Emma Madden

Hamilton, Ontario’s Linnea Siggelkow decided to learn guitar at age 12, when she saw the music video for Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” As the daughter of a piano teacher, it was her first departure from sheet music. When she began writing her own songs, she found herself drawn towards melancholy. That’s the mood that defines Ellis, the dream-pop project she started in her bedroom some four years ago. A series of early GarageBand demos attracted attention, earning her opening slots for Soccer...

Take a five-minute stroll from the South Platte River in Denver, Colorado, on roads that are wrinkled and worn like elephant’s skin, and you’ll find a cluster of industrial buildings. This is the city’s art district, home to several art galleries, music venues, and craft beer brewstations. On the periphery lies Rhincoeropolis, the former artist co-op which housed and provided a lifeline to 15 of the city’s local musicians. Madeline Johnston, who records under the moniker Midwife, was among th...

In Idyllwild, a tiny mountain town in Southern California, the mayor was practically born with a tie around his neck. At just 11 weeks old, he was grandfathered into office; eager to put his paws to work, liaising with local businesses, and helping to promote the town’s message of love well beyond its winding mountain roads. In his official capacity, he’s known as “Maximus mighty-dog mueller, the second," but to this town and to the world, he’s known as "Mayor Max" – the Earth’s only Golden R...

In the past, Katie Crutchfield has used music as a "vehicle to heal." From singing musical theater songs alongside her twin sister Allison in their childhood Alabama home to mixing with Philadelphia’s punk and D.I.Y. scene, and emerging as the lo-fi leaning Waxahatchee in 2012, she’s looked to music to resound her truth. With Saint Cloud, her fifth album (out on March 27 via Merge), she’s turned that method on its head.
Written near her childhood home in Kansas City, immediately after her dec...

Hillary Woods made this record, her second, while she was pregnant. She recorded it between her home in Galway, Ireland and in the home of her producer—the Norwegian noisenik Lasse Marhaug—who has frequently collaborated with Woods’ labelmate Jenny Hval. Noise-folk of this kind is supposed to be more illusory than your traditional pop album, filling in the gaps between each sound so that it becomes its own Rorschach test. Unfortunately, Birthmarks seldom gives you the incentive to find yourse...

The comedian behind Channel 4’s rom-com reimagining has a definitive message: ‘girls bang – they’re horny, filthy, weird, and funny’
Mae Martin, the Toronto-born, London-based comedian clung to the stage from an early age. From 11, she was spending most nights working up an audience for laughs; going through puberty on Toronto’s comedy circuit, where highs were chased and drugs flowed free.
After almost two decades on the scene — highlights of which include several triumphant tours, a very fu...

It's possible we wouldn't be in this moment without the social platform

In the months leading up to Christmas of 1998, parents assembled in droves to buy their children a furry, talking, animal-like toy—equal parts gerbil, owl, and gremlin. It was no bigger than a Nerf basketball, and had wide, blinking eyes with long lashes. From late October 1998 to the end of the year, 1.8 million units of the toy were sold. By the end of 1999, that number would rise to 14 million, transcending mere popularity and attaining cultural significance at the level of Barbie, Action ...

SHEFFIELD — In 2010, two years before her death, Whitney Houston took to the stage for the Nothing but Love World Tour, which served to promote her seventh album as well as the beginning of a general comeback. While the 38-city trek brought in $36 million in ticket sales, according to PollStar, it was still deemed a flop. Critics lambasted her for her hoarseness and fans departed as she coughed between and during songs. The world could only allow themselves a flawless and unharmed vision of W...

Under the Cover is a column analyzing album artwork.
Ever since Kanye West unveiled the chaotic PowerPoint slide-looking artwork for The Life Of Pablo in 2016, a running joke has accompanied the rollout of kitschy album visuals: “Graphic design is my passion.” For those not in on the gag, the phrase emerged on Tumblr some time in the 2010s, in an unsettling Papyrus font on top of a gray marbled background, inexplicably accompanied by a poorly overlaid frog. That mishmash of deliberately taste...

Ten years ago this week, Joanna Newsom released a three-disc epic. Its runtime matched The Emperor Strikes Backand its lyric sheet warranted intense study, but those heady qualifiers didn’t stop it from being a legitimate pop phenomenon too, propelling the songwriter on the charts and the stage at The Late Show with David Letterman. An album like Have One on Me requires an attuned ear and certain breadth of experience; a kind and afflicted heart. Those who don’t come to this album equipped wi...

Meghan Trainor’s album — very conveniently called “Treat Myself” — dropped at the very end of January. But while you may be tempted to update that “badass girl power playlist,” it’s worth thinking about who Trainor’s message actually helps. Increasingly, the anthems that are supposed to make us feel empowered are also, ultimately, used to sell us things. This marriage of female pop anthems and corporate advertising is good for artists. But is it good for us?
This marriage of female pop anthem...

On 'Watch This Liquid Pour Itself,' the artist lets us into all of it
By Emma Madden
Somewhere in Greenpoint, New York, the Norwegian-born model, actor, and musician Kaya Wilkins (a.k.a. Okay Kaya) is holding her phone, waiting for a stranger to call and ask her about her yeast infection, or her experiences in a psych ward, or maybe her boyfriend Stacy — all of which are covered in graphic detail on her sophomore album Watch This Liquid Pour Itself.
The album's 15 tracks pinwheel across genre...

In 1995, the utopian, galactic future was made tangible by software engineer David Bohnett and aerospace engineer John Rezner when they first invited you to their page: GeoCities.com. After several months of testing and developing their free web hosting service, GeoCities took the internet away from academics and hobbyists and gave it to The People, with 25,000 pages created by the first half of the decade’s end. For the first time, the internet was driven by user-generated content, as those ...