Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Photo: Tidal
Beyoncé Unearths Pain and Lets It Flow in ‘Lemonade’ – by Wesley Morris, The New York Times
“Lemonade feels like a cultural rebuke on behalf of lots of aching women, whether they’re standing on that plantation porch, watching from their living rooms, or running for president.”
Where “Becky” Comes From, And Why It’s Not Racist, Explained – by Damon Young, VSB
“It’s actually easier for me to say whether a White woman would be considered a Becky than it is to explain the criteria. Hillary Clinton? Not a Becky. Natalie Portman? Not really a Becky. Taylor Swift? The Beckiest. Iggy Azalea? Darth Becky. There are several theories on its etymology, but the one that makes the most sense is that it stems from the first line of Baby Got Back.”
‘Rock music: I don’t know what’s wrong with it': An interview with Street Chant’s Emily Edrosa – by Duncan Greive, The Spinoff
“You can’t win. I wanna make music for girls to feel comfortable to go to the shows and to feel like they want to dance to. Not for dudes in Flying Nun shirts to stroke their chins or young dudes to brood to or anything like that. But then also I’m ashamed that I thought to express femininity was some kind of weakness.”
Earning the ‘Woke’ Badge – by Amanda Hess, The New York Times Magazine
“When white people aspire to get points for consciousness, they walk right into the cross hairs between allyship and appropriation. These two concepts seem at odds with each other, but they’re inextricable. Being an ally means speaking up on behalf of others — but it often means amplifying the ally’s own voice, or centering a white person in a movement created by black activists, or celebrating a man who supports women’s rights when feminists themselves are attacked as man-haters. Wokeness has currency, but it’s all too easy to spend it.”
Drop Sky? That won't get me a house – by Kirsty Johnston, NZ Herald
“This morning I read advice from a mortgage broker which said house hunters just need to give up their Sky TV or expensive cars and they'll have a first home in no time. It enraged me. I am one of those house hunters. And let me tell you right now, it's not the Sky subscription that's the problem.”
How Prince’s Androgynous Genius Changed the Way We Think About Music and Gender – by Simon Reynolds, Pitchfork
“All this attention, negative and positive—for some rock critics, he’d already become a mascot figure for the dream of a genre-crossing, races-uniting superstar-to-come—went to Prince’s head. The result was Controversy and its titular lead single, on which the racially/sexually mixed-up singer presented himself as the Enigma at the roiling center of a vortex of discourse, parroting back the fascinated confusion of his audience and the media: “Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?””
