Dance Critic Sarah Kaufman: “Perhaps, somewhere, there exists a small, sad sliver of the human population that still believes, 17th-century style, that dancing is sinful, that having fun is wrong, that music is corrupting, that a young woman playfully noodling around with her hair down must be some kind of wild, out-to-get-you Medusa. I guess the Puritan prejudice against a good time hasn’t entirely disappeared. Otherwise, how could anyone think that publicizing a video clip of a beautiful, college-age Ocasio-Cortez dancing with her friends could harm the Democratic congresswoman from New York?” – Washington Post
Author: Douglas McLennan
Ranking All 213 Beatles’ Songs From Worst To Best
This quixotic task was performed by longtime music critic Bill Wyman. It’s an admittedly deeply subjective ranking. Wyman heaps the most scorn for Paul McCartney’s “Good Day Sunshine” which ends up at the bottom. He calls it bland and contends that it ruins “Revolver” the album it was on. – New York Magazine
How The Prado Museum Revitalized Itself
Central to this shift was the Prado’s hard-won independence from government interference. Once, directors came and went with each political quarrel, creating uncertainty and malaise. “The Prado was sometimes a weapon used by one political party against the other”. – The Art Newspaper
Pioneering Animator Don Lusk, 105
“Lusk’s passing is not just the death of a great animator, but the closing of an era in American animation history. He was the last living Disney animator who had made significant contributions to the original animated features produced by Walt Disney, starting with the company’s very first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. ” – CartoonBrew
Our Obsession With Taking Pictures Is Changing Our Memories
It’s not uncommon to see people spending more attention on picture-taking than focusing on the experience they’re having. But “taking photos of an event, rather than being immersed in it, has been shown to lead to poorer recall of the actual event — we get distracted in the process.” – Global News (Canada)
Undergraduates Abandon History Degrees
Of all college majors since the financial crash of 2008, data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that none has fallen faster than history, which has experienced the steepest declines by far in student majors. – The Daily Beast
“How My Cat Destroyed The Painting I was Restoring”
“I bought it in 2015 for £5,250. I probably spent the same again cleaning and reframing it. And as I stood back to admire my handiwork, up jumped our cat, landing forcefully in the centre of the painting with a crunch. Disaster.” – The Telegraph (UK)
How A Heavy Metal Mongolian Band Found A Worldwide Audience
“Mongolians are not just taking elements from Western music and just copying and pasting. So it’s not rock music performed by Mongolians. It’s Mongolian rock music.” And YouTube has found it an audience. – NPR
Are These The 21 Most-Beautiful Theatres In America?
Curbed, the guilty-pleasure real estate porn site, makes a list of standout concert halls in America. Acoustics aren’t the criteria here – or functionality or success. Instead, this is a list of visual pleasures. – Curbed
2018 In Classical Music By The Numbers
Bachtrack’s annual compilation of statistics about classical music worldwide. The headline? About 30,000 performances. Oh, and Leonard Bernstein got a big boost from his anniversary year with a surge in performances of his music. – BachTrack