Our weekly podcast features in-depth analysis of the music we find great, exciting and just plain awesome. This week, editor-in-chief Puja Patel, director of reviews Jeremy D. Larson, and associate editor Cat Zhang discuss some of the trends, scandals, gossip, technology moves, and industry changes shaping the music landscape of 2023. They talk about the rampant influence of musical theatre, the return of the dancing pop star, the guitar's renaissance, the rise of artificial intelligence and the fall of Matthew Healy in 1975, and much, much more. Plus, stay tuned until the end, when Alvvays' Molly Rankin tells us about the one song she'd like to write.
Listen to this week's episode and read an excerpt below. Follow along The Pitchfork Review here and check out all of Pitchfork's 2023 coverage here.
Jeremy D. Larson: Cat, you came up with this idea called Rise of the Musical Theater Girl. What is this?
Zhang Cat: Okay, there's a lot of big pop girls now that have musical theater or have that aura of theatricality. So we have Reneé Rapp, who is a Broadway star Bad Girls the musical, the movie. And then we have Olivia Rodrigo, who was in it High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. And then we have Chappell Roan, who I think did musical theater growing up at school and has a cabaret aspect to her performance, both in her dress and then in her singing style. And then we also have Caroline Polachek, who has this kind of musical theater. A lot of that comes through the vocals, just the willingness to push the vocals over the top, be a little naughty, be dramatic. And so, given that musical theater is historically perhaps despised…
