To truly get me into the spirit of the season, I need “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Music
Posted inFaith, Music
Advent Playlist: Classic hymns to help you wait in hope
Last year, ‘America’ published “An (unconventional) Advent Playlist.” This is my (much more conventional) Advent playlist.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
The Velvet Underground: rock’s first cult band
In a new exhibit, we are treated to a kind of shrine to the band’s origins.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
Is ‘Silent Night’ the greatest Christmas song ever?
On Christmas Eve 1818, in the church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf near Salzburg, “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”) was sung for the first time. Today, the carol has been translated into some 300 languages.
Posted inArts & Culture, Music
Meet the Palestinian rocker writing love songs and protest anthems
Rasha Nahas: “The story I bring with me being a Palestinian artist born in Haifa.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
How to experience the Bible in a digital world
A 21st-century arts collective revives illustrating the Bible for the digital age.
Posted inCulture, Faith
New Bing Crosby bio paints picture of crooner and his priest alter-ego
With Father O’Malley, Crosby “concocted a fantasy priest—a perfect, albeit celibate, man.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Theater
Who is the better songwriter: Bob Dylan or Rodgers & Hammerstein?
How did an old war horse manage to outrun a rolling stone?
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
Lady Gaga shines in a brilliant and intimate ‘A Star is Born’
“A Star Is Born” is not only among the most self-reflective of Hollywood vehicles but the most resilient; when clichés work they are called conventions.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Kanye West, S.N.L. and the incoherence of modern life
Kanye is id-made-flesh, an extreme and uncomfortable example of what we all look like when turned inside out.