Welcome to Liner Notes, where we interview music-obsessed curators and artists. In each interview, we get their three independent artist picks and learn about how their relationship with music impacts their lives.

In this installment, we're talking with culture writer and editor Annie Zaleski, whose prolific career has included stints at the Riverfront Times and Alternative Press as well as a series of acclaimed books such as the 33 1/3 entry on Duran Duran's "Rio." In addition to talking about a life spent in thrall to music, we discussed how rapidly and significantly the writing profession has changed over the last 25 years — and, of course, saved some time for Annie to recommend a few favorite indie acts.

Four Indie Recommendations

Momma - a Brooklyn-based quartet whose sound Annie compares to Veruca Salt with a shoegazey twist.

Spotlight Track: Welcome to My Blue Sky

Pol - a band of Dutch brothers whose mission to bring New Wave back resonates deeply in Annie's early '80s-lovin' heart.

Spotlight Track: Masks

Nation of Language - an indie-pop trio whose sound also hearkens back to formative synth-assisted acts like Kraftwerk.

Spotlight Track: Inept Apollo

Quivers - an Australian outfit offering what they've dubbed "cathartic jangle pop." Their catalog includes a full-album cover of R.E.M.'s "Out of Time" as one point of reference.

Spotlight Track: Oyster Cuts

Full Interview

If somebody came up and said, you know, "Tell me what you do, and who you are, and everything you've accomplished in your life," what would you say?

Oh, my goodness! Big question to start off. Let me try this: I am a New York Times bestselling author of a book on Taylor Swift, as well as a longtime music journalist, cultural critic, and editor. So that's like the 15-second elevator pitch.

Good job! I can tell you've done this before. I want to key in on what you said about longtime, because we've both been doing this for a long time. Let's talk a little about some of the changes that you've seen in our little world in the time that you've been doing this — specifically, how much harder it's gotten for for folks who work with words to make a living.

Absolutely. Yeah, I've been doing this for about 25 years now. And when I started, the internet was — at least in terms of journalism — in a very kind of embryonic stage. I remember in my first internship, updating the website of the magazine where I worked, and it was probably a couple of pages. It was so rudimentary. People hadn't really figured out yet how to use the digital arena for journalism. It was still very print-driven. It was a music magazine. It was Alternative Press magazine. They were very, very successful in the '90s and aughts, like, big fat magazines. 

So that was kind of where I got my start. But at the same time, I kind of came of age when Amazon was starting out, and one of my very first freelance gigs was to write album reviews for Amazon, because at the time, basically, they were populating all of their entries for soundtracks or records coming out on their website with editorial reviews, to basically persuade people to buy. And so, even though I had this very solid print background, I very early got into digital journalism. I did a lot for billboard.com, for example, when I was in college.

So that was kind of the start. And basically, what happened is… so this is the early 2000s, and as everything kind of evolved, print was still happening, but digital was kind of creeping in. And people were trying to figure out how that fit in, because obviously, people didn't monetize it. It was basically free for everybody. And so everyone got used to getting content for free. So I would say the first big major shift was basically trying to balance between print and digital, which was very difficult. 

I was the music editor at a weekly newspaper in St. Louis, and it started off just print. By the time I left, it it was print and digital, and we were digital first. We had a daily blog and a print newspaper of kind of dwindling size. So I think that was the first major shift. And then, as streaming became more of a thing, it became a little bit more audio-driven, and there were definitely opportunities to do writing for streaming sites. For example, I did a couple of really big pieces for Tidal on Peter Gabriel and Elton John. People started shifting a lot of journalism to audio and podcasts.

And video. That was another really, really big shift. "Well, we're going to shift away from print; no one's reading anymore. Let's pivot to video."

Pivot to video, pivot to video. And you know, while I think there were some people that were very successful at having a video strategy alongside everything, it never replaced print, but at the same time there were fewer resources and fewer print columns, and even fewer digital columns devoted to music. And so this is kind of where we are today, is that opportunities for paid music journalism are really really getting scarcer, and even a lot of the bigger places don't have freelance budgets, or they're not devoting freelance budgets to music. If you look at sites that you read five or ten years ago, their music coverage, it's very different than what it was, because things like video games and movies and TV shows have really taken the place of where people's attention has gone.

So there's that element. But I think, along with that — and this is the thing that always bums me out — is that trying to get coverage of new artists is next to impossible now on most websites, because of how the economics work. This is a very broad generalization, but how the broad economics of journalism works is "What is going to get us page views? What are people going to read?" And people read about things they know. So when there's a big album that comes out, you'll notice that a lot of the publications will all cover it. All of their interviews will go live the same day. Maybe they'll have a video element as well, and it'll all happen at the same time at the expense of other artists.

So if you're a smaller artist or an artist that's not as well resourced, trying to get the attention of people and get your name out there is really difficult. But at the same time, and I've seen this from books, is that getting a big writeup in a certain publication doesn't necessarily move the needle right now. There's so much of a fan-to-fan advocate, one-to-one sort of recommendation system that happens. This whole ecosystem is that that's how you really get a hold of people. It's very niche now.

I think the thoughts that you just expressed mirror the conversation that's been going on for a long time. Everything you said is true. All that coverage has been hollowed out, and the great irony there is that people still love music, and people still want to read about music, and people still desperately want to discover new music, and you can see that reflected in the algorithms that drive streaming platforms. And yet it isn't reflected in the editorial world. 

There's a tension there, and I'm not sure how it's going to be resolved in a broader sense. But to your point, I I do think that friends recommending things, trusted people recommending things, that's kind of supplanted the traditional review.

I would completely agree with that. And as someone who loves writing album reviews, it hurts my heart a little bit, you know, when I still do have the opportunity to write reviews — funnily enough for British magazines, so they still very much value reviews, which I very much value as well. But so many places in America have cut their reviews. And readers got primed to knowing. "Oh, I'm not going to actually see reviews here. Where do I go now?" That mechanism was sort of cut off like when I was working at the alt weekly. I believe that they basically told us, "Don't run reviews anymore. We don't have room to run reviews." They were seen as expendable. The idea of being a curator and trying to, you know, facilitate music discovery was not seen as valuable.

To me that's very shortsighted, because it's like what you said: I love new music. I still love discovering new bands and new artists, and the mechanisms now with how we find them are so much more difficult, you know. It used to be, "Hey, let's look at the newspaper." And there was like a whole page of reviews. "Great. Let's see what this sounds like." You can go to the record store. You can preview it now, and the fact that we have everything available to us, it's choice paralysis, and we still need curators to figure out what's new. What might I like? But even trying to get that is very overwhelming, because you don't know where to look, and you don't know who to trust. You don't know what mood I'm in. There's so many different variables. But you're absolutely right.

That's all true. And the algorithms that we're kind of forced to rely on with these platforms are all deeply, deeply flawed. But I've also thought for a while that the role of the review has to change in the streaming era. I don't know if the average consumer needs reviews as much as they used to. 

I think discovery is important. I think music writing is still hugely important, and trying to explain how a piece of art makes you feel, or why something works, or why something doesn't — that's very important. But I think it's more of a conversation with the reader now than it was when we were growing up, when it was much more of like a, you know, "I got this record before you could buy it, and now I'm going to tell you whether or not it's worth your time." I feel like the need for that has gone away in the streaming era. Because as you said, we have access to what feels like everything. Obviously, it's just a small fraction of everything, but it feels like there's so much to listen to, and all you have to do is just hit a button to do it. 

And so I think that most of the reason for the phenomenon that we're talking about is just short-sighted, selfish economics. But I also think that the role of the music journalist has to change in this era.

You're right. Back in the day, they were the gatekeepers. They were the people who worked at newspapers or magazines and said, "I got this record. I'm giving my opinion," and they held a lot of power. And with the way everything has opened up, the bright side is that it's more democratic. Now everybody can have a voice.

We can argue the semantics, you know, sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. But on the bright side, what it's done is open it up to more voices. So it's not just, you know, traditionally, at newspapers, with few exceptions, it was white men who were giving all the opinions. And now it's not that, you know. It's everybody you know. Everybody has the chance to say" I have this niche. This is what I love. I'm going to become an expert. And I'm going to share this stuff." And in that sense, I'm extremely glad about that, because, you know music criticism should not just be a monolithic sort of persona giving their opinion. There's so much music; music is a global entity. There should be voices from everywhere giving their opinion, that's the long and the short of it. 

But I think that's what people are struggling with, is that the reviewer used to be the gatekeeper. So what is their role now? Is it a curator? Is it saying, "Hey, there are these 10 albums that came out this week, here's what you should check out"? Is it more kind of discovery? Is it more "I've listened to this record so you don't have to, you're really busy, so I've put together this playlist of 10 songs"? I saw this a lot with the Springsteen box that recently came out. People were like, "I don't have time to listen to eight records. Where do I need to go to find out what I need to actually listen to that's worth my time?" 

I think that's the other key, is that everyone's in the attention economy, right? Everyone's time is limited, and the days of being able to know what's going on and know what records are coming out in a given week, because there were only like five of them, have long gone. That's the other problem, is that there's so much music coming out, it's impossible to keep up. And so we need people to be able to keep track of that, so we can make better informed decisions. So I see what you mean, as much as I love giving my opinion, and I love saying, "Hey, this is good, and here's why." Because writing criticism is hard. I've lectured to college classes, and I tell them that it's not easy. It's about tone, it's not about "I am the end all be all." It's "Here's what this record is about, what can you take from it? What is good about it? What is not good about it?"

You said the word "gatekeeper," and you said the word "niche." I want to go back to that, because I want to get your thoughts on how the obliteration of the monoculture and the atomization of the audience affects the jobs we're talking about as well, because what even constitutes a major release these days? Something like the Springsteen box or a Taylor Swift record, of course. But that kind of thing only happens a couple times a year, and below that, you've got these acts that are considered major, but their ability to get that kind of broad penetration really isn't what it used to be.

So if you're in the business of talking about music, and your goal is to help people discover music, you're operating within a niche all the time. I think that impacts the economics as well. How do you make enough money from the audience to support that?

I mean, that's, I think, the question everyone is trying to figure out. And I'm glad you zeroed in on that, because I think that the kind of the niche aspect and the you know, the lack of monoculture… I think a lot of people don't realize that. A lot of people who are really fans of a band, they think, "Oh, everyone knows so and so," and more and more these days, that is not the case at all. 

You mentioned Taylor Swift. I think she's like the artist that pretty much everyone knows, and Springsteen obviously has had decades. He's someone else people know. But there as the years go by, everything gets more and more fragmented. I always use the Lollapalooza lineup as an example. When you look at that, and if you're a certain age, you probably have not heard of half the bands on there, even if you're paying attention. But there are kids that go now because it skews toward a younger audience who are over the moon because so many of their favorite bands are on there. It has become niche and stratified, I think, also by age group.

It's been well told that Fleetwood Mac, for example, resonates with a lot of younger generations. But there are a lot of artists that resonate with younger generations that people over the age of 25 have never heard of. It's really, really wild. And you're right about trying to figure out, you know, how to make money off of that. It's basically finding your niche.

This is how I kind of came up was, you know, "I have my genres that I like, I have my artists that I like," but I was a real generalist. You know, I worked for an alternative weekly. And so I was basically covering everything that was coming to St. Louis in a given week. And I made it a priority to say, "Okay, I want to make sure that we're covering the jazz and the hip-hop and the R&B coming as well as the indie rock and the classic rock and the pop music." Because I wanted to give readers a real diverse look at a diverse musical city. 

Being a generalist sometimes can work against you, because everyone is a generalist. Being in a niche is where you kind of make your name. You know, when you look at different music newsletters now, there's people that are rising to the top that have really good hip-hop newsletters, or really good shoegaze newsletters, or punk. That's kind of the way to niche down, is to make a name for yourself, because then you become, as we talked about before, that trusted voice. But it's hard, even being an expert in your genre, you can't be an expert in everything. There just are not enough hours in the day, and it's really difficult.

On that note, I also want to talk about becoming a music critic of a certain age. Personally, I found it liberating. I made my peace with coming to understand that a lot of what was coming out was not necessarily for me. Maybe I could decide to listen to it and comment on it from my perspective anyway, but as you get older, you know, more and more of the mainstream is not geared toward you. It is not for you.

How do you deal with that? How do you respond to that? Do you choose to continue wading through new releases? Every Friday, I make myself listen to the New Music Friday playlist on Spotify, just to engage, even though a lot of it kind of sounds the same to me after a while. Do you tune out? Do you fall back on what's familiar to you? What's your what's your personal policy?

I still engage with new music, because I think what I see in people which just always really bugs me is there's such a tendency, if you do sort of age out of the demographic of an artist, to basically either make fun of it, or sneer at it. That's always bugged me, because more often than not, it's people talking about music loved by teenage girls, because teenage girls never get respected, and their tastes are never respected. And so I make it a point that I still listen to all the new pop music. I actually really love Sabrina Carpenter's music, and I can appreciate people like Benson Boone. I want to understand. I want to stay connected to what's going on. I never want to be that person that's like, "I don't understand what's going on." I always want to try to see what people see in it, because I still emember being that teenager. I remember being that kid who was just, you know, music meant everything to me, and so I always like to see kind of what's going on now to kind of still keep in that mindset. I think it helps that. I have a lot of friends with kids, too. We see they're bringing their kids to concerts, and so they're also kind of staying involved in that as well.

But at the same time, I do recognize that some of this stuff is not for me. And that's okay. I'm okay with that; kind of like what you said, not all music has to be for all people, and people get really offended by that. They feel like all music should be for them. And I've never quite understood that. Because I'm like, "Look, it's okay. Remember when the Beatles came out and how much parents hated the Beatles? Remember what you listened to as a teenager? I remember I had the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik. My mom hated that. It was hilarious, like, she was actually pretty cool about most of my music. Not a fan of the Chili peppers. And really, Mom had good taste. She saw it before the rest of us.

I was that kid, that music meant everything to as well. And I want to talk about that a little bit before we get into your origin story. But first I want to say that I find it harder and harder to be impacted as deeply by music as I was when I was a teenager, and I don't know if that's because the monoculture is gone and we're not experiencing the same major releases together. I don't know if it's because, what's the statistic, when you're between 15 and 19, whatever you hear, that's your favorite music for the rest of your life. I don't know if it's because there are so many more demands on our attention all the time now. 

But active listening has become something that I really have to make a conscious choice to do — repeatedly, while I'm doing it. It's so easy to be taken away from something that I used to… it was like innate, you know, you sit down with a record, and you're just in it until it's over. So what's your perspective on that? Do you struggle with active listening as well?

I mean, I do. And I think you know, kind of like what you hit on, the amount of things that you're sort of responsible for, you know, being an adult, like, when I was a kid, it was like, "I'm just going to sit in my room on Friday night, and just listen to music and read the liner notes." And that was it, because I didn't have responsibilities. And I think now, also, modern life is so much multitasking. It's like, "Okay, well, I'll throw on some music while I'm answering some emails," or "I'll throw on some music while I'm cleaning," or "I'll put this on in the background."

I've noticed this with myself, and I think the idea, because streaming is now the dominant listening mechanism, I think that almost untethers you a little bit from the music. As much as I love streaming for its convenience, it's much easier to say, "Oh, I don't like this. I'm just going to skip forward," or "I'm going to try to find something else." When back in the day you had to get up and turn off the CD player or flip over the record player. And so I think that also kind of encourages less deep listening as much as I love streaming. And I mean, I will tell you, I used to haul CDs out when I would go DJing. You know, I would have CDs strewn in my car. And so the idea that I can access things and not have to deal with that, on the one hand, is great. But it's definitely changed my listening habits in the way I've approached music. But at the same time, I'm still driven mostly by music. It's kind of a running joke that I don't really go to the movies. I'll watch stuff on streaming, I'm still the music person. I would still rather listen to music than watch a Marvel movie, and that has not changed. And so in that sense, I am still very much like I was when I was a kid in terms of, you know, I'm still music, pretty much above all.

I think losing liner notes really hurt.

Yeah.

I agree with you, a hundred percent about streaming. It is incredibly convenient. And I love the opportunities that it offers young listeners, you know. My 17-year-old, a year or two ago, walked in the kitchen and asked me if I'd ever heard of a song called "But Not for Me." And I was like "Have I heard of it? That's a perfect song!" They have the ability to explore in a way that we did not — at least not if we didn't have infinite money to spend.

The thing that I love about physical media is what you touched on — the friction that it introduces to the experience. You can't just put something in and then forget about it. You have to engage with it. And then there's also this physical totem involved that, I think,  reinforces a connection to the music. You know, you're handling it, ideally. There are lyrics, and there are player credits, and you can engage with it that way, but you also have to get up and flip it over, or, you know, skip a song with your hand if you don't like it.

I don't know what the perfect balance of all this looks like, but I do think that a better model has to include liner notes. You have to. I just think, if you've got something to look at, to engage with, while you're listening to the record, that allows you to connect with it in a more lasting way, in a deeper way.

I think this is why vinyl has had such a comeback, with younger folks as well. CDs have started making a comeback because they're cheaper to buy, for starters. But yeah, because it's tangible. It's something you can hold in your hand. I think this is why things like coffee table books are so popular, because it's something that tethers you to the art.

And it is art, you know. I mean, we can joke about how there were so many records that had horrific artwork, but there were also a lot that were really wonderful. People really treated them with thought and foresight. It's a luxury object in a sense, a mini luxury object. But I think that's absolutely why so many people are gravitating toward it, because then you do get that immersive way of experiencing this art that you love.

What made you a music person? Do you know what made you gravitate toward music?

I think it was probably my parents. My parents are huge music fans, and they had all the classics. We laugh in my household that a few years ago Paul Mccartney came to Cleveland and we asked my parents, "Hey, do you guys want to go?" My dad was like, "Yeah, I've never seen Paul." And my mom was like, "I saw the Beatles in '64. I'm good." Okay, Mom, can't argue with that. So I mean, they were music fans from the get-go, and so they grew up basically in the '60s, in the sweet spot. My mom loved the Beatles, and she loved Melanie and Simon and Garfunkel. My dad liked Led Zeppelin, but he also loved garage rock. Growing up in Cleveland, he had Ben Orr from the Cars. He was in a garage rock band here, and he had all those 45s. 

So everything was melded together, but they would go out to concerts too, and so I would grow up with them, telling me stories. "Oh, we saw the Who around when they released Tommy." And "We saw Crosby Stills and Nash," and things like that. And my my dad would always record albums from the library, so we had all these cassettes of, like, the Police, and the Pretenders, and the Cars, and U2. I always really grew up with music around the house. My parents always listened to the radio, so when I was little, basically, I listened to a lot of sports because I was a big baseball fan and football fan and basketball fan. But then I listened to Top 40 and I read, so I really gravitated toward that, because that was what was around our household.

Was there anything that made it a source of comfort for you? The thing that I was thinking about before we talked was for me, as a young person, feeling different. A little lonely, a little sad. Music has a transporting effect. And you've been really outspoken about dealing with mobility issues, so I wondered if, as a kid, you know, you felt other, and listening to music was a balm of sorts in that period of your life, and that's what helped make you the type of fan you are.

I've never really thought about that. But I imagine that probably there was. That was probably a part of it, because I was in junior high and high school right in the thick of grunge and the alternative boom of the '90s, and so I remember listening to Nirvana, which obviously is such a cliche now, but I really gravitated toward the anger and disaffection that was in that record. But I also gravitated toward R.E.M., starting with the '90s stuff and going backwards. They were my favorite band for many, many years, and I'd probably still consider them my favorite band. There's just something very melancholy and kind of searching about their entire career, especially through, I would say, the late '90s. I just really gravitated toward that.

That's the whole idea of, you know, we don't really fit in. I'm trying to find my place, and I'm kind of searching for it. I'm a little bit cerebral. I'm a little bit awkward, because the high school I grew up was like 95% white, very homogeneous. I could never fit in because I had mobility issues. And I was also really smart. And so I didn't fit in, in like 800 different ways. I always had friends, and I always got along, and everything was fine, but I never really felt like I resonated with anyone, and so I gravitated toward all the alternative music. 

But I also gravitated toward the '80s, which was very funny, because, I was the kid who was super into New Wave in like 1994. I was just like, you know, "Give me the Thompson twins. Give me Duran Duran. New Order." I was obsessed with the '80s then, and I think because that separated me a little bit. It was something I had that was just me. My high school had older issues of Rolling Stone, so I'd read those and I'd photocopy different things. If I could psychoanalyze myself back then, I was almost gravitating and making myself different as sort of armor, probably against other people. I never I never got overtly made fun of, I'm sure people did behind my back. I mean, whatever now, but it was not necessarily an easy time. I was a depressed kid; being a teenager was really hard. And so I had these things that were kind of my solace. So yeah.

There's a lot to unpack there.

There was. You're like my therapist. I feel like I should pay you after this interview.

You're talking about. R.E.M., you're talking about Nirvana, two artists who really — in some ways it was overt, especially as time went on. But from the beginning, they welcomed and beckoned people who felt other, and then those sounds became absorbed into the mainstream. And my feeling during that period of time was like, "How come nobody wants to have fun anymore?" I didn't intellectualize it either. I didn't feel like I was popular. I didn't feel like I fit in. But what I didn't understand at that point was that all of pop culture was being made for . You know, a straight white guy. Everything was just being served up to me on a platter. And not that I felt like I would have been invited to any party that the guys in Poison ever threw, but that music was designed to appeal to somebody like me. And then, when music started to shift away from that, the first the first few years of the '90s, I really felt like I got somebody out of time, you know. None of that made sense to me. 

Why the anger, the disaffection? It made no sense to me at all. And it's interesting to me right now, talking to you and looking back on that, how the music that so many people were responding to during that period was kind of an overdue acknowledgment of the way a lot of people felt. And the music that I grew up with was… there's way too much to unpack there, we could spend all day talking about how you know the hair metal of the '80s was kind of used to pave over the influence of disco, and more queer-coded music. We're not gonna do it. But it's just interesting to me now to talk about it with you.

And what I always appreciated, too, about the '90s, in addition to the bands I mentioned, there were so many women doing amazing things. I've written about this a little bit before, but there were so many different women. It wasn't like before.

"We gave you Pat Benatar and Heart. Isn't that enough?"

Exactly. Exactly. People would joke about it, but it was like, "Oh, you're allowed to have one woman in rock." It was Pat Benatar, but then it was also Stevie Nicks. You look at the rock charts in the '80s, and it literally is just like a wall of men. And then Pat Benatar, maybe the Pretenders and Stevie Nicks, that was all that was allowed.

And in alternative rock, you had so many women. You had Juliana Hatfield, who was doing something I really resonated with and whose music I really loved because she was a lot more vulnerable. A little bit insecure. You had people like Tori Amos, who I love because she was so powerful. Also very vulnerable, but in a very outspoken sort of way. You had Bjork. You had bands like Belly and Letters to Cleo, and then, later on, you had Alanis and Garbage like. There were all of these women who kind of showed me, there are many sides to you. You don't just have to be one thing, and I really value being able to grow up in that era, because I think that was also really helpful, because it was one of the eras when the door cracked open and let a lot of different people in. I think we see that now in the underground. I'm so heartened by the fact that there are so many bands in the indie underground — or indie overground, even — that are huge, that are fronted by women. It's really gratifying to see. But yeah, but as a kid, that was really formative to me, too.

From somebody in your position, is there a toolkit that you could present to writers who are trying to survive?

Oh god!

I get asked by a lot of college students to talk about this, and what I always tell people now is to get a day job and work on your journalism on the side, especially if you want to go specifically into music. Sometimes people don't necessarily want to hear that, but you will be able to do better work as a music journalist if you aren't worrying about where your rent comes from, if you're not worrying about health insurance. Have something steady and do your art on the side, because, unfortunately, the economics of it is that it's very, very rare for people to be able to get full-time jobs in music anymore if you don't want to live in New York or L.A. or Nashville.

And that's the other thing, is that for a while there things were opened up a little bit, and the music industry is not very open to remote work and remote jobs. It's very, very rare to be able to not live on the coast and be able to get a job in music, which I think is a real shame. I live in Cleveland, and I've always been able to make it work make opportunities for myself. But in general, you're basically forced to live in two very expensive cities to do this stuff.

You can be an artist on your own terms. If you have a day job doing something, doing other things, that doesn't mean you're not an artist, and it doesn't mean you're not a writer. I think that's becoming a little bit more prevalent now. I remember when I was coming up, there was so much shame for people if they were in journalism to go into marketing, or shame for people to be like, you know, "I'm no longer a music journalist. I'm not doing it full time." And I'm like, "Well, wait a second. That's not true, you know, just because you're doing something else doesn't mean you're not that thing."

So that's my biggest advice, and to also have a good grounding. If you want to be a writer, for example, you know, find a niche. Maybe it's science. Maybe it's business. Maybe it's marketing. Find something that you really love doing. Being able to write is still something that's valuable. I still firmly believe in that. You know, we can talk about AI all we want, but you still need to have a good writer. Maybe I'm a dinosaur. Maybe in, you know, five years, people will be like, "Whatever." But I firmly believe that.

The thing that I want to know after hearing you say all that… I think you've done this less than I have, but I feel like many people who try to make money with writing end up doing hack work to pay the bills. Writing about things they don't necessarily care about, just because that's where a lot of the "money" is these days — you're just grinding out #content for a couple bucks. I've done plenty of that, and I have always struggled with whether or not in doing so, you're smothering the muse, in a way. By making this devil's bargain you're giving up your own talent. You're eroding what makes you special. What are your thoughts on that?

That's a big question, because I think you're right. Anyone who has done writing in the last 15 years will have done something where they're like, "Okay, whatever, fine. This pays well, or this pays anything. It pays on time."

I am such a naturally curious person that I've done content marketing, I've done branded marketing, but I actually find it really interesting to write about stuff that I don't know about, because I want to learn about it. To me, that keeps my brain interested, which, I feel like I'm kind of a weirdo that way. But it's nice to be able to also be seen as someone like, "Hey, I have this thing. Can you do this? You might not know enough about it," but they trust me enough to say, "I know you'll do a good job and get up to speed on this." And so I like doing stuff like that. But you know, when I was at my full time job at the alt weekly, we had these ridiculous blog quotas. We had to do like eight blog posts a day, and we had no budget pretty much, and so I was just putting out whatever. At the time it was like, "Okay, you know, fine. We're just trying to fill space." In hindsight — because they nuked our website, and so I'm trying to salvage any of the clips I do care about — I'm looking at some of the stuff I did, and I'm like, "Oh my god, I'm glad this isn't online anymore," because it's just so cringeworthy.

At the time, I was just trying to get by. It was around the recession in 2008, and in the aftermath of that, and I was just trying to kind of do what people wanted me to do to, you know, stay afloat. I guess to get back to your original question, I've always kind of looked at like as long as I'm doing things that do nurture me and fulfill me, if other things are happening that maybe are not so much, I'm okay with that, because I know that I'm doing other things, and I do have other things brewing that are always exciting to me, and do nurture that side of me. So I've never been too conflicted about that.

What's implicit in what you're saying is that one of the big keys to getting these opportunities is still just old-fashioned networking, to know people who think of you.

Yeah, and be willing to try new things. Because as much as I laugh about how writing has changed, you roll with it. I see too many people who are like, "Well, things aren't how they used to be," or "I only want this specific thing," and they're closing themselves off to opportunities. Leave yourself open to things, because you never know — you might try something and be like, "I really enjoy doing this." I write video scripts for a couple of clients, and I have over the years. And I love doing it. It's such a different way of writing, and it's such a different way of thinking about writing and words and narration. But I love doing it. And I was just like, "Sure, I'll try this." It's just leaving yourself open to things.

All right. This is it. Last question.

Oh no!

Your three indie artists that you want to recommend.

This was hard, because I was like, "What constitutes indie? I had to actually look this up. But one of my favorite albums this year is by the band Momma. Their record is called Welcome to My Blue Sky, and it's on Polyvinyl Records. I think that counts as indie. It reminds me of Veruca Salt mixed with a shoegaze band.

It's a really excellent record, and I could not recommend that one enough. We listened to their entire catalog a couple weeks ago, and it's just really good songwriting. That's my biggest complaint a lot of times. It's like, you know, you can put out a lot of music, but focus on the songs, right?

Another band I like, and I don't even know if they actually have a record deal, is a band made up of Dutch brothers. They're called Pol. They're basically early '80s Duran Duran meets early Depeche Mode meets Japan.

So it checks all your boxes.

All of my boxes, and I've interviewed them before. They are lovely human beings. They're very, very thoughtful. They think about their music like how a lot of the bands did at the time, like "Our shows are events. Our shows are something special." And so they're very thoughtful, very mature. I'm a huge fan.

I almost don't know what's indie anymore. But I think Nation of Language is on Sub Pop, if I remember correctly. They're kind of a synth-oriented indie pop band, and they're one of those bands that every time I hear a song by them in the wild, I'm like, "I really like that song. Who is that?" They tour a whole ton. They're out there on the road all the time, and they're really good folks, and their music is just really really good. 

There are just so many other acts, but those are the three that came to mind, because I'm still listening to new bands all the time. And it's funny because, I think you know, growing up, it was so important which labels people were on. Now, things being sort of untethered from physical media, I don't know a lot of times, and it can be really difficult to figure that out.

We could talk for half an hour about how labels used to have personalities.

Right. Oh, and I feel like that if we told younger generations this, they would look at us like we had eight heads, right? Matador was this, and Merge was this.... I actually remembered a band I should mention. I'll have a bonus one. Merge has a band called Quivers, who are wonderful. They're kind of co-ed indie pop. They actually did a full album cover version of R.E.M.'s Out of Time. But beyond that, they're just really really excellent, so I highly recommend them.

Thank you! This was fun.

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