The album I've had on repeat

Plus a *ton* of links for your weekend...

Behold, links! If you were looking for a few good reads (and listens) to dive into over the weekend, don’t worry—I’ve got you. But, such abundance is too much for any one Inbox to handle, so if you are reading this via email, it will definitely/maybe cut off. Click the title above to view the whole she-bang!

---

So here’s how this particular rabbit hole came about:

In October, Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton debuted the incredible art exhibit Dear New York inside Grand Central Station. In fact, for the first time in history, it was devoid of advertisements in order to make space for the show. The backstory on the exhibit is here, with several moments from it still viewable on Brandon’s Instagram.

When I wanted to learn more, I headed over to the DEAR NEW YORK website, and loved the interactive experience there. The site—and all of the project’s branding—was completed by Pentagram.

So then I got to browsing their website and came across this super cool project they worked on for the MTA’s Fulton Center station, which visualizes the data of the city’s many subway lines. From the case study:

The animated installation visualizes each train line as a character whose unique qualities are extracted from MTA data. Drawn to the beauty of the trains’ intersections, movements, and idiosyncrasies, Lupi and her team sought to reveal the visual poetry of this infrastructure.

Give it a watch here:

OMG, have you guys listened to the new Lily Allen album? WHEW.

Lily Allen is someone whose career I haven’t followed closely, and was mostly (peripherally) aware of her in my 20s, when she was a tabloid regular. So when the first couple tracks of this album played in my headphones, all I could think was, Wait. Whoa. Who is she singing about? What the hell happened? What’s really going on here?

Cue the lore:

Lily Allen and David Harbour (Stranger Things, et al) were married in 2020 after a whirlwind courtship. He posted this kinda weird IG about their Las Vegas wedding. (Note the jab about the credit card—he would appear to be a master of the sarcastic-mean aside.) They bought a brownstone in Brooklyn and decorated it to the nines. Then she got the lead in a big play, and when it opened, he sent her this (also weird) note along with flowers. And then she was so good in the play, she got nominated for a Laurence Olivier award—similar to a Tony—and he posted this (again, weird) IG about it.

This would’ve been enough to fill out an album, but with West End Girl, Allen reveals the extent of what was going on behind the scenes: he asked for an open marriage, but as she suggests, it was all a ruse to gaslight and cheat on her. Like, a lot.

I don’t know either of these people nor what is true or not, but what I will tell you is that the storytelling in this album is wild and wildly attention-grabbing. And—zooming out—I suppose it’s not surprising, given the highly confessional songwriting that’s popular amongst modern pop singers. It’s interesting, how laying the truth bare has become a means to both emotional/artistic release, and to virality.

Confessions aside, the album is also just really fun. It’s got a great mix of unexpected influences (bossa nova! flamenco!) with plenty of electro-pop, too. It’s ear-wormy! Not trying to pit artists against one another, but part of me hoped The Life of a Showgirl would be more like this.

Give it a listen, and I dare you not to get, Nah nah nah nah nahhh, Who’s Madeline? stuck in your head. Fair warning: if you have kids, skip playing this one in the car with them.

Speaking of pop stars and new releases, with the drop of Taylor Swift’s latest album in October and Sabrina Carpenter’s in the summer, I’ve been digesting a lot of the discourse around the works—specifically in the context of mainstream cultural reaction.

When The Life of a Showgirl dropped, I came across this essay from Substacker Matriarchal Blessing, titled “The Madonna Move: Taylor Swift’s Quiet Turn Towards Men.” Then randomly one day, I put on a June episode of Diabolical Lies, titled “Sabrina Carpenter and the Politics of Pop Star Sexuality,” which featured a fantastic contrast of Madonna’s early-career interviews alongside more recent pop stars, plus a crash course in the eye-popping art she made at the time.

It’s interesting to me that Madonna’s come up in both the Taylor and Sabrina discourse. Amidst these two cultural behemoths dominating our feeds today, it’s easy to forget the influence Madonna had on culture in the 80s and 90s, how different her work was from what’s made today, and how in many ways, when it comes to how we react to and chatter about female pop stars, absolutely nothing has changed.

Quick aside: You guys, this ep was such a good listen, and I can’t recommend it enough. Katie and Caro dive deep into what makes a pop star a pop star, how our culture reacts to female pop star sensuality and sexuality, where and when pop stars have (or haven’t) pushed the envelope, and what it all means in the context of Sabrina Carpenter’s controversial album cover. Listen if you can! It got me to completely re-examine my opinion on the Man’s Best Friend album cover; it was an absolute banger of an episode. It’s a paid ep, but I recently upgraded and have four month-long gift subscriptions sitting around. If you want one, comment below and it’s yours! Get ‘em while they’re hot.

And FWIW, Diabolical Lies has been a favorite pod to listen to on walks as of late. The research, discourse, and depth is really good. A few other eps I loved:

• “Ethical Consumption” and the History of “Selling Out” (latest ep, and free!)

• “How to Give Birth in America, Part I” (This one was SO GOOD. It went deep on the history of midwives, and why American pregnancy and l&d culture is the way it is as opposed to, say, Sweden.)

• “Taylor Swift’s Rumspringa, Reviewed” (a TLOAS review, a lot of which I agreed with.)

I don’t even know how I got a link to Michelle Dockery’s absolutely gorgeous London townhome in one of my many feeds. But I did, and now I’m putting it in your feed, too. I love so much about this home: the warmth, the layers, the earthy tones with unexpected bold pops and patterns, and just how lived in and welcoming it feels. Interior eye candy, right this way.

One other good (long!) podcast listen. Earlier in October, Ezra Klein interviewed Brian Eno in a wonderful, meandering, illuminating conversation about making art, the origins of creativity, AI, musical craft, and so much more. You may not have heard of Brian Eno, but you have definitely heard his work—he’s produced albums for Coldplay, David Bowie, U2, the Talking Heads, and more. He even composed the musical sound you heard when you booted up Windows 95 back in the day.

Anyway, this conversation was truly delightful! You can listen on the NYT website here (gift link!), or read the transcript. The podcast is also available on Spotify, here.

Two snippets that have stayed with me:

How [can some people] hear something and it is their favorite thing ever and others will put the same thing on and they hear nothing but noise?

I think the answer to that is that, of course, when we look at any piece of art, we are not looking just at that piece of art; we are looking at this piece of art in terms of our personal history. It’s like you are hearing the latest sentence in a conversation you’ve been having for your whole life.

I wrote this little story once about somebody in some postapocalyptic time finding an art museum. The whole place is wrecked, but there’s lots of pictures still around, and they find one picture that obviously hasn’t been finished, which is just a white canvas, which of course, in fact, is Malevich’s “White on White.” It has no meaning to that person who doesn’t share its history.

What are you doing with art? When I think of your library, it’s not all creating a world that you would like to live in. You’ve given all these legible motivations for other people. Is your motivation as legible to yourself?

At best, what I’m doing is thinking — I often start something by thinking, “I wish there was a piece of music like this” — whatever “this” means in my mind.

For instance, one of my best-known records is “Music for Airports,” and that came from a very direct experience of sitting in a newly built airport in Germany, near Cologne, and everything about the airport was dazzlingly beautiful. It was a lovely structure, and they had terrible German disco music playing really loud through the whole P.A. system in the airport.

And I just thought, “Nobody’s thought about this issue of what kind of music belongs in this place.”

We use music in public all the time, but does anybody actually sit down and think seriously about what would be the best kind of music to have in this important place where people are arriving, leaving, going on to important new phases in their lives or going back to loved ones or whatever? It ought to be something a bit more.

I started thinking, “What should it be more of?” And so I started thinking and trying to make a kind of music that I thought would make the airport experience feel important and special.

It’s after Halloween so I am very late with this, but for your enjoyment and amusement, here is the etymology of the word “witch,” which I looked up in early October because my kid was talking about witches and I said witch out loud so many times that it started to sound weird, and then I wondered where the word came from.

Mac and Jon mentioned legendary Italian artist, designer, and inventor Bruno Munari in their Substack a few weeks ago, and I got curious. A few clicks later, I was ordering a copy of his heralded Design as Art, and I’ve been gobbling it up this week. It’s such a thoughtful, precise treatise on the role of design in our world, as relevant now as when he penned it in the 1960s. I can tell it’s going to be a treasured book in my collection—special enough to gift to a few folks this holiday. Check it out here.

My daughter dressed up as a fairy princess for Halloween. (Not pictured: Etsy wings, homemade crown, homemade wand.)

The dress: mine, circa 1992. Sometime that summer, my mother handed me a catalog and instructed me to find a costume I loved, and this is what I earmarked for purchase.

That year, on the big night, a cold front swept through Austin. Trick-or-treating was preceded by a big fight as to whether a coat should be worn over such a fabulous, glittery garment. (Me:1, Mom: 0) Fitting that in the year 2025, the same discussion transpired. But perhaps the 1992 kerfuffle served as a warning. “It’s part of the dress,” I said aloud to no one after she refused her jacket despite the low 50s temps. “I guess refusing outwear is woven into its fabric.”

And of course, eats.

This sumptuous recipe popped up in my feed this week and I bookmarked it for the holiday. Cannellini beans, kale, butternut squash, mushrooms, wrapped in a cheesy, velvety sauce—hello, comfort food. Recipe is here.

• The New York Times just released their list of the best illustrated children’s books of the year. And if you’re on the hunt for more picture book ideas for your kiddos, might I point you to my other Substack, right this way?

• I follow several principal dancers at the SF Ballet for no other reason than I love seeing their dance Reels. Case in point:

• Yay for towns working together to make things better. (gift link)

• This fall I bought these clog mules from Quince (total Birks dupes, yes) and I really like them! Though I considered the gen-you-ine article, these are water-resistant and have a cushier footbed. I like them for school dropoff and pickup and quick errands! (A before-you-ask disclaimer: I’ve never bought anything else from Quince, so no insight to offer beyond the clogs.)

• Finally, because you made it this far, I present to you without comment:

Hey, did you like this letter?

I liked making it.

Where once I had aspirations for super in-depth newsletters and essays I hoped you’d chew on for days, the reality is, in the year of our lord 2025, I ain’t got time for it. I do, however, got the recs!

Anyway, in this particular season (season 3, by my count), my loose plan is to send a monthly letter with really good reads, watches, listens—things that have enriched my life and mind in a way that is meaningful. The kinds of things I send girlfriends and tell them they have to look at. Kinda like this here newsletter. I hope you like!

And with that, see you next month!