The Magazine
The Music Issue
June 5, 2023
Goings On
Tables for Two
Superiority Burger Keeps a Tight Focus
Brooks Headley’s East Village restaurant, relocated to a relatively sprawling space, builds on his original vegetarian menu with powerful, creative additions.
Goings On About Town
GloRilla Sets Out to Conquer Summer
The Memphis rapper is part of Hot 97’s Summer Jam, which also features Cardi B, Ice Spice, Coi Leray, and Lola Brooke.
The Talk of the Town
Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Ron DeSantis’s run; behold the trash can; random art kids; dinner and a pit bull; Gloria Gaynor’s A-side.
Dog’s Life Dept.
Dogs Are a Girl’s Best Friend
Michael Bloomberg’s daughter Georgina (along with Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara) headlines the movement to save hundreds of thousands of New York pets from euthanasia.
Art Fair
Twenty-Dollar Lemonade, but Is It Art?
On an art-fair rooftop, New York grade schoolers peddle refreshments to benefit art education in public schools.
Survival Dept.
Gloria Gaynor, Still Surviving in New Jersey
As a bio-pic premières at the Tribeca Film Festival, the singer talks about how “the song” was almost a B-side, and the joys of cooking with cream-of-mushroom soup.
Dept. of Sanitation
Original Garbage-Can Art Found in Sanitation Department Archive!
The National Lampoon artist Rick Meyerowitz hadn’t seen the drawing he did for the city’s first recycling campaign—his most ubiquitous art work—since 1986.
Comment
What Can Ron DeSantis Do Now?
It isn’t that the Florida governor is charmless—or it’s not only that. It’s that his career has been spent on a charmlessness offensive.
Reporting & Essays
Onward and Upward with the Arts
Who Is Matty Healy?
For the front man of the 1975, fame is its own kind of performance.
A Reporter at Large
How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party
For the very rich, even the world’s biggest performers—Beyoncé, Drake, Jennifer Lopez, Andrea Bocelli—are available, at a price.
Annals of Music
The Case for and Against Ed Sheeran
The pop singer’s trial for copyright infringement of Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend’s “Let’s Get It On” highlights how hard it is to draw the property lines of pop.
Profiles
Kim Petras Wants to Be a Superstar
The singer has dreamed of pop ubiquity since she was a teen-ager. After a No. 1 hit, “Unholy,” she is under pressure to do it again.
Letter from Memphis
The Secret Sound of Stax
The rediscovery of demos performed by the songwriters of the legendary Memphis recording studio reveals a hidden history of soul.
Shouts & Murmurs
Shouts & Murmurs
Lesser-Known Postpartum Mood Disorders
Fiction
Fiction
Do You Love Me?
“We are the parents of a missing person, but the kind no one around us can understand, not even us.”
The Critics
Books
The Long Afterlife of Libertarianism
As a movement, it has imploded. As a credo, it’s here to stay.
Books
The Trials and Triumphs of Writing While Woman
From Mary Wollstonecraft to Toni Morrison, getting a start meant starting over.
Musical Events
Gustavo Dudamel’s Mahler Misfire
At the New York Philharmonic, the celebrity conductor gave a curiously inert reading of the Ninth Symphony.
Pop Music
Christine and the Queens’ Restless Self-Inventions
“Paranoïa, Angels, True Love” is the latest album from an artist unafraid to become someone new.
Books
Briefly Noted
“The Plot to Save South Africa,” “My Father’s Brain,” “Take What You Need,” and “Gravity and Center.”
A Critic at Large
The Mysticism of Paul Simon
On “Seven Psalms,” the artist continues his spiritual seeking, imagining a divine presence only to interrogate its borders.
Poems
Cartoons
1/19
Cartoon by Bob Eckstein
Cartoon Caption Contest
Puzzles & Games Dept.
The Mail
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.