Heya!
I write + broadcast about music for a lot of places: Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Pitchfork, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and the great UK magazine Uncut (back in the day, I wrote for SPIN, the Village Voice, Minneapolis’ City Pages, and Option). I also write books: Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever, and more recently, Lou Reed: The King of New York. (Yeah, I’m a New Yorker.)
But as music writing about the stuff I love most gets harder to find, I figured it was time to build a Substack newsletter for likeminded music fanatics: a roundup of essential new music reviews, and old music reveries, with obsessively-curated playlist streams to illuminate the writing. How obsessive, you ask? See my 12 chapter playlists for Lou Reed: The King of New York, streaming on Apple and Spotify, with near every song mentioned in the book + then some. 650+ songs. 50+ hours of music.
The newsletter is called New Music + Old Music. It will post every Friday. Along with reviews and playlists, you’ll get heads-ups on forthcoming LPs, singles, books, films, vinyl drops, tours, and ticket sales. A human-crafted alternative, or at least a healthy supplement, to soul-suck social media scrawling, corporate AI streaming algorithms, and other black-hole internet hustles.
There’ll be archival deep dives and historical writing, too (New York music in particular, Lou Reed included), and links to great stuff by fellow music writers. And as you might expect, if you know my writing, the posts will be loaded with cool archival videos embeds and relevant hyperlinks to other lovingly-mined data-gems.
Free subscribers get email notices, so you’ll know what I’m up to, and the occasional post. Paid subscribers get full posts + playlists, plus access to the archives. There will be interactive elements, too; this is a community, as app developers like to say, and it can be collaborative; we can build our own damn algorithm.
Thanks for considering a paid subscription. Paid subscribers make this possible. Expect to be turned on to the unfamiliar, go deep on the familiar, and savor artifacts that, to paraphrase Prince, will help us get through this thing called life.
Patti Smith was my initial inspiration for this newsletter (she also inspired Love Goes To Buildings On Fire, a story I’ll share in a future post). In her Substack intro, she wrote “I am still here.” Me too, and you too. Let’s have some fun. (Below: me, in Grand Central Station, moments before a New York City cop barked “move it along, buddy.”)
x Will
Souunds great - looking forward to reading more 👍
I'm a little late to welcome you to Substack, Will, but a kind and warm welcome to you, regardless of timing. I can say, unquestionably, that the music community here is incredibly vibrant and positive, and a real pleasure to be a part of. Honored to have you here.