Sufjan has a very broad discography, having released 13 studio albums, three soundtracks, 13 EPs, two mixtapes and more since 1999. He has a beautiful habit of making music to cope with tragedy. In 2015, he released Carrie and Lowell, inspired by the death of his mother, and in October, he released Javelin, dedicated to his late partner, Evan Richardson, whom he lost in April. The album takes us through his grief, which reveals itself through his tired voice and intricate lyrics that wax and wane through the hopelessness and hopefulness of losing someone you love too early.
Look what we made her do. With the release of her album Midnights just under a year ago, the announcement of The Eras Tour soon after, nine months of touring and the release of the rerecorded Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Taylor Swift has accomplished more in a year than most of us could dream to do in a lifetime. And she didn’t stop there — Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Movie was released on Oct. 13 and has quickly shattered records.
On Friday, Oct. 20, the Rolling Stones released their 24th album, Hackney Diamonds. This was their first album release in 18 years, and it included two songs recorded in 2019 with the Stones’ late drummer Charlie Watts, who died in 2021 at 80 years old. According to NPR, Watts had chosen Steve Jordan as his replacement should the need arise. In much of the lead-up to the record’s release, however, many seemed less concerned with the new percussionist and the content of Hackney Diamonds, but rather with the band members’ ages: Mick Jagger being 80, Keith Richards being 79 and Ronnie Wood being 76.
Yves Tumor played the 2023 Cornell Homecoming Concert this Sunday at Barton Hall for an extremely excited crowd of several hundred students and alumni.
Tumor, born Sean Lee Bowie in Miami, is an American musician with a cult following who has been releasing music under the Yves Tumor name since 2015. According to Dazed, Tumor began experimenting with music as a way of escaping the “dull, conservative surroundings” of Knoxville, Tennessee, where they grew up. The desire to break boundaries and escape traditional norms is evident in their music. Tumor’s discography covers a wide variety of genres, to the point that the only link between some of their songs is the fact that they sound nothing like anything you’ve heard before. However, Tumor is best described as a modern rock artist with experimental roots, blending the classic genre with electronic and psychedelic influences.
Tumor’s individuality is also displayed in the wide range of artists, engineers and producers they work with.
This article spoils Killers of the Flower Moon, though it should be noted that the nature of the film renders the spoilers somewhat benign.
TW: Genocide
I’ve spent the weekend caught between two entirely contradictory thoughts, each reflected in a piece of media from the week before. The first is the conclusion to Arielle Angel’s article on the Hamas attacks and Israel’s genocidal response, articulating in a moment of truly devastating hopelessness a vision of possibility to hold close. There has never been a period in U.S. history of greater solidarity with Palestine, nor of greater Jewish participation in that solidarity. The other is the concluding moments of Martin Scorsese’s new masterpiece Killers of the Flower Moon: Both bitterly satirical and somehow earnest, a vision not just of evil’s inevitability, but of the function of art as a commodity to fetishize it, and all spoken by a man who’s dedicated his life to the rejection of evil and embrace of art. Scorsese’s exclamation point of bleakness comes at the end of perhaps his deepest felt tragedy to date, an indictment absent of nearly any reprieve.
Killers of the Flower Moon adapts David Grann’s nonfiction book of the same name and follows a string of murders perpetrated against members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation by white capitalists and their manipulated lieutenants.
It is impossible in these times to sit down quietly and write about a piece of media, pretending nothing is ever political. What does film say about history? Vice versa, what does history say about film? Are movies doomed to be an art medium purely for aesthetic enjoyment, or is there space for political engagement? These are a few of the questions that ran through my head as I watched I Am Cuba (1964), an epic film about pre-revolutionary Cuba told in four vignettes.
Although often left unspoken, there are acceptable and unacceptable paths to fame in Hollywood. Often actors who work with explicit content are regarded as lesser than. In its satirical fashion, X challenges this long held prejudice.
There is a very small chance that you are not aware of the crisis currently unfolding in Israel. Pictures of destruction fill our screens, and headlines continue to announce death tolls and count the missing. Many members of the Cornell community attended a memorial held by Cornell Hillel on October 11, and President Pollack has sent two emails about these events.
Unfortunately, the news often has a dehumanizing effect — instead of being thought of as real people, the dead and missing are reduced to numbers, and a country becomes only its actions. Sides arise, and issues become polarized; many forget that these are real people and real lives being destroyed, not simply pawns in a political game. The lack of understanding and empathy for Israel is nothing new.
Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo often make headlines, but now more than ever, the two of them seem to be a major topic of conversation. Taylor Swift’s burgeoning relationship with Travis Kelce has been talked about non-stop in the media, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is already reaching record-breaking ticket sales and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is set to be released at the end of this month. Olivia Rodrigo has largely been talked about in regards to the release of her sophomore album, GUTS, and the announcement of the accompanying world tour.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down decades of precedent by gutting affirmative action programs at colleges and universities throughout the country. With college admissions becoming increasingly competitive, the recent ruling only increases the anxiety thousands of students feel as they curate the perfect application to gain one of the few coveted spots at the college or university of their choice. This world of paranoia and scarcity where identity is carefully crafted and weaponized sets the stage for Jiehae Park’s Peerless. Adapted from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Peerless conveys the perils of Asian-American twins M and L’s unchecked ambition as they mercilessly manipulate and murder their classmates for the chance to attend “The College.” Although an overwhelmingly dark piece filled with toil and trouble, Angel Katthi’s ʼ24 senior thesis production of Peerless proved to be a poignant and surprisingly humorous rendition of this relevant play.
Held in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts’ Black Box Theatre on September 28, 29 and 30, Peerless featured an intimate cast of five phenomenal actors led by Noёlle Romero ʼ24 as the ambitious yet sympathetic M and Katherine Lynn-Rose ʼ25 as her conniving twin sister L. Even from the first moments of the show, the two actresses impressively tackled Park’s fast-paced, short staccato lines as they used the energetic language to enliven the obsessive and threatened world they inhabit. Throughout the production, Romero ʼ24 and Lynn- ʼ25 maintained the intensity of their performances, playing off of each other skillfully to create an interchangeable power dynamic in which the audience could never fully tell who was in control until the play’s shocking end.
Juxtaposing M and L’s unrelenting nature, D, played by the hilarious Oscar Llodra ʼ25, captured the geeky charm of a classmate who uses his 1/16th Native American heritage to claim M’s spot at “The College.” While many actors default to playing D as a stereotypical, annoying nerd, Llodra ʼ25 breathed life into his character, leading M to feel guilty about killing him for his admissions spot and creating an opportunity for Llodra to convincingly transform into D’s Brother who seeks revenge later in the play.
