Eve Barlow
I'm a journalist and I love words
Music, film, matters of cultural import. Sometimes I dabble in serious* investigations. (*pop)
PROJECTS
GQ
Can Iggy Azalea Be Her Own Savior?
It’s been four years since the Australian rapper topped the charts with her song “Fancy.” Since then, her career has stalled: She’s canceled a world tour, scrapped an entire album, and undergone an acrimonious public breakup. But most of all, she’s refused to reckon with her place as a white woman making hip-hop. So how does she explain herself?
Iggy Azalea is lost. Running behind schedule, the Australian rapper drove straight past the photoshoot off Sunset Boulevard and now has to re-route. ...
Q
Mother Theresa: Feature with Theresa Wayman
Six page exclusive feature with Theresa Wayman of Warpaint on her solo project 'LoveLaws'
The Guardian
Coachella review – pop's new democracy creates uneven city in the desert
With a rumoured 40,000 extra attendees at the first weekend of Coachella 2018, the three-day festival is more congested than ever. It’s especially hard to move without stepping into the frame of an influencer’s selfie as they document outfits, record friendships and pray for a feature in a Twitter moment. This culture of validation and self-affirmation makes sense given that the festival’s culture is now predicated on reaction (reflected in promoter Goldenvoice recalibrating their booking in ...
The Guardian
Eminem at Coachella review – career-spanning set is a perfect nostalgia hit
Paris Hilton is in the crowd at Eminem with her fiance, but are the millennials? I am standing between her and a sixtysomething white-haired man who will soon be swaying his hips to every bar. Before Em appears, Paris – who became infamous during that same weird late-90s MTV era as the rapper – takes selfies with everyone, happy to be recognised: like Eminem, she’s fighting to stay around. Hilton tells me about the time she was in an Eminem video for 2004’s Just Lose It. “I had to punch him a...
The Guardian
Beyoncé at Coachella review – greatest star of her generation writes herself into history
‘Is that a catwalk?” says one woman, awaiting the arrival of this year’s Saturday night headliner. “It’s Beyoncé. Of course, it’s a catwalk,” snaps another. “Is she gonna bring any guests out? She doesn’t want someone to cramp her style, right?” says the woman. “Dude, her style is uncrampable,” comes the reply.
It’s true: Beyoncé’s style cannot be cramped. When she headlined Glastonbury for the festival’s 40th anniversary, in 2011, it was big for Beyoncé. Tonight’s performance, in the slot sh...
The Guardian
The Weeknd at Coachella review – slick but edgeless emo R&B
To see the gurns on teens, swaying couples and squads of young women around the Empire Polo Club for The Weeknd’s crossover hit Can’t Feel My Face is to realise that the one-man boyband has written the perfect arc for his six-year career.
During his first headline Friday night set at Coachella, he follows that world-class Michael Jackson-aping jam mid-set with another smash: I Feel It Coming. Both prove why The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) is the ideal opening headliner for a Coachella tha...
Pitchfork
“PYNK” [ft. Grimes]
Janelle Monae recently told Zane Lowe at Beats 1 that her forthcoming album, Dirty Computer, will be “extremely vulnerable.” So far, the route Monae has chosen to take equates vulnerability with boldness. The artwork for her new single, “PYNK,” features Monae in Bowie-style wide-brimmed trousers shaped like a vagina; its video is a multisensory, radical journey into a new dimension of queer sexuality. In these visions, the governing symbols aren’t phallic, as usual, but shaped like the female...
Los Angeles Times
Kate Nash returns to music with a new glow
It's Easter weekend, and Kate Nash has released her first album in five years. And someone just broke the news that the work's initial reviews from her native country have been less than kind.
"So?" she responds. "I don't care. It's the first time I feel like, 'Oh! That's weird. It's such a good album. I don't get it?"
While she hasn't resurrected herself from the dead, the British popstar's levels of confidence are back with a vengeance. The release the other week of "Yesterday Was Forever,"...
Pitchfork
Goat Girl
June 24, 2016—the day Britain voted to leave the European Union—was a dreadful one. And yet something hopeful happened that day: Four teens who called themselves Goat Girl inked a deal with Rough Trade. Two years later, following a round of premature hype as one of the UK’s most promising bands, they’ve released their debut LP. Goat Girl, whose members are now in their early 20s, are navigating post-adolescence in a time of queasy division between the young and old. Brexit’s impact remains a ...
Time Out
Sunflower Bean are ready for their close up
“Hey, y’all look awesome. Why aren’t y’all famous?” says a passing hobo to the rock trio Sunflower Bean outside a Los Feliz café on an early morning in L.A. He’s not wrong. Julia Cumming, the bassist and lead singer of the buzzy NYC indie-rock band, already has blue eye shadow smudged on her cheek. Her bandmate Nick Kivlen has been trained to warn her when this type of cosmetic mishap happens. “This is the kind of bullshit they have to deal with,” she says, pointing at Kivlen and drummer Jaco...
Los Angeles Times
With triumphant El Rey show, Charli XCX prompts a question: Why isn't she even bigger?
It was the afternoon of Charli XCX's debut L.A. outing of her new "Pop 2" mixtape, and the British pop rebel posted a picture of herself outside a Staples office store opposite the El Rey Theatre on Thursday.
It was a taste of XCX's humorous yet knowing approach to the pop machine. As big a fan of the state of pop as she is an instrumental figure in the genre's advancement, she's candid about where she stands.
The pop sensation, 25, has always stayed closer to the underground than the mainstr...
Playboy
Blue Lips, Disco Tits and Pop Synth: Let's Play With Tove Lo
Swedish pop singer–songwriter Tove Lo is incapable of self-censorship; we’ve seen this since she first emerged, in 2013, with the addictive single “Habits (Stay High).” She has spent the past four years conquering ever-larger stages, often with only glitter covering her nipples, kitting out her house-infused synth pop with unfiltered lyrics about sex, drugs and hard-won self-discovery. The result: a bracing new paradigm of how women in pop can present themselves. In addition to co-writing for...
Noisey
Becoming Isolated with Bully’s Alicia Bognanno
The Nashville punks return with a fierce sophomore effort, ‘Losing.’ In order to get here, the band and its leader Bognanno had to go to hell and back.
Alicia Bognanno is in the driving seat. Behind the wheel of Bully's tour van, she chirpily slips away from the cheap motel she and her three bandmates crashed in last night off a flight from Nashville, and heads blindly into Caljam festival in San Bernardino, California while making small talk. Gripping the steering wheel, her left bicep offer...