Author: Madeleine Carpenter

As someone who’s a Swiftie in the same way I’m a lapsed Catholic, I have a hard time wrapping my head around Taylor Swift’s twelfth and most recent album, The Life of a Showgirl. On one hand, Showgirl is the same brand of cringe we’ve all come to expect from the now 35-year-old pop superstar,…

Prairies and sky-scrapers, wars and World’s Fairs, steel towns and serial killers: in a masterclass of composition, Sufjan Stevens captured the Prairie State in technicolor in his fifth studio album, Illinois, a record that is as tender as it is theatrical.  Stevens had famously set out to write an album for every state in America,…