Crumbler is a tumblelog about music, culture and criticism written by Casey Newton, a writer living in San Francisco. I post songs I like and write about them, talk about concerts I went to, and point out when hotly anticipated new albums are available for streaming. But I’m also fascinated by the creative process, and I often link to and quote artists talking about their work and the work of others. One byproduct of this interest in artists’ thoughts about their own work is that I enjoy cover songs and mash-ups much more than the average person — both genres, after all, involve one musician commenting on the work of another.
Here are some of the more popular things that have appeared on Crumbler over the past three years:
- Spotify, Rdio and the Slow Death of MP3 Blogging, which is about just what it says.
- An appreciation of the late Amy Winehouse;
- Not Gonna Fade, a critical re-evaluation of Alanis Morissette;
- An account of my experience seeing Beyonce in concert, an experience I likened to being sucked into a jet engine made out of happiness;
- Re-thinking Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”
- A defense of crowdsourcing your music, a critique of Christopher Weingarten’s assault on music blogs;
- A parody of Weingarten’s rant the following year;
- Rabbit Punches, in which I examine a case of critical malpractice against Frightened Rabbit by Pitchfork;
- A subsequent interview I did with Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson;
- My albums of the decade.
I am also the Internet’s leading authority for salt-related jokes you can make during a viewing of Salt.
