Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

A few thoughts on Airports, Dolly Parton, and pivoting away from a popular platform. Also: a buncha new tracks. As some of you know, in addition to this here newsletter, I also edit an online music publication. We have a few rules around what is kosher to publish and what’s a no-go. One of our informal rules is that we’ll turn back an otherwise fine piece if it’s the one too manyieth1 in a row on any given artist/topic. Think of it like the stock market’s circuit breaker mechanism. We like giving the people what they want, but there’s a limit. In five-ish years, I’ve only had to invoke this rule twice: once for Taylor Swift and once for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. In theory, I could’ve—or should’ve—invoked it a 3rd time for Dolly Parton, but, well, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sure, there were some submissions that were all too easy to decline—if you’re gonna write about an icon, maybe don’t have a machine do it for you?—but most showed a person who managed to touch a lot of…