J.W. Thurston is interviewed on her book What is Goth? by Kevin T. Hobbs, writer and director of the forthcoming afrogothic horror film, Marrow.

How the band’s former persona, and the desire to liberate their audience have formed a hard barrier to ensuring a lasting, empathic connection.

My 2019 article on the origin story of Betty Boop, & the career of child vaudeville star Esther Jones has been featured in the newsletter for the Black & Latino History Project.

On providing space for growth and accountability for imperfect humans, the nuance of race & ethnicity for Puerto Ricans, & respecting that Black people don't owe you forgiveness or emotional labor.

A rant on rock n’ roll’s intersection with gospel, why there’s a new hyper focus on Sister Rosetta Tharpe, respectability politics, and answering the question “is rock’n’roll even older than we think?”

Taken at face value, Meds is a well-crafted alt-rock record; brooding, poetic, melodic, at times experimental, and even darkly humorous. Sonically, its production was sophisticated, bordering on glossy. Becoming the second of Placebo's albums to enter the U.S. Heatseekers Chart, and the first to enter the U.S. Billboard 200, Meds is an album that gets everything right while still retaining the core elements of what make Placebo stand out. From the outside looking in, it appeared almost effortless. But to really understand Meds is to travel backwards in time.

A subculture clings to the past while time forces it toward the future.

When I started writing the unpolished versions of essays that would end up in my books, there were already solid spaces for Black and other alternative people of color to gather. They've existed for longer than we care to admit--in small pockets across small towns throughout the world, as a way of communing with other people over shared experiences. And for each space, there's multiple origin stories of how someone got into goth subculture. There's multiple perspectives on what being goth means to the Black and brown people within these spaces.

That makes white trad-goths very, very uncomfortable.

As the pandemic then sent the world into a lockdown, and humanity began to reevaluate what is really important, JP threw herself into her art. Refining her individuality, and throwing everything we thought we knew into the fire, she began her own private revolution. Enter JP4.

J.W. Thurston is interviewed by Shurlee Sweet of The Vintage Woman Magazine on What is Goth, and more.

For Harriet's Kimberly Foster once said that as Black people, because get so few opportunities for biopics, for our stories to be told, often time we get just one shot to get it right. Now the frank interviews of Linda Kuehl have been made into an incredibly eye-opening documentary on Billie Holiday making the rounds at various festivals across the globe.

A list of six newer Black artists shaking up the landscape of alternative music.