music industry

We live in an era where anyone can increasingly curate their own personas, even us “normals” as 30 Rock's Jenna Maroney would say. Any nobody with the internet can create and filter the public perception of their personality, but of course this self-conscious curation is most obvious with pop stars—Lizzy Grant turned into Lana Del Rey, Christian pop singer Katy Perry became whipped-cream-loving pop superstar Katy Perry. 

No one is better at this than Beyoncé. With Life Is But a Dream—the documentary directed, written and produced by Beyoncé herself that aired on HBO this weekend—Beyoncé appeared to give fans an intimate peek into her life while actually delivering, of course, a carefully constructed portrait.

The film is a mishmash of home videos, selfie Photobooth confessional videos (always sans makeup and looking flawless) and more typical documentary style video. It’s not completely linear—it’s more like you are watching a collage, a scrapbook of moments in Beyoncé’s life.

 

Image: Nona Hendryx

Nona Hendryx broke into the music world as one third of legendary group Labelle. Hendryx, Patti LaBelle and Sarah Dash became known for their groundbreaking ability to make glam-funk music, as well as their larger-than-life stage shows and glittery space-aged costumes.

After three gold albums and number-one hit "Lady Marmalade", the band went their separate ways, and Nona Hendryx began to establish herself as an amazingly versatile and creative artist.

 

 

 

Ida Maria Sivertsen may not have won a Nobel Prize this week, but she is one more good reason to pay attention to what comes out of Stockholm. Ida, pronounced (ee-da) was born and raised in a small Norwegian village with a population of less than 2,000. In 2007 she packed up and headed to Sweden. Since then, she has made it onto the Top 20 charts in the UK and is infiltrating the US through a series of small shows, singles on iTunes, Gossip Girl, Perez Hilton and unbelievably cool YouTube videos.

 

 

First things first: I stan for Joni Mitchell.

That journalist Sheila Weller's NYT Bestseller, "Girls Like Us" also features Carole King and Carly Simon is a nice extra, of course.  I haven't even finished this book yet, but I just have to gush about it.  It's music history, it's women's history, it's American pop culture history...what's not to love?