Best Online Essays of 2017

Ted Gioia

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The Best Online Essays of 2017

“The Sea Was Never Blue” by Maria Michela Sassi
Aeon, July 31, 2017

“When Drummers Become Writers: The Strange Wisdom of Method Books” by John Colpitts
The Paris Review, May 19, 2017

“The Life of a Field Recordist” by Jack Needham
Red Bull Music Academy, March 24, 2017

“Where Have All the V Chords Gone? The Decline of Functional Harmony in Pop” by Dean Olivet
Flypaper, August 14, 2017

“The Contradictions of Joseph Conrad” by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
New York Times, November 21, 2017

“Sweet Bitter Blues” by Amanda Petrusich
Oxford American, January 6, 2017

“The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi” by Rozina Ali/
The New Yorker, January 5, 2017

“Powerlessness and the Politics of Blame” by Martha Nussbaum
National Endowment for the Humanities, May 1, 2017

“The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud” by Kate Chisholm
The Spectator, August 26, 2017

“Evelyn Waugh Revisited” by William H. Pritchard
The Hudson Review, January 2017

“When Gospel Sermons Came on the Phonograph” by Jerry Zolten
The Conversation, June 29, 2017

“Breaking Elgar’s Enigma” by Daniel Estrin
New Republic, February 1, 2017

“Why Do Stars Like Adele Keep Losing Their Voice?” by Bernhard Warner
The Guardian, Thursday, August 10, 2017

“One Man’s Mission to Unearth Africa’s Lost Treasure Trove of Music” by Abdi Latif Dahir
Quartz, April 28, 2017

“You Probably Think This Art is About You” by Carolyn Stewart
The American Interest, August 16, 2017

“Is Goodness Natural” by Nakul Krishna
Aeon, November 28, 2017

“The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster” by Jason Koebler
Motherboard, February 10, 2017

“Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking” by Veronique Greenwood
Nautilus, November 9, 2017

“Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive” by Colin Morris
The Pudding, May 2017

“Who was the First Modern Philosopher?” by Steve Nadler
TLS, April 5, 2017

“Was Weird Al the Real Star All Along?” by Geoff Edgers
The Washington Post, February 16, 2017

“How To Sell A Country: The Booming Business Of Nation Branding” by Samanth Subramanian
The Guardian, November 7, 2017

“Going Deep” by Jay Jennings
Oxford American, February 16, 2017

“Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture” by Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson
Current Affairs, October 31, 2017

“The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial” by Venkatesh Rao
Ribbonfarm, August 17, 2017

“In the Footsteps of Marcel Proust” by William Friedkin
New York Times, May 15, 2017

“Raphael Up Close” by Andrew Butterfield
New York Review of Books, July 15, 2017

“Take a Trip to Los Angeles’s New Internet Celebrity Summer Camp” by Megan Farokhmanesh,
The Verge, July 20, 2017

“An Oxford Philosopher’s Moral Crisis Can Help Us Learn to Question Our Instincts” by Olivia Goldhill
Quartz, October 15, 2017

Here is a list, in no particular
order, of articles I enjoyed
during 2017. They are mostly
longform essays, with a focus
on music and culture, but with
a few articles on other subjects
included as well.
T.G.

For a list of my favorite
recordings of the year, click here.

Selected articles by Ted Gioia
available on the web

Ted Gioia can be contacted at
tedgioia@hotmail.com

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