This might seem corny, but so is a lot of country music, and being corny doesn’t make it untrue: When, in the film Wild Rose, the lying, foul-mouthed, unstable, Glaswegian derelict single mother and ex-con Rose-Lynn (Jessie Buckley) begins singing “Country Girl” or “Peace in This House” on the stage of Glasgow’s own Grand Ole Opry, a kind of spiritual nobility settles over her. All at once, she’s centered, producing sounds that aren’t her but aren’t not her, because they come from somewhere she can access only when she listens to Patsy Cline, Kitty Wells, or Bonnie Raitt, when her sadness and fear and longing to know who she truly is find their purest expression. Read More...
Nicki Minaj has kept booked and busy for the past few weeks, from hosting and performing at the annual MTV Video Music Awards to putting final touches on her highly anticipated Pink Friday 2 album. During the former event, the 40-year-old's long-standing beef with Cardi B rose to new heights, and both women's husbands even got involved. Now, Kenneth Petty is sitting through several months of house arrest for threatening Offset. Read More...
Toby Morrell curses and talks about sex on his podcast. Mike McHargue talks about evolution and LGBTQ issues on his. These things would be typical on most podcasts — but McHargue and Morrell's audiences are almost entirely Christian.
A study by the Pew Research Center, released in 2015, shows that millennials have been leaving Catholic and mainline Protestant churches in droves from at least 2007 but they don't necessarily lose their belief in God. Read More...