By Michael Bonsangue For the past couple weeks, I went around and asked some DJs here at WMUA Amherst for the top three songs in their current rotation and here’s what they said: Michael (Hosts From Coasts, Playlist Work): NEW MAGIC WAND by Tyler, the Creator, Somewhere Tonight by Beach House, Anyone But You by… Continue reading What are WMUA DJs listening to?
By Grace Holland Seen through Noah Kahan’s breakthrough into the popular music scene after his song “Stick Season” went viral on social media, there has been a recent resurgence of folk music in modern pop culture. Contributing to the widespread appreciation of this genre, artists associated with today’s folk scene have created a lot of… Continue reading The Influence of Featured Artists in Modern Folk Songs
By Michael Bonsangue 2024 is turning out to be a packed year for music from artists across all genres. Some have announced projects dropping as soon as next month while others are still in the studio merely teasing their eager fans. CONFIRMED SZA With the performance and subsequent release of “Saturn,” SZA is finally working… Continue reading A Comprehensive List of Artists Confirmed or Slated to Drop Music in 2024
By Michael Bonsangue It’s no secret that music videos, album covers and the like have always been culturally significant in pop culture and important to fans. However, the art of creating a well-thought out aesthetic across all visuals belonging to a respective era seems to be underappreciated and even hard to come by. With the… Continue reading The Significance of Cohesive Music Visuals and the Absence of Them In the Industry
Over the last 60 years, the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s University Museum of Contemporary Art has amassed a collection of over 3,600 prints, drawings, photographs, and three dimensional multiples. In comparison to other university museums in the five colleges area, like the Smith College Museum of Art and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, UMass… Continue reading UMCA 60 Years of Collecting
When music streaming presented itself as a convenient alternative to purchasing music at the end of the 2000’s, it was assumed that the questionable finances would work themselves out in a few years through inconvenient growing pains; but, over a decade later, the business model that works only for popular artists has made independent musicianship… Continue reading A Conversation with Phil Elverum
Between 1994 and 1996, poet and songwriter David Berman made his home at the University of Massachusetts Amherst while pursuing a masters in poetry under Pulitzer Prize winning poet James Tate. By then, his band Silver Jews had already released two EP’s, Dime Map of the Reef and The Arizona Record, through the Chicago label… Continue reading Remembering David Berman
Over three decades Matt Farley has written and produced over 23,000 songs. His work, scattered across 80 different artist names, includes popular tracks entitled "The Poop Song" and "Best Song About Chicago". A majority of his most streamed songs are what he refers to as "joke songs", those that he creates in mass to be… Continue reading A Conversation with Matt Farley
Saturday, October 23rd, WMUA held a fall concert with headliner LustSickPuppy, and accompanying acts TOMB and Space Camp. The event gathered seventy students in the Blackbox Theater of the Student Union, where, for the first time in eighteen months, live music returned to campus. WMUA News’ Owen Embury has more on this story. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2bxNxYD9v6AKEbdvBrzWVD?si=c0e246346f1f4039
WMUA Blog 