Arts & Entertainment

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Black and Palestinian poets’ aesthetics of solidarity bring us to new worlds

Every February, like clockwork, literary institutions— mega-chain bookstores, Amazon, Oprah, and English departments—advertise the urgent necessity of reading a Black writer. Whether it’s Invisible Man, Omeros, or Things Fall Apart, these institutions commodify and repackage Black writers into a promise to the susceptible and well-intentioned reader. The hope? Upon turning[Read More…]

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Song lyrics don’t need to make sense
By Charlotte Hayes, Staff Writer

While songs like Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” contain lyrics more profound than most poetry in the modern canon, others just kind of…feel right. Sometimes, when it comes to the words to a song, what is being said matters so much less than how it’s said. Nonsensical lyrics can operate as everything from metaphor to verbal percussion, each allowing an artist to alter the confines of traditional language use within the medium. So whether it’s Hozier’s “Drain the whole sea, get something shiny, something meaty for the main course” in “Take Me to Church” or the (in)famous “If I was a sculptor, but then again, no” from Elton John's “Your Song,” maybe it’s better to not think too hard about what anyone’s singing and just let the music move you.