Young girls loving music, whatever kind of music, are truth. | | | | Selena Gomez at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 9, 2016.
(Don Arnold/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Young girls loving music, whatever kind of music, are truth.”
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| | rantnrave:// What does it mean for a young girl or woman to see a singer like ARIANA GRANDE in concert? "I never fully understood," the GUARDIAN's ALEXIS PETRIDIS writes in one of many tear-inducing essays and editorials written in the past 36 hours, "until I saw one through my daughter's eyes." For Petridis and his 7-year-old daughter, it was a JESSIE J concert. And what dad saw that night was "a first glimpse of a world that was previously outside her experience, a more adult, or at least more mature world than the one she knew, a world that would one day be her own." Welcome to the oft-misunderstood world of young women, a world shattered by a terrorist's bomb in MANCHESTER Monday night. "The right show on the right night of a young life can facilitate wild awakenings," wrote AMANDA PETRUSICH in the NEW YORKER. It's a world, as ANN POWERS described in a FACEBOOK post, of "flirting with the kid who sells you a soda, dancing experimentally, looking at the woman onstage and thinking maybe one day you'll be sexy and confident like her, realizing that right this moment you are sexy and confident like her, matching your voice to the sound, loving the sound, falling into the sound. This is truth." Grownups who should know better have been making fun of music aimed at young people, especially young females, for as long as such music has been made. ELVIS, the JACKSON 5, the SPICE GIRLS, 'NSYNC, Ariana Grande, take your pick, they've all heard it. Their fans have heard it, too. "The impulse to hate and fear women who are celebrating their freedom ... is older than ISIS, older than pop concerts, older than music itself," SOPHIE GILBERT notes in the ATLANTIC. But those women, no matter their age, know their own truth, and they recognize your lies. Grande, NY TIMES critics JON PARELES and JOE COSCARELLI explain, "is what her fans long to be: Self-assured, sexy, talented, optimistic, in control and proudly feminine." And watching a young girl watch her, writes MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, is "a powerful, glorious thing to witness." MusicSET: "The Meaning of Ariana Grande"... By the way, this goes for boys, too. THOMAS GORTON's first concert, age 13, was LIMP BIZKIT, a band that has heard its share of criticism from alleged grownups. First concerts, says Gorton, "are places full of dreams, where teenagers decide they want to be something"... Related record-review headline of the week: "Who cares what male rock critics think of HARRY STYLES?" | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The New York Review of Books |
| She was fat the first time we saw her, large, brilliantly beautiful, fat. She seemed for this moment that never again returned to be almost a matron, someone real and sensible who carried money to the bank, signed papers, had curtains made to match, dresses hung and shoes in pairs, gold and silver, black and white, ready. | | |
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