Sometimes, all you need is just a little bit of good music. I noticed that since last year I am listening more to music than ever before. Even though I am not really sure why that is, I do know that I love music. Lucky for me, my fellow writers shared that love, and hence this Issue will be a music edition.

This Issue will be like a playlist that contains many different styles, of which you perhaps did not know you liked it. We start with a little bit of Kanye West. However, it will not be his music that Simon discusses. Kanye gained a lot of attention with his political outings the last few years, and Simon will tell you more about that. Another Politically active artist is Anderson. Paak. Luc will discuss how he tries to give back to society in combination with making soulful hip-hop music. Speaking of Soul, Esmée watched the Pixar movie Soul, and she is pretty excited to share her viewing experience with you. By coincidence, all these articles feature African-American artists. On the other hand, it is maybe not that much of a coincidence. Perhaps you will understand why after reading Nick’s piece on the history of black music.

So far, we have already given you quite some suggestions to add to your own playlist, but we are not done yet. Lissette was watching the inauguration of President Biden and was amazed by all the musical performances there, especially the spoken word of Amanda Gorman. She will tell you all about it in her article. The inauguration showed that power and music can go very well together, perhaps a little bit too well..? Femke will dive into the conspiracy theories that are often associated with a couple of famous artists.

Where are you going to listen to all this music, on the radio or Spotify right? We got you covered with an article on both these things. Maaike asked former American Studies student, Bavo Oost about his time as an intern at the radio department of the NPO. Luc did some digging into the playlists of Spotify and will try to explain why those are very important in the music industry. After reading about so much music, you probably have some song stuck in your head. In Youri’s short story the main character has exactly that problem too.

Enjoy the read!

Luc de Klerk