Eric Weisbard

Music critics these days love to argue about "rockism," the unexamined prejudices we bring to our musical judgements, and "poptimism," an effort to celebrate commercial stuff that some think goes way too far. My book, Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music, aims to get us out of ...

Brad Paisley is a sly country singer, a slick electric guitarist and a sometimes repentant West Virginian. "Accidental Racist," off his newest album, Wheelhouse (you may have read about this song a hundred times in the past 24 hours), begins with Paisley thinking about telling his Starbucks barista ...

The bullish Clinton years gave us trite boy bands and carefree pop hits, while the late 70s spawned punk. But the Great Depression also spawned plenty of happy-go-lucky songs meant to inspire escapist fantasies. Today, a look at the correlations between music and the economic cycles with Eric Weisbard, a ...