Madonna, Michael Jackson, and me

stray thoughts on pop stars past and present

Thank you to those of you who continue to subscribe to this newsletter despite its (charming?) infrequency. Time goes by so slowly for those who wait but also remains a false construct and somewhere between those two ideas is where I am writing to you from. (Today’s office etc).

Whenever I’m not here as much it means I am in the Google Doc trenches fighting for my life, eyes burning from screen time, Post-It book flags blanketing my desk and turning up in the most unexpected places (in my bed, attached to multiple items of clothing, on my dog’s paws). The official announcement of the next mini-season will be on Monday but I think that if you haven’t gleaned it from my obsessive IG story posting, the content of this letter will give you an idea of what’s to come.

In general I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a Pop Star™️, both these days and in the past. It’s been an interesting and unplanned mixture of casually taking in some but certainly not all of this month’s Coachella performances from my couch, my Work, a special trip to The Abbey, and a blockbuster film that I had to see for podcasting purposes.

Here are some stray but bullet-pointed thoughts on Michael, what it means for Madonna to continue to feel free, and the limits of the theory of the Imperial Phase: