Monday Roundup Mix

featuring Chaos Chaos, Eliza McLamb, Jade Bird, and more!

Hi, happy Monday!

I’ve spent much of the last few weeks thinking about the future of music journalism after it was announced Pitchfork would be absorbed by GQ. My friend Ruby, author of

Tote Bag Library

, published a great piece last week partly in response to this news. In it, she argues for the importance of music criticism and the necessity of music journalists and tastemakers to help us discover music in a way that the streaming algorithm cannot:

As a culture, maybe we could relearn the value of a good and thorough dunk. We could cultivate a healthy respect for critics and connoisseurs – even when we disagree with them. And ultimately, we could hold human tastemakers in higher esteem than the machines trained to give us more of what we already like.

[Ruby also very kindly shouted out Made You A Mix, so if you’re here because of Ruby- hi, thank you!!]

I agree since critics and connoisseurs have played a major role in my cultural consumption throughout my life. In my teens, I subscribed to (and worshiped at the altar of) magazines like NYLON, Seventeen, and Teen Vogue. I regularly grabbed issues of Spin at the bookstore. In 2010, I purchased a copy of Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” and read it cover to cover to cover to cover, studying up on the The Greats. These magazines and journalists influenced my media intake and shaped me into the listener (and watcher and reader) I am today.

Before any of these teen or music magazines though, I was a devoted reader of American Girl Magazine (a publication for tweens from the brand that brought you American Girl Dolls, though the magazine had very little to do with the toys). The magazine included craft ideas, games, and lots of girl power stories.

One issue from the early 2000s featured a profile of the band Smoosh, made up of sisters Chloe and Asya Saavedra. I read this profile then immediately pulled up my iTunes account and cashed in some gift cards to buy their songs. Girls my age had a band, played their own instruments, and wrote their own music? I could not think of anything cooler.

Thanks to the magic of archive.org, I tracked down the exact issue from 2005 that included the article:

Smoosh were the first band I felt like I had learned about on my own. It seemed so adult to be like, “yes, I like this new band that I read about in a magazine.” Here we are nearly twenty years later, and I’m still a fan because of this profile. Music journalism mattered then and it matters now!

These days, the sisters perform under the name Chaos Chaos as well as release solo music and collaborate with other artists (Chloe has been the touring drummer for Caroline Polachek for the last few years!). In a moment of absolute serendipity, Chaos Chaos released a new song, their first in nearly three years, today! This week’s roundup mix includes this new song plus some essential Smoosh and solo songs (and other new tracks from Eliza McLamb, Jade Bird, Tierra Whack, Carlie Hanson, and more!).

A few months ago, I was browsing used CDs when I came across a copy of Smoosh’s debut album, She Like Electric. I couldn’t believe it- maybe whoever had owned this CD had also read the American Girl profile. I bought the CD, put it on my car, and felt like the coolest tween in town.

Thanks for being here, for reading, and for listening! If you enjoy Made You a Mix, please share with a friend!