Carol Cooper
Carol Cooper is a New York-based journalist and cultural critic who has been reviewing music, books, film, and live performance for over twenty years. Her work has appeared in national and international publications including Actuel (Paris), The Face (London), Latin New York, The Village Voice, Essence, Elle, New York Newsday, and The New York Times. Her essays have also been anthologized in following collections: Rock She Wrote, The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, Brooklyn, Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough: Essays in Honor of Robert Christgau and Rolling Stone Press: The '70s. Her own collection of music, film, book, and nightlife essays Pop Culture Considered as an Uphhill Bicycle Race is available internationally from Amazon.com. Ms. Cooper has also done short tours of executive duty in the music industry, serving as East Coast Director of Black Music Artists and Repertoire for A&M Records in the mid-'80s, and National Director of Black Music Artists and Repertoire for Columbia Records in the early '90s.
Carol Cooper's Rock's Backpages blog
List of articles in the library by artist
Tori Amos: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
Live Review by Carol Cooper, New York Daily News, May 1996
Performing non-stop for nearly two hours on Monday night, Tori Amos sang and played like a woman possessed by the need for release. ...
Dallas Austin: Manchild In The Promised Land
Profile and Interview by Carol Cooper, Fanfare, July 1995
1991 WAS A banner year for Dallas Austin. The Atlanta writer-producer was barely out of his teens when two records he made for Motown with ...
Kurtis Blow: A B-Boy's Progress
Profile by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, September 1983
WHEN RAP WAS first struggling out of the youth-center playgrounds and into big-time notoriety, Kurtis Blow was there. ...
Braxtons, The: The Braxtons' Right Risks: So Many Ways
Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1996
THE STORY goes that The Braxtons originally were a quartet. Producers L.A. and Babyface pulled Toni Braxton out of the bunch, because, at the time, ...
Brooks & Dunn: The Long Road Home: Brooks & Dunn Risk Backlash With a Great Rock Album
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, August 2003
IN THE RURAL east Texas graveyard where my father and his parents are buried, just a stone's throw from a black church built on land ...
David Byrne Looks Forward...and Back
Interview by Carol Cooper, The L Magazine, Fall 2004
Q: AS A SOLO ARTIST you have worked with horn sections and now with string sections to color and embellish your songs. Aside ...
Chic: Bernard Edwards, 1952-1996
Obituary by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, May 1996
Bernard Edwards, Tony Thompson, and Nile Rodgers were in Tokyo for the latest in a recent series of reunion concerts when Rodgers discovered his friend ...
Commodores, The: The Past Of Young America
Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1995
The Commodores: Best Of The CommodoresVarious Artists: The Music, The Magic, The Memories of Motown: A Tribute to Berry Gordy JUST WHEN we were sure ...
Profile and Interview by Carol Cooper, Rolling Stone, September 1994
COOLIO gets a phat return on his dues with 'FANTASTIC VOYAGE' ...
Morris Day, Time, The: Now Is The Time For Morris Day
Interview by Carol Cooper, Face, The, December 1985
He played the senior dude in Purple Rain, the one who nearly stole the show from his real-life hometown rival Prince. He calls his autobiographical ...
Bo Diddley: The Bo Diddley Beat Just Keeps Jangling Along
Live Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, December 1995
Bo Diddley: Chicago Blues, New York, NY ...
E.S.G.: Emerald Sapphire & Gold: Alive, Well And Working In The South Bronx
Interview by Carol Cooper, Dance Music Report, September 1990
Being one of the most widely imitated and innovative live bands of the early '80s isn’t necessarily a bed of roses. ...
Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1995
TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD Faith Evans was already a successful songwriter before mini-mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs signed her as a solo act to his Bad Boy label. This ...
Roberta Flack, Anita Baker: Anita Baker: Rhythm Of Love, Roberta Flack: Roberta
Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, September 1994
In a long list of thank you’s on her first new album in four years, Anita Baker cites Roberta Flack "for loving me anyway." Now ...
Aretha Franklin: Return Of Soul Sister Number One
Comment by Carol Cooper, Pulse!, June 1996
ARETHA – a name so singularly musical that it rolls off the tongue like an incantation. Almost four decades after 1967’s ‘I Never Loved ...
Profile and Interview by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1995
EASTER SUNDAY, 10:30 p.m. The police are manning barricades on West 27th Street to disperse an overflow crowd that has flocked to the Tunnel to ...
Marvin Gaye: Midnight Love (CBS)
Review by Carol Cooper, Musician, February 1983
UPON RELOCATING to England in 1981, Marvin Gaye complained to London's New Musical Express that his last Tamla release, In Our Lifetime, was flawed because ...
Green Day: Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, NY
Live Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1995
BY MATCHING the cheeky insouciance of the early Beatles with the amphetamine hooks of the Ramones in the late ‘80s, Green Day graduated rock and ...
David Guetta: Nothing But the Beat
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, August 2011
David Guetta's Dance Music Melting Pot ...
Profile by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, July 1995
As an opinionated teen in the early ‘70s, I hated Barry White for stealing Isaac Hayes’s sound – even though by 1973 Hayes had evolved ...
House Of Pain: House of Pain: House of Pain (Tommy Boy)
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, July 1992
SPUN OFF from the inspired lunacy of Cypress Hill rapper B-Real's 'Gee, Officer Krupke' whine, the semi-Celtic cartoon called House of Pain is a concept ...
Freddie Jackson: Private Party/Christopher Williams: Not a Perfect Man
Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1995
FREDDIE JACKSON and Christopher Williams are mature, polished performers with superb voices. Both were signed to their respective labels at a time when each record ...
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, February 2008
SURE, MADONNA repeatedly toyed with BDSM in her videos, but she never publicly admitted to breast and genital piercings like Miss Jackson did. So, in ...
Profile and Interview by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, January 2004
DAPPER, CHARISMATIC, and 68 years young, Johnny Pacheco is one of New York's cultural lions, a Juilliard alumnus who revolutionized the way Afro-Latin swing, a/k/a ...
Report by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, October 2006
GOTHAM'S HIPPEST and happiest underground nightlife owes its origins to the ever-streetwise and affable duo of Brooklyn's Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez and Bronx-bred "Little" Louie Vega, ...
Kid Creole & The Coconuts: August Darnell And The Creole Perplex
Essay by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, July 1982
"The dominant feeling of the black poet is one of malaise, better still of intolerance. Intolerance of reality because it is sordid, of the world ...
Kid Creole & The Coconuts: To The Life Boats
Profile by Carol Cooper, Face, The, September 1983
"Strange, how potent cheap music is."– Noel Coward, Private Lives ...
Leadbelly: The Long Goodbye: Huddie Ledbetter’s Living Will
Essay by Carol Cooper, L.A. Weekly, November 1994
According to their most recent videos, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones and Madonna all aspire to the power, wisdom and durability ...
Madonna: Thoughts On Madonna's MDNA Tour in America
Live Review by Carol Cooper, Rock's Backpages, September 2012
AS I WRITE THIS Thursday night, I can hear Madonna singing from Yankee Stadium through the window of my Harlem apartment. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Confronting Marley’s Legacy
Retrospective by Carol Cooper, Record, The, September 1983
NEW YORK – King Tut was playing Munich when I arrived in January of 1981 to pay my last respects to Bob Marley. I remember ...
Profile by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, January 1984
RASTA IDEOLOGY has always been profoundly Spenglerian. The German philosopher’s contention that our parasitic, capital-based machine age will be defeated by "another power, not by ...
Maria Muldaur: A Multifaceted Muldaur
Profile and Interview by Carol Cooper, Newsday, April 1996
"IF YOU THINK about it," Maria Muldaur remarked during a recent showcase for her new blues album, Fanning the Flames, "a tarantella is really just ...
Pebbles: Straight From The Heart
Review by Carol Cooper, Fanfare, September 1995
PEBBLES IS one of the shrewdest women in show business. In 1987, this Bay area femme fatale exploded on the scene with the hit single ...
Iggy Pop: Roseland, New York, NY
Live Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, April 1996
In 1967, when The Doors released their first LP, a young ex-drummer named James Osterberg formed the Psychedelic Stooges to voice the primal urges of ...
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, November 1990
THIS YEAR'S New Music Seminar featured a panel called ‘Reggae in the ‘90s: Does Dancehall Rule?’ Both Jamaican and New York’s regional enthusiasm for dancehall ...
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, May 2006
IN HIS LONG-AGO heyday Prince complimented Kid Creole's backup girls by admiring how Adriana Kaegi "used every beat of the music in her choreography." Evidence ...
Prince: Come (Warner Bros.)/1-800-New-Funk (NPG/Bellmark)
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, August 1994
IF YOU HEAR the sound of a gauntlet slapping the floor, it’s only the echo of Come (Warner Bros.) and 1-800-New-Funk (NPG/Bellmark) hitting the racks ...
Review by Carol Cooper, Rolling Stone, November 1995
With this LP, our former Prince turns in his most effortlessly eclectic set since 1987’s Sign O’ The Times. ...
Prince: Someday Your Prince Will Come
Essay by Carol Cooper, Face, The, June 1983
THE THING TO BEAR IN MIND is that Prince does not do interviews. He certainly didn't do this one, nor any of a dozen others ...
Tito Puente Live At SOB’s, New York: At The Top Of His Game
Live Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, June 1995
Raising his drumsticks like a doubled scepter over a gleaming set of timbales , Tito Puente announced to Monday night’s capacity crowd at S.O.B.’s, "Tonight ...
Otis Redding: The Definitive Otis Redding
Sleevenotes by Carol Cooper, Rhino Records, 1993
THE HISTORY In June 1993, Essence magazine published the results of a listener poll conducted by WBGO-FM’s Felix Hernandez, host of the weekly rhythm & ...
Tony Rich Project, The: The Tony Rich Project: Words
Review by Carol Cooper, Rolling Stone, 1996
If ’94 and ’95 were the years that quirky auteurs like Dionne Farris and Des’ree caught the public’s imagination, 1996 may be the year that ...
Profile and Interview by Carol Cooper, Face, The, November 1984
DESPITE WHAT you may have read, there is no such thing as a monolithic black American style. The attempt to pigeonhole black creativity into narrow ...
Salt 'N' Pepa: Salt 'n' Pepa: Cool, Hot & Vicious (Next Plateau)
Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, January 1987
I DON'T KNOW about you but I've been waiting quite a while for a girl rap group to duplicate the success of platinum playboys like ...
Profile by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, June 2003
NO ONE-SENTENCE summation (no matter how correct or clever) really does justice to the Scissor Sisters. As a girdle-tight, piss-elegant rock unit unafraid to play ...
Interview by Carol Cooper, Rolling Stone, August 1995
The women of TLC stay cool under fire ...
Review by Carol Cooper, Newsday, 1995
IN THE early to mid ‘80s, two of the most successful rap records concerned vigilantism. The Rake’s 'Street Justice' and Kool Moe Dee’s 'Wild Wild ...
List of genre pieces
Outward Is Heavenward: Modern Gospel
Report by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, July 2006
THERE'S SO MUCH going on in gospel music today that you may have missed when Kirk Franklin paused from promoting Hero, his latest chart-topping CD, ...
Putumayo: The Little Label That Could
Report by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, July 2004
WHILE THE REST of the music industry downsizes like mad, an 11-year-old independent label the majors used to snicker at has scored a 15 percent ...
Check Yo’self At The Door: Cryptoheterosexuality And The Black Music Underground
Essay by Carol Cooper, Vibe, 1993
I) Time Considered as a Helix of Semilegal Nightclubs ...
Jamaican Sunrise: The Promise, Problems and Ethos of Rasta Reggae
Essay by Carol Cooper, Black American, The, 1980
AS A BAROMETER of social pressure, and an indicator of public opinion, reggae music has no peer in the modern world of multi-media. As an ...
Retrospective by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, September 1996
WAS ANY underground music more quickly and thoroughly mediated by outside forces than surf music? On the cusp of the ‘60s, California’s coastal teen subculture ...
The Black Music Association Movement Of Jah People
Report by Carol Cooper, Soho Weekly News, June 1979
DURING A DEFINITIVE rendition of ‘Exodus’ which capped an hour-long show by the Wailers, Stevie Wonder joined Bob Marley on stage and moved 2,000 members ...
Overview by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, May 1990
ON FRIDAY night at the Tunnel, Bronx, Jersey, and Brooklyn posses with high-top fades, or one patch of hair dyed psychedelic orange, bob and weave ...
Overview by Carol Cooper, Elle, August 1989
MARCO AURELIO DA SILVA, known as Mazola, sits hunched over the console in one of Rio’s top recording studios, waiting for a live horn section ...
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