Evelyn McDonnell
Evelyn McDonnell is assistant professor of journalism and new media at Loyola Marymount University. She has been writing about popular culture and society for more than 20 years. She is the author of three books: Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She coedited the anthologies Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap and Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth. Da Capo published Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways in 2013.
Evelyn has been the editorial director of www.MOLI.com, pop culture writer at The Miami Herald, senior editor at The Village Voice, and associate editor at SF Weekly. Her writing on music, poetry, theater, and culture has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including the Los Angeles Times, Ms., Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Spin, Travel & Leisure, Us, Billboard, Vibe, Interview, Black Book, and Option. She codirected the conference Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 1998. She has won several fellowships and awards, including an Annenberg Fellowship at USC and a fellowship to the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater.
Her 2004 Herald expose of hip-hop cops was awarded first place for enterprise reporting by the South Florida Black Journalists Association and second place in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sunshine State Awards. She earned her Master’s in Specialized Journalism, the Arts, from USC, where she was chosen for the Phi Kappa Phi honor society. She earned her Bachelor’s in American studies, graduating magna cum laude from Brown University. She leaves in San Pedro with her husband, son, many animals, and a fantastic view of the ocean. In 2023 she published The World According to Joan Didion.
75 articles
List of articles in the library
Camper Van Beethoven, Scruffy The Cat: The Ritz, New York NY
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Billboard, 19 November 1988
YOU CAN take Camper Van Beethoven out of California, but you can't take California out of Camper Van — and you can't necessarily ask the ...
The Go-Betweens: The Knitting Factory, New York NY
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Billboard, 10 December 1988
A FULL decade after they released their first single, Australia's Go-Betweens have finally found a home on a major U.S. label. Presumably, with the beautiful ...
The Chills: Submarine Bells (Slash/Warner Bros.)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, April 1990
MARTIN PHILLIPPS has a way with words. During his 10 years as singer/songwriter/guitarist for the Chills, New Zealand's leading folk-punk band, Phillipps has written more ...
The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Red Hot Chili Peppers: The Ritz, New York
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Billboard, 2 June 1990
LIKE PUBLIC Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers appear to want to do the right thing. It's just that they keep sticking their feet in their ...
Profile and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 23 August 1990
Pouty vocals drape a psychedelic soundtrack ...
Soul Asylum: Soul Asylum and the Horse They Rode In On (Twin-Tone/A&M) ***
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 29 November 1990
THE FOUR MEMBERS of the Minneapolis band Soul Asylum honed their chops in the imposing shadow of the almighty Hüsker Dü. When the Hüskers split ...
Nikki D, Yo Yo: Yo-Yo and Nikki D: Bum Rush the Locker Room
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Musician, May 1991
Yo-Yo and Nikki D turn the turntables on sexist homies ...
Throwing Muses: The Real Ramona (Sire) ***½
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 27 June 1991
AS THROWING Muses has developed, so have the band's imperatives. On the Muses' first album, Kristin Hersh and Tayna Donelly, the group's two singer-songwriters, were ...
Tom Waits: Bone Machine (Island/PLG)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, November 1992
ON THE five years following his last studio album, Tom Waits moved to the country and became a family man. The influences of wife, children, ...
Profile and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, March 1993
Former Throwing Muse Tanya Donelly is up her Belly with highly imaginary tales of a very real world. ...
Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians: Respect (A&M) ***½
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 15 April 1993
ALTHOUGH HE'S gussied them up in images of frogs, fish, food and whatnot, Robyn Hitchcock's obsessions have always been basic and Freudian: sex and death. ...
Profile and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, May 1993
KING MISSILE'S John S. Hall is eating pierogis at New York's Kiev Restaurant, the 24-hour Ukrainian coffee shop outside of which the singer finds his ...
PJ Harvey: Platter du Jour — PJ Harvey: Rid of Me (Island/PLG)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, May 1993
POLLY JEAN Harvey knows that women in positions of power or prestige quickly get demonized. So on Rid of Me, the second album by her ...
American Music Club: Lonely Hearts Club Band
Profile and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, June 1993
Evelyn McDonnell walks and talks the streets of San Francisco with Mark Eitzel and American Music Club ...
Monie Love: In a Word or 2 (Warner Bros.)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 10 June 1993
MONIE LOVE is a good storyteller, an adept rapper and a mediocre songwriter. Her lyrics flow and flow, but on In a Word or 2, ...
Kurt Cobain, The Melvins: The Melvins: Slacking Toward Platinum
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, L.A. Weekly, 17 June 1993
The Melvins and Kurt are asleep at the wheel of fortune ...
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Musician, September 1993
STROLL INTO the Dayton, Ohio, house shared by twins Kim and Kelley Deal on a muggy summer afternoon and step over a clutter of CDs, ...
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 30 September 1993
PICTURE a punk rocker: Ian MacKaye and Emma Goldman are her heroes. She reads Maximum Rock 'n Roll and plays 'Holidays In The Sun' on ...
Debbie Harry: Deborah Harry: Debravation (Sire/Reprise)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 14 October 1993
BACK WHEN Blondie was becoming America's biggest New Wave band, Deborah Harry's deadpan lyric barbs cut the edges around her paper-doll appearance. This is the ...
PJ Harvey: P.J. Harvey: 4-Track Demos
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 25 November 1993
THE POP INDUSTRY loves to simulate authenticity, a trick that, like the manufacturing of fake antiques, puts demands on the consumer. It's hard to tell ...
Report by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 8 September 1994
The ticket is love rock and minimalism at Yoyo a Go Go ...
Meshell Ndegeocello: Me'Shell NdegeOcello
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 29 December 1994
WHAT A DIFFERENCE a year makes. Twelve months ago bassist and band leader Me'Shell NdegeOcello's debut album, Plantation Lullabies, had just been released by Maverick. ...
Paul Weller: Stanley Road (Go! Discs/London) ***
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 13 July 1995
NAMED AFTER the area in suburban London where he grew up, Stanley Road is possibly the most autobiographical record Paul Weller has ever made. He ...
Tori Amos: She Walks The Line: Tori Amos: Boys For Pele (Atlantic) **
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 8 February 1996
THE TENSION BETWEEN secular desires and spiritual devotion has fueled rock & roll frenzy since Day One, so to speak, when the fundamentalist-reared Jerry Lee ...
Comment by Evelyn McDonnell, The New York Times, 2 June 1996
AT THE HEART of feminism lies the belief in self-determination: women should define their own identities. One recent expression of that tenet can be found ...
The Raincoats: Looking In The Shadows (DGC) ****
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 13 June 1996
THE RAINCOATS aren't the kind of band to get hung up on a sound as mundane as a clock ticking. ...
Rage Against The Machine: Roseland Ballroom, New York NY
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 3 October 1996
AT ABOUT the same time Bob Dole was accepting the GOP's presidential nomination some 3,000 miles away, Rage Against the Machine drop-kicked 'People of the ...
PJ Harvey, John Parish: John Parish & Polly Jean Harvey: Dance Hall At Louse Point **
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 17 October 1996
EVER SINCE laying herself bare on the first PJ Harvey album, Dry, Polly Jean Harvey has been struggling to find a pose within which to ...
Sleater-Kinney: There's a Riot Goin' On
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 12 June 1997
SLEATER-KINNEY want to bring feminist punk rock to the mainstream ...
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, September 1997
"JUST A SECOND, just a second now," said Canadian performer Kinnie Starr as she abruptly swung her electric guitar down and stepped off the tiny ...
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 13 November 1997
FIONA APPLE is 20 years and one album old, and already she knows the bipolar swings of stardom. Thanks to one fortuitously placed demo tape, ...
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 13 November 1997
IN 1976, JOAN Jett was a black-leather-wearing 16-year-old living across the street from Los Angeles' notorious Whisky-a-Go-Go and writing songs like the classic fox anthem ...
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 13 November 1997
ONE WAY to control your career is to declare yourself sovereign. When 19-year-old Dana Owens came rapping out of Newark, N.J., in 1989, she assumed ...
The X-Ecutioners: New York's Turntable Wizards the X-Ecutioners Move the DJ Front and Center
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 27 November 1997
THEY MAY spin records, but don't call the X-Ecutioners DJs. "A DJ will play somebody else's record, say, 'All right, that was this tune,' and ...
Queen Latifah: Order In The Court (Flavor Unit/Motown)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 6 August 1998
IN THE four years since Queen Latifah's last album went gold and she won a Grammy, rappers have been getting rich, showing tits and making ...
Seal: Human Being (Warner Bros.) **½
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Rolling Stone, 10 December 1998
WITH HIS rippled six-foot-three body shouldering a face marked by scars that could be teen-idol stigmata, you can't quite hate Seal because he's beautiful. ...
Bruce Springsteen: Tracks (Columbia)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, The Village Voice, 15 December 1998
THE GHOST OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ...
Ronnie Spector: Life Club, New York City
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, The Village Voice, 29 December 1998
"BRIAN WILSON wrote this song for me," Ronnie Spector said on Wednesday at her annual holiday party at Life, "but because of publishing and contracts ...
Hedwig and the Angry Inch: The Rock Musical That Isn't
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Real Gone Music, February 1999
CHEATER IS A band that performs as the Angry Inch in the off-Broadway rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Hedwig is an East German ...
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, The Village Voice, 2 February 1999
FOX ON THE RUN ...
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, The Village Voice, 28 September 1999
L7 Blow-Up in Brooklyn ...
TLC: Civic Center, Hartford CT
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, February 2000
FOR THE PAST decade, TLC have challenged the usual pop-girl predicaments. They sported condom fashions as teenagers, took on their management and record company, addressed ...
Madonna: Serious artist, or celebrity hustler?
Comment by Evelyn McDonnell, Times Herald-Record, 25 August 2001
The great Madonna debate: Does she inspire or annoy you? ...
Goldfrapp: Music That's Going Places
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Miami Herald, November 2001
FORMER ENGLISH country lass Alison Goldfrapp could have had a record deal years ago, if she hadn't bothered her pretty head with petty matters like ...
Yoko Ono: Blueprint for a Sunrise (Capitol)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, January 2002
AS A CONCEPTUAL artist, Yoko Ono can be a genius. ...
Liz Phair: Ex-indie rock queen is back on the scene
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Miami Herald, 22 June 2003
IT HAS BEEN 10 years since Liz Phair first shocked the prudish world of independent rock with the frank sexual confessions of her debut album, ...
Prince at the Super Bowl: A Preview
Report by Evelyn McDonnell, Times Herald-Record, 4 February 2007
WHEN PRINCE sat down with the producers of Super Bowl XLI entertainment to make his pitch for playing the halftime show, he had done his ...
Miami Sound Machine: The Hit Factory Criteria Studio
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 22 July 2008
MIAMI – On any given night, as the fabled moon rises over Miami, the densest concentration of pop stars per square foot is likely to ...
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Interview, 26 November 2008
IT'S BEEN MORE THAN A DECADE since a songstress from Dallas with her hair wrapped in a Nefertiti scarf first unleashed her boho soul upon ...
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Interview, April 2009
TALKING TO MariaTALKING TO Marianne Faithfull over the day's first coffee is a bit like waking up for cocktails. She's alert and energetic, but chicly ...
Joan Jett, The Runaways: Joan Jett
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Interview, 20 February 2010
IN THE FOUR years that they were together, the quintet of teenage girls that made up The Runaways cut a swath of hard rock, harder ...
The Runaways: Wild Thing — How Sandy West Was Lost
Retrospective by Evelyn McDonnell, L.A. Weekly, 18 March 2010
ON A SUMMER day in 1975, a 16-year-old girl carrying a Silvertone guitar took four public buses from Canoga Park to a two-story house in ...
Deadmau5 promises more than just music
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 16 April 2010
THE IMAGES were grainy, the lines obscured — as if they were photos taken by a surveillance camera. The backdrop appeared to be a giant ...
Bikini Kill: Sara Marcus: Girls to the Front
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 10 October 2010
BROOKLYN-BASED writer and musician Sara Marcus deserves a medal just for daring to write a book about Riot Grrrl, the fiercely uncompromising feminist movement of ...
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 3 December 2010
JAY-Z IS A GREAT American artist — and he'd be the first to tell you so. Decoded is an elegantly designed, incisively written bid for ...
Dan Charnas: The Big Payback – The History of the Business of Hip-Hop
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 4 January 2011
"HERE'S A LITTLE story that must be told," Dan Charnas writes by way of an ironic introduction to his brick-sized epic, quoting a classic rap ...
The Feelies Get Perpetually Nervous All Over Again
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, The Village Voice, 30 March 2011
SOME PEOPLE pick up guitars and want to be rock stars. Other people pick up guitars because playing music is a cooler hobby than collecting ...
Ellen Willis: Out Of The Vinyl Deeps – Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, The New York Times, 10 June 2011
WOODSTOCK WAS A RIP-OFF. Creedence Clearwater Revival eclipsed the Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan struggled with identity. Janis Joplin "was not so much a victim as ...
Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears: Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj: Staples Center, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 21 June 2011
Haters Go Home: Britney Dominates L.A. Show ...
Patsy Cline, The Living Sisters, Zoey Deschanel: Living Sisters, Zooey Deschanel honor Patsy Cline
Report by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, 9 October 2011
WITH HER PATHOS-DEEP contralto somewhere between a yodel and a croon, Patsy Cline delivered indelible songs about never being satisfied with the one you're with ...
Björk: A New Map to Björk's Music
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 18 October 2011
IT'S A SAD IRONY: The digitization of music has impoverished the average listening experience. Not only do compressed files sound meagre compared to the sonic ...
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's women problem
Comment by Evelyn McDonnell, salon.com, 11 December 2011
DO THE MATH: Out of the 11 new members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2012, one — Laura Nyro — ...
Kim Fowley: Impresario, Svengali, Saint, Devil
Report and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 1 April 2012
KIM FOWLEY pulls DVDs, fliers, CDs, a hospital admission slip and more DVDs out of a jumble of media on the mixing board of a ...
Carole King: A Natural Woman: A Memoir
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 25 April 2012
MY FAVORITE SCENE in Carole King's long-awaited A Natural Woman comes near the beginning — appropriately, since the teen hitmaker was the epitome of an ...
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena
Live Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 27 April 2012
HALFWAY THROUGH THURSDAY night's miraculous revival meeting cum concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, Bruce Springsteen stopped to recall his beginnings in the ...
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 4 June 2012
AFTER HER National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids greatly expanded her audience, Patti Smith could have done the usual aging-rock-legend safety move: record an album ...
Yo La Tengo: Jesse Jarnow: Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock (Gotham Books)
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2012
THIS IS AS SCINTILLATING as it gets: The opening and closing anecdotes of Big Day Coming revolve around typos. Shockingly, promoters and newspapers have had ...
Jack White: With Blunderbuss, Jack White aims for new beginning
Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 4 August 2012
The former White Stripes leader takes his first solo album through Memphis for soul and Nashville for honky tonk. Many of the album's songs are ...
Pussy Riot and the Politics of Grrrl Punk
Comment by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2012
I WONDER, as they sit in their separate cells, what songs the three jailed members of Pussy Riot sing to themselves to keep their spirits ...
The Riot Grrrl Collection by Lisa Darms (The Feminist Press)
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2013
The Riot Grrrl Collection spreads girl germs of the '90s movement ...
The Runaways: Girl Power: The Birth of the Runaways
Book Excerpt by Evelyn McDonnell, 'Queens of Noise' (Da Capo), Summer 2013
Reprinted from Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways by Evelyn McDonnell. Available from Da Capo Press, a member of The Perseus Books ...
Iggy Azalea, Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj, Meghan Trainor: The Booty Myth
Report by Evelyn McDonnell, Cuepoint, 10 November 2014
Are female pop stars glorifying their bodies or objectifying them? Well, it's complicated. ...
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 17 September 2015
There's no pretending in Chrissie Hynde's spare, deft memoir Reckless ...
Vivien Goldman: Do Everything Yourself: The Lessons Of Punk Renaissance Woman Vivien Goldman
Profile and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Record, The (NPR), 21 July 2016
ON JUNE 29, 64 years after the day she was born in London to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany, Vivien Goldman was back ...
Hollywood Swinging: Joan Didion in '60s L.A.
Book Excerpt by Evelyn McDonnell, 'The World According to Joan Didion' (4th Estate), October 2023
An excerpt from Evelyn's biography, published in the UK by 4th Estate. ...
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