Maura Johnston
I've written about music and culture for 20 years, with pieces published in The New York Times, Time, The Boston Globe, and Rolling Stone, among others. In 2013 I founded the culture periodical Maura Magazine.
I'm an adjunct instructor in the journalism department at Boston College, where I teach two classes: Writing About Popular Music and Journalism and New Media.
I was a founding editor of the music blog Idolator and served as the music editor at The Village Voice.
I went to undergrad at Northwestern University; my graduation speakers were Bill Cosby and Rahm Emanuel, if you want the gist of how different times were back then.
9 articles
List of articles in the library by artist
The 1975: A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
Review by Maura Johnston, Rolling Stone, 4 December 2018
The UK band's latest cuts through our social media malaise with some highly emotional songs and a sound that replicates the sonic placelessness of the ...
Live Review by Maura Johnston, Boston Globe, The, 15 September 2016
THE CURRENT TREND of downcast pop – minor keys, lyrics drenched with bitterness, an overwhelming sense of despair – can be at least partially traced ...
Against Me!: Shape Shift With Me
Review by Maura Johnston, Boston Globe, The, 15 September 2016
THE FLORIDA-BORN Against Me! has been one of the standard-bearers of politicized nth-generation punk since their debut in 1998, thanks to the strangled voice and ...
Dierks Bentley: How Dierks Bentley Became Country Music's Most Relatable Star
Profile and Interview by Maura Johnston, Esquire, 25 August 2016
IT'S A SULTRY August afternoon at the St. Louis record mecca Vintage Vinyl, and in the back of the shop amidst carrels of LPs, Dierks ...
Review by Maura Johnston, Time, 9 May 2016
IN MANY WAYS, Radiohead is the ideal band to be scoring 2016's increasingly dystopian present. ...
Lana Del Rey: Is Lana Del Rey The Kreayshawn Of Moody, Electro-Tinged "Indie"?
Report by Maura Johnston, Village Voice, The, 15 September 2011
LAST NIGHT, Glasslands played host to a "secret" show by Lana Del Rey, an up-and-coming singer who was described by the one press release I ...
Review by Maura Johnston, Rolling Stone, 25 July 2017
LANA DEL REY has become a hugely adored miserablist thanks to a perpetually wounded voice and plainspoken poetry. Her fourth album as Lana Del Rey ...
Kanye West: Kanye West: TD Garden, Boston
Live Review by Maura Johnston, Boston Globe, The, 4 September 2016
"IT'S A GOOD YEAR to be a Kanye West fan," Kanye West said near the end of his show at TD Garden on Saturday night. ...
List of genre pieces
Ellen Willis: Out of the Vinyl Deeps
Book Review by Maura Johnston, Village Voice, The, 5 October 2011
The late New Yorker pop critic and Voice editor's work still vibrates off the page in Out of the Vinyl Deeps. ...
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