Needle Leaves The Groove

Come to find out second-hand that Todd Burns has decided to shutter Stylus, effective next week.

That’s a damned tragedy. Stylus turned me on to a lot of great music, and was always a dependable source for quirky pop-culture analysis. The naked idiosyncrasy of the viewpoints and commentary really made me think that Hey, maybe I can write about pop in a way that’s unashamedly subjective but still meaningful—that I can write about U2 without talking about Eno’s microphone placement or the literary antecedents of the lyrics, but about how the hair on my arm stands up when the piano goes kraaaaang—can write about pop from within—not in a self-indulgent way, but as a critical approach, getting at what it means starting from how it feels. And that was something of a revelation.

The largeness of Stylus’s voice, and its vision of pop as a broad and inclusive church, came from the top. I don’t really know Todd—I only wrote a couple of pieces for the site—but he’s always struck me as a Good Egg, motivated by love both of good pop and of good writing. And now he’s done.

I’ll miss the site, and I wish Todd et al. best of luck with whatever’s next.

Now: What am I gonna do with this pile of unused Stylus pitches?