Alan Light
Contributor
Editor-in-Chief Tracks (2002-05), Spin (1999-2002), and Vibe (1994-97), and author of The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys and The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah."
Primary Contributions (1)
Hip-hop is a global cultural movement that attained widespread popularity in the 1980s and ’90s after its birth in New York City in the 1970s. It is also the backing music for rap, the musical style incorporating rhythmic and rhyming speech that became the movement’s most lasting and influential…
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Publications (2)
The Holy Or the Broken Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" (2012)
See the film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song from Sony Pictures Classics
This “thoughtful and illuminating” (The New York Times) work of music journalism is an unforgettable, fascinating, and unexpected account of one of the most performed and beloved songs in pop history—Leonard Cohen’s heartrending “Hallelujah.”
How did one obscure song become an international anthem for human triumph and tragedy, a song each successive generation seems to...
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This “thoughtful and illuminating” (The New York Times) work of music journalism is an unforgettable, fascinating, and unexpected account of one of the most performed and beloved songs in pop history—Leonard Cohen’s heartrending “Hallelujah.”
How did one obscure song become an international anthem for human triumph and tragedy, a song each successive generation seems to...
The Skills to Pay the Bills The Story of the Beastie Boys (2005)
In 1987, three white Jewish boys from New York City were the most fascinating phenomenon in the burgeoning rap music scene. No, really. The Beastie Boys, barely out of their teens, had just releasedLicensed to Ill, which quickly became the first hip-hop album to reach number one on the charts. Pairing vulgar and hilarious lyrics with heavy-metal-derived musical backing and a punk DIY attitude, the Beasties—MCA (Adam Yauch), King Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz), and Mike D (Michael Diamond)—changed...
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