★ re: voice notes
something fell out of a coconut tree last night that needs to exist in context
Hi again! Last night, I excitedly sent a dispatch debuting Star Quality Voice Notes, technically a p*dcast, that’s an easier to produce on the fly way to chat about pop culture and social trends. Unbeknownst to me, Substack would like podcasts to be paywalled. BUT! I want them to be free because it’s what? Not! That! Serious! So… I’m here to share that each Voice Notes update will be free. You can simply click on the preview player and listen to the episode on your browser or in the Substack app. You don’t need to upgrade your subscription and if you do or did – I’ll refund you. This isn’t Ticketmaster. The context [of all in which you live and what came before you] from yesterday’s post is below as that was clipped for free subscribers. Thanks again for listening and let me know what you think of the format!
Star Quality Voice Notes
It’s not a podcast. It’s not NOT a podcast.
It’s been almost four months to the day since I last wrote you all. So much has changed in this wild world of ours yet my desire to ramble on and on about Charli, Chappell and Sabrina has hardly waned for an instant. That said, Star Quality has been booked and busy.
On the creator side, we recently created the tour artwork for comedian Jake Cornell, podcast rebrands for Who? Weekly and Good Children, a lyric video and merch line for A Twink & A Redhead’s eponymous debut single. We’ve also started working with Sony Pictures Classics to promote films like “Wicked Little Letters” starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, “Daddio” starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn and the upcoming “Between the Temples” starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. We directed three behind-the-scenes content productions at Tribeca Film Festival and even somehow made a virtual red carpet happen for Lena Dunham. Everything’s been giving…
In a very beautiful way! Thank you for supporting Star Quality in any and every way. It means a lot. But back to this Substack. With the work piling on, I’ve not found it in me to sit down and write the long form pieces that I love to usually write on here. Writing is hard? Am I the first to say that? Like, it is! But! I still feel the pull to get my ass on the Internet and absolutely soapbox dot com about the strange reality that is the internet and contemporary pop culture.
So I arrived at an idea this week to try out Substack’s podcast feature and more or less give myself an open mic that I can riff about on when inspiration strikes without all of the pressurized trappings of committing ink to paper (metaphorically) on the permanent record. I have to say, and with the utmost respect to podcasters worldwide, I never saw myself doing one and I’ve never wanted to do one, but it was the following onslaught of diabolical yet hopeful, absurd yet perfectly understandable Kamala Harris pop music meme remixes that drove me to the format. I needed to talk about it. And here we are.
I’ll still find ways to write my little essays from time to time because it brings me, earnest moment, joy! But sitting down on GarageBand for 45 minutes is way less painful and almost as fun. Soooo in this first ever Star Quality Voice Note, I’ll be unpacking these surrealist pop music remixes of Kamala Harris’ viral “Coconut Tree” speech and why it feels like a breath of fresh air in our current electoral politics. I also touch on the Apple dance and how it somehow brought together both the Amish & Fire Island communities. Business as usual as they say…
Please comment what you think of the format and if you have any topics or trends you want me to explore. It’ll be fun! Thanks for listening – hopefully I don’t get cancelled for saying that Trump is a star among other revelations.
xoxo