cry baby pod

Dan DiPiero
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Crying about music since 1986 dandipiero.substack.com

  1. Mar 30

    12 | Queer Appalachia and Strange Americana with Dr. Jacob Kopcienski

    Show Notes Today’s show focuses on queer and leftist americana music, as well as associated fandoms across the broader Appalachian region of the United States. Dr. Jacob Kopcienski, Assistant Professor of Musicology at Appalachian State University, is our guide through the complexities of place, politics, and identity across this cultural and geographic zone. Their work engages ethnographic and archival research with popular music and media studies, which gives us a ton to talk about. Throughout, we explore how depression, queerness, and community manifest in regionally specific ways, molded around—but also against—their circumstances. Content Warning: Suicide, drug addiction, depression and mental health struggles Timestamps 00:00 Intro 3:15 Guest Intro 10:15 (Regionally-specific) depression in popular music 19:25 Aesthetic dimensions of queer americana 32:48 Queerness and class 37:15 Methods 46:18 (Western) North Carolina, drag performance, and climate change 1:02:15 What’s making guest cry Music Discussed References * Mutual Aid in Boone, Western North Carolina, and Appalachia * Drag Call for Proposals Enriquez, Sophia. 2020. “‘Penned Against the Wall’: Migration Narratives, Cultural Resonances, and Latinx Experiences in Appalachian Music.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 32 (2): 63–76. Johnson, E. Patrick. 2010. “‘Quare’ studies, or (almost) everything I know about queer studies I learned from my grandmother.” Text and Performance Quarterly 21 (1): 1–25. Mahon, Maureen. 2020. Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll. Duke University Press. Murchison, Gayle. 2018. “Let’s Flip It! Quare EmancipationsBlack Queer Traditions, Afrofuturisms, Janelle Monáe to Labelle.” Women and Music 22: 79–90. Rosyter, Francesca. 2022. Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions. University of Texas Press. Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. 2016. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening. New York University Press. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    1h 9m

  2. Mar 16

    11 | Everything That There Is with Dr. Macon Holt

    Hello cry babies! Today’s episode is all about the role of popular music in a capitalist hellscape! How has our situation changed since the postmodern turn? What are we to make of popular music in the era of capitalist realism and depressive hedonia? What if it turns out we’re all watching Infinite Jest in small chunks without realizing it? How can we meet enough of our needs to be able to launch a revolution? We’re getting into the critical theory of it all with Dr. Macon Holt. Content Warning: suicide, genocide, depression Timestamps 00:00: intro 4:24: guest intro and book project 23:10: what the f**k is going on? (workshops) 37:25: Labubu as an index of desire 48:12: what’s making guest cry References * Macon’s Book * Lacan’s graph of desire * Lacan’s math * Passive/Aggressive * Super Time Books Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Zer0 Books. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of a Style. Routledge. Holt, Macon. 2019. Pop Music and Hip Ennui: A Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism. Bloomsbury. Holt, Macon. 2020. “The Entertainment.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound, edited by Holger Schulze. Bloomsbury. Mooney, Gavin. 2012. “Neoliberalism is bad for our health.” International journal of health services: planning, administration, evaluation, 42( 3): 383–401. https://doi.org/10.2190/HS.42.3.b Wallace, David Foster. 1996. Infinite Jest. Little, Brown and Company. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    1 hr

  3. Mar 1

    10 | Preprogrammed with Dr. Amy Skjerseth

    Show Notes My guest today is Dr. Amy Skjerseth, Assistant Professor of Popular Music at UC Riverside. Amy is one of the most prolific and prodigious thinkers I know, and she provides us with an entire reading list throughout the course of this episode. From Tina Turner to anti-ICE whistles, we’re talking sound, media, technology, and disciplinarity. Get hip! Timestamps: 00:00: Intro 1:13: Guest Intro and Popular Music Studies 9:39: Sound Studies 16:39: Preprogrammed 36:01: Yoko Ono and the Feminist Wall of Sound 50:17: Host’s training and the question of interdisciplinarity 58:38 What’s making guest cry Music Discussed References Alexander, Neta. 2025. Interface Frictions: How Digital Debility Reshapes Our Bodies. Duke University Press. Atkinson, Niall. 2016. The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life. Penn State University Press. Corbin, Alain. 1998. Village Bells: The Culture of the Senses in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside. Columbia University Press. Echols, Alice. 2010. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. W. W. Norton and Company. Field, Allyson Nadia. 2026. Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History. University of California Press. Gordon, Theodore. 2025. The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America. University of California Press. Hartman, Saidiya (works). Miller, Karl Hagstrom. 2010. Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow. Duke University Press. Ono, Yoko. 2000. Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings by Yoko Ono. Simon & Schuster. Skjerseth, Amy with Catherine Provenzano. 2025. “ Instrumental Presets: The Visible Past of Music Technology.” Popular Music Books in Process Series, April 23. Spiers, Aurore. 2026. Archiving the Past: Women’s Film History in France, 1927–1978. University of California Press. Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Duke University Press, 2003. Sounding Out! (blog) Thompson, Emily. 2004. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. MIT Press. Wilson, Carl. 2014. Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste. Bloomsbury. Yale French Studies volume. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    1h 4m

  4. Feb 15

    9 | Cuban Reparto with Dr. Mike Levine

    Show Notes Welcome back! I said I was gonna do a solo episode but I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Instead we’re jumping back in with a wonderful episode about Cuban Reparto music with my guest Dr. Mike Levine, Assistant Professor of Musicology at Christopher Newport University. From production to consumption to distribution, we cover many of the most pertinent characteristics of this kind of Reggaeton-adjacent tradition, and get into the politics of censorship, gender, and place—among other things. Timestamps 00:00: Intro 3:05: Mike’s research interests in Cuba 5:20: Mike’s book (Pegao), the USB distribution network of Cuban popular music, and the question of political music 22:40: Reparto aesthetics 36:12: Global Reggaeton 41:37: Gender in Reparto 44:06: What’s making guest cy Music Discussed References Díaz, Vanessa, and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau. 2026. P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance. Duke University Press. Levine, Mike. 2025. “Sneaking Across the Digital Divide: Usb Sticks and the Infrastructure of Independent Cuban Music.” In Independence in 21st-Century Popular Music: Cases from Beyond Anglo-America, edited by Shannon Garland, Pedro Belchior Nunes, and Pedro Roxo. Bloomsbury. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    49 min

  5. Jan 1

    8 | Emo (Con) Special with Varun Chandrasekhar

    Show Notes On this episode I speak with Varun Chandrasekhar about all things emo, but perhaps most pertinently, the academic conference he’s organized around the music, to take place at Washington University in St. Louis on April 10th and 11th. Varun is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at WashU, where his dissertation focuses on reading Charles Mingus through the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. In our conversation, we discuss the EMO CON 2026—TO WHICH YOU MAY STILL SUBMIT ABSTRACTS—as well as 4th wave emo’s aesthetics and politics, neoliberal disillusionment, THE MIDWEST, music about being a bad person, and MORE. Timestamps 1:34: Emo Con/4th Wave Emo 24:30: JPMS article/Neoliberal (dis)identification 42:00 Silly Little Emo Band/Charles Mingus 49:30 What’s Making Guest Cry Music Discussed (two playlists, for the enthusiasts) References Chandrasekhar, Varun. Forthcoming. “‘When Things Don’t Get Better, No Things Don’t Get Better, Just Different’: Emo and Affect Under Neoliberalism.” Journal of Popular Music Studies. Chandrasekhar, Varun. 2025. “Jazz and Commitment: Sartre, Jazz, and Charles Mingus.” Jazz and Culture 8 (2): 1–27. Fathallah, Judith. 2020. Emo: How Fans Defined a Subculture. University of Iowa Press. Gabbard, Krin. 1995. “Signifyin(g) the Phallus: Mo’ Better Blues and Representations of the Jazz Trumpet.” In Representing Jazz, edited by Krin Gabbard. Duke University Press. Howie, Tyler and Matt Chiu. 2022. “Analytical Frameworks for Post(-Millennial) Punk: The “Twinkle” Schema in the Emo Revival.” SMT-Pod Podcast, Season 1 Episodes 11 and 12. https://smt-pod.org/episodes/season01/e1.11/. Peters, Sean. In Process. “Life in Plastic (It’s Fantastic): The Significance of the Cassette Tape to Punk Rock in Four Stories.” PhD dissertation, Cornell University. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    54 min

  6. 12/08/2025

    7 | Big Feelings Special with Raechel Anne Jolie

    Show Notes For this special episode I’m sharing my conversation with Raechel Anne Jolie, who joined me to discuss Big Feelings back in October. If you’re a regular reader of cry baby, you’ll already know that Raechel is one of my favorite writers and people period; their award-winning memoir Rust Belt Femme and popular newsletter radical love letters are both required reading (so get on it). 😊This event was such a massive joy for me and I’m so glad I remembered to hit “record”—even if it was just on my phone. Timestamps no thank you! Music Discussed References Bayne, Martha. 2025. “Where Do We Go From Here?: The dream of the 90s is alive at Lilith Fair.” Range of Motion, October 23. Bimm, Morgan. 2022. “Girl Music of the Indie Rock Persuasion: Amplifying Indie Through 2000s Girl Culture.” PhD Dissertation, York University. Jolie, Raechel Anne. 2024. “a form of time travel: on the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack and nostalgic 90s movie music.” radical love letters, June 15. Stratis, Niko. 2025. The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman. University of Texas Press. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    1h 7m

  7. 11/23/2025

    6 | Resilient Pop and Alt (Right) Rock with Dr. Robin James

    Show Notes On this episode I speak with with the one and only Robin James, scholar, editor, author of five books so far, including several we talk about today—like The Future of Rock and Roll, The Sonic Episteme, as well as the forthcoming Good Vibes Only, 33 ⅓ on book The Breeders’ Last Splash and a second edition of Resilience and Melancholy, under contract with the University of Michigan Press. We take the temperature of the rock/pop divide, covering what’s happened to resilience discourse in pop music over the past decade, what’s happening to the notion of genre, the male loneliness epidemic, and much more. Timestamps 0:00 intro 4:27 Resilience and Melancholy (2nd edition!) 15:15 shifting gender norms and resilience narratives 24:22 vibes and post-genre listening (?) 30:00 gender and the evolution of cool 35:00 the manosphere and alt-rock masculinity 36:40 plus bad taste 42:00 plus alt-rock 50:00 what’s making guest cry 51:55 Inhailer Radio and DJing Music Discussed References Foege, Alec. 2008. Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio. Faber and Faber. James, Robin. 2015. Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism. Zer0 Books. James, Robin. 2017. “Is the post- in post-identity the post- in post-genre?” Popular Music 36, (1): 21-32. James, Robin. 2019. The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism, and Biopolitics. Duke University Press. James, Robin. 2020. “Music and Feminism in the 21st Century.” Music Research Annual 1: 1–25. James, Robin. 2023. The Future of Rock and Roll 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence. University of North Carolina Press. O’Reilly, Séamus. 2025. “Séamas O’Reilly: We need to stop lying about what makes lost boys such easy marks for cons.” Irish Examiner, 15 March. https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-columnists/arid-41592826.html Sheth, Falguni A. 2009. Towards a Political Philosophy of Race. SUNY Press. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    1h 2m

  8. 11/10/2025

    5 | Indie Rock and Girl Cultures with Dr. Morgan Bimm

    Show Notes Today’s ultra special guest is Dr. Morgan Bimm, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish NS and very dear friend. We talk about her dissertation on indie rock and girl cultures; her new project on playlists-as-method; the work of making friends in academia; and moooorrreeee. Timestamps 0:00 intro 4:00 dissertation project and origin stories 29:00 playlists and citational politics 45:30 low culture and pedagogy 53:30 how we met :’) 1:06: what’s making guest cry - Music Discussed - References Bannister, Matthew. 2006. White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie Guitar Rock. Routledge. Bimm, Morgan. 2022. “Girl Music of the Indie Rock Persuasion: Amplifying Indie Through 2000s Girl Culture.” PhD Dissertation, York University. DiPiero, Dan. 2025. Big Feelings: Queer and Feminist Indie Rock After Riot Grrrl. University of Michigan Press. Fonarow, Wendy. 2006. Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music. Wesleyan University Press. Goodman, Lizzy. 2018. Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011. Harper Collins. Vesey, Alyx. 2021. “Selling Sonic Girlhood: Feminizing Indie Rock through Music Supervision on MTV’s Awkward.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 60 (5): 217–242. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandipiero.substack.com

    1h 16m
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About

Crying about music since 1986 dandipiero.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Dan DiPiero
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Dan DiPiero
  • Show Website
    cry baby pod