Idolator

The Guardian's Jon Wilde poses the "where did the good music-magazine covers go?" question today, and it's a salient point. But any media observer could tell you that the art of the eye-catching magazine cover has seemingly been lost in general, not just when it comes to music rags; subtlety and irreverence have gone out the window across the board, only to be replaced by a stew of numbers, obvious favor-trading, celebrity-name mishmashes, and big-money baby pics. More »

Last week, Jezebel invoked People editor Dick Stolley's "Law Of Covers," which proclaimed in part "Movies are better than music. Music is better than television. Television is better than sports... And anything is better than politics." But in this era where "popular music" is having something of a crisis, is television really less newsstand-worthy than music? To test this hypothesis, I looked at the 2007 cover roster of pop-culture generalist bible Entertainment Weekly, which this week boasted a two-page music section (sure, it was a slow week for new releases, but that's smaller than the space it devoted to books!). As my former colleague noticed back in November 2006, the magazine's covers devoted to music-related topics had become few and far between. Would 2007's roster of covers show that Stolley's maxim was still in effect, or had the boob tube finally won out over the tube amp? More »