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This week on Slate Plus, Julia, Steve, Dana, June, and Jody honor the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and discuss their favorite lines and plays.
On this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics pay tribute to Prince: a genre- and gender-bending musician, fashion icon, and producer. What made Prince’s career so distinct and his music so danceable? Next up, Beyoncé recently debuted Lemonade: a supremely crafted visual album about infidelity. Does it reveal a side of her that we haven’t seen before? Finally, the gabbers discuss The Girlfriend Experience, a new TV show about a young law student who becomes a high-end escort. Does this show stand out from all of the other premium cable shows that discuss the politics of sex work?
Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:
- Prince songs that were mentioned on this episode: “Head,” “Raspberry Beret,” “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “Kiss,” “When Doves Cry,” “Sign o’ the Times,” “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” “Reflection,” “Pop Life,” “1999,” and “Purple Rain”
- Prince’s 2004 comeback album Musicology
- Prince’s album Crystal Ball, and the song “Dionne”
- Prince’s iconic Super Bowl XLI halftime performance
- Dana’s Prince pick, “Cream,” and “Little Red Corvette”
- Prince’s The Black Album
- Jody’s ballad picks: “The Beautiful Ones,” from Purple Rain, and “Adore” from Sign o’ the Times
- June’s picks: “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “Sugar Walls” by Sheena Easton (composed by Prince)
- Chris Molanphy’s Slate piece about how Prince ruled the charts in the ’80s
- The songs “Hold Up” and “Don’t Hurt Yourself” on Beyoncé’s album Lemonade
- Beyoncé’s Instagram feed
- Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear, and Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights
- Andy Williams’ “Can’t Get Used to Losing You”
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps”
- The Girlfriend Experience on Starz
- Richard Brody’s review of The Girlfriend Experience in the New Yorker
- The DoubleX Gabfest episode on which Noreen Malone endorsed The Girlfriend Experience
- The HBO show In Treatment
- June’s Slate piece about the Shakespeare sonnet walk
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Endorsements:
Dana: Sam Adams’ Slate piece about the Sign o’ the Times concert documentary
Julia: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got by Sinéad O’Connor, especially the song “Last Day of Our Acquaintance”
Jody: The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century by Wolfgang Schivelbusch, and the music of Chuck Berry
June: Victoria Wood’s song, “Like Any Old Day.” Also, check out June’s Slate piece memorializing Victoria Wood.
Steve: Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight
Outro: “Sometimes It Snows in April” by Prince
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our interns are Lizzie Fison and Lindsey Albracht.
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