54 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American musician who co-founded Underoath as its original vocalist and drummer — and whose later solo acoustic work under his own name addresses spiritual and personal themes more directly than the metalcore format allowed.
Greek god of reason, light, music, prophecy, and medicine — the god associated with Delphi and the Oracle — whose association with order and rational clarity makes him the symbol of the Apollonian principle in Nietzsche's Apollo/Dionysus framework.
American singer and pianist known as the Queen of Soul — whose vocal technique, gospel roots, and emotional intensity set the standard for soul, R&B, and popular music.
South Korean musical group (Bangtan Sonyeondan — Beyond The Scene) who have become the most successful Korean musical act in history — whose Map of the Soul album series (Persona, 7) was directly inspired by and references Murray Stein's Jung's Map of the Soul — making Jungian psychology embedded in their most successful artistic work.
American hip-hop group from New York City who signed to Def Jam in 1985 and released Licensed to Ill — the first hip-hop album to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 — before evolving across multiple genres over three decades.
Beck Hansen is an American musician known for genre-blending across 'Mellow Gold', 'Odelay', and 'Sea Change', and for his use of the Shepard tone on 'Lonesome Tears'.
Rick Rubin's podcast where he interviews musicians and artists about their creative process — offering an intimate look at how the most accomplished music makers think about their work.
American rapper and co-founder of Public Enemy whose delivery, rhetoric, and political consciousness defined the golden age of political hip-hop — and who called hip-hop 'the CNN of black America' — establishing the template for the conscious rapper.
Clint Eastwood is an American actor and filmmaker who parlayed his Spaghetti Western and Dirty Harry stardom into one of the most prolific and critically respected directing careers in Hollywood history.
David Bowie was a British rock musician and actor whose five-decade career of constant reinvention — Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke — made him the preeminent figure of pop-art persona construction.
David Julyan is a British film composer who collaborated with Christopher Nolan on his first three features — 'Following', 'Memento', and 'Insomnia' — before Nolan moved to Hans Zimmer.
American record label founded by Rick Rubin in 1988 after his departure from Def Jam — which signed Slayer, the Black Crowes, Danzig, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and Johnny Cash — demonstrating Rubin's genre-agnostic approach to production and A&R.
British musician and songwriter who is one of the best-selling musical artists in history — known for Rocket Man, Tiny Dancer, and Crocodile Rock — whose flamboyant persona, addiction struggles, and AIDS philanthropy through the Elton John AIDS Foundation have made him as culturally significant off-stage as on.
American Celtic punk band from Los Angeles — combining traditional Irish folk instruments with punk energy — known for songs about Irish immigration, drinking, social injustice, and the Celtic diaspora experience.
Prussian king who built Prussia into a great European power through military genius (the oblique order), administrative reform, and philosophical enlightenment — transforming Prussia from a minor German state into the nucleus of what would become Germany.
Wagner's concept of the 'total artwork' — a synthesis of music, poetry, drama, visual art, and dance into a unified aesthetic experience, contrasted with the fragmented state of the arts.
South African Jungian analyst who wrote The Living Symbol — a Jungian analysis of music — connecting the analytical psychology of symbols to the experience and meaning of musical composition and performance.
Hans Zimmer is a German-British film composer who co-founded Remote Control Productions and created some of the most recognizable scores in cinema history, including 'The Lion King', 'Gladiator', 'Inception', 'Interstellar', and 'Dunkirk'.
Harry Styles is a British pop star and actor who rose to fame with One Direction before launching a successful solo career, and who played Alex in Christopher Nolan's 'Dunkirk'.
British-French actress and singer who during a 1983 airplane encounter with Hermès CEO Jean-Louis Dumas complained about the lack of a good everyday bag — inspiring the design of the Birkin bag, which became the most coveted luxury handbag in history.
American actor and musician, lead singer of Thirty Seconds to Mars and Oscar-winning actor, who has also built a portfolio of technology investments.
German Baroque composer — Cantor of St. Thomas Church, Leipzig — composer of the Mass in B Minor, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos, the St. Matthew Passion, and the Art of Fugue — widely considered the greatest composer in Western music history.
American composer who wrote 4'33'' (a piece of 'silence'), Music of Changes (composed using I Ching), and a vast body of work exploring chance operations, indeterminacy, and the dissolution of the boundary between art and life — the most influential figure in 20th century experimental music.
American musician and producer who independently built a significant music career through viral singles and prolific creative output before signing with major labels — known for his vocal range, production skill, and Christian-influenced pop music.
1985 semi-biographical film about the founding of Def Jam Records — featuring Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Fat Boys, and Sheila E — which was the first major hip-hop film and served as a promotional vehicle for Def Jam's early roster.
American rapper and actor who was the first artist signed to Def Jam Records — releasing Radio (1985), the label's first album — and who built a 40-year career across music, acting (NCIS: LA), and the Rock the Bells brand.
Ludwig Göransson is a Swedish-American composer and record producer who won Academy Awards for both 'Black Panther' and 'Oppenheimer', and whose score for 'Tenet' used reversed recordings of his own forward compositions to create the sound of inverted time.
Madonna is an American pop star and cultural provocateur who became one of the best-selling music artists of all time through constant reinvention and boundary-pushing.
Mick Jagger is the lead singer of the Rolling Stones and an iconic figure of rock performance, who also appeared as Turner, the reclusive rock star, in Nicolas Roeg's 'Performance' (1970).
Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe's Los Angeles social networking site — the dominant social network from 2005 to 2008 — famous for its music features, HTML customization, and its dramatic loss to Facebook.
American industrial rock project created by Trent Reznor in 1988 — which produced The Downward Spiral, one of the most commercially successful alternative albums of the 1990s — and whose song Hurt became even more famous when Johnny Cash covered it in 2002.
American hip-hop group from Long Island who created the most politically charged music of the hip-hop golden age — It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) being the defining political rap album — through Chuck D's rhetorical intensity and The Bomb Squad's dense sonic collage.
Greek philosopher and mathematician — founder of the Pythagorean school — who identified the mathematical relationships in musical harmonics and whose theorem relating triangle sides is the most famous result in mathematics — whose beliefs about the soul's immortality influenced Plato.
Beatles B-side (1966) notable for being one of the first popular recordings to use backward tape (backmasking) and for its innovative studio techniques — John Lennon's vocal was accidentally played backward and deliberately used.
American singer (née Alice Richardson) who married Ananda Coomaraswamy and became a celebrated performer of Indian classical music in both India and the West — one of the first Westerners to master and perform Indian art music at a high level.
Aretha Franklin's 1967 recording that transformed Otis Redding's original 'Respect' — a man's demand for domestic deference — into an assertion of female and Black dignity that became one of the defining cultural statements of the civil rights era.
Robert Wyatt is a British musician and founding member of Soft Machine whose 1974 album 'Rock Bottom' contains a Shepard tone.
American hip-hop group from Hollis, Queens who became the first hip-hop artists to achieve mainstream crossover success — their collaboration with Aerosmith on Walk This Way (1986) being the moment hip-hop entered mainstream rock radio — and who wore Adidas as a cultural statement that became the first hip-hop brand deal.
Morgan Neville's documentary portrait of producer Rick Rubin and his Shangri-La studio — examining the creative process of one of music's most significant producers.
American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California — one of the 'Big Four' of thrash metal alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax — whose Rick Rubin-produced Reign in Blood (1986) is considered the defining thrash metal album.
British music collective — led by the anonymous vocalist Vessel — which combines progressive metal, R&B, pop, and art rock in an elaborate anonymous mythology, performing in masks and refusing interviews.
American songwriter who wrote Oh! Susanna, Beautiful Dreamer, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, and Old Folks at Home (Swanee River) — the most beloved American folk songs of the 19th century — whose music, though written in the minstrel tradition, became the soundtrack of American nostalgia.
American singer-songwriter and the best-selling musician of her generation, who used the dispute over her master recordings to launch a re-recording project that became a landmark in artist rights and music economics.
British rock group — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr — whose decade-long recording career transformed popular music through harmonic sophistication, studio experimentation, and lyrical range.
Rick Rubin's 2023 meditation on creativity — presenting creativity as a spiritual practice of attention and openness rather than a technical skill — structured as 78 short chapters on aspects of the creative process.
German novelist who wrote The Magic Mountain, Buddenbrooks, Doctor Faustus, and Death in Venice — the greatest German prose novelist of the 20th century — and who engaged with the tension between art and life, decadence and vitality, Nietzsche and music, throughout his work.
William Herschel was an 18th-century German-British astronomer who discovered Uranus in 1781 and built the largest telescopes of his era.
American singer-songwriter who transformed popular music from entertainment into literature — awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 — with a 60-year career of restless creative reinvention.
American musician and guitarist who transformed the electric guitar's expressive range in a career of barely four years — widely considered the greatest rock guitarist in history.
American music and entertainment mogul who founded Asylum Records, Geffen Records, and co-founded DreamWorks — one of the most powerful figures in American entertainment across five decades.
A collection of Hendrix's own words — interviews, letters, and statements — assembled into a self-portrait of the musician in his own voice.
Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist from Montreal, widely regarded as one of the greatest lyricists in the English language. His songs including Hallelujah, Suzanne, Famous Blue Raincoat, and Bird on the Wire blend spiritual yearning, erotic longing, and existential depth. He explored Jewish mysticism, Zen Buddhism, and Christian imagery in a singular artistic voice.
Klaus Nomi (born Klaus Sperber) was a German-born countertenor and performance artist based in New York whose otherworldly fusion of opera, electronic music, and avant-garde theatricality made him one of the most distinctive figures of the late 1970s-early 1980s underground. He died of AIDS in 1983, among the first public figures to succumb to the epidemic.
Patti Smith emerged from the New York City punk rock scene of the 1970s, blending poetry and rock music to create a raw, intellectual, and deeply influential artistic persona that redefined the boundaries of genre and gender expression.