The Free Press
Shop Limited Edition Tough Love Merch
ForumNewslettersSign InSubscribe
Music
All the Details on Taylor Swift’s Gaudy Wedding
Plus: Paris Hilton’s quest for rich-kid justice, death doulas, and why Americans don’t care about the World Cup.
Suzy Weiss
40M
Great Americans: David Mamet on America’s First Pop Poet
Forget Walt Whitman. America’s greatest bard wrote songs.
David Mamet
Great Americans: Stephen Sondheim, Comic Genius
His musicals draw a direct line between the slapstick comedy of vaudeville and the ambivalence of high modernism—and they could only have grown out of…
Scott Wheeler
I Know What Iran Does to Women Who Sing
The ink on the Iran deal wasn’t even dry before the Islamic Republic showed its true face. Its first move? Sentencing singer Parastoo Ahmadi to 74…
Masih Alinejad
Great Americans: Lil Peep, Gen Z’s Own Kurt Cobain
He put two things together that weren’t supposed to go—emo music and trap rap—and helped make a new, raw style from them, and he did it without the…
Suzy Weiss
Olivia Rodrigo Murdered Her Love Songs
It was supposed to be about a happy relationship—but when her heart got broken, she rewrote her lyrics for a generation cynical about love.
Kat Rosenfield
New York Needs Gustavo Dudamel
The New York Philharmonic has spent years chasing politics and prestige. The celebrated conductor will bring back the one thing that matters: music.
Liel Leibovitz
Great Americans: Louis Armstrong
His feats of creativity reshaped American jazz—and found a way to say what needed saying through his music.
Joe Nocera
Ancient Wisdom: I’m 83. Is My Writing Better Than When I Was 30?
There’s no reason an older creative artist can’t replace lost energy with expertise or, to put it more grandly, ambition with wisdom; we ought to be…
Nicholas Delbanco
A Showdown over Israel in Park Slope
And Scooter Braun tells all on ‘Second Thought.’
Suzy Weiss
EXCLUSIVE: Scooter Braun Tells His Side of the Taylor Swift Masters War
I spoke to the former mega-manager about working with Kanye West, how management is like parenting, and about being cast as the villain in Taylor…
Suzy Weiss
Scooter Braun on Taylor Swift, Kanye West, and Becoming the Internet’s Villain
Suzy Weiss spoke to the former mega-manager about how management is like parenting and being cast as the villain in Taylor Swift’s fairy tale: “I…
Suzy Weiss
1HR 23M
For Free People.
LatestSearchAboutCareersForumShopPodcastsVideoEvents
©2026 The Free Press. All Rights Reserved.Powered by Substack.
Privacy∙Terms∙Collection notice