The Naughty List
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Music, Muzak
[ J A N U A R Y • 2 0 2 5 ]
Read Liz Pelly’s cover story in the latest issue, unveiling Spotify’s “Perfect Fit Content” fake-artist scheme, and then browse the Harper’s archive for more on the business of music.
Read “The Ghosts in the Machine” by Liz Pelly
[ N O V E M B E R • 1 9 9 1 ]
E.L. Doctorow on how great songs name us.
Read “Standards” by E.L. Doctorow, excerpted as “Copy Rites” in the January 2025 issue
[ J U N E • 1 9 8 7 ]
A pianist tries his hand at corporate “mood establishment.”
Read “Ice-Cream Music” by Don Asher
[ J A N U A R Y • 1 9 5 4 ]
“‘We consider,’ said the representative of one record company, ‘that the passive listener market is very big.’” A short dispatch on the innovation of “the record meant to be listened to while doing something else.”
Read “Every Man His Own Musak”
[ M A Y • 1 9 5 6 ]
“Let statesmen and monopolists of the future beware of a musical electorate!”
Read “Music: For Money or For Love?” by Jacques Barzun
Santa’s Workshop
[ S E P T E M B E R • 2 0 0 8 ]
The origins of toys for every girl and boy.
Read “Through the Open Door” by Donovan Hahn
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 8 7 ]
Peter Freundlich does a little Christmas shopping.
Read “Gazing into Bergdorf's Window” by Peter Freundlich
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 9 3 ]
David Sedaris, “full-time elf.”
Read “Santa's Little Helper” by David Sedaris
[ A U G U S T • 2 0 1 4 ]
On the seasonal Amazon workers who can’t afford to stop working.
Read “The End of Retirement” by Jessica Bruder
’Tis the Season
[ D E C E M B E R • 2 0 1 4 ]
Greeting the holidays in an age of mass incarceration.
Read “Christmas in Prison” by Kenneth E. Hartman
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 2 0 ]
Personal accounts of the Christmas truces in the trenches.
Read “Two Christmas Mornings of the Great War” by Wilfrid Ewart
[ J A N U A R Y • 1 9 9 7 ]
On how Kwanzaa bestows the gifts of therapy.
Read “Dreaming of a Black Christmas” by Gerald Lyn Early
[ D E C E M B E R • 2 0 2 2 ]
A Christmas story by Kate DiCamillo.
Read “On a Winter’s Night” by Kate DiCamillo
For Auld Lang Syne
[ A P R I L • 1 9 9 6 ]
Musings on a new millennium in Times Square.
[ J A N U A R Y • 1 8 5 9 ]
“The good old year is with the past; Oh be the new as kind!”
Read “A Song for New-Year’s Eve” by William Cullen Bryant