Loops, Issue Two

Issue 2 of Loops, the biannual journal dedicated to music writing from Faber and Domino, hosts essays from Andy Miller (Est-ce, est-ce ce bon?: on Serge Gainsboug's flirtation with Nazi chic on Rock Around the Bunker), Dan Franklin (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Fast: on Napalm Death and the Possibility of Life's Destruction) and Frances Morgan on Red Square's Thirty Three and the resonance of re-discovery after the event.

And then There's The Man Who Wasn't There, Paul Morley's spectacularly honest and revealing portrait of Michael Jackson and his legacy. So much has been written; so little has been said. Morley unravels and indulges the myth to ask just who he was, how we came to piece him together through our collective desires and fears, and why his destiny so inevitably reflected the dysfunctionality of the culture. This expansive essay takes a sober, brave and imaginative perspective on a story that was written before it was told and mythologised before it was considered. Addicted Jackson. Mutilated Jackson. Abused Jackson. Kennedy, Monroe, Diana: the self-piteous pitiful freak. How did we come to make this man and how did we come to claim him as The King of Pop?
Morley sits alongside Simon Reynolds, Nick Kent, Lavinia Greenlaw, Owen Hatherley, Gruff Rhys, Travis Elborough and DBC Pierre in Loops' second outing.