Weekly Newsletter

Best Cities for Young Musicians 2025 + Art in Turmoil, Loneliness Novel, Erotic Cinema

A data-led ranking of city centers; making art in turmoil; a novel that foresaw loneliness; where cinema’s erotic charge went.

Wolfgang Bakari Burst

11 Sep 2025 — 3 min read

Hamid Naderi Yeganeh, Research Student UCL Maths. Is artist who creates images using math.

Good Afternoon Everyone,

This week’s issue is built to be useful. We lead with a data-backed map of where young musicians can actually get traction in 2025—city centers only, scored on small-venue access, college pipelines, industry footprint, walkability, affordability, and global reach. It’s not a postcard; it’s where to live, show up, and move your career forward.

Then we zoom out. In unstable times, what is an artist’s job? We make the case for making work without performative noise. We revisit a novel that diagnosed today’s loneliness decades ago—and what it suggests about how to live now. And we trace how mainstream movies lost their erotic charge, and where the heat went instead.

If you’re choosing a city, plotting a move, or just recalibrating your creative life, start here. Read the ranking, sit with the essays, and take what you need for the week ahead.

We ranked city centers—not suburbs—on music ecosystem (venues, programs, companies) and livability (walkability, affordability, global scale). The surprises: Nashville’s stage density vs. New York’s industry gravity, and where Austin really lands.

When headlines spin, art clarifies. From Guernica to today’s timelines, this is a short argument for making (and sharing) work in unstable times—without slipping into performative outrage.

Loneliness feels new, but the literature warned us. We revisit a classic novel that mapped our current alienation long before screens—and what that means for how we live now.

From the Hays Code’s ghost to franchise risk-management, we trace how mainstream cinema evacuated eroticism—and what’s bubbling up outside the studio system.

Song of The Week

This weeks song of the week is “Open Up Your Eyes” — Alessandro Magnanini (feat. Jenny B), Jenny B’s vocal glides over a lush bed of strings—elegant, cinematic, quietly euphoric. The minimalist line-face cover art hooked me in and the track sealed the deal, check it out and let us know what you think.