Thank you for reading (and listening to) Evil Speakers. Look for my weekly column on Thursday. Also you can preorder my book (due September 8) “Is This It: The Never-Ending Rise and Fall of The Strokes (and Rock ‘n’ Roll)” now. To all my paying subscribers — thank you for making this newsletter viable.
Charlotte Cornfield’s latest album, Hurts Like Hell, is one of my favorites of 2026 so far. When I asked Evil Speakers subscribers for their favorites, Hurts Like Hell was among the most common responses. We aren’t the only fans — Cornfield was recently long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Polaris Prize. Most important of all, Cornfield herself is an Evil Speakers subscriber. Clearly, this was someone I needed to speak with. So, I reached out, invited her to Zoom with me, and luckily she said yes.
In this conversation, we talk about all the songs about the lives of musicians on Hurts Like Hell, and what is fiction and what is taken from real life. We also talk about the positives and negatives of being a “best kept secret”-type of artist, and why so many great songwriters come from Canada. (It’s all the open space and free health care.) We also talked about the memoirs by Lucinda Williams and Jeff Tweedy, and all the songs I wrote after reading the Tweedy book about songwriting, which I promised to let Charlotte judge so I know what it feels like.
