Zack O'Malley Greenburg's Blog, page 4

How To Make LPs Greener

We’ve all heard the good news about vinyl, a steady drumbeat of recovery over the past two decades. After bottoming out at 857,000 units in 2005, LP sales have have increased every year since, surging another 14% to 49.6 million units last year.

The bad news hasn’t made quite as many headlines, but it’s very clear: vinyl records are pretty terrible for the planet. In fact, vinyl anything is pretty terrible for the planet. That’s because it’s made from polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC, whi...

Diddy And Gatsby

Unless you spent the past week hiding under a bottle of Ciroc, you’ve seen the news unfolding around Sean “Diddy” Combs. Federal investigators raided the mogul’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami; it’s not clear what they found, or what the consequences might be. Diddy has been trailed by the specter of violence for decades, and though he maintains his innocence amid the current investigation, it seems he’s reached the end of his Teflon status. At the very least, it would appear his days as a billi...

Diddy and Gatsby

Unless you spent the past week hiding under a bottle of Ciroc, you’ve seen the news unfolding around Sean “Diddy” Combs. Federal investigators raided the mogul’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami; it’s not clear what they found, or what the consequences might be. Diddy has been trailed by the specter of violence for decades, and though he maintains his innocence amid the current investigation, it seems he’s reached the end of his Teflon status. At the very least, it would appear his days as a billi...

How Could Taylor Swift *Not* Be A Billionaire?

There are good years, and then there’s Taylor Swift’s 2023. Among her superlatives: best-selling global artist of the year, highest-grossing touring act of the year, and Time Person of the Year. Fittingly, 2023 was also the year Bloomberg proclaimed her a billionaire.

That last part is particularly interesting to yours truly, as I used to compile such numbers in my days as an editor at Forbes. So I leapt at the invitation to join NPR’s “Open to Debate” as a guest questioner for the recent episode...

CD Babies: Why Kids Will Save The Compact Disc

My almost-two-year-old daughter, Riley, loves music. Believe it or not, she developed some distinct—and eclectic—preferences by the time she was eight months old. More recently, my wife and I have been playing LPs for her. Now, when Riley wants to hear another one, she’ll actually walk over to the turntable and shout, “Rec-uhd!”

But record players aren’t user-friendly, even for adults. Little kids can’t operate them, what with the belt and the needle and all. Yet Riley has started getting more p...

Toby Keith's Business Legacy

The first time I met country superstar Toby Keith, back in 2013 at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, he dared me to eat a worm.

This wasn’t a random case of peer pressure—Keith had a vested interest. The worm in question sat in a red Solo cup beneath a couple ounces of Wild Shot mezcal, a brand he had just launched, and I was writing a Forbes cover story on his business exploits. I shrugged and threw back the shot, worm and all.

“It might give you visions the first time,” he said with a chuckl...

Best Bets For Grammy Glory

If you read what industry observers are writing about this year’s Grammys, you might think the three most-coveted awards—Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year—are truly anyone’s game.

Billboard says SZA, who leads the field with nine nominations, will capture Album of the Year, with Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift splitting Song and Record of the Year. The Los Angeles Times has Eilish winning the latter two and Swift taking Album of the Year. Noting the potential for vote-spl...

Hot In Here: Hip-Hop's Hidden Climate Battle

The following story grew out of a project I researched as a Columbia Knight-Bagehot fellow last year; Grist published a condensed version in August 2023. Please enjoy the full “Director’s Cut” on the intersection of two topics dear to me.

Under the Major Deegan Expressway, somewhere just north of 150th Street, through a set of double doors wedged between a parking garage and a pizza shop, a humongous gilded throne emblazoned with the letters “S” and “R” sits behind a pair of red velvet ropes. The...

The Last Time I Saw My Dad

Technically speaking, the last time I saw my dad was December 18th, 2023—the day he died. But by that point, it already felt like he’d been gone quite a while.

The last time I really saw my dad—my vibrant, witty, warm, wonderful dad—was in 2019, over one of our monthly “Man Dinners.” We sat in our usual booth by the window at Pershing Square, a bustling restaurant across the street from Grand Central Station, and he started telling me a story about his time with renowned artist Salvador Dalí back...

A Q&A With Grandwizzard Theodore

If DJ Kool Herc is the George Washington of hip-hop, Grandwizzard Theodore might just be the genre’s Ben Franklin. He invented some of the most crucial techniques used in the booth—from the needle drop to the scratch—and those sounds now show up in just about every corner of the music world.

Born Theodore Livingston and raised in the South Bronx during the 1970s, the DJ saw hip-hop evolve around him in real time. And with the genre’s 50th birthday year almost over, I thought now would be a great ...