What is one new or rising artist you would recommend to others right now?
Students
1. Listen to the podcast above. While you listen, you might take notes using our Film and Podcast Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.
2. After watching, think about these questions:
What questions do you still have?
What connections can you make between this podcast and your own life or experience? Why? Does this podcast remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?
3. An additional challenge | Respond to the essential question at the top of this post: What music and musicians are your excited about this spring?
4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
6. To learn more, read “Jensen McRae and 10 More Artists to Watch,” by Mr. Pareles. Here is an excerpt:
Jensen McRae writes constantly: journals, poems, fiction, screenplays and, most publicly, songs. “I’ve always wanted to do a million things with regard to writing and telling stories,” she said. “But music was always the first choice.”
Born in Santa Monica, Calif., and still based in Los Angeles, McRae, 27, joins a long history of California folk-pop songwriters — the legacy of the Laurel Canyon era — who draw on the diaristic specifics of their lives for songs that listeners take to heart. Her second album, “I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!,” is due April 25, with a tour that starts in May.
As a child, “I was usually one of the only Black kids in a class,” McRae recalled in a video interview. “When you’re put into the observer, outsider position early on, it makes it pretty easy to figure out who you really are and what you really want, because conformity isn’t a choice. I started to develop this identity of being a narrator and a collector of details about my life, about other people’s lives.”
McRae has old-school inclinations. Her music relies on hand-played, organic instruments and the power of her unadorned voice. Her 2022 debut album, “Are You Happy Now?,” included stark songs like “Wolves,” about sexual predators, accompanied only by her guitar.
But as a 21st-century performer, McRae maintains a robust social-media presence, sharing songs in progress and hosting an interview podcast, “What Were You Thinking?” Her career has thrived on viral moments. At the height of the Covid pandemic in 2021, she posted a joking tweet predicting that Phoebe Bridgers would write a song about “hooking up in the car while waiting in line to get vaccinated at dodger stadium” — and then wrote the song herself, a Bridgers homage titled “Immune.”
7. Join us again on April 24 when we will feature a short documentary video.
Want more student-friendly videos and podcasts? Visit our Film and Podcast Club column.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
