Appearances in Webcasts, Podcasts, and Print Media
Popular Music Books in Process Series (PMiB)
Book Talk - International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US Branch - April 2025
A discussion with Dan DiPiero and Robin James about Dan’s book Big Feelings: Queer and Feminist Indie Rock After Riot Grrrl, and my book project, The Musical Vernacular of Depression.
“By framing depression as a dynamic expressive language or aesthetic repertoire encompassing distinct semantic practices, stylistic conventions, and affective cultures – that is, the musical vernacular of depression – I argue that popular music is transforming the ways young people conceive of, communicate about, and tend to their mental health.”
ArtsAbly in Conversation: Arts & Accessibility
Podcast interview - April 2024
An interview with podcast host Diane Kolin about my research on music and disability in connection with my two book projects, Music at the Margins of Sense and The Musical Vernacular of Depression.
“In my work on music and disability, I’m really interested in the dynamic tension and reciprocity between the musician’s body and the physical limitations and creative affordances of the designed world. More specifically, in so far as customary portrayals of music and deafness are concerned, I’m interested in shifting the burden of deficit and compensation away from the presumed failures and innate plasticity of the deaf sensorium onto the built environment by foregrounding the disabling and enabling capacities of what Howe refers to as the ‘constructed normalcy’ of music performance.”
Transcripts available in English and French on YouTube.
100 Songs: Geschicte wird Gemacht (History is Made)
Podcast interview - Ö1 Austrian Public Radio - March 2024
English language interview in a German language podcast/radio show with host Stefan Niderwieser about Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” (2019) in connection with my 2023 JAMS article, “Billie Eilish and the Feminist Aesthetics of Depression.”
Transcripts available in German/English on Spotify.
Kristeligt Dagblad interview about Taylor Swift (Danish)
Print interview with journalist Isabella Balanchi- Kristelgit Dagblad - September 2023
September 16, 2023
"Taylor Swift initially cultivated an innocent, girl-next-door image that appealed to country music's historically conservative, Christian values. But when she crossed over into the pop mainstream and began to more freely express her sexuality, she was initially met with criticism on the part of her country music fanbase for having ostensibly betrayed those values. This is a type of gendered criticism that men seldom experience."
NPR interview about film CODA
Print interview with journalist Mandalit del Barco - NPR Culture - March 2022
March 18, 2022
“Holmes is writing a book on music and deafness, and says people who are deaf offer a far more reaching conception of music than hearing people do. ‘Deafness is a diverse ideological, physiological and cultural and linguistic experience," she says. ‘No two deaf experiences of music are alike.’”
Sound Expertise
Podcast interview - April 2021
An interview with podcast host Will Robin about my work on music and deafness in connection with my 2017 JAMS article on “Expert Listening beyond the Limits of Hearing.”
Interview transcript available here.
NACOcast: A Classical Music Podcast
Podcast interview - Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra - Oct 2018
An interview with podcast host Sean Rice about my work on music and deafness in connection with the 2018 NAC Festival Focus on Beethoven’s symphonies.
ArtsFile interview about Beethoven
Print interview with journalist Peter Robb - Artsfile - September 2018
“ ‘I am interested in the senses and in how they inform the musical experience.’ She has a personal connection. Her uncle is profoundly deaf. 'This was my natural entry point into the subject — witnessing the invisible painstaking labours he undertook in his social interactions to supplement the constraints of his hearing aid such as maintaining clear sight lines, intuiting meaning from body language — things that many hearing people take for granted.’ “
