I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. Click here to subscribe!
Andrea Warner is a freelance writer and the author of Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography and We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the ’90s and Changed Canadian Music. She’s the co-writer and associate producer of the 2022 documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, and co-hosts the weekly feminist pop culture podcast Pop This! Andrea is a settler who was born and raised in Vancouver on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I started by writing poetry and then YA novels when I was a kid. My creative writing portfolio helped get me into university but I signed up for some professional writing classes by mistake. I was a huge fan of entertainment journalism (Soap Opera Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere Magazine, etc.) and due to family stuff, I had to think about a job where I could get paid. At the time, journalism seemed more practical than being a novelist or a poet.
I left university for a two-year journalism program and between first and second year, I actually interned at Soap Opera Weekly. I learned a tremendous amount about interviewing (mostly transcribing endlessly) and I published my first paid pieces with Soap Opera Weekly. I was even the horoscopes columnist for a few years. After graduating, I started my own feminist arts & culture magazine with some friends. We published five issues over two years and it went bust. I ended up working at a variety of office jobs but every single time I would start some kind of in-house magazine or create some kind of writing project. In 2007, I realized that I owed it to myself to at least try and make it as a freelancer.
I started reviewing movies and music and theatre, and moved into arts and entertainment features. I took an editorial job at one of the places where I freelanced, and I kept freelancing for other publications throughout North America. In 2012, I left that editorial job and later that year I was hired by CBC Music and I’ve worked there ever since, mostly in a permanent part-time capacity.
In 2015, I published my first book, We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the ’90s and Changed Canadian Music. I also branched into radio as well as co-hosting a podcast called Pop This! In 2018, I published my second book, Buffy Sainte-Marie: the Authorized Biography. Later, I had the opportunity to work on my first documentary. I’m the co-writer and associate producer of the 2022 feature, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On. I’m working on the edits for my next two books right now, one for middle grade readers called Rise Up & Sing! Power, Protest, and Activism in Music (Fall 2023) and my fourth book, a collection of essays about Dirty Dancing (Spring 2024).
Walk me through a typical day-to-day for you right now.
I work at CBC Music on Mondays and Tuesdays, which are also the same days as I do my music columns on the radio (All Points West in Victoria and Vancouver Island on CBC Radio 1 on Mondays; Radio West in Kelowna and the rest of BC on CBC Radio 1 on Tuesdays). The rest of the week varies depending on deadlines. Sometimes it’s freelance pieces, for the last few years it’s been a lot of documentary stuff. Lately it’s been copy edits for Rise Up & Sing! and substantive edits for the Dirty Dancing book. And now I’m starting to think about what I want to work on next!
What does your media diet look like?
I read interviews, magazine features, news, and books, watch a lot of TV and film, and listen to music and podcasts all the time. On the daily or every few days, I read things like: Vulture, the Ringer, CBC verticals, NPR verticals, BuzzFeed, NYT, New Yorker, Bandcamp, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, Time, Andscape, the Meteor, 19th News, This Magazine, American Songwriter, Exclaim!, Complex, Gawker, LaineyGossip, Daily Beast, the Guardian, Xtra, Autostraddle, and probably more. For podcasts, I’m listening to (usually weekly, sometimes I save them up to binge): Who Weekly?, Vibe Check, Best Friends, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders, Secret Life of Canada, Keep It, You’re Wrong About, You Must Remember This, Object of Sound, How Did This Get Made?, the Allusionist, and more.
How has your approach to your work changed over the past few years?
I listen more and try to talk less. As a white settler and cis, straight woman, I’ve been thinking a lot about de-centering whiteness and decolonizing. I’m trying to confront my own complicity in upholding and benefitting from systemic barriers and institutional oppression. My own process is ongoing and accountability is crucial. That’s the work I’m trying to do on myself and it’s a work-in-progress. I have so much to learn and unlearn and then re-learn. There are often real power imbalances between interviewer and interviewee; it’s a vulnerable thing for someone to trust you with their story and I don’t take that for granted. It’s also not necessarily my job to tell other people’s stories. That can be a pretty colonial mindset, or at least often has its roots in a colonial way of thinking. Consent-based journalism is the way forward, especially for writers working with historically oppressed, marginalized, and under-represented folks and communities.
What would you like to see more of in music journalism right now?
More full-time jobs for Indigenous, Black, racialized, trans, queer, nonbinary, gender non-conforming, disabled, and other under-respresented and historically oppressed writers. I’d love to see even more critics and writers interrogating and rewriting the pop and rock canons, identifying the egregious blank spots in music coverage over the decades.
What’s one tip that you’d give a music journalist starting out right now?
Write with your whole heart, listen with your whole body, and don’t worry about what’s cool. Find writers whose work you admire and writers whose work challenges you to think in ways you never have before.
What’s one thing you’d like to see more of from editors, in general?
My favourite editors are those who build you up without tearing you down. Those who take the time to show you how to make your work better, sharper, and clearer. A deep edit done with respect is the greatest gift in the world. There’s no such thing as a perfect first draft, every writer needs to know that, and great editors are essential to great writing.
What artist or trend are you most interested in right now?
I’m really inspired by people who take time with their craft. The musicians and writers and critics who are quietly resisting or refusing the pressure to be content factories. Maybe it’s the slow-art movement? Or maybe it’s just the more deliberate and thoughtful movement. Maybe it has no name, I’m not sure, but as someone who has hustled hard for a long, long time, burn out is bad for my brain, my body, and my writing. I’m trying to say no to more things. This is a privilege in and of itself, though, so it’s all a balance.
What’s your favorite part of all this?
I love to write. I lose all sense of time when I’m deep into something. I love speaking to people and I’m so honoured by the trust they place in me. I also just love music and pop culture and taking these things seriously; it’s such a pleasure to critique something and unpack it. More often than not, it’s an act of love, or at least deep appreciation.
What was the best track / video or film / book you’ve consumed in the past 12 months?
I’m going to cheat and talk about two books. My friend and colleague Melody Lau’s book, Tegan & Sara: Modern Heartthrobs, is so smart and well-researched, and Melody really makes her case for Tegan and Sara as underappreciated groundbreaking geniuses who deserve better. I also LOVED Danyel Smith’s Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. It’s brilliant and tender, and gorgeously written and narrated by the author herself. Danyel’s book is extraordinary and I hope everybody reads it.
If you had to point folks to one piece of yours, what would it be and why?
I wrote a personal essay last year called “Grieving, Dreaming, and Drinking in LA” that coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Bran Van 3000 song as well as the year I graduated high school and went to university, all in the months my father’s sudden death.
Anything you want to plug?
It’s always a great time to find out more about Buffy Sainte-Marie because she’s amazing. Listen to her music and fall in love with the depth and breadth of her genius. And then if you want to know more, read my book, Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography. I also read the audiobook and Buffy pops in, too.
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