The End of the Story Line

The NYPR Archive Collections | Jan 1, 2000

Tony Schwartz observes that all of Frank Sinatra's early recordings end in the
same way: the "story" the singer is telling ends and then the music ends. However, newer recordings -- like the Beatles "She Said She Said," and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" -- focuses less on telling a story, and the songs end on a fade out. To support his point about the disappearance of the coherent story line from mass media, Schwartz plays a recording of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who attributes the disappearance of the "story line" to the proliferation of new electronic mediums of communication.


WNYC archives id: 152020

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