march marginalia
partiful invites, being a regular, MAYHEM by Lady Gaga, NYC influencers, The Last Five Years on Broadway, that viral Amanda Seyfried cover, BlonskyTok
Preface from the Editor-in-Chief (or how you’ve come to know her, the mind behind SLEEPER HIT):
Springtime is starting to peek out from the clouds to say hi and thus, spring cleaning is necessary. I thought I’d start out this issue with a few logistical notes:
You may have noticed that each of my monthly newsletters have slightly different names. I’m testing out various formats to see what feels right, but at the moment, I’ve decided to change our monthlies from “diaries” to alliterative titles. I feel like these names better capture what we’re after anyway, given that I’m not exactly opening my diary to you and rather compiling a monthly digest with bits and pieces of the personal and pop cultural.
Special edition and All-Hands Meeting issues are meant to be totally devoted to either a topic that’s either been living rent-free in my brain (the former) or a review/summary of a monocultural moment (the latter). I’m working on ways to make these special issues more interactive, but more on that later…
BIG SLEEPER HIT NEWS! I accepted a full-time job offer! I’m committed to not letting our newsletter cadence falter, but please bear with me as I adjust and find my bearings. Again, more on that later.
OK, that’s all for now. Happy reading!
Faithful readers and loyal fans, it’s that time of the month.
(No, not that one.)
March has been mainly, irrevocably, totally my month.
By this, I mean a few things:
On my half birthday (February 28th), I received word that I was being offered a full-time marketing role at Vevo. It was a brief 5-minute call following an in-person presentation I gave at their office in Times Square the prior week. Before said call, this is what my notes app looked like:
Guys, what did I say just a few months ago about manifestation?! I guess it really does work. This job seems like a great match for me, not just because I almost broke their servers as a teenager trying to break streaming records for One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” music video. For anyone unfamiliar with the company, Vevo is the world’s largest and leading music video network; it’s a joint venture between Sony and Universal Music Group, the supplier of the vast majority of music videos to YouTube. I’ll be working on their marketing solutions team and come April’s issue, I’m sure I’ll have more updates. But anyway, I didn’t officially sign my offer letter and update my LinkedIn until the first Monday of March, so this fits within my March updates section.
The girls and I sipped wine and danced to our heart’s content to celebrate. I’m so thankful to have people in my life who celebrate my successes with me. But instead of informing my friends over text or FaceTime like a normal person, I created a Partiful invite for a required weekend out on the town with the reason shelved at the bottom of the description. A word to the wise: drumming up drama and intrigue about the goings-on of your life is actually really fun. Another word to the wise: we should all be making Partiful invites for everything – a major life event, a spontaneous night out, going to your friend’s apartment to console them after they break up with their situationship. I think we are severely underusing Partiful as a collective! Let’s do better.
After a weekend of celebration and Elena treating me to two luxurious Manhattan dinners, I was frankly overtired and done celebrating. (She took me to Shukette and Minetta Tavern, both of which I suggest you visit. Shukette’s whipped carrot dip is to die for. Minetta Tavern gave us a fantastic coconut cake and bottle of their finest champagne on the house. I don’t even like champagne and I was having a ball.)
Minetta Tavern’s coconut cake, pictured here with a birthday candle – since Elena lied that it was my birthday on the Resy – and a scoop of coconut ice cream. 
Shukette’s fluffy garlic frena bread – a pita’s Moroccan cousin – pictured here with their whipped carrot dip (with feta, walnuts, coriander, and parsley) and my glass of white wine. Elena got their cucumber cocktail. That Sunday was the Oscars and Madi and Julie hosted an Oscars watch party, complete with Oscars bingo and a prediction ballot that made me frankly nervous having only seen three of the Oscar nominated films at the time.
Then, I found out more fabulous news that made me officially see March as my month. As Club Chalamet would say, “this benefits me in ways you can’t imagine”.
For those unfamiliar with any of the terms in this Deadline headline, I will decode. Nobody Wants This is the Kristen Bell x Adam Brody Netflix rom-com series that took the world by storm several months ago and had people thirsting over a hot rabbi played by none other than Adam Brody (my forever celeb crush). Arian Moayed played Stewy – Kendall Roy’s frenemy – on Succession, while Alex Karpovsky played Ray on GIRLS. Thus, this news benefits me in ways you couldn’t imagine. We’ll also see Moayed reunite with Justine Lupe, who played Willa on Succession and plays Morgan on Nobody Wants This. This show was already a huge win for me as the single rider on the Adam Brody train for years, but also seeing Timothy Simons (a.k.a. Jonah from VEEP) show off his comedic prowess has been a joy. Season 2 will also feature Brody’s wife Leighton Meester – previously stanned on SLEEPER HIT – so these casting decisions are starting to feel targeted. Towards ME.
I should also mention that because I don’t start my new job until the end of the month, I’ve been affectionately calling March my “month of rest and relaxation”, riffing on the famous Otessa Moshfegh book I have not read.
The cover of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh To honor this time properly, I’ve been taking myself out on solo dates around the city this month. One day, I hit up the Whitney on the first 60 degree day of the year – then traipsed through Chelsea Market and on the High Line. Another day, I walked into Bubby’s with zero wait and enjoyed their fresh-brewed iced tea. My waitress bestie came to my table with a free mason jar’s worth of a refill without my even asking. A group of recent grads sat next to me talking about their time at the University of Dayton, the loud-talker of the bunch truly up in arms over which date technically marks her anniversary with her boyfriend whom she just started dating. I usually love and encourage eavesdropping as a worthy pastime, but this conversation made me want to pull a Miranda Hobbes on them.
One day, I explored the West Village via used bookstores. Another day, I explored the East Village via used bookstores. I now own two Nora Ephrons and one Delia Ephron that I can’t wait to dive into. On the day I scored my second Nora, I also snagged a mint-condition Ganni blouse at the East Village Crossroads for $3.50; I had credit on my account from selling old clothes and applied to this square-neck beauty.
My Ganni blouse, pictured here with my new used copy of Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn” – a book recommended to me by many but most importantly Zoë. This copy is well-loved, marked up by its previous owner. I love the idea that I get to learn what was coursing through the prior reader’s mind via their notes just because I happened to pick it up. Same day: I stopped into B&H Dairy, an East Village Ukrainian Jewish institution I had on my list for years as a Jewish deli lover. I later learned that this place is one of Chloë Sevigny’s faves and that fact made the entire experience that much better, as someone who followed along voraciously with her 2023 closet sale. In her Condé Nast Traveler profile, she describes B&H as the type of place where everyone knows her name and order which was my exact experience when I visited – except I did not have the rapport of a return customer. When I walked in, it was like joining a party already in progress. Tuna salad sandwiches and cups of hot borscht were being skillfully slid across the bar counter to their hungry patrons. The two waitresses made small talk with everyone in the tiny luncheonette. I love being a regular at an establishment and though this was my first time at this particular establishment, I was giddy at the thought of being a potential regular. When what seemed like a true regular walked in, the waitress – while ringing up another customer – caught his eye and said “whitefish melt?” before he could even sit down. He laughed and said “you got me!”. These are the simple pleasures, people.
In college at many sorority chapter meetings, we were forced to recite a “rose and thorn” from our week. A good, exciting thing and something that has…posed a challenge, one could say. Very corporate bonding core. In this spirit, I should say that my main thorn has been a nasty sinus infection. My local City MD doctor told me that I seem to have “structural issues” in my nose, which I thought was a funny way to put it especially because I already know I have a deviated septum. I kind of want to start saying that there are “structural issues” every time I encounter a minor inconvenience. Sorry, can’t – there are structural issues.
Monthly Media Menu:
MAYHEM by Lady Gaga: ★★★★★
On March 7th, Mother Monster released LG7 – known to us now as MAYHEM. The full-length solo album came on the heels of the success of lead singles “Disease” and “Abracadabra”, the latter being a playful self-parody calling back to the media’s postulate of her as a Satan worshipper in her career’s early phase. The music video “Abracadabra” debuted during a commercial break in the live broadcast of the 2025 Grammys, hammering home that LG7 would be a return to the dark pop and electroclash excess that largely characterized her early work on The Fame (2008). Perhaps, most importantly, “Abracadabra” contained a classical Gaga element: the work-in of her stage name into a lyric.
Though many had their blinkers on – calling this a reheat of Gaga’s own nachos – “Abracadabra” was the sign many Gaga loyalists needed. In many ways, Little Monsters are one of the most resilient pop fanbases; Gaga is a theatre kid more than any other modern popstar and as such, she will do whatever she wants artistically even if it may not make sense in the moment. Gaga tests her fans. The duets albums with the late great Tony Bennett was one thing (she is, after all, a trained singer with serious pipes), but she also tried her hand at stripped-back guitar pop on the faux-thentic flop Joanne. The critically panned ARTPOP was ambitious and outrageous –even for Ms. Meat Dress herself – despite having some Gaga greats on its tracklist.1 Starring alongside Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born led her to achieve an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, but forced her to stray from the boundary-pushing pop she became known for in her ascent. There was, of course, the corny press cycle that had Gaga saying the same word salad in every interview (the infamous “there could be 100 people in a room…and 99 don’t believe in you…but one does…and that was Bradley…”) and that cozy Grammys performance of “Shallow” – prompting dating rumors between her and Cooper. I, frankly, ate it all up. More recently, Lady Gaga released Harlequin, a companion album to Joker: Folie à Deux – the movie she starred in as Harley Quinn alongside Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker – that left many scratching their heads. But all of that is what makes Gaga Gaga. She is a ubiquitous force in pop culture, solely responsible for some of the most memorable moments in the last two decades for better or worse.
The first time Gaga graced the stage of my mind, she donned a zipper pocket on her eyelid while performing. I never forgot it. Clearly, neither did many people.
The second time I remember going gaga over Gaga was her Grammys performance in 2010. A medley of “Poker Face” into “Speechless” (my all-time favorite Gaga song) into Elton John’s “Your Song” – with Elton himself – captivated me. I bought the performance on iTunes to download to my iPod nano the following day. I was now fully invested.
Then, one of my favorite American Idol contestants – the blue-eyed soul singer Haley Reinhart – got approved to sing an unreleased Gaga cut for the competition in 2011: “Yoü and I”. Gaga approved for Reinhart to be the one to give her global audience a special first listen to the track, a marketing move I believe would give record labels today a hernia. The prophecy was sealed: I would be – no matter what – interested in this totally singular, one-of-a-kind artist who does things like no other artist. She lives up to that title to this day.
MAYHEM is a topsy-turvy, herky-jerky thrill ride of an album with signature Gaga flourishes – as above, the “ooh-la ooh-ga-ga” of it all. But most importantly, MAYHEM is a helpful reminder to those who have been bogged down by Gaga’s theatre kid antics (not I!) that Gaga is a pop icon and a curatorial force. On MAYHEM, Gaga tries on Prince/Bowie-indebted flash funk (“Killah”) for size, flips to stuttering club-ready pop on “Garden of Eden”, lets her frustration out on the blood-curdling “Perfect Celebrity” (what I hear as her first Courtney Love-esque song), and all-but-moonwalks on the Michael Jackson-inspired “Shadow of a Man” and “The Beast”.2 These nods to her influences are not made shyly. But they still all sound true to Gaga because they each molded Gaga into who she is musically. Gaga took the pieces she needed and then made something entirely new out of them.
“How Bad Do U Want Me” and “The Beast” are definitely the most theatrical tracks on this album, where we see Gaga’s personality shine most and where I giggle a bit. In “How Bad Do U Want Me”, Gaga sings – completely earnestly, I might add – “you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans / you like the bad girl I got in me” which is so Marnie Michaels-core. If you know, you know.
The idea that wearing ripped jeans makes one a “bad girl” is so perfect. I, too, would’ve probably sung this earnestly when I wore my favorite pair of dEliA*s denim in 7th grade. If I sound patronizing to Gaga by saying that, know that I mean this so seriously: I am so charmed by her diminishing her own edginess. Like, the lyric – if she wanted to prove her “bad girl”-ness – should be “you like my hair, my ripped-up jeans meat dress / you like the bad girl I got in me”. In fact, you could play mad libs with that lyric and fill in the blank with any other outfit or outlandish accessory Gaga has worn in her long tenure as a popstar. There are so many to name and yet, Gaga chose to be relatable and pick “ripped-up jeans”. Love her for that.
The album closes with two sweeping power ballads, “Blade of Grass” and the Bruno Mars duet “Die With a Smile”. Many critics have rolled their eyes and called these cuts underwhelming Grammy-bait, but I am a sucker for a power ballad done well. And Gaga loves a big ballad. Remember that Top Gun: Maverick theme she did? (I don’t…)
Anyway, MAYHEM is a true pop event and I am so thankful that Gaga gave her Little Monsters what they had been wanting for so long.
Key Tracks: “Garden of Eden”, “Vanish Into You”, “Zombieboy”, “Shadow of a Man”, “Blade of Grass”
Other notable media consumed this month:
TV/Movies: Finished Ugly Betty (immaculate, no notes) – you can and should stream on Netflix. I am now showing Elena Felicity and she agrees that it’s a hit. I also recently indulged in the Matthew McConaughey/Jen Garner rom-com Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which I reviewed on Letterboxd with the commentary “a little misogyny as a treat”. Jen slays as always.3
Broadway: I was lucky enough to see both Cabaret with understudies David Merino as the Emcee and Ayla Ciccone-Burton as Sally Bowles. Both of their performances rendered me speechless. Understudies and swings truly seem like the hardest-working people in the biz. I also saw The Great Gatsby this month –with resident theatre tenor boi Ryan McCartan and Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland – which was a true spectacle. Many adaptations aren’t done well, but I thought the source material translated well on stage. Hyland was an absolute peach at stage door.
Comedy: I was lucky enough to see Mike Birbiglia on his The Good Life tour at The Beacon Theatre and when I say “lucky”, I mean it when it comes to seeing Mike perform. Mike has a rare gift that not many in his field have, that of telling compelling stories while also making people laugh absurdly hard at the same time. I was lucky enough to see Mike twice during his The Old Man and The Pool run at Lincoln Center – once because my friend Izzie had a spare comp ticket and another time because I had to bring my family to see it. The Good Life asks complicated questions and gives messy answers. By the end, I could really call the show life-affirming. The world is lucky to have Mike Birbiglia as a comic and more importantly as a storyteller.
Things Currently On My Mind:
A comment on a TikTok about Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig that read “I bet he’s great at New York Times Connections”. I had half a mind to respond: “agreed. I need 50 pages on that topic on my desk by Monday”.
Are NYC influencers *gasp* boring? This topic has consumed my TikTok FYP for the past few weeks and the discourse has become truly loathsome. The blonde Pilates princesses have clapped back at TikTok commoners coming for their content as if they’ve been called truly heinous things, when the original critique was simply that their content bored rather than entertained. Where do I stand on this issue? I think that our current culture favors “authenticity” and “relatability” – whatever that means – and watching skinny white girls live their crowdfunded lives does not appeal to people who cash in on “relatability”. To that I say, if we don’t like something, we can always keep scrolling. Or, better yet, we can engage with other creators’ content! We can and should diversify our FYPs so that we see more than just “I went to grab an oat milk latte and then went to CorePower and then it was time for an hour meeting and that was my day”. A few more thoughts and then I am done talking about it: 1) dog-piling onto TikTok hate trains about influencers will not make you an influencer. 2) Some thoughts are inside thoughts. 3) Some things are meant for the group chat! Bring back the group chat. The TikTok comment section is not your group chat. You can vent about your personal grievances in your group chat.
This Stereogum headline. Written by Danielle Chelosky, this is truly a legendary linguistic construction. You can read the entire play-by-play of The Blunder here.
The Last Five Years on Broadway. The Jason Robert Brown musical is officially in Broadway previews and if you know anything about this show, this is the first time it has made it off Off-Broadway. Nick Jonas plays Jamie – an insufferable novelist who spends most of his time gaslighting his girlfriend Cathy, a struggling actress played by Adrienne Warren in this production.4 Growing up, I was indeed a Nick girl; he was the sensitive one out of the JoBros and I stand by the fact that “A Little Bit Longer” – his emotive power ballad about his diabetes diagnosis – is a masterpiece. However, NJ has continually rubbed me the wrong way in the past few decades. First, his desire to pursue a solo career is what broke up the JoBros.5 Second, his persona as “the sensitive one” grew into a version of self-seriousness that bothers me deeply. I don’t know the man personally, but he seems like the type to not be able to take a joke. Back to L5Y: Nick’s popstar vocal tone just does not seem well-suited for this material. He is known for his falsetto and his grunting (rEEeeeEEEEdDDDD dDDDrreeEESSSS!) and his try-hard awkward attempts at smoldering sexiness, not for being able to carry big Broadway belters. If you’re looking for supporting evidence for my claim, watch the otherwise fantastic 25th anniversary concert of Les Miserables at The O2 in London – where Nick sings the role of Marius. I know stunt castings are done to draw audiences in – especially in a time when Broadway struggles financially and so many shows close preemptively because of insufficient ticket sales – but I almost feel bad for him.
It almost feels like a set-up to have him sing with this cast and especially alongside Alfie Boe (Jean Valjean), Samantha Barks (Eponine), and Ramin Karimloo (Enjolras). But I must stop myself: Nick Jonas does not need my pity. He still collects his well-earned check when I stream the hell out of A Little Bit Longer (and specifically the greatest JoBros song “Shelf”) and also when I frequent the YouTube search bar with the search terms “nick jonas jealous gospel choir version”. I can give him his flowers for that one. Well, anyway… if I were to somehow come upon tickets to see The Last Five Years, I would not turn them away. Hint, hint… I just can’t rationalize spending money on what I feel is a miscast show. (For the record, I do also think that Adrienne Warren’s vocal maturity doesn’t quite suit the character of Cathy – who is often insecure and unsure of herself.)
Amanda Seyfried covering Joni Mitchell’s “California” on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
While Amanda’s cover may be impressive – even impressing me, a stan of Joni’s music – not just because of the impeccable dove-like vocal delivery but because of her dulcimer playing6, I fear it has also inspired a legion of TikTok covers that have been truly hard to watch. The girls think they have the sauce and they just don’t. I’m a natural-born hater and I’m sorry, but I speak the truth.7
Peter McPoland’s TikTok presence. Quickly, I want you to tell me who Peter McPoland is…ok…go! If the words escape you, you’re not alone. All I know is the following: new indie-pop boy that Emma Chamberlain is dating after dumping Role Model (slightly more relevant indie-pop boy to me now that he released the excellent “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” and The Fray-esque “Some Protector”). Now, I can’t name a single song by this Peter McPoland character. If your response to that is “well, then listen to one and you’ll be able to”, I’ll say this: I can tell when something is none of my business. However, because the TikTok algo force-feeds me his corny dancing vids, I need to take a stand. There must be a swift wartime response made against this genre of pandering to the young women of the Internet. Tall, quirky men: I’ve got you figured out! You are not slick!
After viewing the following video, I promptly shot off an angry text to Maxine about it.
Tiktok failed to load.
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserMy message to Maxine:
And a personal message to Peter: please be more mindful of your use of “Instant Crush” by Daft Punk featuring Julian Casabalancas. That is sensitive material – one of the greatest songs of all time – and needs to be handled far more delicately! Please advise!
Nikki Blonsky from the movie Hairspray. If you know, you know. I’ve been specifically thinking less about the Cameos that have absolutely swamped my FYP (and I’m sure yours too, if we’re on the same side of the Internet) and more about the press cycle Blonsky ran with Zac Efron in 2007. When she appeared on The Wendy Williams Show to promote the movie musical and Wendy asked her if she thought Zanessa would “go the distance and get married”, Nikki snapped: “Sorry V…love you girl…but it ain’t happenin’. I know him real well…and I love him real well.” Which is objectively insane to say about your coworker. But if you go down the rabbit hole of watching their interviews during this time, you can start to understand a bit why Nikki acted like this. Zac was really out here saying “she’s magic” to her face and touching her arm, kissing her for a dare on a MuchMusic interview in Canada… no wonder she acted the way she did. Who wouldn’t act up like that for Zefron in 2007?! On a darker note, Nikki has unfortunately been in the news in recent years for an alleged violent assault and racist remarks. A huge fall from grace in my eyes.
Sleeper Hit #8: Katy Perry really used to be somebody. Many may expect the following sentences to be an ode to the greatness that is Teenage Dream – her finest album – but I cannot in good faith call that a true sleeper hit. What is a true sleeper hit is my favorite KP cut: “Thinking Of You” off her ‘08 One of the Boys album. It’s easy to forget how much moxie and spunk Katy had in her early career, but “Thinking Of You” is entirely emblematic of it. She practically spits out the lyrics, her vowels round and tall like Hayley Williams during her pop-punk days. On the tracklist, it actually comes directly after my other favorite Katy song “Waking Up In Vegas” – another incredible career highlight. “Thinking Of You”, though, is a song in need of serious critical reappraisal – which means it truly encapsulates the meaning of SLEEPER HIT. In fact, my deep love and passion for it may inspire me to do an entire special edition devoted to the sleeper hits and underrated hidden gems within the most popular artists’ catalogs. Stay tuned, Katycats.
“G.U.Y”, “Gypsy”, “Sexxx Dreams”, and “Dope” are all campy hits in my book.
Her intonation on “Shadow of a Man” also reminds me – in the best way – of Britney, specifically the self-titled album cut “Overprotected” (one of my favorite underrated Britney songs). This is also unsurprising because Britney took inspiration from both Janet and Michael Jackson, so the musical lineage keeps on growing. I love it.
Second Jen slay of this issue (maybe this should be a recurring bit…?): Jen’s ex-husband/co-parent Ben Affleck was seen recently hugging her waist during a family ski trip which stirred online buzz about a possible rekindling of their past flame. Jen’s team took action quickly:
The ego death this headline must’ve caused Ben… I think Ben needs to take a break from dating Jens. The world is ready for a full Affleck/Damon romance at this juncture! Friends-to-lovers trope <3
Perhaps the most frustrating part of his casting – to me – is that Jamie is widely regarded as a widely hated musical theatre character for his transgressions throughout the duration of his five-year-long relationship with Cathy. And I can’t shake this guttural instinct that Nicky J would be not only a Jamie apologist, but a defender of the character’s actions. I’m aware this is purely a parasocial take, but I stand by it. His jokey-jokey Twitter correspondence with Elon Musk a few months ago has not left me feeling so keen on Young Jonas.
I’ll never forget my dad’s reaction when this news broke: “they can’t break up. They’re brothers. This is stupid.”
The dulcimer is the stringed, guitar-like instrument Joni is known to have played on many songs on her Blue album. Fun fact: Harry Styles tracked down the maker of the dulcimer that Joni plays on this album so he could recreate the exact sound for his song “Canyon Moon” on Fine Line. Miss him…
And to address the elephant in the room, Gen Z has discovered the unfortunate “Art Nouveau” period of Joni’s career. I have no further commentary on that front, as I was unfamiliar with that period of her career when I fell in love with her Blue album. But yeah, it’s a very bad look. A very, very bad look.