Jillian Mapes

New York

Co-Founder, Writer and Editor at Hearing Things

co-founder/editor/writer/everything @hearingthingsco

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Articles

I Learned to Listen From My Dad

1 week ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

If I tell you my earliest memory, you’ll understand the sort of man my dad is. I was 5 years old, in the living room of the ranch-style house my parents rented at the time, and Peter Gabriel’s 1992 song “Kiss That Frog” was playing loudly on the stereo.
Perfume Genius Explains His Credit Card Statement

3 weeks ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

Credit History is an interview series where we ask our favorite artists to comb through their credit card statements and tell us about what they bought, from the necessary to the frivolous to the outlandish. Mike Hadreas has been working through something in therapy, and maybe—just maybe—he’s made a breakthrough.
Lady Gaga’s Millennial Nostalgia Campaign

1 month ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

On the evening of Mayhem’s release last week, I walked into my local gay bar and prematurely ruined the bartender’s night. My friend and I, both millennial queers, were sharing our initial reactions to the album as we waited for drinks, when the nosey Gen Z butch tending bar interjected with an overblown “oh no.” A new Lady Gaga record, they explained, meant chaos for the night.
A Very Special Live Episode of Waste or Taste!

1 month ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Julianne Escobedo Shepherd |Dylan Green |Jillian Mapes

Talking about music with your friends, trying to make them laugh, and playfully arguing about albums and songs—these are some of the best parts of working at a music website. With our podcast Waste or Taste, we capture that kind of unfiltered banter between longtime critics and friends, and invite you to listen along. The concept is simple: Every episode, three Hearing Things founders each bring a new song to the table and debate whether it’s Waste or Taste.
Becoming Led Zeppelin, Surviving Sly and the Family Stone

1 month ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

Near the end of Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius), the new Questlove-directed, Hulu-distributed documentary about Sly Stone, the R&B hermit D’Angelo muses on the difference between Black legacy artists and their white counterparts. “I hate to say it but these white rock’n’rollers, these motherfuckers go out in style, they go out paid, they go out with their kids around them, like the fucking Godfather movie.
Deep in the Cat Cafe With Kassie Krut

2 months ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

It’s raining cats and dogs on the day I meet up with the members of Kassie Krut at a kitty cafe, and the animals are hiding. As we sip coffee and hit our vapes around a dinky table on the covered outdoor patio of the Cute Cat Cafe in Ridgewood, Queens, I start to wonder if there are, in fact, any cute cats roaming the premises. Eventually a calico emerges from the soggy backyard and saunters around the patio, catching the attention of a little girl through the window of the back door.
How Drunk Do You Need to Be to Enjoy Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra”?

2 months ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Julianne Escobedo Shepherd |Andy Cush |Jillian Mapes

Talking about music with your friends, trying to make them laugh, and playfully arguing about albums and songs—these are some of the best parts of working at a music website. With our podcast Waste or Taste, we capture that kind of unfiltered banter between longtime critics and friends, and invite you to listen along. The concept is simple: Every episode, three Hearing Things founders each bring a new song to the table and debate whether it’s Waste or Taste.
Inching Back from the Edge on “The Milky Sea”

2 months ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

A week ago, I snorted 300 mg of Wellbutrin with a rolled-up dollar bill. My body had gone countless weeks without absorbing my anti-depressant before I realized the undigested pill was not a stray kernel of corn in the toilet. I’d felt noticeably unmoored but attributed the wave of depression to the bitter cold in New York and the Trump administration’s barrage of inhumane and illegal executive orders.
The Grammys Have One Job-and This Year They Actually Did It

2 months ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

Among the various creative maxims offered by Brian Eno in his deck of Oblique Strategies cards, my favorite has got to be: “The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.” I was thinking about that last night as the Grammys finally ended, and Beyoncé won Album of the Year for the first time.
Ginger Root’s Life Is a Movie

Jan 16, 2025 | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

Going Up is a profile series featuring artists we love who are on the verge of breaking through. Cameron Lew was in a Tokyo gyoza bar late one night when he noticed that the stranger sitting next to him had recently listened to his music on Spotify. “I tried to eat my dumplings so fast to get out of there, but he turned to me and he looked me in the eye,” says Lew, who makes post-chillwave indie-soul under the moniker Ginger Root. “And I was like, I know what’s about to happen.