Lauryn Hill Visits Harvard To Talk Building Community Within Songwriting 'Purpose. Love. Passion. Connecting.'
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Fresh off her making her Met Gala debut, Lauryn Hill stuck around the East Coast to kick it with the youth.
The singer made her way to Harvard, where she spoke on a panel. With two rare public-facing events back to back, she expressed that she hadn't done an interview in a while and hopes her contribution to the conversation isn't 'underwhelming.'
Also rare is Hill releasing music, and she hasn't dropped an album since the highly regarded The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998. Still, so many years later, she offered the audience advice on her writing method and finding joy and inspiration in her surroundings.
'I find what I love, I find what I care about, and then I write about that. I have mind and motion and need. Combined. That's what I do, which I'm sure all of you are doing,' she said.
She even boils it down to a few core principles of 'Purpose. Love. Passion. Connecting.'
Beyond that, Hill says that before putting pen to paper, it is also essential to build a community around you that can help fuel your creative process and theirs.
'Curate a community, find a community. People who understand you. Who get you. Who can appreciate, who can reflect you. Who can resonate, so you're not in a vacuum. You can bounce ideas off of someone. They can also articulate appreciation. You can articulate appreciation back. I think these are very healthy and important things in the world.'
This isn't the first time Hill has visited the revered campus; she reportedly went there in 2023 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill .
At Monday night's Met Gala, Hill blurred gender formalwear norms with a Jude Dontoh-designed yellow suit with a train attached. She also worked with Ghanaian jewelry designer Emefa Cole to ensure she wore accessories that paid homage to Ghanaian royalty, staying true to the 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style' theme.
Still, with all the flashing lights, she avoided interviews, only responding 'Everything' to one journalist who asked what Black style meant to her.
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Lauryn Hill Visits Harvard To Talk Building Community Within Songwriting 'Purpose. Love. Passion. Connecting.' was originally published on cassiuslife.com
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Chicago Tribune
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6 hours ago
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Start your day with all you need to know Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public. 'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told The AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.' He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show 'That Was the Week That Was,' a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated 'Saturday Night Live' a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled 'That Was the Year That Was.' 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Yahoo
7 hours ago
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Iconic '60s Singer and Satirist Dies at 97 originally appeared on Parade. The year is 1967. The black-and-white TV screen reveals an impeccably dressed, bespectacled academic in his late 30s. His fingers fly over the ivory keys of a baby grand piano. The first words out of his mouth are 'when you attend a funeral.' What follows is a familiar narrative about loss making you think of your own relatives weeping for you at your funeral, sung with appropriate pomp and circumstance. Then… something shifts. 'Don't you worry,' the singer knowingly smiles at his audience. 'For if the bomb that drops on you/ gets your friends and neighbors too,/ there'll be nobody left behind to grieve.' The song, 'We Will All Go Together When We Go,' picks up as he merrily continues to sing of the likelihood of impending nuclear destruction. The audience is unabashed with their delight, for the man on the screen is not your average run-of-the-mill entertainer. He is, instead, the legendary satirist Tom Lehrer, 97, who passed away in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Saturday, according to Variety. Born in Manhattan in 1928 to a Jewish family, math prodigy Lehrer started his higher education at Harvard when he was 15. Known for his razor-sharp wit and darkly funny, politically savvy songs, the Harvard-educated mathematics professor had a surprising entry into entertainment, and an even more unexpectedly short tenure there. In a 1997 interview with Elijah Wald, Lehrer described what led him to write satirical songs in the first place. He had no yearn for fame or even any real love of performance, despite his natural stage presence. Instead, 'I would listen to the radio and think, 'I can write a song as good as that,' and the problem is, they already have people who can write songs 'as good as that' so what do they need one more for? What is necessary is somebody that can write something different.'' Lehrer was certainly different from anyone who came before him, and his unique blend of musical wit would inspire generations of entertainers to come. In the wake of his death, his fans – including the famous ones – flocked to social media to pay their respects. 'My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living,' Alfred 'Weird Al' Yankovic, 65, posted to Instagram. 'RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.' Fans filled the comments section with 'RIP's and condolences aplenty. 'I'll miss him forever,' wrote one distraught fan. In the early '50s, Lehrer self-released a few albums while still a professor by trade, with teaching posts including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, according to The BBC. 'I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living,' Lehrer deadpanned to one live audience in discussing his academic roots. 'I could be making, oh, $3,000 a year just teaching.' After the release of his first album, 'the word spread like herpes,' Lehrer quipped to Wald, describing how his self-released record went old school viral, selling a shocking 10,000 copies according to Variety. Before long Lehrer was performing in nightclubs, concert halls, and recording live concerts for television, his next record rising to number 18 on the American charts. In his songs, Lehrer explored socially taboo subjects with his signature light tunes and unabashedly frank lyrics. Along with exploring nuclear conflicts in the aforementioned 'We Will All Go Together When We Go,' Lehrer took on sexuality in 'The Masochism Tango' and 'Smut,' racism in 'National Brotherhood Week,' and addiction in 'The Old Dope Peddler.' He also made time for some lighter subjects, like mocking classic spring ballads in his own ode to the season, 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.' He was in the height of his career in the '60s and '70s when, abruptly, Lehrer left the entertainment industry, eschewing fame in favor of a quiet life as a math teacher one quarter of the year, and a 'cheerful layabout' for the rest of the time. "I learned 25 years ago that you didn't have to shovel snow,'' he told Wald in the 1997 interview. "You didn't even have to see snow, and that was a great revelation to me.'' After his retreat from the public eye, Lehrer's popular satire returned to the press in 1980 when they were put together in the musical revue 'Tomfoolery.' Now, despite his passing, Lehrer's songs and his signature wit will live on forever, if the overflowing comments section of Weird Al's Instagram post is any indication. One fan perfectly mimicked Lehrer's signature sense of humor with a reference to his song 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' in the comment, 'The pigeons are safe, BUT AT WHAT COST.' Another fan commented with a reference to Lehrer's aforementioned song about bereavement, 'We Will All Go Together When We Go.' 'I thought we'd all go together,' the fan wrote along with a crying emoji. Iconic '60s Singer and Satirist Dies at 97 first appeared on Parade on Jul 28, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 28, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
