Neko Case Has Sung Hard Truths. Now She’s Telling Hers in a Memoir. Neko Case Has Sung Hard Truths. Now She’s Telling Hers in a Memoir.
The New York Times
In “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” the singer and songwriter outlines the personal and professional challenges that have shaped her career.
One morning, when she was about 7 years old, Neko Case stood on her front porch, closed her eyes and wished with all her might to see a horse.
It was a tall order. She and her parents lived in the coastal city of Bellingham, Wash., and none of their neighbors were equestrians. But, as the musician recalls in her new memoir, “The Harder I Fight the More I Love You,” the young Case “clench-focused as hard as I could,” and when she opened her eyes something incredible had happened: Two gorgeous horses, ridden by two girls, came clomping directly toward her. In the midst of a difficult childhood, this stands out as one fleeting moment when she believed irrefutably in miracles, fairy tales and the possibility that good things could happen to her.
“At 52 years old,” she writes, “I can still see the horses clear as day.”
A cult-favorite singer-songwriter with a gale-force voice and a spiky, irreverent personality, Case has been releasing acclaimed solo and collaborative albums for nearly three decades, and has built an adoring fan base. But readers don’t need to be familiar with her music to be moved by her raw, unflinching memoir, which chronicles her impoverished and at times surreal upbringing as well as her long journey toward self-confidence. It’s a book that mixes defiant humor with an unsentimental resilience that recalls Cheryl Strayed.
“I wasn’t going to go tabloid,” Case said with a dry shrug, sitting in a booth at the Cosmic Diner in Manhattan on a recent, chilly Saturday morning. “I never had sex with famous people, so.”
Still, the book depicts Case’s early life as a minefield of emotional trauma. In a phone interview, A.C. Newman, her longtime bandmate in the power-pop group the New Pornographers, recalled a mutual friend once marveling of Case, “For her to achieve what she’s done, considering where she came from, it’s like winning a marathon with one leg.”
Cole Walliser grabs celebrities for red-carpet close-ups. In recent years, he has become known in his own right, for better or for worse.
Conan O’Brien will return to host the Academy Awards, which begin at 7 p.m. Eastern time, 4 p.m. Pacific. Best picture, best actor and other top categories remain tight races.
With a new video podcast, the influential authors and former nemeses aim to inject a dose of rationality and humility into your algorithm.
Online wagering is all the rage. But the crowdsourced data generally doesn’t interest experts who have built a brand predicting Academy Awards races.
Online wagering is all the rage. But the crowdsourced data generally doesn’t interest experts who have built a brand predicting Academy Awards races.
Since Richard Grenell was appointed by President Trump, the arts center has endured a wave of cancellations and departures. It will soon close for lengthy renovations.
Best-selling and award-winning authors spoke to us about how canines can spark creativity.
In these videos, directors walked us through pivotal sequences from their 2026 Academy Award-nominated films.
Drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have been hailed as miracle treatments. But one in 10 people are what scientists call “non-responders.”
“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” have been neck and neck all season. Here’s what our expert thinks will go the distance.
The award, one of the most prestigious in the field of American history, honors “scope, significance, depth of research and richness of interpretation.”
The Meta C.E.O. bought a waterfront compound for $170 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ivana Trump’s townhouse and a “Breaking Bad” house also sold.
A settlement is reached in the case of Mike Disfarmer, who renounced his family. Decades later they sued to take back his life’s work. When heirs battle the people who built their legacies, the art may be at stake.