Cat Zhang

Hey, I’m Cat! I’m a critic and jour­nal­ist in Brooklyn, New York. I’m cur­rently the Assistant Editor at Pitchfork, and I’ve also con­tributed to the New Yorker, Washington Post, the Cut, Slate, NPR, Vice, and Real Life. Most of the time, I cover the in­ter­sec­tion of mu­sic and in­ter­net cul­ture. I also oc­ca­sion­ally write about Asian America, books, and com­edy. I re­cently won a 2022 ASME Next Award for jour­nal­ists un­der 30, where judges praised my “sophisticated and en­gag­ing style” and abil­ity to oc­cupy many roles, in­clud­ing “historian, so­ci­ol­o­gist, an­a­lyst and mu­sic critic.”

Pitchfork

• Retrospective on Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway
• Trend piece on fan edit com­mu­ni­ties
• Profile of cy­ber pop artist yeule
• Review of Mitski’s al­bum, Laurel Hell
• Profile of 18-year-old digi­core artist dltzk
• Review of FKA twigs mix­tape, Caprisongs
• Recap of 2021 mu­sic trends on TikTok
• Retrospective on Kesha’s 2010 de­but, Animal
• 4,000-word search for the mean­ing of “Asian American mu­sic”
• Critical es­say about city pop and the Western imag­i­na­tion of Japan

Other

• Interview with TikTok fash­ion fore­caster OldLoserInBrooklyn (Vice)
• A pro­file of co­me­dian Jamie Loftus (New Yorker)
• A re­view of Awkwafina’s sit­com Nora from Queens (The Cut)
• An analy­sis of “TikTok Face” (Real Life)
• A look at the Instagram gos­sip site Deuxmoi (Real Life)
• A crit­i­cal es­say about Mitski’s Be the Cowboy (NPR)

Appearances

• On the NYT Popcast dis­cussing Mitski
• On the Netflix show Explained dis­sect­ing TikTok dances
• On NPR talk­ing about TikTok sen­sa­tion PinkPantheress
• On the Embedded newslet­ter ex­plain­ing my dig­i­tal habits
• On Vulture’s Switched on Pop break­ing down Japanese city pop
• On Vulture’s Switched on Pop talk­ing about TikTok’s mu­si­cal land­scape
• On the Pitchfork Review dis­cussing TikTok and ac­tivism
• My city pop fea­ture was fea­tured in the NYT Morning newslet­ter
• My “TikTok Face” ar­ti­cle was in­cluded in me­dia stud­ies. press’s Social Media and the Self reader

cather­ine.zhang29 @ gmail dot com