Cat Zhang

Cat Zhang is a culture writer at The Cut, covering books, film, TV, and music. Her reporting centers on how pop figures, fandoms, and scenes express contemporary desire, politics, and online life. She combines interviews, scene reporting, and criticism to show how artists, audiences, and the internet shape one another.

Pop music as a lens on image, ambition, and virality

Zhang’s music coverage treats pop songs and stars as evidence of broader cultural moods rather than isolated entertainment stories. She writes about the evolving personas of major artists, from asking “What’s Up With Billie Eilish’s Style?” to arguing that “Katy Perry Is Stuck in 2016,” focusing on how wardrobe, rollouts, and nostalgia communicate to fans.

Her pieces on Ashlee Simpson working on new music and Faye Webster’s devotion to tennis use specific careers and hobbies to explore long-tail pop relevance and the way artists build identities across interests beyond the studio. In “The Man-Repelling Anthems of Wet Leg,” she treats the band’s cheeky songs as anthems that complicate desire and gender norms, framing their work as part of a larger indie-rock conversation. Her analysis of Tinashe’s viral single “Nasty” digs into why a track travels across platforms and playlists, turning the song-of-summer race into a study of algorithmic and fan-driven momentum.

She extends this lens to public activism and reading culture by covering Dua Lipa’s plan to open a library for banned books, tying a pop star’s project to debates about censorship and who gets to shape young people’s literary lives.

Her criticism column on Taylor Swift’s songwriting, “The Showgirl Doesn’t Get a Standing Ovation,” treats a vast catalogue and reputation as raw material to question whether the old consensus about pop’s “best songwriter” still holds in the current era. Across these stories, she balances close attention to music with sharp observations about branding, ambition, and how online audiences interpret every move.

Interviews that foreground process, identity, and burnout

Interviews are a major part of Zhang’s work, and she tends to use them to understand how creative people manage ambition, exhaustion, and identity. She profiles pop and indie musicians like Tinashe, Hemlocke Springs, Sophia Stel, and Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale, asking detailed questions about their writing habits, performance styles, and relationship to hype.

Her interview with Tinashe frames the singer’s career as a series of carefully chosen moves, presenting her as someone committed to “one masterpiece at a time” rather than chasing a formula for virality. With Hemlocke Springs, she dwells on the need to “space out” in order to lock in creatively, turning a conversation about a rising artist into a meditation on attention and overstimulation. She regularly speaks with actors and screen creators - including Salma Hayek Pinault, Poppy Liu, Sarah Pidgeon, and Suki Waterhouse - and emphasizes how they negotiate new phases of their careers, from entering new decades to confronting typecasting and political commitments.

In her “How I Get It Done” pieces with figures like sex therapist Casey Tanner and author R.O. Kwon, she focuses on daily routines and emotional labor, linking professional success to mental health, queerness, and late-night work.

Across these interviews, she draws out contradictions between public personas and private practices, showing how people in the spotlight actually live with the demands of visibility.

Scene reports from art fairs, parties, festivals, and public spectacles

Zhang’s scene reports immerse readers in the spaces where culture happens, paying attention to crowds, fashion, and atmosphere as much as formal programming.

At Frieze New York, she writes about the art-world elite at The Shed, treating attendees’ outfits and behavior as part of the show. In “Believe the Hype,” she describes Brooklyn’s hottest party return, noting specific guests and the density of queer nightlife, capturing how a local party becomes a social hub and status marker. Her dispatches from the New York Film Festival linger on the very long lines and cinephiles at Lincoln Center, turning what could be logistical details into character sketches of different kinds of film obsessives.

A SailGP “Formula One of Sailing” race becomes, in her hands, a surreal corporate entertainment spectacle that feels like an episode of Succession, with the event’s staging and audience dynamics treated as commentary on wealth and spectacle. She covers public events like the NYPL Halloween Costume Parade, paying attention to costumes, performers, and the civic joy of a library-centered celebration. These pieces rely on sharp observational reporting and a sense of humor, giving a vivid feel for the textures of contemporary culture in motion - from art fairs to sports-adjacent gatherings and city parades.

Criticism and essays on internet culture, scandal, and taste

Beyond music and events, Zhang writes essays that parse the logics of internet fame, scandal cycles, and taste-making.

In “Perfume Culture Is Starting to Stink,” she treats fragrance discourse as a case study in how niche tastes get flattened by hype and content creation, combining reported detail with critical argument. Her piece on TikTok street interviewers, “Get That Microphone Out of My Face,” critiques the hunger for viral moments and the way strangers are turned into content, highlighting privacy, performance, and the awkwardness of constant recording.

She unpacks drama around Tinx’s ghostwritten novel, examining authorship, branding, and accountability when influencers expand into publishing. In “Alexander Skarsgård Knows What He’s Doing to Us” and her film-related essays on BAFTA’s apology and the erotic appeal of characters in projects like *Pillion* and *Wicker*, she explores how clothing, gestures, and publicity stills encode desire and power. Her regular film festival coverage and interviews with curators like Dennis Lim extend this critical lens to programming decisions and how festivals shape the canon that future viewers will inherit.

Across these essays, she blends reported facts with sharp, accessible argument, treating cultural ephemera as evidence of deeper shifts in taste, ethics, and online behavior.

Background and format

Zhang holds a staff role as a culture writer at The Cut, where she formally covers books, film, TV, and music. She previously worked as an editor at Pitchfork, bringing long-form music criticism experience into her current features and interviews.

In 2022, she received the ASME Next Award for Journalists Under 30, reflecting recognition for her work early in her career.

Her pieces range from tightly structured Q&A interviews to narrative profiles, reported scene reports, and argued criticism, often moving between these formats depending on the subject. The through-line is a consistent interest in how culture - especially pop music - reveals the desires, politics, and habits of the people who create and consume it.