Culture Power Players: Music

 

The smart women fantasising about dragon sex

This week’s bookshop frenzy for a new romantasy title –  A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J Maas – prompts some big questions. Why are romantasy plots so silly? Why do smart women love them anyway? And what does it all tell us about men, women and modern love? 

Come hither: The sex women want is now a $28bn empire

The self-published ‘Romantasy’ author that sparked a 9-way book auction

Stand back for the hot breath of dragon sex in Onyx Storm

Read more about this story at theaustralian.com.au and see the video by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

The weekend edition of The Front is co-produced by Claire Harvey and Jasper Leak. The host is Claire Harvey. Audio production and editing by Jasper Leak who also composed our theme. 

 

Culture Power Players: Music

86 Comments

October 30, 2026 - 4:35am

To mark Culture’s first anniversary, we’ve compiled a list of power players shaping the future, and the face, of our creative industries. It’s a snapshot of a cultural landscape in flux: audiences are fragmenting, funding models are strained, technology is rewriting the script, and the question of who gets to tell which stories has never been more urgent.

In this list, there are the institutional leaders setting agendas that outlast seasons, record-breaking stars, both emerging and established, and figureheads steering the arts through its most complex challenges to date. What unites each name is not a shared style, but a shared impact, offering a portrait of what culture means today: contested, collaborative and constantly being rewritten.

Here are the final ten for music.