FAKE NEWS

TNR Makes Early April Fool's Joke

With songs from 'dead' composer.

It's not even April 1, yet The New Republic is already getting in an April Fool's joke early. In something of a developing tradition, the venerable magazine's music critic celebrated the first anniversary of the "reported death of Nick Hathaway," a supposed Tin Pan Alley composer with taste so outdated that he's completely forgotten. The project pokes fun at the critic's love of obscurity, complete with newly "discovered" Hathaway compositions, including setting words to the fictional first piano concerto by C.K. Dexter Haven, a piece so lovingly mocked by Grace Kelly in High Society. Musicians of renown like Theo Bleckmann and Allan Harris perform the (now) real songs.