Brittany Spanos

As a kid, Spanos loved to read about her favorite bands, like Green Day and Nirvana. The young fan wanted to know everything about them, from what they were inspired by to what they were listening to. Seeing the film Almost Famous in middle school cemented her dream of being a music journalist. Today, Spanos is a staff writer at Rolling Stone. For our American Ingenuity issue, she profiled “one of the greatest artists of our generation,” Janelle Monáe (p. 42). Spanos says, “She’s found some of the smartest ways to combine activism and personal values with her art while also making really easily consumable pop music.”