I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen. | | | | David Bowie would have been 71 today. "David Bowie: The Last Five Years" debuts tonight on HBO.
(Jimmy King/HBO) | | | | |  | “I’m just writing, writing, writing. I keep these tablets on me until I’m inspired to go back in and make the music. I never take a break from my pen.”
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| | rantnrave:// Is there a more rock and roll birthday than today, which would have been DAVID BOWIE's 71st and ELVIS PRESLEY's 83rd? (Happy birthday also to, um, 51-year-old R. KELLY and 34-year-old KIM JUNG-UN.) HBO honors Bowie with tonight's US premiere of DAVID BOWIE: THE LAST FIVE YEARS, which documents his fertile final years, during which he recorded two albums in secret and wrote a musical (while battling cancer, also in secret). FRANCES WHATELY's film suggests he used that creative outburst to "deconstruct and rebuke his own legend." (Oh and, hey, here's a previously unreleased demo of an '80s Bowie classic.) True story: I was sitting on the front lawn of GRACELAND many years ago on a perfectly still August night—not even a hint of a breeze—with a crew of CBS NEWS producers, one of whom was talking smack about Elvis. He was not happy about his assignment. Suddenly, a large tree branch came crashing down, missing him by a few feet. I don't believe Elvis is still alive. I do believe he's still watching. The NEW YORK TIMES' MARGARET RENKL on the strange allure of Graceland, and the JACKSON SUN's BRANDON SHIELDS on an Army buddy who remained improbable friends with the King... You can keep JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, you SUPER BOWL people. Tonight's college football championship game on ESPN comes with a KENDRICK LAMAR halftime show. The U.S. president—the first one in a decade who doesn't know who Lamar is—will be at the game but, sadly, Lamar will not. He'll be performing via video feed from outside the stadium... Yes, SOUNDCLOUD has reduced the bitrate of its audio. No, that's not necessarily a bad thing... Congrats to GOLDEN GLOBE winners ALEXANDRE DESPLAT (best original score, for THE SHAPE OF WATER) and BENJ PASEK and JUSTIN PAUL (best original song, for "THIS IS ME," sung by KESHA in THE GREATEST SHOWMAN)... Prosecutors in SPOKANE, WASH., have dropped all rape charges against members of the metal band DECAPITATED... RIP FRANCE GALL, one of the great French yé-yé singers; MOODY BLUES flutist RAY THOMAS; British metal producer CHRIS TSANGARIDES, and publicist MARLENE PALMER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Billboard |
| With an impending IPO finally on the horizon and copyright-infringement lawsuits worth over $1 billion stacking up, the streaming leader has plenty to deal with in the new year. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| The Western motif of Justin Timberlake’s new album, "Man of the Woods," is the image equivalent of a trip to a dude ranch: an accidental projection of his greatest vulnerabilities, and a desire to immerse himself in a mythical, masculine world that doesn’t ask hard questions. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| In Hollywood and the media, allegations of misconduct brought down powerful men. But the opposite happened in rap, creating a crisis between creators and consumers. | | |
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 | Fact Magazine |
| Scott Wilson stares into his crystal ball to discover how tech may change the way we consume and make music in 2017, wondering what changes are coming to Spotify, whether SoundCloud will survive and whether Eurorack gear will continue to inspire musicians. | | |
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 | Lefsetz Letter |
| There's only room for one majordomo, and it's not him. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| In the Eastern U.S., many are freezing this weekend and looking for warmth. Halfway around the world, Terje Isungset has built a music career dependent on frigid weather. | | |
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 | British GQ |
| From imagining America's founding mothers to celebrating his wife and daughter, Jay-Z's latest music video, directed by Ava DuVernay, champions black female power. | | |
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 | The Canadian Press |
| Despite becoming what some dubbed “the year of streaming,” 2017 proved those shiny little discs still have some life left in them. But it isn’t necessarily because of strong consumer demand. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Summoning's music is heavily symphonic, heavily melodic, and heavily atmospheric, centered on glorious sagas and gloomy stories from Tolkien and other more obscure fantasy authors. The end result is undoubtedly mystical, grandiose, and elaborate—but is also endearingly earnest. | | |
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 | The Uncool |
| A candid conversation with the actor, rock singer and sexual switch-hitter. (Originally published in Playboy, September 1976.) | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| "Nothing changes on New Year's Day." So saith Bono at the dawn of 1983, and he was right - to a point. Flipping the calendar doesn't initiate any grand transition. The morning after the ball drops, life is right back where we left it. But in another sense, everything changes all the time. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Jazz could have spent 2017 looking backward, focusing on the centennials of foundational figures. But instead, several strains of contemporary jazz thrived. | | |
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 | The Grapevine |
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 | The Muse |
| After three long years of giving her all promoting the "Fifty Shades" movie franchise, the (sometimes overwhelmingly) multi-talented Rita Ora has been repaid with the series’ best original song since 2015's “Love Me Like You Do.” I’m so happy she finally been given what’s been owed to her for so long. | | |
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| Billboard |
| The marketing wiz reflects on a year of breakthroughs as he helps position his label for the future. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| From secret messages in music videos to embracing jazz for his swan song 'Blackstar,' our takeaways from this stellar Bowie documentary. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Magnetic Fields, a three-day festival in the Rajasthan desert, saw the country’s burgeoning dance scene go overground. But there are concerns that clubbing is a corporatised "rich person’s game." | | |
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 | Bandcamp Daily |
| "Maybe it's a cliché, but Israel is all about fusion in its food, its architecture, and art," explains Tel Aviv DJ and producer Sabbo. "It's in our genes already to mix things. It's never been a thing to be a purist. We don't intend to mix things, it happens naturally." | | |
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 | TorrentFreak |
| A music technologist who teaches in an Australian university music department has seen his self-generated ten-hour video containing white noise flagged by several copyright holders. Sebastian Tomczak informs TorrentFreak that all of the rightsholders chose to monetize his work, meaning that they're making money from his efforts, rather than him. | | |
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 | Vice |
| Vice travels to Finland to meet the artist behind one of the biggest dance music anthems of all time: "Sandstorm." | | |
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 | YouTube |
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