You say tomato, I say f*** you. | | | | Halsey performing with Lady Antebellum at the 2019 CMA Awards. Her third album, "Manic," is out today on Capitol.
(John Shearer/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “You say tomato, I say f*** you.”
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| | rantnrave:// It was refreshing to read earlier this week that the RECORDING ACADEMY's new chief, DEBORAH DUGAN, had little interest in commandeering a few minutes of stage time in the middle of the GRAMMY AWARDS as her predecessor, NEIL PORTNOW, traditionally did. "I won’t be there unless there’s something important for me to say to the 22 million people watching," she told the LOS ANGELES TIMES. But with the Grammys little more than a week away, it turns out she won't be there for a different reason. The Academy's board placed Dugan on administrative leave Thursday, citing "concerns... including a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team." So much for what had seemed like a smooth transition from the controversial end of Portnow's reign, and so much for a smooth lead-up to a Grammy ceremony where the Academy hoped to bounce back from a couple turbulent years in which it had been accused of repeatedly slighting women. And so much, it would seem, for any chance of the Grammys taking the lead in a wider effort across Hollywood to prove the entertainment industry takes diversity seriously. There is, instead, one more internal mess to clean up. Dugan was the Academy's first female CEO and had sounded all the right notes about the organization's priorities coming out of the "Step Up" era. Is it a positive sign that the board took the allegation of a female staffer seriously and acted decisively, even with the Grammys looming? Or is it a red flag that it acted quickly against its first female boss? Or was it a coup? As of now, we know little about what happened, or what's alleged to have happened, or when. A source told VARIETY that "a lot of the board members couldn't stand her." An LA Times source said she "didn’t fit in, from the get-go." Which, it should be pointed out, has nothing to do with misconduct. The Grammys are in nine days, and it seems safe to say we'll know at least a little more by then. Whether anyone from the Academy will have something to say to 22 million people watching next Sunday is, at this point, anybody's guess... Variety writer CHRIS WILLMAN posted a snarky tweet Tuesday about hearing songs by two women back-to-back on Los Angeles country radio station GO COUNTRY 105 and wondering if the station can get "fined for that." He was referring to a widespread policy at country radio of not playing two women in a row because listeners, apparently, wouldn't stand for it. (Seriously. This has come up a lot in the past few years after and every time it does, I feel compelled to add "seriously." Because, um, seriously.) Willman got a reply from whoever runs the Twitter account of 98 KCQ, a country station in Saginaw, Mich., admitting, "We cannot play two females back to back. Not even LADY ANTEBELLUM or LITTLE BIG TOWN against another female." Needless to say, this then ensued. The KCQ tweet was quickly deleted, and whoever runs the station's Twitter account (or maybe it was now someone else) wrote a bunch of tweets trying to take its cowboy booted foot out of its mouth, without ever quite denying what that mouth had said. This other tweet, amazingly, is still there on KCQ's page. For fun, I listened to KCQ for an hour and a half Thursday night. Twenty-five songs, four women's voices. And no woman within 15 minutes of airtime of another woman. Maybe this isn't any country station's actual policy. Maybe it's just what they do. SAMANTHA BEE, take it away... Congrats to MARIAH CAREY, the NEPTUNES and the rest of this year's inductees in the SONGWRITERS HALL OF FAME. Did you know Carey co-wrote 18 of her 19 chart-topping singles? If not, why not?... And congrats to STEREOGUM founder SCOTT LAPATINE, who, in a grandmaster-level TAYLOR SWIFT chess move, has bought his site back from BILLBOARD parent VALENCE MEDIA. Bloggers can own their masters, too, just like the pop stars they love. Valence also unloaded SPIN, to private equity firm NEXT MANAGAMENT PARTNERS... It's FRIDAY—the first major release day of 2020—and that means new music from the late MAC MILLER, HALSEY, LITTLE BIG TOWN, 070 SHAKE, EMINEM (surprise!), ALGIERS, MARCUS KING, BLUEFACE, ANTI-FLAG, CRITERIA, MURA MASA, DUSTIN LYNCH, AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD, STUNNA 4 VEGAS, YUNG PINCH, PINEGROVE, INNOCENCE MISSION, OF MONTREAL, SONS OF APOLLO, HOLY F***, BLEED THE SKY, COURTEENERS, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN/SHANKAR MAHADEVAN/ZAKIR HUSSAIN, VALERY PONOMAREV, DELLA MAE, G. LOVE, RAEKWON, GABRIELLE APLIN, CHELSEA CUTLER and BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB... RIP LINDA SHAVER-GLEASON, CHRIS DARROW and DICK WHITEHOUSE... MusicREDEF is taking Monday off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. See you Tuesday. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | hopeless fountain kingdom |
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 | Variety |
| As the music industry reeled in the wake of Deborah Dugan's sudden removal from her post as president/CEO of the Recording Academy on Thursday - a mere five months after she'd taken charge, and just ten days before the Grammy Awards - industry sources were stunned by the abruptness of the move and perplexed by the purported reasons for it. | | |
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 | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee |
| Even though women have been killing it in country music for decades, country radio stations have purposely underplayed female artists. Sam sent Sasheer Zamata and Amy Hoggart to Nashville to meet with trailblazers Brandi Carlile, Margo Price, Mickey Guyton, Tanya Tucker, and CMT's Leslie Fram to join them in the fight for equal play. | | |
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 | TechCrunch |
| I love music. Seriously, it's one of the few things that brings solace in this cold, lonely world. Want to go deep on Joni Mitchell, William Onyeabor or Pablo Casals? I'm game. Yes, I worked at multiple record stores years before TechCrunch. Yes, I will always be that guy. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| As fans #FightForX1 both online and on the ground in Seoul, K-pop artists are getting the fighting chances that previously would have been silenced. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| From the Beatles to Bowie to Madonna, metamorphosis has been an assumed component of pop stardom for decades, and the ability to transcend easy categorization has often been key to such artists' success. | | |
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 | Midia Research |
| The Song Economy is the new music industry’s growth engine. It’s why publishing and songwriter catalogues are being acquired at multiples of between 10-20 of annual royalty revenues. It’s why playlists are the most valuable real estate on streaming platforms. It’s why labels and publishers are staffing up their sync teams around the world. | | |
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 | Nashville Scene |
| Tanya Tucker, The Highwomen, Yola, Tyler Childers and beyond - 79 critics vote for the best in 2019’s country music. | | |
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 | Louder |
| Phil Collins talks about Genesis, Led Zeppelin, George Harrison and the unexplained paint pot on Top Of The Tops. | | |
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 | Trapital |
| Building a successful fantasy-label platform isn’t quite as simple as copying and pasting what’s already worked in the world of fantasy sports. | | |
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 | Water and Music |
| There have been countless attempts at "fantasy football for music," but they fell flat. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Singing the national anthem is fraught with peril. But Demi Lovato will tackle it at the Super Bowl as she bounces back from a 2018 overdose. Is that wise? | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| The absorbing posthumous album "Circles" shows the rapper considering his own fragility. | | |
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 | Refinery29 |
| Women can't get any respect on country radio. Kacey Musgraves and Kelsea Ballerini aren't going to take this tweet about it lying down. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Music publications Spin and Stereogum have been sold, Valence Media announced today (Jan. 16). | | |
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| Variety |
| To shake Ken Ehrlich 's hand is to know that you are no more than two degrees of separation from just about any living pop, rock, R&B, country, hip-hop or gospel musician of note - and more than a few who are no longer with us. | | |
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 | PopMatters |
| After nearly two decades, mewithoutYou, an underground musical force whose music stretches from "Christian campfire songs" to room-shaking post-hardcore punk, will soon call it quits. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| When an establishment like the Kennedy Center Honors, which has welcomed cultural giants such as Fred Astaire, Marian Anderson, Lucille Ball, Sammy Davis Jr., James Brown, Steven Spielberg and Earth Wind & Fire since 1978, had the good sense to induct LL Cool J in 2017 before the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, something is off. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| Why does this problem continue to persist, even if everyone is aware of it? | | |
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 | Paper |
| “I don’t want to be well-adjusted in a world that’s crazy.” | | |
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 | TED-Ed |
| Dive into the history and controversy of Igor Stravinsky's ballet, "The Rite of Spring," which shattered the conventions of classical ballet. -- Ballet is typically thought of as harmonious, graceful and polished- hardly something that would trigger a riot. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Circles," out today on Warner Records. |
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