| Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person's life it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens. | | |
| | | Dancing machine: Britney Spears in Berlin, Nov. 13, 1999.
(Thomas Köhler/picture alliance/Getty Images) |
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| | | “Remember, no matter what we think we know about a person's life it is nothing compared to the actual person living behind the lens.” | |
| | #FreeBritney
The line that floored me in the New York Times doc FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS, which everybody who works anywhere near pop music or celebrity media should watch, belongs to filmmaker MICHAEL MOORE, who's seen in a short clip from 2008, caught in the middle of some host-to-host patter between CNN's LARRY KING and ANDERSON COOPER. Cooper has just mentioned "the sad story of Britney Spears." Moore, looking a little sad himself, cuts in: "It would be less sad if we just left her alone. I mean, why don't we just leave her alone and let her just go on with her life?" It's a devastating accusation, delivered with quiet resignation, and because of that it's unclear if either King or Cooper understand it's targeted directly at them. It's targeted at a lot of people, actually; they're just the two who happen to be within Moore's line of sight at that moment. Why *can't* we let pop stars, especially young female pop stars, get on with their lives? Why can't we stop judging what they wear, what they say, what they want, who they spend their time with, how they spend that time, and pretty much everything else? Why can't we hear them? Why were we so awful to Britney Spears?
"Framing Britney Spears," directed and produced by SAMANTHA STARK, doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about its subject. Rather, over the course of 75 minutes, it repeats everything we already know back to us in a new context, one that re-centers Spears as a smart, strong, talented, focused young woman who the world refused to accept as any of those things. Because, as JIVE RECORDS marketing executive KIM KAIMAN tells Stark, "It's so easy, it's so much fun, to take a celebrity who's a young, beautiful, talented girl and rip her to shreds." (Et tu, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE?) Not to compare Spears to MICHAEL JACKSON, whose talent and story were different, but I was reminded of the film THIS IS IT, released shortly after Jackson's death, which made clear, among other things, how completely in control Jackson was of every aspect of his art. In 2009, that registered as a surprise, at least in some ways. It's amazing how the things you thought you knew about Britney Spears seem different when you understand her as an ambitious artist who was in control of her own career, at least for as long as the rest of us allowed her to be.
One of the themes of the conversation around the documentary is that what happened to her couldn't happen today, in the #MeToo era, in a time when we discuss mental health relatively openly, in a space where, because of social media and other changes, the paparazzi have lost much of their power, in a world where grassroots movements like "FREEBRITNEY can have a big impact. But I'm not sure that's entirely true. I'm not sure we're any more enlightened in how we do—or don't—talk about young women's sexuality, or how we understand their agency, and I'm not sure we've learned to stop judging. And considering the number of SOUNDCLOUD and K-pop and hip-hop stars, both men and women, who we've literally lost in recent years, I'm not entirely convinced we've made the pop music space all that much more welcoming for them. But I hope we're trying. And I hope we can finally hear Spears, who in a rare interview about the controversial conservatorship that's the film is largely about, tells MTV: "When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they hear me but they really not listening. They're hearing what they want to hear. They're not really listening to what I'm telling them... I'm sad."
The legal battle over her conservatorship continues in a Los Angeles courtroom on Thursday.
The Grammys of Cinema
No music documentaries made the 15-title shortlist from which this year's OSCAR nominations for Best Documentary Feature will be drawn. Among the music films passed over, none of which were considered serious contenders, were ALISON ELLWOOD's THE GO-GO'S and SPIKE JONZE's BEASTIE BOYS STORY... Songs by JANELLE MONÁE, MARY J. BLIGE, H.E.R. and CELESTE are among those shortlisted for Best Original Song, while TRENT REZNOR and ATTICUS ROSS have two films, MANK and SOUL, on the Best Original Score list. Only one woman—LOLITA RITMANIS, who scored the Latvian film BLIZZARD OF SOULS—made the final 15 in that category. In 87 years of film-composing Oscars, only seven women have ever been nominated.
Plus Also Too
Does the Beverly Hills Police Department have ASCAP and BMI licenses? Should it? I assume no streaming site or copyright owner would intentionally let the Beverly Hills cops get away with what this Vice News story says it's trying to get away with, but I'm less sure about what might happen unintentionally. But I wonder how the long arm of the law would fare against the long arms of the performance rights organizations.... Is mastering a myth?... Guitars, Copyrights, Etc., Etc.... Props to any obsessed fan who has the time to thoughtfully critique the entire recorded output of any given artist. We've added deep dives on FRANZ SCHUBERT's oeuvre of 672 songs, which writer JEFFREY ARLO BROWN says he knocked off in 40 to 50 hours, and the EAGLES' slightly less intimidating catalog of 84, to MusicSET "Everything They Ever Did, Ranked."
Rest in Peace
Rock producer ELLIOT MAZER, whose storied collection of credits includes NEIL YOUNG's HARVEST and its diametrically opposite followup, TIME FADES AWAY... SERVANDO CANO RODRIGUEZ, who founded the Mexican label, management and publishing conglomerate SERCA)... Guitarist and accordionist FLORY JAGODA, who specialized in traditional Sephardic and Ladino music... ED PEARL, who owned both incarnations of the LA club the ASH GROVE.
| | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | | Southern Hustle: Houston Hip-Hop and Chinese Chicken | | by Alana Dao | | Timmy Chan’s fried chicken is legendary in the Houston hip-hop world. Alana Dao delves into the restaurant chain that her grandparents started in the 1950s, and the emergence of chop suey and chopped and screwed. | |
| | Britney Spears Documentary Brings Validity to #FreeBritney Movement, While Putting Misogynistic Media on Blast | | by Elizabeth Wagmeister | | As legal proceedings continue in Britney Spears' highly controversial conservatorship, a new FX documentary, " Framing Britney Spears," will undoubtedly raise questions. | |
| | The Way We Treated Britney Spears Was a Sign of What Was to Come | | by Jude Ellison Sady Doyle | | The misogyny that took down the pop icon more than a decade ago still affects countless women to this day. | |
| | Ownership Has Became Hip-Hop's Ultimate Status Symbol | | by Robert Blair | | The music industry has profiteered off artists for decades. Now, today's artists are aware that ownership and publishing rights is where the money is. | |
| | International Anthem's Celebratory Approach Is Breaking Boundaries | | by Benjamin Graye | | An in-depth look at a powerhouse American label. | |
| | The Four New Global Capitals of Pop Music | | by Lucas Shaw | | Of the 25 biggest pop stars in the month of January, 12 hailed from places that speak a language other than English. The list includes five people from Puerto Rico, four from Colombia, two from India and one from South Korea. | |
| | Every Dollar Earned by Music Biz Generates Another 50 Cents for US Economy: Study | | by Glenn Peoples | | The study will be firepower for rights holders and trade groups seeking assistance from Congress. It "charts a course for state and federal policymakers to leverage music's ability to produce strong economic growth and high-paying domestic jobs," said Josh Friedlander, senior vp research and economics at the RIAA. | |
| | The Baddest Bunny | | by Gary Suarez | | Why would Freddie Gibbs sign to a major label? And why would Warner sign Freddie Gibbs? | |
| | How Hip-Hop’s Influence Is Inspiring Country Music’s Future | | by Marcus K. Dowling | | Breland, Kidd G, Sam Hunt, Lil Nas X and others are boldly using Black artistic innovation in country music. | |
| | In 'Nothing But the Music' Writer Thulani Davis Creates a Space on Both Sides of the Stage | | by Piotr Orlov | | The celebrated poet, playwright, journalist, and storyteller's new book of poems weaves together scenes of a musical landscape populated by Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Bad Brains, and more. | |
| | | 'It took a long time to get here': behind the National Museum of African American Music | | by Nadja Sayej | | Tracing over 400 years of black music, an ambitious new museum in Nashville celebrates artists we all know and those whose work remains under the radar. | |
| | 'Sisters With Transistors': Pioneers Of Electronic Music | | by Allyson McCabe | | The new documentary tells the story of the roles women played - and continue to play - in the creation and development of electronic music, from theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore to today. | |
| | Investment funds forcing artists to name their price is… not a great idea | | by Tim Ingham | | Why calls for investors to learn of every detail of a songwriter buyout are badly misguided. | |
| | Love and Theft: How the Appropriation of Negro Spirituals Taught America How to Sanitize Black Music | | by S. David | | Radical historian S. David investigates the cruelty of what's lost in the translation of black expression into white notation with the commercial rise of the negro spiritual & in the present day with hip-hop and techno. | |
| | RETRO MUST READ: Library of Congress Interview With Mary Wilson on 'Where Did Our Love Go?' | | This interview with Mary Wilson was conducted by the Library of Congress on April 2, 2018. | |
| | COV-AID: Well Before The Live Events Industry Wrote To Biden, Groundwork Was Laid For Vaccine Efforts | | by Deborah Speer | | As the battered and bruised live events industry approaches the anniversary of the near-complete shutdown of business thanks to COVID-19, it’s doubling down on efforts to not only save its stages but making a commitment to the communities on which they depend. | |
| | Music streaming must switch to a fair and logical payout model. There is no time to lose | | by Didier Martin | | Didier Martin, CEO of France's OuthereMusic, on why classical labels like his are crying out for a shift in the streaming payout model. | |
| | Smashing guitars is nothing new, so why are people so rattled by Phoebe Bridgers' SNL performance? | | by Marianne Eloise | | The acclaimed singer-songwriter delivered something extra -- just like the many (male) guitar-smashers who went before her. | |
| | And The Writer Is...Ant Clemons | | by Ross Golan and Ant Clemons | | The epitome of a “rags to riches” story, Ant Clemons spent nights on park benches, couch hopping, and using songwriting as a means of currency. Today, he is recognized as one of the most in-demand songwriters and upcoming artists, due to his work with Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Camilla Cabello, Kanye West, Kali Uchis, H.E.R., G Eazy, Pharrell, etc. | |
| | What Feels Nigerian But Isn't Really Nigerian? Celine Dion | | by Vincent Desmond | | “Until you asked me about it, I didn’t even realise stanning Celine was optional.” | |
| | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” | | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator |
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