I didn’t want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the 70s and 80s, so there didn’t seem to be much point in making a movie that implied that after every gig, I’d quietly gone back to my hotel room with only a glass of warm milk and the Gideon’s Bible for company. | | | | Ryan Porter performing with Kamasi Washington at All Points East, London, May 26, 2019.
(Matthew Baker/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I didn’t want a film packed with drugs and sex, but equally, everyone knows I had quite a lot of both during the 70s and 80s, so there didn’t seem to be much point in making a movie that implied that after every gig, I’d quietly gone back to my hotel room with only a glass of warm milk and the Gideon’s Bible for company.”
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| | rantnrave:// Songwriting credits are partly about lyrics, partly about chords and melodies, partly about economics, partly about business relationships, partly about copyright law, partly about samples, partly about guest verses and more than partly subjective. Who decided GEORGE and RINGO didn't co-write all those JOHN and PAUL songs? Who, for that matter, decided John and Paul did write all those John and Paul songs, which most everyone on earth knows they didn't, not together anyway? Who decided the four members of the British band RUDIMENTAL co-wrote this hit given to them by an outside songwriting team? Who negotiated the songwriting credits on this? (And how do you split a YOUTUBE royalty 30 ways? Do you need special microscopic equipment?) Why do people keep asking whether songs "need" all those writers, and yet no one asks why a band like ARCADE FIRE or the WU-TANG CLAN needs all those members? Why do people think the more writers credited, the worse the song, and yet no one seems bothered that it takes four separate people—or, heaven forbid, more—to produce, record, mix and master the thing? This piece by the BBC's MARK SAVAGE is a pretty good overview of the subject, clickbait headline notwithstanding, which starts with the mathematical news that "it took an average of 5.34 people to write last year's Top 100 biggest singles" and then goes on to ask songwriters and producers why this is. To some extent, how songwriters work *has* changed over the years: songwriting camps, bridge specialists, tracks, features, etc. But to some extent, it hasn't changed. One or more people come up with an idea; one or more people come up with words, music and beats, and one or more people who may not be the same as the other people perform it. JAMES BLUNT tells Savage he likes the idea of an outside specialist who can "show me the elusive fourth chord." CHVRCHES singer LAUREN MAYBERRY was weirded out by a group of songwriting campers who suggested a chorus and then "they'd left like 'Boof! There's your chorus. Goodbye.'" I'd hate that, too. Unless it was a great chorus, I guess. One thing that definitely has changed: How credits are attributed and shared, which has changed for a variety of reasons (see the first sentence above). But by the time that all gets sorted out, the song is probably already written. And it probably doesn't get a little worse every time a lawyer or publisher or manager adds a name to the credits. It just looks that way... Oh, also: The 5.34 writers per song math is based on British charts. One can only wonder what the number will look like post-Brexit, when all those producers, topline writers, guest rappers and song doctors find it a little harder to get into the country... NBC's songwriting competition show, SONGLAND, with judges SHANE MCANALLY, RYAN TEDDER and ESTER DEAN, premieres at 10 pm ET tonight... In other the-more-things-change-the-more-they-don't news: Are pop songs "more anxious and depressed" than they used to be, as QUARTZ's SANGEETA SINGH-KURTZ and DAN KOPF report? Or are they just using the words "anxiety" and "depression" more these days because people in general use those words more? Is it possible they used to use different words to express those same feelings?... RIP BABY JANE DEXTER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | i poured my heart into a song |
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 | Medium |
| In 1944, an eighteen year old boy became famous for throwing eggs at Frank Sinatra. Then he disappeared. | | |
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 | BBC News |
| Rudimental just won a songwriting prize for a song that credits nine writers. How many is too many? | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| He was falsely cast as Mozart’s murderer and music’s sorest loser. Now he’s getting a fresh hearing. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| When CBGBs, New York’s temple to so much pioneering punk and underground music, died an ignominious death in 2008 only to be replaced by a John Varvatos boutique, it was notable that no one stepped in to save the venerable dive bar and cultural institution. A decade later, in what has become an increasingly competitive club market, that outcome would seem unlikely at best. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| A new competition show from the producers of The Voice will search for a hitmaker - but what's it actually like to be a professional songwriter? | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Twenty-one members, originating from six countries, within a supergroup spawning a collection of sub-units who sing in four different languages … so far. NCT is proving that the future of K-Pop stardom is expanding way beyond Korea. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Smith’s music career reveals an artist who believed in an Afrocentric American dream based on ambition, hustle and black pride. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| Streaming music is approaching a decision point. Right now, music subscriptions are doing a fantastic job of monetising consumption, but next we need to learn how to monetise fandom. Global streaming revenues were up 30% in 2018 to reach $19.5 billion in retail values. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Elton John writes about his extraordinary life and why he finally decided to give the Rocketman biopic the green light. | | |
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 | VICE |
| "There's this term that people use to describe the music that we make for 'Stranger Things,' and it's kind of a caricature of itself, so we really don't want to do that." | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| The members of the band coined their name as a way of owning and diffusing a racial slur. Then they had to take on the US government. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| How the record business's new-age economics are really starting to show. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| When Elton John takes the stage at Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome on June 8 for the first of two dates on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, each fan may hear a different version of the show. | | |
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 | Consequence of Sound |
| In 1994, young filmmaker Spike Jonze directed videos for Weezer's "Buddy Holly" and Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" that changed the genre forever. | | |
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 | chartmetric |
| Silos of music consumption--formerly outlined by national economies, cultural/regional tastes, language and old-school media formats--are becoming a thing of the past. What an Indonesian hipster finds for free on SoundCloud might be played by a Spotify Premium for Family teenage user in Iowa next week. Maybe the same day. | | |
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| VICE |
| The urbano hitmaker spent over a decade making a name for herself in Colombia, slowly evolving into the global pop artist she's ready to become. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Laura Barnett wrote a novel about an aging singer-songwriter sizing up her life in 16 tracks. Then she approached musician Kathryn Williams, who created the book's original soundtrack. | | |
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 | The Future of What |
| Thousands of hours of content are uploaded to sites like YouTube, SoundCloud, TikTok, Facebook, etc. every minute, and a fair amount of it contains unlicensed music. Technologies like YouTube’s “Content ID” system can help rights holders find offending usages once they’re uploaded, but not all sites have that kind of functionality, and certain uses are so short that the current tech can’t find them. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The polymath on his new album, unreleased Mac Miller collabs, and what critics got wrong about "Kuso." | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| We ranked every song of the summer this century, from 2000's "Bent" by Matchbox Twenty (not so summery) to this year's duet by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "Apollo XXI," out now on 3qtr. |
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