I used to be in the studio, only the studio, for three months straight, and an album would come out. Now, it’s like a carousel. I do fashion one day, lingerie the next, beauty the next, then music the next. It’s like having a bunch of kids and you need to take care of them all. | | | | Idles guitarist Mark Bowen at the We Love Green festival, Paris, June 1, 2019.
(David Wolff-Patrick/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “I used to be in the studio, only the studio, for three months straight, and an album would come out. Now, it’s like a carousel. I do fashion one day, lingerie the next, beauty the next, then music the next. It’s like having a bunch of kids and you need to take care of them all.”
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| | rantnrave:// Remember a few weeks ago when GAME OF THRONES was going to be the last gasp of pop monoculture? What if everybody was wrong and it's actually "OLD TOWN ROAD"? It's the #1 song in the US for a 10th week, and in the streaming universe it's crushing the competition, three months into its run, like DAENERYS TARGARYEN crushing King's Landing, but without the malice. As I type this, I'm hearing it on ABC's broadcast of the NBA finals while DRAKE stands on the edge of the court in Toronto, helpless to do anything about it. A true, literal monoculture isn't possible in music, where audiences are divided by age, various other demographics and fierce tribal loyalties. But every once in a while a single or an album comes reasonably close. "Old Town Road" is as good a candidate as we could have hoped for in 2019, an irresistible pop earworm that serves as a self-contained multicultural monoculture, crossing boundaries of age, race and genre and particularly adaptable to covers and remixes. It's inclusive and interactive. It has something to say. And by now, even your mother has heard it. As a piece of pop culture to rally around, we could do, and we have done, a lot worse... Is SPOTIFY using its mood playlists to try to change your mood? And to then sell your better mood to advertisers? "The data that is used to sell advertisers on the platform is also the data driving recommendations," writes the BAFFLER's LIZ PELLY in a provocative teardown of the synergy between Spotify's advertising and programming strategies. My current mood: BLACK MIRROR... A reminder, in case you'd forgotten, that MICHAEL LANG and company still swear they're going to hold the WOODSTOCK 50 anniversary festival in August, even though all signs point to probably not... BONNAROO, on the other hand, with PHISH, CHILDISH GAMBINO and POST MALONE headlining, will sell out this year for the first time since 2013... Things we do not currently care about: What songs the Democratic presidential candidates are using as walk-on music (let's maybe talk about the environment instead), and which popular DJ and producer may or may not sue BILLBOARD for discounting his bundled album sales last week (call us when there's actual paperwork) while simultaneous Instagramming that "I'm in the music bizz not bundle bizz," which, besides not being true, has at least two too many z's... SCARFACE is running for City Council in Houston, and his entrance music *is* of interest here... The CHICAGO WHITE SOX for some reason feel it's necessary to remind you, in the middle of Pride Month, that they still hate disco... RIP LIL' BUCK SINEGAL. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Inside Spotify’s emotional surveillance-driven quest for total ad domination. | | |
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| It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business - and almost nobody knew. This is the story of the 2008 Universal fire. | | |
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| In trying to unpack one of the a stranger periods of Bob Dylan's strange life, Scorsese had to meet the bard on his home turf of half-truths and obfuscation. | | |
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| Dio was the first concert I ever went to, and the only one my dad ever took me to. In 1986, I saw Dio headline Madison Square Garden, with the German hard rock/metal act Accept opening up. I was a bigger fan of Accept at the time, but Dio was amazing. The Sacred Heart tour was his commercial peak. | | |
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| Rihanna, as it turns out, kind of does need an introduction. She opens up to her friend, and castmate, Sarah Paulson about getting back to work, work, work. | | |
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| Last week, Apple officially rang the death knell for its tried and true music flagship, iTunes, announcing that it will phase out the groundbreaking download empire with its next OS update. (Only Windows users will get to hold on to the relic.) It's the end of the era of digital music ownership as we know it. | | |
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| At issue is a pair of broader questions facing legacy entertainment companies: Should an industry that has prospered by hewing to tradition be hurtled into the future, and what will happen when it arrives there? | | |
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| The unlikely face of America's ongoing debate about immigration and its intersections with the Black experience. | | |
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| Musician and sound artist Holly Herndon on balancing academic work with a career in the arts, the complications of working with technology, and the value of not getting what you want. | | |
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| The music world lost yet another legend far too soon. | | |
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| Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of age in a time when Black writers began breaking the white ceiling. | | |
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| Sesame Street team members Dr. Rosemarie Truglio and Bill Sherman discuss writing songs for the iconic show over the years. | | |
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| Unless something dramatic happens, it looks like 2019 may be the first year since 1990 in which I cannot hand on heart, say I have a personal favourite album of the year. I'm not saying that there haven't been some great albums -- it's just that my own personal form of music consumption has now switched to songs, and it looks like this shift might be permanent. | | |
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| In the early ‘80s, two teenage siblings in London recorded an album that fused Pakistani pop and British New Wave. It became a perfect harmony of the two worlds they lived in. This is the story behind their lost masterpiece. | | |
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| She's brought her harp along to sessions for Drake, Common and Lauryn Hill. Now she's ready to freshen up the great American art form. | | |
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| Rebeca Leon, co-founder and CEO of Lionfish Entertainment, oversees the careers of three of the biggest artists in Latin music: J Balvin, Rosalia, and Juanes, with whom she founded the company several years ago. | | |
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| Lip-syncing jumpstarted TikTok's rise to the center of teen culture, arguably displacing Instagram . Now the Facebook-owned app is striking back with a new feature that lets you displays lyrics on your video Story synced to a soundtrack you've added with the Music sticker. | | |
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| In his ongoing attempts to seek out the answers to why we like the music we like, Hunter Farris has uncovered a melodic hierarchy via Whitney Houston. | | |
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| The Beat Generation's influence on culture at large is indisputable, but the mark it left on rock music isn't quite as well known. | | |
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| In the past, each generation was contemptuous of the previous one’s music. The internet has changed that according to Wilco’s Tweedy. | | |
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| | | | | | | Billowy title track from new album out now on Youngbloods. Shoutout to pianist Ian Temple and tape manipulator Jeremy Young, who double as CEO and editor-in-chief, respectively, of Soundfly. |
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