There's like a hundred songs that everyone agrees on, and then some others at the margins. That's all you really need to know. | | | | Surprise! Guess who's eighth album was announced yesterday and is out today.
(Emma McIntyre/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “There's like a hundred songs that everyone agrees on, and then some others at the margins. That's all you really need to know.”
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| | rantnrave:// I'm not one to review albums that didn't exist until two hours ago, but I'd like to take a moment out of this New Music Pandemic Friday to say I'm most definitely here for the bedroom pop version of TAYLOR SWIFT who can low-key boil down an extramarital affair to "What started in beautiful rooms / Ends with meetings in parking lots" as if it were 1974 and she was writing A-sides of GEORGE JONES singles, and who can look around her Rhode Island mansion and decide that a half-century-ish history of its most famous previous inhabitant would be a good idea for another song, with names and places and details and an autobiographical payoff like it's 1976 and she's WARREN ZEVON, and who can still, my dad-rock references and AARON DESSNER's indie-soft-rock production notwithstanding, make it sound like a Taylor Swift album. Just maybe not the exact one she would have made in less strange circumstances than the summer of 2020. Surprise, as it were. I appreciate, too, that FOLKLORE (which has production from JACK ANTONOFF as well as Dessner and was released overnight with less than a day's notice) avoids the electronic, in-the-box production that would seemingly be the most convenient way to make an album in a hurry while quarantined. (See: CHARLI XCX's very good electro-pop quarantine album.) The soft, largely analog feel of "folklore" reminds me that I've been drawn, in these quarantine days, to underproduced and underlit livestreams of musicians alone in their apartments rather than carefully staged, camera-ready productions. Swift's album isn't underproduced but it's stripped down by her recent standards and radiates a similar kind of casual intimacy. It's unmoored from most notions of current pop, but very much moored, at least on first listen, to the zeitgeist of this strange summer... My congressman, ADAM SCHIFF, would like to recommend MALIK BENDJELLOUL's great 2012 documentary SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN. The congressman brought it up twice during an ASCAP virtual town hall interview with PAUL WILLIAMS Thursday afternoon. So that's your weekend assignment, fellow residents of California's 28th congressional district and/or members of ASCAP... MERCURY PRIZE nominees: lots of women, not a lot of surprises... BANDCAMP is extending its Bandcamp Friday program, in which its waiving its revenues the first Friday of every month, through the end of the year... It's Friday and that means there's also new music from LOGIC (allegedly his last album but you don't believe it and neither do I), SHIRLEY COLLINS, the KID LAROI, SADA BABY, BLUEFACE, JESSY LANZA, COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS, SNOWGOOSE, LORI MCKENNA, JESSE DAYTON, KATIE DEY, ECOSTRIKE, the ACACIA STRAIN, HAKEN, NECK DEEP, SPARKLE DIVISION, JON HASSELL, KAMAAL WILLIAMS, LUPE FIASCO & KAELIN ELLIS, CURREN$Y & HARRY FRAUD, MISTERWIVES, DEVENDRA BANHART, LIZA ANNE, CINDER WELL, LUKE JENNER (debut solo album from RAPTURE singer), NEON TREES, the NAKED AND FAMOUS, GEORGE CLANTON & NICK HEXUM, SEASICK STEVE, BILL KIRCHEN, MYSTIFIED and maybe or maybe not KANYE WEST. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | the last great american dynasty |
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 | GQ |
| Do you remember weddings? The sweaty, giddy, nearly forgotten feeling of togetherness. Nobody gets that like Jerry Bennett, the maestro behind the Sultans. Daniel Riley goes inside his world of high-dollar dance parties to divine the mysteries of what we’re missing most: each other. | | |
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 | Digital Trends |
| Imagine a cool, zeitgeist-capturing brand with a streaming music service co-owned by one of the biggest names in hip-hop history, which attracts the support of major celebrities, while rapidly ascending to the promised land of multibillion-dollar valuations. Is this the story of streaming music service Tidal? No. | | |
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 | Variety |
| From the moment it was announced, Rave Family Block Fest felt almost too good to be true: With more than 950 artists - including big names like A-Trak, Zhu, MJ, Maya Jane Coles, Khruangbin and even Paris Hilton - and 85 stages entirely within the game Minecraft, it was positioned as the biggest-ever virtual festival. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| The superstar was a rare holdout among A-list musicians, favoring long release cycles over surprise drops. With ‘folklore,’ she may have ended that practice for the entire industry. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| Released with little fanfare this move to more muted songwriting is proof Swift’s music can thrive without the celebrity drama. | | |
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 | Consequence of Sound |
| Members of Skunk Anansie, Alice in Chains, Body Count, Nonpoint, and more share their experiences of being Black in America. | | |
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 | The FADER |
| On the 10th anniversary of One Direction’s formation, read an excerpt from Hannah Ewens’s "Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture" about the band’s most committed fans. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Agreement with the National Music Publishers’ Association is effective retroactively as of May 1. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| "Who in the room knows Roblox?" asked WMG's chief innovation officer for recorded music Scott Cohen at the NY:LON Connect conference in January. | | |
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 | FLOOD Magazine |
| The four artists want the music of their self-titled debut to bring people together. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| After getting cut from singing shows multiple times, Verdes has a breakthrough hit with “Stuck in the Middle.” | | |
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 | Saving Country Music |
| Everybody wants artists and songwriters to be credited and compensated. But by attempting to protect their creators and copyrights, labels and rights owners are leaving themselves and their artists on the sidelines of one of the most revolutionary moments in audio entertainment since the phonograph and the radio. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| Which? says firm changed policy to deny refunds if tickets can be used in 2021. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| "Different artists, to different degrees, have used this as a time for more creativity." | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| The garage rock underground has been in a state of reckoning this week after a series of sexual misconduct allegations surrounding Orange County record store and label Burger Records. Ripple effects have included response statements from accused artists, a Burger-affiliated festival severing ties with the label, and at least one band being removed from streaming platforms. | | |
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 | The Forty-Five |
| Linda Martell was one of country music's greats - but unlike others from her generation, her name has been unjustly forgotten. 50 years since her first and only album, Leonie Cooper looks back at an unsung hero. | | |
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| Music Business Worldwide |
| Modern Sky’s Dave Pichilingi on what coming out of COVID-19 lockdown has looked like for the music industry in China. | | |
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 | The Native |
| We're progressing beyond the need to box music into definite categories, do we really need a chart for the contentious genre of Afrobeats? | | |
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 | More Fire |
| Rap music elicits so many good feelings, but certain music spurs an uneasiness that doesn't vibe with the bassline. | | |
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 | Dallas Observer |
| For more than three decades, Dallas group Absu has carved a space in the industry as a quintessential black metal band, but this reign came to an abrupt end in January when the band announced its dissolution on Facebook. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "folklore," out today on Republic. |
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