Early in my career, I was pretty damn aggravated. I knew people getting songs on the radio weren’t as good as us. For a long time I felt ignored. But it was good for me, because it pissed me off. There was a lot of doubt, and that doubt really drove me. | | | | Rayna Jaymes in the studio: Connie Britton in "Nashville," season one.
(Jon LeMay/ABC/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Early in my career, I was pretty damn aggravated. I knew people getting songs on the radio weren’t as good as us. For a long time I felt ignored. But it was good for me, because it pissed me off. There was a lot of doubt, and that doubt really drove me.”
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| | rantnrave:// NASHVILLE, one of my two all-time favorite prime-time soap operas about music and infidelity that I had to stop watching after I realized everybody on the show was going to sleep with everybody else on the show and/or everybody was going to screw everybody else (hi, EMPIRE) comes to an end tonight on CMT. For all my complaints, "Nashville" was probably the closest we've come to a sort of realistic depiction of music-making and the music biz on TV; it had CONNIE BRITTON (who rumors say may make a surprise return in the finale), and the songs, which could fill several box sets, were consistently good. Using actual MUSIC ROW songwriters to write actual Music Row songs was the show's greatest, and simplest, trick. The TENNESSEAN's DAVE PAULSON offers his six favorite songs from a six-year run. I'd add this SARAH BUXTON and KATE YORK ballad that ended the first season, and this one by Buxton, JEDD HUGHES and KEVIN GRIFFIN, which we got to see being written and arranged over a number of episodes. Maybe the BLUEBIRD will be a little easier to get into now... Another thing about "Nashville": Its protagonists were women, and while diligently portraying some of the obstacles they face, it also dared to envision a business that might welcome them. An activist group called the WOMEN OF MUSIC ACTION NETWORK on Wednesday posted this graphic showing what current country radio playlists would look like if you removed all the men. To quote the network, "Words really aren't needed here." Women's voices apparently aren't needed here either. For a nice contrast, this tweet from the WASHINGTON POST's CHRIS RICHARDS suggests what might happen if you didn't actively, consciously try to deny women access to a microphone... I love stories about the process of making music. How and why songs come to be, what tools are used, which gospel song served as inspiration. MusicSET: "Behind the Song, Vol. 8"... Resistance and protest are built into the very fabric of music. Maybe stop asking why you think there are no protest songs anymore and ask yourself how and why someone who is not exactly like you would express their resistance, and what that resistance might sound like. Because it is there, and always has been. "On Resistance," by HANIF ABDURRAQIB... This year's KENNEDY CENTER HONORS will fete REBA MCENTIRE, CHER, PHILIP GLASS, WAYNE SHORTER and the musical HAMILTON... MusicREDEF is taking a long weekend; we'll be back in your inbox Monday morning. But Friday will still be FRIDAY, and that means new music from DENZEL CURRY, MASAYOSHI FUJITA, RL GRIME, KENNY CHESNEY, MADISEN WARD & THE MAMA BEAR, DANIEL BACHMAN, OTEP, HALESTORM, BOZ SCAGGS, UNDERWORLD & IGGY POP, TONY MOLINA, FACE TO FACE, RISE AGAINST, N.O.R.E., PHANTASTIC FERNITURE, CODY JINKS, SHADOWPARTY, ISRAEL NASH and RAFFI... RIP PATRICK WILLIAMS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Streaming has upturned music’s status quo - and labels are looking farther afield for truly fresh talent. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Arctic Monkeys, Father John Misty, and Jarvis Cocker take the idea of hotel-room debauchery to surreal new places. | | |
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 | Afropunk |
| A short essay by the poet, writer and critic, Hanif Abdurraqib, on the many different manifestations of Resistance, and why all of them are crucial. | | |
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 | Highsnobiety |
| When a musician or group truly captures the imagination of a receptive and impressionable audience, it transcends the confines of the bedroom studios or rudimentary practice spaces in which it was forged and gives way to a genuine movement. | | |
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 | The Tennessean |
| Over the last six years, the TV drama – shot on location in Nashville and centered around the country music industry – has been a transformative force. | | |
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 | Bustle |
| My friends who grew up in religious homes tell me that there wasn’t a moment they “learned” about God -- it just felt like something they had always known, like how to sleep, or breathe, or blame their farts on the dog. I felt the same way growing up, except about Cher. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Released to the public in June, YouTube Music provides yet another avenue for corporate parent Google to storm the entertainment sector. It has some unique advantages, but its connection to the video sharing site may also prove problematic. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| This 19-year-old rapper is having a breakout year on the strength of “Goodbye & Good Riddance,” the full-length album he released in May. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Are clubbers getting tired of techno on the White Isle? | | |
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 | NME |
| Why 'cashless' festivals -- newly championed by Bestival and Camp Bestival -- are a bureaucratic hellscape that make bean counters of us all. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| The air conditioner is broken, and all Vicente Prieto Borrego can do is wait. Borrego knows what’s at stake: Thousands of magnetic tapes, records, cassettes and CDs recorded by EGREM, the Cuban music label founded in 1964. The archive should be kept at exactly 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s impossible with an air conditioner whose filter is clogged by dust. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| The format has fallen to the wayside in the past few years. But should we be mourning its demise or celebrating? | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| Modern country’s sharpest songwriter sounds off -- on gun-control, what country should (and shouldn’t) be, hating lip-syncing, loving Bernie Sanders, and that time he almost died. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Those records included efforts from Sampha, The XX and Nines. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| In the first half of 2018, overall on-demand streaming increased 41.7 percent to reach 403.5 billion U.S. streams, according to Nielsen Music. That growth defies mathematical trends, which dictate that, as a base enlarges, it becomes harder to achieve a bigger percentage growth than in preceding time periods. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| To the majority of her fans, 19-year-old Clairo’s rise was the quintessential anyone-can-do-it success story of the viral era. But a vocal minority began to wonder whether it was a more familiar tale than anyone was letting on. What’s real for the young pop star? | | |
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 | Resident Advisor |
| This annual gathering in the Japanese countryside is a haven for children, dogs and ravers alike. | | |
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| The Washington Post |
| The Australian songwriter continues slouching into one of our most confusing emotions. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| He stopped making new pop music in 1993, but his fans stuck around. Celebrating his 100th Madison Square Garden show, he spoke about writing songs and staying alive. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Some people think that Post Malone really stinks -- literally. "Lol why does everyone want @PostMalone to be on the show," Queer Eye co-host Karamo Brown tweeted last week in reply to a (seemingly since-deleted) tweet from user @tsusnami, shortly after it was announced that the Netflix makeover-reality show reboot was renewed for a third season. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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