I don’t know how I'm making this music per se. I never went to a music school, I never know what you need to know for music, all I know is the feeling of music and how it should be. I just utilize that with intuition. Out of body experience, spirit controlling the flesh. | | | | Achy breaky horses: Billy Ray Cyrus and Lil Nas X at Stagecoach, Indio, Calif., April 28, 2019.
(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I don’t know how I'm making this music per se. I never went to a music school, I never know what you need to know for music, all I know is the feeling of music and how it should be. I just utilize that with intuition. Out of body experience, spirit controlling the flesh.”
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| | rantnrave:// I was asked Monday to try to explain the phenomenon that is "OLD TOWN ROAD," which is now the most successful pop single ever, having spent more weeks at #1 than either "ONE SWEET DAY" or "DESPACITO," not to mention "HEY JUDE" or "HEY YA!" or, hey, any other song that may have been stuck in your head for 17 weeks or 17 years or 17 anythings. I found it a deceptively difficult question. Every reasonably simple explanation—all those memes, all those remixes, all that marketing, all the controversy—was followed, in my head, with "but why him?" If it's all about the meme, why are we talking about LIL NAS X today and not, say, MEGAN THEE STALLION or BLANCO BROWN? If marketing, why are we talking about "Old Town Road" and not the two TAYLOR SWIFT singles that dropped this spring and summer (and that both stalled at #2, behind "OTR")? If remixes, why the rapper who scored a BILLY RAY CYRUS feature and not the singer who scored the JUSTIN BIEBER feature? ROLLING STONE's ELIAS LEIGHT makes the strange argument that a change in BILLBOARD's chart accounting paved the way for lengthy chart runs like this—strange because he's referring to a change made in 1991—and then says streaming and narrowing radio playlists made such a run even more likely circa 2019. But why then is it Lil Nas X and not, say, DRAKE wearing the all-time pop crown? SLATE's CHRIS MOLANPHY, maybe the most astute chart-watcher working today, articulates a lot of the above factors better than I could before arriving at the matter of Lil Nas X himself, who demonstrated the "uncanny ability to keep the virality going long after the public might have moved onto something else." And who made music fans want to "root for him." I buy that. He's savvy and likable. And yet. All that rooting wouldn't amount to much if there wasn't something worth rooting for. Like a wide-eyed, optimistic, relatable outsider who reached into a cloud of $30 beats and his own wanderlust and turned out a pop song for the ages. "Old Town Road" is endlessly hummable (with an assist from TRENT REZNOR, whose hummability quotient escaped pretty much the entirety of pop culture until Lil Nas X and producer YOUNGKIO happened upon it), instantly memorable, and between the silly lines about GUCCI cowboy hats and bladders full of lean it contains a couple succinct, sing-song affirmations of the American dream: "I'm gonna ride till I can't no more." "Can't nobody tell me nothin'." ("A fantastic exchange from grief to escape," writes AFROPUNK's MYLES E. JOHNSON in describing the passing of the pop torch from MARIAH CAREY and BOYZ II MEN's "ONE SWEET DAY" to "OLD TOWN ROAD.") Entire rock, hip-hop and country careers have been built on little more than that. We streamed it and memed it and dreamed it not because 20-year old MONTERO LAMAR HILL told us to but because it resonated and because we wanted to. Molanphy again: "What kept it a hit was the public’s insatiable desire to buy it, stream it, and hear it on their radios all summer long." I completely buy that. That's the exact power of a great pop song. Which is what this is... DAVE MATTHEWS, ANDERSON .PAAK, MARREN MORRIS, IRVING AZOFF and CORAN CAPSHAW are among the artists, managers and lawyers behind the MUSIC ARTISTS COALITION, a new lobbying group that aims to be for artists what the RIAA is for labels and the NMPA is for publishers... I fought the law: A jury in Los Angeles says KATY PERRY's "DARK HORSE" is guilty of infringing on the copyright of FLAME's Christian rock song "JOYFUL NOISE." Perry and collaborators including DR. LUKE and MAX MARTIN are liable for damages to be determined in a second phase of the trial starting today. In Luxembourg, the European Union's highest court says a sample as short as two seconds long requires clearance unless it's used "in a modified form unrecognizable to the ear." The ruling is expected to benefit KRAFTWERK in a long-running copyright infringement suit against the producers of SABRINA SETLUR's "NUR MIR," which recognizably samples Kraftwerk's "METALL AUF METALL." In Sweden, A$AP ROCKY's assault trial begins today under no small amount of international scrutiny... The world's highest-paid DJs... The world's highest-paid bass player whose income does not come from playing the bass... The Los Angeles beat scene is reeling from the death of producer, LOW END THEORY staple and BROTHA FROM ANOTHA PLANET artist RAS G. RIP. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | The Independent |
| Too many people associate the guitar with white indie rockers then blame the ‘death of rock’ for the instrument’s demise. But the six-string is being used best elsewhere, and the Mercury shortlist proves it. | | |
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 | Narratively |
| First he found God. Then he found death metal. But Father Robert Culat believes there’s no reason the two can’t co-exist. | | |
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 | School of Visual Arts |
| Dynamic album covers, innovative videos, ambitious stage setups and eye-catching merchandise have been staples of popular music for decades. In recent years, though, nontraditional design has come to the forefront, intersecting with the entertainment industry--and, by extension, the tech industry--in ways that seemed more like science-fiction fodder just 20 years ago. | | |
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 | Slate |
| It wasn’t just the controversy, the memes, or all those remixes. | | |
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 | Afropunk |
| There was nothing I wanted to do more as a queer Black teenager than escape. My household was pleasant, my parents were fantastic, and school was, well, school. However, the longing to run away lived underneath my flesh even when I intuitively knew that my life was reasonably good. But it was not good enough. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| Dave Matthews, Anderson .Paak and Maren Morris have teamed with some of the industry’s top power brokers to form a new lobbying group that will represent artists in Washington and state capitals across the U.S. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Live Nation has raised ticket prices, globally, for the best seats at amphitheater and arena shows by close to a third since Q1 2018. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Two hip-hop figures from different scenes and generations find that they have much more in common than not. | | |
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 | JazzTimes |
| A freewheeling conversation between the two master musicians. | | |
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 | Variety |
| This year's Newport Folk Festival, on the occasion of its 60 thanniversary, was chock full of one great Woodstock moment after another -- representing, you know, not the real Woodstock 50, should there still turn out to be one, but the Woodstock 50 that exists in our imaginations. | | |
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| | | eventually we'll be together |
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 | Forbes |
| A break-down of how A&R executive and Lava Records Founder Jason Flom discovered Zebra, Twisted Sister, Kid Rock, Enya and her band Clannad. From research records to sync placements, we discuss routes to global hit records back in a time where streaming did not exist. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Did Scooter Braun overpay? Not at all. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| Backed by a band assembled just for this occasion, the breakthrough pop icon performs three joyfully showy songs from Cuz I Love You. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Remembered today primarily as an ode to girls in Abercrombie & Fitch, the song and the tragic story behind it paint a picture of the music at the turn of the century. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| When a shooter ambushed the Gilroy Garlic Festival Sunday, a band witnessed the violence from the stage. | | |
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 | Water and Music |
| Rethinking creativity and accessibility for music in a world where “there will be ten million songs a day.” | | |
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| Music Business Worldwide |
| "As streaming and subscriber growth continues apace our music too has enjoyed growth in line with the market." | | |
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| Variety |
| With the top touring performers nearing an average age of 53 years old, a music attorney makes a case for what's next. | | |
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| Billboard |
| Shawn Mendes’ manager Andrew Gertler on his client’s biggest year so far. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| On the fiftieth anniversary of the festival, a thirty-six-hour boxed set reveals some truths behind baby-boomer myths. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | And they said guitar solos were dead. From "Para Mí," out now on Interscope. |
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