It means so much to me to see African dance on such a platform. | | | | We are all human beings: Logic performs with immigrant parents and children at the Video Music Awards, Aug. 20, 2018.
(Noam Galai/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | | “It means so much to me to see African dance on such a platform.”
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| | rantnrave:// D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T? The VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS ends with a tribute to the great ARETHA FRANKLIN that has nothing to do with the great ARETHA FRANKLIN (you know I love you, MADONNA, but no), followed by a tribute to, um, AEROSMITH, and now I have no idea what year it is or if I missed a rock and roll obituary last week or if science still works. The QUEEN OF SOUL was called home four days ago and we're going to wrap things up by saluting the 1970s of "DREAM ON" and "TOYS IN THE ATTIC" via TYLER, PERRY and MALONE? Instead of the '70s of "ROCK STEADY" and "BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER" via, I don't know, KHAN, TURNER and GRANDE? Wherefore aren't thou BEYONCÉ?... Things that happened in the previous two and a half hours that you plausibly could have ended your 2018 video awards show with: CAMILA CABELLO winning either of her two major awards for a song that celebrated her Cuban heritage while bringing one of the past year's best Latin pop beats to the US charts. TRAVIS SCOTT medleying three songs from his current #1 album, ASTROWORLD, with a Hall of Fame vocal assist from JAMES BLAKE. LOGIC and RYAN TEDDER bringing out immigrant families in "WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS" t-shirts for their politically pointed performance of "ONE DAY." ARIANA GRANDE serving some Last Supper. Steven Tyler and Madonna duetting on an acoustic-guitar version of "I DON'T WANT TO MISS A THING." You pick... (One of the suggestions in that last item didn't actually happen anytime on Monday night. FYI)... RODNEY CARMICHAEL's really great pre-show read on the "Afro-Surrealist Worldview" looming over the VMAs made a little less sense by the end of the evening. It was a surreal evening, though... A final VMA: A year ago, MTV's two major awards shows—Video Music and Movie & TV—ditched gender distinctions. Less noted is that the VMAs also ditched nouns. Among Monday's categories: Best Hip Hop. Best Latin. Best Pop. But best pop what? Whatever it is, Ariana Grande won it... Who's #1? On the current BILLBOARD albums chart, it's Travis Scott, who finds himself on top, vs. NICKI MINAJ, who blames the #2 showing of her album QUEEN on—I am not making this up—Scott, KYLIE JENNER, BILLBOARD, SPOTIFY, REPUBLIC RECORDS and, if you work somewhere in the music industry, probably you, too. Minaj later said her complaints were "sarcasm/dry humor," which was believable in a presidential way. Does anyone care either way? If you work somewhere in the music industry, you probably do, with good reason, but the top of the chart, suggests the NEW YORK TIMES' JON CARAMANICA, is "a metric that’s becoming increasingly irrelevant." Meanwhile in the race to be the best-selling album ever, the RIAA has taken away MICHAEL JACKSON's belt and given it to the EAGLES. This is US-only though. More interesting to me, it's also albums-that-were-audited-this-week-only. The RIAA just audited sales of THEIR GREATEST HITS 1971–1975. The last time it audited sales of THRILLER was sometime in 2017. Before this year, the last time the Eagles album was audited was in 2006. Which, um, what? In short, THRILLER had sold more copies in the US through 2017 than GREATEST HITS had through 2006, and now GREATEST HITS has sold more albums through 2018 than THRILLER sold through 2017. In other news, DONALD TRUMP had 63 million votes as of 2016 and HILLARY CLINTON's votes haven't been counted yet... Aretha is an asteroid, literally, and perhaps will bump into BOWIE up there one day... SPOTIFY, what's with that logo?... RIP KHAIRA ARBY and EDDIE WILLIS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| With a commitment to advertising, the streaming services face a problem shared among platforms and publishers: ad blocking. | | |
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| For Annie Clark, the guitar is not an appendage, not an extension of the body. It is its own body with its own voice. She doesn't use it to embellish her songs; she uses it to build worlds. | | |
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| The Columbia recordings of Aretha Franklin between 1960 and 1965 are not her best, but they show us an artist learning her craft and gathering the tools that would change American music. | | |
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| The NRSC accused Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Phil Bredesen of partnering with "the unhinged left" by holding a rally headlined by Jason Isbell and Ben Folds. | | |
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| Philly rock band Nothing have braved a tough road -- from death and beatdowns to prison and scandal -- but now that they’ve reached their apex, frontman Domenic Palermo is making peace with chaos. | | |
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| ‘London Town’ solidified K-A not only as one of the forerunners of grime, but also one of the best songwriters and craftsmen of his generation. | | |
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| Now that checks are on their way to thousands of artists in the Sony Music system, the result of the company's plan to share the $750 million in profit it collected from the April sale of 50% of its Spotify stock, some lingering questions remain, chief among them: Who is the check made out to? | | |
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| Called “Liu Xing,” which means “shooting star,” the song is performed by Katherine Ho, a 19-year-old biology major at the University of Southern California. | | |
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| When chasms open up between an artist’s views and that of their fanbase, they can be difficult to bridge – even by great records. Thus, Yeezy’s pro-Trump soundbites risked consigning his latest to irrelevance. | | |
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| "I got really into the idea of the fight, which is the worst thing you could do." | | |
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| The unofficial anthem of bachelorette parties, Madonna's 1984 hit can be seen as a wink at virginity's ongoing place in the theater of weddings -- even today, when most brides are sexually experienced. | | |
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| Marvin Schuhmann and Valentino Betz are celebrating five years of running a shop, record label, clothing line and now, a publishing house. | | |
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