I took a lot from Townes—don’t explain too much or write your song like it’s a thesis, don’t give them all the information, leave some things out for interpretation. | | | | Justin Townes Earle at the Echo in Los Angeles, Feb. 11, 2010.
(Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I took a lot from Townes—don’t explain too much or write your song like it’s a thesis, don’t give them all the information, leave some things out for interpretation.”
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| | rantnrave:// His musician father wanted to name him Townes, but "my mother hated TOWNES VAN ZANDT," which is how JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE got his middle name. Her issue was "the trouble that Dad and him got into," trouble that wasn't unknown to the world at large and that wouldn't be unknown to their son. "I do have memories of the man," he said in 2015, "but none of them are good." He did, however, like the man's music, which everyone, even Mom, who raised him, could agree on. Justin Townes Earle died Sunday at age 38 (as of early this morning, no cause had been made public). In his much too short life, he lived up to both the perils and the promise of his middle and last names, which meant addiction struggles (starting in his early teens), getting into a bit of trouble and filling eight albums with dark, character-driven songs celebrated for their novelistic ambition and cold, straight talk. "Nobody likes a happy song," he once said. "Let’s face it, ‘WALKING ON SUNSHINE’ makes you feel like s***.'" Earle's vision of Americana was rooted in blues, folk and country music of old, but it was decidedly modern, too; his idea of a train song was set in the New York subway system. You can easily hear dad STEVE EARLE's (and Van Zandt's) influence in his music, but Justin was equally interested in the music of generations before them and in the indie/outsider country bands that came later. He worked hard to stay out of his father's shadow: For much of his life, he avoided playing gigs with his dad, but he wasn't averse to going to AA meetings with him. They were one of the great families of American roots music, and a complicated one. A substantial and terrible loss... Turns out it's kind of hard to put on a live awards show when the city hosting it requires anyone flying in from 34 states including California and Florida to quarantine for 14 days. So New York State has tossed aside its quarantine rules for artists flying in for next Sunday's VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, which will feature live performances at outdoor locations around New York City. Performers are being told to quarantine when not performing, which is not, according to everything we've been told in the past five months, how quarantining works, and also not, according to everything we've learned about celebrities in the past five centuries, what's going to happen. In return, MTV agreed to follow "rigorous safety protocols," which is a weird thing to promise in exchange for relaxed safety protocols, but the show must go on, I guess. It will go on without RODDY RICCH and J BALVIN, who have dropped out. Balvin revealed last week he's recovering from Covid-19... JOJO and KEHLANI have both pulled TROY LANEZ features from upcoming deluxe albums. MEGAN THEE STALLION last week accused Lanez of shooting her after a party in July in the Hollywood Hills... One of England's leading touring support companies, MATT SNOWBALL MUSIC, is closing shop, a victim of the pandemic... RIP also FRANKIE BANALI, JACK SHERMAN, WALTER LURE and D.J. ROGERS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | Nashville Scene |
| Steve Earle's son Justin struggled with addiction in the shadows of giants-and came out swinging. | | |
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 | The Tennessean |
| Earle intentionally carved an Americana sound that stood apart from his father's defined songwriting. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| While incarcerated he continues to write, dream and release endless new music. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| In Germany, volunteers gathered in an arena for an experiment that could help create safety measures for live events around the world. | | |
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 | British GQ |
| Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Elton playing the Troubadour, he tells GQ how that seminal show on 25 August 1970 changed his life. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| One week on from concert venues being allowed to reopen, social distancing means that very few have been able to do so, leading to calls for further government support. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| The 30-year-old singer-dancer-actor has revitalized his image time and again to remain relevant. Now, over a decade since his big break and with the largest following of his career suddenly at his fingertips, he’s putting in the work to not let the opportunity slip away. | | |
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 | The Associated Press |
| Opera legend Plácido Domingo denied ever abusing his power during his management tenure at two U.S. opera houses in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, as he embarks on a full-throttle campaign to clear his name after two investigations found credible accusations he had engaged in ''inappropriate conduct" with multiple women over a period of decades. | | |
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 | HipHopDX |
| It's the #MeToo era but nothing has really changed. | | |
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 | Level |
| And Culture Club. Lots of Culture Club. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The pandemic sent him back to Melbourne and a life alone. Now comes his best music yet. | | |
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 | Music Industry Blog |
| Kobalt's AWAL division announced that 'hundreds of its artists have reached [the] annual streaming revenue threshold [of $100,000]'. Make no mistake, this is major milestone for a record label that has around 1% global market share. | | |
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 | Quartz |
| Even without stores open, vinyl records sales are still growing. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, the Weeknd, DaBaby, and more chart-toppers from this weird summer, discussed on our podcast The Pitchfork Review. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed News |
| Thanks to songs like "WAP," we're moving from merely accepting our pussies to celebrating them in their untameable glory. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| Figures show number of adults with depression in UK has doubled with young people hit most. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Abdel Rahman al-Shantti became a Palestinian rap star when his video went viral. His trouble began when he advocated “love between us and Israel.” | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| On a rainy morning in early August, we spoke with the singer-songwriter about her raw new album, her process, and the age-old quandary of art versus commerce. | | |
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| Level |
| Too many times, a progressive image has crumbled under misogynistic acts. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| In early August an explosion devastated Beirut, leaving the city -- including its iconic nightclub scene -- in ruins. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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