Every time she sang, we were all graced with a glimpse of the divine. | | Aretha Franklin poster outside the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, on Aug. 29, 2018. (Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | “Every time she sang, we were all graced with a glimpse of the divine.” |
| |
| rantnrave:// And summer ends with another Memorial Day weekend, so to speak. On Saturday, SEN. JOHN MCCAIN's four-day funeral ends with a private service in Washington D.C., while today, ARETHA FRANKLIN will be laid to rest in Detroit with a ceremony and celebration that may last into 2019. The senator's service will be somber, reflecting a dark moment in American politics that, one hopes, will eventually prove to have been a minor blip in the history of a nation. The singer's service might get loud, reflecting something more everlasting, more irreplaceable, more—dare we say it—joyful. STEVIE WONDER, CHAKA KHAN, ARIANA GRANDE, JENNIFER HUDSON, BILL CLINTON, SMOKEY ROBINSON and the REV. JESSE JACKSON will be among the musicians and notables inside the GREATER GRACE TEMPLE, and there will be more than 100 pink CADILLACs parked outside. The service will be broadcast and live-streamed widely starting at 10 am ET. The public mourning of celebrities, writes NPR MUSIC'S ANN POWERS, is "a form of protest and of mutual recognition and, yes, of entertainment, in the deepest realization of that word's potential." Expect Aretha's funeral to be the deepest realization of all of that, in honor of a voice and spirit that has been part of our collective cultural conscience for half a century. Her songs are part of who we are and part of who we will continue to be—and that's why I feel confident we can survive a dark moment in politics, that we can outlast a temporary loss of grace. Voices like Aretha's can still carry us through, together. MusicSET: "Aretha Franklin Was the Voice of America"... Long before he wanted a job in Washington, BETO O'ROURKE worshipped the D.C. punk label DISCHORD RECORDS: "They started their own label, they pressed their own records, they wrote their own songs, they booked their own tours and they set conditions, like: you’re not gonna pay more than five bucks to come into this show." A self-sufficient small business, that is. I'm not clear what the Republican Party would have against that. His band was called FOSS and sounded like this... The JAMES LAVELLE documentary THE MAN FROM MO'WAX opens today in the UK and NEW YORK... Yes that really was MICHAEL JACKSON on that SIMPSONS episode in 1991. Until the singing started...It's FRIDAY and that means new music from TROYE SIVAN, IDLES, EMINEM (surprise!), WHY DON'T WE, ANNA CALVI, SUNNI COLÓN, ALKALINE TRIO, BIG RED MACHINE, ALEXIS FFRENCH, WILD NOTHING, THOU, IRON & WINE, JAKE SHIMABUKURU, MADELEINE PEYROUX, LLOYD, KATELYN TARVER, AMOS LEE, MENACE BEACH, AARON LEE TASJAN, SAINTSENECA, MUNCIE GIRLS, BUN B, MOGWAI, AYOKAY, KRAKOW, OMNIUM GATHERUM, the PINEAPPLE THIEF, CURREN$Y, the KOOKS and DARWIN DEEZ... RIP COLIN MICHAEL MULHERN... MusicREDEF will be off on Monday, which is Labor Day, not Memorial Day, no matter how it may feel. See you Tuesday. | | - Matty Karas, curator |
|
| | Vanity Fair |
How one 28-year-old feminist bluffed her way into running a copy department and made rock journalism a legitimate endeavor, putting six women on the Rolling Stone masthead in the process. | |
|
| Longreads |
Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism. | |
|
| Please Kill Me |
First spotted at the premiere of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Gram Parsons -- the new Byrd, then Flying Burrito Brother and later, solo artist - made an instant lifelong impression | |
|
| Okayplayer |
'80s doc "The Decline Of Western Civilization" gave a candid look into the lives of punk and heavy metal artists. Now, social media does the same for rappers. | |
|
| Noisey |
The 23-year-old Australian makes universal pop that looks queer listeners directly in the eye. With his sophomore album 'Bloom', Sivan is ready to step into a new realm of pop stardom. | |
|
| Music Business Worldwide |
The likes of Spotify and YouTube have faced backlash from Nicki Minaj, Cupcakke and Thom Yorke. | |
|
| Stereogum |
As long as there has been pop music, there have been boy bands. But ask any American about the "boy band era" and they'll probably assume you're talking about the turn of the millennium, when Backstreet Boys and NSYNC led an insurgent army of meticulously styled hormone-activating ensembles. | |
|
| NPR Music |
It's no question that the streaming percentage of songs in Spanish has skyrocketed over the last year. But what does this increase in visibility mean to Puerto Ricans, post-María? | |
|
| The Guardian |
Kathryn Frazier spent much of her career raising the profiles of clients like Justin Bieber and Miguel through publicity but now as a life coach she also helps them stay on an even keel. | |
|
| Detroit Free Press |
Listen to our collection of readers' personal stories about the Queen of Soul. | |
| | Garage Magazine |
Since there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, you may as well consume while looking sad about it. | |
|
| Rolling Stone |
With the addition of newer, more affordable studios and the appointment of Chief Creative Advisor Nile Rodgers, the Fab Four’s former playground has been reborn. | |
|
| UPROXX |
Her successful summer couldn’t have come at a better time. | |
|
| Polyphonic |
When Alt-J broke into the mainstream, a lot of people didn't really know what to think. Some critics loathed them, others lauded them, and some found them ripe for parody, but there was one thing they could all agree o. lt-J's sound was distinctive. | |
|
| Genius |
The drug kingpin has been referenced on hundreds of songs. | |
|
| Slate |
You can’t just throw out a piano. You can’t just turn one down, either. We enter a glittery fugue state that blinds us to the likelihood that no one will play this piano unless forced to. Because in this vision, it’s not us playing; it’s our kids. | |
|
| The New York Times |
“And Nothing Hurt,” the first Spiritualized album in six years, is the result of the 53-year-old musician’s “obsessive” process of assembling sounds. | |
|
| The Fader |
Her new FourTet-produced album, "Broken Politics," is out October 19. | |
|
| NPR Music |
The Kelly Clarkson smash wasn't just a great pop song: In 2004 it was a cultural bellwether, a sign that the walls between mainstream and underground were starting to crack. | |
|
| Detroit Free Press |
The Queen of Soul's rendition of "Respect" is one of the most influential recordings in pop music history and one of the most indelible songs. | |
| | YouTube |
| | | Live at the Fillmore West, March 7, 1971. |
| |
|
| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group |
|
|