Most pop songs just don’t reflect the way it really is. You can’t be happy all the time... I know we get accused a lot of being depressive, but our songs also have a certain get-on-with-it attitude. If life is bad, there’s always something to give you solace. | | | | Kamasi Washington's "Harmony of Difference" EP is out today on Young Turks.
(Peter Van Breukelen/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Most pop songs just don’t reflect the way it really is. You can’t be happy all the time... I know we get accused a lot of being depressive, but our songs also have a certain get-on-with-it attitude. If life is bad, there’s always something to give you solace.”
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| | rantnrave:// If you were rebooting a classic daytime music and pop-culture show that was central to your youth-culture brand, would you invite popular musicians who have been accused of domestic violence or other kinds of sexual assault to appear on it? I'm not sure there's an automatically correct answer to that loaded question. We've been debating how to separate, or not separate, the art from the artist for as long as popular culture has existed. There are legitimate gaps between "accused," "frequently accused" and "guilty." There are legitimate questions about which populations tend to be accused and which do not. But this seems like a glaringly wrong answer in 2017: "I'm not sure I want to answer that question. We want to be on what pop culture wants." That's punting on first down to avoid the awful responsibility of having to call a play. TRL returns to MTV next Tuesday... Just in case you think MTV and hip-hop culture have a monopoly on pop stars doing s***ty things, here's the premiere episode of MIKE JUDGE's animated CINEMAX series TALES FROM THE TOUR BUS, which focuses on JOHNNY PAYCHECK, who was not averse to stealing other country singers' cars or shooting people. Episode two, tonight, is about JERRY LEE LEWIS who, to be fair, did get in a lot of trouble for marrying his 13-year-old cousin. Very cool series, btw, not least because Judge is decidedly not punting on the moral questions his subjects pose... This interactive feature on the language of hip-hop—the words rappers use and don't use—is fantastic. And dope. And gangsta. And trill... While the WASHINGTON POST's CHRIS RICHARDS showers praise on the most inauthentically authentic country album of the year, NPR MUSIC's ANN POWERS celebrates KESHA for "annihilating" authenticity at the RYMAN AUDITORIUM in NASHVILLE. This will not be the year we bury authenticity for good, because that year will never come, but we can always hope... BILLBOARD's "21 Under 21"... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from KAMASI WASHINGTON, IBEYI, PROTOMARTYR, FOUR TET, MILEY CYRUS, TORRES, DEMI LOVATO, IGLOOGHOST, SHANIA TWAIN, PARTYNEXTDOOR, BEN FROST, KEYON HARROLD, DAVID CROSBY, A BOOGIE WIT DA HOODIE, PRIMUS, JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD, DOLLY PARTON, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE & I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE, VESSELS, HOODIE ALLEN, PROPAGANDHI, NEIL FINN, KEEP SHELLY IN ATHENS, LONEY DEAR and the late RONNIE MONTROSE... And a scary MICHAEL JACKSON comp... And a new concert doc (and accompanying live album) from PEARL JAM playing in select cities. The CLIVE DAVIS doc THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES is in theaters, too... RIP CAROL PETERS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | i would like you to dance |
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| Streaming may (finally!) be fueling big industry growth, but Apple Music's Jimmy Iovine isn’t popping bottles quite yet. He, Zane Lowe and Larry Jackson reveal what’s needed now. | | |
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| From Kendrick Lamar's TDE camp to Rick Ross's MMG, industry heavies weigh in on digital's continued disruption of the traditional album release calendar. | | |
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| In the festival world, Steve Aoki is not just a DJ; he's a myth. He has defined his high-energy live-shows via a series of signature, persona-defining antics-Aoki doing a high jump off the decks; Aoki crowd-surfing on pool floatie; Aoki hurling sheet cakes into eager faces in the crowd. | | |
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| An interactive feature on the words rappers use (and don’t use). | | |
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| I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats |
| John Darnielle and Joseph Fink discuss the role in their lives of art, faith, and satan with John Green, author of "The Fault in Our Stars" and the upcoming "Turtles All The Way Down." And we learn why making the job of creating art more difficult can sometimes make the art itself better. | | |
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| In New York City, a self-made collective of next level electronic artists is changing the face of club culture. Meet the minds behind Discwoman. | | |
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| Moses Sumney, Dawn Richard, and KAMI on why we need to listen with our ears, not our eyes. | | |
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| Meet Midland, a Texas trio with an old-school sound and an atypical résumé. | | |
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| Four years after copyright reversion for albums released after 1978 became a possibility, only a handful of artists have regained their masters. What’s the holdup? | | |
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| The 1976 Copyright Act provides for the termination of copyright transfers - but authors need to act within a limited timeframe. Creators are entitled to reclaim their copyrights regardless of any contract stating otherwise after certain time periods. | | |
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| | | take a cha-cha-cha-chance |
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| Do you remember "Party In The U.S.A."? Ha ha, funny question, right? How could you forget it? It was everywhere. There was no escaping it. Ditto "Wrecking Ball" and "We Can't Stop." All three of those singles were massive hits for Miley Cyrus, songs she'd be a jerk to omit from her setlists on tour, the selections from her catalog most likely to unite a karaoke room. | | |
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| We remember the time LSD guru Stanley Owsley allegedly dosed the crew of Hugh Hefner's 'Playboy After Dark' (and other great musical moments) | | |
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| A rare chat with the ultimate music digger. | | |
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| Miley Cyrus and Shania Twain explore the expansively chaotic world of contemporary country pop on their new albums. Our take. | | |
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| Kesha has begun her tour in support of "Rainbow," her first album in five years, bringing both a weighty triumphalism and uncomplicated fun to the Ryman Auditorium. | | |
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| A manager, producer, sideman, and sage for Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, Hiss Golden Messenger, and more. | | |
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| This is repertory-wise one of the dullest Met seasons in memory, but the singing in the first week of performances was often superb. | | |
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| Here's what the MTV reboot is going to be like when it premieres on October 2 with Migos and Ed Sheeran. | | |
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| Annea Lockwood would rather leave interpretations of her music up to other people. “I’m always preoccupied with making the latest piece,” she says. She’ll be introducing a new work, Bayou-Borne, for Pauline, at Issue Project Room on Sept. 29, the first night of the two-evening FOR/WITH mini-festival. | | |
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| The last time Depeche Mode came to the US they caused a riot. A real riot-bottles thrown, windows shaken, lots of pressing, pushing and punching. Some 20,000 fans, many of them teenaged girls, had gathered at the Warehouse in Los Angeles for an in-store appearance. Some had waited for days. | | |
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