Can you imagine being in a bus for six weeks with some of the people you work with? It would be absolute hell, even if you liked them all. It’s like dating more than one person, your whole team, but not getting the fun part. Just getting all the, like, how you chew, how you cut your nails. | | | | Angel Olsen's "All Mirrors" is out today on Jagjaguwar.
(Cameron McCool/Pitch Perfect PR) | | | | |  | “Can you imagine being in a bus for six weeks with some of the people you work with? It would be absolute hell, even if you liked them all. It’s like dating more than one person, your whole team, but not getting the fun part. Just getting all the, like, how you chew, how you cut your nails.”
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| | rantnrave:// Stat of the day, from a DEEZER survey of music fans in the UK: 27 percent of them play albums "the way the artist intended" (to quote MUSIC WEEK's summary of the survey). Or, to put it another way, 73 percent of them don't. About three-quarters of the 2,000 adults surveyed aren't in the habit of starting an album with the opening track, playing the second track next and continuing in that fashion until they get to—as the BEATLES might have called it—"THE END." (And yes, I know, shut up.) If you're an artist, all that time you spent sequencing your perfect album might be going to waste and might have been better spent tweeting (unless you sequenced all the singles up front the way your manager told you to, in which case never mind). And all that time you spent recording track 11, the weird one that doesn't quite have a chorus, might have been better spent hunting for NINE INCH NAILS banjo samples. Then again, maybe this is the way it's always been, and maybe we 27 percenters should be all the more grateful that you artists keep following your heart down album-track rabbit holes and that you then tear out your hair trying to put all those rabbit holes in perfect order. It's possible the main difference between album listening habits in 2019 and album listening habits in 1999 or 1989 is that we have data now that we didn't have then. (Why, in fact, does Deezer have to survey anyone? Can't it just look at its own real-time data?) You, my fellow music geek, were listening to PAUL'S BOUTIQUE and PRETTY HATE MACHINE and THINGS FALL APART front-to-back, exactly the way the BEASTIES, NIN and the ROOTS would have wanted you to, but that's not necessarily the way it worked for the general population. They listened to singles. They listened to singles so emphatically that labels were in the habit of putting singles out of print a soon as they hit the top of the chart because they were petrified the 73 percenters of olden days would never buy the album, never mind listen to the thing, if they could still buy the single. That's literally how record companies used to work. They all but made you buy the album. Their choice, not yours. But no more. I still listen to albums. I like flow. Maybe you only listen to playlists. Or shuffle your favorite tracks endlessly. Because you want a different kind of flow. Maybe you're KANYE WEST and you haven't released JESUS IS KING because you haven't nailed the sequence yet. (Or maybe you're still mixing, or recording, or writing, who knows?) Or maybe you're a Kanye fan and you're thinking, "Don't sweat it, dude, I'm going to switch the order the minute you drop it anyway." And maybe he's thinking, "I'm not sweating it, I can change the sequence myself a year from now if I feel like it." So which is more important in the end: The way the artist intended it, or the way the listener received it?... Other stat of the day: It's been 10 years since anyone over 39 years old won the GRAMMY for Album of the Year... How to sell out MADISON SQUARE GARDEN without a manager, a label or a hit... How to top the BILLBOARD Mainstream Rock Songs chart without a label (but with a manager)... Two of the gang members TEKASHI 6IX9INE testified against were convicted Thursday of racketeering and other crimes, and face potential life sentences... MGM RESORTS has agreed to pay up to $800 million to settle lawsuits stemming from the mass shooting at the ROUTE 91 HARVEST festival two years ago. The shooter fired from inside a room at MGM's MANDALAY BAY hotel, which he had stocked with an arsenal of assault weapons and ammunition... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from ANGEL OLSEN, DANNY BROWN, NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS, WILCO, SUPER-M, SCARLXRD, THAT DOG., GESAFFELSTEIN, ROBERT GLASPER, the AVETT BROTHERS, IMANI COPPOLA, SUMMER WALKER, MIKA, FINNEAS, TONY NJOKU, HIROMI, BILL FRISELL, CHICK COREA, BRANTLEY GILBERT, OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW, KELSEY WALDON, BORIS, DIIV, GATECREEPER, JULIE'S HAIRCUT, EXHUMED, INSOMNIUM, SEIZURES, the MENZINGERS, LAGWAGON, PEEWEE LONGWAY & MONEY MAN, CARLA DAL FORNO, PELADA, L'ORANGE & JEREMIAH JAE, ALEXA ROSE, ZACH WILLIAMS, LOS LOBOS, NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS and KACY & CLAYTON... And MICHAEL STIPE's first solo single, "YOUR CAPRICIOUS SOUL," arrives Saturday. It will benefit the environmental activist group EXTINCTION REBELLION... RIP LARRY WILLIS, MARY ELLEN CATANEO and KAREL GOTT. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | NPR Music |
| Netflix seems to release so many music-related projects - but are they just another box to check on the road to eyeball monopolization? | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Lana Del Rey on her love for the Eagles and all things California, her new boyfriend and the righteous anger of Greta Thunberg. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| After years of industry debate, one company-Deezer-is finally trying out the user-centric approach to streaming royalties. | | |
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 | GQ |
| The indie rockstar finds a new home and a new sense of self. | | |
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 | XXL |
| "I'm Gonna Be Me Going" from a trap star to a rap star has changed Lil Baby's life and no one saw it coming-including him--but yet he still believes it's his destiny. | | |
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 | Variety |
| Congressman Jerrold Nadler may be in headlines in recent weeks as part of the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, but he's also been a longtime advocate for creators' rights in the music industry and played an enormous role in last year's passage of the Music Modernization Act. | | |
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 | God Is In The TV |
| Get ready for Brexit! But get ready for what? It appears the government would rather not be honest with you. In fact they are currently wasting millions on advertising on Facebook on how to prepare for No-Deal. A government report on the consequences of a No-Deal exit of the EU, called Operation Yellowhammer leaked in August, detailing the terrible issues it could cause. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| “The Just Assassins” gives ethnic minority actors a chance to shine onstage at one of the city’s most hallowed theaters. | | |
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 | Americana Highways |
| The recent passings of Donnie Fritts and Jimmy Johnson--two iconic figures who helped shape what we call the Muscle Shoals Sound and left us within ten days of each other--casts a sadness that will be particularly heartfelt when Jason Isbell comes home to his native Alabama and sets foot onstage in Florence for the inaugural ShoalsFest. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Nathan Taylor Pemberton writes on the case for New Age music as American folk art, through the work of the musician J. D. Emmanuel, whose privately pressed album "Wizards," released in 1982, and subsequent work has in recent decades found a new audience. | | |
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 | Hypebot |
| In this new essay, author Julian Tepper directly takes on one-hit wonders, and how the term can often negatively silo artists into a frequently mocked category of performer. | | |
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| Variety |
| Twenty-four shows that started life at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego have gone on to Broadway since "Into the Woods" established it as a headquarters for out-of-town tryouts back in the late 1980s. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| A jury found members of the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods guilty of racketeering after the flamboyant rapper testified about their crimes. | | |
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 | Longreads |
| For one brown, queer Filipino-American, Karen Carpenters’ music anchored her to her musical family’s past while helping chart her path in their adopted Southern California. | | |
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 | Touré Show |
| Brittany Howard is the leader of the Alabama Shakes, an amazing blues band, and she’s just released her first solo album Jaime, named for her older sister who died when they were children. The album is deep and so is Brittany. I love this conversation with her about music and life and family and race and so much more. | | |
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 | The Conversation |
| Creators of video game sound scores have more in common with classical composers than you might think - and they create dynamic sounds and music that cleverly respond to play. | | |
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 | Trapital |
| The Chicago rapper's religious summits are innovative and timely, but they won't repair the damaged relationship with West's former day-ones. | | |
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 | British GQ |
| One of the world’s most distinguished DJs, Norman Jay MBE has lived a life fuller than most can imagine, having witnessed practically every pivotal moment in UK black culture over the past half century. With his new autobiography, Mister Good Times, out this week, "GQ" sits down with London’s legendary DJ to reflect on his extraordinary career. | | |
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 | Spotify |
| Season 5 of Dissect is dedicated entirely to Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer-Prize winning album "DAMN." Today’s episode dives into Lamar’s upbringing in Compton and the developing spiritual beliefs encoded in his early discography. As we’ll come to find out, these beliefs become the basis of the underlying question "DAMN." serves to answer: Is it wickedness or weakness? | | |
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| The New Yorker |
| When Jessye Norman was ten years old, she heard a recording of the great African-American contralto Marian Anderson singing Brahms's " Alto Rhapsody." Norman later told the critic Matthew Gurewitsch, "I listened, thinking, 'But this can't just be a voice! A voice doesn't sound this rich and beautiful.' | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "All Mirrors," out today on Jagjaguwar. |
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