Someone told me this recently and it broke my heart: 'I’ve grown up loving country music and I grew up gay in a small town, and country music has always felt like a big party that I wasn’t invited to.' Oh my god, you’re invited to my party. It’s crazy that a certain kind of a person could feel excluded from a genre that’s so real—or supposed to be so real. | | | | Back that axe up: Greta Van Fleet's Jake Kiszka at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Oct. 5, 2018.
(Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Someone told me this recently and it broke my heart: 'I’ve grown up loving country music and I grew up gay in a small town, and country music has always felt like a big party that I wasn’t invited to.' Oh my god, you’re invited to my party. It’s crazy that a certain kind of a person could feel excluded from a genre that’s so real—or supposed to be so real.”
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| | rantnrave:// The remarkable opening act of A STAR IS BORN is a breathtaking depiction of the rush and the privilege and the miracle and the wonder of being a rock star, as seen through the eyes of two very different people experiencing the rush and the privilege and the miracle and the wonder of falling in love. That opening, writes the MUSE's RICH JUZWIAK, "feels as immersive of an experience as any rock musical has since THE ROSE." It takes place during a whirlwind 24 hours in which the action moves from stage to limo to drag bar (the only one in America where a 40something country-rock star would be immediately recognized by everyone inside) to convenience store to crowded suburban house to private plane and back to stage, by which time you may well be swooning. LADY GAGA is great, the song that turns her character into a star is damn good, and BRADLEY COOPER is the best hirsute, alcoholic, aging singer-songwriter Hollywood has put on the big screen since JEFF BRIDGES in CRAZY HEART. And then the movie continues for another two hours, and you needn't have seen any of the previous versions of the movie to know where it's headed. We soon meet a slimy, manipulative manager, played by RAFI GAVRON, whose job is to move the plot along while also trying to convince you that pop music, unlike rock and country, is an innately unfit medium for expressing one's truth, and will, absent the intervention of an authentic, truth-telling rock and roller, probably destroy you. It's an argument that misunderstands both what pop music can be (Lady Gaga, who's been using pop to express herself wonderfully for a decade, knows something about this) and what pop music is ("SHALLOW," the allegedly-not-pop song that sets the movie's plot in motion, sounds like it could be a current pop hit and is in the process of actually becoming one). Performing with orange hair, dancers and electronic beats, in the movie's world, means you don't have anything to say, no matter how much effort you put into it, while performing with your natural hair, an electric guitar and a denim shirt means you do, no matter how much alcohol you put into it. Also: Singing about butts is bad and not singing about butts is good. Which is one million percent provably wrong. It's possible, if you want to be optimistic about a sad, pessimistic movie, to read the ending as Cooper's character—and perhaps Cooper himself—coming to horrible grips with the idea that he's been wrong all along. Unlikely but possible. It's a good movie, by the way, though probably not a great one. And you should go for the popcorn, not the pop... TAYLOR SWIFT—wow—makes a political endorsement. Two in fact... Musicians really, really, really aren't into Brexit... GREEN DAY is really into October... T.I. says he once saved SCOTT STAPP's life... RIP HAMIET BLUIETT, MONTSERRAT CABALLÉ, JOHN WICKS and MICHAEL PANICO. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | welcome to the working week |
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| The streaming service is a decade old on Sunday. So has it created a post-CD paradise for listeners - or turned today’s music into a grey goo? Our music editors argue for and against. | | |
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| TME isn’t really a music company or investment opportunity, but is instead a series of social entertainment platforms, of which music – and much of it not even streaming music – is one minor part. | | |
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| Bruno Dickemz is known for his extreme BDSM and abuse allegations—as well as an adult film series featuring some of the hottest SoundCloud rappers, including the late XXXTentacion. | | |
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| In the new film, Lady Gaga is both the dressed-down girl next door and the mythical superstar, and her ability to nimbly straddle these two poles is what makes her performance great. | | |
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| "A Star Is Born" dragged my heart all around for months and months before I could even experience it. On paper, it sounded like a disaster: a vanity project from Bradley Cooper featuring Lady Gaga in the third remake of a film whose most recent iteration (the 1976 version starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson) is among the most wretched blockbusters of all time. | | |
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| A year after Tom Petty died at age 66 of an accidental medication overdose, his family members, band mates and others discuss what went wrong and what, if anything, can be done to save others from the same fate. | | |
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| It took a long time to get over itself, but now British guitar music feels like it’s standing on its own feet. | | |
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| In an Instagram post on Sunday, the pop music titan broke her political silence and explained why she planned to vote for two Democrats in the midterm election. | | |
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| Marshall composed Kidjo's album cover based on a concept he had of her as “a street dealer of light.” | | |
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| The King of the South has a superhero-esque knack for being around when people are in a jam. But dedicate his life to helping people? No thanks, he’s got other priorities. | | |
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| The band's set was just one part of Cal Jam's argument that rock can function as both museum piece and living ritual. | | |
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| The Music Modernization Act, now set to become law, is silent on one big remaining issue for the music industry: U.S. AM/FM radio stations pay nothing to broadcast the sound recordings they play. | | |
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| Headlines this week have highlighted the macabre circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Panico, but overlooked his notable contributions to a music community jolted by the news. | | |
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| In her RBMA Berlin 2018 lecture, Jlin talked about the importance of mistakes and being true to yourself as an artist. | | |
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| Money too tight to mention. | | |
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| “Wake Me Up When September Ends” has become an annual anthem - and moneymaker - for the band. | | |
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| We count down the definitive list of the best rock and metal songs from the 1990s. | | |
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| Ticketmaster president Jared Smith has responded to a letter from two U.S. Senators asking questions about the company's resale business in the wake of an investigative report by the Toronto Star and the CBC into Ticketmaster's TradeDesk platform. | | |
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| Kanye West--you may have heard of him--is on the move. On the heels of recent comments about the 13th Amendment and his apparent undying love for our current president and emergency alerter, Kanye has decided to venture to Somewhere In Africa to finish recording his second (you could argue third) album of 2018, "Yandhi." | | |
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| From a puff of smoke at center stage, the legendary crooner appeared, in dark glasses and a gray suit with a black shirt underneath, and his silver crusader cross necklace. He held a red Gibson guitar with a cord plugged into nothing at all, and turned to acknowledge the orchestra before beginning to sing "Crying." | | |
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