I just want to be that girl I needed when I was 15 for someone. | | | | Open Mike Eagle in Charlotte, N.C., April 06, 2019. "Anime, Trauma and Divorce" is out today on Auto Reverse.
(Jeff Hahne/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I just want to be that girl I needed when I was 15 for someone.”
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| | rantnrave:// I have seen song search future and it's a little shaky and unreliable at the moment, but the future often is. Which is to say, when I tried to hum the keyboard riff of BILLIE EILISH's "BAD GUY" into the GOOGLE app on my phone Thursday night, my Google app thought about it for a few uncomfortably long seconds before informing me, "Sorry, I wasn't able to recognize this song." Was my humming a little pitchy? My timing a little funky? Does the app not know the riff, or any instrumental riffs? I tried a hook from LIZZO's "TRUTH HURTS," mixing the words as best as I could remember with some la-la's to fill the holes. Same long pause, same rejection. I stopped for a minute, composed myself, tried the same Lizzo hook in a higher key, and boom: There's a 21% chance, the app informed me, I'm looking for the KIDZ BOP version of "Truth Hurts," a 17% chance I'm looking for Lizzo and an 8% chance, for some reason, I've got NAS on my mind. Google on Thursday announced you can now search for a song on its iOS and Android apps by humming or whistling a few bars. I've been waiting most of the history of streaming music for this function. All you can remember is a little bit of the melody of that song you heard in the car yesterday? An old melody popped into your head and you know you know it but you can't place it? Why shouldn't you be able to just sing it into your search bar? We've long been able to talk to our phones, our computers and other devices; why can't we sing to them, too? The process, for now, is a bit clunky: On an iPhone, you tap the mic icon in the Google search bar, then tap "Search a song" at the bottom of the next screen, then sing, then wait while you imagine your phone is judging you. I learned that slowing down and singing more deliberately helped. My la-la-la version of the chorus of TAYLOR SWIFT's "BETTY" was recognized (with 16% certainty). A couple hummed lines of the chorus of PRINCE's "RASPBERRY BERET" left my phone with no doubt; it quickly pulled up a Google search page for the song, topped by the video. I am not the world's most accurate singer. I'm mediocre at karaoke. This, I wish. But I know how to suggest a melody, and that's enough here. As far as I can tell, Google's working with a database of vocal melodies, no instrumental hooks yet. But those will come, as will the applications. You'll no longer have to go looking for a song. Just, more or less, think it. The universe, and a thousand apps to come, will do the rest... The British parliament has started an inquiry into the "economic impact music streaming is having on artists, record labels and the sustainability of the wider music industry," and among the lines of inquiry are "whether the business models used by major streaming platforms are fair to the writers and performers who provide the material." One imagines there's a long line of artists and writers prepared to hum their thoughts on that topic... The three-day SAVE OUR STAGES fest, featuring YG, DEMI LOVATO, PHOEBE BRIDGERS, the ROOTS, FOO FIGHTERS and many more, streams today through Sunday from clubs and theaters around the US. Sponsored by the NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION and YOUTUBE, it's raising money and awareness for venues in dire need of pandemic relief... SPIKE LEE's filmed version of DAVID BYRNE's AMERICAN UTOPIA premieres Saturday on HBO... JAGGED LITTLE PILL scores 15 TONY nominations... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from BENNY THE BUTCHER (GRISELDA RECORDS' hip-hop onslaught continues), OPEN MIKE EAGLE, STURGILL SIMPSON (does bluegrass), BEABADOBEE, T.I., BLACK THOUGHT, IDKHOW, TOMMY LEE, the STRUTS, MATT BERNINGER, HEALTH, ANNIE, AUTECHRE, KEVIN MORBY, the late GORD DOWNIE... A pause here for two major archival projects also out today. WILDFLOWERS AND ALL THE REST is a mega expanded version of TOM PETTY's classic 1994 solo album WILDFLOWERS overstuffed with previously unheard songs like this and this. And THE HARRY SMITH B-SIDES is a box set featuring the B-sides of every song on collector/curator Smith's groundbreaking 1952 ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC. Some mind-blowing perspective on the passage of time between 1926, when the earliest recordings on the anthology were made, and 1952, and today. (The math on that tweet is slightly off, but the point stands)... Also, JOYNER LUCAS, HELENA DELAND, GOOD SAD HAPPY BAD (formerly MICACHU & THE SHAPES), DORIAN ELECTRA, SASHA SLOAN, SPIRIT ADRIFT, TRACE ADKINS, JAMIE O'NEAL, WILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE, MIPSO, BYRON THE AQUARIUS, ZENKER BROTHERS, TOMOKO SAUVAGE, KATIE MELUA, HOLY MOTORS, GULFER, LIONEL LOUEKE, MARSHALL GILKES, ANJA LECHNER & FRANÇOIS COUTURIER, PETER BERNSTEIN, NATE WOOLEY, HOMEBOY SANDMAN, KOSHA DILLZ, DEEP SEA DIVER, PLURALONE, the DAMNED, OSEES and HAYDEN THORPE... RIP KATHY SMARDAK, PAUL MATTERS and MAURICE EDWARDS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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 | The Washington Post |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Eddie Van Halen, son of blue-collar immigrants, went to Pasadena High. David Lee Roth, his dad a doctor, attended Muir. Their meeting remade rock. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Jeremie Pennick knows he has something to prove. There's a reason that the veteran Buffalo rapper known professionally as Benny the Butcher named his new album Burden of Proof. After years of grinding, releasing mixtape after mixtape (and being interrupted by occasional stints behind bars), Benny's star has risen in recent years, alongside his cousins Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Pioneering manager Rebeca León leads Billboard’s annual Latin Power Players - the executives behind Latin music’s explosive move into the pop music mainstream. | | |
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 | Beats & Bytes |
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 | Loud And Quiet |
| For some artists, even younger ones, catching coronavirus is a risk they just can’t take, even as people return to pubs and venues | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| She’s channeled teenage misery and drug use into songs inspired by her grunge heroes -- and now the 20-year-old is being hailed as the voice of Generation Z. | | |
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 | MusicAlly |
| For several months, the #BrokenRecord campaign in the UK has been calling for the government to step in to the debate about musicians’ streaming royalties. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| In a way, even the Spike Lee-directed version of David Byrne’s Broadway show, streaming on HBO, allows us to “leave our homes.” | | |
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 | Twenty Thousand Hertz |
| People with perfect or "absolute" pitch hear every single sound as precise musical notes. Is this extraordinary talent a blessing or a curse? In this episode, we dive into the neuroscience, pluses and pitfalls of absolute pitch. Featuring neuroscientist Daniel Levitin and Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers and producer/engineer George Drakoulias share their stories about working with the legend. | | |
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 | Variety |
| The pandemic has crushed the live-entertainment business, and concert venues in particular, all over the world - but New York's may have been hit the hardest in the U.S. | | |
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 | Mixmag |
| Maya Baklanova documents the rise of Nazira, the visionary Kazakhstan DJ. | | |
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 | Texas Monthly |
| Mason, one of the most sought-after young composers in the country, has a new work set to premiere in November. | | |
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 | NPR |
| The performance at Club Mercedes was supposed to be just another gig for Mac Phipps, the No Limit rapper whose star was rising in Southern hip-hop around the turn of the new millennium. But it would be the last club date he'd perform for at least two decades. | | |
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 | British GQ |
| The legendary rock star speaks to GQ about the time Donald Trump allegedly schemed to block his bid to buy the Buffalo Bills and discusses his new album," 2020," which confronts the state of America today with songs about the pandemic, George Floyd, school shootings and, yep, the president. | | |
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 | VICE |
| The HU made a splash on YouTube in 2018 but the band’s influence resonates even more today, as some fear that Mongolian language and culture are under threat. | | |
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 | Big Think |
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| Complex |
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| Mixmag |
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| The Washington Post |
| A founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, he left a body of music that defies easy categorization. | | |
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 | YouTube |
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