Scary songs use key, tempo, and timbre to create tension and manipulate the way the listener interacts with sound. This includes the use of what scientists call ‘nonlinear’ sounds, which are generally scratchy, disorganized, and chaotic, like the sound of vocal cords vibrating violently during a blood-curdling scream. Humans, and many other species, are hardwired to perceive such sounds as life-threatening. | | | | Trick or treat me nice: Elvis Presley and actress Joan Bradshaw at a Halloween party in Los Angeles, Oct. 31, 1957.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Scary songs use key, tempo, and timbre to create tension and manipulate the way the listener interacts with sound. This includes the use of what scientists call ‘nonlinear’ sounds, which are generally scratchy, disorganized, and chaotic, like the sound of vocal cords vibrating violently during a blood-curdling scream. Humans, and many other species, are hardwired to perceive such sounds as life-threatening.”
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| | rantnrave:// Is there anything scarier or spookier in music than the ever-present specter of payola? Anything creepier than shadowy record company promoters hiding behind masks while handing out candy to any programmer that crosses their path? Actually, there probably is, and my history books tell me plenty of people don't think there was ever anything wrong with it, but it's Oct. 31 and that particular costume is back in vogue, and plenty of people are wrong, so humor me. Recent news item: "Record labels can now pay SPOTIFY to promote artists on the platform, via pop-up 'Music For You' alerts." Thoughts/questions from music TWITTER: "I think this is called Payola." "Feels like (smart) contextual marketing." "Everything old is new again." "Digital endcaps." I have deep respect for each of these voices. As with so many shiny new digital things, we appear to be in a murky middle ground where no one is entirely sure what to call it, what the ethical considerations are and what those ethical considerations should be. Do streaming music users care if their recommendations come from human programmers, digital algorithms or record compny ad budgets? Should they care? Is a pop-up ad the same thing as a recommendation? Does the answer to that last question change if sometimes the pop-up is controlled by an independent editorial team and sometimes it's controlled by an ad buy? Do users have a right to know which entity is doing the recommending at any given time? (More from music Twitter, in this case the FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION: "Amazingly, no disclosure requirements exist on digital services. We’ve told the FTC to look into this.") How thick is the line between programming and advertising these days? Is it getting thinner? Is a streaming service more like a record store, where every display spot is for sale and customers sort of know that even if no one is saying so out loud, or more like a radio station, where the only things that are supposed to be for sale are the ad spots, wink wink? Is it both at the same time? If it's OK to buy a pop-up recommendation, is it also OK to buy a spot on a playlist? Will labels one day be solicited to start paying for that, too? What will be lost when that happens? Do you trust POP RISING? Who put that COLDPLAY song on there and why? What's your Halloween costume this year? What are SONY, WARNER and UNIVERSAL's costumes? Or can't you quite tell? It is a little dark in here... Speaking of scary things, there are people trying to mess with the alphabet song... Ten songs that are scarier than "THRILLER" according to the PANDORA genome... Rock and roll ghosts... You think the authorship and ownership of LIZZO's "TRUTH HURTS" is complicated? Want about the rights around this little-known and all-but-unheard LOU REED–ANDY WARHOL joint, which one of the men may have wanted nothing to do with and the other, well, it's complicated... Does GOD hand out $68 million tax refunds?... "How streaming killed underground micro-labels" is a clickbait headline for an essay by a label owner who's quitting the biz but isn't even trying to accuse streaming services of murder. It is, however, an interesting take on how tiny labels do and don't fit in this spooky day and age... RIP Woody Guthrie biographer ED CRAY and "The Partridge Family" creator BERNARD SLADE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| | | mind playing tricks on me |
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| This piece appears as part of our initiative on Identity & Representation, a six-month-long project highlighting different facets of identity and how they shape the practices, conventions, and conversations happening in the Highsnobiety world. Head here for the full series. | | |
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| "Total freedom freezes people. They don't know where to go." | | |
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| The Gen Z rapper known for absurdist viral smashes like "Mooo!" hopes her new album, "Hot Pink," establishes her as a serious force in hip-hop. | | |
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| Just in time for Halloween, the most noteworthy witches in modern music. | | |
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| Pandora’s algorithm has found what are technically the scariest songs of all time. Incredibly, and perhaps for the best, “Thriller” is not among them. | | |
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| The new iteration took four years rather than the usual three because it represents streaming’s full takeover of the music industry. | | |
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| Faced with an eviction notice, Kid Cudi almost gave up on his music dreams to avoid becoming homeless. Instead, Dot Da Genius’ family lent a helping hand. | | |
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| From small bars in Orange County to the main stage at Coachella, Ray Suen explains what it’s like to tour with the biggest bands without being in the band. | | |
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| NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Matt Saincome and Bill Conway, co-founders of the satirical punk rock news website The Hard Times, about their new book. | | |
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| Devotion inspires chanting, the intense coiling of identical pieces of sound around an idea or feeling, until the identity of that feeling imprints itself in the sound, speech becoming heat and energy, looping and amplified in the body. | | |
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| Back in June, I wrote a piece for the "Guardian" recounting how Morrissey had once been my greatest inspiration. As one of his very few black fans, I described how, after years of giving him the benefit of the doubt, buying every record he ever made, and leaping on stage to kiss him at shows, I felt personally betrayed by his repeated demonstrations of intolerance. | | |
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| Darrell “Artistic” Roberts of Chi-ROCK Nation has worked to document the culture he loves for more than three decades-and now he’s finally publishing a book. | | |
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| Over a thousand artists have pledged to boycott the corporation due to its cooperation with law enforcement in the US. | | |
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| Remember that time you went to see Jason Aldean and he stopped the concert to take a pitch from a song plugger? | | |
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| Samuel T. Herring looks like the dad in a '50s sitcom. He sings in a stately baritone-blues quaver that sometimes unpredictably lurches into death-metal growl territory. He dances like an unusually balletic hardcore frontman who has been cast as the lead for a Tennessee Williams play. | | |
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| A social media meltdown reveals some deeper issues in the electronic dance music world - and the ways in which online media are amplifying divisions. | | |
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| Less using wokeness for self-promotion, please | | |
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| Ted Cohen was Artist Development for Warner Bros Records in Burbank and worked at WB for 14 years. He tells us stories about Little Feat, Doobie Bros, a girl named angel, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, Van Halen, Roxy Music and Ted ends this episode with Prince. | | |
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| In an extract from a new book to celebrate Glastonbury festival’s 50th anniversary, its organiser reflects on the time Prince almost played, how she wooed Adele and what it’s like behind the scenes at Britain’s biggest music event. | | |
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| Tupac and Biggie were friends. Then Tupac was ambushed in a New York recording studio, and everything changed. | | |
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