I grew up watching the Grammys with my family. I would judge all the girls’ dresses and all the dudes’ suits. To think about sitting in a room with, like, every person I grew up idolizing is terrifying. | | | | 100% that Grammy queen: Lizzo at the Austin City Limits Festival, Austin, Texas, Oct. 4, 2019.
(Rick Kern/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I grew up watching the Grammys with my family. I would judge all the girls’ dresses and all the dudes’ suits. To think about sitting in a room with, like, every person I grew up idolizing is terrifying.”
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| | rantnrave:// Say what you will about the somewhat sexist, Latin-phobic, hip-hop-challenged, possibly ageist and occasionally bonkers GRAMMY nominations, but I'll say this: Give me a Grammy ceremony whose top nominees are LIZZO, BILLIE EILISH and LIL NAS X and I'll give you a fun, interesting show that looks more than a little like pop music itself circa 2019. And that, for the Grammys, is a lot. I ain't mad. "TRUTH HURTS," "OLD TOWN ROAD" and "BAD GUY" all up for Record of the Year? Yes. Eight Best New Artist nominees, at least seven of whom I wouldn’t mind winning? Yes. Vengeance for ARIANA GRANDE, with two nominations for "7 RINGS," the very song she wasn't allowed to perform at the 2019 ceremony? Yup. Overdue recognition for country legend TANYA TUCKER? Yep. Down-ballot recognition for critical darlings BIG THIEF, Nigerian star BURNA BOY, INTERNET wunderkind STEVE LACY, jazz trumpeter-composer CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH (not in a jazz category, but, y'know) and [fill-in-your-own-favorites-here]? Hallelujah. The RECORDING ACADEMY has openly struggled in recent years to create a show that simultaneously honors what it sees as serious and what it knows is popular, and that sounds current while threading that timeless needle. It isn't an easy job. Older (the surprisingly snubbed BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN) and younger (under-nominated MAREN MORRIS) artists alike slip through the cracks. Sometimes the Academy seems like it's trying to create stars out of thin air to fill its own gaps (five nominations for a second year in a row for H.E.R.??? Compared to none for, say, SOLANGE?). Lizzo and Eilish, on the other hand, are perfect Grammy artists, serious and popular, who can appeal across generations and constituencies. This is the first time two artists have each been nominated in all of the top four categories, and they're both fully deserving. The Academy's checkered record with specialty categories continues. BLACK PUMAS, a little-known Austin band whose Wikipedia page contains six sentences, at least one of which was added on Wednesday, was a shocking pick for a Best New Artist nomination; but even stranger is that it isn't nominated for anything else. Ditto for MAGGIE ROGERS, a less surprising Best New Artist nominee whose music floats between the Academy's categories and was overlooked by all of them. The rock categories (rock, metal, alternative), where the Pumas might well fit, seem to have been divvied up in a dice game. The rap categories appear to have been almost completely walled off from the big four categories (and it's not clear if women were invited). You'll have your own gripes and your own hallelujahs. These are the Grammys after all. They could have done a lot worse, and that's worth celebrating... One more Grammy note: According to ROLLING STONE, the last Song of the Year to be credited to one songwriter was AMY WINEHOUSE's "REHAB," 11 years ago. Only one of this year's eight nominees has a sole writing credit: TAYLOR SWIFT's "LOVER." (Speaking of, was Swift's bubbly "3 noms guys!!!!" reaction, after getting shut out of the Album of the Year category, the Grammy equivalent of "Bless your heart"?)... And a special congratulations to my friend JUDY CANTOR-NAVAS, one of the foremost writers on Spanish-language music, for her Grammy nomination for her liner notes for the box set THE COMPLETE CUBAN JAM SESSIONS (which she also co-produced)... JANET WEISS continues to express deep affection for her old SLEATER-KINNEY bandmates, but she left this year, she tells podcaster JOE WONG, because of changing roles in the band that ended with, "I said, 'Am I just the drummer now?' And they said yes. And I said, 'Can you tell me that I'm still a creative equal in the band?' And they said no"... Why does ASAP ROCKY's name keep coming up at the impeachment hearings?... Twenty-five years on death row on a wrongful murder conviction, and now making music again: a great ROLLING STONE feature on R&B singer JIMMY DENNIS... Thirty-six years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, and now playing amateur nights at the APOLLO THEATER: NPR on singer ARCHIE WILLIAMS and the INNOCENCE PROJECT... RIP JOHN MANN and KIM GERVAIS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Oxford American |
| What I want is to love Southern rock without being implicated in the Old South politics. Take secession and Strom Thurmond, take Bob Jones and his university, take the racism, and leave me the Chattooga River, leave me my grandparents on the porch, leave me the fish fries and Ronnie Milsap and the old man at Open Arms Church who played the dobro. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Despite the presence of a continually growing number of inspiringly open-minded voices in music, hypermasculinity remains an unfortunate problem. In hip-hop, that problem has been met with outspoken pushback from many voices ranging from a pre-Trump era Kanye West to the more recent discussions surrounding Lil Nas X, Frank Ocean, and others. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| Freshman-class recording artists Lizzo, Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X collectively landed 20 Grammy Award nominations for 2020 on Wednesday, as the Recording Academy wholeheartedly embraced the music industry's newest faces and sounds. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The freshmen have the run of the school now, as three artists have cornered the major categories with their breakout records. Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and Lil Nas X lead the pack. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| In 1992, R&B singer Jimmy Dennis was wrongfully convicted of murder. He spent 25 years in prison, but he never gave up on music - or justice. | | |
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 | NPR |
| Williams was exonerated by The Innocence Project after 36 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Now he's fulfilling a lifelong dream on the stage of New York's Apollo Theater. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| Ten years ago, a week after I graduated from college, I bought a white Jeep off Craigslist that was older than I was. It cost eight hundred dollars, which was less than the price of a plane ticket plus the fee for shipping my things home, to Texas, from Virginia. | | |
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 | Stereogum |
| There is a lot of singing happening in rap music right now. Some of it -- Polo G, Lil Baby, Juice WRLD's "Bandit" -- is good. Most of it is bad. DaBaby and Megan Thee Stallion, the two rapping-ass rappers who emerged out of the internet in 2019, are looking more and more like glorious anomalies. | | |
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 | Hollywood Reporter |
| Having helped transform the music industry, Ek and content chief Dawn Ostroff set their sights (and your ears) on spending hundreds of millions on exclusive podcasts and recruiting Jordan Peele, Mark Wahlberg and the Obamas in a race for scale with Apple and Amazon. | | |
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 | Chicago Reader |
| The Purple One could hardly have avoided influencing a genre whose earliest, most ardent fans were queer Black and Brown kids. | | |
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 | Fast Company |
| It’s hard to juggle an album, a world tour, and a nonprofit without missing out on something. Chancelor Bennett put family first--and it turns out he’s not missing much at all. | | |
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 | Paper |
| In June 2018, a massive billboard celebrating the fifth anniversary of one of the world's biggest music groups went live in Times Square. | | |
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 | Reverb.com |
| Last month, Tommy Boy accused Amazon of selling counterfeit albums. Now, more labels and watchdogs say it's an industry-wide problem. | | |
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 | AllMusic |
| Our editors' list of the decade's 200 best albums reflects the complexities of modern listening: from our favorite French robots to the final dispatches of now-departed icons to a surprising number of Odd Future affiliates, even this quantity and variety of albums likely leaves a few stones unturned. But we did our best. | | |
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| Complex |
| Streaming dominated all sides of rap this 2010s decade. From fixing its piracy problem to the rise of SoundCloud rap, here's how streaming changed hip-hop. | | |
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 | The Trap Set |
| Janet F***ing Weiss! 2019 has been an eventful year for Janet Weiss. She left Sleater-Kinney after a twenty-four year run and soon after suffered a major car accident. Janet tells Joe about growing up in LA; discovering drumming in San Francisco; finding an artistic community in Portland; the creative dynamic of Quasi; why she left Sleater-Kinney; and more. | | |
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 | Popula |
| DJ Ab's music insists on the integrity and relevance of the language spoken by members of his own society. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Does Spotify really have three times the amount of listening of Amazon Music? | | |
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 | i-D Magazine |
| Introducing the first cover for The Get Up Stand Up Issue! Welcome in a hot girl winter with Megan Thee Stallion, interviewed by Jeremy O'Harris. | | |
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 | FACT Magazine |
| FACT travels to Puerto to meet with some of the purveyors of Mexican reggaeton in its birthplace. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | This year's unlikeliest major nominee. |
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