I try to keep the lyrics I write ambisexual... I enjoy writing songs that do not exclude anyone. The only people they exclude are people who don’t know anything about love. | | | | The Buzzcocks in London, 1977: Pete Shelley on the mic, Garth Smith and Steve Diggle in the matching shirts.
(Ian Dickson/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “I try to keep the lyrics I write ambisexual... I enjoy writing songs that do not exclude anyone. The only people they exclude are people who don’t know anything about love.”
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| | rantnrave:// All bands that call themselves punk-pop or pop-punk or any variation thereof—not some of them, not most of them, all of them—owe everything to PETE SHELLEY and the BUZZCOCKS. Their sound, their vision, their songs, their independence, their existence. Their grasp of pop hooks and their understanding of how noise annoys. The universe-altering magnet that lustfully attracts that grasp to that understanding. A magnet that didn't quite exist before the Buzzcocks fashioned it out of cheap guitar parts and adolescent confusion. And every one of those bands is not nearly as good. And that's not really why I mourn today for PETE SHELLEY, the Buzzcocks' beating heart, who died Thursday at age 63. That's just influence. Everyone has a little of that. Shelley and his band had a lot of it. KURT COBAIN worshipped them. HÜSKER DÜ's BOB MOULD was a longtime member of their fan club. "You are the harmony in my head," eulogized BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG, whose band has a plaque on the exact piece of wall in Cleveland where the Buzzcocks' plaque should be. (They influenced thousands of mediocre bands, too, of course. Shelley to PITCHFORK, 2009: "Other bands come along and have far more success because they don't have the principles, but that's always been the way.") What I mourn is that heart. That heart that changed what punk was and what it could be. That heart that TIME MAGAZINE's JUDY BERMAN captured in a single tweeted sentence that explains everything: "Pete Shelley made punk DIY, queer, emotional and open to anyone." That's it. That's really it. Where the CLASH were political (huge oversimplification; I mean, c'mon, "STAY FREE"), the BUZZCOCKS were personal (not an oversimplification), registering, reflecting and refracting the mystery and wonder and awkwardness and strangeness and comedy of human relations that so many of us felt. He could be cutting and sarcastic, he could be wounded, he could be a power chord packed full of desire. He could believe there is no love in this world anymore and he could tell you the only thing known is our love. He could make you sing along either way, either gender. I met him once, a year out of college, my first trip to Europe, in a stairwell in the back of a club on the outskirts of London, long past midnight. I had a pen and notepad but no assignment and it was too dark to see what I was writing anyway. I was looking, I think, for a connection, fleeting but real, the kind you get from the best two-minute fast, loud and perfectly formed pop songs, of which he wrote a few too many. We talked for the length of maybe 10 of those songs, I went back to my hotel, slept through my alarm and almost missed my plane home the next morning. RIP... The Buzzcocks' first gig was opening for the SEX PISTOLS. JOY DIVISION's first gig was opening for the Buzzcocks. Keep paying it forward, kids... The dizzying, and unnecessary, double apostrophe in this song title should be discussed more often... Nominations for the first GRAMMY AWARDS since those Grammy Awards will be revealed at 8:30 am ET this morning... A STAR IS BORN, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, KENDRICK LAMAR, TROYE SIVAN and DOLLY PARTON are among the nominees for the GOLDEN GLOBES, announced Thursday... PANDORA's Podcast Genome Project is live, and AMAZON is trying to get you to have actual conversations about music with ALEXA... HANNAH KARP takes the editorial reins at BILLBOARD... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from the late XXXTENTACION, GUCCI MANE, VAN MORRISON, BENNY BLANCO, ICE CUBE, JACOB COLLIER, LP, JASON BECKER, JONATAN LEANDOER127 (aka YUNG LEAN), TOKEN, BRETT YOUNG, GUIDED BY VOICES, XXL, HXXS, EDDIE PALMIERI, GIL EVANS ORCHESTRA, LOCKSMITH, DANIEL KNOX, COLDPLAY's live album/film THE BUTTERFLY PACKAGE and a PAUL WILLIAMS tribute album, WHITE LACE AND PROMISES. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | MEL Magazine |
| After all, they've got that PMA. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Once a year, on career day, Nick Catchdubs, the DJ, producer, and founder of the independent record label Fool's Gold, drives across the Hudson River to the New Jersey school where his mom teaches. He visits fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade classrooms and every year he asks his students the same two questions: "What music are you listening to? | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Four attorneys who joined forces to ensure the passage of the Music Modernization Act -- the most sweeping industry legislation of the last 20 years -- kick off Billboard’s celebration of over 120 female industry leaders, veterans and next-gen talents. | | |
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 | Chicago Tribune |
| He was a subversive songwriter who helped sharpen the leading edge of punk. The first incarnation of his band the Buzzcocks didn’t survive the punk era, but Shelley’s catchy, caustic songs endured. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Singles Going Steady was never supposed to be Buzzcock’s magnum opus, let alone a massively influential document of the exact moment pop and punk collided. It would go on to influence bands like Nirvana, Green Day, and Arcade Fire. | | |
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 | Fact Magazine |
| How the ‘Estamos Bien’ artist is challenging Latinx masculinity and the streaming dump ethos of trap music. | | |
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 | UPROXX |
| A plea to put the awards show in proper perspective before nominations are announced Friday (Dec. 7). | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Following the band's Rock Hall nomination, founder Gerald Casale reflects on its dystopian legacy in the age of Trump. | | |
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 | BBC |
| EXP Edition are a K-pop band with a difference - none of them is Korean. Does that matter? | | |
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 | The Atlantic |
| Sure, they’re pop stars playing parts. Yes, sexism allows him to dress down. But isn’t his shlumpy outfit also saying something about her spectacular one? | | |
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 | XLR8R |
| "It’s easier to standardise and mass reproduce mediocrity." | | |
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 | Grok Nation |
| On the 25th anniversary of the Bratmobile album 'Pottymouth,' a podcast tells the story of the rad feminist band. Here's what the band members had to say. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| Janelle Monáe, Mitski, Soccer Mommy, Charlie Puth, Juice WRLD... | | |
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 | The New Statesman |
| I break songs down into small morsels, getting hooked by tiny details, passing moments that offer fleeting glimpses of heaven. | | |
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 | Daily Dot |
| TikTok ruled by flooding the internet with memes. Can the good times roll? | | |
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 | MTV News |
| From Shawn Mendes smashes to her own "LillyAnna," this was the year she roared back. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Hannah Karp steps in as the newsroom boss after the resignation of a chief executive and questions concerning the publication’s editorial integrity. | | |
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 | The Independent |
| After The 1975 frontman apologised for comments about misogyny in rock and hip hop, musicians Queen Kwong, Tali Källström of the band Estrons, and music correspondent Roisin O'Connor explain why his apology isn't good enough. | | |
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 | NewMusicBox |
| It’s time that we start thinking more about a pretty important stakeholder in what we do, our audience. Just about everything we do, especially as teachers/conductors, is driven by the end result. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| “I felt compelled to make a pure, autonomous album ... to hear outside of me an unadulterated representation of a music that I hear inside of me. I always need to be on the frontier where the freedom is, and that can be a lonely place.” | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | "Life's an illusion, love is a dream." |
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