If you told me at the beginning of the year that I’d be covering ‘The Bends’ by Radiohead in full, I probably would have laughed and said f*** no. If you’d told me that songs like ‘Bones’ or ‘Nice Dream’ or ‘Street Spirit’ would help to pull me out of a dark depressive episode that came with being stuck in lockdown, well I probably wouldn’t have believed that either. | | | | Kid Cudi in Long Beach, Calif., April 29, 2018. "Man on the Moon III: The Chosen" is out today on Wicked Awesome/Republic.
(Scott Dudelson/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “If you told me at the beginning of the year that I’d be covering ‘The Bends’ by Radiohead in full, I probably would have laughed and said f*** no. If you’d told me that songs like ‘Bones’ or ‘Nice Dream’ or ‘Street Spirit’ would help to pull me out of a dark depressive episode that came with being stuck in lockdown, well I probably wouldn’t have believed that either.”
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| | rantnrave:// In a year in which the word "touring" has all but disappeared from the lexicon, a good number of artists appear to have decided that releasing new music doesn't make sense. "I've already heard of indie rock bands with very sizable followings," LARRY FITZMAURICE writes, "that have already turned in new albums to their labels with the understanding that they be held until, at the very least, next fall." Others, he notes, may have reason to regret having put out albums anyway, including, for example, CHILDISH GAMBINO, whose surprise release in March, during what turned out to be the first week of pandemic lockdowns in many cities, I had completely forgotten about until Fitzmaurice reminded me. Which was his point. But one size has never fit all pop music career planning, and another good number of artists—maybe because they had nothing else to do in this lost year, or maybe because the apocalyptic contour of 2020 stirred up their anger, their rage, their sadness or just their need to respond in some fashion—have decided it's a great time to drop multiple projects. Today alone brings us rapper BOLDY JAMES' fourth album-length release of 2020, graybeard indie rockers GUIDED BY VOICES' third (OK, that might actually be a slow year for them), STURGILL SIMPSON's second deep dive into bluegrass and, as you might have heard sometime in the past 24 hours, TAYLOR SWIFT's second full-length, too. Swift's EVERMORE seems to be of a piece with her July album FOLKLORE, featuring warm, intimate, stripped-down songs made with AARON DESSNER, BON IVER and many of the same supporting musicians and, for the second straight time, finding room for at least one F-bomb. (Also, she kills a dude. He deserves it.) The last one was the 2020's best-selling album (so far). It's doubtful anyone's going to forget, or regret releasing, this one, and DANIEL "You Can’t Record Music Once Every Three to Four Years" EK will no doubt be especially pleased. But once every three to four years, or less, may continue to make perfect sense for artists like FIONA APPLE, whose 2020 masterpiece FETCH THE BOLT CUTTERS was her first album in eight years. And twice every year may or may not continue to make sense for artists like Swift and SAULT, whose two in 2019 and two in 2020 add up to one of the most astonishing four-album runs anyone's produced in a long time. A good pace for releasing new music, if you ask me, is whenever the inspiration strikes, whenever the songs present themselves, and whenever circumstances gift you with the time... Grammy gripes: Hours after TIFFANY HADDISH said she turned down the RECORDING ACADEMY's invitation to host the GRAMMY AWARDS pre-telecast ceremony because the job doesn't pay, the Academy's interim chief, HARVEY MASON JR., publicly apologized—but not, strangely, for asking her to work for no pay. Also, he threw his own talent booker under a bus... Also saying no to the 2021 Grammy Awards: three of the nominees for Best Children's Music Album, who have asked to be removed from the ballot to protest that all the nominees in the category are white and only one is a woman. "These numbers would be disappointing in any category," they write, but especially "in a genre whose performers are uniquely tasked with modeling fairness, kindness, and inclusion"... It's FRIDAY and in addition to TAYLOR SWIFT that means new music from JACK HARLOW, KID CUDI, the AVALANCHES, BOLDY JAMES & REAL BAD MAN, KAMAIYAH, CHRIS CORNELL (covers album recorded in 2016, shortly before his death), STURGILL SIMPSON (more bluegrass remakes of his own songs), SALAMI ROSE JOE LOUIS, NILÜFER YANYA, YO-YO MA & KATHRYN SCOTT, ROSIE CARNEY (covering RADIOHEAD's THE BENDS in full), M. WARD (covering BILLIE HOLIDAY's LADY IN SATIN almost in full), PETE ROCK & THE SOUL BROTHERS, HEEM, FXXXXY (posthumous debut from Dallas rapper who died in September) , PLAYTHATBOIZAY, GRIMES (DJ mix to coincide with the release of the game CYBERPUNK 2077), the KILLS (rarities), FOXY SHAZAM, BORIS WITH MERZBOW, HERETICAL SECT, LESS THAN JAKE, KING HANNAH, IDA ENGBERG, KACY & CLAYTON and MARLON WILLIAMS, MAINO, FETTY WAP, LIL LOADED, FRENCH CASSETTES, MUZZ, OGBERT THE NERD, GUIDED BY VOICES and a 20th anniversary reissue of DEFTONES' WHITE PONY paired with a new remix album, BLACK STALLION)... The BEE GEES documentary HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART? premieres Saturday on HBO. JASON HIRSCHHORN says it’s a must-see... RIP DALE SHEETS. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | for you, for me, for evermore |
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 | Chicago Reader |
| Internal strife, unpaid royalties, and the looming possibility of a sale have forced the venerable Chicago indie label to a crossroads. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Once upon a time, the box set was the luxury item of the music-listening experience. It could confer importance, cement legacies, and revitalize careers. But what is a box set when all the world’s a playlist? | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Its leaders are already hard at work pushing for greater transparency and representation in the academy — and the industry at large. | | |
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 | Last Donut of the Night |
| What happens when artists release new music without touring in place to promote it? The answer is several-fold, but for starters, that “new music” disappears from the collective consciousness way more quickly, no matter how famous you are. | | |
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 | Time Magazine |
| In 2020, the K-pop sensation ascended to the zenith of pop stardom-and did it in a year defined by setbacks. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| With “dorothea,” Swift revives the same narrative device she employed on “betty.” | | |
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 | VICE |
| Service Canada's hold music has soundtracked the pandemic for thousands of Canadians waiting to collect the CERB. It turns out the government did not tell the musician it was using his song. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Alastair Moock & Friends, the Okee Dokee Brothers, and Dog on Fleas say they cannot “benefit from a process that has… so overlooked women, performers of colors, and most especially Black performers” | | |
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 | The Line of Best Fit |
| Phoebe Bridgers talks us through the genesis of our favourite song of 2020, Punisher's standout track "Kyoto". | | |
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 | NJArts.net |
| An interview with Dick Wingate, who has worked with Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Peter Tosh and others. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| The new HBO documentary "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" explores the brothers' unlikely path to disco stardom and the backlash that followed. | | |
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 | The Quietus |
| Ben Cardew looks at how dance music's obsession with hardness is an arms race that cannot be won. Image via Bangface. | | |
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| Billboard |
| As we blissfully prepare to depart from 2020, let's take a look back at Billboard's picks of 25 songs by LGBTQ artists that helped make this year manageable. | | |
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| Los Angeles Times |
| Known for slow, confessional R&B shrouded in heavy reverb that’s hard to describe without the word “vibe,” Aiko has, for the last decade, steadily carved out her own intimate corner in a crowded post-“urban contemporary” field | | |
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| The Ringer |
| The rapper is set to return this Friday with ‘Man on the Moon III,’ the third installment in his classic series that wrestles with mental health and addiction. | | |
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 | Pollstar |
| While there’ve been many iterations of the format, including entire drive-in concert tours, one company took it to another level: D.LIVE, which operates five venues in Düsseldorf, Germany. | | |
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 | DJ Mag |
| A new white paper published by the UK Government plans to completely reorganise England’s system for planning applications, leaving the country’s clubs under serious threat of encroachment from developers, with little room for objection from local communities or authorities. | | |
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| Vulture |
| How the bond between the late Pop Smoke and his mentor, Steven Victor, continues to chase history. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| The feel-good musical was supposed to be a heartwarming balm, yet there’s outrage over James Corden’s “offensive” turn as a flamboyant, gay theatre star. What went wrong? | | |
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 | Genius |
| We spoke to producer Sebastien Najand about what K/DA’s success means for the worlds of music and gaming. | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| Some artists veer wildly between styles from record to record. And then there are those who discover their sonic identity and stick with it, hardly straying from their one true path. Their life's work is the patient art of inflecting and perfecting. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | From "evermore," out today on Republic. |
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