Love life? I haven't any. | | | | | My headphoney valentine. (4FR/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Love life? I haven't any.”
|
| |
| | rantnrave:// The hand-wringing, second-guessing and angry tweeting over the worst GRAMMY results since the last time BEYONCÉ was suspiciously shut out of the major categories (shoutout 2015) was fierce on Monday, and hopefully will continue to be fierce for a long time. The issue isn't new; the level of outrage is. Under a #GrammysSoWhite headline, the NEW YORK TIMES' JON CARAMANICA made a direct connection to current world politics: "It was a show about borders—who is allowed to cross, who isn’t and who doesn’t even bother trying." Among those who didn't bother Sunday were non-attendees DRAKE, FRANK OCEAN, KANYE WEST and JUSTIN BIEBER—and, some pundits argued, Beyoncé, who accepted her runner-up status with quiet grace, as if she knew what was coming. She was both aware and "unfazed," JOHN VILANOVA wrote in an LA TIMES op-ed in which he argued that awards shows impose a "glass ceiling ... on black excellence" (and offered some persuasive baseball-like statistics as proof). LAURA STYLEZ of NEW YORK's HOT 97 predicted "more and more artists are going to boycott" after what happened... But what exactly did happen? NPR's ANN POWERS suggested a lot of voters are studio pros and musicians who value "high craft," which would be a reasonable argument if Beyoncé's LEMONADE wasn't state-of-the-art studio craft itself. To suggest otherwise (and this is a knock on those voters, not on Powers) is to turn the idea of "craft" into racially coded language. As in: We mean this kind of craft, not that kind... VOX's TODD VANDERWERFF made the case that Adele won because of vote-splitting, with Beyoncé competing with Bieber and Drake for pop and hip-hop votes, and Adele competing with no one for the adult-contemporary bloc. OK, maybe. But why do these voting bubbles exist? Why is Beyoncé's soul-infused, grown-up, complicated concept album in one of them and Adele's grown-up pop-soul album in another? Who decides where the borders are?... And in what bubbles do Grammy voters themselves live? This isn't, at the end of the day, about Beyoncé or Adele. It's about a system in which three black artists have won Album of the Year this century. And in which 10 have won ever. No one *deserves* or needs a Grammy. Not KENDRICK LAMAR. Not DAVID BOWIE. Not anyone. But it's a nice thing to have (and sometimes a really nice career boost). And if they're going to hand them out as a representation of what the recording industry values, the industry might consider stepping back and thinking about what, and who, it does value... Some of the best takes on all this are collected in our REDEF MusicSET Beyoncé, Adele and #GrammysSoWhite... For VALENTINE'S DAY: GUCCI MANE and KEYSHIA KA'OIR, the love story... RIP ROBERT FISHER and TRISH DOAN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
|
|
| Digital disruption makes our music more public, more granular, and more abstract. | | |
|
| I was a weird kid growing up -- or so I was told. You never feel weird as a child. I thought everyone obsessed over Prince’s, Janet Jackson’s, and Bobby Brown’s outfits and dance moves. I thought all the other kids knew every breath and beat of Lisa Stansfield’s “Been Around the World.” | | |
|
| From gay anthems to online romance, love songs have charted our changing times. Here’s our guide to seven decades of swooning in pop. | | |
|
| Adele's upset win over Beyoncé's at the 2017 Grammy Awards reopened an old wound. What does a black artist have to do to get recognized by the Grammys? Or, more to the point: What do the Grammys have to do? | | |
|
| Social network seeks accord for user videos, and possibly more. | | |
|
| The music business should be prouder of its pioneering spirit, argues TheLynk's founder, former head of digital at EMI and Warner Music France. | | |
|
| Stupid lyrics are good for you. Bad lyrics are just bad. | | |
|
| November 8, 2016 has gone down as one of the most controversial days in recent history--it is the day that determined Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States. The 2016 election marked the second opportunity I had to vote for a president. | | |
|
| "You call Lil Yachty punk but not Kanye?! REEEEEEEEEE" | | |
|
| The Oscars are a vehicle to promote smart films that aren’t destined to be blockbusters. | | |
|
| As the UK enters its most disorienting period in recent history, we examine the artists subverting patriotic zeal. | | |
|
| Spotify may be "too big to fail", according to Billboard magazine, but the clock is ticking as the company hatches its plans to go public. | | |
|
| When thinking about Al Jarreau, who died in Los Angeles on Sunday at age 76, one word comes insistently to mind: Smooth. | | |
|
| David Bennun casts his eye back over "Rumours," "Tusk" and "Tango In The Night" and rediscovers a band who hid their dark, experimental tendencies in plain sight behind a triumvirate of ubiquitous AOR albums | | |
|
| Welcome to ‘Beardo,’ an indie rock-scored surreal and absurdist retelling of the story of Rasputin and his ascendancy within the Romanov court. | | |
|
| On Cathy’s final episode, hosts Felix Salmon of Fusion, Cathy O’Neil, author of "Weapons of Math Destruction," and SlateMoneybox columnist Jordan Weissmann chat with Derek Thompson, author of "Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction." | | |
|
| In early 1984, director Walter Hill contacted Arlen Roth-guitarist, columnist and co-creator of the Hot Licks instructional video series-about a new film he was about to make starring Ralph Macchio.It was to be centered on the blues and present a modern twist on the mythology and legend tied to the late Robert Johnson. | | |
|
| As his gaze switches from Ruminations to Salutations, we have an in-depth conversation with Conor Oberst about his life and career. | | |
|
| The world, and pop, has changed in the year since her Grammys sweep. | | |
|
| Singer-songwriter Ryan Adams knows there's a stark difference between the way he views the work throughout his career and the popular perception of it. | | |
|
| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
|
|
