"Emo has long been denied serious critical assessment, often dismissed as music for teens but never subject to the generous leeway or empathy given to pop music specifically designed for adolescents. But unlike with grunge or goth or any other subgenre that evolved from a defined set of sonic characteristics to a fashion phenomenon, the definition of 'emo music' is either too narrow or too vague to the point of being almost completely useless" - Ian 'Master of Emo' Cohen writes in the introduction to his list of 100 best emo songs, going back almost 40 years.

"The most influential forerunners of punk on their respective sides of the Atlantic, these trailblazers established the tenets of glam that would serve as the foundations for future glam-punk" - PopMatters writes in an easy to read essay about the beginnings of glam-punk. "The transition of raw rock from garage to glam began in the mid-60s when Reed met Warhol... Striking pre-political poses that challenged the conventions of gender, sexuality, and class, Warhol's posse of eccentrics became an inspiration to the young Reed, who felt encouraged to ignore any pressures to compromise and to charge full-on with his decadent musings".

Google Books provides free access to a huge number of music magazines, going all the way back to the 1940s, now mostly defunct. It's funny to see how music critics 35 years ago felt about Red Hot Chili Peppers ("baddest posse of white funk west of the mighty Mississip" - Spin), how Vibe announced "the most eagerly anticipated album in hip-hop history" (Snoop Dogg's), or how CMJ was trying to understand Portishead ("an invitation to a nightmare"). Billboard it the eldest among these, it was coming out during World War II (prior to that as well, it's just that the G-Books didn't archive it).

Publicist Meghan Daum wrote an interesting article for the GEN about how she switched from listening to music to listening to podcasts when she turned 40. Not that she doesn't like music anymore, it's just that - “music is alive with associations. I can’t listen to some of it if it’s too connected to a painful situation. Podcasts don’t seem to hold those same associations for me”. That's mostly music she listened to before, where there are associations. There's a solution - "to get a new car, one with Bluetooth so I can listen to my old music in a new way. Or force myself to listen to — and enjoy, god dammit — some new music". Plenty of that...

As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love. The global adoption of social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, the mainstreaming of the influencer model, and the rise of new creator tools has shifted the threshold for success - Andreessen Horowitz in an interesting article about the shift in what and what people do what they do. He names a few examples of this shift: the average initial pledge amount on Patreon has increased 22 percent over the past two years; on the online course platform Podia, the number of creators earning more than $1,000 in a month is growing 20 percent each month; on Teachable, the average price point per class offering has risen roughly 20 percent, year over year. So, it's not that everybody's going to do what they love and get paid doing it starting today, but we're going there.

When are the best and worst times to release an album, how style of music effects release windows, and how can marketers strategically plan their record campaigns around optimal release weeks - the Medium analyzed 691 "notable" album releases from 2019 in the US and - came up with answers. It is the US, but still, the basic principles apply everywhere. With the basic principle before all the basic principles being - make good music.

Society is shifting from ownership to access in other spheres too: movies, software, cars, even mobile phones. Perhaps I need to shift my mindset and embrace the loss of certainty and control. Accept that the lesson of on-demand music streaming could be, paradoxically, that you can’t have everything you want, exactly how and when you want it - Guardian's journalist writes about our need to own the things we love. Which we, obviously, don't have to. But we still do.

There are plenty of those, but these stand out!

TikTok presented it's power on the example of 'Break My Stride', a perky pop smash from 1983 by Matthew Wilder. Thousands of users have shared the song in a texting lyrics prank, and compilations of the clips are racking up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. The prank is simple: You text someone the lyrics to Break My Stride, one line at a time, until they figure out what's going on; then you film yourself dancing in front of the text chain. The results are hilarious: teachers have been pranked by their pupils, and cheating boyfriends have met their comeuppance. One user sent the lyrics to a man who'd been lurking in her DMs. Other recipients simply recognize the song and join in the fun. Compilations of the clips have been watched more than 100,000 times on YouTube. The author Matthew Wilder says he's "astonished and thrilled".

"I’ve been listening to jazz my whole adult life, or more. But I generally do not raise the subject with anyone unless I know they are also into it, as though it was a sexual kink or a fringe religion" - the Outline reporter writes in a great article about "the jazz guys". An interesting perspective of a "jazz guy" is the one on Damien Chazelle, director of the films 'Whiplash' (2014) and 'La La Land' (2016) - "'Whiplash' is a sports movie in which the athletes compete using musical instruments... 'La La Land' managed to be even worse - a story about black music that is overwhelmingly white, a movie musical that is inspidly heterosexual".

Jazz is more serious than other genres - jazz requires exactly as much or as little expertise to listen to and appreciate as anything else

Jazz was born in New Orleans - it emerged almost simultaneously in a number of different communities

Jazz must swing - jazz artists are prone to experimenting with unusual time signatures

Jazz musicians were (or are) on drugs - early propaganda designed to paint black communities as dens of iniquity, and create reasons to arrest them

Jazz is dead - it’s integral to hip-hop and vibrant jazz scenes in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Canada

The physical media is still alive, despite all the convenience of the streaming platforms. Number confirm that the physicals are still here - by 2018, more people aged 30-49, meaning older millennials and younger Gen Xers, still owned DVD players than any other age group. On the other hand, vinyl records earned $224.1 million in the first half of 2019 and recently outsold CDs for the first time since 1986. Nearly 50 percent of record player owners are 35 or younger.

“'I’m not physically or musically capable, but thanks for the offer', said Dave Grohl when it was suggested he replace Neil Peart in Rush after the legendary drummer retired from the group in 2015... Peart was nick-named The Professor thanks to his meticulous, intricate, firebrand drum work in all manner of exotic time signatures, which was key in making Rush one of the most renowned bands of classic rock and inspired countless drummers to take to the sticks in awe of his skills".

Nick Cave was asked “Do you like Kanye?” on his blog. This is his not-so-disambiguous answer: “Making art is a form of madness – we slip deep within our own singular vision and become lost to it. There is no musician on Earth that is as committed to their own derangement as Kanye, and in this respect, at this point in time, he is our greatest artist”.

"Happy birthday/ to Greta, who stood today/ as every Friday, refusing/ to be neutral” - Patti Smith wrote in a birthday Insta-message to environmentalist activist Greta Thunberg. Read the poem in full below.

"If you’re looking for something to keep you company on a long drive or help you turn up a workout, I hope there’s a track or two in here that does the trick” - Barack Obama said in his post on social media, where he listed his favorite songs of 2019. There’s 'Redesigning Women' from […]

Berlin-based producer Matias Aguayo was the latest guest in Fact magazine's segment Against The Clock were a musician, or a band, is given 10 minutes in the studio to make some music. Aguayo made a great deal out of that time - he produced a mini live set, based on washed-out vocals, loop-heavy beat built […]

Twenty-three songs have been in the top half of Billboard’s Holiday 100 nearly every week since the list began in 2011, with 15 of them being written before 1970, and only 1 of the top 23 holiday songs was released this century, and it’s a cover of a song written in 1951, Washington Post writes […]

American funk singer Roy C in 1973, at the height of the Watergate scandal, made a song 'Impeach the President' about Richard Nixon, but it was left obscure. It has been sampled for around 600 times since, but somebody else owns the publishing rights now. The week the Trump's impeachment process was announced online streams […]

Rolling Stone tries to, partly at least, define the 2010s by specific sounds that emerged. Not that those sounds didn't exist before, it's just that in the last 10 years they got main roles. RS heard: whisper pop sounds (by Billie Eilish), sounds as lyrics in rap (Future, Young Thug), chorus devoid of human voice […]

NME's Mark Beaumont doesn't agree one bit with Coldplay who decided to stop touring until they find an environment-friendly way to do so. Not touring would make more harm than good: "If musicians are dedicated to working towards carbon neutrality, it’s vital that that message gets shouted from the biggest, most amplified and most eye-catching […]

"No real fan waits patiently in the pissing rain outside a stage door for some hog-wild aftershow to finish in order to make their soggy tour programme worth twenty quid more than they paid for it. To a real fan, an autograph’s monetary value is irrelevant; it’s priceless to them because it represents a small […]

"When it comes to making records promiscuity has become a talent-killer. That’s why Kanye was right to ban anyone working on his album from having pre-marital sex during the recording period of ‘Jesus Is King’ – not for ridiculously pious religious reasons but to stop the music being smug, bland and self-satisfied" - Mark, My […]

NME's Mark Beaumont's new blog entry is about fake social media accounts of pop stars, the latest victim being pop-reggae star Shaggy - "Why not grab at the chance to become a virtual superstar? Initially the internet offered these unsung heroes – with their slightly misspelt surnames and their many, many handle numbers – a […]

PopMatters has an excellent article about post-punk, here's an excerpt: "Like 76 punk, post-punk was reactive in nature, and thus was inevitable and necessary for punk's survival. Without it, punk would have eaten itself; with it punk was able to develop and diversify beyond its initial confines. As such, post-punk not only tells the story […]

BBC started a new segment, Songs that Made History, and the first one is Billie Holiday's version of 'Strange Fruit' recorded on 20 April 1939. Eighty years on, BBC explores how a poem about lynching became a timeless call to action. Listen to the powerful piano-jazz ballad here.

A nice read by Consequence of Sound: There was one show in particular that single-handedly foreshadowed how monumental Zeppelin would become: January 26th, 1969 — the fourth and final show at Boston Tea Party. It was the night where Zeppelin reportedly played for over four hours with only one album’s worth of material, eventually resorting to […]

Pitchfork chose 10 "essential" tracks from Gost Zvuk, Russia's electronic label: "Most releases are connected by their lo-fi ambient haze (...) those who dare to explore their own identity in specific ways often produce the most interesting results".