“Lana is simply one of the best songwriters in the country, as we speak. She just creates a world of her own and invites you in. So a big favorite of mine, the lovely Lana Del Rey” - Bruce Springsteen said in a recent broadcast on SiriusXM, Stereogum reports. Springsteen also played Del Rey’s own 2012 song 'American' during the radio show, which notably name-drops him: “Springsteen is the king, don’t you think/ I was like, hell yeah that guy can sing”.

“There are so many situations where a fight needs to be had. A revolution is needed, and I want to inspire it" - Burna Boy said in an NME interview about his new album 'Twice As Tall'. It's the lies in school he heard that sparked his anger: “The schools in Nigeria would rather teach you another man’s history than your own", for example the 18th-century Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who Burna was told in school “discovered the river Niger”. “That’s one of the fucking scams we’re taught!” he splutters. “This is a river that has been drank from and bathed in, and children have been given birth to in, for thousands and thousands of years. Now suddenly a man called Mungo Park comes from fucking England or some shit and ‘discovers’ the Niger? How do you discover something that people have their history in? Then you go and teach these people’s children that in schools! That’s something to fight against".

"Sometimes I think people are too problematic to be cancelled, or not relevant enough to be cancelled. I mean, it wouldn't even make news if he said something racist today, because he went on a racist rant in the 60s or 70s that was very famous" - Phoebe Bridgers told about Eric Clapton in a Double J interview. She added - "I have such an Eric Clapton rant, because I think it's just extremely mediocre music, but also he's a famous racist". Previously, she spoke how "John Lennon beat the [expletive] out of his first wife, and nobody really talks about it. And he was the most fake activism guy ever". But "it’s not true that only people who make [expletive] music like Eric Clapton are problematic. Daniel Johnston wouldn’t have made the music that he did if it weren’t for John Lennon, and he’s definitely the best Beatle. But you can’t deny someone is a bad person because you love their art".

“When you make a woman feel like she’s the baddest bitch in the room, to me, that’s female empowerment” - Cardi B says in Elle interview about the backlash she got after her latest video 'WAP'. One of the colleagues who didn't appreciate her song was CeeLo Green who first accused her of "salacious gesturing", but afterward apologized saying - "I'm an advocate of artistic freedom and expression as well as a fan of Nicki, Cardi and Megan... I would never disrespect them by any means. I acknowledge them all as powerful, beautiful and influential women… and professionals".

"The fan believes the artist and their work helped them come into their own. The artist’s work becomes a comfort—almost like a friend on their journey—as they figure out who they want to be" author Hannah Ewens says in Bitch Media interview about her new book 'Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture'. The book traces the history of fandom from the Beatles onward to contextualize what fandom means, how it functions, and how it both reflects and drives cultural conversations about everything from teenage girls to mental health. Ewens also differentiates between fans and stans, the latter of whom go to extreme lengths to prove their devotion.

"The seven tracks that comprise 'Alphaville' are at once harrowing and transcendent, terrifying and cathartic, filled with jazzlike grooves" - PopMatters says about Imperial Triumphant's new album. What makes the New York trio stand out is their avant-garde approach to metal, with jazz and psychedelic elements added to their black metal. Separate songs differ a lot among themselves and each song incorporates plenty of elements because, as vocalist and guitarist Zachary Ilya Ezrin tells PM- "we have a strong idea of what the song's about, why it needs to exist, what it stands for".

"I like [going on buses]. I find it very grounding... I also like a nice car and I like driving too. But there’s something about that, being ordinary... I mean, I know I can’t be ordinary, at all – I’m way too famous to be ordinary – but, for me, that feeling inside, of feeling like myself still, is very important" - Paul McCartney says in a great interview for the GQ. He also talks about building and then breaking up the Beatles, suing the band for their own sake, being in lockdown, working with Rihanna and Kanye West... A great read.

"Life is very complicated, from my understanding. So I think, in certain capacities, when you listen to Lupe Fiasco music, you get a reflection of the complexity of the situations that we find ourselves in" - Lupe Fiasco says in Vulture interview about his newest EP 'House', made almost accidentally, during the lockdown. Talking about his lyrics and fans understanding them he says "I just don’t put 'Fuck the police', and that’s it. It’s like, 'Why are we fucking the police? Is it even cool to say ‘Fuck the police’? What does that do with the police? What are we going to do if we don’t have police?'. Let’s break it down and get into the nuts and bolts. I think that is where you find the solutions, if you’re willing to do the work".

"The word jazz has very racist roots. It's totally inadequate in describing the breadth of music that has come out under its umbrella. And many of its founding players of the genre also took issue with the word as something that was not defined by them and was used to commodify their work. Miles Davis didn't like to call it jazz. Duke Ellington didn't like to call it jazz. Mingus didn't want to call it jazz" - drummer Makaya McCraven says in NPR interview. He explains further on - "So I think of 'jazz' — in quotes — as an aural tradition that you learn from playing and being around other people. And like aural traditions, they evolve and they move; it's not a stagnant thing for preservation. Like with an aural tradition, there's an actual physical touch". His new album 'Universal Beings E&F Sides' is out now.

"Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough" - Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told in a Music Ally interview, but, he claims - "from the data, there are more and more artists that are able to live off streaming income in itself". He offered a piece of advice: "The artists today that are making it realise that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans". Ek's statements have rankled musicians around the globe - Exclaim collected those.

A great interview in the Believer mag with producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Kramer, who talks about different jobs he did, but the best was being a touring musician - "The best years of my life happened over the course of about six months in 1985 while I was on the road with Butthole Surfers... I may die penniless, but thanks in great part to Gibby and Paul, these two Texas gentlemen who named their band Butthole Surfers and still got a major label record deal, I am, at least in terms of life experience, one of the richest men in the world". Kramer's hilarious also: "We looked like Hell had just puked us up and wanted no part of us. We looked exactly like what we were; a poverty-stricken American band with little or no idea of where we’d just been, where we were going, what we were doing, or why. It was all about surviving those twenty-three hours a day leading up to that one hour onstage. Onstage, we were a force to be reckoned with. Offstage, we were masters of nothing. And we looked it".

"One of the things that has really jumped out at me on TikTok is that you do not need any history of performance metrics for something to go viral; if something is working, even if you’re a first-time uploader with no ‘Likes’, views or creations in place yet, you have an equal and democratic chance of spiking on the platform as something with tons and tons of history" - TikTok’s Global Head of Music, Ole Obermann, said in a Music Business Worldwide interview, adding "that’s pretty unique, relative to other platforms, and obviously paves the way nicely for any type of artists – whether independent, major or unsigned".

"There's definitely the theoretical America and then America in reality. Back then there was the expectation that the theoretical America 'knew better'" - American rapper Lupe Fiasco told Radio 1 Newsbeat, and continued - "but what you've started to see is that America's not like that. America is very much the world leader in not getting it together - just with Covid-19 for example". Lupe says countries "don't want to be like America, where the police are killing people for nothing", and he predicts that in coming decades America will "fall behind the times in a very real way as other countries start to outpace, out-develop, or just ignore America to a certain extent".

"I didn’t miss it [tour shows]. I’ve always wanted to perform from my bed at home... I never wanted to do the packing and going through the car and luggage and the hotel and, 'What’s the password? What’s the internet?' You get tired after years and years of doing it, you know?" - Erykah Badu told the New York Times about not touring and performing live-streams instead. She was among the first to start charging for her streams, that were richer production-wise - "I wanted the audience to feel like their money not only got them into the show, but they also got to help create the moment". Neighbors, it seems so, loved it as well - "I had to get a truck to broaden the bandwidth of my house. All the neighbors had high-speed internet for a couple of weeks because of it".

"I wanted to explore boy bands with the same kind of intellectual curiosity reserved for topics and music deemed 'serious' while also maintaining the integrity of what makes boy bands great: They’re fun! They’re supposed to make you feel good!" - author Maria Sherman told Music Journalism Insider about her new book 'Larger Than Life' (Todd L. Burns says the book is "incredibly fun!"). In a Rolling Stone excerpt from the book, Sherman emphasizes that the very first boy bands "contrary to the contemporary image of these harmonizing hunks... were people of color".

"I put up a photo of Obama smoking a cigarette, looked like he was enjoying it, and these people were arguing for days. But I’m not gonna get involved because you can’t argue with stupid" - country singer Margo Price told LA Times about alienating some fans with posts on social media. "There have been so many times where I’ve put in some kind of thoughtful response to somebody, and it rarely does any good. I’m not really worried about losing a few fans. I think I’m gaining an equal amount". She released her new album 'That’s How Rumors Get Started' this week.

Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine has spoken of his experiences with racism and encounters with the KKK - “In Los Angeles, dozens of times, I was pulled over when driving, going on official band business but in my old Chevy Astro van when I was driving through Beverly Hills. ‘Why is there a thirty-something-year-old black man in this neighbourhood?’", Radio X reports. While he was growing up, in Libertyville in Illinois, he was "the only black person. Once, there was a noose in my family\s garage, there was the occasional burned cross on the lawn", and then, “I was in a popular band that had songs that were predominantly played on white, rock-oriented stations, the way I speak is not typically urban vernacular, and there’s a large part of my fan base that freaks the fuck out when I say that I’m black".

"You don’t get to just come and take because you have that privilege" - blues singer Lady A, real white Anita White, told Vulture about a lawsuit that the country band Lady A (formerly Lady Antebellum) had brought up against her. The band claim that White's attorneys "delivered a draft settlement agreement that included an exorbitant monetary demand" of $10 million. The lawsuit they've now filed does not ask for monetary damages, but an official declaration that the band are lawfully using the Lady A trademark. White also told Vulture (via Exclaim) that while the band Lady A's presence grew in the public eye (and on search engines, Spotify and Apple Music), hers shrank. When she tried to upload her new independent single via independent distribution service DistroKid, she couldn't verify her name. She believes it's a thing of racism - "here we go again with another white person trying to take something from a Black person, even though they say they’re trying to help. If you want to be an advocate or an ally, you help those who you’re oppressing. And that might require you to give up something because I am not going to be erased”.

Kanye West talked in lengths with Forbes about his presidential bid - he has chosen a party name, Birthday Party, a slogan, “YES!”, and a vice president - Wyoming preacher Michelle Tidball. His political views are quite conservative - he said vaccines are “the mark of the beast”; he believes family planning is racist - “Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work”; he envisions a White House organizational model based on the secret country of Wakanda in 'Black Panther'. NME's Mark Beaumont argues that West's "Presidential bid, by swaying even a small amount of liberal and minority voters away from Biden, might well serve to aid Trump’s re-election chances. You might even wonder if the whole idea for the West 2020 campaign came from POTUS sliding into his DMs to stroke his permanently priapic ego".

"The history of Black rockers is crazy. Little Richard and Chuck Berry were literally risking their lives. At any point, they could have been shot by cops at the side of the road" - music journalism veteran Scott Sterling told Los Angeleno in conversation with Tony Pierce about black guitar players. And they're one the most important ones; "Bad Brains was kind of like on some Miles Davis jazz thing. Those guys could really play"; "We can talk about [Thin Lizzy's] Phil Lynott all day and twice on Sunday"; "Lenny Kravitz is a guitar hero. A lot of his great solos are themes. It’s not about blowing everyone away, it’s creating a little melodic theme that people can latch onto"; "Eddie Hazel from Parliament-Funkadelic... is one of the main dudes"; "Tom Morello is literally a guitar hero. An educated Black man who can play with Bruce Springsteen just as easily as he can play with Zach"; "Isn’t it interesting that most people don’t consider Slash a Black guitarist?".

The most interesting artists right know, as selected by editor and journalist Matthew Schnipper for Music Journalism Insider: Dean Blunt, Lara Sarkissian, John Beltran, Jabu and Daniela Dyson, DJ Python, Mariah the Scientist, Akasha System, Ydegirl, Celia Hollander, Rod Wave, MIKE, Duval Timothy, Yu Su, Young Jesus, Nkisi, The Weeknd. Best song in the last 12 months - 'Hope Road' by Anne Clark; best music journalists: Cat Zhang, Mina Tavakoli, Ben Dandrige-Lemco, Mankaprr Conteh, Hubert Adjei-Kontoh, Arielle Gordon, Olivia Horn, and Jenzia Burgos.

An immensely talented, LA-based collective that has grown from a group of school friends using jazz as a form of escapism to become one of the most influential forces in contemporary music - Dazed writes in a big profile of West Coast Get Down. They were playing for years in LA jazz bars perfecting their craft and style – "they" being Tony Austin (drums), Ronald Bruner Jr (drums), Stephen ‘Thundercat’ Bruner (bass), Cameron Graves (keys), Brandon Coleman (keys), Miles Mosley (bassist), Ryan Porter (trombonist), Patrice Quinn (vocals), Terrace Martin (multi-instrumentalist), and Kamasi Washington (saxophonist) – when they got their big break, playing of Kendrick Lamar's 'To Pimp a Butterfly'. That wasn't the highpoint, rather a kick - West Coast Get Down is only just getting started, Dazed argues.

Venezuelan-born, Barcelona-based artist Arca released her new album, an avant-pop record 'KiCk i' which celebrates the "prenatal kick; that instance of individuation, that unmistakable moment where parents realise their baby is not under their control but has its own will to live, its own impulses that are erratic and unpredictable, separate to their own", as she told i-D in an extensive interview - "So this is celebrating the moment of disagreement that is an expression of feeling alive". About her own change from gay to trans Latina woman she said "we’re all in constant flux, you know? We’re all transitioning: from birth to death, it’s inevitable. And then there’s this transition that is optional, that socially – as imperfect and flawed as it is – allows you to express this thing that is so abstract and physical and primal".

“It can’t be that music is a commodity, or content to use to sell advertising or a subscription plan. Artists have to come first” - Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond said in a Guardian interview about his service. It's his second internet project actually - he sold his first company, an email service called Oddpost, to Yahoo in 2004. Unlike streaming services, Bandcamp takes the idea of ownership as crucial to its success - “by doing that it makes [fans] feel like they’re part of that music’s creation”. Diamond, a musician himself - saxophone player - believes music “is essential for humanity. If you’re serious about that, then the welfare of artists is essential”. This year he practiced his beliefs by waiving Bandcamp's fees in favor of artists...

Experimentalists 100 gecs were described, particularly at the start of their career, of being deliberately ironic, but “the ironic thing is the biggest non-true thing. We’re not doing this to be ironic. The opposite resonates as really true. There are people who say: ‘They’re just expressing a love for music, all sorts of different kinds’” - the band says in a Guardian interview. They are releasing a remix album - "If '1000 gecs' was the logical conclusion of the late-2010s’ post-genre experimentalism, the remix album is that worldview taken to its absurdist extreme".

An interesting interview in the Guardian with Norah Jones, who looks back on every one of her albums:

'Seven Years', her debut from 2002 - “I was trying to have fun with the success, but at the same time, I was a little too worried about getting swallowed up by it all”

'Sunrise' (2004) precipitated the signing of Amy Winehouse, Katie Melua, Joss Stone - "I had to separate myself from it all. The truth is some great artists came out of that and that’s awesome”

'Rosie’s Lullaby' (2007) was written on tour, with a lot of alcohol around - “I was just trying to keep together, to be honest”

'Chasing Pirates' (2009) was the first one written primarily by herself - "It lifted me up as a songwriter and made me feel validated”

'All a Dream' (2012) -  "It was a transformative experience. Before, I was terrified of having to finish songs before I went into the studio... I went in having faith in the process and the lightning bolt of inspiration that comes with making music"

'It’s a Wonderful Time for Love' (2016) - it's about "let’s lift each other up and send love to each other in a hard time"

'It Was You' (2019) - it was released one song at a time, which in turn "really freed me up and made me more inspired than ever”

'Flame Twin' (2020) - “If there’s a darkness to this album, it’s not meant to be an impending sense of doom. It feels more like a human longing for connection”

"This time I feel like the songs are wildly better because it’s me as an adult. I’m getting less afraid" - Phoebe Bridgers said in CoS interview about her new album, 'Punisher'. For her second record she made more energetic material - "I think it’s just more fun to play live. That might be something I learned from my collaborations: the more fun a song is to play live, the more I like it over time, whereas I get kind of exhausted playing sad songs over and over and over". Bridgers released the album earlier because - “I’m not pushing the record until things go back to ‘normal’ because I don’t think they should”, as she wrote on Twitter.

"I can’t say that I thought this would happen, because it’s one of those things - you know, my 20-year old self or my 15-year-old self would never have thought that would happen" Aaron Dessner told Stereogum about working with Michael Stipe, since R.E.M. were such a bih influence on The National - "but more recently, it seemed like more of a dialogue". The band is quarantined now, which is a huge difference, for The National in particular - "we’ve played so many shows for 20 years, and now who knows when that will come back. One of the negative sides of a really intense arc as a touring band is there are big gaps in your memory because you’re so exhausted. It’s an amazing job, and we’re so lucky and grateful for that. But one of the things that is maybe sometimes bittersweet is you miss a lot of normal rites of passages and people’s birthdays and such".

"We daydreamed a lot; we were trying to escape what was around us and were listening to much more immersive music, music that had lefts and rights and corners and different streets" - Dublin noir-rock champions Fontaines D.C. tell NME's Mark Beaumont about their new album 'A Hero's Death' (out July 31). The primary influence on the new album - “It’s inspired by the stillness of the sea. Kinda like later Beach Boys".

"I’m not going to pay my police to kill me. We never felt protected by the police" - producer Terrace Martin told Complex about his new song 'Pig Feet' where he's joined by Denzel Curry, Kamasi Washington, G Perico, and Daylyt. He says the message of ‘Pig Feet’ is "A, awareness, B, strength, and C, fearlessness. The song is very fearless. I want people to instill that in their lives. It's okay to be fearful, but to be fearless is much stronger right now. So, instead of pumping out Kumbaya, I want to pump out awareness and stay ready for whatever".