Surviving members of the Prodigy have released a statement urging their fans with mental health issues not to remain quiet about them, NME reports. "It has been a tough time for everyone over the last few weeks since Keef’s passing. If you are struggling with depression, addiction or the impact of suicide, please do not […]
Former Woodstock 50 backers Dentsu Inc. pulled financial support from the festival back last month, and founder Michael Lang now alleges that the former investors “illegally swept approximately $17 million from the festival bank account.” Also, he alleges the Japanese company blocked ticket sales, advised talent to back out of lineup for potential slots in […]
People with depression listen to sad music because it makes them feel better, according to a study at the University of South Florida. Scientists asked 76 female undergrads (half of them diagnosed with depression) to listen to various happy and sad clips and found that participants with depression indicated they would rather listen to sad […]
Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis Capaldi releases his debut album 'Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent' on 17 May, with "power ballads about breakups, heartache and insecurity". On social media he's quite a funny guy, but on records quite sad: "When you're happy you're thinking about puppies and spaghetti... just enjoying being happy", he told BBC, and […]
Here's how Guardian describes them in a few lines: Amyl and the Sniffers are like a breath of filthy fresh air... Their sound sucks meat from punk and glam’s bones, and throws in basslines from 70s pub-rock... [They] promise swearing, sweat and the short, sharp shock of rock at its gutsiest. Amyl and the Sniffers’ […]
Tool performed 'Descending' and 'Invincible' - 9 and 6 minutes long - over the weekend at Florida festival Welcome to Rockville. The songs are most probably taken from Tool’s long-awaited new album, first since 2006’s '10,000 Days'. Band's frontman Maynard James Keenan previously said the as-yet-untitled album should arrive "between mid May and Mid July". […]
Guardian has another "bigger picture" article on social implications of a pop-culture trend. They write about estimated 1 million youngsters from South Korea and Japan competing in auditions for talent agencies, which will take on a select few as “trainees”. It's not just showing up at auditions, they train beforehand, paying thousands of dollars worth […]
“I’ve spent about seven years not writing anything for the band. I couldn’t write anything for the band. And then about a month or so ago, I wrote almost an album’s worth of material for the band... I had almost two weeks of those daily visitations and it was so nice. It makes you so […]
Madonna accepted the advocate for change award at the 2019 Glaad media awards, and gave an emotional speech about how seeing gays in Detroit in 1970s for the first time in life changed her life: “For the first time I saw men kissing men, girls dressed like boys, boys wearing hot pants, insane, incredible dancing […]
The centre of the song is The Weeknd, he got a helping hand from SZA, and Travis Scott, and it's taken from 'Game of Thrones' album. Anthony Mandler directed the visuals for 'Power Is Power', and it has 1,3 million views on YouTube. It's taken from the 'For The Throne (Music Inspired by the HBO […]
“It is not an inviting idea … and then, yes, there will be the notion of coming to Europe and the ease of travelling from one country to the next. That is part of what makes touring possible for lots of artists,” Kamasi Washington told the Guardian about what happens with UK exiting the European […]
"City Pop" was a type of soft rock/AOR/funk that was tremendously popular in Japan in the age of disco and early new wave. 'Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986' chronicles this musical positivity, with slick beats and gleaming grooves providing the perfect soundtrack - PopMatters presents the latest Light in the Attic […]
Japanese fashion company Toki Sen-I Co. has accused Kanye West, claiming his Yeezy brand owed them $624,000 for materials and work done on his exclusive sneaker line. They claim West “used his reputation and celebrity status” as a tool to deceive them into producing the fabric, which he then didn’t pay for. The firm also […]
Cricket Blue interweave the fantastical with very real questions of emotional and philosophical value, PopMatters says about Vermont folk band's full-length album, 'Serotinalia'. Their new song 'Psalm' builds through moments of quiet and fervor alike as the narrator's moral compass comes under self-interrogation. Listen to it here.
Metalachi are mariachi band from California, consisting of five siblings born in Mexico, and they are known for their covers of famous rock and metal songs. Loudwire made a list of 11 of their covers, including 'Sweet Child o' Mine' by Guns N' Roses, 'Raining Blood' by Slayer, 'Ace of Spades' by Motorhead...
At a ceremony on Saturday, Wu-Tang Clan were honored by having the Park Hill area of Staten Island officially renamed "The Wu-Tang Clan District". The rap stars, community leaders, special guests, were on hand for a renaming ceremony, as well as Councilwoman Debi Rose who said: “This is a great day where we have an […]
Measuring by the number of performances Melbourne is the most musical city in the world with well over 73,000 performances a year, according to the World Cities Culture Forum. It is followed by New York, with 36,192 performances, Paris with 31,375 and London with 22,828. Then again, Guardian says, maybe it doesn’t come down to […]
Stereogum takes on a serious issue of musician committing suicides: "We continue to lose music heroes to suicide and self-medication, with no real connection between age or genre — Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Avicii, Mac Miller, Lil Peep, Scott Hutchison, Keith Flint from the Prodigy, Kim Jong-hyun of K-pop group Shinee, Allman Bros. Band drummer […]
Brits in Hot Weather is PopMatters' guide to some of best new British music around at the moment, and in the latest edition of their segment they chose five songs - soulful house with a UK garage twist in the form of Quiet Man x Joy Anonymous, stuttering funk from Skinny Pelembe, downtempo synthpop from […]
Country singer Garth Brooks has called for more gender diversity in the genre, saying his wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, "works a thousand times harder than me to get a tenth as much as I do out of this business", BBC reports. Female country singers have seen a decline in airplay over the past two […]
"Ghostly, experimental jazz that sets a new standard for music of its kind. A deeply tasteful and meditative recording" - PopMatters really likes debut album by Odum, out today. It's a new band consisting of Chicago underground masterminds Eric Block (Veloce) and Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Corrections House), and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley added drums […]
Tinder has launched a new feature Festival Mode, which allows users to add participating festivals to their Tinder profiles, and that allows them to view and match with other Tinder users who have marked themselves as attending. The Tinder Festival Mode will be in use for 12 festivals both in the U.S. and the U.K. […]
Pop songs are the most popular choice at British funerals, and traditional hymns have been completely squeezed out. Frank Sinatra’s 'My Way' is No. 1 at the funeral chart, Ed Sheeran’s 'Supermarket Flower' is a new entry to the list, and Monty Python's 'Always Look at the Bright Side of Life' closes the Top 10 […]
A fan-made memorial was created at the site where Nipsey Hussle was gunned down in Los Angeles in front of his Marathon Clothing store, but location has become chaotic because of a high number of people attempting to make money off the grieving public, TMZ reports. There were people selling bootleg t-shirts with Nipsey's image, […]
The Harley in Sheffield, the Maze in Nottingham, the Victoria Inn in Derby, have been closed recently, or are about to close, and they are just examples of a big trend - in January 2018, industry body UK Music estimated that 35% of venues across the country had closed in the preceding decade. On top […]
Female artists are not just topping charts; they’re also challenging and expanding the limits of hip-hop - Consequence of Sounds writes, and picks out the 10 most crucial female rappers now: very much pop hip-hop Megan Thee Stallion, emo-rapper 070 Shake, blues musician turned rapper Lizzo, poetic rapper Noname, provocative Cupcakke, daughter of a rapper […]
The Quietus was in Malmö, Sweden to check out the fifth instalment of Intonal Festival - "The organisers have very little interest in commercial concerns, choosing instead to celebrate the weird, the underground and the experimental by showcasing artists who are challenging the ways music can be produced and experienced. And they do this in […]
On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, art historian Martin Kemp has collaborated with early music singers I Fagiolini to create a tour and album centred on da Vinci's musicianship, Guardian reports. Da Vinci played a kind of fat violin called the lira da braccio, for which there were not even written scores, […]
Drake got 12 Billboard Music Awards yesterday, including the biggest prize of the night - the award for top artist - beating the likes of Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Post Malone and Travis Scott. Drake also won top male artist, top streaming songs artist, top rap artist and top Billboard 200 album for Scorpion as […]
Heavy metal topped all other genres in 2018 in increased streams and downloads in 2018 from the previous year, according to music distribution company TuneCore. Streams and downloads at Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, and more than 150 other music streaming and download services, that are home to 250,000 artists, totaled 199.3 billion in 2018, an […]
