“Sad songs make me feel better because I’d rather feel something than nothing. Music that changes your mood is like alchemy for your feelings” - Phoebe Bridgers told Nylon about how sad music actually makes her feel better. Science has put it this way - listening to sad music can raise levels of the hormone prolactin, which produces “a consoling psychological effect”.
Owen Pallett has surprise-released new album, 'Island', made differently than usual - Pallett wrote the nine songs on acoustic guitar and then worked out orchestrations for them, and recorded with the London Contemporary Orchestra at the legendary Abbey Road Studios (listen here). The lead single is 'A Bloody Morning' which comes with a very striking music video - it features dancers, who range in age from 6 to 72, filmed entirely through windows and doorways with no contact. Pallett says it's "cathartic".
Death Angel drummer Will Carroll contracted COVID-19 while on a European tour in March, and during a medically induced 12-day coma as a result of his illness, the artist claims he had met Satan. Well, he didn't really like it, as he's told the San Francisco Chronicle - "I'm still going to listen to Satanic metal, and I still love Deicide and bands like that. As for my personal life and my experience of what I went through, I don't think Satan's quite as cool as I used to". He says he'll consume less alcohol and drugs now, too, Exclaim reports.
An estimated crowd of 3,000 people attended a concert in Tel Aviv on Thursday, that was among the first large live music gatherings since the global industry shut down in March amid the coronavirus pandemic, Times of Israel reports. The cultural protest event was staged in support of crew members who rely solely on live music concerts for their livelihood. It had the backing of the Israeli Police and the city of Tel Aviv, and it was against the Israeli government for ongoing shutdown of live events.
Lana Del Rey called out fellow female stars Doja Cat, Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello, Cardi B, Kehlani, Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé, who "have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, f---ing, cheating, etc". On her Instagram post headlined "Questions for the future" she then asked if she can continue singing about her own dark past "without being crucified or saying that I’m glamorizing abuse?”. Del Rey added she liked those singers, and would like to "have some of the same freedom of expression without judgement of hysteria". After being accused of racism, she further explained - "there are certain women that culture doesn’t want to have a voice it may not have to do with race I don’t know what it has to do with".
"I felt like I was in that cartoon 'Cars'... Playing to all these headlights and everything" - country singer Keith Urban told BBC how it felt like playing at a drive-in. In general, he says, it felt like a "tailgate party". Is it the future? Urban suggests it's too expensive.
There will be four stages in corona-influenced albums, Mark, My Words argues: Insanity and bewilderment of the isolation nation; calming records about the routine, zen-like serenity of home quarantine; Coronapunk stage demanding the heads of the political class; Pub. But, what is it that we really need" - "Albums about the crisis will get tired very quickly; albums designed to help us through it, on the other hand, will remain encased in the generational amber. It’s time, already, to start singing for when we’re winning".
Google Play Music is going to be fully shut down later this years, which means YouTube will be the only streaming music option from the company. Google Play Music has been a very easy way to upload CDs and purchased music from other platforms into a single cloud, accessible anywhere. Google says now they would be rolling out a new, simple way for users of its Play Music offering to transfer files over to YouTube Music. AJOMT analyzes what happens next...
“The only real challenge for me was [the absence of] the energy from a mosh pit. But the car horns, the flashing headlights - that was crazy cool” - Keith Urban said about his concert last week for about 200 people in 125 cars or trucks at the Stardust Drive-In Theatre in Tennessee. Variety reports Live Nation plans to take the concept nationwide in the USA this summer, and produce concerts at its 40 amphitheaters - in the parking lots. There are still some issues to think about: radio sound or loudspeakers; carload or individual pricing; allowing lawn chairs or trying to keep customers inside their cars; parking lots or drive-ins.
Jazz bassist and YouTube music scholar Adam Neely published a GREAT musicsplaining video about "the worst saxophone solo of all time", Vinny Mazzetta's alternative take on the Five Satins' 'The Jones Girl'. Nelly explains in great musical detail, in a 28-minute-long musical and cultural history of the one-note solo, why it is to bad.
Joe Rogan is taking his podcast exclusively to Spotify in a licensing deal worth more than $100 million, in one of the largest such deals in the rapidly growing podcast business. Spotify's aim, presumably, is to become “the largest audio platform in the world”, but what does this deal mean for music in general?. Spotify users will probably spend less time listening to music, but Spotify will probably gain subscribers thanks to podcasts, who will also listen to music. Music Business Worldwide goes into detail what will this deal mean for both record labels and artists, as well as music publishers and songwriters. BIG thinks this means "death to independent podcasting".
British singer-songwriter Laura Marling has sold out the first major geo-blocked concert of this year - a live, multi-camera, ticketed event taking place at 7 p.m. ET on June 6 at London’s Union Chapel, limited to North American fans, Variety reports. She has announced a similar show on the same day, taking place at 8 p.m. GMT / 9 p.m. Berlin time (three hours before the first-announced show) geo-blocked for U.K. and European Union fans. Tickets, priced at 12, will also be capped to a limited number.
There are over 14,500 Grateful Dead live concert recordings on Archive.org available for streaming for free. They can be filtered by year, by taper, by type of recording, by date added, or searched for specific songs, albums, venues, recording studios... New recordings are being added every week.
Wu-Tang Clan have launched “Protect Ya Hands”, a plant-based, vegan hand sanitizer with a citrus scent made in collaboration with skincare company JUSU. For every purchase of the hand sanitizer, another hand sanitizer will be donated to the Ottawa Mission Foundation along with other homeless shelters throughout Canada. Sanitizer is part of their new A Better Tomorrow Collection, which also includes a T-shirt and a reusable food bowl. Orders can be found here. Check out the hand sanitizer below.
Neil Young has shared his fifth Fireside Session, lockdown shows streamed from his yard, and this week it was a special "Banyard Edition". Young played this time for an audience of chickens, and some other of his and Daryl Hannah's animals, like Laslo the llama. Neil breaks out the ukulele for 'Tumbleweed', plays 'Homegrown', 'Harvest', 'Old Man' and 'Everybody Knows This is Nowhere'. The audience seemed cheerful! Watch the show at Neil Young Archives.
"[Freedom] is about living the life you want … I feel free and freedom is priceless” - French-Algerian rapper Soolking told Guardian about that fundamental element of everyone's life, the one that so many lack. Young people of Algeria felt like that when they started protests against the regime last year, with Soolking's song 'Liberté' being the unofficial anthem of the year-long protests.
Rolling Stone made a list of 100 greatest debut singles that became building blocks to great careers, and a couple of seismic one-hit wonders. It goes from 'Achy Breaky Heart' by Billy Ray Cyrus which "helped shift the trajectory of country music", to '…Baby One More Time' by Britney Spears - "this girl changed the sound of pop forever". Check out the full list - 100-51, 50-1.
Lily Cornell Silver, daughter of the late Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, has launched a discussion program called Mind Wide Open to normalize the topic of mental health. She made the announcement this week on her Instagram, three years after her father has died. Cornell Silver said that her goal is to normalize mental health discussions. The new series will take place on Instagram and will feature interviews with mental health professionals, public figures and other notable guests.
Twitter user @RottenDrawings' has reimagined every album cover by the metal pioneers Death as a 'Seinfeld'-related sight gag. Each Death album - 'Scream Bloody Gore' (1987), 'Leprosy' (1988), 'Spiritual Healing' (1990), 'Human' (1991), 'Individual Thought Patterns' (1993), 'Symbolic' (1995), and 'The Sound of Perseverance' - gets a recreation that references that basic 'Seinfeld'. Awesome!
Berlin-based vocalist and producer Lyra Pramuk released her debut album 'Fountain' of "futuristic folk music" this year, made entirely with her own voice. Fact Magazine visited her in her studio to see how she does it.
Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Taylor Swift and Janelle Monáe will be among those joining “Dear Class of 2020”, a virtual commencement ceremony for this year’s quarantined graduates, Deadline reports. Former American president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are delivering commencement addresses, alongside K-pop powerhouse BTS, Lady Gaga, and more. Live programming event will also feature guest appearances by Alicia Keys, Kelly Rowland, Demi Lovato, Billy Porter, Lizzo, Camila Cabello, Chloe x Halle, Maluma, CNCO, Doja Cat, FINNEAS, Megan Thee Stallion and more. It will be livestreamed on YouTube on Saturday, June 6 (starting at 3 p.m. Harvard time, 8 p.m. Cambridge time, 4 a.m. on Sunday Tohoku University time). YouTube expects it to last a few hours.
Australian painter Lushsux was savagely beaten as he attempted to paint another one of his famous murals of 50 Cent. Lush became famous by merging images of 50 Cent as Taylor Swift, Mike Pence and President Donald Trump (his Instagram profile). 50 Cent didn't really like it, or get it, so he called on for somebody to beat Lushsux up over his paintings, Complex reports. "Unfortunately, some 6 or 7 smoothebrains at one time on the street already put me in hospital already this month because of this s##t" Lushsux said. He adds this attack won't stop him "me doing what 99.8% of what everyone else seems to for the most part get a hearty chuckle out of".
In the first two months of social distancing, American listeners largely gravitated toward the acoustic genres - singer-songwriter classics and country, Rolling Stone reports. Streaming data show that, in general, Americans have gravitated away from electric and electronic genres. Streams for pop fell 16 percent, dance music streams fell 11 percent, hip-hop decreased 15 percent, hard rock and metal fell 10 percent, while arena rock tumbled 23 percent. Country music has seen an 8 percent growth in streams, singer-songwriter music was up 8 percent, soft rock was up 5 percent, and roots rock 4 percent. In general, on-demand audio streams in the U.S. dipped eight percent from March 13th through May 7th compared with the previous two months.
Webby Awards winners were announced yesterday, among them: Cardi B for fashion & lifestyle, Lil Nas X for his video 'Panini', Dolly Parton for her mini-series 'America', Rihanna for her Fenty Beauty brand, Swizz Beats + Timbaland for the Verzuz battles on Instagram Live, Celine Dion for her innovation on social media. They were honored during an online celebration dubbed 'WFH: Webby From Home', which took place on Tuesday at WebbyAwards.com. The Webbys said this year's event is dedicated to "honoring outstanding individuals and organizations who are using the Internet in response to the incredible difficulties imposed by the coronavirus pandemic." Those Special Achievement honorees include D-Nice for his creation #ClubQuarantine, and Miley Cyrus for the creation of her Instagram Live show 'Bright Minded: Live With Miley'.
A 29-year-old Seoul man visited five clubs and bars in a Seoul neighborhood on a busy weekend night and was later tested positive for COVID-19. After that incident, 119 new infections have been traced back to the 29-year-old, Korean authorities have announced. Additional 5,517 fellow clubgoers have been contacted in the process. A total of more than 11,000 people had been in the general area on the night in question, Statista.com reports.
'So You Won’t Forget' is a new Khruangbin song from their forthcoming album 'Mordechai', slightly less world music, slightly more funk, a summer breeze song; Compton rapper Problem's 'Janet Freestyle' is a tribute to his friend Nipsey Hussle, it samples Janet Jackson, and features jazz musician/Kendrick Lamar collaborator Terrace Martin; Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante and Suicidal Tendencies bassist Ra Diaz covered Billie Eilish's 'Bad Guy' - that would have happened had her brother been a metalhead; metalcore outfit Misery Signals play tense and dense on 'The Tempest'; American Trappist go psych-rocky on 'Losing My Grip'; Slowthai is back with yet another new song, 'BB (BodyBag)', he's still pretty much angry; Apollo Brown & Che’ Noir feature Black Thought on soul-heavy 'Hustle Don’t Give'; dark-pop newcomer Daine sounds like a polished Billie Eilish on her debut single 'Picking Flowers'.
“Touring in Europe can fucking suck—sometimes you have to pay to go to the bathroom, and it’s fucking nasty when you get in there, and maybe there’s no food besides sausage for days. But I would be in a van in Europe right now in a heartbeat” - Phoebe Bridgers says in New Yorker interview about her new album 'Punisher' (out in June, no tour yet). She had decided not to delay the release of the album, but still felt weird about putting it out during a global crisis - “Here’s my thing, for your emptiness. It’s very poetic”.
Travis McCready performed on Monday in a former Masonic Temple in Arkansas, in a first live concert in America since the pandemic stopped live shows in March. Fans had to have their temperatures taken and wear masks for the show, and they were required to buy seats in clusters, or what promoters call “fan pods”. Dave Poe, a New York-based concert promoter and a co-founder of the Independent Promoter Alliance, called Monday night’s event “a great jump-start to the industry”. Daniel Neathery, 33, had to buy six tickets (at $20 a pop), an entire fan pod, even though he came alone, but - “for me, it was worth it to have some normalcy”. New York Times reports from the Temple.
Sci-fi rockers Devo shared an online store featuring coronavirus merchandise. Offerings include themed face masks and Devo’s iconic red energy dome hats with an attached clear plastic face protector. The band explains: "Once the dome was placed on your head it recycled the electrical energy that regularly escapes from your brain. People of course laughed. Now the dome is no longer a source of controversy or derision. Its popularity is a sort of proof that De-evolution is real!".
The former CBS Records president who may have been the most powerful person in the music business in the closing years of the 20th century has died, Billboard reports. Walter Yetnikoff helped sell megastars like Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel. Yetnikoff also cultivated a reputation as a loud, snarling, hard-partying power broker, and was a symbol of an era of past excesses.
Each of GQ’s 21 global editions nominated local artist across a world of genres, in search of pop music’s voices of the future. A few of them are: Thailand rapper Milli; Italian singer/rapper Fedez with a social mission; French Eddy de Pretto - somewhere between chanson and rap; Indian street rapper Divine; Mexican neo-folk singer Natalia Lafourcade; Australian indigenous rapper Ziggy Ramo; J-Pop singer Fujii Kaze; Spanish flamenco singer Israel Fernández... Listen to all of the selected here.
Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Warner Music Group have generated $5.60 billion in the three months to end of June, up by $1.53 billion (or +37.6%) on the same period of last year, Music Business Worldwide calculates. That $5.60 billion turnover equates to the three majors cumulatively generating $61.5 million per day in the year’s second quarter – or, in turn, $2.56 million every hour. In the first six months of 2020, the three major music companies generated $10.91 billion – putting them firmly on course for a cumulative $20 billion year.
Ruth Radelet, Adam Miller, and Nat Walker of the synth-pop quartet Chromatics have announced the break-up of their band, Consequence reports. The statement announcing Chromatics’ breakup doesn't make a mention of their longtime bandmate Johnny Jewel, who also released the group’s music through his Italians Do It Better record label. Jewel separately announced that "he’ll continue making music and supporting great art and artists through his label Italians Do It Better".
"Concerts in real life have various constraints like budgets, the chance of accidents, space limitations, etc. But when it comes to a virtual world, there are none. If you have a crazy idea, you can get it implemented. And this widens the scope of how musical concerts can be done and how artists can interact with fans" - metaverse enthusiast E2Analyst writes in the Medium after seeing Ariana Grande perform in Fortnite.
Billie Eilish's new album 'Happier Than Ever' has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Of the 238,000 equivalent units sold, 73,000 of them were vinyl records, the second-most vinyl records sold in an album's first week since 1991. The benchmark is currently held by Taylor Swift's 2021 album 'Evermore', which sold 102,000 vinyls in its first seven days, Billboard reports.
'Dreams Still Inspire' by the Chicago underground rap duo Abstract Mindstate is the first album fully produced by Kanye West that was not his own since Common’s 'Be' in 2005. It is also the first release under West's new YZY SND imprint. Coming out nearly 20 years after the release of their first and only album, 2001’s 'We Paid Let Us In!', and "with lyrics and production that perfectly complement each other, Abstract Mindstate's reunion album is a masterclass in Hip-Hop fundamentals", Hot New Hip-Hop points out.
Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie has sold her 115-title song catalog, including hits such as 'Don’t Stop', 'You Make Loving Fun', 'Over My Head', 'Songbird', and 'Say You Love Me', to Hipgnosis, Music Business Worldwide reports. McVie first joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970 helping them become one of the most commercially successful music artists of the past 50 years, with the Grammy-winning 1977 album 'Rumours' selling more than 45 million copies worldwide. Hipgnosis has spent more than $2 billion in three years acquiring rights to a vast number of popular songs. Hipgnosis’s filings reveal that McVie's 115 songs acquired in the deal generated $1.7 million in 2020, $1.72m in 2019 and $1.58m in 2018. Hipgnosis usually pays an average multiple of 15 times the annual income, which would bring the price to McVie's songs to approx. $100 million.
"There's a certain amount of pressure that comes into our album world when we go in to make a record because we're thinking about keeping people in the arenas, in the stadiums. I think that pushes you into a territory musically. Having everything shut down by Covid allowed these other songs to begin to be heard that were otherwise too quiet" - The Killers' Brondown Flowers says to The New Cue about their new album 'Pressure Machine'. It's much quieter, and deals with his childhood: "I think the thing that was most profound was just that how much grief that I still had that I didn't realise that I was walking around with for some of these people, some of these stories. And that was a little bit of a shock to me, that it was cathartic for me to talk about some of these things".
Japanese band Oavette shares a jazzy/post-rock gem 'Neus'; Lingua Ignota takes a turn into Appalachian Gothic with ‘Repent Now Confess Now’; Deafheaven are keeping their stylistic U-turn with their latest, melancholic single ‘In Blur’; Martina Topley Bird shares ‘Topic’, produced by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja; one of the highlights on Nas' new album is ‘Nobody’, which sees him reuniting with Ms. Lauryn Hill.
