American country singer Maren Morris says women in her genre are offered two paths - "You've either got to be this religious, virginal conservative, or the wronged woman burning the house down", as she tells BBC. What did she do about it? She made an album 'Girl' where she is "confident and sexy and sexual", […]
Strobe lighting at music festivals can increase the risk of epileptic seizures, and even people who have not been diagnosed with epilepsy might be affected, the Dutch scientific team said. Around 3% of people with epilepsy are photosensitive, which means their seizures are triggered by flashing or flickering lights, or patterns, Independent reports. Recommendation is […]
Radiohead have released 18 hours of 'OK Computer' sessions that recently leaked online. Listen to it on Bandcamp, or buy it for £18; proceeds go to Extinction Rebellion, the climate activist group that recently staged protests in London. The hackers who stole it demanded 150.000$ on threat of releasing it. The band's release will be […]
Thousands of master recordings were destroyed in “the biggest disaster in the history of the music business” - a fire at Universal Music Group’s Vault on Universal Studios, the New York Times reports. The fire happened back on June 1, 2008, it was widely reported at the time but mainly from a movies/television angle and […]
Onscreen depiction of homosexuality in Elton John's biopic 'Rocketman' was too much for conservative Pacific nation Samoa so they banned it, Deutsche Welle reports. Samoa's principal censor, Leiataua Niuapu Faaui, said 'Rocketman's' homosexual content clashed with residents' strong Christian beliefs and violated the country's laws, including the 2013 Crimes Act, under which sodomy is punishable […]
From music that "felt so full of authentic, unfiltered emotion" on his first album to "his best album in years and his most stunning artistic achievement since he introduced himself to the world almost a decade ago" on this year's 'IGOR? - Brooklyn Vegan sums up Tyler, the Creator's career. BV sees him as one […]
"This is all so gripping, both as a time capsule and as a showcase for Dylan’s unique presence and glorious performances from Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and also from Patti Smith" - the Guardian reviews new Martin Scorsese's documentary about Bob Dylan 'Rolling Thunder Revue' (5 of 5 stars). "This is an immersive experience, like […]
"I don’t think the next few generations of women are fucking about. They’re much more switched on than my generation were. They’re not going to take this sitting down” - Garbage's Shirley Manson says in an interview with the NME about changes in abortion law in USA. But she's optimistic: "I believe wholeheartedly in evolution. […]
Video creator Mylo the Cat made a mash-up of 'Dexter’s Laboratory' cartoon and GZA's classic 'Investigative Reports'. Watch it on Instagram.
“We’re trying to pick some ones we haven’t done in recent years, stuff we haven’t done before Most of the time people don’t want too much unusual. People like a little bit unusual" Mick Jagger says in his first interview after the heart surgery. The Rolling Stones had to postpone their summer tour (kicks of June 21 […]
BBC has an important article about sexual harassment in music - several fans have been speaking to BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat stories of how "groupie" culture has led to them being sexually abused. Musicians take advantage of fans, especially when they're young. It gets even worse if a fan wants to make a career in […]
American singer-songwriter Bill Callahan has a new record, 'Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest' (out this week), which the Quietus calls "supreme... He finds the cosmic in the straightforward and the straightforward in the cosmic, often within the same sentence. The record is as profound a meditation on the birth, death, love and loss". The album […]
New York City on monday held a renaming ceremony for the corner of Fulton Street and St. James Place in Clinton Hill, which is now known as Christopher ‘Notorious B.I.G.’ Wallace Way. Biggie's street arrives after years of efforts to rename the street; due to the violent nature of his music, the memoriam met resistance […]
DJ Khaled got really angry for not reaching the No. 1 at the USA album sales chart. First he was angry with his publisher for not doing enough to market the album, and then he turned his aim at Billboard Chart for allegedly not counting all of his album sales. Tyler the Creator sold 165,000 […]
American folk singer-songwriter Rhiannon Giddens' new album 'the is no Other' (lowercase and capitalisation are intentional), is a collaborative concept Italian jazz multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, merging Giddens' banjo playing with Turrisi, who draws on North African, Middle Eastern and Italian traditions. This cross-over shows "the ease with which the boundaries of genre and nationality can […]
Organizers of the British festival Glastonbury banished punk band Killdren because of their lyric "kill Tory", which made the Quietus point at double standards at Glastonbury. Glasto booked a singer - Carrie Underwood who has released several songs glamorising the act of murder. tQ goes, rightfully, into travesty in the article - at Glasto headliners are […]
Ed Sheeran was the most-played artist on British radio last year, despite not releasing new music, and without an entry in the Top 10 most-played tracks, suggesting his entire catalogue of hits remains on rotation on the radio, BBC reports. It's the third time in four years that he's been the UK's most-played artist. 'Feel […]
Black Pumas were voted Best New Band at the 2019 Austin Music Awards, and "the songs they’ve assembled on their self-titled debut revivify the sound and feel of 70s soul in a surprisingly fresh way", Guardian writes. They have a debut album (out June 20), "so perfectly realised by the standards they’ve set themselves that […]
American riot grrrl punk band Bikini Kill reunited after 20 years, playing a reunion tour. Singer Kathleen Hanna says in a Guardian interview they're back because "we want to be a part of this conversation about what feminism is in this moment”. The issues they were fighting in the 1990s are still issues - "being […]
Bushwick Bill of legendary Houston rap group Geto Boys, has died at the age of 52, All Hip Hop reports. Alongside Scarface and Willie, Bushwick Bill made Geto Boys’ core lineup. Geto Boys’ 1991 album 'We Can’t Be Stopped' featured a graphic photo of Bill in the hospital after losing an eye in a gunshot incident. The […]
M.I.A. on saturday received an M.B.E., or Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, with rapper saying she is accepting it thanks in part to her mother, Rolling Stone reports. M.I.A., or how her mother named her, Mathangi Arulpragasam, is a daughter of Sri Lankan Tamils revealed that her mother helped craft […]
"Imagine making a David Bowie biopic and stopping before 'Space Oddity', and it's just his early hippie stuff. That's exactly what we did in this one" - screenwriter Michael Idov tells All Music about his new movie biopic 'Leto' ("summer" in Russian) about Viktor Tsoi, charismatic leader of Russian 1980s rock band Kino. The movie, Idov […]
The Washington Post has an interesting article about something "unthinkable" twenty years ago - indie/jam crossover. "Indie rock (let’s say: everything that descends from the Velvet Underground) and jam band music (let’s say: everything that descends from the Grateful Dead) have traditionally felt incompatible, if not adversarial. Indie people are skeptical and fickle. Jam band […]
German electronic producer Robag Wruhme has a new album out 'Venq Tolep' - it covers the "area between home-listening house, ambient, and half-remembered vestiges of IDM. Sometimes it feels like an attempt to fashion a new kind of songwriting, one less dependent upon lyrics than simple human presence", Pitchfork says in a review. "The album’s […]
In seems like ancient history, but Guardian's story about smuggling rock'n'roll from the USSR actually says a lot about today's spies and politics, the only difference now being delicacy in spy's methods. The article's hero is Joanna Stingray, who in 1980s visited USSR, found there an underground rock scene, and published, in USA, a compilation […]
Johnny Depp recorded a cover of one of David Bowie’s biggest hits, 'Heroes', together with his bandmates in the supergroup Hollywood Vampires which includes Alice Cooper and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. They recorded it last year at Berlin’s Hansa Studios, in the same place Bowie recorded it in summer of '77, Blabbermouth reports. Video includes […]
Music videos generate the highest return-on-investment for YouTube despite making up only about 5% of all videos uploaded, according to a new analysis. Music and music-related videos had a collective 1.987 trillion views on YouTube in 2018 (an average of 16,937 views per video), representing 20% of all views on the platform. Further on, music videos all […]
In honor of celebrating pride month, Loudwire has compiled a gallery of LGBTQ figures in the rock, pop, and metal community. There are obvious ones like Elton John and Freddie Mercury, and some less known like members of metal bend Cynic or siblings Tegan and Sara (Quin) of the band of the same name.
Where Future Unfolds started life as a solo project for Chicago musician and activist Damon Locks, who used samples from civil rights era speeches and recordings in improvised performances with a drum machine. Over the past four years he gathered a band Black Monument Ensemble, and 'Where Future Unfolds' is a live recording of The […]
Elvis Costello has been named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to music, which he, at first, decided not to accept, but then, after a conversation with his mother, changed his mind and accepted it, Spin reports. Costello's music has often been critical of British imperialism and politics […]
John Mayer posted a snippet of his new song to TikTok, and young British singer/songwriter and Mayer-lover Mary Spender couldn't wait so she composed the rest of the song. It took her three days to come up with the rest of the song, to record and mix it. She even made a video of the whole process and her version of the song.
Belarus has been disqualified from the Eurovision Song Contest after its entry failed to comply with the non-political nature of the competition, CMU reports. Galasy ZMesta's first song 'Ja nauchu tebja' ('I will teach you') was rejected due to complaints that the lyrics mocked the mass protest movement against long-time Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The new song entry by the same band has also been disqualified by the EBU.
"We love antiheroes and complicated figures, and can acknowledge the ways in which the system preys on young Black men, but as long as we pretend that their upbringing completely stifles their agency, we allow them to avoid accountability for their actions [like Kodak Black and YoundBoy Never Broke Again]. To be 'complicated' is a patriarchal privilege. When Cardi B or Azealia Banks admit their past misdeeds or act out on social media, they aren’t contextualized; they’re policed" - Complex writes in an excellent essay.
Mozart expert Timothy Jones, who teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London, has released an album of his completions of several fragments for violin and keyboard that Mozart never finished, the New York Times reports. Posthumous completions are not unheard of in the classical world. This new Mozart-Jones recording is unusual, though, in its choose-your-own-adventure approach. Jones, testing different aspects of Mozartian style, made multiple completions of each fragment, and the album includes some of that variety, leaving the listener to choose the version they like the most.
Billy Childish has released over 130 albums under various guises including The Milkshakes, Thee Headcoats, The Buff Medways, CTMF, and last year he’s suddenly started releasing albums - he’s delivered five LPs over the last four months with a new group, The William Loveday Intention. All these are surprisingly influenced by Bob Dylan - "it’s the lizards’ fault because I ended up stuck on a YouTube loop of all his songs and films", as he's told to The New Cue. Why so many albums in such a short time: "I had this silly idea where I thought it would be good to do a career in a year. Ten albums in a year".
Pete Davidson, Chris Redd and musical guest Jack Harlow delivered an Eminem-inspired rap about NFT on the latest episode of Saturday Night Live. Rapping on Eminem’s 'Without Me' video Davidson acts as a superhero, he is then joined by Redd’s Morpheus from The Matrix, and Harlow as a janitor.
Justin Bieber's newest release 'Justice' debuts on top of Billboard 200 chart with 154,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending March 25, Billboard reports. It's his eighth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart - all 10 of Bieber’s charting albums have reached the top 10, and he’s only missed the top slot twice. Bieber this week also stops the chart-topping domination of Morgan Wallen’s 'Dangerous: The Double Album', which spent 10 consecutive weeks in a row (it's at No. 3 this week). Lana Del Rey’s 'Chemtrails Over the Country Club' debuts at No. 2 with 75,000 equivalent album units earned.
Five thousand people attended a concert in Barcelona on Saturday night (March 27) as part of a COVID-19 experiment looking at the possibility of holding live music events with no social distancing if rapid testing is employed, al Jazeera reports. All attendees at the gig were tested ahead of the gig and the antigen test results were reported back to the attendees within 10 to 15 minutes via an app on their phones. The ticket price of $23 came with a rapid test and mask included. The show, which saw Spanish rock band Love of Lesbian playing at the Palau Sant Jordi arena, is said to be the biggest concert in Europe since the pandemic began last year.
"Women have been written out of history for centuries, their contributions to culture diminished, dismissed, or viewed solely in relation to the men in their lives. But through her entertaining, affectionate and righteous book, Thorn invites us to witness her friend in all her gobby glory" - Guardian writes in the review of 'My Rock'n'Roll Friend' by Tracey Thorn on Everything But The Girl, and her relationship with Lindy Morrison of the Go-Betweens. The G adds that "the author brings wit, candour and vividness to her storytelling... as well as providing a portrait of a mercurial and brilliant musician, the book exposes the sexism and hypocrisy of an industry, and attempts to right a terrible wrong".
BBC is showing a new documentary 'Black Power: A British Story of Resistance' about the UK's Black Power movement in the late 1960s which aimed to bring a revolution to the status of black people in the UK. It features interviews with past activists, some of which have told about the music that epitomises their journey.
