Beyoncé and Lizzo amended their songs following criticism by fans on social media. The Face argues in favor of the (responsible) power of the people: "In the case of ​“sp*z” and derogatory terms in music, cultural customs (i.e. the use of problematic terms when ignorant) don’t necessarily align with the ​“right” and ​“justified” action in real time. Values change over time, and so does the context of certain words. It’s OK for artists to learn, like every flawed human on the planet. Evolution and dismantling harmful practices is something to be embraced and welcomed, not scrutinised. These days, artists are scanning social media for feedback and potential edit suggestions. Let’s hope the fans use their power responsibly".

They still got it - that disco glam-trash garage-rock that Yeah Yeah Yeahs got famous for is right there in 'Burning'. It's short, direct, and powerful. Count on the lyric "Whatcha gonna do when you get to the water" to get stuck in your head. Watch the video below.

One man died and at least 40 others were injured as high winds exceeding 82 km/h (51 mph) caused part of the main stage at Medusa Festival in Valencia, Spain to collapse early Saturday morning (August 13), BBC reports. The festival grounds were promptly evacuated afterwards and organizers have since canceled the rest of the event.

YouTube music theorist 12tone's new video serves exactly like a late-night show - in 24 minutes it's fun, engaging, clever, and has plenty of music (well, parts of one song, actually). 12tone reconstructs Tom Petty's 'Free Fallin'' - "the most LA song ever written. 'Free Fallin'' is both Tom Petty's celebration and his admonishment of my adopted city, wrapped in layers of complex production and lyrical nuance that challenge listeners to reexamine their concepts of freedom while also being just super fun to sing along with".

Belgian band Brutus go into melodic hard-rock with their latest song 'Liar', taken from the album 'Unison Life' available October 21. It goes deeper into the melodic metal they have stepped in on the previous album 'Nest'. Brutus vocalist Stefanie Mannaerts explains the idea behind the song: “When things get a bit more difficult or when relationships demand too much energy, I choose to avoid confronting things, or just lie about it for the sake of keeping the peace. At that point it just seems like the easy thing to do so that nobody gets hurt. But in the long run, those well-intentioned lies will catch up with you, and the peace you thought you'd found turns out to be an illusion.” The music video has been filmed in Morocco.

The animated music theorist 12tone went on a quest of describing what makes something butt rock? What does it mean, and what does it sound like? He sees three stages of the genre and defines what exactly it sounds like. Fun video.

The popular third-party Windows application for digital audio playback, the good old Winamp s back, Gizmodo reports. Developers posted the latest build of the software late last month, four years since its last update. At the peak of the download era, Winamp was renowned for its ability to play most popular audio formats and the customization of the user interface.

Trapital's founder Dan Runcie stopped to think about this Talib Kweli's quote: “I was touring before the pandemic. I was doing 200 shows a year… how was I doing that? That’s not sustainable. I was on some superhuman shit… I got a lot of shows coming up, but I can’t let it get back to 200 a year… 20 years straight, I did that for 20 years”. Runcie concludes "artists really have to love living on the road to do it for that many nights per year. It’s ironic to think about the touring grind given the remote work vs in-office debates in Corporate America. Many 9 – 5 workers will never go back to a job that requires them to commute 200+ days per year again. Imagine doing that in a different city every night?! Artists’ travel is on another level".

Some really interesting thoughts by singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin in The New Cue about how songs come to life and how they change: "I feel like this record in particular, when we finished it, it was just like, ‘oh, OK, this is what I made, cool’. It wasn’t exactly what I imagined but also I was just very open to the journey and for it to be what it needed to be, which is a relaxing way to be sometimes... Sometimes I think crowd responses informs me what the song is and how it should be played, I think they can really transform on the road".

Jack Probst shared with Creem.com his fascinating story from his years as a janitor at a music venue ten years ago. He was collecting fans' letters that bands such as My Chemical Romance, Death Cab For Cutie, and many more had left behind. "Reading the intimate stories fans shared with their idols kept me going as I mopped sticky floors and scrubbed permanent marker graffiti off bathroom stalls. They are a unique part of music history, the human side of a cold industry most of us never get to see".

Roxy Music's guitarist Phil Manzanera talked to The Telegraph about how much he makes from music: "Luckily, Roxy have continued to be popular, so it’s like having a pension. I don’t have any other pensions... I was also lucky to have my guitar riff from my 1978 second solo album 'K-Scope' sampled in 2011 by Jay-Z and Kanye West, who built a whole song around it. The track, 'No Church in the Wild' on the 'Watch the Throne' album, won a Grammy and was hugely successful and used in films and lots of ads. It was like winning the lottery out of the blue. I get more than they get for it: a six-figure sum over 10 years. And they continue to pay me multiples of six figures because they’re so successful and I partly own my share. It’s prob­ably more than I ever earned in Roxy: we had all the gold albums but no gold!".

Sudan Archives is releasing her second album this year, and one of the tracks on it is “Selfish Soul”. She talked to Song Exploder about how the idea for this song "started when she asked her boyfriend, James (who is the rapper Nocando) to shave her head. Cutting off her hair made her reflect on her whole hair story, from experiences she had as a kid, to the cultural and racial issues that have historically surrounded Black women’s hair".

generated recommendations, means: "Besieged by automated recommendations, we are left to guess exactly how they are influencing us, feeling in some moments misperceived or misled and in other moments clocked with eerie precision. At times, the computer sometimes seems more in control of our choices than we are".

Women and first-time nominees dominate the 30th anniversary of the Mercury Prize, which celebrates the best British and Irish albums of the year. 11 of the 12 shortlisted albums are from the first-timers like Kojey Radical and Yard Act. Little Simz is the only artist here with Mercury history: her third album, 'Grey Area', was nominated in 2019, with her second nod coming for its follow-up, 'Sometimes I Might Be Introvert'. Simz also leads a pack dominated by women, with seven of the 12 albums by female solo artists or mixed groups, like Wet Leg, Jessie Buckley, and Joy Crookes. Guardian delivers a good insight.

Adam Neely and his Sungazer bandmate Shawn Crowder watch people play covers of their band's songs like 'All These People', 'Threshold', 'The Dark', and others. At one point, what their fans did becomes "almost impossible". Quite impressive stuff.

“Next year, Pulp are going to play some concerts" - Jarvis Cocker said during a Guardian-hosted live Q&A. Next year also marks the 25th anniversary of the band’s 1998 album This Is Hardcore. This isn’t the Sheffield band’s first reunion. After splitting in 2002, after the release of seventh album, 'We Love Life', the five-piece reunited in 2011 for a series of festival dates.

Fans with access codes for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s much anticipated 2023 tour were offered tickets priced between $1,000 and $5,000, in Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing" system. “In pricing tickets for this tour, we looked carefully at what our peers have been doing” Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau said to the New York Times, adding - “We chose prices that are lower than some and on par with others. Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range". Ticketmaster argued that only 1.3 percent of tickets sold went for more than $1,000.

Joni Mitchell made a surprise appearance for a full set Sunday at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival, joining Brandi Carlile. Two ladies were joined by Blake Mills, Taylor Goldsmith, Marcus Mumford, Wynonna Judd, Lucius’ Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, and others. Over 13 songs, Mitchell sat around on couches on-stage playing a mix of her favorite oldies ('Why Do Fools Fall in Love', 'Love Potion No. 9') as well as an array of her masterpieces. Rolling Stone reports from the fest.

Pearl Jam have cancelled their show in Vienna, after Eddie Vedder developed throat problems following an outdoor gig in Paris. On Thursday, the band also nixed their show scheduled for Friday in Prague, the Guardian reports. The band explained that "due to the extreme circumstances at the last outdoor site outside of Paris (heat, dust, and smoke from the fires) our singer Ed Vedder’s throat was left damaged". Also from the PJ camp: Eddie Vedder booted a fan out of a Pearl Jam concert in Zurich after they started a fight with another attendee - "you’re out of here. Violence is not allowed”, Vedder said.

There were 131.3 million album-sale-equivalent units of ‘Current’ music registered in the United States in the first six months of this year, down by nearly 2 million units, or 1.4%, on the 133.1 million from the first half of the prior year, MBW reports. Total Album Consumption of all music in the United States (that’s ‘Current’ + ‘Catalog’) grew by 9.3% YoY in H1 2022 to 475.4 million. Meaning the popularity of ‘Catalog’ music grew considerably, up by 14.0% YoY to 344.1 million TAC units. ‘Catalog’ took a 72.4% market share in H1 2022, as ‘Current’ music’s share fell by a full 3% to just 27.6%. 'Catalog' is all music older than 18 months.

"Listeners—especially young ones—are not concerned with what category each track falls under, but instead in how each track makes them feel. The abundance of homemade playlists coupled with the popularity of experimentation has made the fixation on traditional genres akin to insisting that the guy has to pay for dinner on a first date... Organizing music by mood finds promise in one simple fact: some people can’t tell you what genre a song falls under, but everyone can tell you how it makes them feel" - Tiffany Ng points out in her new essay about genre-less times.

The New Cue has shared an excerpt from Ted Kessler's new book 'Paper Cuts' describing how he lost his Doc Marten's boots in Paris metro: "'Where are you from?’ asks one.
‘London,’ I say, ‘but I live here.’
‘Ah, OK,’ says the mod-skin. He sizes me up. ‘Is that where you get those Docs from?’
‘Yes.’...
‘Let’s swap.’
I look at his feet. He has massive old canvas army boots on, covered in stains. They look terrible.
‘No thanks.’"

“We’ll be hearing about it for the next 10 years at least, in terms of a reference point in marketing meetings” - Jonathan Palmer of record label and music publisher BMG, said about the "boom" of Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' after being used in 'Stranger Things'. The same is happening with Metallica's 'Master of Puppets' since being used in the show's finale earlier this month. Last year we've seen a similar pattern with TikTok. "The triple bonanza of a TV sync spiralling into music streaming services and TikTok is something that cannot be orchestrated though, only capitalised upon" - Guardian points out.

Glenn Horowitz, Edward Kosinski and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi have been accused of attempting to sell handwritten notes and lyrics by The Eagles’ co-founder Don Henley, the Variety reports. Officials estimated that notes and lyrics of ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Life In The Fast Lane’ are worth over $1 million. Henley has been trying to recover the documents for years after they were stolen in the 1970s and according to officials, pawned off to Horowitz in 2005. Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinski then allegedly began selling to various auction houses, as well as trying to coerce Henley into buying them back.

Vox partnered with data analysis website The Pudding to figure out what happens between a song going viral and an artist becoming a bonafide success. "It turns out the app is completely revolutionizing the way record labels work, and giving artists more leverage than ever".

Crosby, Stills & Nash have returned to Spotify after a five-month boycott, which they started by joining Neil Young’s protest against the platform—citing misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. Other artists such as Joni Mitchell, Crazy Horse’s Nils Lofgren, and India.Arie also joined the boycott in the winter, Graham Nash said in a statement that Spotify has “taken a positive step by adding a Covid content advisory to podcasts that include a conversation about Covid, directing listeners to a Covid information hub", Paste Magazine reports. Crosby, Stills & Nash appear to be the first of the high-profile departures to return to the platform.

Jennifer Lucy Allan shared an interesting thought about "weird" music in a Music Journalism Insider interview: I think there’s something deeply conservative about pointing out something’s weird, I always imagine it being said in inverted commas, or with a sneer. Even worse is using it with pride to distance yourself from so-called pop music. It’s not weird music, it’s unfamiliar music—often unfamiliar to you. The logical conclusion of this is a stagnation of the mind and the ear. Total nightmare.

From the relics of strife and destruction, the duo of Moor Mother and DJ Haram use raw materials at hand to mend, build and redesign. The fabrics they use include fringe club music, hip hop sampling, Middle Eastern drums, slam poetry, - punk rock, jazz and noise, all coalescing in a knife-edge fashion, keenly political above all else" - Beats per Minute stresses introducing the debut album by 700 Bliss. The Line of Best Fit insists "'Nothing To Declare' is peculiar in both sound and concept... a great project bursting with genre-bending sounds and heart-wrenching lyrics that perfectly capture the times". Pitchfork called it a "noisy, thrillingly confrontational album".

Since 1996, the so-called “Big Four” Grammy Awards - Album of The Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist - have been awarded to 67 recipients. Of these, only five are hip-hop: Lauryn Hill (AOTY, Best New Artist); OutKast (AOTY); Chance The Rapper (Best New Artist); Childish Gambino (SOTY, ROTY); and Megan Thee Stallion (Best New Artist). The Grammy Awards’ holy trifecta – “AOTY”, “ROTY”, and “SOTY” – has eluded him despite nine nominations. How much more impact would Kendrick have had with one – let alone several – well-deserved Big Four win(s)? - Trapital asks in the latest newsletter.

R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being found guilty of all counts of racketeering and sex trafficking against him at his Brooklyn federal trial last year, CNN reports. Prior to sentencing, seven of Kelly’s victims addressed the court - “I am a representation of every woman, boy, child, man that you have ever afflicted with your deplorable, inexplicable acts and with that I leave you with yourself, Robert Sylvester Kelly” - “Angela” said to Kelly - “You used your fame and power to groom and coach underage boys and girls for your own sexual gratification". “These crimes were calculated and carefully planned and regularly executed for almost 25 years” - judge Ann Donnelly told the defendant announcing the prison sentence of 30 years for Kelly, five years more than the minimum prosecutors sought.