Three times as many male as female pop stars appeared on last year's biggest hit singles - ninety-one men or all-male groups were credited on the british Official Chart Company's top 100 most popular songs of 2018 - compared with 30 female acts. Thirteen of the most popular 100 songs of 2018 were credited only […]
Consequence of Sound recommends Australian rock-country singer-songwriter Julia Jackson's new album 'Crushing'. It is about "rediscovering what about herself she may have buried during a long-term relationship, without erasing the experiences that it created", a "reckoning with one’s mysterious and daunting personal potential than a reflection on someone else. Each track, in one way or […]
Nick Cave is bringing his ‘Conversations’ tour to Europe - he just finished Australian leg of the tour, and it sees Cave taking a widespread selection of questions from fans and performing some of his most iconic tracks on piano (NME). Describing the tour as “an exercise in connectivity”, he considers topics such as grief, […]
American funk and soul singer Chaka Khan has a new album 'Hello Happiness' which "has put a new spark in my career”, as she tells the Guardian ("vital calling card to remind everyone to come hear this unearthly voice, still sizzling with spice" the say in review). There she talks about addiction - "All through the […]
A grand jury has secretly been assembled in Chicago to discuss the possibility of indicting the R&B singer on criminal charges. Grand jury comprised of citizens from Chicago was formed after attorney Michael Avenatti delivered video footage of R. Kelly engaged in sexual activity with a 14-year-old child, All Hip Hop reports. Similarly, Ryan Adams' […]
Slash has confirmed that Guns N’ Roses are working on new material - “Axl, Duff, myself, and Richard have all talked about … there’s material and stuff going on already for a new record”. Don't expect a date yet: “It’s just, with Guns N’ Roses, you don’t go, ‘Oh, there’s a plan, and it’s gonna […]
'Lines' is a trilogy of short albums (available singly or as a set) by english folk band The Unthanks, respectively focused on the poems of Emily Bronte, those of first world war writers, and a Maxine Peake drama celebrating Hull fishworker and and campaigner Lillian Bilocca. Unthank sisters Rachel and Becky have become national treasure - […]
A New York Police Department commander Emanuel Gonzalez is under investigation after allegedly telling his colleagues to “shoot 50 Cent on sight”. Police chief made the alleged comment in June last year during a briefing at New York’s 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park, ahead of the rap icon’s scheduled appearance at a boxing match in […]
"This album was largely crowdfunded via Pledge Music and was written remotely, from places as far flung as Chicago and São Paulo, where some members are now based, but it is seductively cohesive, glazed in experience... Their eponymous return is an immersive, invigorating and convincingly brooding stomp of disenfranchisement" - Guardian.
A documentary about singer and songwriter Chris Cornell, core member of Soundgarden, Temple of The Dog and Audioslave, is being produced by actor Brad Pitt, his widow Vicky Cornell and production company Film 45 from California. The film will follow the life and career of Cornell, and will be directed by Berg ('Lone Survivor', 'Deepwater Horizon'). Variety...
When asked by TMZ if he would ever consider staging a second Fyre Festival, New York rapper Ja Rule kept the door wide open: "In the midst of chaos is opportunity. I’m working on a lot of new things". He went on to call Fyre Fest “the most iconic festival that never was”, before slyly adding, […]
"The new project from Grouper’s Liz Harris contains some of her most beguiling work. Spread across two long, contrasting ambient compositions, her music remains in an enigmatic class of her own" - Pitchfork.
A brilliant mash-up of 'Fyre' documentary and Steven Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park', about the ill-fated luxurious festival, has arrived online. While keeping to the documentary format of 'Fyre', the trailer for 'Jurassic Fraud' sees John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) assuming the role of infamous Fyre founder Billy McFarland. As well as featuring footage from Jurassic Park, the Nerdist creation is cleverly interspersed with mocked-up […]
American actress, musician, and singer Rain Phoenix shared her first single as a solo artist. 'Time Is The Killer' features Michael Stipe, it appears on a new release 'Time Gone', out today, and in arrives with a new video directed by Bobby Bukowski and Bradley Gregg (video here). A lot of connections among them - […]
Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and music charity the Playing for Change Foundation have been named recipients of the 2019 Polar music prize. The Swedish award is considered the music world’s equivalent of the Nobel prize. Previous laureates include Metallica (2018), producer Max Martin (2016), György Ligeti (2004) and Joni Mitchell (1996). Abba manager […]
"Kelsie Hogue grew up in New Hampshire, the daughter of bohemian types, and she recorded 'Crush On Me' after a couple of pit stops — going to college and singing hardcore in Boston, trying her hand at weirdo comedy in Chicago. Somewhere along the way, Hogue discovered her own queerness, coming out as bisexual and nonbinary. And 'Crush […]
British-american rapper 21 Savage has been granted a release from custody on bond. The 26-year-old had been arrested last week by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) who said the rapper, whose given name is She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph and was born in Britain, was living in the US with an expired visa. Vulture...
“My daughters are obsessed with Billie Eilish. The same thing is happening with her that happened with Nirvana in 1991. People say, ‘Is rock dead?’ When I look at someone like Billie Eilish, rock and roll is not close to dead!” - Dave Grohl said to Live Nation CEO's Michael Rapino at a one-on-one discussion […]
50 Cent announces he’s in full support of a publicized boycott against Gucci amid a blackface sweater going viral. He said he's gonna give all his Gucci stuff to the homeless (SOHH). Lil Pump has also announced his decision to boycott the fashion brand, but revealed why he’ll still perform his standout track 'Gucci Gang' […]
"For the last decade, Marina – formerly Marina and the Diamonds – has sat on the precarious fence between mainstream and underground pop: someone with that curious, 21st-century kind of fame where you can rack up tens of millions of streams without ever having a Top 10 single. The Welsh native’s first solo work in […]
US rapper Rich The Kid has been caught up in an armed robbery at a recording studio in California, hours after he posted a picture of himself on Instagram posing next to a purple Lamborghini, holding what appeared to be a bundle of bank notes, with the caption "Always in bank mo deposit." Other embers […]
Noted cover band Weezer made a new video - their cover of Norvergan synth-poppers A-Ha and their smash hit 'Take On Me'. Rivers Cuomo was into hair-metal in the time of A-Ha's hit, and it's Finn Wolfhard, star of 'Stranger Things', who plays him as a teen-metalhead. Very nice. Watch the original video and the Weezer […]
LA Times makes an interesting point on Childish Gambino and his non-appearance at the Grammys: "Less than an hour into the telecast, Google pulled the biggest troll of the Grammys so far. The ad for a new phone sported an animated Glover in a seemingly silly dance-off with a digital avatar of himself... The ad […]
Kacey Musgraves won album of the year with 'Golden Hour', Dua Lipa won best new artist, Cardi B made history as the first solo female to win best rap album. Childish Gambino's 'This Is America' became the first rap-based song to win record and song of the year (CNN). Drake, who rarely attends awards shows, […]
Her music’s intimacy feels so organically abstract, it is as if the songs are distilled directly from her subconscious. While Pratt’s toolbox remains minimal she weaves these means more intricately than ever, with a firm and confident hand - Pitchfork. Hear the first single, 'This Time Around', here.
Stereogum has a nice review of Lords of Chaos, a new documentary about highly controversial Norvegian black-metal band Mayhem: "If you were looking for an experienced director who was qualified to bring a black metal biopic to life, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone with a better resumé than 'Lords Of Chaos' director Jonas Åkerlund. Not only […]
Guardian renews and old phenomenon, which actually occurs regularly for decades now, this time the cause is - streaming services: "Chart-toppers used to focus on long-players. Now, in the streaming era, they can release tracks whenever they like – and many, including Ariana Grande, have decided to do just that"
After NME's Samantha Maine shared the story of how she incorporated her favourite band in her homework, other music fans began sharing their stories. A funny read...
Indian movie director Zoya Akhtar made a movie 'Gully Boy', Bollywood’s first hip-hop film, starring two of Bollywood’s biggest actors: Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. Gully Boy is a fictionalised account of the burgeoning hip-hop scene in Mumbai. Gully, or “gutter”, rap is a musical sub-genre made by the younger people who live in the […]
A nice read by Consequence of Sound: There was one show in particular that single-handedly foreshadowed how monumental Zeppelin would become: January 26th, 1969 — the fourth and final show at Boston Tea Party. It was the night where Zeppelin reportedly played for over four hours with only one album’s worth of material, eventually resorting to […]
Lovely and sad The Natvral's 'New Moon' is about when love just isn't enough; nasimiYu steps into big-sounding R'n'B territory with 'Watercolor'; Visionist share a dark industrial pop 'Form'; J.I.D. raps about the syphilis experiment at the American south on 'Skegee'.
A thought-provoking article in Loudwire about the age rock musicians were at when they wrote their classic albums/songs. All Black Sabbath members were at the age of 20/21 when they wrote their debut, Kurt Cobain was 23 in 1990 when he wrote Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', as old as equally left-handed Jimi Hendrix was when he wrote 'Are You Experienced'. Metallica were 21, 22, and 23 when they wrote their masterpiece 'Master of Puppets', while Silverchair members, at the time of their multiplatinum debut 'Frogstomp', were just children - 14 years old!
"America is a slavocracy: it is a nation founded on bigotry, and those principles continue today. People might think racism no longer exists because there is no longer a slave system, but they don’t realise the laws that enabled the slave system still put us in a position where we have to jump over insurmountable handicaps to just become equal” - composer Adrian Younge said to the Guardian, talking about his new album 'The American Negro', and a new podcast – 'Invisible Blackness'. There's an irony in the latter title - “I use the phrase of the show’s title to illustrate that we all have invisible blackness, this sense of ‘otherness’ inside us, because we are all descended from the first human being in Africa".
The 10-year-old wunderkind Nandi Bushell shared her version of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1991 hit 'Under The Bridge'. This time, she played the guitar, drum, bass, and vocal parts. Bushell operates a looping machine for her instrumentals while simultaneously putting on her Anthony Kiedis impersonation.
Iggy Pop opened this year's virtual Tibet House Benefit with a dramatic reading of Dylan Thomas' classic poem 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' against a soundscape created by Noveller and Leron Thomas. Directed by Simon Taylor, it features Iggy Pop staring straight into the camera lens and reciting for 1 minute 47 seconds.
Bob Dylan has sold his entire songwriting catalogue to Universal Music for $300 million; Beach Boys sold their masters and brand to Irving Azzoff to $100 million; Taylor Swift is re-recording her older records; Round Hill has bought some Beatles The Rolling Stones, and Backstreet Boys classics for $282 million; Neil Young has sold 50 percent of his catalogue for $150 million - these are only some of the deals in the music business last year. Music business podcast Money 4 Nothing talks to Cherie Hu of Water & Music and David Turner of Penny Fractions about whether this makes any business sense, and how will it shape the future of music.
Huck tells the story of the LA punk scene which survived the pandemic with dozens of backyard gigs. The magazine argues "this attitude – of taking personal responsibility for yourself and your actions, despite what the rules say – is a common one in the DIY punk scene". Beko, the singer and frontman of punk band Lazy Dream, explains the attitude: “Our whole method is do-it-yourself. We were tired of waiting for people to do the recording thing, so we just did the recording ourselves… With the shows, we did that as well. We were like, ‘Ok, we have this backyard right here, might as well throw a show. Because if no one’s going to hire us or invite us anywhere, might as well do it ourselves’”.
Pussy Riot shared 'Toxic', a new collaborative single with Dorian Electra, produced by 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady who adds plenty of hyper-pop sonics. Nadya Tolokonnikova said “‘Toxic' is political, because personal is political. The single reflects on the importance of self-care, cherishing your mental health and staying away from relationships that poison you", according to Pitchfork.
"I'm a girl from a cotton field that pulled myself above the destruction and the mistakes. And I'm here for you" - Tina Turner says in the official trailer for the documentary 'Tina', which is set to follow her early life and childhood, People reports. The brief interview clip refers to Turner's youth. At 11, Turner's mother Zelma left her family and the abusive relationship she had with Turner's father Floyd. The documentary also features interviews with Tina in her hometown of Zurich, Switzerland and shows new footage, audio tapes, and personal photos.
NASA's Perseverance rover has recorded the first audio clips captured on the surface of Mars, and beamed it back to Earth, Space.com reports. The microphone picked up the low growl of a wind gust, marking the first sounds recorded from the Martian surface. The microphone was designed by Jason Achilles Mezilis, a Los Angeles–based rock musician, and composer.
