'Heat Waves' by Glass Animals was released as a single on June 29, 2020, and in March 2022, this week, 'Heat Waves' hit #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 after a 59-week climb, by far the longest climb to #1 in Billboard history, Billboard reports. The funny thing is, it's an old song now - SOUNDSCAN will register it as a "catalog" transaction since it's older than 18 months.
Music theorist Adam Neely analyses the latest copyright infringement lawsuit which claims that Dua Lipa plagiarized reggae band Artikal Sound System's song 'Life Your Life' for her hit 'Plagiarized'. Neely goes a step back into history only to find Outkast's 'Rosa Parks'.
Van Magazine talked to four teenage musicians from the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and their orchestral manager, Alexandra Zaytseva, about the situation on the ground and the small consolations of music in a state of high alert. Uliana (16) from Kyiv who plays viola, shared some sad thoughts: "I played my viola for five minutes yesterday. Just so that my instrument knows it’s OK. My viola was very out of tune; instruments feel. My viola is at home, under my bed. It’s very important to me. It might get damaged, because rockets have been hitting the higher floors of buildings".Give Kyin a chance
Universal Music Group saw its overall annual revenues across publishing, records, and merch hit €8.50 billion ($10.03 billion) last year, surpassing the USD $10 billion mark for the first time in history, Music Business Worldwide reports. That figure was up 17.0% year-over-year in constant currency. Also, Universal’s total revenues on a Euro basis in 2021 (€8.50bn) were more than double the size of UMG’s annua
Pitchfork looks beyond the news about video-games company taking over beloved music streaming service. "Epic’s history suggests a pattern of reinvention, with several major realignments of priorities based on the gaming industry’s prevailing winds. Bandcamp’s growth has been relatively slow and steady, and runs counter to mainstream business models by putting the needs of artists first".
Japanese digital pop-punk artist Haru Nemuri shared some interesting thoughts with Tune Glue. Here's one: "I really feel that music is vibration whenever I play shows than when I listen to music at home. It’s an experience where you feel the vibration through your body. It also changes how I take in rhythm, so even from my own responses, I think, oh, so it feels like this best for this kind of beat. The audience, people in Japan would ride the beat this way, but during my Europe tour, I learned people in Europe ride the beat another way. My approach to beats have really changed from looking at how people respond using their bodies".
Epic Games, maker of hit video game 'Fortnite'' has acquired online music store Bandcamp, Stereogum reports. Previously, Epic acquired Harmonix, creator of Rock Band, pointing out at the time that they plan to "reimagine how music is experienced, created and distributed”. Ethan Diamond, CEO and co-founder of Bandcamp, said today that “Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans".
Support Ukrainian artists quickly & directly via Bandcamp - this crowdsourced spreadsheet of Ukrainian artists and labels calls for. It's not about choosing sides, it's about supporting what's good. There's some good Russian music too.
Iconic artist and songwriter Neil Diamond has sold his song catalog as well as the rights to all recordings to Universal Music Group, MBW worldwide. The agreement encompasses hits such as 'Sweet Caroline', 'Red Red Wine', 'Solitary Man', 'Cracklin’ Rosie', 'Song Sung Blue', 'Love on the Rocks' and 'America', and the catalog also includes 110 unreleased tracks, an unreleased album and archival long form videos. Diamond has sold more than 130 million albums over the past half century.
Maria Sonevytsky explores on Twitter, the "rich and complex" history of Ukrainian music. She goes across the country and back for decades. An interesting selection which includes punk rock, reggae, folk music, klezmer and much more.
Mick Jagger and the Roots’ Questlove and Black Thought are to executively produce an upcoming four-part documentary about James Brown’s life and career, the Root reports. 'James Brown: Say It Loud' is a massive four-hour docuseries that celebrates the Godfather of Funk’s legacy. The series will feature both never-before-seen archival footage and interviews with friends, family, collaborators and more.
'Pierced Arrows' from Hurray for the Riff Raff's new album is just plain and simple a great pop rock song; rapper Denzel Curry meets drum’n’bass on ‘Zatoichi’; Yves Tumor shares an electro-rock song ‘Secrecy Is Incredibly Important To The Both of Them’, featuring a not-to-miss video; Florence + the Machine shares the first single from her fifth studio album, a ready-to-explode 'King' with yet another great video; Toro y Moi sail smooth and psychedelic on 'The Loop'.
The powerful force behind Screaming Trees who was also known for his work in Queens of the Stone Age and The Gutter Twins, the unique Mark Lanegan has died at the age of 57, the New York Times reports. Lanegan was a pioneer of the grunge scene, fronting Screaming Trees from 1985 until their breakup […]
It’s really good to be playing concerts again and seeing concerts again. Concerts are the new drug, seeing them around town. You don’t even need to get high anymore, it’s like, ‘wow, this feels almost unnatural and simultaneously so euphoric’. I saw Bob Dylan into Ween into Steve Gunn, I’ve seen a lot lately. I go out to all of them" - Kurt Vile told The New Cue about the "high" he gets from going to concerts. His new album (watch my moves) is out in April.
Kanye West claims that he had generated over $2 million in sales from his Stem Player device. He would be releasing his new album, 'Donda 2', exclusively via his Stem Player. A handheld circular device allows users to split the star’s music (or their own music) into stems, i.e. isolating drums, vocals, bass, samples etc. It also enables users to manipulate these stems / samples, and create loops from them – meaning that West's fans can use his recordings as the basis to create fresh tracks. Costing $200, it can be purchased through KanyeWest.com.
An interesting interview with the biggest new UK rapper Central Cee in The Face. Two of his thoughts: about online comments - “Like, I wake up every day, I step out on the roads and I never have any sort of altercation. There’s no animosity in my real life. So if there is any sort of negativity online, I just look at it from a level-headed point of view, like: ‘What are they thinking?’. Most of them are creeps"; and about opportunity - “we’re in a growing state, though, we’re in the early stages to say the least. We’re in a good position because there’s a lot to do, and there’s certain people like me that [are] pushing down doors for people to do different things. For everyone”.
John Paul Jones appears in a new Playing for Change music video, performing Led Zeppelin's 'When the Levee Breaks' alongside 17 musicians from around the world, Rock and Roll Garage reports. The video features appearances from guitarists Derek Trucks and Buffalo Nichols, drummer Stephen Perkins, harmonica player Ben Lee, singer Susan Tedeschi, singer Elle Marja Eira, slide guitarist Keith Secola, vocalist Mihirangi and others. Playing For Change is a multimedia music project, featuring musicians and singers from across the globe, with the mission to connect the world through music. The song has so far generated $34,088, all funds will benefit charity partners of Peace Through Music, including Conservation International, American Rivers, WWF, Reverb and the Playing For Change Foundation.
"Nightclubs and music venues have been closed since March 2020, disco lights are banned, and DJs are prohibited from playing on 'raised podiums' or mixing tracks in case, god forbid, this encourages dancing" - Rave New World's Michelle Lhooq looks across the ocean into Singapore night-scene. She points out "the moratorium on partying feels like a morality-tinged repudiation on the value of electronic music culture: classical music concerts have returned, pop bangers blast at indoor spin classes, church choirs sing maskless, yet the country is still waiting for a tiny cadre of four or five top officials to decide when clubs can reopen".
"One of the things that annoys me most is what I like to call the Wiggly Air Fallacy, or the idea that music can be meaningfully reduced to just its sonic components. It's not true, it's a bad way of conceptualizing music" - 12tone writes, introducing his latest video. His point, in short, is - "all that information we gathered in the context layer shapes the emotional landscape we perceive, and that, not the vibration of air molecules, is what allows music to affect us so deeply". G
Russian figure skater Alexandra Trusova won a silver medal for her performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. She danced to Florence and the Machine’s 'Call Me Cruella' and the Stooges classic 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'.
YouTube music theorist Adam Neely in his latest video explores the perceptual limits of tempo, and why decimal points in BPMs are trash. Neely uses the help of good old metronome in this one.
"Music isn’t just about fun: it can be about creating remarkable soundworlds of baroque pop fantasias, and this band are outstanding at those" - the Observer looks into the new Black Country, New Road album 'Ants from Up There'. Ian Cohen hears an emo album because "they spend every second reminding us of why we let ourselves get swept up in these beautifully doomed fantasies to begin with". Music OMH says it "sounds as though Black Country, New Road are less concerned with making a statement, more willing to let their songs unravel slowly instead of uncoiling with jack-in-the-box furore".
Last week Snoop Dogg released his twentieth studio album, 'B.O.D.R. (Bacc On Death Row', while also releasing the album on the blockchain through a partnership with blockchain gaming platform Gala Games, via his 'Stash Box' NFTs, sold on Gala’s new Gala Music store. Snoop Dogg’s NFTs are limited to 25,000 and each ‘box’, includes 1 of 17 songs from 'Bacc On Death Row'. Each box costs $5,000. On Wednesday there were 16 thousand NFTs remaining, and if that means that the other 9,000 have been sold at the asking price – then the NFT sale has generated at least $45 million. If all 25,000 sell out, Snoop Dogg’s Stash Box NFT’s will have generated total revenues of $125 million, MBW points out.
"...Let’s call if Super-Vinyl. It would have all of the advantages of the current physical products, but with better audio quality, durability, etc. Maybe it even comes with some digital or NFT twist. Let your imagination run wild. This is the single biggest opportunity for record labels to take the music business back from Silicon Valley" - Ted Gioia.
"This was hip-hop playing the long game, taking its presence and acceptance as an achievement, conceding that the gatekeepers want a level of assimilation with their authenticity" - Pitchfork looks into the Super Bowl, the first-ever hip-hop halftime show. Rolling Stone calls it "a triumph", whereas BBC asks "did too many hooks spoil the broth?". Watch it here.
A nice little chat with producer David Holmes in The New Cue, about making movie music. When he got offered to do the music for 'Hunger' he thought the film didn't need any music, because all the music was in the silence. Director Steve McQueen told him "he wanted the music to be really emotional but non-musical. OK! I learnt so much from that one thing because it’s helped me in so many other projects, that you can hit that really raw emotion without being really emotional. That’s the power of the drone. Things like accordions where you just hold a chord, these harmonics come in. You put that against the right images and you don’t need anything else, and it’s actually way more powerful than a thirty-piece orchestra". Holmes also says he has "tremendous respect for anyone making a movie because there’s so many moving parts to think about. Directing a good film is so hard, it’s a bit like winning the Champions League".
Blues, R&B and rock guitarist and singer Tommy Castro is nominated for the B.B. King entertainer of the year award, album of the year, band of the year (with The Painkillers), contemporary blues album, and blues rock artist for this year's Blues Music Awards. Chris Cain and Anthony Paule have four nods each, Billboard reports.
Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ian McDonald, best known for his co-founding roles in both King Crimson and Foreigner, died Wednesday at the age of 75. McDonald was known as one of the key architects of progressive rock, playing both saxophone and keyboards in King Crimson and co-writing its iconic 1969 debut, 'In the Court of the Crimson King'. The record’s opening track, '21st Century Schizoid Man', featured McDonald’s wild double-tracked alto-sax solo. Guardian describes him as "a galvanising force in the group’s potent mix". McDonald also co-founded rock outfit Foreigner with guitarist Mick Jones.
"In 20 songs, Big Thief have rambled far beyond the bounds of their previous catalog... 'Dragon...' is as heavy in its lyrical concerns as any previous Big Thief record, and more ambitious in its musical ideas than all of them. But it also sounds unburdened, animated by a newfound sense of childlike exploration and play. Twenty times, it asks 'What should we do now?', and twenty times it finds a new answer" - Pitchfork really appreciates playful new Big Thief album (9.0 score, Best New Music tag). NME finds similar joy: "the band employ some weird methods that ultimately end up making sense; often allowing their varied surroundings to creep into the creative process". Spin calls it "an overwhelming effort, aiming for band’s magnum opus".
An interesting new episode of Adam Neely's series "How to get good at music" where he is critiquing people music, this time with the help of guitarist/composer Shubh Saran. The litemotif in this video, more or less is - add more melody (coming from a progressive jazzer, really says plenty). Neely also invents a term - "movement music".
American musician John Vanderslice described to Consequence how he managed to make a “middle-class living" from touring. It was a 12-date tour of the American west coast when he used a hotel scam to get discounts, didn't use any drugs or alcohol, made his own food, and had a lot of merch in his car. All in all, he made $8064 from concerts and $9220 from the merchandise. His costs were $1795, which means he made $15,500 in two weeks. Vanderslice owns a studio and works as a record producer.
"The more [musicians] get the acclaim, the more they start needing it. You might think that after all the big paychecks and standing ovations, they would eventually have reached some sense of self-satisfaction that would allow for an easy retirement. But that’s not true. In fact, the opposite is the more typical case. The more the artists are rewarded, the more they still want" - music writer Ted Gioia looks into the possibility of ending a career as a musician. "Sometimes it’s better to walk away when you’re still riding high. I greatly admire performers such as Audrey Hepburn or Shirley Temple, who happily launched second careers doing charitable works and good deeds. They used their fame for something different, something perhaps better. My view is that Madonna would have a much more powerful and positive legacy if she did something like that."
"I haven’t really thought about all that [scandalous stuff] that much recently. But now that you mention it, most of everything that [Guns N’ Roses] did would’ve gotten us canceled in this day and age" - G'N'R's guitarist Slash says in a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment. He added: “We would not have fared well in this environment, for sure… on so many different levels. But I mean, a lot of things from back then would not be what you consider acceptable at this moment in time. … I’m just glad that we didn’t have the internet bac
Bandcamp Daily presents the experimental electronic music scene from Amman, the capital of Jordan, one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the Levant. It’s long been a hub for businesses and NGOs, which has had a liberalizing effect on the city, and made for the environment that created producers such as Toumba, Taymour, DJ ODDZ, and Idreesi, selected by Bandcamp. Crack Magazine recently interviewed Toumba who shared his insight of the music: “If I showed my recent stuff to someone in London, they wouldn’t recognise it as folkloric – they’d just recognise some swung drums that sound a bit left field, But someone from Jordan would be like, ‘Ah, I know this.’ That’s what I want to make.”
Terrestrial radio accounted for 17% of listener engagement in 2022, compared to subscription audio streaming, which accounted for 24%, according to IFPI’s 2022 Engaging with Music Report. Plus, 73% of those surveyed stated that when they do listen to the radio, they listen to it mainly for the purpose of listening to music, MBW reports. Tom Rose, Managing Director at pan-European PR and radio plugging agency Propeller Communications, believes radio will maintain its position as the essential platform for new music discovery - "people want to be recommended music by people they trust, as well as algorithms. That’s why public radio stations are able to increase in listenership when they get it right. There are less and less media outlets out there with the demise of blogs and print media, but fans still want to be recommended music by tastemakers that they trust."
“People want positive energy in their lives. Trance music offers just that” - Dutch curator, writer, and label owner Arjan Rietveld says to Pitchfork about the current revival of trance. Rietveld sees trance as a natural corrective to the omnipresent darkness of styles like techno and more experimental styles of club music, not to mention real-world woes like climate change and the pandemic, The P points out. Musicians at the crest of that new trance wave are TDJ, Young Marco, DJ Courtesy, among others.
Award-winning ballet director Marco Goecke from the Hanover State Opera has been suspended after smearing dog faeces on a critic's face, Daily Mail reports. Goecke, apparently furious about a review of one of his shows by journalist Wiebke Hüster, allegedly confronted the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung critic during the half-time break of another show and smeared a paper bag filled with dog excrement on her face. Ms Hüster described Mr Goecke's show, 'In The Dutch Mountains' opened recently at the Nederlands Dans Theatre in The Hague, like being "alternately driven mad and killed by boredom". When the director attacked her, she said she couldn't defend herself, as she was in panic, she told NDR.
"There is melancholy here but wonder too. Love, death, family, home, religion, and even the enormity of the universe... appear more personally realized, revealing vulnerabilities and emotionality that are at once recognizable, stirring, and occasionally profound" - PopMatters reviews 'All Of This Is Chance' by singer-songwriter Lisa O'Neill, adding - "raw yet arresting, it can pull at the heart and transport one to different worlds, sounding both timeless yet contemporary and unmistakably Irish, not only by accent but by power and depth of feeling". Uncut highly recommends these "songs of love, loss, wonder and despair", whereas Hot Press describes it as "a breathtaking and incredible record". Guardian is equally decisive: "transcendent and original – a triumph."
Algiers are about to release their new album 'SHOOK' next week, with Backwash being one of the featured artists. The Quietus took the opportunity and invited them to interview one another about metal, rap, gospel, cage fighting, cocktails and more. An amusing read.
Oleh Shpudeiko bought himself a handheld digital tape recorder in 2012 and started to record sounds around his city - rail stations, the sound of traffic and birdsong, the dripping of water in a tunnel, the rumbling of trains on a track, the babble of voices in a shopping mall – all sliced up, manipulated, accompanied by synthesisers and transformed into a piece of compelling ambient music. The city in question is his hometown of Kyiv. The album, 'Kyiv Eternal', was completed after the Russian invasion and is coming out next week under the name Heinali. Guardian presents the album and the composer.
