Betty Buckley, the actress who sang 'Memory' in the original New York production of 'Cats' tries to find some reason in Donald Trump's somewhat bizarre love for the song. "So, like, Trump was a handsome kid, but his dad was a bully, so he became a bully, just trying to impress Daddy. I can’t win with charm, he thought . . . and he’s always felt outside. In his heart of hearts, there’s this tremendous need, an insatiable need, to be loved, the love he never received from his father or mother. So that is in that song: that incredible longing to belong, to connect, to not be rejected, that’s what this whole thing is. All these years, I had no clue why that song touched him, but now, with this book . . . I get it, I get it!” - she tells the New Yorker.

Late Tom Petty's quote that today's country music is nothing more than “bad rock with a fiddle” was the inspiration for Medium's blog entry of the best country rock songs. It includes some Rolling Stones, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley, and some context.

Kacey Musgraves performed 'Justified' on 'Saturday Night Live' with her guitar and boots on - and nothing else. “She was nude” - Musgraves’ publicist confirms to Variety - “precautions were taken, and this was the first time it’s happened on the show”.

"Art is a mirror of what’s going on socially. You can connect the dots. So this has been the best time to write because reality itself is being questioned!” - Nightmares on Wax' George Evelyn tells in a Mix Magazine interview about the point of music. It has a purpose also: "Music has always been the channel for the common man or woman against the system. Now I find it’s the minimum amount of artists speaking up for the common man or woman".

'Working For the Knife' "arrives with the kind of energy that tosses you back in your scarlet theater seat and keeps you nervously eating popcorn, licking the salt the same way Mitski licks the staircase at 2:08 in the video" - Rolling Stone presents new song by the singer-songwriter. The video is "a strangely compelling short film starring a reluctant performer returning to the spotlight".

Pitchfork is celebrating its 25th birthday with a selection of 200 most important artists who have made the biggest impact across Pitchfork’s lifetime so far. The list features "The Icons" as well as "The Essentials", listed alphabetically, from Aaliyah to Wilco.

Pop stars Shakira, Elton John, Ringo Starr, and Julio Iglesias were named in a new leak of private financial documents, known as the Pandora Papers, published over the weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, offering a glimpse at the tangled web of offshore accounting and alleged tax avoidance schemes used by some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. None of the above were accused of any wrongdoing or of violating any laws.

Journalist Ciaran Thapar's debut book 'Cut Short: Youth Violence, Loss and Hope in the City' follows the story of four individuals to observe how youth violence, policing, gentrification and the media have affected their lives. The book is based on Thapar’s research, interviews and the relationships he’s formed as a youth worker. Each chapter title of 'Cut Short' is named in reference to a song lyric - which is the basis of The Face interview with Thapar.

Level goes on an ambitious quest - tries to connect wordings of contemporary rappers with those of classic philosophers. One of the comparisons is between Kendrick Lamar and Plato, who both deal with issues of identity, reality and ideas:

“What money got to do with it / When I don’t know the full definition of a rap image? / I’m trapped inside the ghetto and I ain’t proud to admit it / Institutionalized, I keep runnin’ back for a visit” - Kendrick Lamar, 'Institutionalized'

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light” - Plato.

The effect of background music on concentration largely depends on a person’s personality and taste, but work-appropriate music tends to share a few general qualities - Maria A.G. Witek, a professor in the Department of Music at Birmingham University, states in a new study she co-authored. The best kind of music to listen to while working should have no vocals, Witek says, because lyrics tend to be distracting. The music should also be slow, repetitive, and soft. Tram Nguyen, a member of the Cambridge Brain Sciences Team, recently also found some evidence that low-tempo songs may benefit the regions of the brain responsible for memory and completing tasks. Elemental reports on the science of music to work to.

"I am throwing in the shoes. I'm retiring" - David Lee Roth, the original lead singer of Van Halen, has sad announcing his retirement in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Roth's announcement comes just shy of a year after Eddie Van Halen, the band's lead guitarist, died of cancer. Roth referenced his friend's death, saying he had been thinking about "the departure of my beloved classmate. I am encouraged and compelled to really come to grips with how short time is, and my time is probably even shorter".

LCD Soundsystem have announced a 20-date residency at Brooklyn Steel, marking their first live shows in more than three years, Rolling Stone reports. The run of shows takes place between November 23rd and December 21st. It was only a few months ago that LCD Soundsystem leader James Murphy said the band was on a “full hiatus”.

"More than just an exceptional body of music that goes well beyond techno, ‘Tresor 30’ stands as a testament to the community-building power behind the music. What started in a small pub in Schöneberg and sweaty basement in Kreuzberg now has leylines extending right across the world" - DJ Mag presents Berlin club's monumental 52-track boxset, ‘Tresor 30’. It also draws a short history of the club.

An amusing and amazing TED talk by Lizzo who goes into twerking as a pop-cultural phenomenon. She traces booty shaking to a traditional West African dance and tells how Black women across generations kept the rhythm alive, from blues and jazz singers to modern rap and hip-hop performers. With her characteristic energy, she shares how twerking empowered her to love her own body — and explains why understanding its origins helps protect Black culture from erasure and misappropriation.

“Becoming a household name has been complicated. Because you don’t get to choose the people you become a household name for” - country star Brandi Carlile tells in an interesting Spin interview. She looks into her as a star: “It’s really scary, because I’m so flawed. But I have all the same poor kid afflictions that anybody else does when they get a little bit of money or power. I’m bad with money. I make selfish decisions. I veer in and out of fucking messianic complexes and narcissistic behavior, so it would be easy to catch me up. But at some point, you have to accept and know that people are going to choose their own leaders, and I’m just going to continue to be myself. We can’t let it dampen our activism. We just have to keep powering forward, because we can’t do nothing”.

The latest MusicREDEF newsletter points out the obvious - the similarities between Lil Nas X and Little Richard: "Nas, like Richard, is a theatrical musician who combines sexualized Black art and gender-bending provocations. They both thrived in a time when the taboo nature of what they do had loud sociopolitical resonance. Like Little Richard making everything from bluesy covers of Wilbert Harrison's 'Kansas City' to seductive slow drags like 'Valley of Tears', Lil Nas X's singles since his debut hit have expanded in a scattershot of directions. They've awed and frightened a lot of adults and served as a clarion call to free-thinking, progressive-minded ribaldry".

Shakira was recently attacked by two wild boars while walking in a Barcelona park with her eight-year-old, as she has shared on her Instagram. Nothing really that bad happened - the two animals messed up her purse. BBC reports how in 2016, Spanish police received 1,187 phone calls about wild hogs attacking dogs, plundering cat-feeders, holding up traffic, and running into cars in the city.

Tori Amos shares ‘Speaking With Trees’, the first single from her new album ‘Ocean to Ocean’; Elton John and Stevie Wonder reunite on a new song, lovely gospel/soul ‘Finish Line’; Aurora clears the dust from Boney M's 'Rasputin' for a space-folk cover.

“I completely recognize that I stand on her shoulders, as [do] all the younger women that came after me . . . whether they know it or not” - drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who has toured with Herbie Hancock and led late-night bands for Arsenio Hall and Quincy Jones, said about Dottie Dodgion. New Yorker reminds that "Dodgion forged a once legendary but now overlooked career at the conclusion of the big-band era—despite a rocky childhood, difficult marriages, and the steep challenge of breaking into what Enstice called the 'hard-core male jazz fraternity on the drums'".

Sony Music Entertainment has announced a new wellness-focused program called Artist Assistance, which is planned to be a “broad global effort aimed at promoting wellness for our signed talent and providing them with relevant information and key resources for their careers”, Music Business Worldwide reports. Artist Assistance starts with access to “free, confidential counseling services to address stress, anxiety, depression, grief, family and relationship matters and more”. It means that SME’s “active roster artists” worldwide can now connect with a licensed therapist completely confidentially and for free.

Eminem’s 'Mom’s Spaghetti' restaurant opened in Detroit on Wednesday, and Slim Shady himself manned the takeout window, Detroit Free Press reports. The rapper worked the walk-up window at the alley-set eatery when it first began serving customers at 5PM. Em served the first 10 customers their takeout containers of spaghetti and meatballs (with a vegan option available!). The line for the opening day celebration stretched for blocks around Detroit’s Foxtown neighborhood.

A Los Angeles judge has suspended Britney Spears' father Jamie Spears from the conservatorship that's controlled the singer's life, career and finances for 13 years. The decision is a major victory for the pop star, who has pushed to remove her father from the court-appointed arrangement, NPR reports. Mr Spears called the court’s decision “disappointing, and frankly, a loss for Britney”. Rolling Stone quoted Jamie Spears' statement sent through an attorney: “For 13 years, he has tried to do what is in her best interests, whether as a conservator or her father. This started with agreeing to serve as her conservator when she voluntarily entered into the conservatorship. This included helping her revive her career and re-establish a relationship with her children. For anyone who has tried to help a family member dealing with mental health issues, they can appreciate the tremendous amount of daily worry and work this required".

"In the digital era, when everything seems to be a single click away, it’s easy to forget that we have long had physical relationships with the pieces of culture we consume. The way we interact with something — where we store it — also changes the way we consume it, as Spotify’s update made me realize. Where we store something can even outweigh the way we consume it" - Kyle Chayka writes in an essay about the meaning of collections in a time of digital music. "While we have the advantage of freedom of choice, the endless array of options often instills a sense of meaninglessness: I could be listening to anything, so why should any one thing be important to me?".

Universal Music Group has signed a first-of-its-kind partnership with digital therapeutics company MedRhythms, in order to help people with walking impairments, Rolling Stone reports. The partnership provides MedRhythms with access to UMG’s catalog in order to build “direct stimulation solutions” that use clinical-grade sensors, software and music to help restore function lost to neurologic disease or injury. MedRhythms is developing a patented platform of evidence-based, prescription digital therapeutics using music to address walking impairments.

A cassette containing what’s believed to be a previously unreleased John Lennon and Yoko Ono song, 'Radio Peace', as well as an interview has been sold for $58,300 at an auction in Copenhagen, Denmark. NPR looks back at the nice story of four Danish teenagers who were late for a press conference, but Lennon nevertheless spent half an hour with boys talking about war, local action, and singing 'Give Peace a Chance' for them.

The great music theorist is in a great mood in his latest video, where he answers several questions, including his thoughts on the phrase “music isn’t like how it used to be?”, do certain keys have “better” bass?, details on the new album by his band Sungazer, thoughts on Bach vs Mozart and similar great trivia.

Supergroup Blood Moon, with Chelsea Wolfe, Stephen Brodsky and members of Converge release their dark-metal onto the world; the awkwardly named Croatian band ### shares a noisey post-rock song 'Tamo to ne mogu ovdje to ne želim'; Explosions in the Sky rise and shine on ‘Chisos’; Karloff go extremely screamo on ‘Hibiscus’.

When Ludwig von Beethoven died in 1827, he left some musical sketches for his 10th symphony and nothing more. In early 2019, Dr. Matthias Röder, the director of the Karajan Institute, an organization in Salzburg, Austria, that promotes music technology, was putting together a team to complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday. He hoped an AI would be able to help fill in the blanks left by Beethoven. Ahmed Elgammal in the Conversation describes how he presided over the artificial intelligence side of the project, leading a group of scientists at the creative AI startup Playform AI that taught a machine both Beethoven’s entire body of work and his creative process. And - they did it" A full recording of Beethoven’s 10th Symphony is set to be released on Oct. 9, 2021, the same day as the world premiere performance scheduled to take place in Bonn, Germany – the culmination of a two-year-plus effort.

'Parallel World' by Cadence Weapon was selected by an 11-member jury of the 2021 Polaris Music Prize as the Canadian album of the year, based solely on artistic merit, The FADER reports. Across its 10 songs and 26 minutes, 'Parallel World' makes distinct references to Black experiences and history in Canada and draws inspiration from a wide range of music, literature and art by Black creators to reflect our "dystopian present".

"Banning Kelly’s music would be a form of censorship, and whatever metric is used to justify that ban should by all rights be used against others. But where does one draw that line? Kelly’s music continues to earn royalties, presumably millions each year. And stretching the question further, who exactly should be penalized? Should every songwriter, producer, or instrumentalist convicted of a certain felony category have each of their songs banned?" - Jem Aswad asks the essential question in Variety following R Kelly's conviction. Gives one possible answer: "Great art is sometimes made by horrible people, and whether or not a person is morally comfortable consuming that art, and earning money for that horrible person, is up to them". Jim DeRogatis, the journalist who brought the R Kelly story to the light, looks at the victims: "The verdict leaves several questions unanswered, including how the many people Kelly victimized will begin to heal".