Being in a band called The Vaccines over the past year was "not as frustrating as you would fear, or hope maybe" - band's Justin Young says in The New Cue interview. "I think a name - forgive the pun - but the name is kind of an empty vessel or an empty vial that a band fills and I think most people aware of The Vaccines existence, I hope by this stage in our career, we're more than just a word or a phrase. And so you get the odd dad joke and I think we're slightly more difficult to Google at the moment. The weirdest thing is for people that have never heard of us. I'll meet people I'll tell them the name of our band and they'll go, 'no way, really? That's so clever, well done!' And I’m like, 'no, no, we've been called that for 10 years'” - Young explains. The Vaccines have released their new, conceptual album 'Back In Love City' with the central emotion of "technicolour, really, and that language is quite reductive when trying to describe how a certain emotion feels. I think social media and the way we've been connecting over the last 18 months has made that even more sort of binary and I think music is as close as you can really get to somewhere like 'Love City' is coming from, because you can put on a pair of headphones and feel whatever it is".

Rolling Stone goes into the new trend of rock stars tweeting as if they're still alive. This week George Harrison and John Lennon both tweeted through an online listening party celebrating the 50th anniversary of 'Imagine'. It's not only the Beatles breaking the space-time continuum - Tom Petty recently mourned the death of Charlie Watts.

The New Yorker is welcoming people back to the office with an introduction of brand-new album 'Now, That’s What We Call . . . an Office!' comprised of eight one-hour songs. The funny album includes song titles such as 'Water-Cooler Chatter', 'Loud Work Call' and 'Printer Percussion'.

Jazz Times talks to notable musicians who consider an old question, with Ambrose Akinmusire giving an interesting perspective: “It’s the sonic representation of how Black people navigate through the world. The improvised element. It’s the never know[ing] what’s coming your way, but reacting and staying calm and knowing that no matter what it is there’s a way to spin it and make it work”.

Britney Spears’ father Jamie Spears has filed a petition to end his daughter’s conservatorship after more than a decade in charge of it. Jamie Spears’ attorney Vivian Thoreen offered an explanation for the petition in the filing: "Ms. Spears has told this Court that she wants control of her life back without the safety rails of a conservatorship. She wants to be able to make decisions regarding her own medical care, deciding when, where and how often to get therapy. She wants to control the money she has made from her career and spend it without supervision or oversight. She wants to be able to get married and have a baby, if she so chooses. In short, she wants to live her life as she chooses without the constraints of a conservator or court proceeding. As Mr. Spears has said again and again, all he wants is what is best for his daughter. If Ms. Spears wants to terminate the conservatorship and believes that she can handle her own life, Mr. Spears believes that she should get that chance". In a statement to Rolling Stone, Britney Spears’ attorney Mathew S. Rosengart said that Jamie Spears’ new filing “represents a massive legal victory for Britney Spears, as well as vindication”.

History of Yesterday remembers the notoriety of the classic music genius: "Beethoven famously chopped the legs off of his piano to feel the notes from the floor vibrations. When that stopped working, he attached a metal rod to the piano. While composing, he bit the rod to feel the notes... When aristocrats attended his performance and talked in the crowd, he would stop playing, turn, and stare at them from his bench, his eyes cutting lasers out into the crowd. There would be painful silence until he’d resume".

"Interpolations have run rampant in the strange year of 2021. Just ask Olivia Rodrigo, Ava Max, Lorde and Doja Cat, who’ve all made charting or platinum records in the past year borrowing beats and melodies from older hits. As a musical concept, interpolations are a cousin to sampling, the art of sticking sound snippets of older songs into new projects that has defined so much of hip-hop. Rather than lifting or modifying a recorded track, though, an interpolation cribs only from a song’s written composition — whether that’s lyrics, a melody, a riff or a beat" - Rolling Stone goes into the story of interpolating old songs for new hits.

Former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant claimed in a new interview that bands who stay together too long look “sadly decrepit” when playing live. “Most musicians form a band, then they stay in the band until it’s over - 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, whatever it is - and it starts to look sadly decrepit. It’s like people hanging onto a life raft, or staying in a comfortable place” - Plant told MOJO. Several years ago, Plant swore he would never reunite with Led Zeppelin again if the offer presented itself, out of fear that their old age could squash their legacy. Plant is working with Alison Krauss now - he explained it’s fun to write songs with a fellow musician where you’ve “got nothing to lose” because there’s no expectation, NME reports.

Lil Uzi Vert had his $24 million diamond implant ripped right off his forehead after he jumped into the crowd at Miami’s Rolling Loud Festival, CNN reports. He was fortunately able to hold onto the diamond and still has it in his possession. The pink diamond is reportedly worth $24 million and was surgically implanted in the rapper's face earlier this year.

Massive Attack have released their climate plan aiming to restructure the music industry, in order to combat the climate crisis, Guardian reports. Years in the making, the findings of their partnership with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the plan is proposing a course of action for the “urgent and significant reassembly” of the music industry. Required actions include the immediate elimination of private jet use, a switch to electric transportation for concerts and festivals, and, by 2025, phasing out diesel generators at festivals.

Kanye West’s 'Donda' has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the biggest week for any album released this year with 309,000 equivalent album units, Billboard reports. With 'Donda', Kanye West has once again tied Eminem for the record of most No. 1 debuts in a row on the albums chart, too. Eminem broke the tie in early 2020 with 'Music to Be Murdered By'. West has become one of only seven artists in chart history to release 10 chart-topping albums, alongside the Beatles, JAY-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, Eminem, and Elvis Presley.

Shortly after the military coup in Myanmar at the beginning of the year, four musicians recorded a protest song 'Headshot' about security forces shooting to kill. Within hours of releasing the song, the rockers scattered. Three of them were later placed on a wanted list for sedition, their names and photos shown on the military-run TV channel. By June, they’d be irreparably separated. Kyar Pauk has since fled the country. Han Nay Tar, lead singer of Eternal Gosh, an alternative and pop rock band established in 2013, has gone deep into hiding and couldn’t be reached. Novem Htoo, among the country’s most famous metal vocalists, has sought shelter with an ethnic armed organization. Raymond, lead singer of the band The Idiots and among Myanmar’s most influential rock musicians of this generation, had been staying in the jungle with Novem Htoo, but on June 23rd, the 32-year-old, who had long suffered from gastrointestinal problems, was found dead. Rolling Stone tells the story in full.

English rap meets afrobeat with a touch of Balkan brass sound on Che Lingo’s ‘Eyes on the Prize’; Bobby Shmurda has put out his first single since being released from prison, a big song 'No Time For Sleep'; Jerry Cantrell goes country-grunge on ‘Atone’; Madi Diaz is fully emotional on 'Think of Me'.

"I felt a little bit of pressure: 'This is our first show in a while, I hope we’re not too rusty'. But I think actually the audiences were equally rusty: everyone was coming into it with a kind of fascination and curiosity and openness that really lent itself well to the evening" - Sarathy Korwar told the Guardian about his return to gigs. The London paper also talked to Mogwai, Corinne Baily Rae, Sleaford Mods, Jayda G, and others.

"Documentaries can only be as fascinating as their subjects. That's why this bio/doc will have legs, because even in the afterlife Rick James gives his fans something to talk about" - Dwight Brown Ink give a verdict on the new docu. New York Times deems it "fascinating and troubling viewing". Consequence says "the smartest move 'Bitchin' makes is to just lay all of James' cards out on the table and let the audience figure it out for themselves".

“Thirty years of the Black Album, it’s a pretty big year. We’re overachievers and we’re perfectionists. We think outside the box and we try to be the first at things. There’s no nostalgia driving this band; we used to be very fearful of it” - Metallica's James Hetfield says in a Guardian interview ahead of 52-track covers album, 'The Metallica Blacklist'. Hetfield insists “We’re still explorers. A project like the Blacklist is proof of that. Someone once told me: ‘The rear-view mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason’".

Anghami is a music streaming service based in the Middle East, namely Abu Dhabi, serving mostly the Middle East. "It has 70 million registered users and nearly 60 million songs in its library. It’s also set to be the first Arab tech startup to go public on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange. Anghami’s trajectory has also been something of a case study in how the global music industry is being slowly transformed from outside its core centers of New York, Los Angeles, and London". Rest of the World brings the whole story.

Jason Isbell asks Dr. Antohny Fauci questions about COVID-19 and safety protocols at live events. Fauci recommends outdoor concerts, since the danger of getting infected is dramatically higher in a closed space. Fauci suggests talking to people, giving them answers to valid questions. Fauci insists the work on the vaccine started two decades ago. Both also agree the audience should stop yelling out requests - "I know what you like, don't worry".

"I’m constantly going into different genres and fields to make the message more accessible. It’s really for young people and for mothers to be able to tap into what I’m doing. This record is like a gateway, a trickery: bringing people in with the smooth vibes. But if you know my music, I like to punch people in the heart and then kiss the heart" - Moor Mother says in Pitchfork interview about her forthcoming album 'Black Encyclopedia of the Air'. She also believes there's not enough proper protest songs now: "If we’re talking about radical statements and protest music, just standing around saying 'F this', what is that accomplishing?".

"It’s Simz’s most personal album yet but also her most removed, in the sense that it’s cinematic and surreal and overwhelming... 'Introvert' is heady and dense and restless — a masterwork" - Stereogum gives a verdict to London rapper's new releases (it's also Stereogum's Album of the Week). Guardian likes the leftfieldness of it - "Voraciously creative, clever and cool...  It is notably non-synthetic and twitchily alive, with Simz’s vocal presence so intense and distinctive it is able to withstand all manner of genre-fickleness". Gigwise insists Simz is at the "highest echelons of British rap".

ABBA have released two songs, their first new music in 40 years - 'I Still Have Faith In You' is a big nostalgic ballad, whereas 'Don't Shot Me Down' is a dancey song. Both of these will be released on their new album 'Voyage' on November 5, NPR reports. ABBA has also announced a virtual tour Abba Voyage, which will open next year in a specially-built arena in east London. Playing six nights a week, it will feature digital versions of Abba's band members, accompanied by a 10-piece live band performing 22 of their greatest hits. The digital Abba show will initially be staged in London, but could tour the world. The so-called "Abba-tars" were designed by Industrial Light and Magic - the visual effects company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas. More than 850 people worked on recreating Abba "in their prime" using motion capture technology to scan "every mannerism and every motion" of the musicians, who are now in their 70s, as they performed.

Dogpatch is a podcast with two funny hosts Dante Carfagna and Jon Kirby talking about music, and playing music on a theme in each episode. The last episode was about music recorded in prison, by prisoners, the big chunk of it from the 1970s. Maximum Security Prism episode features music by Location Service, Walls, Reality Index, Public-Use Guitar, Pando, Cashbox Directory, All-State Band, Bids, Culture Gaps, Concrete Reflection, Cupcake, Winston Moore, Studio Guns, Isolated Not Isolation, Rodeos, Stateville Merch Booth, and Heartsongs.

"I’m a walker, I love walking. That’s funny" - Steve Gunn says in a Tone Glow interview about his new album 'Other You', which features a few songs about the mundane habit. Why does he like it? - "Partially the walking correlates with being open and exploratory. I do a lot of walking that isn’t to a specific destination. I’m just being receptive to what’s around me, being observational. I’m present in my current space. Particularly with this record, and the fact that it was a very isolated time, walking was really important for me. Being in the park close to where I live was a godsend and it was an important part of my process, an important part of opening myself up a little more".

YouTube has surpassed the milestone of 50 million YouTube Music and Premium subscribers, growing its subscriber base by around 20 million in the past 11 months, or around 1.8m subscribers per month since October 2020, MBW reports on the music stat. YouTube's biggest rival Spotify's global Premium Subscriber base grew to 165 million in Q2 2021, which was up 20% year-on-year. Apple Music in June 2019 announced it had surpassed 60 million subscribers.

"With paintings, when you draw a body, you try to make your drawing look like the body more or less everywhere, even if it’s different from Africa to Asia or anywhere. Each time, you want to recognize something like a face or nose. But in music, it doesn’t exist" - Parisian composer and improviser Jean-Luc Guionnet says in a Tone Glow interview. He adds: - "I like to think that there was a deep crisis when language came, and music changed. Perhaps before, for example, a guy was coming back from somewhere, and wanted to describe the landscape that he saw yesterday. Perhaps he played music to imitate the sounds of this landscape, because he couldn’t say, because he didn’t have language. But when language came, it wasn’t useful to do that anymore. So then music appears".

'The Velvet Underground' documentary features in-depth interviews with the band’s surviving members and other key figures from the era, as well as never-before-seen performances, studio recordings, experimental art, and films by their one-time manager Andy Warhol. It is the first documentary for Todd Haynes, director of 'Velvet Goldmine' and Bob Dylan biopic 'I’m Not There'. Haynes also helped curate the movie’s accompanying soundtrack, featuring classic and rare tracks. Rolling Stone reports...

"A large portion of the people that are streaming, they've never owned a CD, they may not listen to the radio, and when they hear David Bowie's Life On Mars, they're hearing it for the first time" - songwriter Ryan Tedder, who wrote songs for Adele, Ed Sheeran, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lil Nas X - told the BBC. "So the source of discovery is the last 70 years of music. It's all brand new, right now. So you're competing with every song that has ever come out". He's got a point - entertainment analysts MRC Data say that catalogue albums (defined as anything older than 18 months) now account for 66.4% of all streams worldwide.

Jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington has released his cover version of Metallica's 'My Friend Of Misery', Blabbermouth reports. This version sounds nothing like metal - Kamasi Washington has turned 'My Friend Of Misery' into an astral jazz song, insisting on virtuosity, common to the original. This cover is one of more than 50 songs which are included on Metallica's massive new covers compilation called 'The Metallica Blacklist', which features artists' takes on 'Black Album' songs.

After much delay, Kanye West has released his 10th album 'Donda' with 27 songs spanning an hour and 48 minutes. The length of it is an issue with the critics. "Nobody needs all 27 of these tracks" - NME insists, adding, "but dig deep into its contents and you’ll find enough gems to make his 10th album worth your time". The Times hears a "sprawling and sometimes brilliant album". Pitchfork says the album is "barely finished and with a lot of baggage. Its 27 tracks include euphoric highs that lack connective tissue, a data dump of songs searching for a higher calling".

Olivia Rodrigo returns to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart for a fifth week with her debut album 'Sour', following its vinyl LP release on Aug. 20 (the album originally came out in May). In the week ending Aug. 26, 'Sour' earned 133,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. (up 133%). Of that sum, album sales comprise 84,000 (up 1,201%), with vinyl LP sales equaling 76,000 of that figure - the second-largest sales week for a vinyl album since MRC Data began electronically tracking sales in 1991. The only larger week was by Taylor Swift’s 'Evermore', when it sold 102,000 on vinyl in the week ending June 3, Billboard reports.