A great read in The Quietus about The Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost, a project/album with songs by Billy Reeves, who can't even remember writing them, due to memory loss after a traffic accident which happened after he finished the album. It's just bitter-sweet: "There’s a couple of songs that seem to be bitter break-up songs. The lyric 'featherweight summer that didn’t last too long', to me that’s amazing, but what is it about?”.

Jamie Spears, Britney Spears' father, has agreed to step down as her conservator, according to documents filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court Thursday, NPR reports. The documents state that there are "no actual grounds for suspending or removing him under Probate Code section 2650" but that he has chosen to step down because of the "public battle with his daughter". The language of the documents also appears to question pop star's stability - "it is highly debatable whether a change in conservator at this time would be in Ms. Spears' best interests".

Pitchfork goes into the sensitive issue of music ownership: "The reality that behind every young, female pop star exists a team eager to exploit that stardom by any means necessary has not exactly been obscure throughout pop history. The shadow of the svengali producer and manager, long solidified in the work of men like Phil Spector, Porter Wagoner, and Kim Fowley, lingers in the edges of the modern industry... But 2021 feels like a breaking point for a public understanding of industry control that stretches far beyond singular producer-artist dynamics or bad contracts. As high-profile artists like Britney Spears and estates like Aaliyah’s battle for control and fight off their respective leeches, they illustrate the ways in which a musician can be dehumanized to function as a kind of corporation, one through which a staff of bad actors can rotate, or be sold off in parts to the highest bidder".

Phoebe Bridgers has shared her cover of Metallica’s 'Nothing Else Matters', about to be released on the covers album 'The Metallica Blacklist'. Bridgers said - "I feel like my version almost sounds baroque. Literally, James [Hetfield] does all sorts of weird octave jumps and stuff that I can’t do, and I almost have a Billie Eilish approach of right by the microphone, performing it the opposite of them, which was really fun to lean into”.

Seungri, the 30-year-old former singer from the popular Korean boyband Big Bang, was convicted for three years for arranging sex services and other charges stemming from a sex and gambling scandal, South China Morning Post reports. Big Bang enjoyed widespread fame after their 2006 debut, and 'Seungri' – real name Lee Seung-hyun – went on to become a successful businessman. He was convicted of arranging sex services for potential investors in his business. Seungri was also ordered to pay 1.15 billion Korean won (US$1 million) in restitution.

“What began as a straightforward glimpse into an artist’s life and career gradually morphed into something altogether different – and strange” - the press release for 'The Nowhere Inn', starring St. Vincent, Carrie Brownstein, and Dakota Johnson, reads. Directed by Bill Benz, the metafictional film features the stars portraying fictional versions of themselves out to make a documentary about the provocateur otherwise known as Annie Clark (St. Vincent of course). “You’re nerdy and normal in real life, but the disparity between that and who you are on stage as St. Vincent is jarring” - Brownstein says in the trailer, leading Clark to reply - “I can be St. Vincent all the time, so that I can be a little bit more interesting”.

Justin Bieber leads the field for the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards with seven nominations. Megan Thee Stallion follows with six. Billie Eilish, BTS, Doja Cat, Drake, Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Nas X, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd and more are also among this year’s nominees. Check out all the nominees at MTV.

Dolly Parton has teamed up with author James Patterson for her debut novel 'Run, Rose, Run', People reports. The 448-page book - out March 7th, 2022 - is country star's first work of literary fiction and it “combines my love of storytelling and books". Parton also announced she has "a new album to go along with the book. All new songs were written based on the characters and situations in the book".

With 22 nods in 13 categories, Bad Bunny leads the list of finalists for the 2021 Billboard Latin Music Awards. Bad Bunny, with three albums under his belt, is nominated in the artist of the year, songwriter of the year, Hot Latin Songs artist of the year, top Latin rhythm album and top Latin album of the year categories. Maluma follows with 11 nominations, J Balvin with 9, and Karol G, Anuel AA and Black Eyed Peas with 8 each. Check out all the nominees on Billboard.

Ugandan rapper Blaq Bandana and Italian producer Still mix trap, drill, cut kuduro, and electro on ‘Nkwaata’; Lowertown rolls a delicate acoustic guitar on the verge of exploding on ‘The Gaping Mouth’; we have heard it all from the post-rock front, but still, the way Shy, Low mix energy and beauty on ‘Helioentropy’ deserves a recommendation; Moritz Von Oswald Trio slide between minimal techno, jazz, and avant-ambient electronics on ‘Chapter 4’; Courtney Barnett shares some delicate guitar work on ‘Before You Gotta Go’; Big Thief share a feather-light love song 'Little Things'.

"A vibrant, soulful memoir that binds her own belated coming-of-age with her mother’s untimely death, and serves up food, music and, yes, tears alongside insights into identity, grief and the primal intensity of the mother-daughter bond" - Guardian reviews 'Crying in H Mart', a memoir by singer-songwriter Michelle Zauner, the frontwoman of the band Japanese Breakfast.

“The name British Sea Power had come to feel constricting, like an ancient legacy we were carrying with us” - the alternative British rock band said, announcing a name change to Sea Power. “We always wanted to be an internationalist band but maybe having a specific nation state in our name wasn’t the cleverest way to demonstrate that” - the band added. Sea Power also announced a new album 'Everything Was Forever', and shared a single from it called 'Two Fingers'.

The former CBS Records president who may have been the most powerful person in the music business in the closing years of the 20th century has died, Billboard reports. Walter Yetnikoff helped sell megastars like Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Joel. Yetnikoff also cultivated a reputation as a loud, snarling, hard-partying power broker, and was a symbol of an era of past excesses.

Each of GQ’s 21 global editions nominated local artist across a world of genres, in search of pop music’s voices of the future. A few of them are: Thailand rapper Milli; Italian singer/rapper Fedez with a social mission; French Eddy de Pretto - somewhere between chanson and rap; Indian street rapper Divine; Mexican neo-folk singer Natalia Lafourcade; Australian indigenous rapper Ziggy Ramo; J-Pop singer Fujii Kaze; Spanish flamenco singer Israel Fernández... Listen to all of the selected here.

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, and Warner Music Group have generated $5.60 billion in the three months to end of June, up by $1.53 billion (or +37.6%) on the same period of last year, Music Business Worldwide calculates. That $5.60 billion turnover equates to the three majors cumulatively generating $61.5 million per day in the year’s second quarter – or, in turn, $2.56 million every hour. In the first six months of 2020, the three major music companies generated $10.91 billion – putting them firmly on course for a cumulative $20 billion year.

Ruth Radelet, Adam Miller, and Nat Walker of the synth-pop quartet Chromatics have announced the break-up of their band, Consequence reports. The statement announcing Chromatics’ breakup doesn't make a mention of their longtime bandmate Johnny Jewel, who also released the group’s music through his Italians Do It Better record label. Jewel separately announced that "he’ll continue making music and supporting great art and artists through his label Italians Do It Better".

"Concerts in real life have various constraints like budgets, the chance of accidents, space limitations, etc. But when it comes to a virtual world, there are none. If you have a crazy idea, you can get it implemented. And this widens the scope of how musical concerts can be done and how artists can interact with fans" - metaverse enthusiast E2Analyst writes in the Medium after seeing Ariana Grande perform in Fortnite.

Billie Eilish's new album 'Happier Than Ever' has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Of the 238,000 equivalent units sold, 73,000 of them were vinyl records, the second-most vinyl records sold in an album's first week since 1991. The benchmark is currently held by Taylor Swift's 2021 album 'Evermore', which sold 102,000 vinyls in its first seven days, Billboard reports.

'Dreams Still Inspire' by the Chicago underground rap duo Abstract Mindstate is the first album fully produced by Kanye West that was not his own since Common’s 'Be' in 2005. It is also the first release under West's new YZY SND imprint. Coming out nearly 20 years after the release of their first and only album, 2001’s 'We Paid Let Us In!', and "with lyrics and production that perfectly complement each other, Abstract Mindstate's reunion album is a masterclass in Hip-Hop fundamentals", Hot New Hip-Hop points out.

Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie has sold her 115-title song catalog, including hits such as 'Don’t Stop', 'You Make Loving Fun', 'Over My Head', 'Songbird', and 'Say You Love Me', to Hipgnosis, Music Business Worldwide reports. McVie first joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970 helping them become one of the most commercially successful music artists of the past 50 years, with the Grammy-winning 1977 album 'Rumours' selling more than 45 million copies worldwide. Hipgnosis has spent more than $2 billion in three years acquiring rights to a vast number of popular songs. Hipgnosis’s filings reveal that McVie's 115 songs acquired in the deal generated $1.7 million in 2020, $1.72m in 2019 and $1.58m in 2018. Hipgnosis usually pays an average multiple of 15 times the annual income, which would bring the price to McVie's songs to approx. $100 million.

"There's a certain amount of pressure that comes into our album world when we go in to make a record because we're thinking about keeping people in the arenas, in the stadiums. I think that pushes you into a territory musically. Having everything shut down by Covid allowed these other songs to begin to be heard that were otherwise too quiet" - The Killers' Brondown Flowers says to The New Cue about their new album 'Pressure Machine'. It's much quieter, and deals with his childhood: "I think the thing that was most profound was just that how much grief that I still had that I didn't realise that I was walking around with for some of these people, some of these stories. And that was a little bit of a shock to me, that it was cathartic for me to talk about some of these things".

Japanese band Oavette shares a jazzy/post-rock gem 'Neus'; Lingua Ignota takes a turn into Appalachian Gothic with ‘Repent Now Confess Now’; Deafheaven are keeping their stylistic U-turn with their latest, melancholic single ‘In Blur’; Martina Topley Bird shares ‘Topic’, produced by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja; one of the highlights on Nas' new album is ‘Nobody’, which sees him reuniting with Ms. Lauryn Hill.

"The Grand Prix Freestyle event, where riders can choose their own music and moves rather than go through a pre-set test, is the blockbuster event of Olympic dressage" - NPR goes into equestrian events at the events, and the music it is being performed to. So, what is it that the horses like? "Norway's Carina Cassoe Kruth went for an 80s medley including 'I Want To Know What Love Is' by Foreigner and 'Footloose' by Kenny Loggins. The U.K.'s Carl Hester rode his horse, En Vogue, to groovy disco music that channeled the Bee Gees. Germany's Isabell Werth looked to the majesty of Beethoven's 'Ode To Joy' for her performance".

A lovely story in Pollstar about Dan O'Connor who has been jumping into Lake Michigan every day for over a year. Beginning of this year he started inviting musicians to perform live on the water's edge while he jumped, and using his daily ritual as a platform to fundraise for Chicago music venues.

"The 29-year-old rapper really stepped in it, and continued to smear it all over the place, when on July 25th during the Rolling Loud Miami music festival he made some truly vile comments about gay men and people living with HIV... After his clusterfuck of faux-pologies, DaBaby’s left those in the queer community no choice but to demand dollars... We don’t need apologies. We’re tired of apologies. To be Black and queer in this country is to constantly have to apologize for your own presence, to constantly assert your own value, and to constantly watch others dismiss you entirely. An apology ain’t doing shit for anybody. Instead, speak the only language that carries weight in this country: cold hard cash" - Rolling Stone gets to the bottom line with DaBaby.

Rock N' Heavy goes into the lyrics of "them good boys" The Beatles, who were, well, not that good all the time. Even in their early songs, like 'Please Please Me' with a direct suggestion of oral sex:

"Last night I said these words to my girl
I know you never even try, girl
C’mon (C’mon), please please me oh yeah, like I please you".

Former Maccabees guitarist and current member of Tailender podcast team, Felix White has written a memoir 'Always Summer Somewhere' about his band's breakup, about being the inspiration of an entire Florence Welch album, and his obsession with cricket. "It’s a brilliant book, funny, reflective, sad, funny again, dealing with the worst things life can throw at you with a real lightness of touch" - The New Cue gives its verdict. They also talked to the guy. White said that "some of the hardest stuff to write, that I really wasn't sure that I should or not, was the stuff about being a nice guy in a band but knowing that I'm being a nice guy in a band, because it was from a position of power".

Kanye West levitated hundreds of feet in the air at the second live-stream of his highly anticipated album, 'Donda', Pitchfork reports. West was shown lying on his back as he was flown on a wire hundreds of feet in the air while his single, "No Child Left Behind" played. About 35,000 West fans witnessed the retooled 'Donda', which sounded more cohesive, with more beats and melodies.

Singer-songwriter Billie Marten picks the only album by guitar virtuoso and US cult hero Ted Lucas for The New Cue's An Album To Blow Your Mind segment: "I came across it as I was looking for something new and good over the third lockdown back in winter, and I was convinced it was a modern artist trying to sculpt the best sonics plucked from every great 70s recording. I did some research - after milking this record so much that I’ve now had to place a temporary ban on it - and it turns out he was one of the greats in assisting everyone under a session player guise of ‘exotic string specialist’, helping out on a lot of the great recordings coming out around that mid-70s time".

The New Yorker writer likes the new Prince album, but still felt uncomfortable listening to it. This is why: "Prince didn’t have a will when he died. Every act performed with his music is done without his permission. Even the people who seemed to know him well speak of him as a mystery. Who, then, is qualified to say that they have any inkling of what he’d do with his songs? Recently, things got even more complicated: around the time that “Welcome 2 America” was released, news broke that many of Prince’s siblings had received buyouts from the independent music publisher and talent management company Primary Wave, giving it the largest stake in Prince’s estate. During his life, Prince was vocal about ownership, autonomy, and control. He did not want middlemen to take shares of his streaming revenue; he changed his name to a glyph partly in protest of what he saw as an onerous recording contract. The infrastructure profiting off Prince in death is the one he’s criticizing on 'Welcome 2 America'”.