Country music legend Charley Pride, the genre's first black superstar, died Saturday at age 86 of complications from Covid-19. His baritone voice was featured on more than 50 Top 10 country hits and he was the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was a sportsman at first - he played Negro League baseball at 16, eventually becoming an all-star player with the Mets. He quit baseball and arrived in Nashville in 1963 to start a career that spanned more than four decades, and included 52 Top 10 country hits, Grammy awards, and the status of RCA Records' top-selling country artist. Pride's early singles were released without mention of his race or a photo of him. Some of Pride's biggest hits include 'Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone', 'Just Between You and Me', 'Kiss an Angel Good Mornin''.

Mariah Carey’s festive hit 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' reaches Number 1 on the Official UK Singles Chart 26 years after its release, and breaks a record in the process, the Official Charts Company reports. Upon its original release in 1994, 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' peaked at Number 2, below East 17’s 'Stay Another Day'. Carey's hit summits in its 70th week in the Top 40, and sets a new chart record - no other song has spent more weeks in the Official Chart Top 40 before eventually reaching Number 1 in UK chart history. The song notched up 10.8 million streams over the last seven days – the most streams in a week by any song in 2020 so far.

Blue Ivy Carter has become one of the youngest Grammy nominees in history - the eight-year-old daughter of Beyoncé and Jay-Z was added to the nominees for best music video for her mother's 'Brown Skin Girl', People reports. Leah Peasall of The Peasall Sisters is the youngest Grammy nominee (and winner) as one of the credited artists on the 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' she was eight at the time. Deleon Richards is the youngest performer to receive an individual nomination - she was nominated at 8 1/2 years old for a 1985 award for best soul/gospel performance, female for her album 'Deleon'.

Space-jazz masters The Comet Is Coming released their hybrid new single 'Imminent' featuring MC Joshua Idehen; Thou & Emma Ruth Rundle released a mighty cover of Cranberries' 'Hollywood'; screamo boys For Your Health released 'Birthday Candles in the Effigy' with a ballerina dancing to it in a sinister video; Burial, Four Tet, and Thom Yorke collaborated on two new moody songs 'Her Revolution' and 'His Rope'.

Indie rock bands with very sizable followings have already turned in new albums to their labels with the understanding that they be held until, at the very least, next fall - Last Donut of the Night blog writes about the prospect of new albums by indie bands like Death Cab For Cutie, Soccer Mommy, Protomartyr... It is similar with A-list stars - we could have expected new albums by Lana Del Rey, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Billie Eilish were it not for the pandemic...

"We can’t in good conscience benefit from a process that has—both this year and historically—so overlooked women, performers of colors, and most especially Black performers” - Alastair Moock & Friends, the Okee Dokee Brothers, and Dog on Fleas wrote to the Recording Academy asking to rescind their nominations for the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Children’s Music Album. Three of the five nominees say that "it is not an aberration” that all of the 2021 nominees are white and only one nominee is female, Pitchfork reports.

A very good selection of the best books covering musical topics released this year, picked out by the Rolling Stone. Sasha Geffen presents an interesting idea in 'Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary' - that "popular music has always been powered by transgressive ideas about identity". Mark Lanegan's 'Sing 'Backwards and Weep: A Memoir' is "one of the most compelling and revealing rock memoirs ever". 'The Baddest Bitch in the Room: A Memoir' by the marketing specialist Sophia Chang is about, well, the character in the title.

Big music companies are trying to make money on old hits, engineering them to become viral TikToks, Vice argues, suggesting we are going to see more of that. New York Times reporter wrote that some record companies have been paying influencers to feature music from their back catalog, also looking for that Fleetwood Mac effect.

An encouraging story in the Rolling Stone about the aspiring Australian rapper YNG Martyr who quit his job (didn't like, wasn't good at it), took out a $15,000 dollar loan from the bank, and spent it all on Instagram memes incorporating his song 'Nike Ticks'. Thanks to these memes interest in the song rocketed upwards, earning more than 30 million streams on Spotify in the last 14 months, and it got YNG Martyr a record deal. Turned out he's also a good meme-maker, so he started YNG Marketing that works on meme campaigns.

Rap videos and lyrics are increasingly being used as evidence in criminal trials in the UK - over 60 cases where “rap evidence” has been used in this way have been identified - presented by prosecutors as autobiographical confessions to crimes, threats of violence or proof of gang affiliation, rather than fictional or greatly exaggerated stories. Enter Prosecuting Rap: Criminal Justice and UK Black Youth Expressive Culture, a research project headed by Eithne Quinn, Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, networked with other academics and legal professionals, serving as rap expert for the defense in trials, trying to differentiate the menacing musical persona in the song with the young person sitting in the dock. DJ Mag reports on the worthy collective.

The big news about Bob Dylan selling his entire songwriting catalog to Universal (for somewhere in between $300 and $400 million), got a fresh perspective in the Rolling Stone - why did Universal buy it? It seems the major music companies feel they need to take a stand against upstarts like Hipgnosis Songs and Primary Wave, which have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying songwriters' catalogs. This big spending spree is likely to continue as "music rights become one of the most reliable growth assets of the pandemic era".

Guns N' Roses' 'Patience', John Lennon's 'Watching the Wheels' and Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' are some of the songs covered by Chris Cornell on an album surprise-released today, Seattle Times reports. 'No One Sings Like You Anymore' is Cornell's “last fully completed studio album”, and it also includes Ghostland Observatory (with 'Sad Sad City') Harry Nilsson ('Jump Into The Fire'), Carl Hall ('You Don't Know Nothing About Love') Electric Light Orchestra ('Showdown'), Terry Reid ('To Be Treated Rite'), Lorraine Ellison ('Stay With Me Baby'), and Janis Joplin ('Get It While You Can').

Rapper Nines won album of the year for 'Crabs in a Bucket', and best hip-hop act, while R&B singer Mahalia won best female act and best R&B/soul act at the 2020 Mobo awards, returning for the first time since 2017 to celebrate music of Black origin. Drill rapper Headie One was named best male act, while 'Don’t Rush' by pop-rap duo Young T & Bugsey was voted Mobo song of the year.

"One of the main vehicles helping us during this time is music. Heavy, experimental, interesting you name it. And from that perspective, it has been an excellent year! ... Experimentalism is thankfully on the rise, as boundaries are still pushed and new realms are explored" - PopMatters says about this year in metal music. Their top 20 in the genre:

20. Black Curse - 'Endless Wound'

19. Megaton Sword - 'Blood Hails Steel'

18. Kevel - 'Mutatis, Mutandis'

17. Spirit Adrift - 'Enlightened in Eternity'

16. Spirit Adrift - 'Enlightened in Eternity'

15. Wake - 'Devouring Ruin'

14. Pyrrhon - 'Abscess Time'

13. Haken - 'Virus'

12. Thou and Emma Ruth Rundle - 'May Our Chambers Be Full'

11. Faceless Burial - 'Speciation'

10. Wayfarer - 'A Romance With Violence'

9. Oranssi Pazuzu - 'Mestarin kynsi'

8. Expander - 'Neuropunk Boostergang'

7. Old Man Gloom - 'Seminar VIII: Light of Meaning/Seminar IX: Darkness of Being'

6. Neptunian Maximalism - 'Éons'

5. Ulthar - 'Providence'

4. Duma - 'Duma'

3. Paysage d’Hiver - 'Im Wald'

2. SUMAC - 'May You Be Held'

1. Imperial Triumphant 'Alphaville'

Sean Malone, the longtime bassist of the great progressive metal band Cynic, has died aged 50, Loudwire reports. Malone played on all three of Cynic's full-length albums, leaving a great mark in music. "Without any hyperbole; a true legend" - Steve Di Giorgio of Death wrote, adding - "Sean Malone is basically responsible for an entire genre of metal bass playing. Very influential and definitively ahead of the rest of us".

"It feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: To turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in" - Taylor Swift said on Twitter announcing her second surprise album of 2020. 'Evermore', coming out at midnight, is described as a "sister album" to the delicate, escapist 'Folklore', which itself arrived out-of-the-blue in July, the New York Times reports. As with 'Folklore', 'Evermore' will contain collaborations with indie artists Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner, as well as female rock trio Haim.

Texan blues-soul band Black Pumas played a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR - it was an intimate setting as usual, and powerful nevertheless. Singer Eric Burton "digs deep and... he's burning with old-school soul heartbreak", Adrian Quesada's guitar "is the perfect call-and-response foil, while the entire band - complete with two powerful back-up singers - calls to mind soul classics, but with a groovy new sheen".

CI's list of 75 albums of 2020 starts with both Sault's albums released this year, but then it becomes different, offering a wealth of lesser-known albums by artists such as Moses Boyd, Moor Mother, Irreversible Entanglements, Sauce and Dogs...

The rise of streaming platforms and those looking to rip a little extra access is likely to become a new frontier in the cat and mouse game of (illegal) copying of music - Hollywood Reporter writes anticipating a new wave of "piracy wars". The subject of the latest and still developing battle is youtube-dl, a third-party software tool that enables its users to rip videos and songs from the Google-owned platform.

Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks sold 80% of her songwriting catalog for an estimated $80 million, Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Nicks’ sale coincides with the recent buzz around 'Dreams' fueled by a viral TikTok video. To put this in perspective, pop-rock band Imagine Dragons sold their catalog for more than $100 million, while Bob Dylan sold his entire catalog for $300 million.

Switch presents his impressive flow on 'Cleopatra's Nose', with a helping voice from Killah Priest; plenty of Christmas songs, but Julia Jacklin's 'Baby Jesus Is Nobody's Baby Now' deserves a proper listen; similarly, Porridge Radio's 'The Last Time I Saw You (o Christmas)' is for those who don't really like the holidays; Lushlife delivers some spacey jazzy-rap on 'Hessdalen Lights'; Scottish folk singer James Yorkston shares a baroque pop single 'Ella Mary Leather'; Every Time I Die share their first new song in four years, a melodic metal-core 'Desperate Pleasures' with some math-core energy.

A nice article in Spin about children who played big parts in some of the most popular videos, like the girl with braces in 'Black Hole Sun' by Soundgarden, the boy who kisses Madonna in 'Open Your Heart', or the boy playing Michael Anthony Jr. in Van Halen’s 'Hot for Teacher' (while drunk!). One of the lucky ones was Kelsey Lewis, known for her role in the video for Pink’s 'Family Portrait', who continued acting in following years, has also started DJing, and escaped mass-shootings on two occasions.

Clubhouse is an exclusive, audio-only social network where people can spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together, but they can get it only by invitation. It has less than 4 thousand members around the world, including musicians like Drake, Jared Leto, Estelle, 21 Savage and Lupe Fiasco. Clubhouse is about connecting people via audio, only. So, once inside, users can eavesdrop on, or join in with, conversations that are already happening, or start one of their own. Complex tried it out, says it "has the potential to be a fun platform to engage celebrities about their interests, talk music with like-minded people, or even get a beat placed". Clubhouse founders say they’re working on making it available to the public as quickly as possible.

“The gigging lifestyle - where musicians are freelancing from one independent job to another - I don’t know if that’s going to be around in New York after this. You’ll probably see some 'Mad Max' scenario where the young guys claw their way to survival” - Spike Wilner, the owner of two New York jazz clubs Mezzrow and Smalls, says in a Curbed interview. “Every jazz club that presents music is part of a chain, like a food chain, supplying life force to this community”, Wilner said, adding - “when the environment dries up, less and less animals are allowed to live”.

David Crosby has announced plans to sell off songs from his songwriting catalogue, days after Bob Dylan sold his own for $300 million, Exclaim reports. "I can't work…and streaming stole my record money," he wrote on Twitter - "I have a family and a mortgage and I have to take care of them so it's my only option". His fans were surprised Crosby wasn't worth millions ("I am not"), and he couldn't make money any other way - to which Crosby reiterated - "streaming does not pay us for records and COVID has shut down all work live… is that clear enough for you?".

The U.K.'s Royal Mint pressed a special coin of the late, great David Bowie and sent it to space to have it offered as a competition prize, BBC reports. Earlier, the Mint pressed and released the collectibles which celebrate different stages in Bowie’s career. The one-ounce silver proof coin made a 45 minutes trip by balloon to the edge of space to an altitude of 35,656m before safely returning to the earth. It’s to be offered as a competition prize on the Royal Mint’s Facebook page. Bowie is the third to feature in the Royal Mint’s 'Music Legends' collection following Queen and Elton John, both issued earlier in 2020.

Harold Budd, the iconic avant-garde ambient composer, has died aged 84 due to COVID-19, Rolling Stone reports. He frequently collaborated with Brian Eno, and The Cocteau Twins' guitarist Robin Guthrie, as well as XTC’s Andy Partridge, Ultravox’s John Foxx, Public Image Ltd’s Jah Wobble, and more. Over the past 40 years, Budd has released dozens of albums in a wide range of genres, including experimental piano, avant-garde minimalism, dream pop, and beyond.

A record number of 1.253 million vinyl albums were sold in the week of Nov. 27-Dec. 3 in the U.S., enough for the largest sales week since 1991, when electronic tracking music sales began, Billboard reports. It’s only the second week in 39 years that weekly vinyl album sales surpassed 1 million - the last time it happened was a year ago when 1.243 million were sold in the week ending Dec. 26, 2019. Half of the sales is attributed to Record Store Day Black Friday festivities at independent record stores, as indie physical store sales accounted for 542,000 vinyl LPs sold in the week. The top-selling vinyl was Harry Styles’ 'Fine Line', with 15,000 copies sold.

LD Beghtol, musician, artist and writer who contributed to The Magnetic Fields' '69 Love Songs' has died at 55, MXMWN reports. LD has participated in various other musical collaborations with Stephin Merritt over the years like The Three Terrors, and he made his own music, too, as part of Flare, and LD & the New Criticism. LD also wrote about music for Time Out, chickfactor, The Advocate, and The Village Voice, and he also made the book '69 Love Songs: A Field Guide'.

"The best albums of 2020 proved that incredible new music will always make their way to our ears, even in the toughest of times" - Pitchfork announces its albums of the year special.

The top 20:

20. Fleet Foxes: 'Shore'
19. Amaarae: 'The Angel You Don’t Know'
18. Destroyer: 'Have We Met'
17. Róisín Murphy: 'Róisín Machine'
16. Run the Jewels: 'RTJ4'
15. U.S. Girls: 'Heavy Light'
14. Jay Electronica: 'Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn)'
13. The Microphones: 'Microphones in 2020'
12. Lil Uzi Vert: 'Eternal Atake'
11. Adrianne Lenker: 'songs / instrumentals'
10. Bad Bunny: 'YHLQMDLG'
9. Jessie Ware: 'What’s Your Pleasure?'
8. Haim: 'Women in Music Pt. III'
7. Yves Tumor: 'Heaven to a Tortured Mind'
6. Bob Dylan: 'Rough and Rowdy Ways'
5. Perfume Genius: 'Set My Heart on Fire Immediately'
4. Phoebe Bridgers: 'Punisher'
3. Moses Sumney: 'græ'
2. Waxahatchee: 'Saint Cloud'
1. Fiona Apple: 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters'