California glam-rock band Steel Panther is offering a customised song with lyrics inspired and approved by the buyer. Before they record a song they will set up a meeting "and talk about what you want in your song and pry as much information out of you as humanly possible. We want your song to be good!". The customized song goes for $7,500.

Opera singer and essayist Xenia Hanusiak wrote a philosophical text in the Psyche about how music helps us understand ourselves better: "The present pandemic has brought us closer to ourselves. There is dissonance. The rhythms are haphazard. Contrary motions of jangling melodies confront us. We seem to be living in a maze of minor keys and open-ended cadences. We move chromatically, step by step. The array of discord challenges us. We’re searching for resolution. If this gamut of expressions seems familiar, you’re right. They are the building blocks of music. We might not ordinarily say to ourselves, let’s modulate, or let’s change key, but every day we unconsciously conduct our lives as a musical composition, a symphonic masterpiece, an anthem, or a slice of hip-hop".

The average size of the top 10 selling K-pop groups of the last decade is 9 members, there is even one with 23 members. The Pudding offers a few answers on why the bands became so large - it's a combination of the popularity of super-size groups, the growth of trends in casting, subunits, and survival shows, and the shifting roles within groups over time.

Fleetwood Mac singer Mick Fleetwood started a TikTok account and his first video is a recreation of the viral skateboarding video showing TikToker Nathan Apodaca riding a skateboard while drinking juice and lip-synching to Fleetwood Mac's 'Dreams'. Apodaca uploaded the post last month, it quickly went viral and now has 22 million plays. Mick Fleetwood's only video already has 3.6 million.

"Skin’s story is one of a rhomboid peg spurning both the round and the square hole, drilling dimensions of her own... in a frequently jaw-dropping memoir" - Guardian writes about 'It Takes Blood and Guts', a memoir of Skunk Anansie's singer Skin. The critic adds that "among the pleasures of this peek into an extraordinary life are the intriguing facts it pumps out", like the one time when Robbie Williams took on racist Russian nightclub bouncers when they refused Skin entry to the club.

A small group of Donald Trump supporters played Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' outside Walter Reed Medical Center, where the American president is being treated for Covid-19 infection. Consequence of Sound explained how completely bizarre that is: "To emphasize for what has to be the bajillionth time, 'Born in the USA' is not a pro-patriotism song. It’s a lament for a country addicted to feeding its working class populace into pointless wars, only to leave them neglected once they return. So the fact that these people were blasting this protest song outside of a military hospital, where actual members and veterans of the military are trying to rest and be cared for, crosses irony over to actual ignorant cruelty".

Machine Gun Kelly has landed his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with 'Tickets To My Downfall', which earned 126,000 equivalent album units, Billboard reports. The album was mostly written and produced by Travis Barker of Blink-182 and has been described as “pop-punk”. It also marks the first rock set to hit the top of the chart in over a year; the last was Tool’s 'Fear Inoculum'. K-pop group SuperM debuted at No. 2 with 'Super One: The First Album', Joji came in at No. 3 with 'Nectar', Pop Smoke’s 'Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon' fell from No. 2 to No. 4 and Deftones rounded out the top five with 'Ohms'.

This year festivals were virtual or none, a return to normal is expected in 2022 or 2023, and next year will see a “phased return” for events with hybrid models featuring some digital elements next to live ones, Guardian reports. What is to be expected next year at the music festival entrance are thermo scanners, interactive wristbands that vibrate to mark a lack of social distancing, and rapid on-site testing.

"It crosses barriers between indie/art rock, post-hardcore/emo, abrasive noise-rap, R&B, dance beats, bedroom folk, and more" - Brooklyn Vegan says about Bartees Strange's 'Live Forever' - "one of those debut albums that truly brings something new to the musical table, and it also very much seems like it's only the beginning". It's Stereogum's Album of the week because "it’s rare to hear someone have so much presence right out of the gate, but Strange owns every decision that he makes... 'Live Forever' is a testament to the power of taking chances in order to make great art".

Rapper and entrepreneur Jim Jones started Quarantine Studios, a one stop shop for artists, producers and engineers to work in the studio from anywhere in the world. Complex says it is a unique virtual experience, enabling artists to still cooperate in lockdown. The magazine visited him in his Q-Studios.

Chris Cornell's posthumously released cover of the Guns N’ Roses classic 'Patience' has just reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart, making it the first time for a Cornell solo song to reach No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock tally, which tracks radio airplay across the United States. Cornell’s take on the GN’R ballad was released by his family on July 20th, in commemoration of what would have been the late rocker’s 56th birthday, Billboard reports. With Soundgarden, Cornell earned six No. 1 singles on the Mainstream Rock chart from 1994 through 2013. He also scored two chart-toppers with Audioslave.

"They are lifers. They are great songwriters. They plant their flag wherever they show up and fully commit" - Rise Against's Tim McIlrath said about Anti-Flag, who have a new documentary 'Beyond Barricades: The Story of Anti-Flag' premiering today. It was directed by Jon Nix, it features live and behind-the-scenes footage from over the years, interviews with all four members of Anti-Flag, and interviews with Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Billy Bragg, McIlrath, Brian Baker (Bad Religion), and others. The film is as much about politics as it's about the last 30 years of punk rock as it's about Anti-Flag themselves, Brooklyn Vegan says in an announcement.

BBC reports from the parks of New York where jazz musicians usually playing at Broadway have found their new stage to perform. They, for a change, play together, as opposed to practicing alone at home, and they manage to earn something, hopefully, more than change. But, they're worried because the winter is coming, and it'll get different - it will be harder to play, and the audience won't be that eager to be outside, especially for longer than one song.

"Stories and songs bring us into contact with our best and worst natures, they enable us to locate ourselves in other people’s experience and they increase our compassion. But these things in a vacuum are useless. A story doesn’t cultivate empathy just by virtue of its having been thought up; it must be engaged with to become powerful; the story must be read, the song must be listened to, in order to acquire its full charge" - poet and performer Kae Tempest wrote in the Guardian about their new book 'On Connection', a non-fiction meditation on the power of creative connection.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon made a new song 'Your Honor', which he premiered after talking to a few undecisive voters; Ed Harcourt 'Drowning in Dreams' is a piece of mellow electro classical music, a great morning song; folk-rock queen Joni Mitchell shared the first original demo of her career, 'Day After Day'; Mallrat plays some sort of hard-pop on 'Rockstar'.

A lovely interview with Robert Plant in the Spin about his anthology (out today), how his music evolved through time. He shared advice for aspiring musicians: "Keep it light. Keep growing. Keep moving. Keep listening all the time. There’s some spectacular music out and about, and these influences will definitely affect what these kids of the new generations will do. They’ll look back at me and they’ll say, wow… he must have been a musician, too”. 'Nothing Takes the Place of You' is a new song on the anthology - listen below.

"Sometimes we had used twenty channels of really noisy shit... But the good thing with noise is, it just melds into itself... A lot of this kind of noise can go really far and sound good. Anyway, a lot of music today is trapped in noise: I think that is where the world is now" - Sam Karugu of Nigerian experimental metal band Duma told the Quietus about the process of producing their debut album, an electro-metal noise record. Explaining the strong physical imagery on the album Karugu said it - "concerns exposing your true self and asking, 'Who is that inner person you are hiding inside yourself?' We have the same lungs, stomachs, kidneys and blood types. We don’t care where you come from. There are just different ways of living and maybe different perceptions of the world, but we are essentially the same and that is what has been forgotten".

Cardi B spoke to SiriusXM about double standards faced by female rappers, compared to male counterparts - “Female rappers, y’all, they are always in mad pressure. If you don’t have a super crazy smash, it’s like oh, you flop, flop flop. The song could be like two-times platinum and it’s still flop, flop, flop. You’re always under pressure, and I feel like it’s not fair”, Elite Daily reports. Men, on the other hand - "I feel like there’s male artists who go two years without putting a fucking song out and they don’t go, ‘Oh, you’re irrelevant. It’s over for you’”.

10-year-old drummer phenomenon Nandi Bushell has penned a theme song for her rival-idol Dave Grohl called 'Rock and Grohl, the Epic Battle', following a theme song Grohl wrote for Bushell last month, Louder reports. Sharing her original song on YouTube, Bushell wrote - “Mr Grohl. The song you wrote for me was truly, truly EPIC! You really are LEGENDARY! I wrote a song for you to say THANK YOU! I made up and played all the instrument parts myself, just like you! It’s called ‘ROCK and GROHL, The EPIC Battle’... Whoever wins this round, it’s been an HONOUR to battle you. The Rock Gods of old are happy!".

Billie Eilish shared a music video for 'No Time to Die', her theme song to the new James Bond movie. The black-and-white clip features scenes from the new film, and it was directed by Daniel Kleinman, who has designed every title sequence for the Bond series since 1995.

Tone Glow's experimental music-lovers chose 30 albums released July through September they liked the most (streams added). It's not just some serious and hard-to-swallow music, they promise fun: on Secluded Bronte's 'What? Yes!' one member of the trio reads an absurdist script while the others interrupt with outraged “WHAT?”s, and every time the response is a resigned “Yes”, also there's experiments to be made on bagpipes - YES! - as Donald WG Lindsay & Richard Youngs prove. There's also highly conceptual music like Network Glass, a unique project on the verge of even being music. All in all, a simple and quick way to find out what's going on in the world of modern experimental music.Music

When lockdown began in March, Fender launched their free guitar lessons initiative, which they now extended for three more months, Guitar World reports. The Fender Play app giveaway offers lessons for guitar, bass and ukulele using multi-genre, instructor-guided video lessons that can be accessed on smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers. Its user base grew almost fivefold in April of this year - increasing from 150,000 to 930,000 subscribers.

Jay-Z and Meek Mills initiative REFORM Alliance made their first major legislative victory as California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1950 into law, which will limit adult probation sentence maximums to one year for misdemeanors and two years for felonies. The new law was pushed forward in a campaign led by REFORM, Hip Hop DX reports. Newsom also signed a bill banning police officers’ use of chokeholds during arrests and another that made it so the state’s attorney general can independently investigate police shootings.

AC/DC have announced a reunion, featuring members who had left the classic rock band in recent years - vocalist Brian Johnson, bassist Cliff Williams and drummer Phil Rudd, have rejoined the band, Loudwire reports. Johnson had been the band’s frontman since 1980, following the death of original singer Bon Scott, but had quit in 2016 due to hearing loss; Williams retired in 2017; Rudd was sentenced to eight months’ house arrest in 2015 after being charged with drug possession and threatening to kill his personal assistant. The three returning musicians are joined by uncle-and-nephew guitarists Angus Young and Stevie Young, who had remained in the lineup. The band's last album was was 'Rock or Bust' in 2014. The band is presumably preparing an album called 'PWR UP', and they released 30 seconds of a new song called 'Shot in the Dark'.

'The Anthology of American Folk Music' is a six-LP compendium of folk, blues, and country songs recorded in the United States between 1926 and 1934, curated by Henry Smith, and issued in 1952. The set ultimately became one of the central texts of the folk revival, guiding artists including Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, The New Yorker writes revisiting the anthology. This fall, b-sides of every 78-r.p.m. records Smith used for the 'Anthology' are coming out in a box-set.

Guardian critics admit mistakes they made years ago reviewing music, that they now realize is waaay better than they originally thought. Alexis Petridis misjudged Daft Punk's 'Discovery' - "my review, on the other hand, has not aged so well", while Phil Harrison had a Slayer-revelation - "As a teen Smiths obsessive, I had been a bit of a snob about metal’s neck-breaking, big-shorted charms. That lasted until my late 30s, when I accidentally encountered Slayer at a festival. Within moments of their first howled, blasted, faster-than-hardcore notes, I was like: 'Holy mother of SATAN, this is incredible. Why did nobody tell me!?'".

The best album ever to Beastie Boys' Ad-Rock - 'Sign of the Times' by Macka B, that's how he voted for Rolling Stone in their 500 best albums special. Rolling Stone shared Ad-Rock's list, which includes some unusual records like Ultimate Spinach's 1968 self titled album, German orchestra leader and clarinet player Hugo Strasser's 'TanzHits ’71', Bridget Everett and The Tender Moments, a group of which he's a member, and a few musicians which might have existed, or not, like Chirp, Sergeant Crikey and Juan Epstein. More than 300 artists, journalists, and industry figures cooperated in making the list.

Fleetwood Mac's 1977 hit song 'Dreams' climbing the charts again after a TikToker Nathan Apodaca went viral on the platform for a video where he's seen chugging a litre of juice while skating around town and lip-syncing to 'Dreams', Billboard reports. Captioned 'Morning vibe', the seconds-long clip currently sits at 3.4 million views on TikTok after being posted only five days ago; Apodaca's Instagram cross-post has an additional 3.1 million views. Apple Music reported 221 percent increase in streams of the song, while Spotify reported an increase of 127 percent and Shazam clocked in with a whopping 1,137 percent increase. Meanwhile, sales of the track have nearly tripled since the weekend. Apodaca himself is seeing increased success in the clip’s wake, as well - he’s received over $10,000 in donations over the last five days; he lives in an RV outside his brother’s home, TMZ reports.

Weird Al Yankovic has teamed with The Gregory Brothers and made an autotuned remix of the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Weird Al takes over as moderator, with Trump and Biden's more memorable lines turned into hooks.

A great story about Thelonious Monk's 1968 Palo Alto high school concert came full circle. In the fall of the frantic 1960s, a 16-year-old high school student Danny Scher invited legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk to perform a show at his high school's auditorium in Palo Alto, California. White folk weren't buying the two-dollar tickets, so Scher opened up sales to the surrounding, poorer black folk so the concert turned out to be a great moment of jazz and unity. Luckily, the school's janitor recorded the performance and handed it to Scher who put it in his attic and it sat there for decades before he approached Monk's son, drummer T.S. Monk, who last week released it - "one of the best live recordings I've ever heard by Thelonious". PopMatters has the details.