It always did sound similar and, as it turns out, the word "saxophone" is etymologically related to the word "sex" - Olivia M. Swarthout points on her Twitter. It all began with proto-Indo-European word "sek" which means "to cut, divide".
An interesting article in The Conversation about an amazing phenomenon from Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea where people, next to their names, also bear "name-tunes". These names aren't words, they're rather a wordless melody, given to children and recognised throughout the community to refer to one person alone. In Ethiopia, it's exclusive to 45,000 Oyda people from the southwest of the country. This “name tune”, or moyzé is most often whistled, but it can also be sung to a series of non-meaningful sounds different for each name tune. In one small region of Madang Province in northeastern Papua New Guinea, about 15,000 people across three language areas (Nankina, Domung and Yopno) also employ name tunes, which they call konggap. Yopno konggap differ in performance style from the Oyda moyzé, since they are either simply whistled with no use of the hands, or sung on a series of open vowels (like “a-o-a-o-e-e-a”). However, konggap and moyzé are strikingly similar. Both moyzé and konggap are unique to every individual, and generally bear no relation to a person’s given name, which is often shared with other community members. The tunes in both traditions use similar pitch ranges and last 1-4 seconds.
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".
"The first songs to express personal emotions and individual aspirations appeared more than 3,000 years ago in Deir el-Medina, a village on the west bank of the Nile. By seeming coincidence this was also the location of the first successful labor protest in history, when artisans launched a sit-down strike that forced 'management' - Ramesses III in this instance - to increase grain rations. Is it just by chance that a major musical innovation and a historic expansion in human rights took place in the very same (and tiny) community?" - music writer Ted Gioia asks in his great article about the connection of art and activism.
“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'.
"It’s delightful that there are still questions Siri and Alexa can’t answer, and that people argue fervently about rock lyrics from more than 45 years ago" - LA Times writes in an article about the Internet argument over a Bruce Springsteen lyric. The song is 'Thunder Road', it begins 'Born to Run', the 1975 album that made Springsteen a star, and it's the opening lyrics - “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves”, or is it "sways"? The problem is, Springsteen isn't sure himself. In the original album gatefold design of 'Born to Run', the lyrics are printed “Mary’s dress waves”, but on page 220 of his best-selling 'Born to Run' memoir, Springsteen says “‘the screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways’ — that’s a good opening line”. Or maybe Boss just doesn't want the story to end, as he admits in his Broadway show: “I come from a boardwalk town where everything is tinged with just a bit of fraud. So am I. I’ve never seen the inside of a factory, and yet, it’s all I’ve ever written about… I made it all up”. Springsteen's longtime manager Jon Landau settled the matter in the New Yorker - “The word is ‘sways. That’s the way he wrote it in his original notebooks, that’s the way he sang it on 'Born to Run', in 1975, that’s the way he has always sung it at thousands of shows, and that’s the way he sings it right now on Broadway. Any typos in official Bruce material will be corrected”.
“Proud to report that a New Zealand mother has named her children Metallica, Pantera and Slayer. She told me, ‘It’s not easy raising three of the heaviest bands'” - New Zealand documentary filmmaker and actor David Farrier shared via a newsletter article. The daughter named Metallica had a middle name of 'And Justice for All' (no mention of baby named Pantera's meddle name being Cowboy From Hell). In New Zealand, there are no restrictions on naming babies after bands or albums.
In 2008 Katty Perry released her hit-single 'I Kissed A girl'. "For as groundbreaking as it felt to hear a woman explicitly singing about being with another woman then, it would take another 13 years for a man explicitly singing about being with another man to appear on the charts — enter Lil Nas X’s 'MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)'" - The Pudding goes into the history of same-sex lyrics in pop songs.
“The hatred shown towards me from the creators of the Simpsons is obviously a taunting lawsuit, but one that requires more funding than I could possibly muster in order to make a challenge” - Morrissey writes on his website after a Simpsons episode which parodied the former Smiths frontman. "The worst thing you can do in 2021 is to lend a bit of strength to the lives of others. There is no place in modern music for anyone with strong emotions … In a world obsessed with Hate Laws, there are none that protect me” - the singer says. Morrissey satirised during the episode 'Panic on the Streets of Springfield', in which Lisa Simpson becomes obsessed with a fictional band called the Snuffs and befriends its frontman, Quilloughby.
British label behind the xx, FKA twigs, Arlo Parks, Sampha, and many more, has changed its name from Young Turks to just Young, as Uproxx reports. Founder Caius Pawson explained that, when he named the label after a Rod Stewart song in 2005, he had been “unaware of the deeper history of the term.… and that the Young Turks were a group who carried out the Armenian Genocide”. The label will also donate an undisclosed sum to the Armenian Institute in London.
