The LOL tweet that got TOM MORELLO to go viral last week with his perfectly played WTF reply isn't proof that people are stupid. It's proof, rather, that people hear only what they want to hear, no matter how loudly the thing they don't want to hear is ringing in their ears. If you love the sound, it's easy to fool your ears into ignoring that the sound carries a message your brain doesn't want to hear. See: the complete history of pop music. The corollary to this is if you *don't* like the sound, it's easy to miss that it's broadcasting a message you'd in fact love to hear if only your ears were open to hearing it. Which is why so many people have been complaining for years that no one makes protest music anymore, even though every hip-hop and R&B radio station—and by default quite a few pop stations—has been blaring protest music nearly nonstop for a good part of this century. And some jazz stations. And some rock stations. And YOUTUBE. You have to dial it in. And if you do, it's there, as loud and clear as MARVIN GAYE or N.W.A or RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE or BEYONCÉ ever were. You could put together a pretty good box set, if you were so inclined, of the songs that have been released in the past two weeks in response to the GEORGE FLOYD/BLACK LIVES MATTER protests, or you could just step outside and absorb them in any number of cities right now. You might hear the angry cadences of both the rapping and the jazz accents in TERRACE MARTIN's "PIG FEET" (featuring DENZEL CURRY, DAYLYT, KAMASI WASHINGTON and G PERICO), or the mournful soul of LEON BRIDGES and Terrace Martin's "SWEETER," or the comically ecstatic release of DJ SUEDE THE REMIX GOD and IMARKKEYZ's "LOSE YO JOB." You may find yourself knocked flat by BETTYE LAVETTE's new version of "STRANGE FRUIT," which explicitly connects the civil-rights moment of today with the crimes of a century past, both spiritually and musically. Some of the songs are brand new, some revived/repurposed, and some recorded in the past year or so and rush-released into a moment they were meant to soundtrack. MusicSET: "Otherside of America: The Sound of Protest in 2020"... The second episode of MICHAELA COEL's I MAY DESTROY YOU aired Sunday on HBO and, like the first, it had a prominent and perfect TIERRA WHACK sync, and it might be my favorite new show of 2020... Maybe the band formerly known as LADY ANTEBELLUM should change its name again, to LADY APOLOGIA.... TENCENT, which owns stakes in UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP and SPOTIFY, has added WARNER MUSIC to its portfolio... The ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME reopens today... RIP KEITH TIPPETT and TONY REDZ.