| You can’t create in a vacuum and just fail to relate to people. At the same time, you cannot compromise your integrity. There has to be a middle road, where some sensible balance is made between, on the one hand, pure creation, and, on the other hand, the reality is that we live with, eating and survival and money and business. |
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Slowthai (right) with DJ/producer Kwes Darko at the Glastonbury Festival, June 29, 2019. "Tyron" is out today on Method/AWGE/Interscope.
(Jim Dyson/Getty Images)
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“You can’t create in a vacuum and just fail to relate to people. At the same time, you cannot compromise your integrity. There has to be a middle road, where some sensible balance is made between, on the one hand, pure creation, and, on the other hand, the reality is that we live with, eating and survival and money and business.”
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The Flashback Starts
If lockdowns continue for long enough, one wonders if TAYLOR SWIFT will eventually get around to re-recording the two albums she recorded in the first year of the pandemic, note for note, with new players, just because. In the meantime, we now know Swift recorded a third album during pandy year one—a note-for-note re-creation of her 2008 blockbuster FEARLESS, thus beginning her long-promised/threatened project to re-record her entire BIG MACHINE discography.
We've known for quite some time she wasn't kidding about this this, but now we really, really know. I mean, wow. That's my rough overlay of the old and new versions of "LOVE STORY," her first top 10 single. The new one, helpfully and pointedly titled "Love Story (Taylor's Version)," was released this morning as a valentine for her fans. It will double as an anti-valentine for SCOOTER BRAUN, who acquired Swift's old masters when he bought Big Machine in 2019. He flipped them a year later to the investment firm SHAMROCK CAPITAL but apparently still stands to profit from their usage. Swift does not want him profiting from anything of hers.
She wants streamers to stream, radio programmers to program, and music supervisors to license her new versions, and only her new versions. Supervisors may have no choice since Swift, as a songwriter, can veto any movie or TV usage she doesn't like. I have no idea what radio will do. But based on the care Swift put into getting every detail right, I can't think of any reason why her biggest fans on SPOTIFY and elsewhere won't opt for the new versions. Swift is setting up and promoting FEARLESS (TAYLOR'S VERSION), which comes out in April, as a new album, essentially providing her own answer, in advance, to the question of will anyone care. They'd care even without the six previously unreleased songs she's adding to the album, but there's that, too. They'll care because they know their care will be rewarded. The metadata, including updated song and album titles and year of release, will make it easy to find and stream the right ones. Respect. If lockdowns continue for long enough, maybe Swift can start a publicity and marketing agency, too.
Where Have I Known You Before
No artist should be measured by the number of GRAMMY AWARDS on their shelves—the more you have, the less you need anyone to know—but the fact that the most awarded jazz musician of all died with two more nominations still pending tells you something about how tireless, prolific and beloved he was. And how central CHICK COREA was to the last half-century of jazz. As a bandleader, he was a technically gifted pianist with an ear for magnetic melodies—crowd-pleasing and crowd-challenging at the same time. As the electric pianist in MILES DAVIS' IN A SILENT WAY and BITCHES BREW bands, he helped push jazz forward into the funk, rock and psychedelic 1970s. And as the founder of RETURN TO FOREVER, the jazz fusion group that brought him his greatest fame (and the first of those Grammys, in 1976), Corea and his crew all but created a new genre out of jazz, rock, Brazilian music and a few other ground-shifting inputs. Return to Forever was among the first jazz groups I was exposed to, and for a while I assumed all jazz sounded exactly like that. For a while, perhaps, it did. He kept going, nonstop, for another 40-plus years. RIP.
This Is Not a Collection of Stories About Morgan Wallen
This is a collection of stories about country music and the country music industry and a longstanding culture and a dialogue about that culture that started because of something one man said but this is not a collection of stories about one man. MusicSET: "This Is Not a Set About Morgan Wallen."
Love Love Love
Billboard's 50 biggest love songs of all-time, based on advanced chart analytics that demote what I assumed was #1 to a lowly #6. Then again, the actual #1 is a duet, which makes love-song sense... Alternatively, 14 asexual anthems for Valentine's Day... JUSTIN BIEBER will livestream what's being billed as TIKTOK's first full-length concert Sunday at 9pm ET... YOUTUBE reaction stars TWINSTHENEWTREND react to SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE's version of themselves... STEELY DAN, bandsplained... A certain Washington daughter of infamous Washington parents who aren't quite as relevant as they were five or six months ago is among the hopefuls who'll appear on Sunday's premiere of the new season of AMERICAN IDOL. And since this is a newsletter about this but not that, this shall be the last time any of this will be mentioned here unless it turns out she can sing... MusicREDEF is taking a long weekend in honor of Presidents' Day. We'll be back in your inbox Tuesday morning. In the meantime...
It's Friday
And that means new music from enfant terrible British rapper SLOWTHAI; jazz supergroup R+R=NOW, featuring ROBERT GLASPER, TERRACE MARTIN, CHRISTIAN SCOTT ATUNDE ADJUAH and more; Miami rapper SMOKEPURPP, whose PSYCHO EP pays homage to OZZY OSBOURNE; singer/songwriter CLAUD, the first artist signed to PHOEBE BRIDGERS' SADDEST FACTORY label; country statesmen FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE, whose fifth album will be followed by solo projects but who swear they're not breaking up; PENTATONIX's first album of originals in five years; the soundtracks to JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH, featuring H.E.R., LIL DURK, a JAY-Z/NIPSEY HUSSLE collab and lots of other boldface names, and SIA's film MUSIC, which also serves as a new studio album by the fledgling writer/director; and albums from JPEGMAFIA, ANIKA PYLE, ROBIN THICKE, the PRETTY RECKLESS, FOR YOUR HEALTH, ABIOTIC, YOKO MIWA, JAKOB BRO, PALE WAVES, GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT, LAUREN AUDER, CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH, BODIES OF WATER, HIS NAME IS ALIVE, CHRIS CRACK, CALLISTA CLARK, STEADY HOLIDAY, DJANGO DJANGO and TEENAGE WRIST.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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The Bitter Southerner |
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| The Texas DJ Who Screwed Up The World |
| by Charlie Braxton |
| DJ Screw’s chopped and screwed mixtapes transformed Houston hip-hop and his legacy is still felt today. |
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REDEF |
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| REDEF MusicSET: This Is Not a Set About Morgan Wallen |
| by Matty Karas |
| This is a set about country music and the country music industry and a longstanding culture and a dialogue about that culture that started because of something one man said but this is not a set about one man. |
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Spotify |
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| Black Girl Songbook: Now That We Found Love |
| by Danyel Smith and Deborah Cox |
| In the second chapter of ‘Black Girl Songbook,’ Danyel Smith explores her favorite type of record. From Etta James's “At Last” to Erykah Badu’s “Honey,” Danyel dives deep into songs that capture the discovery of a pure and true love. |
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The Guardian |
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| Songwriters fight to be heard in streaming revenues debate |
| by Rhian Jones |
| As music consumption has evolved, the songwriting community have seen their income diminish despite playing a greater role in shaping emerging artists. |
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The New York Times |
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| Chick Corea, Jazz Keyboardist and Innovator, Dies at 79 |
| by Giovanni Russonello |
| Chick Corea, an architect of the jazz-rock fusion boom in the 1970s who spent more than a half century as one of the foremost pianists in jazz, died on Tuesday. He was 79. The cause was a rare form of cancer that had only recently been diagnosed. |
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NPR Music |
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| After U.S. Immigration Battle, Musician Kayhan Kalhor Returns To Iran |
| by Anastasia Tsioulcas |
| Grammy-winning Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor called the U.S. home for decades, until chaotic encounters with the immigration system caused him to leave the country permanently. |
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| rave:// A thumbs-up from one of the Hall's most insightful critics |
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Populism |
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| The Rock Hall course corrects |
| by Evelyn McDonnell |
| After decades of snubbing female artists and increasingly ignoring artists of color, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame made an impressive course correction yesterday. |
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Music Tectonics |
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| Music Tectonics: The Evolving Business of Hip-Hop with Trapital’s Dan Runcie |
| by Dmitri Vietze and Dan Runcie |
| Dan Runcie’s Trapital Media gives the business of hip-hop the rigorous coverage and in-depth analysis that it deserves. This week, Dan gives host Dmitri Vietze a picture of the state of hip-hop as a culture, a musical genre, and an influential business ethos- and how it’s evolving faster than ever. |
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Complex |
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| 50 Cent Is Still an Ever-Present Force in Rap Without Much Rapping |
| by Andre Gee |
| Without needing to release much new music, 50 Cent has harnessed the power of social media and celebrity to stay an ever-present force in rap. |
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Clash Magazine |
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| Why Are Some Of Our Favourite Pop Stars So Tone Deaf On COVID? |
| by Malvika Padin |
| When ordinary fans miss out on key life events, their social media feeds are a little galling. |
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| rant:// Yet another story of how miserable the world can be to young female pop stars |
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Stuff |
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| After the 'Friday' music video went viral 10 years ago, Rebecca Black spent the last decade recovering |
| by Josh Paunil |
| She just wanted to break through, but what Black got with the abuse from the "Friday" song and video pushed her close to a breakdown. |
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| rave:// I loved the doc but these are questions very much worth asking |
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Slate |
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| The Problem With 'Framing Britney Spears' |
| by Jeffrey Bloomer |
| The New York Times' "Framing Britney Spears" does something it’s hard to imagine the newspaper doing in print: It gives extensive, credulous airtime to the Free Britney movement that has risen around her conservatorship fight. |
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LAist |
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| Edgar Wright Made This Documentary So He Could Stop Explaining Why Sparks Are LA's Underground Rock Royalty |
| by John Horn |
| The director of "Shaun of the Dead" and "Baby Driver" told us he was tired of explaining who the best British band to come out of America really are and why he loves them. |
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Billboard |
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| UK Parliament Member Presses YouTube Exec On Artist Payments: ‘You’re Not Being Transparent’ |
| by Richard Smirke |
| A YouTube executive refuted claims that the video platform compensates artists less than competitors like Spotify, while acknowledging a "problematic" lack of transparency in the share of industry payouts going to artists and songwriters. |
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Music x |
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| The pandemic has changed music education for good. These are the opportunities |
| by Maarten Walraven-Freeling |
| Online educational technology disrupts, or has the potential to disrupt, offline music learning in two main practices. |
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Pitchfork |
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| How Longform Editions Created a Boutique Outlet for Experimental Sounds |
| by Philip Sherburne |
| The Australian label’s founder talks about offering a museum-like space for freeform music and breaks down a few key releases. |
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Tone Glow |
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| Interview: Suzanne Ciani |
| by Joshua Minsoo Kim |
| Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with the composer and electronic music pioneer to discuss the difference between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, her latest albums, Don Buchla, and more. |
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Complex |
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| How a 25-Year-Old From Serbia Ended Up Producing on Cardi B's New Single 'Up' |
| by Miki Hellerbach |
| Here's the story of how a Serbian producer named Yung Dza ended up with credits on Cardi B's new single "Up" thanks to the power of the internet. |
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Complex |
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| Peace, Love, and Based God |
| by Brenton Blanchet |
| In a rare interview with Lil B, the 31-year-old legend discusses how it feels to see his fingerprints all over modern hip-hop. TYBG. |
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VAN Magazine |
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| What Happened to Marina Poplavskaya? |
| by Olivia Giovetti |
| The Russian soprano sets the record straight about her career trajectory, the gendered dynamics that underscore the diva myth, and what it was like to read her New Yorker profile—for the first time—10 years later. |
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| Music of the day |
| "Spain" |
| Chick Corea & Return to Forever |
| From "Light as a Feather" (1973). |
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YouTube |
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From "Light as a Feather" (1973).
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Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White.
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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