| A whole lot of magic has to happen to make music. A whole lot of minds have to see something invisible. You're taking something that’s not physically seen and you're bringing it from nowhere, pulling it from thin air, so people can experience it. |
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Valerie June rehearsing at City Winery, New York, March 20, 2019.
(Al Pereira/Getty Images)
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“A whole lot of magic has to happen to make music. A whole lot of minds have to see something invisible. You're taking something that’s not physically seen and you're bringing it from nowhere, pulling it from thin air, so people can experience it.”
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Committee Behind the Madness
"The last Black artist to take album of the year" at the GRAMMY AWARDS, writes the New York Times' BEN SISARIO, "was HERBIE HANCOCK in 2008, for a tribute to JONI MITCHELL." This isn't breaking news—anyone who's been paying attention to Music's Biggest Night over the years is well aware or, at least, has all the information needed to be well aware—and yet it's still shocking to see it spelled out like that. In the last 13 years, BEYONCÉ hasn't won Album of the Year. KENDRICK LAMAR hasn't won album of the year. DRAKE hasn't and RIHANNA hasn't and FRANK OCEAN hasn't and KANYE hasn't and the WEEKND hasn't and CARDI B hasn't and, not to put too fine a point on it, EVERY SINGLE BLACK PERSON WHO MAKES MUSIC hasn't. I could mention the names of some of the people who *have* won but that would be unnecessarily cruel. It's not that the winners haven't been talented, serious artists who've worked for their success. Every one of them has. It's just that a lot of them haven't deserved to win. You can Google them. The system is broken.
No amount of trying to explain the process, in which a pool of nominees selected by the RECORDING ACADEMY's rank-and-file membership is filtered through a secret committee of about 20 music professionals "at the top of their craft in songwriting and producing" who sit in a conference room and whittle that pool down to a final ballot of nominees to be sent back to the voting membership to pick the actual winner, can change the basic fact of the results. The process doesn't work. It so completely didn't work in coming up with nominees this year that the Academy would be better off pleading guilty to the vague accusations of favoritism and conflicts of interest on the committee, or to punishing a potential nominee for taking the SUPER BOWL halftime gig (which would have been a week after the Grammys if the ceremony hadn't been postponed), rather than trying to argue that its committee actually believed this was the best possible slate of nominees, which is the most terrifying explanation of all.
This Sunday promises to deliver a particularly strange Grammys, and not because of Covid-19 or the location that's almost as much of a secret as the members of those committees or the five stages arranged in a circle or the blend of live and taped performances in which we're not supposed to know which is which. It will be forever remembered, above all, as the Grammy weekend without the Weeknd. (The first of many apparently: "I will no longer allow my label to submit my music to the Grammys," ABEL TESFAYE told the New York Times Friday, formally adding himself to a growing list of Black superstar Grammy nonbelievers.) Downballot, amid the strange new-but-not-new categories in which "World Music" has been thesaurused into "Global Music" and the euphemism "Urban" has been turned into the even worse euphemism "Progressive R&B," we'll eagerly await the results of the Best Children's Music competition, in which three of the five nominees asked the Academy to take their names off the ballot and begged voters not to vote for them. There have already been, and there will be more, promises to review the process and review the membership and try to do better next time. There will be reminders that the Academy has, in fact, tried to greatly expand and diversify that membership, albeit a little slowly. But nothing needs to be tweaked and nothing needs to be improved and expanded and diversified. It was a bad recording and it's too late to fix it in the mix. Time to erase and start over.
Dot Dot Dot
The New York Times Magazine's 19 songs that matter right now... How many tracks does each streaming service have in 2001?... What do the greatest guitar solos of all time have in common?... Digital MF DOOM masks for sale and yes of course they're NFTs... Optimistic headline of the week.
It's Friday
And that means the first album in four years from genre-resistant Memphis/Brooklyn singer/songwriter VALERIE JUNE... The solo debut from ROSÉ of K-pop stars BLACKPINK... SELENA GOMEZ's Spanish-language EP, REVELACIÓN... The posthumous debut from SoundCloud rapper 6 DOGS, who died in January... The second album from much-debated Massachusetts rapper JOYNER LUCAS... And albums from NICK JONAS, JACOB BANKS, LUSHLIFE, CLEVER, DJ MUGGS THE BLACK GOAT, GIVEON, CLOSER, REALLY FROM, CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS, MIGUEL ZENÓN (tribute to ORNETTE COLEMAN), JANE MONHEIT, LAKE STREET DIVE, EYEHATEGOD, ROB ZOMBIE, DEMISER, ENFORCED, MAGNUS KARLSSON/HEART HEALER, SEPULCROS, STEPHEN MALKMUS & VON SPAR (covering the CAN album EGE BAMYASI), SLOPE, GOD'S HATE, THE HORRORS, KALAN.FRFR, SKINNYFROMTHE9, LOUISAHHH, the ANCHORESS, KI ONI, PINO PALLADINO & BLAKE MILLS, CECE WINANS (live), BUTCH WALKER (live), the PAPER KITES, TOM GRENNAN, ISRAEL NASH and PETER CASE... And I'VE FORGOTTEN NOW WHO I USED TO BE, an album of field recordings from Ghana's witch camps, refuges for women who've been accused of witchcraft and banished from their communities.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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The New York Times |
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| Amid Controversy and a Year of Uncertainty, the Grammys Take Center Stage |
| by Ben Sisario |
| The event on Sunday will address the challenges of a music industry hit hard by the pandemic. The Weeknd, who was snubbed, says he will boycott the awards going forward, in a sign of continuing friction with artists. |
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The Ringer |
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| Fixing the Grammys’ Album of the Year Atrocities |
| by Charles Holmes and Rob Harvilla |
| It’s been a bewildering two decades for the Recording Academy. Two writers try to clean up the mess. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| How NPR's Tiny Desk Concert became a golden ticket to the Grammys |
| by Randall Roberts |
| Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, Harry Styles, Jacob Collier and BTS are just some of the Grammy-nominated artists who have performed on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert. |
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Billboard |
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| A Seat At The (Kids) Table: Children’s Music Grammy Nominees -- And Their Overlooked Peers of Color -- Open Up |
| by Frank DiGiacomo |
| When the children’s music album category produced an all-white ballot, three noms protested. Now, the conversation about the diversity defines it is starting. |
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Stereogum |
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| Who Are Black Pumas, And Why Are They Grammy Darlings? |
| by Chris DeVille |
| Black Pumas are catnip for TV producers and certain kinds of yuppie authenticity fetishists. |
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The Guardian |
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| 'The boat has been rocked': Mickey Guyton, the Grammys' first Black solo female country nominee |
| by Marissa Moss |
| Her song Black Like Me is a bold statement in an often conservative genre, but the Texan singer is conflicted about bringing diverse voices into the ‘lion’s den’ of country music. |
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The Daily Beast |
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| Grammy Nominee JP Saxe Is Sorry If His Song ‘If the World Was Ending’ Made You Text Your Ex |
| by Cheyenne Roundtree |
| The Canadian singer-songwriter is up for Song of the Year after imagining an apocalypse that became slightly more literal when the coronavirus pandemic began sweeping the globe. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| For the surviving members of metal band Power Trip, the Grammys are a bittersweet coda |
| by August Brown |
| In their first interview since the death of their singer, Riley Gale, the surviving members of Power Trip discuss their Grammy nomination and what lies ahead. |
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VenuesNow |
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| How the Grammys Came to Honor Venues |
| by Andy Gensler |
| Like so many of the good things that have happened to the independent club sector this year, the initial concept originated with NIVA. |
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WBGO |
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| Considering Chick Corea's Grammys Success And The Kitchen Sink Of Genre |
| by Nate Chinen |
| Corea, who died in February, remains the most-awarded jazz musician in Grammys history. But he wasn't landlocked by any genre conventions. |
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Billboard |
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| Inside Justin Bieber’s New World: Therapy, Date Nights and Delivering ‘Justice’ |
| by Katie Bain |
| Pandemic downtime and marital bliss helped the pop star make peace with his past. As he works on his new album, 'Justice', he’s taking ownership of his career. |
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The New Yorker |
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| The Perils of the Posthumous Rap Album |
| by Sheldon Pearce |
| What should happen to the unreleased recordings after an artist dies? |
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The New York Times |
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| 5 Notes From a Quiet Year: How Music Survived the Pandemic |
| by Dessa, Sarah Burke, Jazmine Hughes... |
| Performers kept hustling. Nightlife thrived online. And we kept finding ways to make music - together. |
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NOLA.com |
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| Live music is returning to New Orleans, but here's why it won't come quickly |
| by Keith Spera |
| Come Friday, live music will once again be allowed inside New Orleans music venues. But don't expect a rush to reopen just yet. |
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Variety |
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| Music Biz on the Rebound: Assessing the State of the Industry for Concerts, Songwriters, Publishing, Music Discovery and the Latin Explosion |
| by Jem Aswad, Cata Balzano, Geoff Mayfield... |
| Here’s a look at five key trends and questions as the industry looks to rebound from the COVID-19 shock |
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NPR |
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| Shuttered Venue Grants Are Coming In April, After A Long Wait |
| by Andrew Limbong |
| The live music industry breathed a sigh of relief when Congress passed a $15 billion grant program for struggling venues. But owners still face uncertainty and delays. |
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Music Tectonics |
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| $424 Million in Royalties: What the MLC means for the Music Business |
| by Dmitri Vietze and Kris Ahrend |
| You probably heard that the Mechanical Licensing Collective received $424 million in historical unmatched royalties from music streaming services. In this interview with MLC CEO Kris Ahrend, we find out where that money came from, who it is going to be paid out to, and when. |
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Pollstar |
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| The Coda Collection Brings Archival Music Films New and Old To Amazon |
| by Eric Renner Brown |
| Long before the pandemic took physical touring offline and left streaming and digital content as the only ways for fans to connect with live performances, Jim Spinello, John McDermott and Janie Hendrix were conceptualizing an online hub for archival concert footage. |
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The Nation |
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| How Many Movies About Billie Holiday Does it Take |
| by Ethan Iverson |
| ...to capture her immense contribution to music? Apparently more than three. |
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Variety |
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| BYGMusic Connects Touring-Starved Indie Musicians With Brands Like Ford, Crocs and Macy’s |
| by Andrew Hampp |
| The company has paid out an estimated $1.5 million in revenue to independent artists from brand and sync fees that have helped underwrite their career endeavors. |
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The Guardian |
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| Gurrumul, Omar Souleyman, 9Bach and DakhaBrakha: the best global artists the Grammys forgot |
| by Ian Brennan |
| From the Godfathers of Arabic rap to the father of Ethio-jazz, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan guides a tour through global music’s greatest. |
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Level |
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| Black Artists Are Fed Up With Grammy Snubs, But Don’t Always Respect the Alternatives |
| by Keith Nelson Jr. |
| Black awards shows exist, yet artists never seem to hold them in the same regard |
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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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