| I’ve been thinking about the idea of queer joy so much, because any kind of advocacy with... any marginalized community, usually the advocacy is rooted in righteous anger or grieving. It’s actually so radical to express joy in the face of a world that writ large does not want you to have it. |
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Sophie at the London club Heaven, March 13, 2018.
(Burak Cingi/Redferns/Getty Images)
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“I’ve been thinking about the idea of queer joy so much, because any kind of advocacy with... any marginalized community, usually the advocacy is rooted in righteous anger or grieving. It’s actually so radical to express joy in the face of a world that writ large does not want you to have it.”
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It's Friday
And that means new music from SAULT, the mysterious, prolific, socially conscious neo-soul entity whose fifth album in 25 months is called NINE (any numerologists out there?) and "will only exist for ninety nine days," a strategy whose exact meaning each of us has been left to interpret for ourselves. While you're mulling it over, you can download the album for free at Sault's website or for a price of your own choosing at Bandcamp, which gets you much higher quality files. And you should, because Sault is as good a musical entity as the 2020s has delivered, its songs meeting the sociopolitical moment with no fear or compromise and its stripped-down productions hitting bullseye after bullseye in our damaged 2020s hearts... I usually end, rather than start, Friday's newsletters with the week's new releases but damn there are a lot of them today, and a lot of them are really good, so... TYLER, THE CREATOR has reached the enviable weird pop genius phase of his career where he can push almost any emotional or musical button on the hip-hop/R&B/pop spectrum and a few million fans will follow. May he stay there for as long as his muse allows. Lil Uzi Vert, Pharrell, Lil Wayne and 42 Dugg lend a hand on CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST... On her kaleidoscopic second album, FATIGUE, Brooklyn's L'RAIN is "constantly melting down and metamorphosing, deliberately evading genres, in a way she has described as 'approaching songness,'" suggests the New York Times. *Her* weird pop genius is the ethereal type; those songnesses sometimes seem to float and shimmer on invisible bodies of water... DOJA CAT makes a case for herself, on her third album, PLANET HER, "as our new ice-cool pop-queen supreme," Vulture's Craig Jenkins writes. "Annoying. But... also exciting"... LUCY DACUS goes full-on singer/songwriter confessional on her third solo album, HOME VIDEO, based on journals she's been writing since she was 7... Classical violinist RANDALL GOOSBY debuts with a canon-challenging album of pieces by Black composers or inspired by Black culture...
Plus—seriously there's a lot today—new music from SPELLLING, RAUW ALEJANDRO, JUSTINE SKYE, the MOUNTAIN GOATS, EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY, MARC RIBOT'S CERAMIC DOG, MILES DAVIS (live recording of one of his final concerts), CAROLINE SHAW & SŌ PERCUSSION, GASPARD AUGÉ (solo debut from half of JUSTICE), GREYSON CHANCE, MODEST MOUSE, HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER, LADY A, BRIAN KELLEY (of Florida Georgia Line), FAYE WEBSTER, JENNIFER NETTLES, GARY ALLAN (first album in eight years), VINCENT NEIL EMERSON, CEDRIC BURNSIDE, SKI MASK THE SLUMP GOD, MIKE, BFB DA PACKMAN, EVIDENCE, DANIEL AVERY (released earlier this week), the GRID & ROBERT FRIPP, MATTHEW DEAR (unreleased 2008 album), ANUSHKA, LNS & DJ SOTOFETT, HURRY, EVE 6, the RUBINOOS (unreleased early tracks), UB40, POM POM SQUAD, PAULA FUGA, SPLIT SINGLE, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, SQUIRREL FLOWER, WITHERED, DARKTHRONE, HELLISH FORMS, LIGHT THE TORCH, BEARTOOTH, EMILY WOLFE, JOHN GRANT, CAUTIOUS CLAY, ARRESTED YOUTH, HELVETIA, WINONA AVENUE, JACK SAVORETTI, HIATUS KAIYOTE, PICTURE THIS, ANTHONY RAMOS, FREE THROW, DARIUS SYROSSIAN & BUSHWACKA... And LADY GAGA's BORN THIS WAY REIMAGINED, featuring covers of songs from the album by KYLIE MINOGUE, BIG FREEDIA, ORVILLE PECK and others.
Dot Dot Dot
I believe this qualifies as fully bipartisan congressional deadlock. With DIONNE WARWICK and DROPKICK MURPHYS singer/bassist KEN CASEY in the house, Florida Democrat TED DEUTCH and California Republican DARRELL ISSA Thursday introduced a bill that would, for the first time, require terrestrial radio stations in the US to play royalties to the artists whose music it plays. But no matter how fair the AMERICAN MUSIC FAIRNESS ACT might seem to an bystander—it's strange that BOYZ II MEN have never seen a penny for radio play of "END OF THE ROAD," one of the most successful pop singles of all time, isn't it?—it presumably faces an uphill battle against the weight of radio history, the lobbying force of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS, and the equal and opposite momentum of another bipartisan bill, with 138 signers in the House and 18 in the Senate, that would preserve the status quo of broadcasters not paying Boyz II Men or any other artists while continuing to pay royalties to songwriters and publishers. That bill is the Local Radio Freedom Act, and you might say it puts the "free" in freedom. Broadcasters say it continues a mutually beneficial arrangement in which radio helps to launch and sustain the careers of the artists who supply them with their music. It's an old, well-trodden debate, but one worth having every once in a while. Everyone knows that's the way we've always done it. But is it the way we'd do it we were starting from scratch today?... The RECORDING ACADEMY has settled out of court with ex-president/CEO DEBORAH DUGAN, two weeks before they were to go into arbitration over her controversial ouster just before the 2020 GRAMMYS. The terms are private, they said in a joint statement Thursday night... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN is personally turning the lights of Broadway back on Saturday night, when his revival of SPRINGSTEEN ON BROADWAY opens at the ST. JAMES THEATER, with the original cast of two—Bruce and PATTI—returning in the same roles. Performances are booked through Sept. 4. And, yes, your ASTRAZENECA vaccine is good enough to get you in. Well, that plus a ticket... Today, the documentary MARY J. BLIGE'S MY LIFE launches on Amazon Prime... QUESTLOVE's Sundance-winning SUMMER OF SOUL opens in very limited release today before going wide in theaters and on Hulu July 2... More on this later, maybe, but for now: Banjo player/politics tweeter WINSTON MARSHALL left MUMFORD & SONS on his own and there's no indication anyone in the band pushed him. All these things appear to be true, too: People on Twitter often run in packs and sometimes are truly awful. Harassment is real. People in bands still can, and still do, talk about politics, and they can, and do, say unpopular things. More bands should employ banjo players.
Rest in Peace
DIEGO CORTEZ, a New York art and music instigator who was a founder of the Mudd Club and collaborated with Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and Blondie... ALAN LEWIS, storied British music journalist who founded Kerrang! and served as the top editor at NME, Sounds and possibly every other music publication in England at one point or another... South African choral music composer MZILIKAZI KHUMALO.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Vulture |
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| The Songwriters Who Refuse to Be Bullied Out of Publishing Profits Any Longer |
| by Charlie Harding, Nate Sloan and Emily Warren |
| Emily Warren explains why she and other top songwriters formed the Pact to fight a longstanding music industry swindle. |
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The Undefeated |
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| T-Pain popularized Auto-Tune, but it came at a cost |
| by Justin Tinsley |
| His comments on Usher reveals an even harsher truth in T-Pain’s career. |
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The New York Times |
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| The Britney Spears Transcript, Annotated: ‘Hear What I Have to Say’ |
| by Julia Jacobs and Sarah Bahr |
| In a 23-minute speech, the singer said she desperately wants to end her conservatorship, calling it an abusive system in which she was drugged and forced to work against her will. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| Britney Spears upended her conservatorship case. Now what? These attorneys weigh in |
| by Christie D’Zurilla |
| Britney Spears finally spoke out about her conservatorship, but what's next? 'Once the system gets ahold of you, it is hard to get out,' an attorney says. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Clubbing Is a Lifeline--and It's Back |
| by Emily Witt |
| After the coronavirus pandemic, New Yorkers will not take their dance-club scene for granted again. |
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Wax Poetics |
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| NYC Dance Music PhD |
| by Piotr Orlov |
| Few other dance-music veterans eloquently color the space between the storied NYC figures of the past (Larry Levan and Shep Pettibone), dedicated club lifers (Ultra Naté and Eric Kupper), talented contemporaries (Honey Dijon and Cakes Da Killa), and outsider pop savants (Sofi Tukker and Foster the People). On "Red Hot + Free," they are all parts of Bill Coleman’s cast. |
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Bandcamp Daily |
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| L'Rain’s 'Fatigue' Captures the Everyday Nuances of Black Life |
| by Marcus J. Moore |
| "Fatigue" isn’t about solving challenges per se; it’s about making the effort to address them while finding bliss in a world spiraling out of control. |
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Medium |
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| Why I’m Leaving Mumford & Sons |
| by Winston Marshall |
| I loved those first tours. Bouncing off a sweaty stage in an Edinburgh catacomb we then had to get to a gig in Camden by lunch the next day. We couldn’t fit all four of us and Ted’s double-bass into the VW Polo. I think it was Ben who drew the short-straw and had to follow by train with his keyboard. |
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Billboard |
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| Billboard’s 2021 Country Power Players |
| by Trevor Anderson, Jim Asker, Katie Bain... |
| CMT’s Leslie Fram leads Billboard’s seventh annual Country Power Players list celebrating the genre’s wins as the industry enters a post-pandemic world. |
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Billboard |
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| Executive of the Year Leslie Fram on Making Country Music a ‘Big, Beautiful Tent For All Underrepresented Voices’ |
| by Melinda Newman |
| At CMT, she’s using every tool at her disposal to elevate rising artists and make country music a “big, beautiful tent for all underrepresented voices.” |
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| you make me feel mighty real |
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The Guardian |
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| Lorde: ‘I’m only just scratching the surface of my powers’ |
| by Laura Snapes |
| She quit social media, embraced the feral and grieved for her beloved dog. Now rejuvenated, Lorde is back with a free-spirited new album - though there’s a sinister side to its sunniness. |
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MTV News |
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| Teddy Geiger Rediscovers Her Voice |
| by Harron Walker |
| The lead vocals on her album, 'Teresa,' are layered to the point of indecipherability. And yet, the artist's point of view has never been more clear. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| What Zoom fatigue? Pandemic virtual concerts may have changed live music forever |
| by Ryan Faughnder |
| Consumers are excited to get back to live events. But 'virtual' shows aren't going away, according to a new study from UTA. |
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Bloomberg |
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| Snap Strikes Licensing Deal With World’s Top Record Label |
| by Lucas Shaw |
| Snap Inc. has struck a licensing deal with Vivendi SE’s Universal Music Group that gives its users access to thousands of songs, including tracks from Taylor Swift and Drake, in the latest tie-up between social-media giants and record labels. |
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The Seattle Times |
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| Seattle musicians get ready to return to the stage after 15 showless months |
| by Michael Rietmulder |
| After 15 months without live music, Seattle musicians are dusting off their pedal boards in preparation for their post-pandemic return to the stage. |
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KQED |
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| SPELLLING’s New Album Dazzles with Surreal Storytelling, Ornate Instruments |
| by Ned Raggett |
| The standout Oakland musician evolves from D.I.Y. producer to composer as she invites dozen of musicians into her fantasy world. |
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Songs in the Key of Death |
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| Henry Clay Beattie |
| by Courtney E. Smith |
| When Henry Clay Beattie’s wife Louise died under what turned out to be mysterious circumstances in 1911, the trial of the century began. Figuring out the circumstances of her death would lead to a million lines of newsprint all over the country — and end with the electric chair. Naturally, the story became a song. |
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BBC News |
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| Glastonbury cancellation 'big hit' for Greenpeace |
| by Harriet Robinson |
| Two years without the Glastonbury Festival has meant "a big financial hit" for environmental charity Greenpeace. |
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Variety |
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| Congressmen Introduce American Music Fairness Act to Compel Radio to Pay Royalties on Recorded Music |
| by Jem Aswad |
| The United States is the only major country in the world where terrestrial radio pays no royalties to performers or recorded-music copyright owners of the songs they play, a situation that is largely due to the powerful radio lobby's influence in Congress. |
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The Ringer |
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| The Ringer’s 100 Best Jay-Z Songs, Ranked |
| by Justin Sayles, Jomi Adeniran, Danny Heifetz... |
| In honor of the 25th anniversary of ‘Reasonable Doubt,’ we’re counting down the best of Hov’s best, from his days with Jaz-O to the present, from Marcy to Madison Square. |
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| Music of the day |
| "Marry the Night" |
| Kylie Minogue |
| From Lady Gaga's "Born This Way Reimagined," out today on Interscope. |
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YouTube |
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From Lady Gaga's "Born This Way Reimagined," out today on Interscope.
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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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