| [Producing should be] awesome for a girl. You don’t have to hide in a dark room and not wear makeup and your hair is never done—that's not the life that I live, and that's the life that I thought I *had* to live. |
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Willow Smith in Los Angeles, Dec. 19, 2019.
(Rich Fury/Getty Images)
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“[Producing should be] awesome for a girl. You don’t have to hide in a dark room and not wear makeup and your hair is never done—that's not the life that I live, and that's the life that I thought I *had* to live.”
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Thursday Thoughts and Things
Beware of platforms bearing polls—especially polls they commissioned themselves, and double especially those conducted online. Two new ones unveiled by TIKTOK Wednesday confirm what you already know—TikTok is a primary influence on music and culture—but with vague claims like "67% of TikTokers [are] more likely to seek out a song they heard on TikTok on a music streaming platform." More likely than who or what? More likely to do what exactly? Is there anyone who isn't more likely to seek out a song after they're exposed to it? Variety's GEOFF MAYFIELD notes that the polls, conducted by MRC DATA and FRANKLIN GROUP, are short on comparative data (read: context), and points to another recent poll, conducted by the major streaming companies, that places TikTok in the middle of the pack as an engine of music discovery. You're of course free to apply some gentle skepticism to that one, too... Beware also of congresspeople, even bipartisan ones, trying to get on the BRITNEY SPEARS anti-conservatorship train... Everything is an unauthorized remix: The THELONIOUS MONK estate wants you to know that JUPITER RISING's just-announced biopic on the jazz piano giant, starring YASIIN BEY, doesn't have the family's blessing and "we actually condemn the effort." The DR. JOHN estate feels the same about BLACK KEYS singer/guitarist DAN AUERBACH's planned documentary on the New Orleans piano great, and the SEX PISTOLS have apparently imploded over the decision of whether or not to license music to DANNY BOYLE's Pistols TV series, which is surprising only insofar as you had no idea they hadn't already imploded decades ago. Authorized docs and biopics, of course, aren't automatically good, cough cough QUEEN, but sometimes they BILLIE EILISH are, so anticipate accordingly...You can almost never go wrong following the example of the metal community... The reason people are still counting the number of women onstage at festivals like this weekend's ROLLING LOUD MIAMI (read: almost any festival) is that even after years of slow and steady improvement, it's still a little too easy to count them. Make it more difficult and they'll stop counting... This weekend in Germany, the 145-year-old BAYREUTH FESTIVAL will welcome its first woman conductor... Maybe ERIC CLAPTON can be the first major musician to play to an all-not-vaxed audience: You look wonderful tonight, sir, but I'm going to need to see proof that you haven't had your shots... Tweet of the week, courtesy WOLFIE's mom... You, you got what I need, JEFF GOLDBLUM... MOTOWN founder BERRY GORDY and singer/songwriter JONI MITCHELL will be 2021 KENNEDY CENTER HONOREES, along with BETTE MIDLER, JUSTINO DÍAZ and LORNE MICHAELS.
Rest in Peace
LA singer/songwriter, Viper Room co-owner and man about town CHUCK E. WEISS, who was in love with the little girl singing that song... Trinidadian rapso singer BROTHER RESISTANCE... Jazz drummer JERRY GRANELLI, who played on "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Complex |
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| Stop Blaming Rappers for a Problem America Created |
| by Andre Gee |
| Rappers are often vilified as pawns in an agenda to spread harmful messages to their communities, but they’re just as susceptible to the pitfalls they rap about. |
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The New York Times |
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| A Rap Song Lays Bare Israel’s Jewish-Arab Fracture -- and Goes Viral |
| by Roger Cohen |
| A Jew and a Palestinian sling slurs at each other, giving voice to hidden prejudice with the aim of overcoming it. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| Rickie Lee Jones remembers Chuck E. Weiss: 'He was a Svengali to Tom Waits and everyone who knew him' |
| by Rickie Lee Jones |
| Hollywood musical fixture Chuck E. Weiss died on July 19, at age 76. Here, one-time running mate Rickie Lee Jones pays tribute to Weiss' cool charisma. |
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Billboard |
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| Billboard's 50 Greatest Producers of the 21st Century |
| by Nolan Feeney, Melinda Newman, Andrew Unterberger... |
| If there's been one consistent in popular music across the first 20-plus years of the 21st century, it's been the prominence of the producer at the forefront. Producers have become household names in their own right, defining entire eras of popular music, and frequently becoming recording stars themselves. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| What would it really take to decentralize the music industry? |
| by Bruno Guez |
| There’s a huge tension between what the current music industry needs and what decentralized systems do. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Willow Smith Goes Pop-Punk |
| by Sheldon Pearce |
| The reluctant child star embraces the sounds of punk for her best album yet, “lately I feel EVERYTHING.” |
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Esquire |
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| What We Lose When We Ignore the Real Roots of Murder Ballads |
| by Courtney E. Smith |
| American pop culture will tell you these songs come exclusively from white creators with Appalachian backgrounds. That’s wrong, and it erases countless Black contributions. |
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Vox |
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| Pop music sold us on consumerism, one single at a time |
| by Ann-Derrick Gaillot |
| In hit songs, wealth is success, and success is always earned. |
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UPROXX |
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| Ask A Music Critic: Is It Wrong To Wear A Band Shirt To Their Concert? |
| by Steven Hyden |
| A reader asks Uproxx culture critic Steven Hyden about an unwritten rule about show culture etiquette. |
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JSTOR Daily |
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| How Dolly Parton Is Literally Like a Cougar |
| by Laken Brooks |
| The mountain cat’s cries, like Dolly Parton’s famous songs, carry the diverse voices of rural Appalachia. |
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Variety |
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| Studies Show TikTok’s Music Clout: Two-Thirds of Users Go to Streaming Services to Play Songs They’ve Found |
| by Geoff Mayfield |
| It won't surprise most music marketers to learn that 75% of TikTok visitors discover artists there, while 63% say it's a source for music they've not heard before and 72% indicating they associate certain songs with TikTok. |
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Billboard |
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| England’s Venues Are Open Again, But New Vaccine Passport Plans Stir Discontent |
| by Richard Smirke |
| Government plans in England to allow only fully vaccinated patrons into nightclubs and large music venues are being met with resistance from industry leaders. |
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Clash Magazine |
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| Are Album Bundles Helping Artists Game The UK Official Charts? |
| by Beth Kirkbride |
| It's not just major label acts that are bundling their music with merch or tickets. |
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Culture Notes of an Honest Broker |
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| The Secret Music Technology of Raymond Scott |
| by Ted Gioia |
| Raymond Scott should have been as famous as Dolby or Moog or even Stockhausen; instead he's unfairly pigeonholed as accompanist to Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. |
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Black Music and Black Muses |
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| Eavesdropping on the Goodspell |
| by Harmony Holiday |
| Shirley Ann Lee's "Someday." |
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Music x |
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| The web3’s user-friendliness barrier for music |
| by Bas Grasmayer |
| Setting up a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is a clunky affair when compared to more centralized variants. But maybe that's the point? |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| CTS Eventim launches Eventim Live Asia in partnership with ex-Live Nation exec Jason Miller |
| by Tim Ingham |
| The music industry shouldn’t sleep on the rapid growth of concert promoter and ticketing company CTS Eventim. |
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The New York Times |
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| A Violinist on How to Empower Asian Musicians |
| by Jennifer Koh |
| Jennifer Koh, an acclaimed soloist, calls on classical music to make space for artists of Asian descent, who remain marginalized in the field. |
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The Ringer |
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| How Steely Dan Became a Cult Favorite for Millennials |
| by Derek Robertson |
| Even as younger generations seem to be at war with baby boomer ideals, there is one relic of the ’70s they can get behind. |
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Dallas Observer |
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| In Defense of Stadium Country Music, From a Goth Rock Fan |
| by Diamond Rodrigue |
| Blame it all on my roots, but I'll be damned if there isn't something special about the "second golden age" of country music, the neotraditional wave of line dancin', hat tippin' and boot scootin' hillbilly music of the late 1980s to mid '90s. |
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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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