| We defend our freedom to live, to love, to sound. On our land, we are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs. The dead silence. Fill the silence with your music! Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV. |
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| "Drinks is on Silk Sonic tonight," said Anderson .Paak, performing with his sonically silky partner Bruno Mars at the Grammys, Las Vegas, April 3, 2022. |
| (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“We defend our freedom to live, to love, to sound. On our land, we are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs. The dead silence. Fill the silence with your music! Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV.”
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- Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, appearing via video at the Grammy Awards
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| rantnrave:// |
We Are What We Are
You can spend days and weeks before the GRAMMYS trying to guess what they're going to do and days and weeks after the Grammys second guessing what they have done and it will never really matter because at the end of the day, every day, the Grammys are simply going to be the Grammys and you're simply going to be you and occasionally the twain shall meet but more often they shall not—unless you decide, finally, to give in and put your money on the nominees who can read sheet music and tune their own instruments by ear, but what would be the fun in that?
JON BATISTE looked befuddled when his name was announced as winner as Album of the Year, the last award handed out Sunday night, which was an appropriate and endearing reaction from an accomplished, good-hearted, well-loved jazz pianist and late-night TV bandleader who no one had expected to be the night's big nominee and who, even after that happened, no one expected to be the night's big winner, including, apparently, Batiste himself. His album WE ARE is an ambitious, genre-fluid album that, as the New York Times' BEN SISARIO dryly noted, "had virtually no commercial impact." Also, it had been an embarrassing 14 years since a Black artist won the Album of the Year Grammy.
Read that last sentence again. If you choose to never watch the Grammys again, or if you long ago stopped, that would be a good reason why.
Embarrassing might not be the exact right word.
But that said, the last Black artist who won the award, in 2008, was a jazz pianist whose album didn't have all that much commercial impact, at least until after he won, which turned the album into a surprise, belated hit. The last Black artist who won before that, in 2005, was... a jazz and R&B pianist.
That track record is so bizarre it's almost impervious to criticism. It is what it is, whatever that is. But inasmuch as you do have criticism, direct it at the RECORDING ACADEMY and its voters, not at Jon Batiste, who released a very good album in 2021 that most pop fans have simply never heard.
As a live performer with a live band on live TV on the Grammys telecast, Batiste brought down the house Sunday. "I believe this to my core," he said when he won. "There is no best musician, best artist, best dancer, best actor. The creative arts are subjective and they reach people at a point in their lives when they need it most."
There weren't a lot of other speeches Sunday because there weren't a lot of awards. I mean, there were a ton, 86, but only nine of them were handed out on television. SILK SONIC, OLIVIA RODRIGO and CHRIS STAPLETON were among the other big winners on a show that the Academy repeatedly told us wasn't about winners. "Don't even think of it as an awards show," host TREVOR NOAH said near the top. "This is a concert where we're giving out awards, all right?"
Kudos, then, to the one winner* who refused to display any humility. "We are really trying our hardest to remain humble at this point, OK?," said ANDERSON .PAAK of Silk Sonic, who won all four Grammys they were nominated for, including Record and Song of the Year. "But in the industry, we call that a clean sweep... Drinks is on Silk Sonic tonight."
* QUESTLOVE, who won a Grammy (pre-telecast) for his documentary SUMMER OF SOUL, to go along with the Academy Award he won a week earlier, flashed some of that same moxie while presenting the night's first award to Silk Sonic. "They say it’s better to give than receive," Quest said before announcing the nominees. "And I'm not so sure about that."
And, oh yeah, the concert. The state of pop is A-plus right now, no matter what your list of winners may or may not say. Olivia Rodrigo's big-production version of "DRIVER'S LICENSE," which she began inside a vintage Mercedes, was one of the best pop performances I've seen in a long time on any TV show, and within 45 minutes BTS, LIL NAS X and BILLIE EILISH had all matched it.
And BRANDI CARLILE, she hit a note.
The most moving performance, though, came from JOHN LEGEND, who played "FREE" with Ukrainian musicians SIUZANNA IGLIDAN and MIKA NEWTON and poet LYUBA YAKIMCHUK after an impassioned, taped plea from Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY for help from the music community. "Fill the silence with your music!," he said, speaking from a bunker in Kyiv. "Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV." Zelensky was reportedly denied a chance to speak during the Academy Awards.
Grammy This Grammy That
Damn it takes a long time to announce 10 nominees—two minutes and 15 seconds, in fact, to get through all of the nominees for the night's first award, Song of the Year (winners: Anderson .Paak, Bruno Mars, CHRISTOPHER BRODY BROWN and DERNST EMILE II for writing Silk Sonic's "Leave the Door Open"). No wonder there wasn't time for more awards on the telecast... Lil Nas X rapping on the Grammys about winning Grammys was good meta-Grammying... Meta-Grammy counterpoint: "It doesn't take a trophy to make You proud," sang MAVERICK CITY MUSIC, winners of the trophy for Contemporary Christian Album, on the roof of the MGM Grand... DOJA CAT, winner for Pop Duo/Group Performance (with SZA) isn't the first awards show winner to be caught in the bathroom when her category came up, and I wouldn't be shocked if it was planned, but no one's ever played the moment as well as she did. "I have never taken such a fast piss in my whole life; thank you everybody" is a hall of fame-worthy acceptance speech... Country stars BROTHERS OSBORNE won their first Grammy for "YOUNGER ME," a song inspired by lead singer T.J. OSBORNE's decision to come out as gay. "I never thought that I would be able to do music professionally because of my sexuality," T.J. said in accepting the award during the pre-telecast... AROOJ AFTAB didn't win Best New Artist but did become the first Pakistani artist ever to win a Grammy (for Global Music Performance)... JONI... FOO FIGHTERS, who pulled out of the telecast after the death of drummer TAYLOR HAWKINS, won all three awards they were nominated for, all given out before the show... Billie Eilish performed "HAPPIER THAN EVER" in a Taylor Hawkins t-shirt... Hawkins and STEPHEN SONDHEIM got the main spotlights during the in memoriam segment, and though I'm as big a Sondheim fan as anyone, I thought he was an odd choice. They have the TONY AWARDS for that. RONNIE SPECTOR, LEE "SCRATCH" PERRY, DMX and YOUNG DOLPH got just a few seconds of attention each... Bless the Grammy producers for including musician/critic GREG TATE in that segment, though. You can never include everybody, but among the notable missing: murdered LA rapper DRAKEO THE RULER, SLIPKNOT's JOEY JORDISON, salsa great LARRY HARLOW, ambient music giant JON HASSELL, soul singers SYL JOHNSON and TIMMY THOMAS, JAMES BROWN saxophonist PEE WEE ELLIS and jazz DJ/historian PHIL SCHAAP... Cancel culture, you say?
Rest in Peace
FITZROY "BUNNY DIAMOND" SIMPSON, one of three members of reggae harmony greats the Mighty Diamonds. He died Friday in Jamaica after years of declining health, only three days after his bandmate, lead singer Donald "Tabby Diamond" Shaw, was murdered. "This double loss is devastating," Jamaica's minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sport, Olivia Grange, said... BILL FRIES, an advertising executive who under the name C.W. MCCALL had a series of country novelty hits in the 1970s, including the #1 pop hit "Convoy." He'd originally created C.W. McCall as a character for a TV commercial... Bluegrass multi-instrumentalist and singer ROLAND WHITE, who played with Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and, maybe most notably, his brother, guitarist Clarence White... And on a personal note: bassist DAVE MAINS, a longtime presence on the Jersey Shore music scene who woke up every morning of his life eating, breathing and inhaling the eternal fire that is rock and roll. He blessed numerous bands with his rock and roll heart, including mine, the Trouble Dolls, whom he almost singlehandedly transformed from a theoretical band practicing every Saturday afternoon in our friend Jeff's basement into an actual band worthy of a Saturday night slot at the Brighton Bar. He was loud, he was annoying, he had a nasty, trebly bass tone, he was a loyal friend and he was a magician. He spent a glorious few weeks as the touring bassist for the Leaving Trains and otherwise spent his days and years writing, playing and performing anywhere he could, never betraying his heart, never compromising his spirit and never turning down the volume. This is him in 2020, an admittedly rough recording he made with his wife, Carol, during the early days of the pandemic lockdown for a Soundcloud audience of maybe 15 people. It may be the last music he ever made, and it rocks.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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The Ringer |
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| The Winners and Losers of the 2022 Grammy Awards |
| By Justin Sayles |
| Jon Batiste won Album of the Year? Olivia Rodrigo was nearly shut out of the major categories? We break down the best and worst of an occasionally fun, occasionally confounding ceremony. |
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Bloomberg |
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| The Music Catalog Boom May Be Coming to an End |
| By Lucas Shaw |
| Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Nicks have all cashed in on the streaming boom. But the market may have hit a ceiling due to inflation and rising interest rates. |
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Vulture |
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| How to Change a Genre |
| By Justin Curto |
| Three Grammy-nominated musicians grapple with racism and respect in roots music. |
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Stereogum |
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| Arooj Aftab Quits Her Day Job |
| By Pranav Trewn |
| The Grammy Best New Artist nominee on her breakout "Vulture Prince," bringing the ancient into the now, and forgoing guru-esque mystique in favor of "cursing and drinking whiskey and being a f***ing idiot." |
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Kerrang! |
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| How the Parallax Orchestra became rock’s go-to musicians |
| By Aliya Chaudhry |
| Fresh from teaming up with Architects on For Those That Wish To Exist At Abbey Road, we meet the musicians behind the Parallax Orchestra, and find out just why their classical workings go so well with rock. |
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The Guardian |
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| Music, memory and my dad: how songs define and shape us |
| By Jude Rogers |
| The Flying Pickets’ Only You unlocks such visceral emotions for Jude Rogers that it can stop her in her tracks. In this extract from her new book, she asks what science lies behind the power of music to make the past vividly present. |
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Slate |
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| Black Women Are Pop Innovators |
| By Chris Molanphy and Danyel Smith |
| Danyel Smith joins Chris Molanphy to discuss Black women singers never getting their due and how their voices are “the epitome of free.” |
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NPR |
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| Daddy Yankee, a reggaeton 'leyenda,' retires |
| By Ailsa Chang, Felix Contreras, Miguel Macias... |
| Reggaeton superstar Daddy Yankee has announced his retirement from music at the age of 45. But it's unclear whether that means he'll never perform or release music again. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Freedom” |
| Jon Batiste |
| From "We Are" (2021). |
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| Video of the day |
| “Live at the Essence Festival 2021” |
| Jazmine Sullivan |
| The Grammy winner for Best R&B Album didn't have a performance slot on Sunday's telecast. Here's a taste of what we missed. |
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| Music | Media |
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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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