| We didn’t aspire to get signed. We thought it would not be in the cards. We just wanted to play some silly songs. |
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| Bending over backward for rock and roll fame and fortune: Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg at SXSW, Austin, March 17, 2022. |
| (Jason Bollenbacher/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“We didn’t aspire to get signed. We thought it would not be in the cards. We just wanted to play some silly songs.”
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- Hester Chambers, Wet Leg
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| rantnrave:// |
Stolen Moments
"It’s estimated that 22 million songs are uploaded to Spotify every year, at a rate of 60,000 per day," the Independent's MARK BEAUMONT writes in an essay on the ED SHEERAN plagiarism trial that ended Wednesday in London, in Sheeran's favor. "Somewhere in that tsunami of sound, by statistical inevitability, is a song closely resembling anything that any major songwriter might be knocking together around their Caribbean firepit." That’s a nice, straightforward explanation of a) why plagiarism lawsuits seem to be becoming more and more common, but also b) why it seems less and less likely most of them are worth a court's time. Because that's more than 21.99 million songs each year that don't become hits, and the chance that Ed Sheeran, or anyone, will ever hear any given one of those songs outside a courtroom is exceedingly low.
Sheeran was in a courtroom for 11 days while the case was heard. He sang on the witness stand. He heard his lawyers accidentally play part of an unreleased song. He got very annoyed`. By and large, the industry sees the lawsuits as an enormous, time-sucking, money-draining nuisance, which is, to be fair, how most industries view most lawsuits. But the music people would seem to have an especially good case. Songwriters routinely borrow from each other and from the collective cultural well of all music that came before them, while also following a shared set of musical rules. There are only so many chords that can follow G at the beginning of a pop song, and only so many notes you can sing over whichever chord you pick (spoiler: it's less than 12). This is a great video from YouTube musicsplainer ADAM NEELY showing how another closely watched plagiarism suit, involving DUA LIPA, is almost certainly a case of multiple songwriters drawing from the same well rather than drawing from each other.
But also, there's this: Even if Ed Sheeran was intimately familiar with SAMI SWITCH's "OH WHY," it's easy to hear his "SHAPE OF YOU"—which has a similar but not identical hook—less as a theft and more as an homage-slash-improvement, as thousands of songwriters before him have done to thousands of songwriters before them, for the benefit of all of us who get to listen. His is a better pop song. In almost any fair system, suing him will always have to be an option, because no one's saying actual plagiarism doesn't happen. But going back to the drawing board and trying to write an even better one will always be an option, too. A way of paying it forward—or, if you will, stealing it forward.
Etc Etc Etc
Starting here and continuing here is a beyond fantastic thread on the origins of the friendship between JAY-Z and the NOTORIOUS B.I.G., courtesy Biggie biographer JUSTIN TINSLEY, who was inspired by Jay's verse in the new PUSHA T song, "NECK & WRIST," and I wish the internet always worked like this. Actually, the internet does always work like this, it's just not always quite as good as this, and it's generally doing two thousand other things at the same time. We don't need an edit button. We need a delete-the-other-one-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-things button. Anyway, read this and respect the talent and the hustle and the difference between an MC and a rapper... SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA, who was going to be at the festival anyway, and the WEEKND, who wasn't, will be KANYE WEST's replacements at COACHELLA. I'm not sure how accurate the stories about the money involved are, but if you want to look, here you go... MARC GEIGER and JOHN FOGELMAN's SAVELIVE platform has raised $135 million and announced an initial round of partnerships with 21 venues and promoters. The live music and agency veterans conceived SaveLive during the pandemic, with a goal of buying controlling stakes in clubs across the US and turning them into an independent touring network. It appears that, at least for now, the platform will have stakes that size in some but not all of the venues... NATHANIEL GLOVER, aka the KIDD CREOLE, a founding member of GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE, was convicted of manslaughter Wednesday for the 2017 for the stabbing death of a homeless man in New York in 2017. He'll be sentenced in May.
Rest in Peace
ERIC BOEHLERT, who covered the music industry as an investigative reporter for Billboard, Rolling Stone and Salon before rising to national prominence as a media critic. Among the topics he covered were Pearl Jam's battle with Ticketmaster, payola and Clear Channel's monopolistic role in radio and live music. A music man to the end, Boehlert always included recommendations in his widely read Press Run newsletter; in his last one, published Monday, the day he was hit by a train while riding his bike in Montclair, N.J., he raved about the Red Hot Chili Peppers' recent single "Black Summer"... Canadian conductor BORIS BROTT, artistic director of the Orchestre classique de Montréal... EASY SAWABA, a star of Nigeria's fújì music scene in the 1970s and '80s... Hollywood Records and Capitol Records promotion exec JUSTIN FONTAINE.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Variety |
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| Clive Davis Shares ‘Clive-isms’ on Music, Artists, His History, and Keeping an Open Mind |
| By Jem Aswad |
| When I was made head of Columbia Records in 1965, it was a total, unexpected appointment. I’d had no ambition for it, and it was through lucky breaks that I got it. I’m eternally indebted to Goddard Lieberson for giving me the position and then, somehow, letting me do my thing—not that he knew I would have ears, or that I knew I would have ears. |
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Stereogum |
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| DJ Drama’s Well-Earned Victory Lap |
| By Tom Breihan |
| In one of the quieter moments on J. Cole's new Dreamville mixtape D-Day, DJ Drama chimes in with a little self-aggrandizing commentary. This is nothing new. For decades, Drama has been filling up the pauses on mixtapes by bellowing about his own greatness. |
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Beats & Bytes |
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| How This Year's Grammys Affected Grammys Music |
| By Rutger Ansley Rosenborg |
| The 64th annual Grammy Awards ceremony on April 3, 2022, appeared to have a bigger effect on tracks than artists - especially on Shazam and Soundcloud. Could this be a trend? |
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The Signal |
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| The Suave House Hippy |
| By David Katznelson |
| The Andy Wickham I got to know…who I thought I knew…was not the Andy that is written about and remembered. |
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Penny Fractions |
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| A Long Year for Chinese Music Streaming |
| By David Turner |
| In late 2020, China began a campaign of tech regulations that created quite a bit of upheaval within the industry and its music platforms were caught in the frenzy that caused curious ripple effects across the western music industry. |
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Scarce Objects |
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| To Have No Juice |
| By Vaughn McKenzie-Landell |
| An offering to the new gods of Web3 Music. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Angelica” |
| Wet Leg |
| From the British duo's self-titled debut album, out Friday on Domino. |
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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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