I’ve never been someone who’s like, 'Music is gonna change the world.' It's not just single-handedly music. But [music reflects] the way that people think, the things that people are attached to, the passion that people have for wanting to see positive change.
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Wednesday May 11, 2022
REDEF
Leyla McCalla at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, April 29, 2022.
(Erika Goldring/Getty Images)
quote of the day
I’ve never been someone who’s like, 'Music is gonna change the world.' It's not just single-handedly music. But [music reflects] the way that people think, the things that people are attached to, the passion that people have for wanting to see positive change.
- Leyla McCalla
rantnrave://
bye, Pod

Congratulations, APPLE, for an exquisitely Apple-esque announcement in which it announces that it's ceased production of the last surviving IPOD by literally not announcing that it's ceased production of anything. Find me a word in here about what Apple has actually stopped doing. I'll wait, as they say. Everybody, of course, understood what Apple was saying, either because Apple gave them a head's up offline, or they'd already read it somewhere else, or they just kind of figured it out. Which is pretty much how it's always worked with Apple. Has anyone ever read one of the company's instruction manuals for anything? Of course not. You just kind of follow the crowd, or play around until things start making sense.

"iPod touch will be available while supplies last" was, I have to admit, a pretty good clue in bold type at the top of Tuesday's official announcement. But normally a sentence like that goes at the end, after you've explained why that's suddenly an issue. The iPod touch, it turns out, is being discontinued, and that will be the end of the iPod line, born 21 years ago in October 2001. The seventh generation iPod touch, introduced in 2019—a fact I learned yesterday—is where it all ends. But its spirit lives on because, and I quote, "the experience of taking one’s music library out into the world has been integrated across Apple’s product line — from iPhone and Apple Watch to iPad and Mac." Sort of? I guess? I have iPhone. I have APPLE MUSIC. I do not have N'DEA DAVENPORT's 1998 self-titled album and neither do they. And even if I did, I have no idea how I'd move a digital copy of that album from my computer to my phone. That knowledge, and for all I know that ability, is long gone. What's the last time you intentionally moved an MP3 or WAV file from your MacBook to your iPhone? Would you know how?

It started way back when with an exquisitely designed white pocket-sized device, with a wheel that clicked when you turned it, that could hold way more music than any other device that had ever fit in one of your pockets (especially if you were cool with 128k MP3s, which most of us were). It had a little heft to it, which gave it gravitas. It was easy to use. It made sense. It connected to iTunes, which also used to make sense.

As elegant as its design was, the iPod didn’t do anything you couldn't do before. Portable MP3 players existed. The ability to copy, curate, reorder and share your music in slightly degraded form had been available for decades thanks to cassette tape, and the WALKMAN had long allowed you to carry at least some of it around in your pocket. But the iPod made everything faster, easier, bigger, more immediate, more fun. It was to cassettes and other MP3 players what the Twitter retweet button was to cutting-and-pasting someone's tweet and adding the letters "RT" at the top. It was the better version. The simpler version. The viral version.

The iPod alone didn't disrupt the hierarchy of the album or elevate the single over the album—the '20s and '30s and '50s and '60s and '80s and '90s had already done a good job of that—or turn music into ones and zeroes (does anyone remember CDs?) or invent the art of personal curation. But it moved the needle on all those things and more, and heralded a seismic change in music consumption, which in turn would herald a significant change in music production. It was a beginning and an end. A beginning of the era of neither the single nor the album, but just, simply, the track. A beginning of instant access, which streaming would soon come around and put on steroids. A beginning of what would become the celestial jukebox. But where the celestial jukeboxes of RHAPSODY, SPOTIFY, BEATS MUSIC and APPLE MUSIC would give everyone access to the same bottomless collection of music, the iPod was a kind of last hurrah of an era when we all had different, personally curated collections in our pockets. The end of ownership, at least in the way that ownership used to be understood. There are plenty of great private collections, big and small, today. You may well have one. But everyone used to have one. And for many of them, the iPod was its final resting place.

Rest in iPeace, iPod. Your spirit does live on, not integrated across Apple's product line, but integrated across all of us.

Rest in Peace

SHIVKUMAR SHARMA, virtuoso of the santoor, a 100-stringed Indian hammered dulcimer, and Bollywood composer... Drummer TOMMY MCCONNELL of '80s funk/disco band Skyy... Canadian pop singer/songwriter SUSAN JACKS, best known as lead singer of the late '60s, early '70s pop group the Poppy Family. In later years she became a country songwriter in Nashville.

- Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator
our native daughters
Los Angeles Times
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Prosecutors allege that Young Thug's violent boasts in song help prove his participation in criminal activity. His attorney calls the charges 'baseless.'
Tidal
Speak-Sing Me a Song
By Simon Reynolds
How Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, Black Country, New Road and other groups are carrying a rich post-punk tradition forward — while providing a properly sardonic voice for these dystopian times.
TechCrunch
The iPod is dead
By Brian Heater
Apple announced that the iPod is dead. That is, as much as a particular gadget can ever be dead. Rather, it will shuffle off this mortal coil slowly, remaining for sale while supplies last.
VICE
We Asked People Who Still Use MP3 Players: Why?
By Koh Ewe
In the year 2022, some people are still downloading songs in .mp3 and carefully curating them on their iPods.
The Independent
Fivio Foreign interview: ‘Pop Smoke was my brother -- I have to keep his name alive’
By Annabel Nugent
The Brooklyn rapper has worked with Kanye West, Nicki Minaj and Drake to usher the controversial drill genre into the mainstream. He speaks with Annabel Nugent about the legacy of his predecessor Pop Smoke, sitting down with mayor Eric Adams to discuss the city’s gang warfare, and changing his lyrics to please Beyoncé.
Esquire
England's Dreamer: Danny Boyle Takes on the Sex Pistols
By Olivia Pym
The British filmmaker's next project, a six-part series, sees him returns to his roots in punk patriotism
NME
Ukrainian Eurovision entry Kalush Orchestra: 'This is the highest responsibility possible'
By Andrew Trendell
Kalush Orchestra, Ukraine's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022, on the lyrics and meaning of their song 'Stefania' & war with Russia.
Trapital
Bad Bunny and the Globalization of Hip-Hop
By Dan Runcie
He didn’t switch his style up. The masses are coming to him, and now he’s reaping the rewards.
Billboard
For the Record: How the Dylan Center Reinvents the Idea of a Music Museum
By Robert Levine
When some artists leave the road, their stuff keeps touring - or it goes someplace where fans pay to see it. The Bob Dylan Center suggests a smarter model.
Flagging Down the Doule E's
An In-Depth Look at the Bob Dylan Center's Unheard Live Recordings
By Ray Padgett
Talking Supper Club, Salt Lake '76, and more with co-curator Parker Fishel.
carolina chocolate drops
Sound & Vision
Can Tidal Stem the Tide of Its Hi-Res Challengers?
By Mike Mettler
Tidal has literally rolled with the changes over the course of its 7.5 years (and counting) being nestled in our collective streaming consciousness. In recent years, the streaming giant has doubled down on the ways it offers a multi-genre cornucopia of streaming content in a number of hi-res-friendly ways. 
Dada Drummer Almanach
The Jazz-Adjacent Sound of Now
By Damon Krukowski
Feeling Positive with Alabaster dePlume.
Slate
How a Song From Two Admen Became a Trucker Protest Anthem
By Evan Chung
CB radios and a global oil crisis helped kick off a pop culture craze.
Time Magazine
How an Asian American Opera Singer Found Her Voice Amid a Reckoning with Race
By Cady Lang and Diane Tsai
Amid a reckoning with anti-Asian racism, Nina Yoshida Nelsen is speaking out against racism and calling for better representation in opera.
MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY
More Bizarre Goings On At the Copyright Royalty Board, this time with additional Google, fava beans and a fine Chianti
By Chris Castle
One of the main beefs I've had with the Copyright Royalty Board is the secrecy in plain sight. Very few people follow what's going on there, yet every time you move a rock, another toad hops out.
Apple Music
Pusha T: ‘It’s Almost Dry,’ Pharrell’s Influence, and Carving Out Your Own Lane
By Ebro Darden and Pusha T
Pusha T joins Ebro Darden for a game of ping pong and a conversation about his album, ‘It’s Almost Dry.’ They discuss his relationship with Kanye West, and how Pusha’s early morning chats with Pharell inspired the album's unique start.
SPIN
How Brandi Carlile Made History at the 2019 Newport Folk Festival
By Marissa R. Moss
But first, she had to send one particular letter, to a particular person: Dolly Parton. (Excerpted from Marissa R. Moss's book "Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be.")
The Washington Post
Danyel Smith’s ‘Very Personal History’ gives Black women of pop music their due
By Jonathan Capehart and Danyel Smith
In this Washington Post Live conversation, author Danyel Smith explains why she wanted to give Black women their due in "Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop."
The Opera Queen
Elena Dubinets: Ukraine, Russia, And Émigré Artists
By Catherine Kustanczy
London Philharmonic Orchestra Artistic Director Elena Dubinets discusses programming choices and war within the context of Russian cultural identity.
Billboard
iPod Commercials Defined an Era for Music in Marketing: The 10 Most Iconic Ads
By Katie Bain
In honor of the announcement that Apple is discontinuing the iPod after 20 years, here are the 10 ads that most stick with us, featuring music from Daft Punk, Feist, Bob Dylan and more.
what we're into
Music of the day
“You Don't Know Me”
Leyla McCalla
Caetano Veloso cover from "Breaking the Thermometer," out now on Anti-.
Video of the day
“Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes (live in New Orleans, 2020)”
Leyla McCalla
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