| Ninety percent of what I made went to women, whiskey, drugs and cars. I guess I just wasted the other 10 percent. |
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| Stranger things have happened: Kate Bush in Tokyo, June 1978. |
| (Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Ninety percent of what I made went to women, whiskey, drugs and cars. I guess I just wasted the other 10 percent.”
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- Ronnie "The Hawk" Hawkins, 1935 – 2022
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| rantnrave:// |
New Summer, Who Dis?
It's the first day of June. New York City spent the last day of May in the mid 90s (the temperature, not the decade). Summer has unofficially begun, as have the often-silly arguments about what will be the official song of this two-day-old season, and/or what it means that there may not be one this summer because streaming or because TIKTOK or because GLASS ANIMALS or because old people or because games or because too many people have too much access to too many songs as if for some reason that's a bad thing. Or because consensus simply doesn't exist anymore. But maybe consensus never existed. Maybe consensus was a con perpetrated by one or two demographic bubbles with good media access and the luxury of being able to pretend other demographic bubbles didn't exist or didn't matter. Maybe streaming and TikTok and old people and young people blew up *that* con. Maybe it isn't that more people have more access to more songs but rather more people have more access to the media, and the media has more access to them. My summer and your summer will likely be two different summers, so why would we automatically share a soundtrack? Not to mention both of our summers have barely started, so how could either of us know what we need those soundtracks to do?
(That all said, this is one of the better suggestions for a song of the summer-to-come that showed up on in our Twitter replies in the past 24 hours, h/t writer/founder DENISHA KUHLOR for this reminder of a Nigerian spring, which still sounds good on an early summer Brooklyn day.)
So Good So Good So Good
HALSEY's "SO GOOD," the single she said her label wouldn't release without an accompanying viral TikTok moment, is coming out next week, and we'll leave it to future pundits to decide if it's because CAPITOL heard Halsey's complaint about artists feeling undue pressure to do social media or because the complaint was exactly the social media moment the label was looking for. In either case, this happy ending, if that's what it is, is unlikely to quell the groundswell of complaints about what labels in general are asking artists to do. "It can feel quite degrading," REBECCA TAYLOR, aka SELF ESTEEM, wrote in the Guardian Monday, "to tie your only chance of success to your ability to perform the kind of personality that plays well online, and not your work." Taylor also finds it "no coincidence that the recent examples of artists who say their labels have forced them to get on TikTok are all women." MusicSET: "Halsey Rocks Around the TikTok."
Etc Etc Etc
BTS thrills the White House press Army, confuses TUCKER CARLSON, then gets down to business with PRESIDENT BIDEN... Ukraine's KALUSH ORCHESTRA auctions off its EUROVISION trophy for $900,000 and donates the money to its country's military... HARRY STYLES and LIVE NATION pledge to donate $1 million from Styles' upcoming tour to EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY... After two weeks of testimony, a federal jury in Texas says DEAN GUITARS has infringed on several GIBSON guitar designs, including the iconic Flying V. But the jury also says Gibson waited too long to make some of its claims and awards damages of only $4,000, or about the price of one vintage Flying V... Anarchy on the TV... Summer music reading.
Rest in Peace
RONNIE HAWKINS, the Arkansas rockabilly singer who relocated to Canada in the late 1950s and never looked back. His stage shows were wild, his hits were few and he became most famous as a mentor to the five Canadian and American men who originally served as his backing band and went to become Bob Dylan's band and then, simply, the Band. "Ronnie was the godfather," the Band's Robbie Robertson wrote. "The one who made this all happen." Hawkins' many side gigs included acting in disaster films—as in films that were themselves disasters—including Dylan's "Renaldo and Clara," in which he played a character named Bob Dylan, and Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate"... Indian rapper and activist SIDHU MOOSE WALA, murdered Sunday in Punjab. The popular and somewhat controversial rapper released his final single, "The Last Ride," just two weeks before he was killed. The song samples a news broadcast of 2Pac's assassination and its cover art is a photo of the crime scene... Bollywood playback singer KRISHNAKUMAR KUNNATH, better known as KK. He recorded film songs and advertising jingles in at least nine languages... Country producer/arranger BILL WALKER, who was a prolific TV composer and musical director for "The Johnny Cash Show"... Florida rapper OHTRAPSTAR, killed in a car crash last Wednesday in Miami... WARREN "WAZ" COSTELLO, co-founder of Australian indie Liberation Records and a key figure in the history of the label's parent company, Mushroom Group.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Vox |
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| We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral |
| By Estelle Caswell and Matt Daniels |
| It’s no secret that TikTok is a virality machine. But we wanted to know exactly what happens between a song going viral and an artist becoming a bonafide success. So in the fall of 2021, we partnered with data analysis website The Pudding figure it out. |
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Dazed Digital |
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| A$AP Rocky: father of a generation |
| By Suzy Exposito |
| With the arrival of the world’s flyest newborn, and a new album on the way, our summer 2022 cover star A$AP Rocky discusses his ‘fairytale with a street twist’, his Bajan heritage, and influencing a generation of creative young people. |
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The Atlantic |
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| Why Fangirls Scream |
| By Kaitlyn Tiffany |
| From bobby-soxers to Beatlemania to Bieber Fever--we all know what a screaming fangirl looks like. But do we really know why she’s screaming? |
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The Guardian |
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| Why do female musicians have to fake it on TikTok? |
| By Rebecca Taylor |
| Everyone from FKA twigs to Florence is under pressure to provide viral social media content, but it’s at the expense of building a sustainable fanbase and honing one’s craft. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Angel Olsen Sees Your Pain |
| By Amanda Petrusich |
| On her new album, "Big Time," the musician transfigures harrowing grief-and an unexpected new love-into songs of survival. |
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8Sided Blog |
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| The Art of Alan White |
| By Michael Donaldson |
| I'll argue that Alan White is one of the most influential drummers of our time, fully knowing that his influence is inadvertent. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Sungba” |
| Asake ft. Burna Boy |
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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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