| I wanted people to know who I am based on my music, not on what they read in the tabloids. |
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| Lisa Marie Presley circa 2004. |
| (Martin Philbey/Redferns/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“I wanted people to know who I am based on my music, not on what they read in the tabloids.”
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- Lisa Marie Presley, 1968 – 2023
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| rantnrave:// |
Promised Land
She was born into royalty, the only heir to mid-century America’s most famous estate and inheritor of mid-century America’s most famous sneer, along with all the darkness and strangeness that came with it. Which may have been her truest birthright. As we are learning (again) this year, being born into royalty is no guarantor of liberty or happiness.
LISA MARIE PRESLEY was born in 1968, the year of her father’s back-to-the-roots Comeback Special, and died in 2023, having last been seen in public two days earlier on a Beverly Hills red carpet celebrating the back-to-the-neon-lights Comeback Film. We didn’t know her, couldn’t possibly know her, but we sent our tabloids after her and worshipped her a little and judged her a lot and bore witness to too much tragedy and the accompanying attempts to process all of it—the unbearable tragedy and the unfathomable fortune and the strange fact of them arriving side by side.
Sometimes she could even see the black humor in this. Her first album, the one that briefly ran up the pop charts, arrived in 2003, heralded by a single on which she sounds like alt-rock CHER telling us, “Someone turned the lights out there in Memphis / That's where my family's buried and gone / Last time I was there I noticed a space left / Next to them there in Memphis / In the damn back lawn.” It’s a damn good single. There were two more albums, the 2005 followup featuring covers of DON HENLEY and the RAMONES, and a 2012 back-to-her-dad’s-roots swan song produced by T BONE BURNETT.
She never became a pop star. She seemingly became a little more comfortable over time with that inescapable spotlight. Thursday night, Memphis’ Commercial Appeal noted, “Apparently encouraged in part by her pride in director BAZ LUHRMANN’s ‘ELVIS,’ a biographical motion picture about her father that was a commercial and critical success, Lisa Marie had elevated her public profile during the past year, appearing at film festivals and other events, and actively promoting the movie and sharing memories of her father.” Thus that final image of her on that red carpet Tuesday night, crashing an interview of AUSTIN BUTLER, an actor young enough to play her son but winning acclaim for playing her dad. “I really didn’t know what to do with myself after I saw it," she said. “I had to take, like, five days to process it.” May she rest in peace, and may she be processing it now with her dad on their back lawn in the clouds, with nobody else watching.
It's Friday
And that means new music from Nashville maverick MARGO PRICE, whose continued turn away from her country roots on STRAYS sounds, strangely, exactly like country to me. But maybe that’s just me. Others might say roots-rock. With a touch of indie pop. And a classic-rock freak-out. And the delicate pro-choice short story that is “Lydia” (“Just make a decision / It’s yours”). “I know a lot of people just want country music from me,” Price tells Vulture’s Justin Curto. “And while on this album we snuck in some pedal steel, and it still is my band playing live in a room, and there’s lots of acoustic instruments, it’s hard to describe what genre it is. I really do feel like it is a bit genreless, but I still feel like it’s me and it’s focused on the song.” Also, as she’s told several interviewers, mushrooms were involved. As was the writing of a memoir, which was published last fall and features several of the album’s songs as chapter titles.
Also today: New music from BabyTron, Billy Nomates, Belle & Sebastian, Molly, Rozi Plain, Julia Wolf, Clavish, Skyzoo & the Other Guys, Marcus Strickland Twi-Life, Rachael & Vilray, Tujiko Noriko, Obituary, Azken Auzi, Myron Elkins, Whitehorse, Jared James Nichols, Velvet Negroni, James Yorkston/Nina Persson/The Second Hand Orchestra, the Subways, Gaz Coombes, the Features, Juniper, Uni & the Urchins, Circa Waves and Sylo.
Etc Etc Etc
“The Top 10 Hits in the US Last Year Accounted for Fewer Than 1 in Every 200 Streams”—continuing a trend, Music Business Worldwide reports, of the biggest hits in the US becoming less and less popular... “1 of Every 25 Vinyl Albums Sold in US in 2022 was by TAYLOR SWIFT”—which may say something about the benefits of selling four different versions of the same album, and/or the unequal access major labels and pop stars have to vinyl pressing plants in a time of limited capacity... The COACHELLA poster broken down by agency... JONI MITCHELL will be honored in March with the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS’ Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. A March 1 tribute concert in Washington, D.C., will be broadcast March 31... If JOHN FOGERTY can get his catalog back, there's hope for everybody, though hopefully everybody won't have to wait quite as long. Good moon rising tonight... MusicREDEF is taking a long weekend in honor of MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY. Our next newsletter will hit inboxes Wednesday morning.
Rest in Peace
Bachman-Turner Overdrive drummer ROBBIE BACHMAN.
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| - Matty Karas, curator |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| RETRO READ: A name for herself |
| By Robert Hilburn |
| Fear and family kept Lisa Marie Presley away from the microphone -- until now. (Originally published April 6, 2003.) |
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Vulture |
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| Margo Price Is on Her Own Trip |
| By Justin Curto |
| The proudly stubborn singer-songwriter stopped drinking, released a memoir, then took another left turn. |
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XXL |
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| Has the Competitive Landscape Changed for Women in Hip-Hop? |
| By Kathy Iandoli |
| Women in hip-hop have climbed their way to the top for decades while seemingly only one female rapper at a time could exist. Has the landscape for women changed in 2022? With more ladies than ever succeeding, it's a resounding yes. |
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No Depression |
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| In the Deep End With … Whitehorse |
| By Stacy Chandler |
| When you know as much about music as Canadian duo Whitehorse does, flavors from across time and genres are bound to seep into the sound. |
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VAN Magazine |
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| After Barenboim |
| By Hartmut Welscher |
| The legendary conductor resigns from the Berlin Staatsoper. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Been to the Mountain” |
| Margo Price |
| "I just know who I’m not and that’s all right with me." From "Strays," out today on Loma Vista. |
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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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