| I have the smartest and strongest little son now. I can’t even begin to explain that s***. How do you explain? It’s like he opened me back up to a lot of emotions that I thought I was beyond. |
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| Earl Sweatshirt in Brisbane, Australia, Feb. 1, 2020. |
| (Marc Grimwade/WireImage/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
Threads (Whoa Oh Oh Oh Oh)
The FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION looks for lessons in BANDCAMP's phenomenally successful "Bandcamp Friday" promotion, in which the service generated $61 million in sales on 15 Fridays going back to March 2020. The heavily marketed promotion had a simple, clear, easy-to-understand goal: to help artists and labels struggling through the pandemic by letting them keep 100 percent of any sales on those days. By waiving its transaction fees, Bandcamp, according to FOMC's calculations, effectively donated $7 million to artists and labels over the course of the promotion, while creating traffic, awareness and goodwill for the company. Any digital service, including Bandcamp's much larger competitors, could have done something similar, but none did. In an earlier thread, posted on the promotion's inaugural day two years ago, FOMC noted how the company stood out by investing in humans over algorithms, staying relatively small and maintaining "a commitment to iteratively asking artists what they need." Looking back now, that strategy looms large: "The key," the coalition writes, "is having a close enough relationship with artists themselves to know what is helpful." Simple, clear, easy to understand. But maybe, ironically, not so easy to execute... RONNIE SPECTOR interlude #1: The amazing company she kept. "I was going out with DAVID BOWIE," she recalled in a 2012 interview, reminiscing about the 1970s, right after she escaped her toxic first husband. "And I was seeing JOHN LENNON, when he wasn’t with YOKO, and hanging around with KEITH RICHARDS." As one does. Spector makes it fairly clear these were platonic relationships, but the point is: Damn, those men were lucky to be around such royalty... A good short one, started by SEAT GEEK's J HERSKOWITZ, on the tangled and fuzzy legal rights behind all those duet versions of SADIE JEAN's "WYD NOW" floating around TIKTOK. JON CARAMANICA's NY Times story on the open-source song collaboration project is a great read. He notes that while versions of "WYD NOW" featuring LIL YACHTY and countless other TikTokkers, both amateur and pro, can be found on the service, only Sadie Jean's own version has received a proper digital release. "Why not release an EP with all the different duets, the modern-day equivalent of the remix EP of old, or a dancehall riddim album?," Caramanica asks. The internet asks the obvious followup: "What's the IP picture?" What would the splits look like on that EP, and what negotiations or protocols would Jean and her virtual collaborators use to get there? What rights might TikTok itself have? What's the state of the law on that? And, since this is the 2020s, what's the state of the blockchain on that?... Ronnie Spector interlude #2: Christmas. The magic of those four or five weeks every year, back in the day, when it seemed like the radio played nothing but Wall of Sound Christmas songs by the RONETTES, the CRYSTALS and BOB B. SOXX & THE BLUE JEANS. It's quite possible that's the first context in which I ever heard Ronnie Spector's voice, and I'm pretty sure the songs and the performances were burned into my heart long before I knew the names of any of the singers. To this day, that's what Christmas sounds like to me: bells, snare drums, massed armies of pianos and saxophones, smart, sassy female (mostly) voices... "Please please please please please" stop calling CLARA SCHUMANN, the great German pianist and composer, by her full name while calling her husband by only his last name. If you make it past DR. ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY's first tweet on the subject and don't understand that she's right, here's a longer explanation from a year and a half ago for why you should simply stop calling famous composers by their last names. It's demeaning—not to the composers whose first names you omit, but to all the other ones. I'd add that you risk a future in which no one knows who WOLFGANG, JOHANN SEBASTIAN or LUDWIG are because no one has ever said any of those names aloud. So please pleases please please please stop.
It's Friday
And on his first album in more than three years, singular LA rapper EARL SWEATSHIRT sounds "sharper and more tangible than the foggy, atmospheric doubt-trips of [his] last few records," Stereogum's Tom Breihan reports. "Earl’s voice is higher in the mix. There’s less blurry noise around the edges of the tracks. The drums kick more. The melodic loops resolve. But that doesn’t mean Earl Sweatshirt is out here making Roddy Ricch records"... FKA TWIGS swerves toward "unbridled avant pop" and—surprise—joy on her CAPRISONGS mixtape, a set of songs that, Rolling Stone's JULYSSA LOPEZ argues, shows she's "uninhibited and out of f***s to give"... Recording remotely during a pandemic isn't the obstacle it's purported to be, reports ELVIS COSTELLO, who made the rock-oriented A BOY NAMED IF with longtime backing band the IMPOSTERS. "You often record in separate boxes in the studio and assemble a series of different performances into the final mix," he Elvis-splains to The Line of Best Fit. "It’s not really that different when you're doing it in different locations." Consider yourself schooled, Zoom skeptics... British electro musician BONOBO continues his ongoing project of "enmeshing the electronic and organic" on FRAGMENTS... New Jersey deathcore band FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY rises up to "vertiginous" expectations on its "f***ing bruising [and] claustrophic" sixth album, OH WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS.
Plus new music from CORDAE (fka YBN Cordae), YOUNGBOY NEVER BROKE AGAIN, CAT POWER (her third covers albums features her take on Frank Ocean's "Bad Religion"), ABDULLAH IBRAHIM, RICHARD CARPENTER (arranges Carpenters hits for solo piano), TOKEN, NLE CHOPPA, JIM JONES & DJ DRAMA, KEEDRON BRYANT, GRACE CUMMINGS, UNDEROATH, MIZMOR, GARCIA PEOPLES, BLOOD RED SHOES, ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF, the WOMBATS, FUSS, CHASTITY, SEA GIRLS, SKILLET, CASTING CROWNS, PUNCH BROTHERS (Tony Rice tribute album), the LUMINEERS, JAMESTOWN REVIVAL, the KERNAL, ORLANDO WEEKS and LIL REKK.
Rest in Peace
Wall Street Journal theater critic, essayist and biographer TERRY TEACHOUT, who wrote biographies of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and libretti for three operas... Berlin DJ CARSTEN KLEMANN... Longtime Glastonbury executive ROBERT RICHARDS.
Programming Note
MusicREDEF will be taking a brief pause for MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY. We'll be back in your inbox Wednesday morning.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Stereogum |
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| 26 Thoughts On The Coachella 2022 Poster |
| By Tom Breihan |
| It's a tradition like no other. Every year, Coachella unveils its poster to great social-media pomp and circumstance. And every year, I write a long and ridiculous Stereogum piece about all the tiny narratives embedded within that poster. Or that's what used to happen, anyway. |
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XXL |
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| Explore the History of the Hip-Hop Remix |
| By Rob Kenner |
| SpotemGottem's trap banger "BeatBox" inspired countless rappers to hop on the hard-hitting beat and drop their own version of the song last year. But what does a remix really mean these days? |
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Lefsetz Letter |
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| The Bob Lefsetz Podcast: Jeff Pollack |
| By Bob Lefsetz and Jeff Pollack |
| Jeff Pollack ran the leading rock radio consultancy in the '80s and '90s and then pivoted into music documentaries. Jeff is responsible for "Laurel Canyon" on Epix, Paul McCartney and Rick Rubin on Hulu and more. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “Titanic” |
| Earl Sweatshirt |
| From "Sick!" |
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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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