| We should never have to worry about our safety or our lives in places that are dedicated to learning and growing... We need stricter gun control laws in America. |
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| Halsey at the American Music Awards, Los Angeles, Nov. 24, 2019. |
| (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
Trash TikToking
The irony of the HALSEY vs. CAPITOL RECORDS social media dustup, as I'm hardly the first to point out, is that the artist, in complaining about what the label wanted her to do, has given the label exactly what it asked for: a viral TIKTOK post. "i have a song that I love that i wanna release ASAP," Halsey wrote in the text of a Sunday morning TikTok, "but my record label won’t let me." According to Halsey, Capitol said no-go to a single "unless they can fake a viral moment on tiktok." Everything is marketing, she complained. "i'm tired." This is, of course, a little gross. It's also, of course, not new. Everything has always been—or at least has always been subject to—marketing for as long as there have been songs and records to market. Artists have always had to do press. Artists have always had to do radio. Artists have always had to shake hands and smile. In the social media era, artists have to make endless streams of content, day after day after day. In the current era, it's not out of the question that making records "may well come last" in the list of priorities for some artists. There are so many other things that must get done. *I'm* tired. Halsey's TikTok rant, in which her eyes wandered around the screen while a snippet of a new song, presumably *that* new song, played and her complaint slowly unfolded via text, was intimate and compelling and quickly went viral, as both she and her label wanted, presumably for different reasons (though can we ever be sure?). Capitol Records responded with a statement in which it said it believes in Halsey and "can’t wait for the world to hear their brilliant new music." (Halsey uses both "she" and "they" pronouns.) The label's statement didn't challenge a word of Halsey's rant. Halsey had already won this week's music news cycle. Why mess with that best of all outcomes? Why lie or deflect when you don't have to?
FKA TWIGS, CHARLI XCX and FLORENCE + THE MACHINE's FLORENCE WELCH have also complained publicly in recent weeks about their labels trying to squeeze TiKTok content out of them. But Welch, who began an a cappella TikTok performance in March with a heavy sigh and captioned it "The label are begging me for ‘low fi tik toks’ so here you go. pls send help," told the LA Times, "The fan community on TikTok was so funny and cute that I kind of started to enjoy it." She's continued to post a steady stream of TikTok videos, and no more sighing. Halsey has posted just one more TikTok, the same day as her label rant, in which she's having a release strategy discussion with an unseen adviser. "I just hate this," she tells him. "It sucks." There's only one line of text onscreen in that one: "I wish I was kidding lol."
MusicSET: "Halsey Rocks Around the TikTok."
Ad It Up
The good news about the bad news about SPOTIFY welcoming back political ads after a two-year hiatus is that music streaming users won't hear them—the ads will be podcast-only—and individual podcasters will have the power to refuse them. The bad news about the bad news is that Spotify, as Protocol's Issie Lapowsky reports, isn't as well equipped as companies like META and GOOGLE to vet and contextualize the ads for its users (and frankly those companies are hardly well equipped either). Spotify says it's "spent the past two years strengthening and enhancing our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content," and it will accept ads only from known entities and not from "issue" groups. The ads will be micro-targeted in all the creepy ways we've come to expect... After a 10-year run, PEPSI is giving up its sponsorship of SUPER BOWL halftime. The move saves Pepsi, which will continue to be an NFL partner, $40 to $50 million a year, which it may well shift to more targeted Super Bowl spending. And it raises the question, suggests Billboard, of whether "this could shift the calculus in terms of who might perform" at future halftimes—although, as the magazine notes, ROC NATION will continue to have control of that decision.
Etc Etc Etc
The NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION's "Grand Ole Night of Freedom" concert will go ahead as scheduled Saturday night during the org's annual convention in Houston, four days after a gunman killed 19 schoolchildren 275 miles away in Uvalde, Texas. Veteran country singers LEE GREENWOOD, LARRY GATLIN and T. GRAHAM BROWN have all confirmed they still think it's a good idea to perform, and SIRIUSXM's DANIELLE PECK is still hosting. But there'll be no "AMERICAN PIE"—singer DON MCLEAN has pulled out, saying, "In light of the recent events in Texas, I have decided it would be disrespectful and hurtful for me to perform." To the credit of the wider country music community, not a single artist who's had a hit in the last 20 years said yes to this gig except the host, and it's been 15 years for her... DAVID BOWIE and JERRY LEE LEWIS docs premiere in Cannes. FANNY doc premieres Friday in New York (and is headed to PBS in 2023)... BOB DYLAN and T BONE BURNETT are WU-TANG'ing their mysterious new-audio-format recording of Dylan's "BLOWIN' IN THE WIND," putting it up for auction as an edition of one, with an estimated price in the MARTIN SHKRELI range.
Rest in Peace
French metal singer GUILLAUME BIDEAU, whose bands included Mnemic, Scarve and One-Way Mirror.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| i gotta find peace of mind |
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REDEF |
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| REDEF MusicSET: Halsey Rocks Around the TikTok |
| By Matty Karas |
| Halsey goes viral with a TikTok video complaining that her label won't let her release a new song unless they can... make her go viral on TikTok. Are labels asking too much of artists, or are they getting exactly what they want? Or both? |
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Twenty Thousand Hertz |
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| Ghosts in the (Hit) Machine |
| By Andrew Anderson, Skyzoo and Dame Taylor |
| Many of today’s biggest songs are written and produced by people whose names don’t appear anywhere in the credits. They’re called ghostwriters and ghost producers, and they’re a huge part of the music industry. So what’s it like to watch your song become a hit when you can’t legally talk about it? |
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Passion of the Weiss |
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| Remembering Lil Keed: Rap’s Perfect Student |
| By David Brake |
| Cleveland Avenue is a five-lane thoroughfare that cuts sharply across South Atlanta. It runs about six miles below the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the high-rises of the city’s downtown, and Magic City. Driving east down Cleveland you’ll roll through a low sprawl of strip malls and liquor stores, gas stations and Auto Zones. |
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DownBeat |
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| Charles Mingus @ 100 |
| By Allen Morrison |
| He would have been 100 in April, offering an opportunity to reappraise his place in jazz history: as a composer, bassist and a singular American cultural figure. |
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GQ |
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| The World’s Newest Superhero: Bad Bunny |
| By Carina Chocano |
| In the six years since he quit his job bagging groceries, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio has become one of the most streamed artists alive, a professional wrestling champion, a whole new kind of cliché-shattering sex symbol--and next, a Marvel leading man. |
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Dada Drummer Almanach |
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| A Face Made for Radio |
| By Damon Krukowski |
| I suspect we are in an era of voices made for TV. Pop careers seem increasingly created by and for televised singing competitions, late-night talk show performances, and – not unrelated – the enormous video screens that frame festival stages. All of which feed into endless rebroadcast on YouTube and social media. |
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Abundant Living |
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| Viva Dead Ponies: In Memory of Cathal Coughlan, 1960/61-2022 |
| By Zachary Lipez |
| I was shocked to read that Cathal Coughlan died, but not because he seemed young, or because he’d ever given the impression, like Lemmy or Bowie did, that he’d live forever. I was shocked because I never thought of Cathal Coughlan as a man at all. I thought of him as a collection of songs. Or, to be honest, I thought of him as a secret catalog, that only I knew about |
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Slate |
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| My Schizophrenia Has a Soundtrack |
| By Sally Littlefield |
| There are times when I just want to revel in some of the memories and songs from my 10-month psychotic episode. |
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| what we're into |
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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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