| Kellyoke is a utopian place beyond the limiting logic of rockism and crotchety arguments that people stopped writing decent songs after [insert your arbitrary year here]. Kellyoke believes that 'Jolene' can (and should!) coexist with 'High Horse,' 'Edge of Seventeen' with 'Dancing on My Own.' In a time of algorithmically controlled taste, Clarkson... is making an... argument that each of these compositions belongs in the modern pop songbook. |
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| Karaoke queen Kelly Clarkson on her own TV show, April 2022. Her "Kellyoke" EP is out today on Atlantic. |
| (Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Kellyoke is a utopian place beyond the limiting logic of rockism and crotchety arguments that people stopped writing decent songs after [insert your arbitrary year here]. Kellyoke believes that 'Jolene' can (and should!) coexist with 'High Horse,' 'Edge of Seventeen' with 'Dancing on My Own.' In a time of algorithmically controlled taste, Clarkson... is making an... argument that each of these compositions belongs in the modern pop songbook.”
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- Lindsay Zoladz, "The Daily Revelations of Kellyoke"
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| rantnrave:// |
You Must Remember This
One way to get a hauntingly clear picture of how deeply music is wired into our brains, hearts and souls is to spend time with someone with dementia. Like my mother, a bright, well-read, confident, curious woman who’s at a point in her journey where her short-term memory is all but non-existent and her long-term memory is a confusion fog that blends reality and fiction, recent events and long-ago ones, people she knew and people she didn’t. She communicates in short loops that sometimes spiral out in random improvisations and other times spin endlessly in place like a lock groove on a vinyl record. I asked her a few days ago to think of the highest number she could. “A hundred twenty-four,” she said. My new favorite number.
But name a song from her childhood or a long-forgotten advertising jingle, or start humming something, and she’ll jump right in, with no confusion and, it seems, no anxiety. And she’ll generally get it right. Words, melodies, everything. Mom always loved music—SINATRA is by far her favorite—but I have no memory of her ever actively playing a record or tape (that was dad’s job), and I’m not sure I ever heard her singing anything besides “Happy Birthday,” and she couldn’t hardly hold even that simple tune. A family of singers, we were not. But now, deep in dementia, she’s fearless in her singing, and weirdly accurate. Verses and choruses from decades and decades ago refuse to abandon her like everything else has, and she refuses to abandon them. They transcend a space that almost nothing else has transcended.
That’s what music does.
The relationship of music and memory has long been understood. Music triggers emotions. Emotions trigger memory. We feel the music that moves us and we store it forever. “Music,” TONY HO TRAN writes in a Daily Beast piece about a music-therapy startup called LUCID, “can invoke a whole tapestry of feelings, and the effects of a single song can be felt throughout a lifetime, with every repeated listen.” In Alzheimer’s patients, neurologist BORNA BONAKDARPOUR tells him, “the areas in the brain that are involved with music processing are the areas that go last. People lose verbal memory first, visual memory next, and really near the end is musical memory.” We’re wired to hold onto songs and symphonies.
Dementia music therapy is a growing field, and Lucid is using artificial intelligence to build personalized playlists that potentially could help people with anxiety as well as those with dementia, and which might be able to reach far more patients than therapists currently can. Music as a pharmaceutical. I’m rooting for the technology for the obvious personal reasons, but also because of what the company’s work says not only about dementia and memory, but about music itself and why we hold onto music so dearly. We hold on because we have, literally, no choice.
Rest in Peace
CHRISSIE DICKINSON, musician, multimedia artist and rock and country critic for the Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, Journal of Country Music and others... Model PASHA BLEASDELL, who starred in several music videos including Nelly’s “Hot in Herre”... FRANK URSOLEO, founder and president of the reissue label Iconoclassic Records.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| the fundamental things apply |
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The Daily Beast |
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| This Music-Powered Digital Drug Could Treat Alzheimer’s |
| By Tony Ho Tran |
| Music can invoke a whole tapestry of feelings, and the effects of a single song can be felt throughout a lifetime, with every repeated listen. That’s the case even when we’re suffering from some of the most debilitating illnesses that lay waste to our very mind. |
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The Bitter Southerner |
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| Killer Mike's More Perfect Union |
| By Christina Lee |
| Rapper Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike, leans on the wisdom of family, mentors, and the Dalai Lama to inform his wisdom and activism. |
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The New York Times |
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| The Daily Revelations of Kellyoke |
| By Lindsay Zoladz |
| Kelly Clarkson has covered more than 500 songs on her syndicated daytime series. The segments are one of the last predictably good things on network TV. |
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iHeartRadio |
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| Questlove Supreme: Wayne Shorter |
| By Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Wayne Shorter |
| Questlove Supreme interviews a true living legend of sound. Wayne Shorter tells Team Supreme about his time with Weather Report, The Jazz Messengers, and Miles Davis. Wayne also speaks about his earliest music memories and his draw to Buddhism. |
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Penny Fractions |
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| Music’s Future is Here: It’s Called Streaming (Part 1) |
| By David Turner |
| The record industry's primary source of revenue isn’t reliant on a hit record or song in the way it's traditionally been understood. People just need to hold a desire to listen to any music, not be pushed to a store to get the new no. 1 record, as was the case throughout most of the 20th and even 21st century. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music | Media |
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Suggest a link  |
| “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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