| People put too much emphasis on what somebody else can do for them, and what you can’t do for them. I didn’t sit around and wait for somebody to bust these moves for me. | | |
| | | Cynthia Erivo as Aretha Franklin in "Genius: Aretha."
(Richard DuCree/National Geographic) |
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| | | “People put too much emphasis on what somebody else can do for them, and what you can’t do for them. I didn’t sit around and wait for somebody to bust these moves for me.” | |
| | Dangerous Territory
MORGAN WALLEN's DANGEROUS is one of only three albums in history to debut at #1 on the BILLBOARD 200 and stay there for at least 10 weeks. The other two are WHITNEY HOUSTON's WHITNEY and STEVIE WONDER's SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE. You don't need to sell nearly as many albums today as you did in Whitney's 1987 or Stevie's 1976 to top the chart—technically you don't need to sell any albums at all anymore—but you do have to outperform your contemporaries in the marketplace just as they had to outperform theirs. Which is to say, even when you account for the strange dearth of superstar albums in the first quarter of 2021, "Dangerous" is a historic, albeit strange, commercial juggernaut. In its 10th chart-topping week, "Dangerous" sold 4,000 copies and got credit for another 1,000 via sales of individual tracks. Its songs were streamed 89 million times, which, in Billboard's complex math, translates to another 64,000 albums sold.
The consumption of Wallen's music in 2021 is a uniquely private affair. For most of the album's run, for reasons that have been well covered, its songs haven't being played on the radio, and because of the pandemic, fans aren't hearing them en masse in arenas, in clubs or even in record stores. None of those methods of communal listening affect the album charts, but they have a lot to do with how songs and albums become cultural phenomena beyond the chart section of a trade magazine. It's how legendary albums like "Whitney" and "Songs in the Key of Life" became part of the air that almost any sentient being breathed in their time (we still breathe some of that air today). It's how TAYLOR SWIFT's FEARLESS, GARTH BROOKS' ROPIN' THE WIND and BILLY RAY CYRUS' one-hit-wonder-album SOME GAVE ALL—the only three country albums that have spent more time at #1 than "Dangerous"—became as essential to Nashville life as the GRAND OLE OPRY and Lower Broadway. "Dangerous" is a very well-made, well-sung album, but it isn't that. Not yet.
Wallen's historic run will almost certainly end next week, when the competition will include JUSTIN BIEBER, who's never *not* debuted at #1 with a full-length album, and LANA DEL REY, whose last five have all bowed in the top 3, two of them at #1. And then I might suggest one more national conversation. Not about Wallen himself. Not about whether his punishment was too harsh or not harsh enough, and not about when it will be OK to welcome him back into the pop culture mainstream. Not about what is or isn't in his heart. Rather, I'd like to suggest a conversation about what it means that the songs on "Dangerous" were streamed 89 million times last week, nearly two months after he sent a single terrible word, and all the terrible history contained within it, into the air that everyone in Nashville has had to breathe ever since. And what it means that, his own apology and penance notwithstanding, music fans have decided this is a cause to rally around. And what exactly that cause is. I'd like to suggest a conversation, this time, about what's in *our* hearts.
Dot Dot Dot
US venues battered by the pandemic can finally begin applying for Shuttered Venue Operators Grants on April 8—more than a year after their business all but disappeared. Congress has set aside more than $16 billion for the program... A bill introduced last month in the California state Assembly would prevent record companies from signing artists to contracts longer than seven years. The MUSIC ARTISTS COALITION and BLACK MUSIC ACTION COALITION are among the groups lobbying for the bill, which would remove decades-old exemptions that treat record companies and film and TV studios differently from all other employers in the state, for whom the length of personal service contracts is strictly regulated... What is March Madness without the bands?
Rest in Peace
Original UNDEROATH guitarist COREY STEGER... Bebop pianist FREDDIE REDD... PAUL JACKSON, bassist for HERBIE HANCOCK's HEADHUNTERS... Rock singer/songwriter DAN SARTAIN... JT GRAY, owner of Nashville bluegrass institution the STATION INN... Baroque harpsichordist KENNETH COOPER.
| | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | | | Benny the Butcher Doesn’t Know Anything but the Truth | | by Justin Sayles | | Few rappers had a bigger past 12 months than Benny the Butcher, who dropped his most successful album to date, starred in a movie, and recorded the official anthem for his hometown Buffalo Bills. Now, he’s back with the ‘The Plugs I Met 2,’ and he’s not stopping there. | |
| | 'Unchain my art' – Eugene Mthethwa and sorting out the royalties tangle | | by Gwen Ansell | | Severe relationship problems persist between South Africa's largest royalties collection agency and its constituency at the very time when musicians are most desperately in need of revenue. | |
| | Who Is Demi Lovato’s Honesty For? | | by Anna Walsh | | For a decade, the pop star has made openness about mental health and addiction a core part of her brand. With ‘Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil,’ she’s finally embracing honesty on her own terms. | |
| | Audio streaming 3: follow the money | | by David Karlin | | In the first and second articles in the series, we looked at the streaming industry’s revenues, how they’re shared out between the music we listen to and how we choose that music. This week, we’re going to look at who ultimately receives the money – and at how the industry could or should change. | |
| | Yearning for Life on Tour, Roadies Open Up Online | | by Alex Marshall | | Backstage music crews were set adrift by the pandemic. For some, a weekly Zoom group has been the answer. | |
| | Interview: Nitin Sawhney | | by Om Malik | | For a long time, Nitin Sawhney has occupied a prime slot on my very short bucket list of people to interview. We are part of the same generation, and his albums capture the reality of the world as seen through the eyes of an immigrant. I had once described him as the Dylan of the connected, wired, post-globalization world. | |
| | 5 Lessons You Can Learn From Troy Carter's Relentless Determination | | by Polina Marinova Pompliano | | Lessons from the music industry veteran, talent manager, and startup investor. | |
| | The Nas generation of scholars: Finally, a Grammy for the hip hop artist who led me to liberation | | by Darryl Robertson | | His discography gave me a blueprint, unleashing a flood of curiosity about Black history and literature. | |
| | The Scott 4 cassette | | by Mark Brend | | Though it seems impossible now even to imagine it, once, there was a lost estate of music, apparently inaccessible forever. Before streaming and before the CD reissue goldrush that preceded streaming, there was a time when almost the entire history of recorded music was not just a few clicks away. Some of us remember this. | |
| | At This Japanese Firm, You Get Paid Leave If Your Idol Retires | | by Hanako Montgomery | | Talk about corporate benefits. | |
| | | For Decades, Countless Young Latinas Like Me Have Regarded Selena as an Icon. Maybe It’s Time We Took Her off the Pedestal | | by Cat Cardenas | | If we’re going to honor the real Selena-and find a way to carry her with us-we need to imagine what she might have done if she had lived a full life. | |
| | Artists have a 0.2% chance of generating $50k a year on Spotify. Let’s kick this stat around | | by Tim Ingham | | Spotify's new website has started a debate. The world of soccer might provide some answers. | |
| | 'We won't make enough money to exist': live music sector still highly uncertain | | by Katie Hawthorne | | With a backlog of gigs and uncertain rules around reopening, bands and venues are worried as UK pandemic wanes. | |
| | Feedback Loops: How The Who Turned Pop Into Self-Destructive Art | | by Peter Stanfield | | In an extract from his new book, "A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk," Peter Stanfield explores the web of connections between Pete Townshend and the cybernetic art of Gustav Metzger and Roy Ascott. | |
| | Addison Rae on Her Pop Reinvention and Debut Single ‘Obsessed’ | | by Janelle Okwodu | | Debut singles are the musical equivalent of an introduction. But what happens when we've already met the singer long before the debut? | |
| | 2021 Grammys: How They Pulled Off An In-Person Ceremony | | by Joe Lynch | | Here's how the Grammys pulled off an in-person broadcast in the COVID-19 era. | |
| | How To Start A Record Label | | by Tom Faber | | Tom Faber guides us through the particulars of launching your own outlet, with expert advice from leading label owners. | |
| | Hip-hop professor looks to open doors with world's first peer-reviewed rap album | | by A.D. Carson | | Can college professors rap their way into academic publishing? One professor makes an album to prove they can. | |
| | With the UK’s right to peaceful protest under threat, protest music is more important than ever | | by Jenessa Williams | | In this week’s subtweets, Jenessa Williams admires the current vibrancy of protest music, and wonders how a police crackdown on gatherings might alter creative expression. | |
| | 'As Though It Is Everywhere': An Interview with Hanif Abdurraqib | | by Kevin Smokler | | In his four books of poetry, essay, and biography, Hanif Abdurraqib connects forms of music and culture America calls its own with the Black genius practitioners of that music and the white racist violence inseparable from its creation. | |
| | | | Music of the day | | "Pullin'" | | Aretha Franklin | | From "Spirit in the Dark" (1970). | |
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From "Spirit in the Dark" (1970). | | | Video of the day | | "Genius: Aretha" | | National Geographic/Imagine | | Continues tonight on National Geographic with episodes 3 and 4. | |
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Continues tonight on National Geographic with episodes 3 and 4. |
| | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | “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?’” | | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator |
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