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| Country Star Morgan Wallen Has Had the No. 1 Album for 10 Weeks -- and the Industry Is Happy He’s Nowhere in Sight |
| by Chris Willman |
| Reports that Wallen is booking shows for the summer turned out to be ill-founded, but adverse reaction to the idea showed how unwise any quick comeback attempt would be... even as the embattled singer breaks records in absentia. |
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| The Brutal Audacity of Demi Lovato |
| by Rich Juzwiak |
| Rarely is a contemporary documentary with a pop star at its center so invested in *going there* as "Dancing with the Devil" is, and even more rarely does it deliver to the degree that this four-part YouTube Originals production does. |
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| 'So much pressure to look a certain way': why eating disorders are rife in pop music |
| by Rhian Jones |
| A documentary series about Demi Lovato shows how brutally controlled the singer’s diet once was, and, as other pop performers attest, it’s control that underpins damaging behaviour. |
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| What the Spotify/K-Pop Showdown Underscores About the Future of Streaming |
| by Noah Yoo |
| After the Korean conglomerate Kakao clashed with Spotify over international licensing agreements, the streaming platform removed hundreds of their artists’ catalogs-only to restore them 10 days and much public outcry later. |
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| 24kGoldn Became a Pandemic Pop Star. Now Comes the Real-World Test |
| by Joe Coscarelli |
| The 20-year-old rapper and singer had one of the biggest hits of last year with “Mood,” and is easing into the life of a celebrity with the release of his debut album, “El Dorado.” |
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| Migos Cooled Off. Can They Get Back on Top? |
| by Jessica McKinney |
| Over the last few years, Migos have lost momentum as a group. Heading into their new album ‘Culture III,’ can they return with another hot streak? |
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| Electronic Frontier Foundation |
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| Facebook Treats Punk Rockers Like Crazy Conspiracy Theorists, Kicks Them Offline |
| “I had 2,300 friends on Facebook, a lot of people I’d met on tour,” says singer Gina Marie of the Oakland band Oakland band Adrenochrome. “Some of these people I don’t know how to reach anymore. I had wedding photos, and baby photos, that I didn’t have copies of anywhere else.” |
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| Is the guitar solo dead in the 21st century? |
| by Jonny Scaramanga |
| Until now, the most famous guitar solos have been made almost exclusively by men, mostly from the US and UK. It would be arrogant to assume all the guitar’s possibilities have been explored when only a tiny slice of the population has even tried. |
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| SXSW 2021 music recap: We came, we saw, we channel-surfed on our couches |
| by Deborah Sengupta Stith and Peter Blackstock |
| We unpack what worked and didn't work as SXSW went online for 2021. |
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| Before Stevie and Lindsey, Peter Green was the soul of Fleetwood Mac. Just ask Mick Fleetwood |
| by Rob Tannenbaum |
| Founding Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green died in July, five months after Mick Fleetwood organized an all-star tribute concert to his ex-bandmate. |
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| Q’s With USC’s Dr. Stacy L. Smith On ‘Inclusion in the Recording Studio?’ |
| by Sarah Pittman |
| "If somebody is having a conversation and they think of women artists, and they think of Billie Eilish or Rihanna or Nicki Minaj or Adele, they’re going to likely overestimate how well women are doing in music. And that’s why data is important." |
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| It’s easy for women to be written out of their story. So I wrote my rock ’n’ roll friend back in |
| by Tracey Thorn |
| Lindy Morrison, drummer with the band the Go-Between, endured the trials of being a woman in the music business in the 1980s, and her story should be told. |
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| Why we believe streaming subscription ARPU fell by around 8% globally for the record industry last year |
| by Tim Ingham |
| MBW runs the numbers from the IFPI's must-read new Global Music Report covering 2020. |
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| Freak out! It's Nile Rodgers in your living room, singing and answering questions |
| by Etan Smallman |
| The superstar hitmaker spent five hours answering 350 questions - to become the world’s first voice-interactive digital portrait. He reveals why the tell-all experience was thrilling - and sometimes upsetting. |
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| Song Exploder: Jon Batiste – 'We Are' |
| by Hrishikesh Hirway and Jon Batiste |
| Pianist, songwriter and composer Jon Batiste talks about how he drew from his roots, at a very personal level — and at a cultural, historical level — and wove all of it into the title track of his 2021 album, "We Are." |
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| 52 songs, four hours, one album: How jazz trickster Sam Gendel made a pandemic opus |
| by Randall Roberts |
| Rising jazz star Sam Gendel has released three albums in the past 12 months, the most recent of which, 'Fresh Bread,' is 'Justice League'-long. |
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| HBO’s ‘TINA’ Raises Questions About How We Treat Famous Survivors of Abuse |
| by Rae Alexandra |
| It’s impossible to watch the new documentary without a sense of enthralled awe-and, probably, a little bit of guilt. |
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| beabadoobee’s Next Phase Begins Now |
| by Arielle Gordon |
| Beatrice Laus wrote her new EP 'Our Extended Play' with Matty Healy and George Daniel. |
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| Twenty Thousand Hertz: 20th Century Fox |
| by Dmitri Vietze, David Newman and Aubrey Solomon |
| The melodic fanfare that introduces every 20th Century Fox movie was first composed almost a hundred years ago. Since then, it's become one of the most enduring and recognizable pieces of music in modern history. It's survived company acquisitions, competition from television, and changing trends in Hollywood. But nothing lasts forever. |
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| How Lonnie Smith Found an Unlikely New Collaborator: Iggy Pop |
| by Brad Farberman |
| The soul-jazz organist and the punk frontman worked together on a pair of covers and discovered a musical kinship. |
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