Touring is how you sell records. As Lou Reed told us very early on, 'You know, you gotta tour. The fans, they want to view the body.' That’s really what it is. They want to view the body. | | | | BTS fans outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Sept. 9, 2018.
(Getty Images) | | | | | | “Touring is how you sell records. As Lou Reed told us very early on, 'You know, you gotta tour. The fans, they want to view the body.' That’s really what it is. They want to view the body.”
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| | rantnrave:// In the past month, K-pop fans have jammed racist hashtags on Twitter, crashed a Dallas police app that was trying to identify protesters, raised more than $1 million for Black Lives Matter and taken credit for helping to depress the turnout at PRESIDENT TRUMP's Tulsa rally—all using the same tools with which they've turned songs by BTS and other artists into massive online hits. Much has been written about how this apparently sudden explosion of activism may not be quite as sudden as it seems. There's a certain affinity for activism almost built into the idea of being a K-pop fan—especially in the US, where the community conducts relentless campaigns to make stars out of non-English-speaking artists who haven't always been welcomed by radio and other mainstream media. While the genre's most prominent groups have traditionally steered clear of political partisanship and controversy, the music itself has been embraced as both propaganda by the South Korean government and as a soundtrack for protests against that government. K-pop lyrics and memes were seen last year at street protests in Chile and Algeria. In the US, where there's a significant Black presence in the K-pop fanbase, along with an awareness that the music owes a heavy debt to Black predecessors, the Black Lives Matter movement could be seen as a natural ally (even if, ironically, those Black fans haven't always been made to feel welcome within the scene), and the shift from chart activism to political activism may not have been all that wide a turn. "You can go on K-pop Twitter," K-pop scholar CEDARBOUGH SAEJI told the NEW YORK TIMES, "and you will see somebody post about Black Lives Matter and then 10 minutes later post something about the cutest idol that they are totally fan-girling over. They don’t see a contradiction there." Reading that quote made me think about how modern pop fans—and artists—don't give a second thought to swimming back and forth between pop and rock and hip-hop and techno and metal and any number of other styles. It's all easily accessible, so why wouldn't you access it? Likewise, political activists are exactly as within reach as playlist programmers; why not reach out simultaneously to both? Why think of them as in competition with each other, when you can you have your BTS, and BLM, too? MusicSET: "K-Pop Fans Step in the Political Arena"... The EAGLES, PEARL JAM, DISTURBED, WIZ KHALIFA and JASON ISBELL are among more than 50 artists who got federal PPP loans of at least $150,000 to support their crews during the pandemic, according to ROLLING STONE. The largest of those loans were in the neighborhood of $1 million, and in, for example, the Eagles' case, were aimed at saving as many as 50 jobs. Labels got loans, too, per PITCHFORK, which lists SUB POP, THIRD MAN, DREAMVILLE and LIGHT IN THE ATTIC as among the significant recipients... Meanwhile, 26 percent of fans responding to a new NIELSEN MUSIC/MRC DATA survey say they'd be willing to go to a live show within a month of a Covid-19 vaccine or treatment becoming available, which is a bump up from previous surveys. I assume I needn't tell you what the enormous wild card in that sentence is... The RECORDING ACADEMY is partnering with the online organization COLOR OF CHANGE to increase opportunities for Black artists and professionals in the music business. "We’ve seen the great work that they’ve done in Hollywood with TV and film and saw the opportunity to extend that to music," said VALEISHA BUTTERFIELD JONES, the Academy's chief diversity and inclusion officer... A summer issue of the recently revived fanzine MAGGOT BRAIN is available as a free PDF... TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON was voted jazz artist of the year in the 2020 DOWNBEAT Critics Poll... RIP JOE PORCARO. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| They've jammed racist hashtags, flooded a Dallas police inbox and taken credit for depressing turnout at one of President Trump's rallies—using the same tools with which they've turned BTS videos into massive YouTube hits. How did the K-pop fanbase get political, and why didn't anyone notice before? | | |
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| Japandroids’ ‘Massey F***ing Hall’ is a force of nature. It’s also a reminder of a different world. | | |
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| He’s solidified his place in the Latin hip-hop pantheon while subverting the genre’s machismo via his inclusive sound, message and look. But beneath Bad Bunny’s trap-god exterior, the 26-year-old from Puerto Rico is just trying to get it right | | |
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| Two years after overdosing, the singer has a new hobby (painting), a new manager (Scooter Braun), and a new mandate (doing exactly what she wants). | | |
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| In this guest column, David Israelite, president & CEO of the National Music Publishers' Association, argues in favor of the CASE Act, which would create a board within the U.S. Copyright Office to decide copyright disputes rather than going before a court. | | |
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| Emergencies have a way of shining a bright light on flawed thinking and dumb ideas. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed latent, and embarrassing, American weaknesses, from the highest levels of government right down to the grocery stores, where Karen and Ken refuse to follow basic public safety rules. | | |
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| The famed composer made soundtrack music that lived on its own. Each piece was an expressive universe unto itself. | | |
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| Our critic recalls the Ennio Morricone interview in which he talked about his radical music-making with an experimental ensemble known as the Group. | | |
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| Stars like Dua Lipa are freshening their sound by drawing on pop’s mirror-ball past. | | |
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| The posthumous debut album of the Brooklyn rapper reverberates with the tragedy of his untimely death. | | |
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| We take a look at the pedal steel guitar and a few of the artists with a desire to push it forward. Learn how this unique instrument fits in jazz. | | |
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| Jennifer Lucy Allan asks what's not to like about a singular medieval instrument whose sound most closely resembles a heavy metal drone group. | | |
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| Chloe x Halle talk to Billboard about “Do It” debuting on the Hot 100, what it’s like developing under Beyoncé’s tutelage, their new album, and more. | | |
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| Black American artists being more widely accepted and promoted in country music is an act of restorative justice. | | |
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| We may be in the era of higher visibility, with women in hip-hop dominating the charts, but misogyny still persists behind closed doors and on social media. | | |
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| Sports analysts have recently adopted a system that groups the major college football programs into tiers, and that concept applies nicely to the major labels halfway through the marketshare season. | | |
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| Ryan Adams has apologized for his history of, in his words, " mistreating women." Mandy Moore, who was married to Adams from 2009 to 2015, was understandably unimpressed. "I find it curious that someone would make a public apology but not do it privately," she said in a Today show interview. | | |
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| Both artists quietly teased new music over the holiday weekend. | | |
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| Billboard Korea spoke to Yiruma about how he’s taking all this in. | | |
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| Brilliantly out of step, the rock provocateur architected revolutionary sounds with the Stooges and Bowie. | | |
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| Not really. I don't say that with any certainty mostly because trying to do this for a living is like constantly hovering over a body you found in the street, sticking your finger under the nostrils to see if that's breath from the body's lungs that you feel or just a passing wind. | | |
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| | | | | | | Side project of BTS rapper Suga. From "D-2," out now on Big Hit Entertainment. |
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