Is it classical, is it pop? I don’t really think about it that way. There’s a beat, there’s a rhythm. Who cares about those distinctions any more? I use the same musical building blocks whatever kind of piece I make... Radio 3 and 6 Music overlap in a way you’d never have imagined. | | | | Brass-erie: French horn section of the New York Philharmonic, December 1938.
(Margaret Bourke-White/The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images) | | | | | | “Is it classical, is it pop? I don’t really think about it that way. There’s a beat, there’s a rhythm. Who cares about those distinctions any more? I use the same musical building blocks whatever kind of piece I make... Radio 3 and 6 Music overlap in a way you’d never have imagined.”
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| | rantnrave:// A quarter-century ago, when MIRANDA LAMBERT was in grade school and MAREN MORRIS was teething, a radio consultant set out to prove his theory that country radio listeners prefer a diet consisting of 85 percent men and 15 percent women. To do this, he ran a test at four of the stations he worked for that he thought were playing too many songs by women. He culled their playlists by removing the weakest-testing songs by all the women in their rotation and leaving only the strongest-testing ones, until he got the stations down to his magic 15 percent target. All of their ratings, not surprisingly, went up. He attributed this to the reduced number of female voices rather than to the reduced number of weaker tracks in rotation. He does not appear to have tried the reverse test, to see what would happen if he increased the percentage of women's voices on country radio by culling the weakest tracks by men. This is all according to his own blog, which is called the UnConsultant but might better be called Confirmation Bias (which would also be a good country song title; it rhymes, sort of, with "hey suits, play more tracks by us"). The consultant, KEITH HILL, is infamous in Nashville as the guy who started a scandal called SALADGATE a few years ago by pushing his 15 percent theory while describing women as the "tomatoes" in country music's salad and men as the "lettuce." Seriously. He said that. In the years since he tossed that awful metaphor, the percentage of women played on country radio has gotten worse, and Hill has stuck to his guns (or his mushrooms, if you will). He is now promoting the idea of hiring more women at country radio stations, which is a great idea, while advising them to play fewer women on the air, which is not. He places the blame for his theories squarely on female listeners, who allegedly get fatigued when they hear too many female voices. Think about that in the context of catfighting narratives that are all too common in our culture, and try not to cough up a hairball while you do. Think about that in the context of a radio industry that is consistently not exposing its audience to female voices, and then blaming the audience when those voices don’t get heard. Think about that in the context of this ROLLING STONE exposé on what women have to go through to get on country programmers' radar. Think about that in the context of this response to a woman actually having a major country radio hit in 2018. Keith Hill insists he is interested in nothing but ratings and profits, and frames his philosophy as giving people exactly what they want. In reality, though, he's telling people what they want, and then feeding exactly that to them. And there appear to be no substitutions allowed at this salad bar... Man walks into AVETT BROTHERS concert with a gun, tells security guards he's an out-of-state police officer, disappears into crowd. They cancel show. I would have, too... SONOS going public... An "APES***" tour of the LOUVRE... Best first-album, first-songs (what's missing?)... BET AWARDS on the move?... A beyond-classic BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN live recording gets its first official release, 40 years later... RIP VINCE MARTIN, BRET HOFFMAN and GARRY LOWE. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Five centuries ago, the world’s longest rave took place in Strasbourg - a ‘plague’ of dancing that was fatal for some. What caused it? Art, poetry and music of the time can provide some clues | | |
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| The resurgence of a traditional Afro-Puerto Rican musical genre owes something to formal experimentation. But some traditionalists fear that its roots are at risk. | | |
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| Even if you don’t know "Seven Nation Army," chances are you know the first seven notes. | | |
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| Three years later, the guy who said women should be treated like "tomatoes" on country radio is doubling down, though women are down to 10% of airplay. | | |
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| The closer the music got to the mainstream, the more it got watered down, and yet somehow the loose collective's core message broke through. (Excerpted from "90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality" by Allison Yarrow.) | | |
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| Life as a musician at sea may sound glamorous, but not if you're working for a dictatorial Romanian diva. Bill King survived to tell the tale here, and he remains a lover of ocean travel. | | |
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| The rapper’s third record, which will come out on Empire, may not be released until October. Streams of his music have soared since his death in June. | | |
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| Sonos Inc. filed for a U.S. initial public offering as the wireless speaker pioneer gears up to take on increasing competition from Amazon, Google and Apple. | | |
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| Why Jay Z and Beyoncé's latest move didn't make industry ripples like it once might have. | | |
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| One of my favorite classical radio stations is making a meal over measures that one of my favorite conductors is taking to combat coughing in the music hall. San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas now gives away cough drops at concerts. | | |
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| Meet the rising rapper owning her weirdness. | | |
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| The Italian composer discusses her creative process. | | |
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| The head of global touring for Live Nation dishes on digital disruption, ticket prices and his most disastrous decision ever. | | |
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| When he stands at a microphone, Arcanabyss Brooks is beyond mortal. His fans even chant his name. | | |
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