| It would be extremely exciting if music could take you on the same sort of high-thrill 3-minute ride as a theme park roller coaster. Where it spins you upside down, dips you in water, flashes strobe lights at you, takes you on a slow incline to the peak, and then drops you vertically down a smoky tunnel, then stops with a jerk, and your hair is all messed up, and some people feel sick, and others are laughing—then you buy a key ring. | | |
| | | Sophie at Coachella, April 19, 2019.
(Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) |
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| | | “It would be extremely exciting if music could take you on the same sort of high-thrill 3-minute ride as a theme park roller coaster. Where it spins you upside down, dips you in water, flashes strobe lights at you, takes you on a slow incline to the peak, and then drops you vertically down a smoky tunnel, then stops with a jerk, and your hair is all messed up, and some people feel sick, and others are laughing—then you buy a key ring.” | |
| | If You Let Me
I'm stuck trying to come up with something coherent and helpful to say about SOPHIE, a ridiculously gifted pop star who never quite became a pop star but almost certainly would have if life had given her a little more time, but whose influence on the past few years of pop is massive ("your favorite pop star's favorite pop star" is an overused cliché, but "your favorite pop star's current infatuation/inspiration" wouldn't be off the mark), and who touched countless lives in ways that even the most thoughtful analysis of her best songs would have a hard time getting at.
Pop lives simultaneously above the surface of its most surface-y songs and below the depths of its deepest ones. Sophie consciously worked both ends of that massive space. EL HUNT writes, for the Forty-Five, about the "limitlessness" of electronic music—"a medium that escapes the constraints of the physical form"—and what it means to feel seen by an artist using that form to explore her own existential questions. The whispery, confessional ballad "IT'S OKAY TO CRY," "which seems to speak to the pain of concealing queerness, offers light instead," Hunt says.
Vulture's SASHA GEFFEN, in a booming profile written in 2017, on the eve of Sophie's only studio album (it was proceeded by a collection of singles that packs its own kind of SINGLES GOING STEADY punch), investigates how Sophie's autobiography is woven into songs and productions that seem, on their surface, like they're trying their best to hide it. (See also: WARHOL.) "The loosening of gender boundaries," Geffen writes, "feels central, not incidental, to Sophie’s music, which is maybe why she doesn’t feel the need to talk about it. Anything she could say she’s already recorded." (As for the slow reveal of that autobiography in more conventional ways, I'm going to let this beautiful tweet from my friend JUDY MILLER SILVERMAN, who worked with her, say all that needs to be said.)
Sophie was obsessed with sound, especially those limitless possibilities of electronics, which she began exploring obsessively after her father, who regularly took her to raves with him, gave her a cheap keyboard as a birthday gift. Her productions, built on layers of heavily processed sounds of her own invention, "distilled speed, noise, melody, clarity and catchiness," JON PARELES writes in his New York Times obit. They were avant-garde and pop, as if there was no difference, which often there isn't.
One thing I couldn't help thinking about, as I re-listened to her music this weekend, is how she went in four years from the dizzying electro-pop bubblegum of "LEMONADE" to the mysterious mid-tempo grandeur of "INFATUATION" and the multi-layered, cinematic sweep of "WHOLE NEW WORLD / PRETEND WORLD," which, as artistic growth goes, is up there with BEYONCÉ going from "CRAZY IN LOVE" to her own LEMONADE, but faster. (See also: The BEACH BOYS. RADIOHEAD. Or fill in your own favorite example of a musical supernova. Not to compare. Just as context.) And I thought about how you could reverse that sentence and make it end with "Lemonade" and "BIPP," her other early calling card, which are both, not unlike "Crazy in Love," fully formed pop theses. "I can make you feel better," goes "Bipp," "if you let me." In one way or another, she spent the rest of her short career processing and re-processing that one line. She could have and should have been able to keep doing that for much, much longer. RIP.
Dot Dot Dot
COACHELLA has been canceled again (again), to quote the A-plus LA Times headline (written, Twitter informs me, by music editor CRAIG MARKS). The not unexpected decision to scrap Coachella and its country music sister STAGECOACH for a third straight time was made by the Riverside County Health Department, which says it would be all but impossible to track a Covid outbreak at a festival of that size. The two fests generate an estimated $400 million for the local economy, and all eyes are now on fall 2021... Could streaming royalties be paid out in a way that mirrors progressive taxes? The ASSOCIATION OF INDEPENDENT MUSIC (AIM) has proposed to the British parliament an "artist growth" model that would decrease per-stream royalties for streams above a certain threshold. As with income taxes, the association writes, "the more pounds you earn, the less each pound becomes worth to you net of tax." (H/T Complete Music Update's CHRIS COOKE)... A long-planned changeover at KCRW's influential MORNING BECOMES ECLECTIC: Music director ANNE LITT wraps up her yearlong stint as the show's temporary host this morning, and NOVENA CARMEL and ANTHONY VALADEZ take over Tuesday as the MBE's first permanent co-presenters... Ain't no one going to turn JEOPARDY guest host KEN JENNINGS around.
Rest in Peace
Guitarist HILTON VALENTINE, a founding member of British Invasion rockers the ANIMALS and player of these arpeggios... MICHAEL "DOUBLE K" TURNER, half of long-running indie hip-hop group PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS... Pop/R&B songwriter/arranger JERRY LUBBOCK... STEVEN SANTACRUZ, guitarist for British rock band PINK GREASE.
| | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | true as a wizard, just a blizzard |
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| | | Remembering Sophie, the once-in-a-generation artist who changed pop music forever | | by El Hunt | | El Hunt looks back on the life and work of a true musical visionary. | |
| rave:// Beautifully done profile from 2017. | |
| | | RETRO READ: Sophie Can Show You the World | | by Sasha Geffen | | And she’s changing pop music in the process. | |
| | Even before Covid, music was broken. Let's use this moment to hit reset | | by Tim Burgess | | The present streaming model makes artists acutely vulnerable to shocks like the pandemic. Something’s got to change, says Charlatans singer Tim Burgess. | |
| | This is what happens when a Buddhist nun joins a heavy metal band | | by Ralph Jennings | | She's quite a contrasting sight on stage alongside the other members of the band, some in goth make up, Grim Reaper capes and fake blood. | |
| | RETRO READ: The Playboy Interview: Berry Gordy (1995) | | by David Sheff | | A candid conversation with the maestro of Motown about building an empire against all odds, clashing with Michael Jackson’s father-and why he left all of it behind. | |
| | Lil Baby Is Ready to Embrace His New ‘Beginning’ As Rap’s Leading Superstar | | by Carl Lamarre | | Lil Baby speaks on his 2020 heroics, staying level-headed despite his rise in popularity, his friendship with James Harden, and welcoming his role as one of the new rap leaders. | |
| | Roadiecare: When Crews Fall Through The Cracks | | by Deborah Speer | | Dan O’Neil has been in some dark places over the last 10 months since his work as a guitar tech dried up, but none as much as when one of his colleagues in the industry “lost everything,” including his home. | |
| | Olivia Rodrigo and ‘Drivers License’ Aren’t Going Anywhere | | by Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, Justin Curto... | | A conversation about the year’s first genuine pop phenomenon, and the long arc of the Disney machine. | |
| | Streams of the Unconscionable | | by Lukas Harnisch | | As Spotify continues to dominate the streaming market, artists have to deal with alternative means in order to make a living. How will they survive the streaming economy? | |
| | RETRO READ: RIP Double K, Long Live People Under the Stairs | | by Jeff Weiss | | A re-upped profile of People Under the Stairs circa 2009. | |
| cheech wizard in a snow blizzard |
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| | quote:// "I understood my father, I understood his fight, but I never understood why he put everybody before his family." - Femi Kuti | |
| | | Different beat: how Fela Kuti’s son and grandson are modernising the dynasty | | by Kate Hutchinson | | Ahead of their new album, Femi and Made Kuti reflect on the Afrobeat pioneer’s legacy, their complex family, and the problems Nigeria still faces. | |
| | Foo Fighters interview: ‘I’d get beaten by police and rednecks’ | | by Helen Brown | | Ahead of Foo Fighters album number 10, ‘Medicine at Midnight’, Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins talk to Helen Brown about singing for Joe Biden, recurring dreams about Kurt Cobain, and why Grohl’s starting to notice that male rockstars experience ageism too. | |
| | Can This Music Rights Search Tool Solve a Big Industry Problem? | | by Glenn Peoples | | Rightsholder.io wants to make finding music copyright data easier for licensing professionals and others. | |
| | Results and Recommendations of the Artist Rights Watch MLC Awareness Survey | | by Chris Castle | | The basic questions about the MLC awareness we were trying to better understand were whether respondents even knew what we were asking about, and if so, how did they know. | |
| rant:// A helpful guide to her own records as well as her production oeuvre. | |
| | | Hear Sophie’s 12 Essential Songs | | by Lindsay Zoladz | | The producer and performer’s short but influential career had a profound impact on the way modern pop music sounds. She died after a fall in Athens. | |
| | Blackpink’s Arena-Sized Livestream ‘The Show’ Is the Next-Best Thing to Being There: Concert Review | | by Ilana Kaplan | | On Saturday night or Sunday morning - depending on the time zone - Blackpink fans finally got to experience the closest thing to an in-person concert from the group with "The Show." | |
| | Neighborhood opera composer | | by Mark Tiarks | | "Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood" had a resident trio led by jazz pianist Johnny Costa. It also had an uncredited resident composer who wrote more than 200 songs for it, as well as 13 operas. His name? Fred Rogers. | |
| | I thought classical music could stand up to anything. Now it feels more vulnerable than ever. | | by Michael Andor Brodeur | | The past 12 months have made one thing clear to me: Take nothing for granted. Stand guard for the things we share. Assuming the music will go on forever is inviting the silence to stay. | |
| | Electronic Dream Plant: The Punk Synth Company | | by Jim Allen | | With £200 and £100 synths in the late '70s, the makers of the Wasp and Gnat brought synth power to the people. | |
| | Brexit: What Next For UK DJs & Performers? | | by Harold Heath | | With the UK now out of the EU, we look at the impact of Brexit on travelling and working in Europe for UK DJs and performers. | |
| | | 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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