It's a beautiful sound, but for me to fool with electronic music, I'd feel that I was being programmed by Bell Telephone... These people could pull the plug out of me at any time and I wouldn't be able to express myself. So I just like dealing with the natural way of being and the natural vibrations of music. | | | | Rahsaan Roland Kirk, circa 1960.
(Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “It's a beautiful sound, but for me to fool with electronic music, I'd feel that I was being programmed by Bell Telephone... These people could pull the plug out of me at any time and I wouldn't be able to express myself. So I just like dealing with the natural way of being and the natural vibrations of music.”
| - | Rahsaan Roland Kirk, 1972 |
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| | rantnrave:// Could the GRAMMYS be next? If PARASITE can win Best Picture at the OSCARS—becoming the first non-English-speaking film to do so—can a non-English-speaking band like BTS seriously compete for Album or Record of the Year at the Grammys? Can ROSALÍA? Can they and other musicians walk through the same door that director BONG JOON-HO and "Parasite" appear to have cracked open in Hollywood? It's not as if the Academy Awards and Hollywood in general have suddenly become havens of diversity, but Sunday's surprising Oscar results has the film industry abuzz with possibilities and questions about what this means for international film going forward. (There's also some racism going around, this is America, but let's try not to think about that right now.) This may sound stupid, but one of the ways you diversify a business is to just go ahead and diversify it. Back projects by women and people of color, and more women and people of color will start walking through the door. Give awards to female musicians and musicians of color, and more people just like them will start coming into view. Music is different from film in countless ways. There's no real equivalent of movie subtitles for a song, for example. On the other hand, you can follow almost any song without understanding the words, which isn't quite the case with film (I still don't know the words of half the English-speaking songs that I love; do you?). The demographics for international pop and international film are almost certainly different. Etc. But if you think people at the DOLBY THEATRE were going out of their minds for "Parasite" Sunday night, check out Americans in a stadium losing it to BTS. The music translates. There's a precedent, sort of, at the Grammys. STAN GETZ and JOÃO GILBERTO's jazz-meets-bossa-nova collaboration GETZ/GILBERTO, whose vocals are mostly in Portuguese, was Album of the Year in 1965. But the hit that drove the album's commercial success—and won Record of the Year—was an English language single sung by Gilberto's wife, ASTRUD. "Getz/Gilberto" without "THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA" is still a classic jazz album, but is it a multimillion seller and Grammy darling? Two years ago, "DESPACITO" was nominated for two of the big four Grammys, but it was the version with JUSTIN BIEBER. The "Parasite" crew celebrated its Oscar wins with an afterparty featuring K-pop band A.C.E., whose set included covers of their countrymates BTS (who are friends with "Parasite" actor CHOI WOO-SHIK). Is that other Hollywood industry ready for one of those bands having an after-party of its own anytime soon? Are music fans ready?... Did IDINA MENZEL really hit that high note?... "Virtually all of our agreements with recording artists [are] a work-made-for-hire relationship"... This SPOTIFY ad? Gross, surely. But it's really just another kind of product placement. They'll get better at it soon enough, and you might stop noticing. It will still be gross, though... RIP LYLE MAYS, MIRELLA FRENI and DJ SLICK B. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Most of us move away from the soundtracks to our earlier lives. Thank God for the invention of podcasts. | | |
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| Meet the new generation of talent transforming music's whitest genre. | | |
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| Even though the way we access pop music has changed and gone digital, hitmakers lag behind other industries in terms of globalisation. | | |
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| Being eighteen and unimpressed is a thrill, but being forty-seven and humble is pretty great. | | |
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| Spotify's founder and CEO has control of voting shares linked to Tencent's stake in his company. | | |
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| Alternative title: if you can sell a Dutch guy a bicycle helmet, music can make giving a damn about the environment a lot cooler. | | |
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| Roberta Flack is only solo artist to win two consecutive Record of the Year Grammys and she helped usher in an enduring style of R&B. Could she be pop music's most under-appreciated influence? | | |
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| Music is the original gig economy, and the concerns of the musical underclass are shaped by America at large. | | |
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| After dropping 'Fuck the World,' Brent Faiyaz spoke with Complex about new music, his affinity for London, Tyler, the Creator and genres, and more. | | |
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| Binaural beats, which you can find in playlists on Spotify or YouTube or anywhere else people post music and sounds, are an auditory illusion designed to stimulate the brain. Proponents frame them as a pharma-free way to encourage the brain to perform the way you’d like it to. | | |
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| | | quiet nights of quiet stars |
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| "Break My Stride" first climbed the charts thanks to a payola scheme. Nearly four decades later, it suddenly went viral--organically. | | |
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| For a generation of African-American guitarists growing up in the '60s, Jimi Hendrix's was revelatory. The album, which introduced the guitarist's new trio with bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles, reached the Top 10 on the Billboard album chart. | | |
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| Snafu Records is bringing a new approach to finding musical talent - founder and CEO Ankit Desai described the Los Angeles-headquartered startup as "the first full-service, AI-enabled record label." | | |
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| Splice, the popular platform for rights-cleared sounds and beats, has paid out more than $25 million to musicians in its artist-to-artist marketplace, the company has revealed. The milestone marks a significant acceleration since announcing a year ago that it had reached $15 million in payouts. | | |
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| We meet the DIY crew who gave an early platform to bands like Black Midi and Sorry when they were still just teenagers. | | |
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| Musician Huey Lewis reflects on over 40 years of being an entertainer, the illness that threatens to end his singing career, and the mechanics of writing a good pop song. | | |
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| The singer-songwriter reflects on her 'crazy, tumultuous year' and the 'Grey's Anatomy' marathons that got her through it. | | |
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| We know that music has the power to affect our moods, but you might be surprised by just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Music can affect our brains and bodies in profound ways. Professor Jessica Grahn tells us how our love for music has shaped us as humans while Nate Sloan unpacks our appreciation of music, and reveals how it can be used to manipulate us, both for bad and for good. | | |
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| The writing on the wall at Record Plant reads, "Those who can go anywhere, come here." Reaffirming that sentiment are photos of musical heavyweights like David Bowie, Prince and Freddie Mercury on a wall that pays homage to the iconic studio's star-studded list of clientele. | | |
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| Ira Kaplan explains why the iconic indie-rock trio handle their business affairs in-house. | | |
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