I’ve ... started listening to jazz. A lot. I don’t understand jazz, and I find that liberating. The music stays just music. I just listen instead of listening to what kind of bass drum they’re using. | | | | Gang Starr's Guru and DJ Premier, 1990.
(Martyn Goodacre/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | | | | | | “I’ve ... started listening to jazz. A lot. I don’t understand jazz, and I find that liberating. The music stays just music. I just listen instead of listening to what kind of bass drum they’re using.”
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| | rantnrave:// "Pop music follows the evolution of society in general. Everything moves faster. Intros have gotten shorter.” That's according to MAX MARTIN, who gives a master-class in pop songwriting and producing in an interview published a year ago by SWEDEN's DI WEEKEND and just now translated into English. Martin, who talks to reporters about as often as J.D. SALINGER did, advises that every chorus should have more energy than the previous one ("then, at the end, euphoria"), that it can be cool for the chorus to have the same melody as the verse because then listeners will already be familiar with it (see: ROBYN's "DO YOU KNOW [WHAT IT TAKES]" or PRINCE's "I WANNA BE YOUR LOVER"), that the bridge better be catchy because eventually your listeners are going to get tired of that chorus no matter how good it is, and that if you play your song for someone and "they start fiddling with their phones as the second verse kicks in," the problem is probably with your song, not with them. If you want to know how a pop producer hears pop music, this Q&A is gold... If you'd like to know how a pop star who has never signed to a label makes his money, CHANCE THE RAPPER has a quick and easy answer for interviewer KATIE COURIC: "I have a very successful merchandise business." Also, "reinvesting in myself"... ROLLING STONE guesses who might be invited to DESERT TRIP II—and who is likely to say no. The mag assumes it will be centered on '70s rock and pop, which would make it NOT-QUITE-AS-OLDCHELLA. Boo to RS for not considering ABBA (who are as likely to say yes as LED ZEPPELIN) and STEVIE WONDER (who would make a fab nine-hour double bill with BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN)... SPOTIFY is killing its inbox and messaging feature, which you won't be surprised to discover that nobody uses... RIHANNA is the HARVARD FOUNDATION FOR INTERCULTURAL AND RACE RELATIONS' Humanitarian of the Year... TOM DELONGE is the INTERNATIONAL UFO CONGRESS's UFO Researcher of the Year, which unfortunately has nothing to do with this UFO... LADY GAGA takes BEYONCÉs place at COACHELLA... Forty-plus members of THE FALL, cross-stitched. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Some of the most beloved hit-songs over the past 20 years were written by a swede. For the first time Max Martin tells his story. | | |
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| It was a muggy summer night in South Side, Chicago in 1979. In and around Comiskey Park, home to the long-struggling White Sox baseball team, the scene was one of total chaos. Thousands of working- and middle-class young men, predominately white, predominately angry, went riot. | | |
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| Katie Couric on Yahoo! News |
| Independent artist Chance the Rapper is shaking up the music industry. The 23-year-old unsigned rapper made Grammy history with his wins for his streaming-only album, Coloring Book. The Chicago rapper took home three awards -- Best Rap Performance, Best New Artist and Best Rap Album. | | |
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| Residents make a complex, joyous political statement in the city’s Ninth Ward. | | |
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| In December of 2016 I gave a TEDx Talk at Koç University in Istanbul, and the video of that talk just went live today! In my talk I discussed a number of issues that I write about on this blog, including my viral article on The Millennial Whoop. | | |
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| Plus: A new season of shows from Gimlet, award-winning audio fiction, and NPR's Embedded returns. | | |
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| There are two kinds of breakup albums: self-pitying ones and accusatory ones. Collections like Ryan Adams’s "Prisoner" and Miranda Lambert’s "The Weight of These Wings" struggle simply to find gravity amid upheaval, while ones like the first half of Beyoncé’s" Lemonade," blame for a couple’s disconnect is set at the feet of the guilty party. | | |
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| 'Local on the 8s' can be a shelter from the storm-or just upsetting dad rock. | | |
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| With many international acts refusing to perform in the Turkish city, the local scene has started to fight back against the negative perception it’s receiving on the global stage | | |
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| For every evangelist about this, though, there’s a sceptic wondering whether VR will be mainstream; whether music fans will want whizzy VR experiences; and whether business models will emerge to cover the costs of making those experiences. | | |
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| What the Roxanne Wars of the early 1980s can tell us about today’s feud of the moment. | | |
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| With a grainy recording of a college rap battle, Jamal Edwards started an £8m empire that released the talent of British estates and emboldened a generation of black British artists. | | |
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| Classical composers Philip Glass and John Corigliano have both had success scoring for the big screen. They debate that relationship with Jed Distler in New York | | |
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| An animated invitation to inhabit a rare neurological crossing of the senses. | | |
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| Though Prince's catalog is on Spotify and Apple, much of his music remains unavailable. We take a look at one such side project, the 1985 self-titled debut from "The Family." | | |
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| In June 1973, an act of arson that torched the UpStairs Lounge in the French Quarter of New Orleans killed 32 people. A new play revisits an overlooked tragedy. | | |
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| Swedish artist Jens Lekman’s new album is a refreshingly transparent, clear-headed statement of reenergized purpose. | | |
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| In the late 1970s, Sheffield--the former industrial powerhouse in the North of England--was a city in a state of flux. It was still defined by its manufacturing industry, one that churned out masses of steel and coal. Tall brutalist concrete buildings towered over the city’s skyline, drawing comparisons to Fritz Lang’s "Metropolis." | | |
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| Last fall, the strands of singer Rhiannon Giddens’s life and the hybrid tapestry of American music wound together in one evening-long whirl. At 5 p.m. she joined Eric Church to sing the country anthem “Kill a Word” on "The Tonight Show." | | |
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| Over the next three years, moviegoers will get more original tunes, live-action updates of animated classics, Broadway shows transported to the silver screen for the first time, and remakes of movie musicals we already know and love. Here are the 15 projects we’re most excited about, neatly divided into four categories. | | |
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| | | | | Kanye West and DJDS feat. The-Dream |
| | This remix of The-Dream's demo for "Bed" soundtracked the Yeezy Season 5 show at New York Fashion Week. |
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