The way music can transport you back to a long forgotten memory is the closest sensation we have to traveling in time. | | Little Simz at SXSW, March 14, 2017. Her third album, "Grey Area," is out today on Age 101. (Steve Rogers Photography/Getty Images) | | | | “The way music can transport you back to a long forgotten memory is the closest sensation we have to traveling in time.” |
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| rantnrave:// Stop the presses, SOLANGE's new album is out. Which is to say, Solange has pulled a BEYONCÉ. Best singing sisters since LORETTA LYNN and CRYSTAL GAYLE? (Um, yes)... How will your feelings about these musical siblings change in the next few days? DAN REED's controversial and sure-to-be-polarizing documentary LEAVING NEVERLAND airs in two parts Sunday and Monday nights on HBO. It's an intentionally one-sided, intimate profile of two men who say they were sexually abused by MICHAEL JACKSON as children. A four-hour prosecution with no cross-examination. "The approach is so insular," writes the RINGER's ROB HARVILLA, "that the documentary forgoes even the expected onscreen denials and disclaimers from Jackson’s lawyers or estate." The film seems practically designed to push viewers (and/or nonviewers) into two faraway corners. It may even push *you* into two faraway corners. "You can believe it and still not believe it," Harvilla writes. The best response I've seen to "Leaving Neverland" comes from the NEW YORK TIMES' WESLEY MORRIS, who notes that almost everything about Jackson's life—except his music, which no sane pop fan has ever not believed in—required a suspension of disbelief: "He lived in defiance of physics and race and gender, and we just kind of lived with that. We ate it up." Morris believes the victims, and wonders if Jackson himself was subconsciously trying to tell us all along. A great read heading into a compellingly difficult weekend for pop fans... The US music industry in 2018 had double-digit growth for a third straight year, led by a booming subscription market. With lingering questions about how long the overall US economy can continue to grow, this would be a good time to put some of those profits away and start thinking about rainy days ahead. Just sayin'... TOMMY BOY RECORDS, facing a backlash from the hip-hop community, puts the brakes on delivering the classic DE LA SOUL catalog to streaming services... Congrats to my friend ANNA BOND, the new director of business development, North America, at SONGTRUST... And to my friend BERTIS DOWNS for not running when he knew... Congrats also to the world's new most famous A&R man: LEBRON JAMES... It's FRIDAY and that means in addition to Solange there's new music from LeBron's protégé 2 CHAINZ as well as HOZIER, WEEZER, JAPANESE HOUSE, LITTLE SIMZ, HAND HABITS, WHILE SHE SLEEPS, ZARA MCFARLANE, CFCF, SIGRID, LIL SKIES, BRANKO, BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET, CACTUS BLOSSOMS, CRYSTAL FIGHTERS, BLU & OH NO, KRONOS QUARTET w/MAHSA & MARJAN VAHDAT, TEEN, ROYAL TRUX, IN FLAMES, MARK MORTON, BRYAN ADAMS, YVES JARVIS, QUEENSRŸCHE, DELLA MAE, CATHERINE RUSSELL, SELF ESTEEM, ROBERT FORSTER, DEE WHITE, POND, SNAPPED ANKLES, DELICATE STEVE, DJ MUGGS X ETO, TOM WALKER, DEMON HUNTER and CITIZEN COPE... RIP ANDRÉ PREVIN, STAN APPLEBAUM and DOUG SANDOM. | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| In a new documentary on HBO, two men accuse the star of sexually abusing them as children. Our critic wrestles with their stories, and his own fandom. | |
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From the start, they were conceived as a girl group with global appeal. As they touch down in the U.S. for the first time, can the new queens of K-pop crack the American pop code? | |
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In ELLE’S Music Issue, the singer explains why she puts her heart and soul into every song. | |
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As magazines reinvent the format of the celebrity profile, they spark questions about how much truth their audience is actually getting from today's biggest artists. | |
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The sounds percolating in Latin music are more experimental and varied than ever before, thanks in large part to its trap movement. | |
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Spotify's market cap has fallen by around $2bn since the start of this week. | |
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Wisdom from the first woman to make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. | |
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World music festival director says acts worry they will face visa problems this summer. | |
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'Uniform: paid for. Electric bill: paid for. Water bill: paid for.' | |
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In the streaming era, the art of burning CDs has been lost, and making playlists just isn't the same. | |
| The last time I spoke to Lil Pump for an interview, the teen rapper drifted off to sleep somewhere between anointing himself " the best SoundCloud rapper" and claiming Taylor Swift would feature on his mixtape. We spoke for about ten minutes total -- or rather, I spoke at him, while he fed me a series of half-truths and flat-out lies. | |
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Somehow, this ridiculous TV show - which became a surprise hit for Fox - had a genuinely emotional season finale. | |
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Quiet storm and slow-moving songs about the urgency of love are fading from view, but they’re not gone yet. | |
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The musician is under criminal investigation for his conduct, yet has made no moves to cancel his UK tour - leaving angry fans with tickets they can’t sell, or even return. | |
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The organization claims Coachella security denied 2018 concertgoers access to bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. | |
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After a transformative five years, Sharon Van Etten leaps forward on ’Remind Me Tomorrow.’ | |
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As the seminal hip-hop label Def Jam turns 35, it’s developing a roster of eager young recruits in order to reclaim its place in the upper echelon of the game. Inside one wild night coaching two dozen new homegrown stars. | |
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From Dipset's 'The Diplomats, Vol. 1' to Chance the Rapper's 'Acid Rap,' here are 25 mixtapes we want to see added to streaming services next. | |
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Jeff Mills is more than a DJ, more than a producer, more than a musician. | |
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They say it’s the same as it always was, but it’s not. | |
| | | | "Thank f*** for headphones!" From "So What?," out today on Sleeps Brothers. |
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