His voice is a more expressive instrument than any song with the lyrics 'Baby bust it open like woo-hoo' should ever demand. The gap between the puerility of what he is often saying and the pure yearning with which he is expressing it is startling. | | | | Post Malone at the Wireless Festival, London, July 6, 2018.
(PA Images/Getty Images) | | | | | | “His voice is a more expressive instrument than any song with the lyrics 'Baby bust it open like woo-hoo' should ever demand. The gap between the puerility of what he is often saying and the pure yearning with which he is expressing it is startling.”
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| | rantnrave:// This is a gorgeous rock ballad about a volatile, probably toxic relationship, built on lush major 7th chords that, in the tradition of so much great rock music, appear to be at odds with the subject matter. It features over-earnest singing, one well-placed cuss word and an understated 12-bar slide guitar solo. It’s from 2018 and it's by POST MALONE. I saved the name for last, to increase the chances you would click on it. I'm not prepared to love 2018's most reviled pop star as much as PITCHFORK's JAYSON GREENE suggests he does in this beautifully written, musically astute plea for reconsideration. I'm ready to like him, though, not unlike the way I liked KID ROCK, another white rapper with country-rock ambitions, before he became a gaslighting political troll. Post Malone is a much better singer. There's plenty more to love on his second album, BEERBONGS & BENTLEYS, not least the current single, "BETTER NOW," which glides in on a four-chord new-wavey teenage dream keyboard loop, but in a minor key, and proceeds to detail the ways the singer is not even remotely over his most recent breakup. Post Malone has been on my mind since I read this tweet last week quoting an unnamed "v senior" music exec lamenting the sorry state of pop music. There have been v senior execs saying this every day since the dawn of time, and 20 years from now a v senior exec who grew up loving Post Malone will utter the same sentence to somebody who grew up loving IMAGINE DRAGONS and they will nod their heads in agreement and share a moment of sad silence together. Whatever will prompt them to have that conversation, that's what I most look forward to hearing come 2038. Meanwhile, the next time you find yourself worrying that today's pop stars are lacking in realness or chops or whatever it is that may be bothering you, treat yourself to a video of Post Malone shopping for guitars, or maybe one of him fingerpicking "DON'T THINK TWICE, IT'S ALL RIGHT"... Speaking of IMAGINE DRAGONS, is it time to reconsider them, too? UPROXX's PHILIP COSORES' makes a somewhat backhanded case here... After months of speculation, our friend TROY CARTER says he will leave SPOTIFY in September... Spotify users may leave even sooner if the service continues to host a podcast by ALEX JONES... VIVENDI says it will sell up to half its stake in UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP but will not spin off the division... SKY FERREIRA got her SOUNDCLOUD account back and this is so on-the-nose it's perfect... RIP TERRY BASSETT and SAM MEHRAN. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| Whether he’s singing about poignant heartache or “beautiful boobies,” the pop star’s party music is curiously affecting. | | |
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| A small handful of musicians have quietly played a huge part in creating some of the biggest songs of recent years. Now they’re done being "secret weapons," and they're banding together to get what’s theirs. | | |
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| Eison Triple Threads thinks men will be drawn to their favorite artists’ styles. | | |
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| You can write a song, whether you play an instrument or just write poetry that works as lyrics. Rising country music star Emily Hackett explains how. | | |
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| Beginning on Valentine's Day 1970, in a succession of Manhattan spaces outfitted with audiophile soundsystems and innumerable balloons, David Mancuso hosted a members-only party that was a safe space for many marginalized communities. The Loft is often lumped in with the rest of New York City’s famous '70s discos, but the Loft preceded them all, and the party continues to this day. | | |
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| Vivendi lit up the industry rumor mill by announcing that it will look for a strategic partner, or possibly two, to sell up to 50% of the Universal Music Group, igniting a firestorm of speculation on who likely suitors could be, even though the company has yet to begin the process. | | |
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| Danny L Harle sits in his London studio when I call him up on Skype. At the time, he's been busy working on a heap of new material before flying out to New York at Charli XCX's request to DJ the after party for her sold-out Pop 2 performance. | | |
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| Imagine Dragons are the most successful contemporary rock band, and they deserve it. | | |
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| Popular music has always delivered social critique. But it’s struggled to grapple with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. | | |
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| Opera Australia's new production of Aida features movable LED panels with digital scenery. It's part of a revolution transforming the art form. | | |
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| Perhaps more than any other modern pop star, Christina María Aguilera breaks the mold and pushes dramatically against Lieb's suppositions. Although known popularly by the moniker "Xtina", Aguilera refused from the outset to change her "too ethnic" sounding official name for brand mass appeal. | | |
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| A succession of conversations with record labels over the last couple of months has made me start to ponder whether we are approaching a tipping point in streaming era A&R. At the heart of the conversations is whether the growing role of playlists and the increased use of streaming analytics is making label A&R strategy proactive or reactive. | | |
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| The morning of August 8, 2004 dawned cool and crisp in Chicago. It was the perfect day to take in the city’s sights without being overwhelmed by its usual summertime heat and humidity. Tourists lined up for the Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier, went shopping up and down the Magnificent Mile, boarded double-decker buses that would whisk them down Lake Shore Drive. | | |
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| Conductor apologizes to women after Washington Post report. | | |
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| Boz Scaggs lost his home and a trove of lyrics scribbled on legal pads and cocktail napkins in wildfires last year. Writing his new album, "Out of the Blues," helped him process the loss. | | |
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| Gamma, the oversized electronic music and contemporary art event, has just wrapped in St. Petersburg, RU. We talk to Moscow-based curator Natalia Fuchs about transformations both historical and future in the realm of intermedia art and technology culture. | | |
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| 21 years later, the club and record label is still a driving force in Russia’s nightlife. | | |
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| The 'Beautiful Soul' hitmaker was the ultimate teen heartthrob of the early 2000s -- then he slipped off the grid. In honour of his viral tweet-fuelled renaissance, we ask: what the f*** has he been doing for the past 15 years? | | |
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| Jay Kay also reflects on his spinal injury, fatherhood and the chaos of Woodstock ’99. | | |
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| How many of you ladies and gentlemen are making music these days intended for listening primarily on a five CD changer set to shuffle? If you are mixing for any other format, be it radio, vinyl, CD, film, television, streaming, or iTunes, crushing your mix to maximize loudness is self-defeating. | | |
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