| I just can't do anything if I'm not inspired. I always sorta wait for the inspiration to come, and if the spirit doesn't drive me to do it, then I won't do it. 'Cause I definitely know that what I'm doin' is sorta bigger than me. It's somethin' that I've been assigned. | | | | |  | Together, not forever: Lauryn Hill with the briefly reunited Fugees in London, December 2005.
(Rune Hellestad/Corbis/Getty Images) | | | | | "I just can't do anything if I'm not inspired. I always sorta wait for the inspiration to come, and if the spirit doesn't drive me to do it, then I won't do it. 'Cause I definitely know that what I'm doin' is sorta bigger than me. It's somethin' that I've been assigned." | | | | The Way He Talks
We don't have any context, beyond a 37-second clip posted by TMZ, to explain why MORGAN WALLEN shouted the N-word at a small group of people, presumably friends but we don't know that for sure either, outside his house in Nashville Sunday night. But we don't need the context because there's none that would make it OK. To his credit—and this is the only thing he deserves credit for right now—the biggest current star in country music, who's had the #1 album in the US for the past three weeks, offered no excuses for himself in his written apology. "I'm embarrassed and sorry," he wrote in a message to media outlets. But he also offered no evidence of soul-searching or contemplation, no indication he's sought to understand why he uttered that ugliest of all vulgarities in the middle of a vulgarity-laced goodbye to those people, whoever they were. And no suggestion he'd thought about it for even a minute before TMZ busted him. "I promise to do better," he said by way of ending his short apology. This isn't the first time during his quick rise to the top of the country universe that Wallen has had to promise to do better at something. This time, he needs to do better than promising to do better.
For now, Nashville's country music community is doing some reckoning for him. "The hate runs deep," MICKEY GUYTON tweeted Tuesday. And then, replying to herself, "This is not his first time.... and we all known [sic] that." Two hours later, KELSEA BALLERINI told her followers, "The news out of Nashville tonight does not represent country music." An hour after that, MAREN MORRIS responded: "It actually IS representative of our town." Morris, too, accused Wallen of having used the word before. "We all know," she wrote. "We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse." Them. Not him.
Earlier Tuesday, the country site HOLLER published my friend MARCUS K. DOWLING's profile of Black country singer MIKO MARKS, who next month will release her first album in a decade. Asked about that hiatus, she told Marcus a story about a meeting with a "premier" label in Nashville who told her she "sounded great, the music was great, and my songs were lovely" but "this project isn't a fit for us." And then they recommended she try a specific label that's "doing some...more...innovative...things." No record company is under any obligation to sign any given artist, ever, and most artists, at the end of the day, aren't a fit for most labels. But that particular encounter, that particular word—"innovative"—hangs heavy in the air for Marks. She thinks things might be a little better today. But she also thinks, "for many, being a Black woman making country music in Nashville is still considered 'innovative.'"
It isn't completely fair to lay all the blame for this or for that on one city or one genre of music. This is a much wider and deeper problem, and I'm pretty sure we all know that, too. Tuesday night, Variety reported that CUMULUS, the country's second biggest radio group, has taken a stand, pulling Wallen's music from all its stations "immediately... without exception." Other radio stations are expected to do the same, according to Variety's' CHRIS WILLMAN. Considering Wallen's popularity, that's a consequential and laudable decision. And potentially a helpful one. The last time Wallen said he needed to do better, he made one specific promise: "I'm going to take a step back from the spotlight for a little while and go work on myself." That step back seemingly lasted about as long as a fiddle solo. Less than two months later, Wallen was perforning on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and joking about his transgression. His music had been all over country radio throughout. This time it appears radio is taking the step back foe him and maybe, just maybe, creating a space that will allow some real soul-searching to begin.
Dot Dot Dot
SONY "hasn't just bought a choosy DIY distributor: It's bought a very clever Sorting Hat," writes Rolling Stone's TIM INGHAM in the best explanation I've seen anywhere for why Sony spent $430 million to buy AWAL earlier this week. It's also as good an explanation as anyone's offered for how AWAL works... The GRAMMYS will be held outdoors in downtown Los Angeles with no audience and "a small number of media," Variety's JEM ASWAD reports, citing unofficial sources. Expect a mix of live and prerecorded performances at the show, which was bumped from Jan. 31 to March 14 because of Covid-19... Milwaukee's SUMMERFEST has been pushed back from June to September... DOLLY PARTON has rewritten "9 TO 5" as "5 TO 9" for a SUPER BOWL commercial and some people are not pleased. Helpful perspective... A reminder that this country soul searching exists... The greatest and yacht-iest of the DOOBIE BROTHERS according to MICHAEL MCDONALD... QUESTLOVE's SUMMER OF SOUL sweeps the grand jury and audience prizes for documentaries at SUNDANCE.
Rest in Peace
Synth designer WOWA CWEJMAN.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | Tracing Marilyn Manson's Blurred Lines Between Shock Rock and Alleged Abuse | | by Marc Hogan | | Before Evan Rachel Wood and four other women accused Manson of abuse, the 1990s goth-pop hitmaker had a long history of disturbing rhetoric and alleged impropriety. Did his status as a willful provocateur affect how that was received? | |  | | Variety |
| | Country Radio Quickly Removing Morgan Wallen From Playlists After Racial Slur | | by Chris Willman | | Cumulus Media sent a directive to its 400-plus stations to remove the country star from its playlists as of midnight. More chains and stations are expected to follow in cutting Wallen off the air — a stunning development for someone who is easily the most successful recording artist in any genre at the moment. | |  | | Rolling Stone |
| | Why Did Sony Music Just Spend $430 Million on Indie Label AWAL? | | by Tim Ingham | | The deal, which is one of the biggest acquisitions in music in recent years, is really about the unstoppable explosion in DIY indie artists. | |  | | The Muse |
| | The Unstoppable Rise of Cardi B | | by Clover Hope | | Instagram launched a simple yet radical feature in June 2013: the ability to upload videos in addition to photos. Finally, users could bombard their followers with fifteen-second snippets of their lives, which was a bad omen for Vine, the six-second video app made popular by teens. But it was life-changing for people like Cardi B. | |  | | SPIN |
| | The Last Remaining Juke Joints in America | | by Roger Stolle | | The future of these blues clubs is at a crossroads. | |  | | Vulture |
| | Meeting the Greatest Band You've (Maybe) Never Heard Of | | by Anne Victoria Clark | | Edgar Wright and the band Sparks talk about making the director's new documentary, The Sparks Brothers. | |  | | DJ Mag |
| | Motor Bass: how car culture influences electronic music | | by Ben Murphy | | Cars and music have worked in tandem for a long time. With genres such as Miami bass and trap, cars have inspired the growth of scenes, while in hip-hop, gqom and synthwave, the connection is more nuanced. Ben Murphy explores the connections between car culture and music production. | |  | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | Round Hill IPO fund starts buying, spending $282m on hits recorded by The Beatles, Marvin Gaye and more | | by Tim Ingham | | A Round Hill-managed fund has just acquired over 18,000 songs from another Round Hill-managed fund, for a price ($282m) that's significantly higher than the first fund paid for them. Welcome to the music business. | |  | | Billboard |
| | Live Nation Sues Insurance Company for Not Covering COVID-19 Claims | | by Dave Brooks | | The promoter says it's lost hundreds of millions since the pandemic shut down touring, but Factory Mutual refuses to honor its premium policy. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | Eric Church never wanted to sing the Super Bowl national anthem. Then came the Capitol riot | | by Mikael Wood | | On Sunday, Eric Church will perform the anthem with R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan. "We're unifying. And it's a time in our country when we have to do that." | | |  | | Berklee Online |
| | WhoSampled: Chris Read on the Art and History of Sampling Music | | by Ashley Pointer | | Hear from Chris Read, the Head of Content at WhoSampled, as he discusses the art of sampling and the leading database for sample-based music. | |  | | Qwest TV |
| | 'Studio 17 -- The Lost Reggae tapes' | | by Mark James and Reshma B | | Formed by a Chinese-Jamaican couple in the early '60s in Kingston, Jamaica, Randy's Records started as a used record store, then grew to house a reggae recording studio. Studio 17's history as the heartbeat of a new style of music—from ska to rocksteady to reggae to dub reggae—is vividly captured in this 2019 film. | |  | | Music x |
| | Smarter Playlists: automate your music discovery, playlist strategy, and library organisation | | by Bas Grasmayer | | Smarter Playlists is still the best way to 'automagically' create and update playlists on Spotify. The tool, made by Paul Lamere of music data firm The Echo Nest (now Spotify), provides you with countless ways to source music, combine it, filter it, sort it and turn it into playlists. | | | | Vulture |
| | How 'Blinding Lights' Used Retro Sounds and Modern Bass to Break Records | | by Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan | | A spirited deconstruction of the Weeknd's ubiquitous hit. | |  | | Pollstar |
| | Peace Through Bookings: How Adrienne Elrod May Have Helped Save Our Democracy | | by Andy Gensler | | The artists Adrienne Elrod and her team curated for President Joe Biden's Inauguration, including the "Celebrating America" prime time special and especially the swearing in ceremony at the Capitol, may have done more to unify a divided and badly shaken nation in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack than all the punditry and political pronouncements combined. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | 'Anything for Selena' Examines a Singer's Legacy and Latino Identity | | by Maira Garcia | | While the podcast is a biography of the Tejano star, it also weaves in the personal story of the host and examines why the singer has had a lasting effect on culture. | |  | | Under the Radar |
| | Hanif Abdurraqib on His Podcast 'Object of Sound' | | by Celine Teo-Blockey | | What would you put on a playlist right now for your future self-would it be songs of dread or songs of joy? What makes a great cover song-can you giving your best rendition of Amy Winehouse covering The Zutons, while you're in the shower, be considered a good cover? | |  | | Tracklib |
| | Bob James reacts to hits sampling his songs | | by Bob James | | The jazz musician shares his thoughts on hearing himself in songs by Röyksopp, Warren G, Run-DMC and Souls of Mischief. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | The Velvet Mafia: the gay men who helped shape music in the 60s | | by Jim Farber | | In a revealing new book, the often overlooked input of queer men who helped advise, manage and steer artists in the swinging 60s is examined. | | | | The New York Times |
| | Ricky Powell, 59, Dies; Chronicled Early Hip-Hop and Downtown New York | | by Jon Caramanica | | Prolific with his point-and-shoot camera, he captured essential images of the Beastie Boys, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Run-DMC, Andy Warhol and more. | | | | | 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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