| Perfection is in everyone. Nobody's perfect, but they can be. | | | | |  | Revolutionary girls & boys: Prince and Wendy Melvoin, May 1986.
(The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images) | | | | | "Perfection is in everyone. Nobody's perfect, but they can be." | | | | Nothing Compares
It's been five years and zero days. April 21, 2016, was a Thursday and I was in New York on a day off from this newsletter. I was heading to Boston the next day for the beginning of Passover. ADAM WRAY, who was then curating FashionREDEF, called me with the news: a report that someone had died at PAISLEY PARK. I think they were already saying it happened in an elevator, but I might be remembering that part wrong. Awful news. And it didn't occur to me, didn't cross my mind at all, that it might be him. Why would it be him? I don't think I knew what fentanyl was. Not yet. I went about my business in the East Village, a little shaken, and maybe a little trying not to think about it. The news I didn't want to hear, the single most horrible news of what was already turning into the darkest year I'd ever lived through, came shortly after. I don't remember the exact moment, or who or what told me. I do remember feeling dazed, gutted, speechless. I remember the emptiness more than anything else. I remember walking around aimlessly. I remember getting into a cab on Broadway and hearing "THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD" on the radio and tearing up inside and thinking to myself what a weird coincidence. It took a minute to register that, duh, everybody knew. The cab driver knew. The world knew. The radio knew. And then the tears started showing up outside.
I've thought about PRINCE a lot over the past five years. He still feels unusually present to me, partly because of the steady stream of music and video that has continued to surface as archivists pore through his legendary vault (which, as we learned after his death, was basically a small, disorganized room behind a locked door, which, we learned just this month, Prince had long forgotten the password for). Partly because of his unconventional, unfinished memoir. Partly because of events like the cathartic dance party thrown by MAYA RUDOLPH and GRETCHEN LIEBERUM's Prince cover band, PRINCESS, in downtown Los Angeles the night before DONALD TRUMP's inauguration, when Prince's death still seemed like current news and his music remained as a spiritual rebuke to all that had happened in the months since. Partly because of the generosity of all that music, which skips freely between concise pop songs and open-ended jams, between sophisticated piano ballads and horny funk grooves, between boys and girls, sacred and profane, starfish and coffee. Partly because I still think the entire histories of pop, funk, blues, soul, rock and more reside somewhere within the perfect stripped-down two-and-a-half-minute sprawl of "TAMBORINE" and there are days when I still can't come up with a reason to listen to anything else.
I beat myself up every now and then for my terrible decision to pass up this not-so-secret secret show, 10 minutes from my house, in March 2014 because I was tired and I had an early flight to SXSW the next morning. And I'm an idiot. And I figured there'd be other four-hour secret shows 10 minutes from my house because, for a ridiculously long time, that's exactly how it felt. It still does sometimes.
Rest in Peace
JIM STEINMAN, operatic rock songwriter extraordinaire, best known for writing the entirety of MEAT LOAF's bombastically fantastic BAT OUT OF HELL, an album that by my reckoning was six years long, ending in 1983 with this BONNIE TYLER epic that Steinman wrote and produced. He also collaborated with the likes of CELINE DION and ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER... Producer, engineer and harmonica player BOB LANOIS, who opened Grant Avenue Studio with his brother Daniel in the 1970s in Hamilton, Ontario... Filmmaker MONTE HELLMAN, who directed JAMES TAYLOR and DENNIS WILSON in the groundbreaking TWO-LANE BLACKTOP.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | |  | | Star Tribune |
| | Prince: 5 years after his death, how the Purple One lives on | | by Jon Bream | | His overstuffed vault continues to yield treasures. His superfans keep his legacy alive. And critic Jon Bream reflects on how his own opinion has changed over the years. | | | | Star Tribune |
| | From unheard songs to cat doodles, this man catalogs the contents of Prince's vault | | by Jon Bream | | Since the fall of 2017, archivist Michael Howe has immersed himself in an overwhelming volume of recordings and ephemera, some carefully labeled, others waiting for an assistant Prince never hired. Whether music or doodles - cat drawings, anyone? - Howe makes sure it's inventoried, digitized and preserved. Then he figures out what to take to market. | |  | | Money 4 Nothing |
| | Pulling Back the Veil on Posthumous Albums | | by Saxon Baird and Sam Backer | | Plenty has been written about the music and legacy an artist leaves behind when they pass prematurely. But there hasn't been much of a discussion on how the obligatory posthumous album is handled and marketed. | |  | | Passion of the Weiss |
| | Rap & Death | | by Yoh Phillips | | Anywhere, anytime, anyplace, bullets are flying at rappers. Yoh Phillips details the cultural interest for lawless songs and the painful past 48 months. | |  | | Slate |
| | Inside the Facebook Group Dedicated to 'Oddly Specific Playlists' | | by Marianne Eloise | | The Facebook group invites members to make and share playlists with the most bizarre, amazing themes. | |  | | Variety |
| | Taylor Swift's 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)' Debuts Huge: What It Means for Replicating Oldies, Weaponizing Fans | | by Chris Willman | | Few things have been replicable about the Swift phenomenon, so this is no time to imagine copycatting can work now. But certainly her seeming to come out ahead in the war over her masters, on her own terms, should continue to inspire other artists to further deputize or weaponize fans in their own business disputes, even if the same results are hardly guaranteed. | |  | | Dream Pollution The Jim Steinman Web Site |
| | RETRO READ: Classic Albums Four Hour Interview With Jim Steinman | | by Jim Steinman | | "I needed someone to sing my songs. And when Meat Loaf came in it was like a gift from the gods. Like they had sent someone who could sing far better than I could and who actually was the only person I could imagine on earth who had the perfect voice for what I was imagining." | |  | | Vulture |
| | Can Listening to Music Ever Really Be Sustainable? | | by Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding | | "I think it may be one small place where we could really fundamentally ask: What do we want to sustain in the first place?" | |  | | The New Yorker |
| | The Afrofuturist Sounds of Dawn Richard | | by Amanda Petrusich | | On her new album, the former Danity Kane singer combines electronic beats with references to the cultural touchstones of New Orleans. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | Why Is It So Hard to Show Black Women's Musical Genius Onscreen? | | by Salamishah Tillet | | Oscar-nominated performances this season put the emphasis on the trauma, not the artistry, of Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey. The most insightful movie might just be "Soul." | | |  | | XXL |
| | Rappers Getting Paid From the Cannabis Boom Is Social Justice | | by Rob Kenner | | Big Business Hip-hop artists getting paid from the cannabis boom is more than just a side hustle. It's a matter of social justice. | |  | | Clash Magazine |
| | How Slowed + Reverb Became The Soundtrack To Gen Z Lockdown | | by Laura Molloy | | Anime girls dancing slightly offbeat in endless circles to a distorted version of 'More Than A Woman' by the Bee Gees. An unlikely combination that borrows British/Australian music, Japanese art, and an underlying southern American influence: a cocktail of culture only possible in the internet age. | |  | | Level |
| | Prince Told the Truth About America Through His Music | | by Scott Woods | | Five years after the icon's death, a deep dive proves his catalog to be timely - and political - as ever. | |  | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | Why are Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Sting, Chris Martin and Stevie Nicks demanding the UK government 'fix streaming'? | | by Tim Ingham | | Page and Plant reunited at last… in letter calling for 50% of 'lean back' streaming royalties to be paid direct to artists. | |  | | The Guardian |
| | Covid-cautious festival cancellations dampen 'great British summer' hopes | | by Damien Gayle | | Promoters cite financial risk of staging events that the government could shut down at short notice. | |  | | VICE |
| | Inside Boomtown's Decision to Cancel This Year's Festival | | by Ryan Bassil | | Boomtown's co-founder and Creative Director Lak Mitchell warns that other festivals could face the same fate if the government doesn't step in. | |  | | The Independent |
| | 'It's the beginning of a new era': the POC punk bands reclaiming pop-punk | | by Zoya Raza-Sheikh | | Punk has long been white and male-dominated, but a new wave of rising stars like Meet Me @ The Altar, The Tuts, and Proper. are putting paid to that. They speak to Zoya Raza-Sheikh about paving punk's inclusive future. | |  | | Soho the Dog |
| | André Previn's Jazz | | by Matthew Guerrieri | | This is a survey of every jazz and jazz-adjacent recording André Previn ever made. This is not an attempt to canonize Previn as a forgotten jazz immortal. But it is a story about canonization: how countless individual decisions coalesce to bring some musical activity into the future and leave other musical activity behind. | | | | Variety |
| | Meet the Singing Voice of 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' | | by Jazz Tangcay | | Viola Davis transforms into the Mother of the Blues for her award-winning role in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" - and while she delivers a powerhouse performance, former Ikette and soul singer Maxayn Lewis is the unsung hero of the film. It's her voice that catapults Davis into a new realm. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | For young shredders at School of Rock, it's finally time to melt faces again | | by Suzy Exposito | | Starting in May, School of Rock students have the option to return to live learning. "I miss playing on stage with my band," says 12-year-old Daniel. | | | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | Are virtual fitness instructors becoming music's newest influencers? | | by Murray Stassen | | Panel of leading industry experts throws up key talking points for the intersection of music x fitness. | | | | | 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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