| Artificial intelligence can mimic art, but it can't be expressive at it because, other than the definition of the word, it doesn't know what expressive is. | | | | |  | Shroom meeting: Don Toliver at Rolling Loud, Miami Gardens, Fla., July 24, 2021. "Life of a Don" is out today on Cactus Jack/Atlantic.
(Rich Fury/Getty Images) | | | | | "Artificial intelligence can mimic art, but it can't be expressive at it because, other than the definition of the word, it doesn't know what expressive is." | | | | Billions
The US Treasury won't be minting trillion dollar coins anytime soon, but if billion dollar coins ever become a thing, the music industry might want to have a chat. Or, more to the point, songwriting investors and their private equity backers might want in on that conversation. Count the number of separate references to "$1 billion" between this New York Times feature on SHERRESE CLARKE SOARES' HARBOURVIEW EQUITY PARTNERS—an intriguing new player in the space—and Bloomberg's story on BLACKSTONE INC.'s interest in HIPGNOSIS' MERCK MERCURIADIS. As Music Business Worldwide sums up the landscape in a headline dotted with one more period than there are commas in a billion, "HERE. COME. THE. GIANTS."
Sherrese Clarke Soares, whose billion-dollar backer is APOLLO GLOBAL MANAGEMENT, suggests in an interview with the Times' BEN SISARIO that she'll pursue a different slice of the publishing pie than her competitors, who've been busy buying up the work of, in Sisario's words, "iconic white artists." Soares, who is Black, says, "We want to invest differently, not colored by preconceived notions. Just because something is in the R&B sector, or in the Latin sector, we don't believe that it should have a discount."
Whether mega-successful songwriters need yet more investors bidding to take their life's work off their hands is a whole 'nother question—"own your masters" used to be the goal and in many places still is—but part of owning your work is having the right to sell it when the time comes. The prices are in coloratura soprano territory right now, and Billboard's ROBERT LEVINE and GLENN PEOPLES suggest last month's UNIVERSAL MUSIC IPO could end up driving them even higher. So if you are going to sell, this might be the time. And why not, in that case, sit down with a new player interested in diversifying the pool and whose motto is "Content is queen," because, says she, the queen "can move in multiple different directions and control the board, whereas the king can't actually move that much." Touché.
Etc Etc Etc
Sometimes, of course, songwriters invest in themselves. TED GIOIA has a candidate for "The Most Expensive Music Career of All Time"... BILLBOARD's Latin Power Players... How R. KELLY's legal team fell apart...Cheers to the PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA and conductor YANNICK NÉZET-SÉGUIN for reopening CARNEGIE HALL Wednesday with a program that included BEETHOVEN, BERNSTEIN, IMAN HABIBI and, to start, VALERIE COLEMAN's "SEVEN O'CLOCK SHOUT," a five-minute homage to the nightly pandemic ritual of making noise to celebrate first responders. It featured strings, trumpets, clapping, shouting and, writes ANTONY TOMMASINI, "a hard-won vision of a more beautiful place."
It's Friday
And that means new music from the sometimes unwieldy emo outfit THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE & I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE, which has stripped down its lineup—where once there were eight-ish or nine-ish members, now there are five—but not its name or its ambitions. ILLUSORY WALLS finds TWIABP "scaling up the old bombast in every conceivable way," reports Stereogum, approvingly... "Every betrayal sounds brand new," says NME of FRIENDS THAT BREAK YOUR HEART, the newest ode to loneliness by electronica balladeer JAMES BLAKE, whose decade-long résumé includes collabs with Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean and many more. SZA lends her voice to "Coming Back"... Travis Scott, Kali Uchis and Baby Keem come along for the ride on rising Houston rapper/singer DON TOLIVER's second album, LIFE OF A DON... Canadian jazz/jam band BADBADNOTGOOD enlists Brandee Younger, Terrace Martin, Laraaji and others on TALK MEMORY... One of Nashville's favorite songwriter/collaborators, NATALIE HEMBY, steps out from the Highwomen for her second solo album, PINS AND NEEDLES... ORQUESTRA AFRO-BRASILEIRA's 80 ANOS is the beloved Brazilian jazz group's first album in more than 50 years, featuring the lone surviving original member, percussionist Carlos Negreiros.
Plus new music from ATMOSPHERE, ALCHEMIST, TECH N9NE, OLD DOMINION, CODY JOHNSON, DILLON FRANCIS (released earlier this week), TRIVIUM, CRAIG TABORN, HIROMI, KURT ELLING & CHARLIE HUNTER, MARY LAROSE, MAGDALENA BAY, the VELVETEERS, NOAH GUNDERSEN, PORCHES, W.H. LUNG, LADYHAWKE, GUILTY SIMPSON & GENSU DEAN, BBNO$, BRONZE NAZARETH, JAMES ARTHUR, SAM FENDER, SHANNON LAY, JERUSALEM IN MY HEART, MICHAEL PRICE (with Yann Tiersen, Bill Ryder-Jones, Malibu, Eluvium and Peter Gregson), KAYLA PAINTER, CAROLYN WONDERLAND, the RECORD COMPANY, KOWLOON WALLED CITY, BANOFFEE, OH WONDER, VERA ELLEN, LALA LALA, S. RAEKWON, EFTERKLANG, JOHN KING, CHRISTIAN LOPEZ ...And the previously unreleased JOHN COLTRANE 1965 set A LOVE SUPREME: LIVE IN SEATTLE.
Programming Note
MusicREDEF will be off Monday for Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day. We'll be back in your inbox Tuesday.
Rest in Peace
KOICHI SUGIYAMA, iconic and controversial composer for the Dragon Quest video game series... '60s British pop singer BARRY RYAN, who performed with his twin brother as Paul & Barry Ryan.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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| | Band on the Run | | by Lucia Gillot | | Even before the Taliban came in there were problems. The girls couldn't walk around the streets with their guitars, they'd get attacked or harassed. So, they all kept guitars at their houses and at the school. Now their teacher has told them to do a Jimi Hendrix and smash them. | |  | | Stereogum |
| | How Remix Albums Helped Indie Rock Artists Get Through The Pandemic | | by Mia Hughes | | The gloomy, intense post-punk of Ganser; the chaotic, hyperactive bedroom pop of Glass Beach; the contemplative, sorrowful slowcore of Julien Baker. Musically, these artists have little in common. But confined to their homes and denied traditional collaboration by the pandemic, all three had the same idea. | |  | | British Vogue |
| | Adele, Reborn: The British Icon Gets Candid About Divorce, Body Image, Romance & Her "Self-Redemption" Record | | by Giles Hattersley | | Her remarkable songs of heartbreak and redemption have won Adele many millions of fans. Now, she tells Giles Hattersley, in her first interview for five years, she is poised to release her strongest album yet. | |  | | Water & Music |
| | An overabundance of music NFT platforms -- and scams | | by Cherie Hu | | The new wave of hype around music NFT platforms is the fastest acceleration in new venture announcements, partnerships and fundraises that I've seen anywhere in music/tech — even faster than livestreaming at the start of the pandemic. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | A $1 Billion Competitor for Music Rights Says 'Content Is Queen' | | by Ben Sisario | | Sherrese Clarke Soares, the founder of HarbourView Equity Partners, is a Black woman approaching the high-stakes world of catalog sales from a different perspective. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | 'You haven't heard the last of Charlie': Rolling Stones on a bittersweet tour and new music | | by Mikael Wood | | Mick, Keith, Ronnie and Steve Jordan on saying goodbye to Charlie Watts, filling a legend's drum seat and why it was 'the right decision to keep going.' | |  | | NPR Music |
| | George Wein Never Stopped Listening | | by Nate Chinen | | Nate Chinen remembers Newport Jazz impresario George Wein, who helped create the modern music festival but never lost his appetite for listening in small rooms and connecting at a human scale. | |  | | The Baffler |
| | The Singing Left | | by Kim Kelly | | At a recent commemoration of the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, songs of struggle took center stage. | |  | | Billboard |
| | The Kid LAROI: Behind the Scenes With the 18-Year-Old Australian on Top of the World | | by Josh Glicksman | | After steadily growing his fan base with streaming hits, he has the biggest song on the planet with "Stay." Now, as he prepares his debut album amid big behind-the-scenes changes, he's finding out what being a superstar actually takes. | |  | | VAN Magazine |
| | The Intelligence of Bodies | | by Jan Swafford | | The philosophical and musical failings of "Beethoven X: The AI Project." | | |  | | The Daily Beast |
| | The Next Big Boy Band That Vanished Without a Trace | | by Kevin Fallon | | Former MTV VJ Dave Holmes has spent 30 years wondering what became of Sudden Impact, who, for three seconds of a music video, were tipped to be the Next Big Thing--then disappeared. | |  | | WTF with Marc Maron |
| | WTF with Marc Maron: Episode 1268 -- Kelefa Sanneh | | by Marc Maron and Kelefa Sanneh | | Kelefa Sanneh has been writing about music for his entire career. Drawing on his experience as the music critic at The New York Times, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a lifelong music obsessive, Kelefa took a detailed look at how music unites and divides us with his new opus, Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. | |  | | Music x |
| | Who controls the flows of money in music? | | by Maarten Walraven-Freeling | | We're currently moving through a paradigm shift in music – and the internet more broadly – when it comes to creation, ownership, fandom, and monetization. | |  | | Complex |
| | Why Nas Is Teaching a MasterClass on Hip-Hop Storytelling | | by Andre Gee | | "Since I was a kid, I wanted to be in the music business and also be able to help people who are trying to get in." | |  | | DJ Mag |
| | AI Futures: how artificial intelligence is infiltrating the DJ booth | | by Declan McGlynn | | Conversations around automation and DJing are tried-and-tested comment triggers - the ubiquity of the tedious 'press play' criticisms and 'sync button' debate attest to that. But AI and ML offer a whole new era of DJing, that goes way beyond simply keeping music in time. | |  | | Holler |
| | Charley Crockett: A Life Less Ordinary | | by Paul Sexton | | A profile of Charley Crockett, chronicling his rise to fame, the broad tapestry of his travels across the country and why he likes to release records the old way. | | | | The New York Times |
| | How the Colombian Band Morat Is Winning Over a Global Audience | | by Jordan Salama | | One of the fastest growing bands in Latin America is speaking to a generation whose personal anxieties often exist amid a broader backdrop of social turmoil. | |  | | Jezebel |
| | The Surreality of 'Diana: The Musical' | | by Kelly Faircloth | | I genuinely cannot fathom why this production exists. | | | | Billboard |
| | How Universal Music Going Public Ushers in a New Era for Music | | by Robert Levine and Glenn Peoples | | Universal Music's spinoff will trigger a new flood of funding - as well as new conflict and competition across the music industry. | |  | | Phoenix New Times |
| | Mr. Lucky's Oral History: 55 Years of Wild Tales From Phoenix's Iconic Country Nightclub | | by Benjamin Leatherman | | In tribute to the club, which opened 55 years ago this month, we've lassoed together a collection of tall tales and wild yarns of big shows and good times from its musicians, employees, and loyal regulars for an oral history of the place. | | | | | 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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