In case you are keeping track:
Guidelines for outdoor venues to reopen in California now includes pop-up theater and music
The new guidelines allow for pop-up outdoor stages — perhaps set up in a parking lot — as long as they have assigned seating with fixed or marked locations allowing for six feet of distance between audience members. Advance reservations are required, and entry and exit points must be monitored closely to prevent crowding.
The guidelines address outdoor venues that are "a permanent and fixed facility, focused around a stage round, field court, or other central area designed primarily for viewing entertainment or athletics by an audience OR a defined and demarcated outdoor area." The venues must be open air, and barriers must provide at least 12 feet between audiences and the stage or performance area.
Before these guidelines were issued Friday evening, arts groups lacked guidance on outdoor pop-up performance spaces that did not have fixed seating. The existing rules applied only to established outdoor venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, leaving arts organizations wondering if and how they could stage shows in places like patios, parks and parking lots.
The Bruins' win comes after crosstown rivals USC failed to advance past the Elite Eight Tuesday, falling 85-66 to No. 1 seed Gonzaga, who UCLA will face Saturday in the Final Four.
A two-story, makeshift residence built by someone without a home has divided a Marina del Rey neighborhood. Some complain it's unsafe and an "insult" to those paying property taxes in the area, while others say it's the result of local officials' mismanagement of the homelessness crisis.
Watch Ariana DeBose in 'Shall We Dance' R&H Goes Pop! Music Video | Playbill
The music video, shot in 2019 and directed by Notice Pictures, features choreography by Julius Anthony Rubio, accompanied by assistant choreographer Krizia Lanza with additional choreography by Carlos Sanchez Falú and John Michael Fiumara. Rubio, Falú, and Fiumara also appear as dancers in the music video, along with Emma Pfaeffle and Eliza Ohman.
Warner Music's 'Saylists' Use Pop Songs as Speech Therapy | Muse by Clio
A few years back, Rothco creative director Rob Maguire and his sister, who teaches young children, found themselves discussing approaches to treating speech impediments.
So, "we started looking for places where repetition is fun, and music provided the answer," Maguire says. "You hear a lot of musicians such as Ed Sheeran talking about how music helped them overcome their own SSDs, so we realized there was a crossover here that could do with formalizing."
Based on such insights, Accenture Interactive-owned Rothco and Warner Music developed an algorithm that scanned the latter's massive catalog to find tracks to that could aid kids in their daily speech therapy. Through this process, the team devised "Saylists," a series of 10 English-language playlists launched exclusively on Apple Music.
"The algorithm scans the tracks and ranks them according to a number of rules, such as the proximity and frequency of certain sounds," Maguire says. "It's searching for the kinds of patterns that kids are asked to repeat when they're working on a specific problem sound. Except this way, instead of boring flash-card sentences, they get to sing along to tracks they like."
Each list contains songs designed to address the most commonly challenging speech sounds: "CH," "D," "F," "G," "K," "L," "R," "S," "Z," and "T."
For example, in Sheeran's "I Don't Care," which appears on the "D" Saylist, "there's a heavy use of the word 'don't,' and a healthy dash of words like 'dancing' 'dealing' and 'disappearing,' " Maguire says.
"Don't Start Now" by Dua Lipa also made the "D" list, while David Bowie's "Changes" understandably leads the "CH" set, and Lizzo's "Good as Hell" appears among the "Gs."
For that last one, we're thinking most kids will get a kick out of saying words like "hell" and "ass" as part of their lessons. No boredom there!
"There was a point where we could have pivoted and filled the list with parentally approved tracks, but 'what young people want to listen to' has always rubbed up against what parents disapprove of," Maguire says. "If we were releasing it back in the '80s, we would have taken Madonna off the list—in the '50s, we'd have cut Elvis. We decided to ignore our inner Tipper Gore and trust Warner's instinct about what would get listened to. After all, that was the priority—to make something that kids would want to engage with." (It should be noted that Apple's parental controls allow adults to restrict content they deem questionable.)
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Justin Bieber's 'Justice' Songs Explained By Harv and Aldae
Bieber backed up his claim a month later when he released "Anyone," his most undeniable pop song in years. Now, with Justice out , the turn looks even sharper. Released just 13 months after Changes , the new album positions Bieber's R&B phase as more of a detour. Instead, Justice picks up after Purpose , which Vulture music critic Craig Jenkins recently hailed as "one of the previous decade's finest pop projects." But while much of Purpose diluted EDM trends into pop hits, Justice prefers the polished, synth-fueled pop-rock of the 1980s as a jumping-off point.
It's a lot to process from Bieber, who's given few interviews on the new music. So to look behind the scenes of Justice , Vulture spoke to two of Bieber's key collaborators on the album: Bieber's band member since 2010 and current music director, Bernard "Harv" Harvey, and songwriter Gregory "Aldae" Hein. Harv co-wrote and co-produced "Somebody" and "Peaches," while Aldae co-wrote "2 Much," "As I Am," "Unstable," and "Somebody." Both collaborators described the fast-paced, detail-oriented process behind Bieber's sonic pivot. "It's about making sure that this album is going to be the best album of the year," Harv says. "Every producer and writer, we all had that same idea."
With Justice released so close to Changes — Bieber debuted first single "Holy" just seven months after putting Changes out — it may have looked like the album was cut from the same sessions, like Taylor Swift's folklore sequel evermore . "The original plan was to do two albums back-to-back," Harv says, but to keep the processes separate. "We literally started from scratch," he adds. "We wanted Justice to have its own sound, its own identity, so we put those old songs back on the shelf." To better establish that divide between projects, Bieber brought a number of new writers on for Justice , including Aldae. "People know Justin as a pop star," he says of the shift. "I think he crushes the R&B, but I personally love this style of music more with him."
The argument over whether pop music is moving away from the album form persists, but Bieber has remained focused on it. The approach pays off on Justice; critics have praised its cohesion. (Even Pitchfork called it "Bieber's smoothest album-length statement to date.") "It's a format, how we track-list the album," Harv explains of the 16 songs. "We kind of let the album grow as you listen to it." And it does, with Bieber easing his way from slower ballads at the beginning of the album into more upbeat songs after the "MLK Interlude." " We literally sat down and listened to every song and made sure that they all sounded like they were on the same project," Harv adds. "For me, it was kind of hard, 'cause I had way more songs that were supposed to be on the album, but it just didn't [fit together with the sound]. That was a moment for me to be like, Okay, it's about the full body of work. " The sessions became less about sound than a unifying spirit of the work. As Aldae puts it, "There are songs you can dance to, but I think every song makes you feel something."
When Bieber teased a photo of him planning the track list on social media, an impressive list of featured artists — from Khalid and Daniel Caesar to Burna Boy and Beam — caught fans' eyes. On all the songs they worked on, Harv and Aldae said the features came from Bieber himself. With "Peaches," Bieber switched to A&R mode right after cutting his vocals. "Like two hours later, he FaceTimed me," Harv says. "Justin was like, 'Yo, like I think we got one.' I'm like, 'What do you mean?' He was like, 'I got Giveon on, on the feature.'" The up-and-coming R&B singer first cracked the top 40 as a feature on Drake's "Chicago Freestyle" last year. Then, about a month later, Harv got another call. "Just how Justin is, he'll FaceTime me out of nowhere," he says. "He was like, 'Hey, let's get Daniel Caesar on it.'" Some of the other features, though, came down to the wire. Aldae notes that both Khalid 's and rapper-singer the Kid Laroi's parts on their respective songs came in days before the album's release .
And yes, Bieber's feature choices also extended to Dr. King. "2 Much" opens with his famed quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." King's daughter, Bernice King, later said she approved the quote along with the album's longer interlude, while Bieber committed to work with the King Center among other social-justice organizations. Aldae admits he didn't plan on putting the quote in "2 Much." "At first I was a little confused when I saw MLK in the credits," he says. "A lot of classic albums have an insert at the beginning, something to bring you into the album. People close to me have told me there was a disconnect between those two things, but to me, it was just like, 'Yo, welcome to my album.' MLK, one of the greatest speakers of all time. Why not?"
While he introduced the world to the ideas behind Justice in a Twitter thread, Bieber had been thinking on them for months. In December, Bieber had a meeting with his collaborators about the meaning driving the project. "He talked about how important this album was to us, and how his name actually was translated to justice [from Latin], and how important it was for him to make an impact, and how he was in this high position. He was calling on us to help be the vessel for what he wanted to channel into the world," Aldae says. "He was very vulnerable with us about wanting to put that goodness into the songs."
Lil Nas X: How Montero forced the Old Town Road star to become the world's most controversial pop
To start with, the singer - whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill - released a new song called Montero (Call Me By Your Name) , a celebration of his newfound openly gay identity following his public coming out back in July 2019.
He also released a touching note to his 14-year-old self highlighting the personal stakes involved in the new track.
"I know we promised to never come out publicly, I know we promised to never be 'that' type of gay person, I know we promised to die with the secret, but this will open doors for many other queer people to simply exist," he wrote.
Critics said the video was inappropriate, particularly considering many of Lil Nas X's fans are children. US artist Joyner Lucas suggested the singer forgot that Old Town Road was "every kids' anthem".
She went on to claim the shoes prove the US is "in a fight for the soul of our nation". "We need to fight hard. And we need to fight smart. We have to win," she wrote.
Like any child of the internet, he's delightfully trolled the backlash, first issuing a faux apology on YouTube and then addressing Governor Noem directly on Twitter.
"You are a whole governor and you're on here tweeting about some damn shoes. Do your job," he wrote.
"I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the shit y'all preached would happen to me because I was gay. So I hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves," he added.
Perfectly. The video is the highest trending music video on YouTube with more than 37 million views, while the single is the #1 new song on Spotify globally.
21 best pop songs to test your speakers | What Hi-Fi?
Pop music: a problematic genre to pin down. So, for the avoidance of doubt (and in an effort to better understand what constitutes an actual pop song) let us take a hint from a select few commercially successful musicians, singers and song-writers.
Frank Zappa once said, "I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else that has ever happened, and vice versa" – deep, coming from the Mothers of Invention.
John Lennon mused, "I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song", while Manfred Mann stated, "Pop music is probably the only art form that is totally dependent on its success for the general public. The more people buy a record, the more successful it is – both commercially and artistically."
Pop, then, is music that actually becomes part of the vernacular; lovable and often hard to pen songs that have achieved considerable commercial success.
But what of the nagging notion that pop music is lesser, diluted, lacking in substance and ultimately, manufactured?
Peter Tork has argued, "Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins." Prince once uttered, "What's missing from pop music is danger" and Bono's thoughts on the matter include: "Pop music often tells you everything is OK, where rock music tells you it's not OK, but you can change it."
Perhaps our favourite such quote comes from Nina Persson, lead singer of The Cardigans, who said, "Pop music is a difficult term to define. I think about good music and bad music. Good music is good music whatever genre is comes from."
Historically, jazz, the blues, R'n'B, gospel and folk are among pop's roots, where electronica, dance, rock, metal and hip-hop are just some of its branches. Of course, it is worth remembering that to be good encourages popularity, but to be popular is not always to be good. An understanding of contemporaneous societal pressures (and momentary pain relief from these) is surely a positive aspect of pop music, though. We certainly agree with Johnny Rotten when he said, "Pop music I have always loved best."
And now that the classification debate is all sorted, which songs from pop's extensive and varied ouevre should you be playing to test your stereo speakers? Thought you'd never ask. We've picked out 20 of the best we can think of and explained why they're a match for even the most gifted drivers. Our selection spans 45 years of the genre, too, so there's no danger of 1980s synth-and-jangle overkill.
AJR on 'Bang!' Broadway, 'OK Orchestra,' and 'Way Less Sad'
Charlie: On a recent episode of Switched On Pop, we offhandedly called "Bang!" post-rock polka carnival trap and received blowback online. But the major influence here appears to be musical theater. Is that fair to say?
Ryan: You have to dress it up a little bit. If you have this Broadway sound, you have to dress it in clothes that appear like they belong with everybody else. "Bang!" was originally more of an acoustic kind of drum set, and it literally felt Broadway. Having the trap beat, the rolling hi-hats and trap snare, immediately makes you say, "Okay, now I understand this could only be made right now." It sounds very [modern], even though it's juxtaposed with something that was popular like a hundred years ago.
Charlie: What is it about Broadway that can be both so over-the-top but also perfect at communicating an individual intimate moment?
Ryan: I think it's the same reason we love movies so much and we both went to film school. It's kind of in the same world. It can be really specific and very considered and apply to just one story, and yet it can be accessible on an enormous level.
Something like Finding Nemo , right? It's technically a story about fish in Australia, but in a way bigger sense, it's about fatherhood and losing somebody you love. I think the best Broadway songs, the "One Day More!"s of the world, are really good at doing the same. There's this specific story about the French Revolution, but also it's "one day more" until whatever you want it to be. And you can relate on any level.
I think a lot of people sometimes make the mistake in pop music of thinking the way to be most relatable is to go the broadest. And the most broad thing you could say is "Don't leave me" or "I love you." And I think often we try to stay away from that because the most relatable stuff can be the most specific stuff if you strike the right nerve.
Charlie: The song seems to reflect some internal self-doubt: You sing, "Pretend you know this song, everybody." Did you have any feeling that this song would go platinum and go to No. 8 on the Hot 100?
Jack: We have a different mind-set than other writers. In every interview, we watch writers or artists say, "I've never, ever tried to write a hit. That's the way to not have hits; you can't try to write a hit." Ryan and I are the absolute opposite. We absolutely try to write what we think will be a hit. But the answer is no, we did not. We never, ever think anything is going to get popular. We went nine years with zero success. No one knew our music. So we're kind of conditioned to think that there's a big chance this will fail.
Charlie: Your next single, "Way Less Sad," takes a different turn from "Bang!" in its contrast between very sullen moments and then very joyous moments. What role is it playing in OK Orchestra ?
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