Not to change the topic here:
Best Motown Songs: Supremes, Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson - Rolling Stone
In 1959, an aspiring songwriter and record producer named Berry Gordy Jr. borrowed $800 to start his own record label in Detroit. Good investment. Within a year, Motown had its first million-selling record, with the Miracles’ “Shop Around.” By 1969, the label would place dozens of records in the Billboard Top 10 as it reshaped the sound of pop music for a generation, thanks to its somewhat contradictory mix of assembly-line consistency and individual artistic brilliance, integrationist upward mobility and black self-assertion, fierce competition and familial camaraderie. “I was so happy whenever I got a hit record on one of the artists,” said Smokey Robinson , the label’s greatest songwriting genius. “Because they were my brothers and sisters.”
Opinion | Why Grammy Winners Might Never Sound the Same Again - The New York Times
Since the 1960s, pop music has been ruled mostly by what's known in the business — and to your ears — as the verse-chorus form: The verse sets the scene, the pre-chorus builds tension, and the chorus reaches a climax. Then, the cycle starts again: verse, pre-chorus, chorus. It's the fun, if slightly predictable, roller coaster we've been riding for decades.
For a simple yet powerful and classic example, think back to "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" sung by Aretha Franklin. She starts out, "Looking out on the morning rain," thinking of how she "used to feel so uninspired," then brightens up talking about her new love, singing, "You're the key to my peace of mind." The instruments — horns, strings, drums — brighten up right alongside her and peak, cathartically, with the titular line everyone knows and loves (backed by a literal chorus).
Listeners loved this new form so much that it was soon the industry default. The music theorist Jay Summach has found that by the end of the 1960s, 42 percent of hit songs used verse-chorus form. By the end of the 1980s, that figure had doubled to 84 percent.
But things quickly began to shift in the 2010s. A mix of generational churn, creativity spawned by the digitization of music production and the dilution of the industry's top-down structure — paired with the fragmentation of the media and adaptations to the streaming economy — has warped song structures. Beyond radio play, songs are five-second memes, 12-second TikTok soundtracks, 30-second ads and two-and-a-half-minute club anthems.
Listen to the Top 40 charts of the last decade and a surprising trend emerges. The form of pop as we know it seems to be changing before our ears. Take Billie Eilish's " Bad Guy ," one of the biggest hits of 2019. It displays few of the values we typically associate with pop: the peaking decibel levels, the soaring melodies, the recurring phrases that are easy to sing along with, all wrapped into a steadily repeating climax that neatly tucks itself in between verses.
Instead, the chorus of "Bad Guy" offers the listener a low-key, half-whispered, stream-of-consciousness rhyme scheme ("Just can't get enough guy / Chest always so puffed guy /I'm that bad type / Make your mama sad type") over muffled drums and bass.
The musical high point of the song comes afterward instead in the form of a wordless, ear-grabbing synthesized melody. In a telling bit about the role bottom-up self-production plays in this trend, the nebulous sound that brought Ms. Eilish, born in 2001, to prominence was not forged in a high-end corporate studio but in her brother Finneas's bedroom. Last year, she won the Grammy for Best New Artist and "Bad Guy" won Song of the Year.
Turn the radio dial (or hit "shuffle" on Spotify or Apple Music) and you'll invariably find songs with intentionally broken choruses, like Bad Bunny's " Si Veo a Tu Mamá ," which unleashes hook after blistering hook on top of a " Girl From Ipanema " interpolation, creating a cascade of catchy sections without a central chorus.
(The success of Bad Bunny — the most-streamed artist of 2020 — is a testament to not only pop music's changing forms but also its widening cultural borders .)
Riverside native Brooke Reese blends music and pop culture on Apple Music Hits’ ‘Pop
For nearly six years, radio personality Brooke Reese has been hosting music chart countdowns from around the world and interviewing some of the biggest stars in music on “The Chart Show,” which lands on the streaming service Apple Music 1 Monday-Thursday.
Riverside native Brooke Reese is the current host of “The Chart Show” on Apple Music 1 and recently launched “Pop Hits Radio” on Apple Music Hits, where she discusses and shares music, fashion, movies and pop culture from the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. (Photo by Sebastian Kim)
When she’s not at a drive-in or daydreaming about the chicken flautas from Olivia’s Mexican Restaurant near her childhood home, Reese is studying global music charts and recording chats with artists like Monsta X , Kelly Clarkson, Charlie Puth, Ava Max, Aly & AJ, Gabby Barrett and Kane Brown for “The Chart Show.”
She’s made the best out of a challenging situation and said she’s grateful for the opportunity to continue to entertain and grow her global audience since the program is so musically diverse and can now be heard in over 165 countries.
“It’s so much fun, and my knowledge for music has grown immensely,” she said. “It’s about artists here in the U.S. having big moments, but also artists breaking around the world, so you’ve got J-pop music, K-pop music, hip-hop and so much Latin music. That’s the way people listen to music now with streaming. ‘The Chart Show’ is kind of like making your own playlist with music from around the world and everything just kind of melts together. It’s fun to see what people are listening to and what they’re connecting with on a personal level.”
Earlier this month, Reese launched a brand-new show, “Pop Hits Radio,” on Apple Music Hits, which airs on Saturdays and Sundays. The show gives Reese the freedom to run wild with ideas for a curated playlist each week. They’re crafted more like a soundtrack to specific periods of time between the 1990s and 2010s and also incorporate fashion, television shows and other pop-culture tidbits.
“I feel like everybody right now is looking for something to brighten up their world a little bit,” she said. “People are already diving into TV shows and their favorite albums and songs. My favorite thing about music is that it makes memories and holds memories for you. So when you hear something it can instantly take you back to a moment or specific state of mind.”
Quite a lot has been going on:
Santa Cruz's Varro Vivyds Embraces Her Inner Pop Diva
Last year, when Santa Cruz's Varro Vivyds was in the studio working on a bunch of new material, she had a technique for getting the kinds of performances she wanted: Pretend she was in front of a huge audience. She even dimmed the lights to create that concert mood.
"I try to get in the Varro mindset," Vivyds says. "I definitely will close my eyes and get into the song as if I'm performing it in front of a bunch of people."
Vivyds has been writing and performing music for nearly a decade and a half, but for most of that time, she's done so under her birthname, Veronica Christie. She's played many a coffee shop open mic with her acoustic guitar and original material, but always felt incredibly vulnerable as she did so.
"I loved doing guitar, but I felt my skill level in terms of playing the instrument, it wasn't that high. I could play enough to write a song. But it wouldn't be very elaborate," Vivyds says.
In 2019, she wanted to mix up the music she was making and incorporate more pop elements into her style. She started to work with producers who would send her beats she would then write lyrics and melodies for. Her childhood friend, locally revered musician Henry Chadwick, was her engineer in 2019 and 2020 as she worked to create these songs.
"I'm definitely the first challenge in pop music that he's ever sound engineered before. We've been having fun," Vivyds says. "I've known him since the seventh grade. He's someone I can really trust. He definitely held my hand through a lot of it, which was great, and gave me tips and techniques."
When she wrote a lot of these songs in 2019, she was planning on releasing them as Veronica Christie. But then last year, an idea struck her: She could be the pop diva she always wanted to be if she created a pop diva persona. Varro Vivyds was born.
"I can actually be, like, really introverted. And I found that when I was performing, especially when I was doing theater, I had a costume, I had a different name. It was way easier to get on stage and to be someone else," Vivyds says. "Varro is kind of an elaboration on Veronica. It's kind of, in a way, a security blanket, where I can do things and go on stage and feel as if I'm somebody else to try to help get out of those nerves. Varro has a lot more confidence than me. She likes to be around a bunch of people, which is so opposite of me."
The resulting songs are quite diverse, with rock, R&B and soul vibes, and a firm footing in catchy pop music. She describes "Alleyway" as sounding like "Billie Eilish, but a little more energy."
Female artists struggle to make gains in pop music: Study | Hindustan Times
The report was timed to coincide with International Women's Day and comes just days before the Grammy Awards, the industry's biggest night of the year. The Grammys have been criticized in the past for failing to nominate or showcase a diverse field. Though the awards have made progress in the past decade, 28% of nominees in five key categories are women this year, the USC report noted.
"It is International Women's Day everywhere, except for women in music, where women's voices remain muted," Smith, who oversees USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, said in a statement.
Smith, which used Billboard's year-end chart of the 100 most popular songs as a gauge, found the music industry is more diverse than the population when it comes to race and ethnicity. Artists of color received 59% of the credits on top songs released in 2020, and 47% between 2012 and 2020. Most of that is due to the prominence of Black musicians in R&B and hip-hop, which is the most popular musical genre.
But while people of color have boosted their share of top hits by about 20% over the last nine years, women have made smaller gains -- and in some cases, lost ground. They received production credits on about 2% of the top 100 songs for the past nine years, a number that has remained unchanged. For every woman who got a producing credit, there were 38 men.
Women account for around 13% of songwriting credits, a number that has increased over the years. But 57% of songs measured by the study had no female writers, and less than 1% had only female writers.
"Each song on the popular charts represents an opportunity to include women," Smith wrote in the report, co-authored by Dr. Katherine Pieper, Marc Choueiti, Karla Hernandez and Kevin Yao. "For artists starting work on new music, consider working with women in songwriting and producing roles. While it may seem easier to work with prior collaborators, the process of discovering new partners and opening up the potential for innovation is the path toward greater inclusion."
Cake Pop, Including 100 gecs' Dylan Brady, Share New Song "Black Rum": Watch the Video | Pitchfork
01 Black Rum
02 Cake Happy
03 Whistle
04 Magic
05 Ether
06 Candy Floss
07 Satin Bedsheets
08 Boom
09 Pombachu
10 Almost Famous
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