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Taylor Swift's 'Fearless' re-release pays homage to her country music roots with Maren Morris,
In August 2014, Taylor Swift could not have been more direct — she was moving on from country music, the genre that made her famous.
This was not an easy thing for some in the country music world to accept, given that she was one of the format's most successful singers. Swift told Rolling Stone at the time that her record label president begged her to include a few country tracks on the album. She declined to do so.
While Swift has transformed into a pop megastar in the years since, she hasn't completely left the genre behind. She has written a couple songs for other acts (Little Big Town's "Better Man," Sugarland's "Babe") and performed last year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. But on Friday, she paid homage to her country roots in the most significant way yet with "Fearless (Taylor's Version)," a rerecording of the 2008 album that won album of the year at the Grammy Awards, the top prize at both major country award shows, and launched her into superstardom with smash hits such as "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story."
Incidentally, the reason for the rerelease stems from an incident with her former Nashville label, Big Machine. Two years ago, music manager Scooter Braun purchased Big Machine Label Group in a reported $300 million deal, meaning he became the new owner of Swift's master recordings from her first six albums. Afterward, Swift penned a scathing letter saying that her masters being sold to Braun was her "worst case scenario"; she said he had "bullied" her for years and also alleged she wasn't offered the chance to outright buy the masters herself. Swift promised she would rerecord all of her older albums so she would fully own them, therefore devaluing Braun's purchase.
"Fearless (Taylor's Version)" is her first step in that quest. While all the songs sound very similar to the past version, save for her more mature vocals and a few new production elements, she took extra steps to maintain it was still a very Nashville record.
First, she enlisted two of the genre's current biggest stars to join her on songs from "the vault," a collection of six tracks that Swift wrote years ago and wasn't able to include on the original "Fearless." Maren Morris, who once joined Swift as a guest performer on tour, is featured as a background singer on "You All Over Me."
"One thing I've been loving about these 'From The Vault' songs is that they've never been heard, so I can experiment, play, and even include some of my favorite artists," Swift wrote on Instagram in March. "I'm really excited to have @marenmorris singing background vocals on this song!!"
Keith Urban also shows up on two "vault" tracks: He plays electric guitar and performs background vocals on "We Were Happy," and duets with Swift on "That's When."
"I'm really honored that @keithurban is a part of this project," Swift wrote in another Instagram post. "I was his opening act during the Fearless album era and his music has inspired me endlessly."
Olivia Rodrigo And Addison Rae: A Tale Of Two Popstars
Olivia Rodrigo and Addison Rae have taken their first steps into music - and their approaches couldn't be more different.
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Olivia Rodrigo's 'drivers license' isn't just the biggest song of 2021 so far — it's one of the biggest debut singles in history .
In pop music, there's no such thing as a guaranteed hit. But in hindsight, 'drivers license' is the kind of song we're always craving, that comes around once in a blue moon: like 'Rolling in the Deep' or 'Somebody That I Used to Know', it's a heart-stopping ballad with an attention-grabbing arrangement , sung by an original, yet comfortingly familiar voice. So how do you force lightning to strike twice in a row? The answer is: you don't.
Last week, with 'drivers license' still in the Billboard Hot 100's top five, Rodrigo released her follow-up single 'deja vu'. Like 'drivers license', it opens with twinkling synths and a car metaphor, but the destination feels very different. In the song, Rodrigo recalls her formative memories with her ex — "Car rides to Malibu/Strawberry ice cream, one spoon for two" , then imagines him repeating all of her moves on his new girl — "So when you gonna tell her that we did that, too?/She thinks it's special, but it's all reused!"
She sings the titular chorus several ways — first softly, as a question, then almost yelling it, hoping that her ex's memories of their relationship will sour like hers have: "Do you get déjà vu when she's with you?!" But ultimately, the song feels as playful as it is angry; like a hot-flush outburst that feels embarrassing in the moment, but leaves you feeling relieved.
'deja vu' isn't as immediate or dramatic as 'drivers license', but that arguably shows us more of who Olivia Rodrigo is as a songwriter. She's always feeling multiple emotions at once. "Watching reruns of Glee/Bein' annoying, singin' in harmony" — she sings, recalling a happy memory with a tinge of sadness. What makes Rodrigo unique, even two songs in, is that her self-conception isn't static. She writes lyrics about the past, sung as if in the present, on songs that are released with an eye to her future. As a student of the Taylor Swift school of songwriting, Rodrigo understands that whatever she's singing about — love, relationships, exes — the real subtext is her own personal and emotional growth.
'drivers license' could have served up a gossipy celebrity love triangle to the media on a silver platter — but it's a blessing that the drama never once threatened to outweigh the music; that neither Rodrigo nor the other parties have been typecast as, well, anything.
I wasn't sold on the "drivers license" craze but I love olivia rodrigo's new song, "deja vu." it sounds like if taylor swift and radiohead collabed https://t.co/DK1gAaNWkm
Where Are the Douyin Generation's Pop Stars?
Last month, I was scrolling through my feed on Douyin, the version of TikTok accessible on the Chinese mainland, when I came across a "Top 10 Douyin Songs of 2021" compilation. Produced by a music company I had never heard of, I was skeptical that it was just a marketing ploy. Nevertheless, I let the video play.
To my surprise, I recognized every song on the list. Also to my surprise, most of the comments on the video were highly critical: "Catchy songs never last," read one. "Douyin updates trendy songs so fast, they're gone before I can even learn how to sing them," another user added.
The idea that Douyin has deprived China's Generation Z of truly classic songs is not a new one . In online discussions , music fans born in the 1980s and 1990s frequently reminisce over the so-called golden age of Chinese pop music. Lasting from the late 1980s to roughly the emergence of the fresh-faced boy band TFBoys in the early 2010s, it was a time when pop idols produced stone-cold classics in an endless battle for chart position. Admittedly, everything looks better when viewed through nostalgia's rose-tinted glasses, but these wistful fans are onto something. China's music industry is in the midst of a dramatic decoupling from traditional distribution channels, one that's reshaping how we experience new music.
In contrast with music-streaming platforms like QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, where full songs are still the primary product, music is never more than part of Douyin's backdrop. Good music is still indispensable to the app, even if the platform has rendered it more disposable and anonymous than ever. A song's adaptability — its ability to work with a wide variety of videos and their associated visual effects — is just far more important than what it aims to express.
Take "Give You Four Seasons," for example. One of the titles listed by the above-mentioned "Top 10 Douyin Songs of 2021" video, it started as a gentle love ballad. Its Douyin version, however, added concentrated drums, making it more likely creators would choreograph a dance to it. And choreograph a dance they did: A number of influencers have set the song to a dance that shows off their rippling ab muscles.
These drumbeats and seemingly unrelated thirst traps work to shift viewers' focus away from the song itself and on to video creators. The app's famous algorithm also pushes users in this direction. Search the names of top songs on Douyin, and the app will often auto-fill suggestions like "dance" or " finger dance ." Dance tutorials also tend to rank near the top of search results. In this way, Douyin engineers condition creators to produce the imitative, competitive content they want to see.
In response to Douyin's growing influence over the music market, music labels have started turning to data analytics in the hopes of finding the secret formula for producing a viral hit. Their findings suggest that Douyin's algorithm favors songs with simple, memorable lyrics and repetitive tunes, which all have a "brainwashing" effect on users. Armed with hard data, small- and medium-sized music labels now produce music according to user preferences, as opposed to what artists want to express — a practice that crystalizes the contradiction between music as "art for art's sake" and as a programmed means of entertaining the masses.
The lack of enthusiasm for actual songs, even ones that are generally well-liked and reviewed, puzzled even Douyin's music team, according to interviews I conducted with employees at ByteDance, Douyin's parent company. The only reason they could give is that users' musical tastes are fickle. Absent any answers, the platform's music team has since abandoned its efforts to inject their musical preferences into the algorithm and has gone back to recommending music solely based on data or as part of commercial deals with labels.
Meanwhile, the competition to make the next trending hit is only escalating. According to domestic media reports and interviews with music industry insiders, if a song does not go viral within three days, the label immediately stops promoting it. It's a cruel rule, but it has nonetheless become the norm for music companies. Over time, repetitive tunes and simple lyrics — or even no lyrics at all — have become increasingly common, and songwriters and recording artists work as if on an assembly line.
Glass Animals: Pop success of "Heat Waves" is a "lovely surprise" -
Pooneh Ghana British band Glass Animals has been releasing records since 2012, but their current single " Heat Waves " is their first-ever to make it onto Billboard 's Hot 100 chart, not to mention their first on Billboard 's Pop Airplay chart. And nobody is more surprised by the song's success than, well...the members of Glass Animals themselves.
"This song being on these pop radio stations is just such a surprise," says Glass Animals drummer Joe Seaward . " Everything's such a lovely surprise. You just never feel jaded, I think, is the nice thing, 'cause everything's always a bonus."
The band's frontman, Dave Bayley , tells ABC Audio why the success of "Heat Waves" -- coming as it did in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic -- means a "huge amount" to the band.
"We haven't actually been able to go overseas, but this song has kind of traveled and sort of done that for us," he notes. "We feel very lucky to have had that, it's pretty amazing."
As for why "Heat Waves" has become their breakthrough hit, Joe believes it's because the song's combination of "upbeat, exciting music" and "remorseful, mournful lyrics" reflects our present moment in time.
"It's quite sad," notes Joe. "I think that that resonates quite strongly with what's been happening to people in the last year."
"Heat Waves" appears on Glass Animals' new album, Dreamland , a concept album about Dave Bayley's childhood. He's hoping that new fans who've discovered the band through "Heat Waves" will now be inspired to give Dreamland a try.
"Maybe it'll lead people to listen to the album, which was very much written and made as an entire entity, as an entire world," says Dave, adding, "I think you can say a lot more when an actual album is greater than the sum of its parts."
Tayla Parx on Silk Sonic's 'Leave the Door Open,' Retro Hits
Singer-songwriter Tayla Parx has written hits for the biggest acts in pop, from Ariana Grande ("thank u, next") to Panic! at the Disco ("High Hopes") to Khalid ("Love Lies"). The Dallas-born 27-year-old's prolific résumé also includes a collaboration with Anderson .Paak on his track " Tints ," featuring Kendrick Lamar, and two solo albums in the past two years. In demand thanks to her knack for crafting the perfect topline and her encyclopedic knowledge of music history, she has had her finger on the pulse of the industry for years. So much so that Switched on Pop co-host Charlie Harding was inclined to call Parx to get her expertise on a burning question: Why can't he (and everyone) get the retro sounds of " Leave the Door Open ," .Paak's new song with Bruno Mars ( their debut as the duo Silk Sonic ), out of his head?
In this week's episode of Switched on Pop, Harding and Nate Sloan break down the Philly soul and Quiet Storm references that undergird Silk Sonic's throwback hit. Parx drops by to school the guys on writing a retro-soul jam for the ages and why listeners may be ready for a blast from the past.
Charlie Harding : "Leave the Door Open" is just like 1970s Philadelphia soul. And it's a very winking song; it's taking itself extremely serious musically and it's very lighthearted, lyrically.
Having worked with him on his record Oxnard , I was wondering if you could walk me through his parts on this song. Is there anything you immediately identify that feels like what's happening now as opposed to what would have been happening in like the '70s?
Tayla Parx: It doesn't sound like people trying to do music back then. It sounds like his own interpretation, which he's very good for because he's a musician . And when you're a student of music, you can say, "What is it specifically that I liked about that, that I'm trying to capture now?" Because Bruno is also a musician, they're able to really play "shuffle."
I can't imagine how many changes the song probably went though, in drum patterns, or in melodic or rhythmic or cadences. What makes it feel so today is, lyrically, it's so conversational. And of course his personality is shining through. You can tell that this is just somebody who's a little bit silly.
There's this line in particular that, for me, was like a giveaway to the modernity. At the end of the first verse, Paak goes: "My house, cleaned / My pool, warm / Just shaved, smooth like a newborn / We should be dancing, romancin' / In the East Wing and the West Wing of this mansion, what's happening?"
That is very, very good. It has that thing where it's like, "Mmm!" You can hear [the early influences] in his voice, but those cadences are still very contemporary. [There's a similar sound on] the verse on "Dance Alone" [Parx's 2020 single], too.
But it's only when you get to the section where .Paak sings "kissing, cuddling" [in a more classic style] that it's like, "Oh, okay. I see what you're doing," Everything else is just new and very him, because he always had that way of genuinely saying, "I know you can hear those influences. Look how I made them my own."
Let's look back at the history of pop music and the historic moments of Michael Jackson | Daily
It is hard to find anybody on this planet who doesn't love pop music. Pop music is more than just melodies; it's an emotion that sets you on an endless rollercoaster. When we speak of the pop genre, we actually discuss modern music and the continuous advancements that dwell in popular music. The term 'pop' music simply means popular music. It was coined in the mid-1950s while a group of avant-garde musicians presented a rebellious form of music in the United States and the United Kingdom. Though many people consider popular music to be something different, the meaning of pop music is more or less the same. Popular music is generally what's trending in the music community and it dabbles in different styles of music, keeping the option of variation always open. When you look a few decades back, during the period between the 1950s and 1960s, you can clearly see how other genres impacted pop music. It included everything from rock and roll to what the youths of the first world countries were jiving along. There was a shear connection between the rock and pop genres at the beginning. They were roughly similar to one another but that concept changed in the late 1960s. Since then pop started to revolve around more commercial tunes which easily penetrated the market. People seemed to accept the accessible genre more than anything.
Now people call pop music whatever they hear on the radio and the music charts. But you can't mix it with songs on record charts because it has a distinctive style that often sounds very different. It is easy to spot a pop song with repeated choruses and stunning hooks. Pop music has a different pattern; sometimes the length of the compositions is short and sometimes it gets medium to long. It is the most danceable genre that combines the music flow of rock, slow electronic beats, urban style, dancehall, Latin, and country vibes.
After the brief introduction, it's not hard to understand the elements of pop music. The definition of pop changes from time to time. David Hatch and Stephen Millward believed that pop music is “a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, and folk music”.
Pete Seeger defines pop music as “professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music”. People find pop music is only about chartbusting numbers but the singles on the charts are not the epitome of the genre. These days, music charts have access to classical, folk, jazz, and novelty songs, making them popular in the music community. So, you can't mistakenly come to believe all the popular songs are from the same genre, pop. Pop is a separate genre that exists with the accumulation of diversified musicality. Pop music is designed to become universally appealing and most songs target teenagers as its audience. As time is changing, the course of pop music is also evolving. That's why the music writer Bill Lamb has come with another definition for this music genre. He defined it as “the music since industrialization in the 1800s that is most in line with the tastes and interests of the urban middle class.”
The term "pop music" was coined in 1926 in a clear sense which only meant “having popular appeal” for a specific kind of music. Hatch and Millward remind us that some events can be mentioned from the history of music in the 920s which directly lead us to the birth of modern pop music. The trend of recording in the country, jazz, blues, and hillbilly music has its part in making the music industry that we call pop industry nowadays.
The distinction of the pop genre was made during the late 1960s when people started using the term in opposition to rock music. Finally, that was the cue to divide two genres gaining separate generic importance in the music industry. Rock was supposed to inspire authenticity and the possibility to popularize music. Pop music started to associate with more commercial, ephemeral and common musicality. The British musicologist Simon Frith believed that pop music was created as "a matter of enterprise not art”. It is “designed to appeal to everyone” but “doesn’t come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste”. According to him, pop music is produced with the sheer interest of making a profit. With commercial music, the artist started to obtain commercial rewards. The pop industry grew with the help of top-tier record companies, radio programmers, and concert promoters instead of making music from independent uprising artists. Pop is not labeled as do-it-yourself music; rather it is 'produced and packaged'.
The early version of pop music was popular in England around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is enjoyed mostly by common people. After the print revolution, a new era arrived with the broadside ballads which were available at cheap rates and in enormous numbers. With technological and social advancement, pop music changed its form in the nineteenth century. The brass band was the forerunner of the accessible and communal form of music. New gigs and music halls came forward to offer new kinds of entertainment suitable for urban societies while dwelling with the existing formula of popularizing music among the youth. Back in the 1930s, the rise of American Jazz led to the beginning of a new chapter in music with the introduction of British dance bands.
Pop music generally flows in the form of groovy songs that take two to three minutes to incorporate all the sound elements in the projects. It is generally marked by repeated and continuous rhythmic altos following mainstream style. The chorus of a pop song is often led to "the drop" where the bass slows down and beats get heavy. It includes the amalgam of every form of music from jazz to country, rock to dance. Sheet music is another phenomenon in the pop industry and the publishers of sheet music formed companies to give out what the artists desired. Pop music is a simple form of the biggest accumulation of musical trends that is easily marketable, warm, and enjoyable. It may include vocals, lyrics or it can be simply based on melodies, compatible rhythms, groovy drops, and thick bass work.
The period of 1956 was dominated by one name in the music industry and that was Elvis Presley. He arrived in the 1950s as the most crowd-pleasing rock star with great rock and rock music. He is still considered the king of rock and roll. His contributions to the music industry make him the best-selling solo artist. 1957 is an important phase in the history of music because John Lennon came across Paul McCartney in March. John Lennon set up a band called Quarry Men and invited Paul McCartney to join his band. It couldn't impress the audience before the promoter, Carroll Levis. Then a new saga of rock music emerged in The English music industry with the arrival of the rock band Beatles. Beatles was formed by John Lennon, PaulMcCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr in the decade 1960-70.
Meet Kristian North: the former garage punk frontman sharing his new sophisti-pop music - The
Being the son of two Broadway veterans, Montreal-based Kristian North's love for music was almost written in the stars. North began his musical journey more than 20 years ago, playing music at an early age, but his passion truly came to fruition when he started playing in bands during his teenage years. Since then, pursuing a career in music has never been out of his radar.
Before becoming a solo artist, North was the frontman of the punk garage band Babysitter, where he performed all over Canada and the United States with his bandmates. After releasing their last project in 2015, the group disbanded. This was an opportunity for North to explore different music genres and to completely redefine his sound.
When comparing Passion Play to his first album, North associates one to a compilation of short stories and the other to a long novel. When reminiscing about writing The Last Rock 'n' Roll Record , Kristian admits the album took a very long time to finish because he dove way too deep into the concept. For Passion Play, he wanted the eight songs of the album to have their own story plot while remaining sonically cohesive.
The album's first single, "Fantasy," released last February, perfectly sets the tone for what the record is going to sound like. When listening to the song, the funky guitar grooves of Janelle Monáe's "Make Me Feel" or of Prince's "THE GOLD STANDARD " instantly come to mind.
Though North is very proud of the entirety of his project, he has some favourites; one he is particularly proud of lyrically would be "Halfway To Heaven." This song's writing process took over six months to complete and is, according to him, one of the more crafted and significant songs on the record. He is also particularly proud of his second single "Genius Of Song," for both its lyrical and sonic quality.
The Concordian spoke with Kristian North to talk about his musical evolution and to know more about his forthcoming sophomore album Passion Play.
TC: You first were in the garage punk band Babysitter. Since then, you've made a stark shift in the kind of music you make. What led you to this reinvention of your craft?
KN : I guess there's a strong aesthetic difference in my music before and after Babysitter, but I'd say that the songwriting aspect has kind of always headed toward the same direction. I even think that what Babysitter was doing musically towards the end, leading to this, makes some sort of "twisted" sense.
KN: Yes and no. I mean, Babysitter was a pretty "free" band. But now, the compositional method is kind of different; the songs are a bit more thought-out now. Babysitter was mostly about improvisation when crafting the songs, and the structures were never quite as solidified as there are for me now.
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