NEW YORK , April 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Honoring pop music's hottest songwriters, producers and publishers, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) today announces the winners of the 2021 ASCAP Pop Music Awards , which will be celebrated on @ASCAP social media through April 15 . After a record-setting year following the release of his double platinum album After Hours , pop superstar Abel " The Weeknd" Tesfaye is named ASCAP Songwriter of the Year for the first time in his career.
Known for his signature alternative R&B sound, velvety voice and pitch-perfect falsetto, The Weeknd undeniably dominated the charts in 2020. Taking home the ASCAP Songwriter of the Year honor and two most-performed song awards for smash hits "Blinding Lights" and "Heartless," The Weeknd is now a 13-time ASCAP Awards winner. As the critical and commercial success of After Hours continues, "Blinding Lights" closes in on diamond-certified status, while becoming the first song in history to spend an entire year in the Billboard Hot 100's top 10.
ASCAP Pop Music Awards Song of the Year goes to Post Malone's megahit "Circles," honoring ASCAP hitmakers Louis Bell , Kaan Güneşberk and Billy Walsh alongside publishers Nyan King Music , Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing Group. The third single off the chart-topping album Hollywood's Bleeding , "Circles" spent 39 weeks in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and marks the artist's first #1 hit as a solo billing.
All The Best New Pop Music From This Week: Doja Cat, J Balvin
This week in the best new pop music saw a handful of exciting collaborations. Doja Cat tapped SZA for a look at her upcoming project, J Balvin and Khalid made a laid-back tune , and Justin Bieber called on some R&B contemporaries for a devout EP.
Doja Cat has been teasing her next album, Planet Her , for several months. She’s since shared a potential list of guest features which included The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, French Montana, Megan Thee Stallion, and SZA. Confirming SZA’s involvement, Doja Cat shared the groovy tune “Kiss Me More” this week, which featured the two singers’ soaring melodies.
Despite releasing two albums in 2020, Taylor Swift is already back in the studio. This time, she’s rerecording her old catalog after a feud with Big Machine Records over her old masters. She’s currently sharing updated versions of her Fearless tracks, including songs that never made it to the record like “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” a heartbreak anthem that Swifties are convinced is about her breakup with Joe Jonas .
J Balvin may have released his well-received concept album Colores in 2020, but it looks like the prolific musician is already gearing up for a new release. He’s shared three new singles in 2021, his latest being the introspective tune “Otra Noche Sin Ti,” where Balvin tapped Khalid to grace the track with his soulful musings.
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard new music from Gwen Stefani but if her recent track “ Let Me Reintroduce Myself ” is any indication, the singer is planning to throw it back to hear early career with an upcoming, nostalgia-inducing project. Calling on Saweetie to infuse her “Slow Clap” single with icy girl swagger, Stefani proves that she’s still as relevant as ever.
Slayyyter is a few months away from releasing her anticipated debut album Troubled Paradise , which she’s previewed with a handful of hyperpop singles. Offering yet another taste of the album’s blown-out sound, Slayyyter shares the fuzzy anthem “Cowboys,” where she sings of an ex that she just can’t quite shake.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
LL Cool J Responds to Being Called 'Pop Rap' Pioneer | Complex
LL Cool J has had many monikers throughout his nearly 40-year career. In fact, Mr. Smith even coined the term “GOAT.” Despite taking on different personas, LL didn’t take kindly to being labeled a pop rapper.
Yet, LL Cool J’s accomplishments—and rejection of “pop music”—leads fans back to the age-old question: “Is it ‘Pop’ because it’s successful?” This moved them to flood the timeline with their take on the phrase “pop rap” while also giving LL his props.
Pop-culture investments fuel poet Hanif Abdurraqib | WXXI News
Hanif Abdurraqib left Connecticut in the spring of 2017, after a painful breakup. Now he was back in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. A wounded writer. Perfect. Anger and bitterness have filled many, many library shelves.
Except, it was too easy to be bitter, he says. "I don't really write well when I'm bitter. And so I needed to figure out something for myself that served my writing."
Abdurraqib figured it out by going back to what had once been. In the case of that relationship, it was the hope. Generosity and kindness. That's "A Fortune For Your Disaster," a collection of poems that outlived pain.
Abdurraqib seizes the freedom to write about anything that catches his eye, with no regard to what he is supposed to be. He is a published poet. An essayist. And that catch-all for a brain ruminating through a keyboard, "cultural critic."
Browsing through his words, it's clear music is a key. Abdurraqib is not genre-bound. He writes about A Tribe Called Quest and Olivia Newton-John. And it's through music that he connects with the greater world. A rumination on a film about Aretha Franklin. An appreciation -- appreciation , mind you! -- of the 1998 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy, "You've Got Mail."
And on into a world where, for some people in this country, a flag at half-staff "reminds me to either feel fear or sadness."
"Because it's how I did as a kid, it's what I had at my disposal when I could not find language otherwise," Abdurraqib says. "And so I think I have come to rely on music, to kind of feel my way through a more complicated world. And still to this day I do that, I turn to music new and old to kind of make a map for me."
Dogs also play a lead role in another poem, "Watching A Fight At The New Haven Dog Park, First Two Dogs And Then Their Owners." It opens with the instantly classic line, "The mailman still hands me bills like I should be lucky to have my name on anything in this town…," and then goes on to eschew any form of punctuation. Just one long, run-on sentence of misunderstandings. It is a tough urban poem that makes me think of the late Amiri Baraka. Pounding out a stream of consciousness.
So many of these "pop culture investments" are drawn from the 1990s, when Abdurraqib was in high school. It's nostalgia, he admits. Inescapable influences. Of "You've Got Mail," he says, "There was a point where that film was always on TV. I'd be home from school in the summer, and it seemed like it was on every channel."
Music from the Middle | Cover Story | Style Weekly - Richmond, VA local news, arts, and events.
Whether dance floors are open or closed, pop music retains its power to move us, distilling complex emotional experiences into art that resonates the moment it hits our ears.
That immediacy is a hallmark of songs by indie-pop singer and songwriter Tyler Meacham , including her two newest, which arrive via your preferred streaming platform this Friday.
While neither "Unknowing" nor "Nothing Is Easy" mentions COVID-19 by name, you're likely to see in them some part of your own journey through 2020.
"In a universal sense, it feels like we have been in a place of uncertainty and unknowing for the last year," Meacham says.
Written prior to the pandemic, "Unknowing" hits extra-hard in light of the roller coaster we've all been on – one that's forced us to come to terms with the fact that, as the song states so succinctly, "safety is no guarantee."
For musicians, that upheaval has been devastating. The need for social distancing put a halt to concerts, wiping out a vital line of income for an industry already in crisis over meager streaming royalties. Having released her "Property" EP shortly before the shutdown, Meacham felt the financial effects right away.
Seeking an outlet for that frustration, she opened up on social media, finding validation from fellow musicians and a sense of purpose in enlightening her other listeners.
"There was this kind of confusion about how it was even possible that we were having to deal with this," Meacham says. "A lot of those conversations became moments to educate people. … Our social media accounts can paint one picture of success and acclaim, or whatever the case may be, and then a pandemic hits and you can't really run away or hide the truth. Struggle is real."
The title and tone of "Nothing Is Easy" align closely with that struggle, but true to Meacham's knack for bridging the personal and the prevalent, the song's imagery is timeless. Waiting for a frozen landscape to thaw. Feeling stuck between where you've been and where you're going. "I'm somewhere in the middle now," she sings in one particularly powerful moment. As hard as that lyric hits, given the road to recovery ahead for the music industry, there's hope in reading it as an invitation to consider the big picture.
Lady Gaga Reacts To 'Artpop' Fan Rally | Billboard
Lady Gaga, winner of Best Music (Original Song), attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on Feb. 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, Calif.
After Little Monsters shot 2013's Artpop album into the top 3 on the U.S. iTunes album chart this week amid calls for a sequel, Lady Gaga told them the love has warmed her heart.
"The petition to #buyARTPOPoniTunes for a volume II has inspired such a tremendous warmth in my heart," she tweeted after fans helped push the singer's notoriously ambitious third album back onto the charts with their hashtag effort.
The plea then cited a recent post from the album's main producer, DJ White Shadow, in which he responded to a fan asking if we'd ever hear the mythical lost tracks from the sessions. "Gotta petition Gaga on that one" he responded about a possible 10th anniversary celebration of the album.
Gaga appeared to second that emotion about the EDM-leaning project that she poured all her creative faculties into that was perceived by some as a creative misstep . "I fell apart after I released this album," she tweeted of the effort that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts. "Thank you for celebrating something that once felt like destruction. We always believed it was ahead of its time. Years later turns out, sometimes, artists know. And so do little monsters. Paws up."
At the time of the original's release, Gaga hinted in a tweet to a fan that Act II was already in the planning stages and Shadow has reportedly played some alleged instrumentals from the mythical sequel in concert as the opening act on Gaga's 2017 Joanne World Tour.
"I will continue to push for those songs you want so badly, that LG and I did, and I hope you will get to hear them," he promised. "Don't let them die." Oh, and he said he texted Gaga about it.
Twee Pop: 8 Essential Albums From the Subgenre - Popdust
From Beat Happening to Belle & Sebastian, we look at eight albums that came to define an underground subgenre.
Eventually, indie pop spawned what would be called "twee pop." Initially used as an insult towards indie pop's often cutesy, tenderfooted exterior, the word "twee" — like many of the best insults of history — was eventually reclaimed by the community it was used against. Indie pop of the late '80s and '90s embraced a sort of childlike wonder. It still possessed the progressive motives of punk, but instead of spiking their hair and starting mosh pits in basement shows, twee pop bands sang pleasant melodies over basic guitar chords, expressing a delightful sense of innocent charm.
The influence of early twee pop bands can be heard in modern-day artists such as Frankie Cosmos, Sidney Gish, Remember Sports, and Diet Cig. At once scrappy and incredibly comforting, the twee pop subgenre persists among the indie community.
Below, we've listed some of the best and most important twee pop albums to emerge since the subgenre's original boom. Put on your Converse and polka-dots and dance along.
It's impossible to discuss the history of twee pop without mentioning Beat Happening, the Olympia, Washington-based trio fronted by K Records founder Calvin Johnson. Their self-titled debut album, released in 1985, was a landmark execution of stripped-down post-punk filled with guileless whimsy.
The members of Beat Happening weren't especially technical musicians, but the amateur candor of Beat Happening adds to the record's appeal. And it makes sense that Beat Happening went on to become so influential; nobody could match Johnson's booming, droning baritone, his band valued passion over finesse, which in itself adds to Beat Happening 's charm.
Another record label that was crucial to the early days of twee pop and indie rock was the Washington, D.C.-based Slumberland Records, whose co-founder Mile Schulman performed in Black Tambourine. Blending indie pop sensibilities with the harsher guitar textures of shoegaze, Black Tambourine went on to inspire bands like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Vivian Girls; members Archie Moore and Brian Nelson also performed in another fantastic indie pop band, Velocity Girl. All the best songs by Black Tambourine can be heard on their self-titled compilation album.
Like Cub and Heavenly, Tiger Trap embodied the ferocity and spunk of the riot grrrl movement. Formed in the early '90s by high school friends Angela Loy and Rose Melberg, Tiger Trap only lasted for a year, but was arguably one of the most influential bands of twee pop's heyday, as their sound takes cues from the subgenre's punk origins.
A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness was the 1996 debut from Rocketship, a Sacramento band whose earlier releases often fused twee pop with elements of dreampop and jangle pop. They drew on similar influences to Belle & Sebastian — namely underground English band Felt — and both bands subverted the stereotype that twee was amateurish and unsophisticated.
Bree Runway Discusses Relieving Stress, Jollof Rice & Pop Music On Noisey's
On the light-hearted series, artists are presented with several different multiple choice questions and are expected to reply with their preference as well as reasons for choosing that option – making for a fun way to get to know more about some of our favourite artists.
During her appearance on the show, Bree speaks on natural disasters, relieving stress and jollof rice, before briefly delving into a conversation on pop music and why she can’t be boxed in.
Rise of regional Latin music: The evolution of Latin music genres - Hypebot
In this concluding part of Chartmetric’s Latin music series, we dig into the evolution behind Latin music’s various genres.
MIGRANTES + Oscu + Rombai + AGP + Alico · Prod. Valdi | Si Me Tomo Una Cerveza REMIX [Video Oficial]
Humans migrate — it is intrinsic to our nature. When we do migrate, we aren't just transporting ourselves, but our culture as well. Thanks to the globalization wave that took place during the 20th century, migration was turbocharged, provoking cultural exchanges that generated new cuisines, mestizo graphic expressions, and new music genres. Music is possibly one of the cultural expressions that records such cultural exchanges with the greatest fidelity.
As economic and cultural exchanges intensified during the 20th century, Cumbia traveled around Latin America until it was adopted by virtually every Spanish speaking country in the region. As a result, the variations in subgenres today are numerous and rich, resulting in almost every Latin American country now having its own Cumbia style. In spite of being originally a Colombian music genre, Cumbia has become hugely popular outside of Colombia, especially in Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, and in the Mexican American market. As we will review here, Mexican, Argentinian, and Uruguayan artists are leaving their mark on Cumbia with great regional commercial success.
Latin Pop artists have also started to take notice. The fact that Cumbia is again en vogue didn't escape the attention of arguably the fastest rising star of the Latin Pop world: Camilo. Camilo has been incorporating different regional Latin music genres in his most recent releases: Bachata from the Dominican Republic and, of course, Cumbia, from his native Colombia, in his track "Vida de Rico." Diego Burgos, Latin Music Global Editor at Deezer, helps provide more context:
Cumbia Sonidera is a subgenre born in Mexico from the fusion of Colombian Cumbia and electronic music influences around the mid '80s. This fusion was born at massive street parties organized in working class neighborhoods — parties helmed by DJs known as Sonideros . The sound of Cumbia Sonidera fuses mid-20th century Colombian Cumbia, electronic music through a heavy use of synthesizers, and voice processing effects that invoke those used in '80s/'90s EDM tracks. This movement was born mainly in the underground scenes of Mexico City and Monterrey, where these DJs used to do unauthorized "Sonidero" versions of the original recordings coming from Colombia; they then sold the unauthorized versions they made of those songs at their events in the form of compilations. This trend became so popular that many Mexican Cumbia artists and producers started approaching the Sonidero sound in their new original releases.
In Part 2 of this series , we spoke about Cumbia and its Colombian origins ; however, it will be useful to explore more about its arrival on Mexican shores. Mexico had a really strong film industry between the 1940s and the 1950s, which is why that period is known as "The Golden Era." During this period, one movie genre that was wildly popular involved musical movies in which music stars from all genres were also the stars of the films, and they got to perform their music as part of the film’s narrative.
As in any underground movement, there are a myriad of artists that pave the way for one of them to go mainstream. One of those acts has gone on to build a long and wildly successful career doing Cumbia Sonidera: Los Ángeles Azules. Los Ángeles Azules are a band from Mexico City who are, without a doubt, the biggest Cumbia act in the world today. The band, formed by the siblings Mejía Avante, was originally born in 1976, but it wasn't until 1983 that they formally started their career playing Grupero music. Years later, after pivoting to Cumbia Sonidera, they had their first huge hit with "Como te Voy a Olvidar," a song that is now a staple in celebrations of all sorts in Mexico and Latin America. In 2013, they broke the mold by starting collaborations with mainstream Latin Pop artists, a strategy that has continued since then and has paid off handsomely, as shown by the streaming numbers and YouTube video views of their latest hits "Amor a Primera Vista," with Belinda and Lalo Ebratt (454.5M views), or their version of "Nunca Es Suficiente," with Natalia Lafourcade (1.17Bviews).
Comparing Los Ángeles Azules with international artists, we find that they are the most followed Cumbia artist on both Spotify and Deezer, with 4.1M and 942.5K followers, respectively. On Spotify, this puts them in the same category as British Electronic group Clean Bandit (4.17M), or the contemporary Country group Florida Georgia Line (4.16M). On Deezer, their playlist "100% Los Angeles Azules" grew 40 percent in Colombia and 532 percent globally in 2020. Their wildly successful YouTube channel has accumulated 7.47B views with a growth of 33.7 percent during 2020, which means they've generated 1.86Bviews in the last 12 months alone. Every month, their channel increased by an average of around 174M views, more than what Beyoncé generated each month on average (164.8M), and just below what Cardi B garnered every month, despite a very strong year for her (175M). On Pandora, as expected from a successful Mexican artist, Los Ángeles Azules have a very active listenership, which is evidenced by their 2.62M average monthly listeners, putting them pretty close to American DJ Marshmello (2.63M) and within the same rank as Colombian superstar Maluma, who has 2.64M average monthly listeners. These numbers demonstrate that Los Angeles Azules' 40+ year career is still stronger than ever.
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