“This was a wonderful project to be a part of,” declares Alexandra Patsavas , the music supervisor of Netflix ’s “ Bridgerton .” The period drama about finding love in 19th century London has become one of the most popular shows of the season, thanks in part to its music, which often features reimagined versions of contemporary hits. In an exclusive video interview with Gold Derby ( watch above ), the Grammy-nominated producer discusses the challenges of putting a classical spin on modern pop music.
Patsavas is no stranger to working with executive producer Shonda Rhimes having worked as music supervisor on “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” and many other “Shondaland” shows. With “Bridgerton,” Patsavas describes the unique challenge of bridging the worlds of contemporary and classical music. “It is very interesting to think about making sure that the musical character of ‘Bridgerton’ is inviting, is contemporary, but it is fitting for the period,” she explains. I think that the idea of instrumental covers of current iconic pop songs was something that we talked about before the first episode was shot.”
The series includes a number of current pup songs reimagined as classical compositions, including “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish , “Thank U, Next” by Ariana Grande , and “Girls Like You” by Maroon 5 . Many of those covers are performed by the Los Angeles-based group, Vitamin String Quartet , a group with whom Patsavas was quite familiar. “A string instrument is the closest thing to the human voice,” she says. “I really think those kinds of performances can be so exquisite and so emotional.” Patsavas says she was not expecting the audience’s reaction to VSQ, which saw their streaming numbers increase a whopping 350 percent. “It’s super rewarding to understand that they have new fans as a result of ‘Bridgerton,'” she exclaims.
Working on the series proved challenging on non-musical levels as well thanks to the Covid pandemic. Patsavas describes having to do post-production work on the series via zoom separate from her collaborators . “This was my first experience of being in a room this way– in a zoom room, watching the cut,” she explains. However, she also believes that the show’s quality comes across, pandemic or no pandemic. “I just think it’s so good,” she exclaims. “It’s entertaining. It’s cheeky. It’s uplifting.”
BTS's 'Butter' Hits 100 Million Spotify Streams In Record Time
BTS's "Butter" has officially been out for one week now, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody who pays even remote attention to pop music, it has gotten off to an explosive start on streaming services, posting the biggest seven-day streaming total in Spotify history—sort of.
The Korean pop septet's delectable new single collected 99.37 million Spotify streams in its first seven days, according to the platform's stream counter. It cruised past the 100 million mark on its eighth day (May 28), lifting its total to 110.481 million. It's the fastest song to hit 100 million streams in Spotify history, and the biggest first-week total ever, according to the stream counter.
Alas, when the official first-day total for "Butter" came out, Spotify had shaved off nearly 50% of its reported streams. Streaming services implement filtering as a safeguard against "low-quality" streams, i.e. songs that are looped ad nauseum or played on mute or super low volume in an obvious attempt to juice the numbers.
Spotify is less precise in the explanation on its own website, claiming only to use "a formula that protects against any artificial inflation of chart positions." As a result, "the data might look different from other reported stream numbers we share (e.g. in Spotify for Artists, the desktop app, and other custom usage reports)."
Whether BTS's new song dethrones Olivia Rodrigo's streaming juggernaut "Good 4 U" on the Hot 100 remains to be seen—and eagle-eyed fans should expect an excruciating wait for the charts to refresh this week, given the holiday weekend and the potentially tight race for No. 1. But no matter how the Hot 100 shakes out next week, BTS have earned themselves another win. Butter Summer has arrived.
This article has been updated with information about Spotify's streaming calculation formulas from both Spotify and Music Business Worldwide.
A night of pop and opera | Cyprus Mail
"Anastasia Maximova is one of the most vivid and unique phenomena in the world of contemporary music," say the event organisers. "An opera singer, she is a graduate of the St Petersburg State Conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov and has unearthly beauty and strength in her voice."
Her career spans from the role of co-host of the popular Russian TV show The Musical Ring to her extensive tours across Europe and Russia. She had once surprised everyone with her experiments in uniting pop music with operatic vocalisations. Now, as a mature artist, Anastasia continues to synthesise compositions from what may seem to be a bizarre combination of genres. "Her amazing voice and unmatched stage energy," add the organisers, "fascinate listeners all over the world! At the Colosseum, Anastasia will be accompanied by two Cypriot musicians in a show that will blend pop and opera music."
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5 Rising Korean Artists To Know Now | GRAMMY.com
Album: Liz Phair - Soberish | The Arts Desk
Pop music, like Hollywood , is a dream factory: a place where you can be anything you like, as long as that's not a middle-aged woman. I'll hit the last year of my 30s next week, with the number one spot in the country held by a woman who has her driving licence but isn't old enough to drink. Cannot relate. In either respect. Thank god, then, for the return of Liz Phair.
Last seen ruffling the feathers of indie purists with side-swipes into pop (2003's self-titled album) and hip-hop (2010's Funstyle ), Phair has spent much of the last decade working on film and television soundtracks, a box set 25th anniversary reissue of her groundbreaking debut Exile in Guyville , and the first volume of her memoirs , Horror Stories . Those trips into the past prompted a return to the studio with old friend and collaborator Brad Wood - producer of the California-via-Chicago songwriter's first two and a half albums - but the results capture a magic far beyond nostalgic trickery.
The album takes a little bit of everything that makes Liz Phair great - the candid lyrics she first became known for, the irresistible pop hooks of her turn-of-the-millennium reinvention, the memoir-meets-short-story of her prose and sonic tricks straight out of the composition handbook - and throws it all in a blender, creating something both unique and uniquely Liz. Songs shift gear halfway through: album opener "Spanish Doors" cycles through grinding guitars on the verse to hit a sweet spot of a chorus, complete with audacious vocoder harmonies; "Hey Lou", an upbeat rocker which imagines Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed at opposite ends of the dinner table, takes a dreamy detour down 5th Avenue; "Ba Ba Ba" lurches from cello and nursery rhyme lyrical percussion to alt.rock romance. "Sheridan Road" is both a simple acoustic composition and a triumph of sound design, the ambient sounds of Phair's native Chicago "merging, converging" with a lovers' trip down memory lane. The whole thing is dizzying first time around, delightful as you burrow your way deeper with repeated listens.
Phair, who'll be opening for Alanis Morissette on a rescheduled UK tour later this year, said in a recent interview: "If you had told me at 23 that I would still be doing this, that would have seen revolutionary to me". But to those of us who grew up in her shadow, this revolution comes as no surprise.
Exploring 1974, an unexpectedly seminal year in America - Anchorage Daily News
Writers often use specific years in the titles of their books to demonstrate what the book is about. The year 1776 has been used many times as shorthand for the American Revolution. So has 1865, for the end of the American Civil War.
Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein, now of the Atlantic magazine and CNN, has chosen 1974, although the complete title of his new book is the mouthful "Rock Me On The Water: 1974, The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics."
For those not around in 1974, "Rock Me On The Water" is the title of a Jackson Browne song. Browne figures prominently in Brownstein's L.A. tale. So does a Brown without the "e" – Jerry.
The year 1974 is not obviously important in history. It's remembered best for President Richard Nixon's resignation during the summer, following the Watergate revelations. Brownstein tells us vividly why 1974 mattered.
"Chinatown" is a story of corruption so deep and pervasive that it is ultimately unfathomable to J.J. Gittes — played by Nicholson. The rich and powerful have stolen the water that feeds Los Angeles. Then they go on to unspeakable intimate crimes. Director Roman Polanski wasn't unspeakable to Nicholson's co-star, Faye Dunaway — the criminal acts that forced him to flee the country came later — but he was nasty and abusive on the set.
L.A. music, in the Brownstein telling, is almost exclusively rock/pop, although there is a chapter on Motown's Berry Gordy moving to southern California and Bill Withers coming from nowhere to stardom at Sussex Records.
It's no wonder Linda Ronstadt recorded "Poor Poor Pitiful Me." Before she became a megastar, the men in the music industry had only two things to say to her: "I want your body," and "Shut up, you don't know anything, you're a girl." The relentless sexism of pop music circa 1974 is not surprising but hard to take for a male reader of almost 50 years later — even one not woke. If you were after the world's cutest girl, wouldn't it make sense to smile at her? The groupie culture intensified the sexism. Women were constantly available and expendable. It may be that Ronstadt took up with Gov. Jerry Brown because he didn't pinch her in the elevator and would ask "What do you think, Linda?"
Comedian Bob Hope said "We can all be proud of TV, and its owner Norman Lear." For Lear and CBS, the mid-1970s were the hit shows starting with "All in the Family" and the money that followed. Lear dominated the ratings, his shows accompanied on CBS by "M*A*S*H" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Brownstein explains that CBS executive Robert Wood was instrumental in putting "All in the Family" on the air. Wood saw no future for rural-themed shows — "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Hee Haw" — and was willing to take risks with Lear.
Michael Carey is an occasional columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News.
'It was a big deal to leave the gospel world and to do pop music' - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk
BTS Makes Being a Korean-American Adoptee (a Little) Easier - Popdust
On a typical day, I'm BTS-fatigued, but I can no longer feel annoyed with this Korean wave in American pop culture.
The 7-member K-pop band's latest single, "Butter," has broken world records this past week, and I still don't want to have kids.
The seven-year-old says she looks like me, which is pretty accurate. I mean, I have freckles and I'm taller. She has straight hair, and mine is wavy. But with our black hair, pale skin, and broad cheekbones we share a resemblance, despite not having a single strand of DNA in common.
Although my nieces are still working on the simple geography of their small suburb where I also grew up, I've mentioned that both their dad and I were born Somewhere Else called "Korea" (I can't wait to explain that their dad is, literally, my brother from another mother).
As they get older, we'll get around to words like "adopted," "naturalized citizenship," and the grosser ones like "model minority" and "yellow face." At some point, I'm sure "banana" will be revised, too: "Yellow on the outside, white on the inside."
But for now, they certainly don't know where Korea is… And these days I still wonder who actually does. Growing up in a rural, predominantly white suburb in the '90s, everybody I met was like my nieces, in that they had no clue what or where Korea was. During standard education's requisite five minutes of covering Asian history, this map was agonizing. Truly, take a guess where Korea is, I dare you.
But in the last 20 years, it seems every aspect of childhood has changed. Kids want to grow up to be YouTube stars (did you know some 10-year-old named Ryan makes $30 million a year by reviewing toys and yelling a lot on his channel?). Toddlers can ask Alexa to play " Baby Shark " until you shut off the Internet, and every toy ad these days looks like a diversity pamphlet compared to what I grew up with (RIP the unbearable whiteness of '90s candy commercials ).
But of all the cultural differences that demarcate my childhood from that of my nieces, the most obvious one is BTS.
It started around 2008, when Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube greatly aided the cultural phenomenon of Hallyu , or the Korean wave. Today it seems like Korea's eminence is everywhere, from Korean skincare products hailed as holy grails within the beauty industry to Korean dramas populating on Netflix.
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