Hedge-fund billionaire William Ackman's deal for a stake in Universal Music Group wouldn't be his family's first brush with the music industry—though it could be more lucrative.
His grandfather, Herman Ackman, wrote a song in 1926 that he sold for $150 on Tin Pan Alley, the old-time New York City hub of publishers who dominated pop music. "Put Your Arms Where They Belong (For They Belong to Me)" turned out to be a hit, with more than 750,000 copies sold.
Mr. Ackman opened his first meeting with Universal management with the tale, according to people involved in the deal.
Executives at the largest music company in the world connected the dots to find that Universal, through acquisitions over the past century of music-business consolidation, owns Mr. Ackman's grandfather's recordings. While the companies were going back and forth on the mechanics of the potential special-purpose acquisition company deal, Universal executives tracked down two 78s of the song and the sheet music, then mounted and framed them as a gift to Mr. Ackman, according to the people.
If the transaction goes through, the bid by Mr. Ackman's Pershing Square Tontine Holding Ltd. for 10% of Universal Music Group would mark a new high point in the industry's resurgent growth, which has sparked interest from Wall Street investment and private-equity firms such as KKR & Co. , to everyday investors like those who can buy shares in publicly traded music-investment company Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd.
John Mayer's Retro Moper, and 10 More New Songs - The New York Times
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter , a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.
If the seamy synths and seamier guitar on John Mayer's new moper "Last Train Home" — the first single from a forthcoming album, "Sob Rock" — are any indication, he may be just a few years away from making his version of "The End of the Innocence," perhaps the leading post-sleaze, decaying-rock album of the 1980s. Strong approve. JON CARAMANICA
The classic country boy seduction of the city girl, except in 2021 Nashville, the country boy sure does have the air of a city slicker. Noah Schnacky has a cinched-tight pop-friendly voice and a rhythmic approach to singing indebted to Sam Hunt , deployed here in service of smooth-talking a woman who's left Los Angeles — and presumably thousands of men who sound just like this — behind. Jimmie Allen, one of country music's few Black stars, arrives in the second verse and sings a few lovely and restrained bars, as if not to overwhelm. CARAMANICA
On "Soberish," Liz Phair 's first full album since 2010, she examines a divorce in all its bewilderment, ambivalence, resentment, nostalgia and tentative steps ahead. She also circles back to work with Brad Wood, who produced her three definitive 1990s albums. "In There" ticks along on electronic drums and pulsing keyboards, as Phair notes, "I can think of a thousand reasons why you and I don't get along" but also admits, "I still see us in bed"; it's not a clean breakup. JON PARELES
The British band Wolf Alice makes rock that's sometimes dreamy, sometimes spiky. "Lipstick on the Glass," from its third LP, "Blue Weekend," falls on the woozier end of its spectrum. Over a wash of synths and an undulating riff, the singer and guitarist Ellie Rowsell sings about reconnecting with a partner who's strayed. The bridge makes clear that it's a road well traveled, as Rowsell lets her glowing soprano climb with each repetition of the section's only lyrics: "Once more." CARYN GANZ
Billie Eilish 3.0 is leaning into slowgaze R&B, croaky dismissals, modern burlesque, 1950s jazz, sentiments that smolder but don't singe. She's peering outward now, and her eyes are rolling: "I used to think you were shy/But maybe you just had nothing on your mind." CARAMANICA
The Argentine songwriter and singer Sofia Rei is also a professor at NYU's Clive Davis Institute, where she created the course New Perspectives in Latin Music. "Un Mismo Cielo" — "The Same Sky" — is from her new album, "Umbral," It's thoroughly global world music, using looped vocals, jazzy clusters on piano, Andean panpipes, a funky bass line and a keyboard solo that hints at Ethiopian modes. Echoing the way she melds music, Rei sings about lovers who are separated, yet they still see the same sky. PARELES
On his new album, "Rare Pleasure," the producer, composer, keyboardist and vocalist Mndsgn enlisted a top-flight crew of L.A. improvisers, including Kiefer Shackelford on keys, Carlos Niño on percussion and Anna Wise on backing vocals. These tracks scan as a matte collage of Southern California radio moods from the past 50 years: 1970s spiritual jazz and fusion, smoother '80s stuff, the soft rock that ran alongside all of it. But on "3Hands / Divine Hand I," he's mostly splitting the difference between Thundercat and Stereolab, singing affable absurdities in a distant falsetto: "Three hands is better than the two that you were born with." GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
The ghostly, deliberate, double-tracked whisper and subdued acoustic guitar of Elliott Smith have been revived by Cavetown: the English songwriter Robin Skinner, who has also produced fellow bedroom-pop songwriters like mxmtoon and Chloe Moriondo. Like Smith, Cavetown cloaks self-doubt and depression in deceptive calm and hints of Beatles melody. In "Ur Gonna Wish U Believed Me," he sings about "The fraying threads of recovery/Crushing me from above and underneath," and eventually Cavetown makes the underlying tensions explode into noise. PARELES
Harry Styles, Jennifer Lopez, pop stars who acted in dramatic roles
Why the Grammys are right to not add a Best K-pop category – and why it should stay that way
Segregating music by language, region or race isn't the answer for awards shows seeking to claw back relevancy
I n recent years, when the time has rolled around for another raft of Grammy nominations to be announced, one question has popped up: When will a Best K-pop category be added to the shortlists?
Earlier this month, those asking – more often than not, journalists rather than actual K-pop fans – got their answer: not any time soon . "What we've heard from the community is that they consider what they are creating to be pop music," the Recording Academy's chief awards officer Bill Freimuth told Billboard . "Some argue that it's pop music from Korea."
We'll overlook the implication through the use of "argue" that there might be a logical claim that K-pop – Korean popular music – isn't "pop music from Korea" for now. It's rare to see the Grammys get something right, but it could be onto something here. Pop music is pop music, regardless of geographical location, the racial or ethnic identity of those making it, the language it's sung in, or any other factor you might choose to segregate people by.
The Billboard piece went on to reveal that only 14 submissions to the Grammys were received from the K-pop industry for the 2021 awards – a number far short of the 100 needed for a new field to be considered. But whether there continues to be 14 submissions or 140, the Academy should stick to the decision it has made so far and never add a Best K-pop category.
Doing so might give a handful of Korean groups new bragging rights and a shiny new trophy to display, but how much would it do for them in the wider world? If you're not already interested in a particular genre or scene, the likelihood of you paying that much attention to a niche category celebrating its artists is low, so the chances of such a field bringing heaps of recognition onto K-pop stars also seems slim.
Segregating awards shows by language or region, as already happens with the Grammys' Latin and "global music" categories, continues to perpetuate the othering of music that isn't Western, white (until very recently Black artists also struggled to be considered in the main categories) and English-led. It takes the onus off of awards bodies to work towards equal diversity and representation, or judging music on its merit and with an open mind, because those releases can just sit in the specific categories created to celebrate them at arm's length.
You only have to look at the Latin categories for proof of this. For example, the Best Latin Pop category was introduced back in 1984, yet very few Latin artists have been nominated in the 'Big Four' fields – Record Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Song Of The Year and Best New Artist – since then. There was Los Lobos in 1987 and Los Lonely Boys in 2005. Since then, J Balvin and Bad Bunny have been up for Record Of The Year, but only as part of Cardi B 's 'I Like It', while Luis Fonsi 's smash 'Despacito' won the record and song awards. In 37 years, that's pathetic.
As music fans' listening habits become increasingly open and globally-focused, it will become ever clearer that the Grammys – and other institutions like it – are painfully behind the times . Partitioning artists into more divisions won't do anything to help that. If The Recording Academy wants to claw back relevancy, it should continue to diversify itself and seek to strategise ways to become more inclusive. And no, this doesn't include booking BTS and then putting them on last to keep your viewership ratings up.
Olivia Rodrigo's 'Sour' Breakthrough - The New York Times
For the past few years, there's been something of a pop star vacuum — or at least, a pop-music star vacuum. By and large, performers making centrist, big-tent pop music have been relegated to the sidelines as hip-hop — and other genres borrowing heavily from it — took center stage.
But Olivia Rodrigo, a Disney child star wielding a bad breakup and a tart voice, has made pop primal, and primary, again. "Sour," her first album, just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with the biggest sales week of the year.
On this week's Popcast, a conversation about Rodrigo's meteoric year so far, the long arc of the mainstreaming of emo and the quickening of the maturing of Disney idols.
Debbie Gibson New Album Includes Collab With Joey McIntyre - Rolling Stone
The time is right for Debbie Gibson to finally get her due as a pioneer. She invented the whole concept of a teenage girl writing and producing her own Number One hits, singing about her own feelings, at a time when the music world scoffed at the idea. Debbie was just 17 when she dropped one of the great pop albums of the Eighties with her 1987 debut, Out of the Blue . She was a songwriting prodigy, but she also had a radical vision: ordinary teen girls deserve to be heard. She’s the godmama to the whole Olivia Rodrigo/Billie Eilish generation of world-beating pop queens. And she’s about to drop her first album in 20 years, The Body Remembers — proof that Debbie’s electric youth lasts forever.
Her new album comes out August 20th, from Stargirl Records. It includes her new remake of “Lost in Your Eyes,” as a duet with Joey McIntyre from New Kids on the Block . She and Joey also have a Las Vegas residency coming up in August and September.
Her new tunes go for a delightful vintage dance-floor vibe, in disco bangers like “One Step Closer.” “I love the throwback style of Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue,” Debbie says. “I love those girls. I miss Donna Summer. I think we all do.” She wrote most of the songs during lockdown. “I was writing both upbeats and ballads, but I was gravitating toward the upbeats just because everybody needs that energy shift now. Pop music does that — it shifts energy. That’s where the title comes from — the body remembers all the visceral moments tied to your favorite pop songs.”
She never let herself get stuck in the past. When pop trends changed in the Nineties, she just moved on to the theater. She starred on Broadway as Sally Bowles in Cabaret , Belle in Beauty and the Beast , Eponine in Les Miserables . (Her 2003 Colored Lights: The Broadway Album is a very underrated gem in her catalog.) “I was never a good strategist,” she says. “Madonna is unbelievable — it’s like she set out to have hits in every decade. And I really didn’t. I preferred my path of, ‘OK, grunge is in, Electric Youth is out; I’m going to explore my Broadway roots now.’ I just go wherever feels natural for me at the time.”
Debbie blew up in 1987 with her Top 10 debut single, the dance-pop “Only In My Dreams.” On the cover, they dressed her up like a chic model — not realizing that her greatness was that she was an authentic suburban geek from the malls of Long Island. She had that unfakeable teen goofiness, like the moment in the “Shake Your Love” video where she uses her shoe to mime a phone call, or the way she painted her knees with smiley faces to show through her ripped jeans. (Her most distinctive fashion statement, along with her U2-style black hat.)
But like young females then and now, she got hostile reactions when she insisted on doing her own songs. “Yes, there was a lot of resistance,” she says. “The label thought it was a fluke — ‘Oh yeah, she wrote one cute song.’ ” Her mom kept pushing. “She was the original momager. Momagers get a really bad rap, but they’ll do nobody else would ever do. And Diane Gibson was at that conference table. It was me and my mom and all men in suits. Everyone was convinced I needed some 40-something male to rewrite and produce. I wasn’t ever gonna ever get myself to Manhattan on my own, let alone convince a conference room full of men to let me produce my own single.”
The suits were skeptical of letting this girl take creative control. “I mean, literally, I can see their shoulders,” she says. “They all laughed, and the suit shoulders went up and down. That’s an image I’ll never forget.”
Needless to say, she was surrounded by men giving her advice. “There was some guy at the beginning hired to critique all my songs that eventually became hits, and I never changed a word. I never listened. And I just remember going, ‘What does this older man know about young girls’ feelings? I don’t understand why they think they can tell these stories better than me.’ It’s not that I thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I just thought, I am the person to connect with my peers. And these puppy-love songs, written from my limited experience? It was speaking to my audience.”
But to the shock of the music business, the fans went crazy. The pop girls can always smell a phony, and they knew she was the real deal. MTV was full of models and poseurs, yet only one pair of painted knees. The video for her best tune, “Out of the Blue,” was just Debbie in her room, with stuffed pandas and a guitar, flipping through a photo album.
BTS Aren't Ruining The Billboard Charts. They Were Already Broken.
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - MAY 21: BTS attends a press conference for BTS's new digital single 'Butter' at ... [+] Olympic Hall on May 21, 2021 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by The Chosunilbo JNS/Imazins via Getty Images)
"The Hot 100 is the best historic marker we have for what's big at any specific time," Breihan continues. "In gaming the system, BTS are f***ing that whole thing up."
It's worth noting now that BTS have never relied on merch or ticket bundles to sell their music because they don't have to . They're one of the few artists capable of selling out stadiums all over the world while simultaneously netting No. 1 hits and shattering sales and streaming records. It wasn't always that way. Eight years ago, the group started out with virtually no stateside presence. Their first several albums didn't even crack the Billboard 200, and once they started to do so, the group enjoyed a years-long ascent before finally topping the chart with 2018's Love Yourself: Tear . Music video streaming records, collaborations with major Western pop stars and the leap from arenas to stadiums followed, cementing BTS's status as not just the biggest "K-pop" group, but one of the biggest musical artists in the world. They're doing concert numbers on par with U2, the Rolling Stones and Metallica, while doing chart numbers comparable to Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande.
BTS aren't tarnishing the credibility of the Billboard charts; they're spotlighting just how fundamentally broken the charts, and the metrics by which they are calculated, have been for years. Pop radio is an outdated monolith designed to uphold the status quo of algorithmic pop songs by Western artists; bonus points if those artists are white and conventionally attractive. For the first several years of their career, BTS were effectively blackballed from U.S. pop radio for simply daring to sing in their native Korean. The fact that radio stations were so quick to add their two English-language hits, "Dynamite" and "Butter," is exciting on one hand, but also indicative of the systemic issues still plaguing the format.
Breihan's assertion that "Butter" isn't actually the most popular song in America right now simply does not hold water. Just because a song doesn't fit your preconceived notions of what a hit sounds like or how it is achieved doesn't make it less legitimate. Barring a seismic industry shift, the Hot 100 still determines the most popular songs in the country, flawed methodology and all. Somebody's got to determine what song takes the throne every week, be it fans, record label executives or somebody else with deep pockets. This week, the fans put their money where their mouth is and sent "Butter" all the way to the top. To accuse them of ruining the pop charts in the process is to ignore decades of foul play surrounding the Billboard charts as well as BTS's own stratospheric success, which took years to cultivate and which shows no signs of diminishing. If you're just now taking note, that's on you.
Bigga Baggariddim: What's That? It's Our New Album, Says Grammy Nominated UB40's Jimmy Brown
English Reggae and Pop band UB40 have announced their new ‘Reggae collaborations’ album Bigga Baggariddim with artists ‘spanning four continents and seven decades of recording experience’. The artistes include House of Shem, Tippa Irie, BLVK H3RO, Inner Circle, Pablo Rider, KIOKO, Gilly G, Slinger, Winston Francis, Leno Banton, and General Zooz (Reggae Rajahs). Bigga Baggariddim will be the group’s 21st studio album.
From India, the Reggae Rajahs’ General Zooz adds more diversity to UB40’s most eclectic album yet and as the founders of Goa’s annual Reggae festival, are a testament to India’s rapidly growing Reggae scene.
The band, formed in 1978, has been nominated four times for Best Reggae Album at the Grammys. In an exclusive interview with Outlook’s Eshita Bhargava, Jimmy Brown, UB40's drummer, talks about their journey, Reggae and pop music, plans to make music for Bollywood, and much more.
That’s a wide-ranging question. The technology had had a profound effect on music generally – particularly production and post-production. The development of software has democratized music recording. Where a band [or record company] would pay thousands of pounds a day in a state-of-the-art recording studio, now, for a lot less than the daily rate of the said studio, you can OWN YOUR studio. This has put the ability to produce quality music in the hands of virtually everyone. There has never been a time in history that so much music is available today. And the variety is mind-boggling. New technology also means that artists can talk directly to their followers without going through the filter of mainstream media.
It’s our latest album. It’s a collaboration with many artists from around the world and our hometown too. I’m very proud of its diversity, with artists from the 4 corners of the globe. From NZ to India, to Jamaica to the UK. Also, it mixes veterans like Inner Circle and Winston Francis with new up-and-coming artists. As well as some of the original artists we used on an album called ‘Baggariddim’ which this new album ‘Bigga Baggariddim’ is a long-awaited follow-up to. My assertion that Reggae is international is strongly backed up by this album.
How do you work on your music? What is the process like? Do you sit together to write lyrics, compose them, etc?
We sit around and play instruments together till we produce something that sounds like music. Very often working from the bass line and groove up, rather than a chord sequence first and work your way down. We are generally a collegiate gang of friends. We like working together, and we probably get the best out of each other.
As far as lyrics are concerned we write those individually, but they can often be changed as we go along. Nobody gets too precious these days, we’re too old for clashes of ego.
To be honest, there was much literal collaboration involved. We just gave backing tracks to various artists and said do what you feel. No rules. And the diversity of the response justifies that approach. What we got back was a revelation.
Joy Oladokun, Hayley Kiyoko & More New Music: First Out | Billboard
Happy Pride Month! To celebrate the return of the season, check out some new tunes from some of your favorite queer artists. Billboard Pride is here to help with First Out, our weekly roundup of some of the best new music releases from LGBTQ artists.
From Joy Oladokun's major label debut, to Hayley Kiyoko's brand-new LGBTQ anthem, check out just a few of our favorite releases from this week below:
In the span of just a few years, Joy Oladokun has quickly grown to become one of the hottest new singer-songwriters making music. Her major-label debut with Republic, In Defense of My Own Happiness , expands on that growth even further, showing Oladokun at her apex thus far. The stunning, emotional album sees Oladokun wading through emotional trauma, sorrow, anger, solitude and, yes, eventually the happiness hinted at in the title, all with surgical songwriting and soulful vocals that will send chills down your spine on each repeat listen.
Hayley Kiyoko has always thrived when writing pop songs that sound like diary entries set to the soundtrack of your favorite '80s film. "Chance," her latest release timed to come out at the start of Pride, is no exception — the plaintive track sees Kiyoko pining after a girl, and one who she's convinced doesn't feel the same about her. The thrumming bass and glittering synths add a sparkle to the star's voice, as she wonders aloud, "How did it go? We'll never see. I knew she'd never take a chance on me."
"'Chance' is a song based on those moments when I denied my true feelings for someone out of fear of rejection, and therefore didn't allow someone to take a chance on me," says Hayley. "I hope this song empowers people to push past their own self-doubt and realize how worthy they are of love."
Self-sabotage has simply never sounded this good. On "House Burn Down," Mikaela Straus, a.k.a. King Princess, takes on her own destructive tendencies in a fun, classic rock anthem. Fuzzed-out guitars permeate the angsty single, as Straus sits in wait for her relationship to come crashing down around her. She doesn't know how it's going to happen yet, but she thinks it's coming in hot, as evidenced by the blown-out nature of each chorus, where she croons, "I'm just waiting for this house to burn down/ I'm just waiting for my luck to run out."
Above practically all else, Cavetown's Robin Skinner knows how to create extremely personal-yet-relatable music. Man's Best Friend , the latest EP from Cavetown, is a 25-minute exploration of the internal monologues we've all experienced throughout quarantine. Whether handling an imagined love ("Idea of Her") or the weight of toxic positivity ("Let Me Be Low"), Skinner offers a glimpse into his own consciousness throughout the project, giving fans not only an idea of where he's at, but offering them a place to feel seen by someone going through the exact same thing.
"The main thing I want to give people is a feeling of comfort," Cavetown said of his new album in a statement. "So even though it can be scary to talk about certain things, I just have to remember thosemomentswhen people have told me that a song of mine has helped them.The idea that my musiccan help someone else get through a difficult time is always so uplifting to me."
It's Pride Month, which means its the time of year where we as queer people get to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and remind ourselves that we are great. That's exactly what rising singer Ah-Mer-Ah-Su makes clear on "No One," her dance-tinged new self-love anthem. Star Amerasu's hypnotic voice floats over an unrelenting beat, as if coaching herself through a mantra, as she dedicates the entirety of her anthem to "no one but me."
Michelle Zauner on New Japanese Breakfast LP and Finding Joy - Rolling Stone
When Michelle Zauner thinks about her latest album as Japanese Breakfast , she thinks of persimmons. “Persimmons are pretty present in a lot of Asian cultures, as gifts that you give to people,” she says over the phone from her home in Brooklyn. “I had seen an image of these hanging persimmons that are dried during the winter and turned into sweet, dried fruit. And I really like the idea of this very bitter, hard fruit before it’s ripened — on display and slowly maturing and turning sweeter and letting its environment impact it. It felt like a very fitting metaphor for where I’ve come from.”
The album’s lead single, “Be Sweet,” feels a little poppier and less in the indie-rock direction you’re known for. How did that happen?
I was really worried that everyone was going to get mad at me and think I was, like, going full-on pop, but I think a lot of people really liked it. Even our fans are like, “She always does this thing where she puts out a song and it doesn’t sound like the rest of the record.” [ Laughs. ] I think that I’ve built up a bit more trust. “Be Sweet” is obviously our poppiest song. It feels like the most like radio-ready of the songs that I’ve put out. It very much has a chorus, but I think the rest of the songs are really wacky and weird.
I’m obviously a poptimist. I especially like pop music that isn’t formulaic and has depth to it. I was really cognizant of that going into this album. I think as a lot of indie bands get bigger, it’s a very obvious move to pivot to the pop realm, because you’re kind of like, “What’s going to get me into a bigger room?” But I wanted to make sure that I was well-intentioned with my music. I was very scared of making a poppy record.
With this new record, I wanted to invite more people into our world, and the two of us would sort through the pieces together. I definitely did fuller demos for this album than I had before. Jack brought his own creative flavor to “Be Sweet” and “Posing in Bondage,” and Alex really opened me up. “Savage Good Boy” is just a really weird song. I tried to take the best parts of all my collaborators and showcase [them] on this record.
“Paprika” is such a triumphant way to kick off the record. Why did you choose to open it with that one?
I felt like there was no question that the album had to open with “Paprika.” I actually fought with the label to make sure that it wasn’t a single. It felt like such a thesis statement for the album. We really went all out for that one. The strings and horns — it was everything that I wanted. The song is so much about forcing yourself to revel in music-making and really feeling what you have to offer and making sure that that’s really real — that you really deserve to be in this position that you’ve staked out for yourself. I specifically wanted it to not be a single, because I’m excited for people to listen to it as the opener of a record without having heard it before.
How much of the theme for this album is joy?
I had the title Jubilee for a long time. The main theme was going to be joy, but of course, the 10 songs aren’t all about being happy. They’re about different ways that we interact with joy — if it’s a struggle to feel joy, or it’s a reminder to feel joy, or if it’s doing something to sustain joy, or walking away from someone or something to experience joy or preserve joy. That to me is what the theme of the record is.
The record has darker moments too, especially towards the second half.
I tend to put the bangers up top and then slowly get sleepier, like on mixtapes. That was always the arc that I’ve been drawn to creating in a playlist. The sadder songs for me — like “Tactics” is very much a song about the things that you have to do to protect your joy. Sometimes it’s about walking away from an environment, and you have to make a tough decision to negotiate your joy over someone else’s.
For a song like “Kokomo, IN,” I don’t have that type of longing the way that most teens do anymore, but that’s certainly what makes a more interesting song. So I wanted to put myself back into position of being 18 and losing a love. But it’s seen from this more mature lens, where a young boy is saying goodbye to his girlfriend who’s gone off to a study abroad in Australia. It’s a very sweet song. Like, “It would be selfish to keep you here in this small town, and you’re about to show off to the world, the parts I fell so hard for. And I’m sad about it, but ultimately, the world deserves you far more than just little me.”
Last year, you collaborated with Crying’s Ryan Galloway on an EP under the name Bumper , and he also appears on Jubilee. Do you see a through line between those two projects?
That EP is very much just a marriage of Ryan’s and my interests. It was a pretty quick process that was all connected over the internet. But I think the same kind of earworm sensibilities that I strive for are present there.
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