Over their astonishing 50-year career, the singular art-pop outfit Sparks has consistently demonstrated a distinctively cinematic sensibility. The pair's songs are often conceptual and narrative-driven, with rich characters and shifting points of view accompanied by a kind of symphonic flair. The scenarios laid out by the tongue-in-cheek compositions of brothers Ron and Russell Mael — a boy nervous to introduce his German girlfriend to his Jewish family , or a man who regrets marrying a Martian — frequently resemble the plots of short films. So it's only fitting the band has turned to the screen numerous times. They appeared in the forgotten '70s disaster thriller Rollercoaster , collaborated on unrealized projects with Jacques Tati and Tim Burton, wrote original music for films by Guy Maddin and Tsui Hark (and even recorded a very strange song with the Hong Kong auteur ), and most recently wrote Leos Carax's upcoming musical Annette .
Netflix docuseries ‘This Is Pop’ explores the making of music from Abba to Zapp
When the creators of the new Netflix series “This Is Pop” began thinking about how to tell the story of pop music in an eight-episode docuseries, they looked first to the model of their ongoing series “Hip-Hop Evolution,” which last year finished its fourth season on the same streaming network.
That series traced the development of rap and hip-hop from a now-legendary party in the Bronx in 1973 where DJ Kool Herc set in motion a series of events that would lead to the genre and its many offshoots we know today, says Amanda Burt, series producer of “This Is Pop” for the Toronto-based Banger Films.
“It’s impossible,” Burt says. “Pop music isn’t one of those things that started at a party, and you could go through the family tree of it and end up today.
A scene from the new Netflix series “This Is Pop” with T-Pain and his wife Amber. (Courtesy of Netflix)
“It’s many, many origin stories,” she says. “Many countries, many, many overlapping ideas of what pop music is. So there isn’t an easy path to take when you’re talking about pop music.”
Seori talks about the meaning behind 'The Long Night' and reflects on her first year in the K-pop
The indie R&B singer also discussed her love for alternative rock and what she has learned from her star-studded list of past collaborators
From working on an original song with Park – under his solo moniker eaJ – and featuring on K-pop boyband TXT's latest single '0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You)', to her partnership with American label 88rising , the 25-year-old singer has had a whirlwind of a year since the release of her debut EP '?Depacse Ohw' last May.
Now, back with a brand-new single called 'The Long Night', featuring South Korean rapper and producer Giriboy, Seori has sat down with NME to discuss her meteoric rise to fame and the future of her blossoming music career.
"Thank you so much! First, I'll explain the meaning of this track. 'The Long Night' is about the emptiness after having a great day and having to say goodbye at night with the person you love. I think I'm someone who tends to feel lonely a lot. When I was writing the lyrics and melody, I saw an empty bed, and that was when the idea hit me."
"I was so excited to work with Giriboy because I've always wanted to work with him. Thankfully, he listened and understood what type of song I wanted and was a really great guide. I had a wonderful time and I hope we can work together again if we have the chance."
"The newest experience I had working on 'Lovers in The Night' was having to receive instructions through a video call while we were recording because of the pandemic. That was the most new and different thing that I went through. I was also worried if I could pull through but fortunately, it went well."
"When I was a kid, I kind of had a fantasy about singing in front of people. Other than that, I didn't really have any other dreams. But I couldn't gather the courage to pursue it because the industry is so narrowed."
"But after entering high school, I kind of thought that I should decide what I wanted to do. The only thing I wanted was music and so I challenged myself with it. Now that I think about it, I can't imagine myself doing anything but music."
"I was doing music even before starting YouTube, but I only focused on writing songs then. But then I started to wonder what people would think of my songs, and that's when I started uploading my music on YouTube. At that time, I didn't expect much. I was just into music because I was passionate about it. That's why I started. The only reason was my passion for music."
10 Cool New Pop Songs: Tinashe, Anthony Ramos, Raye | Billboard
These 10 tracks from artists like Jessie J, Tinashe, Raye, Kylie Minogue as well as Anthony Ramos, Leslie Grace and Marc Anthony from In the Heights will get you energized to take on the week. Add any of these gems into your personal playlists -- or scroll to the end of the post for a custom playlist of all 10.
Ramos and Grace's voices blend beautifully on the upbeat "Home All Summer," Lin-Manuel Miranda's new song for the insanely enjoyable big screen adaptation of his Broadway hit In the Heights. Just like the movie it hails from, it's comforting, effortlessly charming, flawlessly executed and boasts a memorable Marc Anthony cameo. – Joe Lynch
British singer-songwriter Raye specializes in crowd-pleasing dance-pop fare, and with a dizzying disco hook and ultra-supportive lyrics, new single "Call On Me" makes the mainstream its target. As she continues to impress across the pond, here's hoping Raye makes the leap toward U.S. stardom in 2021 with songs like this one. – Jason Lipshutz
Twenty-one-year-old Nigerian singer Rema has continued to garner attention and gain global traction for his smooth and sultry vocals, which pair perfectly with the production on his latest summer jam "Soundgasm." The tongue-in-cheek title hints at the playfully confident lyrics throughout, and while the intro and underlining riff recall something from a Justin Timberlake song, Rema's presence quickly overpowers any notions of comparison. – Lyndsey Havens
Orville Peck's "Born This Way" tugged heartstrings and Big Freedia's "Judas" tugged G-strings, but Kylie Minogue injecting disco goddess vibes into the underrated Gaga banger "Marry the Night" for Born This Way Reimagined is a Pride Month fever dream come true. If the night married Gaga 10 years ago, it is now in a polyamorous union with Kylie as well.
– J. Lynch
File John K's new track "Everything" away under the Pandemic Pop label: similar in theme to Julia Michaels and JP Saxe's "If The World Was Ending," the song muses on connection under extreme circumstance ("The world outside is a mess, it can wait," he sings, before concluding on the chorus, "The sky could be falling, as long as you're next to me, I got everything"). John K is too talented not to pull off the concept, though, and "Everything" will have you fully appreciative of your quarantine partner. – J. Lipshutz
At long last, vocal powerhouse Jessie J returns -- while celebrating 10 years since her debut album Who You Are -- with a glistening '70s-inspired dance-pop single. With help from co-writer and producer Ryan Tedder, Jessie J's vision to "come back with a song that felt classic but modern" (as she said in a statement) successfully came to fruition. – L.H.
For a song inspired by insomnia, Upsahl's "Melatonin" is a surprisingly bright, buoyant pop tune, although when the L.A. singer-songwriter hits the chorus, you can feel a little of the exhaustion creeping around the edges of her vocals -- in a good, gritty way. Even so, if sleeplessness sounds this appealing, who wants to go to bed anyway? – J. Lynch
In conjunction with an album announcement -- 333 , her first since 2019, which will arrive later this year -- multi-hyphenate Tinashe released lead single "Pasadena" featuring Buddy. Complete with syncopated handclaps and gorgeous layered harmonies, rising producer Oliver Malcolm (signed to Darkroom/Interscope) rounds out the track with a glitchy 20-second ending that makes the whole thing feel like a summer daydream gone too soon. – L.H.
Rebecca Black's 'Friday' Was Ahead of Its Time - The Atlantic
Black is now 23, and she's still smiling. The cover of her new six-song project, Rebecca Black Was Here , would be a glamour shot—coiffed bangs, dangling jewels—if not for the green-black slime smeared on her teeth and chin. Over the past year, Black has been wriggling back into the public's consciousness as a hip Gen Z avatar—while coming out as queer, making a hilarious remix of "Friday," and recording adventurous pop singles for a devoted fan base. The sweetness of her teenage persona isn't gone, but it now comes with a punkish, even gruesome, twist.
"As somebody who had been out of control of the narrative surrounding me as a kid, it's fun for me to play with perception," Black told me over Zoom while sporting George Michael–esque cross earrings and a burgundy-tipped bob cut. "There is a very different person there—I would hope that I'm not still acting like a 13-year-old."
She isn't—but she is acting like a member of the internet-raised generation for which she became an unintentional mascot. When "Friday" blew up in 2011, Justin Bieber was riding high as the first YouTube-made teen-superstar singer. Entertainers such as Katy Perry could still force sugary pop into ubiquity without having to contend with Spotify. The growing meme ecosystem minted accidental celebrities such as the Double Rainbow guy at a more manageable rate than it does today. It was, in other words, a more earnest time—a time when long-tested playbooks for show-business success seemed likely to still rule social media.
"Friday" now feels like a turning point. It emulated what hit songs were supposed to sound like in 2011, but the attention it received embodied the values that would define popular culture more with every passing year: entropy, cringe, and the ambient blend of pleasure and confusion that's often described as post-ironic .
Black's immediate post-"Friday" trajectory demonstrated how those old playbooks were losing their relevance. A young Glee fan who'd always dreamed of performing, she showed a striking amount of poise as she acted in a Perry music video , worked the red carpet at the Kids' Choice Awards , and gave interviews about cyberbullying on programs such as Good Morning America . As the "Friday" craze faded, Black's newly hired management team steered her toward recording more teen-pop jingles—but Black wasn't quite sure that was what she wanted. "As a kid, I was really vulnerable to other people's ideas," she told me. "The typical log line of [a] young girl in the industry—everyone wants her to be perfect and strong and emotional and beautiful and thin—is very true." Her music later in teenagedom also aimed for generic pop success, which at the time meant Chainsmokers-style EDM and music videos that looked curated for Instagram.
Many of today's music and meme subcultures, perhaps not coincidentally, love to reclaim bits of entertainment that were once mocked as tacky . Among the fans Black heard from in 2020 was an influential practitioner of such reclamation: Laura Les, one half of the duo 100 Gecs, whose hyperpop sound aims for a "Friday"-style uncanny valley filled with processed vocals and catchy nonsense. Les's bandmate, Dylan Brady, ended up producing the song's tenth-anniversary remix to make a delightfully annoying tune even more ridiculous. Featuring the guest singers Dorian Electra, Big Freedia, and 3OH!3, the hallucinatory music video for the new "Friday" has clocked more than 2.8 million views.
"I wanted to be able to push it as far as I could," Black said of the remix. "'Friday' became such a huge meme [by] unintentionally being everything that it ended up being. Bringing that in in an intentional way was fun, and more interesting than trying to make a serious version."
The hit parade of Netflix's 'This Is Pop' - The Boston Globe
In the early 1990s, a new musical group broke a longstanding record for the most weeks with a Number One hit, eclipsing Elvis Presley. Two years later, they one-upped themselves with another blockbuster hit. A year after that they did it again, staying on top with their latest single for a record 16 weeks.
To date, this group ranks fourth all-time with 50 cumulative weeks spent atop the Billboard pop chart. No, it wasn't Nirvana, or Hootie and the Blowfish.
It was Boyz II Men who "broke the code of the Hot 100 charts," as Michael Bivins, the Boston native and founding member of New Edition, says in the opening moments of "This Is Pop." "And no one talks about it."
"This Is Pop" is a smart new Netflix series premiering Tuesday. It's a deep dive into various phenomena that have helped define the popular music saturating the airwaves at any given moment. Not only that: These eight episodes help define the times themselves.
Themes include the teenage song factory of the Brill Building around 1960, the dominance of Britpop in the mid-'90s and Auto-Tune in the 2000s, how country music went mainstream, and how music festivals have become a kind of secular pilgrimage. The first episode, the one that features Boyz II Men, explains how their brand of close harmony galvanized the boy band craze of the late 1990s — and how this group of onetime Philadelphia high school classmates never got adequate credit for that.
"We treated this like journalism, not entertainment, like 'E!' or 'Behind the Music,'" says series producer Amanda Burt. "How do we ask some big questions through the lens of music?"
Burt came to Banger Films, the Toronto-based production company behind "This Is Pop," from the CBC, where she spent several years as a newsroom producer. Banger is the award-winning house that produced the documentary feature "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage" and the Netflix series "Hip-Hop Evolution," among other projects.
Despite their impact, surprisingly little has been written about Boyz II Men, says Burt. The boy bands episode, she says, is "one of the ones I'm proudest of in terms of the shoe leather" — the solid reporting that makes a documentary soar beyond the initial research.
"Yeah, we kicked Elvis in the butt, but it wasn't so much about that," says Bivins, on the phone in his car. He signed the group to his management company, Biv Entertainment, after they sang a New Edition song for him.
New York, New Music: how the city became a hotbed for music in the 80s | Music | The Guardian
"There's a lot of important music made at that time that a lot of people don't know about," Corcoran said. "We're hoping to encourage some musical discovery or rediscovery, to raise awareness about the different kinds of music. We want to give people an opportunity to expand their musical horizons a bit."
After all, there's a strong preconception of music from that era. "When people think of 80s music, they think pretty exclusively of pop music because of MTV – they made stars out of artists like Madonna," says Corcoran. "But I'm trying to show the wide range of music and cultural scenes happening in the city at the time. The disco era and the punk movement of the 70s tends to get a lot of the spotlight, but the music just a few years later was as vital and experimental."
"What really surprised me was how interconnected all of this music really was," Corcoran notes. "If you look at a week's lineup of the Mudd Club, it could be all different genres and styles of music from day to day. The booking was really courageous and wide ranging. People were absorbing all these different kinds of music and bringing it into their own music. New York is very well-suited for this cross-pollination of cultures and ideas."
Corcoran hopes the exhibition brings fresh attention to the era's often overlooked musical ingenuity. "New York of the early 1980s was the perfect incubator for all this – that social-cultural-fiscal situation set the right stage for a lot of creative people to be here, meet each other and create together," he said. "That still happens today, but there was just the right combination of those things then to be really impactful."
ONLINE: K-Pop SuperFest - Isthmus | Madison, Wisconsin
Joy Ruckus Club is the largest Asian music festival in the world. A humanitarian-oriented, virtual concert series, founded by Asian Americans, and led by artists of Asian descent from all over the world, Joy Ruckus Club is a revolution in pan-Asian music. Not silent, not complacent, not foreign, Joy Ruckus Club is a society of woke Asians who are in solidarity with all truthfully progressive movements of the oppressed and conquered.
Rebecca Black on "Rebecca Black Was Here" and Being Grateful for the Chaos of
"Over the past 10 years, I've obviously had a lot of time to understand myself and what I want, and that love for performing and music has never, ever gone away. Even though it's been a difficult path, it's really difficult for me to give up on things, for better or for worse," Black tells me over Zoom, her bright red hair glimmering in the light of the window in front of her. "It was a lot of emotional work, trying to rebuild my confidence. It's definitely been worth it, I guess I can say now."
Though she credits the pandemic slowdown for this project's existence, the genesis of Rebecca Black Was Here came far before she'd ever envisioned her new direction. After "Friday," Black needed time to focus on healing and existential questioning, to clarify for herself who she was, and what made listening to her music worthwhile. "I couldn't have made this project without having experienced 'Friday,'" she says, referring to the maelstrom that followed her first song's release. "Ironically, it's a huge part of the reason I still do what I do."
Though Black may not have been intending to set off a domino-effect of pop culture at thirteen years old, the origins of hyperpop, one of the prevailing sounds of the moment, can be traced back to her and the now-defunct ARK Music Factory, which produced "Friday" and a handful of other internet-infamous tracks. The producer A.G. Cook, a pioneering force of some of the 2010s most exuberant pop joyrides, has credited ARK as an influence in his early music and the formation of his own record label, PC Music—the primordial soup that spawned hyperpop as we know it—and which then, in turn, inspired the now 24-year-old Black's current sound. In some ways, Black and her teenaged counterparts were responsible for where pop music has migrated, and she herself has evolved to reap the benefits of what she had sown.
Her newfound embrace of that era is partially a result of the recent conversations she has had about what "Friday" still means to people. "Over the last few years, I really started to shift my perspective around the song, as I'd seen the narrative shift around the way people would talk to me about it," she says, the mid-morning sun casting a glow behind her. "It was so much less of the elephant in the room and a lot more of this, 'Oh my God, this was such a crazy thing that happened back then.' It felt like I heard people start talking about it in this nostalgic, sweet, almost celebratory way, as this thing we all collectively remembered."
Some of that nostalgia comes through in this new batch of music: "Better In My Memory," is reminiscent of something produced by the late SOPHIE, and "NGL" (the Internet-slang acronym for "not gonna lie") is an ebullient pop number distorted to perfection. At the other end of the spectrum, "Blue" is soft and sweet, carrying a level of vulnerability that Black feels she's never really expressed in her music. The project's accompanying visuals explore a myriad of darker themes, from the blood-red color scheme in "Worth It For The Feeling", to the unhinged "Personal" video in which Black transforms from a high-femme character into a Patrick-Bateman-inspired, bedazzled-chainsaw-wielder. "Visuals are so important to me and this project overall—as a fan, as a girl who loves shows, and as someone who is now going to explore this world for the first time as a headliner," she says.
When I ask Black if she has a favorite line from the project, she recites a lyric from "NGL:" "'I bet you think I changed on purpose // Took a picture of who you loved and burned it // It'll break your heart for certain // That someone you loved is a different person.' That was the last song that we wrote for this project," she says. "It capped off in the way that I found closure for myself—really understanding that in the end, the other person is going to have their idea of how things went and that's fair for them, and I'm going to have my idea. I just have to feel good about how I felt about how things went, and try to promise myself that I am changing for the better."
Pros of Sound: Kim Petras - PAPER
"[Growing up], my mom and dad would play a bunch of jazz. My mom always sings jazz around the house when she's cleaning [and] my dad is super into jazz; he plays like eight instruments," she says of her upbringing in Cologne, Germany. "He would always embarrass me when we would go to school because at every stop he would pull out a trumpet from under his seat and practice."
Growing up in Germany in the '90s and 2000s with two older sisters was a heady musical experience. A golden era of techno and electronic pop in Germany, Petras was coming of age amidst the Disney renaissance, with films like Beauty & The Beast and The Little Mermaid ingraining a camp, ebullient sensibility in the heads and hearts of young listeners, not least Petras.
"We would always have little parties, me and my two older sisters. There was always music, and we'd always sing and harmonize together," she says, thinking back fondly on some of her earliest experiences with singing, which is still her primary instrument to this day. "[There] was a lot of techno going on in the '90s and '2000s when I was a teen, [too]. I really wanted to be a raver when I was a kid, I really thought that was so cool. It was a very musical upbringing; I loved pop, I loved funk, I loved like Broadway music, Disney music, all that stuff."
You can hear both the hook-forward musicality of Broadway soundtracks and the bone-rattling bass of cutting-edge electronic in much of Petras' music. Her many influences coalesce perfectly on Clarity , which showcases any number of sounds, but stands as a whole due to the striking nature of Petras' voice and songwriting. A track like "Icy" has ostentatious flair without sacrificing edge — a quality that, no doubt, is key to what makes her music so indelible, and such a favorite for singalongs, whether in a club or the backseat of a car.
The frictionless fusion of so many different sounds in Petras' music also speaks to her genre-agnostic outlook. "I wouldn't say I'm necessarily just one genre. I listen to everything and I'm inspired by everything," she says. I think music is the one thing that transcends genre, transcends gender, transcends skin color, everything. It's just about emotion — do you feel it? Do you connect to it?"
There is one distinct exception to Petras' genreless ideology: TURN OFF THE LIGHT , her Halloween-themed mixtape, is one of the strangest and boldest pieces of pop music to be released in the past few years, and it draws its palette entirely from the haunted, neon-lit world of horror soundtracks. "I listen to a lot of horror soundtracks," Petras says, singling out the soundtracks for It Follows , by Disasterpiece, and Drive , by Cliff Martinez, as two perfect starting points for beginners. Listening to them, it's clear where the eerie, vintage-sounding genesis for TURN OFF THE LIGHT began.
Still, for Petras, they present the kind of sound that fosters creativity: "I listen a lot when I'm sketching fashion or tour outfits or things like that," she says.
Although not explicitly Halloween themed, the rest of Petras' music seems to draw from cinematic and intricate film scores, too. While much of pop music is designed to be blasted from festival stages or mall speakers, Petras' music rewards both communal experiences and intense, active listening. This trait likely stems from the fact that, from a young age, headphones have provided solace, as well as an easy connection to the immersive world that so much music offers.
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