OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

no, hang on, you're right - it's nominally a news piece, though again, the writer doesn't seem to know the album well enough to express the shards of opinion without leaving the note to find a song that supports his suppositions later.

I guess this is a common risk with web writing though - did you save the rough first take of a piece on the CMS as a draft as you meant to, or did you actually go through with publishing the thing?

rest in peace, mac mccormick...

"In great measure Lightnin' and his songs reflect the mistreatment which has been and, in lesser degree, is the condition of Negro life. But while reflecting it, Lightnin' is not in any real sense subject to it in the way his neighbors are. Pursued by women of two races, earning upwards of $15,000 a year, and free to exercise all but a fraction of the rights of first class citizenship, his position is hardly comparable to those who stand in a condition of fear and elemental want."

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/12274467_10154362120527137_7640918093203148569_n.jpg?oh=2e695b80d119bed0cc77a68e6e17d523&oe=56ADC6B3

wow, is that in the liners?

yeah. and it gets worse after that.

"As this tribute illustrates, the one single thing which Lightnin' can give is music. Otherwise he has nothing to offer."

"Not to be confused with the great bluesmen who expressed a deeper, universal sorrow..."

he compares him to a clown. and then just rakes him over the coals forever. describes at length the ways in which Lightnin' wouldn't help various family members who needed money. it's brutal.

What a charmer

wow

"As this tribute illustrates, the one single thing which Lightnin' can give is music. Otherwise he has nothing to offer."

hopkins was a notoriously layabout and womanizer and was widely considered to lack elementary loyalty, but... jeez.

mccormick sounds a bit like that stephen calt guy. who is also dead. coincidence?

Calt's a bastard but at least he writes in a way that suggests an education beyond the fifth grade

This is decent from a grammatical/syntactical perspective, but it rivals the Goddess In The Doorway album review for the title of "Most Rolling Stone Article Ever."

i like how immediately after gioia went off on music people really wanting to be in the movie business he referred to what 'jack black' was doing with third man records

research!

oh whoops wrong thread i'm talking about these videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NT-fbu4b40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xOK9ETlhRs

maura, it was nice to see you write about Palm in RS. they played a great show at my store this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaDnnPLdu4I

yeah!! i love them. they're playing here tomorrow!

also, shout out to whiney for accepting my pitch on them :)

good job, whiney!

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/who-is-really-paying-for-adele

Idiotic.

the previous and seemingly unassailable record, 2.4 million, set by ’N Sync, in 2000,

her label, Columbia, and its parent, Sony

can't get past the commas

maybe one superfluous comma there?

I'd say two: after 'N Sync and after parent.

the general tone of the average "WHY ISN'T ADELE ON SPOTIFY" article, this one included, makes it sound as if she was withholding bread from children
dear entitled jagoff: you can still get this album free in a dozen different ways like, i dunno, youtube if you don't want to support the radical belief that an artist has the right to sell her own work how she'd like
dear "industry insider": the current trend is for blockbuster artists to roll out a concrete album release and then a quieter exclusive or multiplatform streaming release months later and sales seem to undeniably suggest that's the smartest way to do it; if you have some sort of insight as to why that's not the case, maybe voice that argument instead of nonsensically flailing about with false "the industry has EVOLVED" platitudes

Stupid article but wrt the bit at the end that goes "Why not make “25” available to the premium subscribers on streaming services?": iirc TS offered this to Spotify for 1989 but Spotify refused because they don't want to have premium-only material.

Best thing about the article was the suggested link to http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business which is an interesting read

The whole thing is stupid but this but took the biscuit considering Adele is already on record moaning about paying tax so why would she want to not make as much money to help other artists?

In this scenario, maybe Adele doesn’t get the record for albums sold, but she would have significantly increased streaming subscriptions, which would benefit many artists. The way things are going now, only Adele wins.

Of course she does! that's her whole reason for doing it!

This article is so fucking stupid that it's practically ruining my weekend

If you are an Apple or a Spotify subscriber (I am both), you are faced with a quandary over what to do about “25.”

Even if I were -- which I'm not -- I would not be faced with a quandary, because I don't care about the new Adele album. But to take an example that actually applies to me, I do subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu. And this weekend, my kids wanted to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because we recently finished the book. Guess what? No Harry Potter on Netflix or Hulu. Did I scream and yell because the services I subscribe to at a grand total of about $16 a month don't have every movie ever made (or, for that matter, most of them)? No. I paid the $3.99 for the HD stream from Amazon, because 4 bucks is still pretty cheap for an afternoon of family entertainment. (We did check the public library first, but it was checked out.) There are so many fallacies in such a short space that it's hard to even know what to say. I'm not even sure who he's worried about. The industry? The consumer? Both of those seem to be doing fine, at least as far as the Adele album goes. It's like he's gotten 100 percent on board the streaming train, and he's just mad that the whole world isn't there with him. The frustrated rage of the early adopter.

reminds me of the guys who think people should only listen to the format of their choice who post on facebook how much they hate cds/vinyl/mp3s whatever.
But they dont get paid for it and no more than 10 people probably read it

The whole thrust of his argument is "Look, lady, I already spent $20 on music this month, and now you expect me to spend another $10?!"

And this weekend, my kids wanted to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because we recently finished the book. Guess what? No Harry Potter on Netflix or Hulu. Did I scream and yell because the services I subscribe to at a grand total of about $16 a month don't have every movie ever made (or, for that matter, most of them)? No. I paid the $3.99 for the HD stream from Amazon, because 4 bucks is still pretty cheap for an afternoon of family entertainment. (We did check the public library first, but it was checked out.) There are so many fallacies in such a short space that it's hard to even know what to say. I'm not even sure who he's worried about. The industry? The consumer? Both of those seem to be doing fine, at least as far as the Adele album goes. It's like he's gotten 100 percent on board the streaming train, and he's just mad that the whole world isn't there with him. The frustrated rage of the early adopter.

The number of times in the last two years I've seen people blink several times when I say, "I checked X out of the library" has been astonishing. It's like, if the library's not part of your life, the library will never be in your life.

i was mad for years that there was no high quality version of the "like dust" video by the passion puppets on youtube. livid! finally, this year, my prayers were answered.

oh no this massively successful album may not sell as many copies as it could have. the writer of "shake it off" will only be able to afford two summer homes this year.

let's not stop until culture is 100% saturated in adele

Who's Adele? [/satire]

I finally realized what the Yahoo Rihanna stuff-up reminded me of – this, from the movie Chicago

http://s12.postimg.org/a3n9ytq8d/Chicago_newspaper_Guilty_Innocent.png

Fairly inefficient journalism imo. Half of these papers will have to go in the bin, and the other half won't really be "news". Money-saving tip: just glance at the headline, then wait a few hours and buy a better newspaper. But even this fictional rubbish newspaper accepts that there are two possible versions of reality. Yahoo isn't quite there yet. (Apparently Chicago nicked that idea)

http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2015/11/13/ezra-furman-the-outsider/

Ezra Furman is the kind of artist who comes along every now and then to reduce jaded music hacks to gibbering, simpering wrecks. All cynicism evaporates, all objectivity is thrown out of the window, and terms like “life-changing” are tossed around with giddy, reckless abandon. And it’s not just the press. Witness Furman’s new label boss, Bella Union supremo (and erstwhile Cocteau Twin) Simon Raymonde. After catching a particularly riotous gig at London’s Lexington earlier this year, Raymonde took to Instagram and became very, very excited indeed. As in, capslock excited:

“EVERYTHING. ALL THINGS. LIFE. THE BEGINNINGS. THE STRUGGLE. EVERYDAY. OUTSIDE. TEARS. HEARTBREAK. UNBRIDLED JOY. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS BEFORE OR AFTER. JUST THIS MOMENT. LIVING. SHARING. LOVE. WHY WE BOTHER. THE MOST IMPORTANT. DON’T USE THE WORD VISCERAL UNLESS IT REALLY WAS. NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN.”

Quite. And it’s not just Raymonde. The rest of the U.K., it would seem, has fallen head over heels in love with Furman. He’s received across-the-board fi ve-star reviews, BBC 6 Music has practically adopted him, he sells out shows in minutes, and in one of the summer’s more surreal musical/media meet-ups, he appeared in a suitably somber interview on Channel 4’s evening news. Not bad for a selfconfessed misfi t, a cross-dressing, bisexual, observant Jew with a history of depression. Even more impressive when you consider that, as recently as three years ago, he was pleading for money on Kickstarter to fund his first solo album, The Year Of No Returning. Not that he seems particularly fazed when MAGNET calls him to talk about this sudden burst of fame.

Oh, and "his latest album, Perpetual Motion People, is far and away one of this year’s most sublime efforts...a giddily splenetic, high-octane record, packed full of a dizzying array of influences—the Violent Femmes, Lou Reed, ’50s doo-wop, Bowie, Jonathan Richman"...I admit to feeling a little dizzy, but it may just be nausea.

What's the US version of landfill indie? Because this guy is that.

Ezra Furman is the kind of artist who comes along every now and then to reduce jaded music hacks to gibbering, simpering wrecks.

mission accomplished

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01112/mission_accomplish_1112950c.jpg

I know some people who tell stories like that too, where they try to make shrug-worthy things or events sound interesting by applying melodrama. It's either desperate or delusional.

maura, it was nice to see you write about Palm in RS. they played a great show at my store this year.

― scott seward, Saturday, November 28, 2015 1:22 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love this band. weezer back!

people have been writing music for other people forever. what's the difference this time?

uhhhh...sweden?

dimbulb seabrook interview.

https://recode.net/2015/11/30/adele-owned-last-week-but-a-guy-youve-never-heard-of-owns-pop-music-heres-how-he-did-it/

"It’s also interesting that the [song-producing] technology was [initially] not used by the mainstream songwriting people, but it sort of came from the margins — from hip-hop people, that didn’t have access to the studios."

marginal hip-hop basement tech. until the swedes arrived...

is he talking drum machines

i have no idea.

apparently, if i'm reading the interview correctly, pop music was two guys banging away on a piano writing songs until the studio-less hip-hoppers showed the swedes how to do things quicker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CwwCbMq320

so how many times do I have to read about max martin before I've heard of him

until an old white guy lets him produce an album, he is only a myth carried on the wind by sylvan messengers

he's your little swedish secret that you keep in your pocket when you want money. shhhhhhh.........