We all thought that Spotify were paying something like six cents per 1000 streams and maybe it works out that much but it isn’t that simple. The reason is that Spotify’s Revenue and not the amount of streams is the starting place
Glitter And Gold – Rebecca Ferguson – If you don’t include 1D, Rebecca is the best chance at an artistically valid TV song contest celebrity since Kelly Clarkson, and if that seems gerrymandering for the singer, give this ballad a listen – B+
I don’t think John can help himself; fronting a full swing full scale rock and roll band, he has no problem pounding the drums into submission. It is such hard work with all sense of fun or camp for that matter, long time gone, that it is a storm warning: why feel if you can over feel.
Since life has no meaning, since it all boils down to “and what if I do? and what if i don’t?”, why fight the dream that everything matters including, and especially, me?
Yes folks, he is back and on tour as a solo act for the first time in FOUR YEARS. Sounds incredible, right? Especially since I’ve seen Jay Z on stage some five times in the past four years! Well, that’s New York for you
Sometimes you look at the charts and you say, ‘who are these people? I haven’t heard of one of them.” And other times you look at the charts and you say “Who are these people? Well, I know every single one like the back of my hand and they all suck”. 2013 has been a lousy year for music and this is a disgraceful chart.
the Garth Brooks Walmart only 6 CD, 2 DVD box set, with four albums of Brooks covers, his greatest hits album from 2007 and a live special that aired on CBS on DVD. Whatever future CDs have, it will be something like this
I Woke Up Dreaming – Lydia Lunch – A great image though the song itself is the subterranean sound of things crashing around your ears same as it was; No New York lives, on this live album from a year ago – B
Barbra might want to tells us about being mother natures guardian or treasuring every minute, it doesn’t mean much, and we are not there for platitudes, but but to hear her sing “Some Other Time”, we understand instinctively what it means to pass through the world on borrowed time.
Prism is a sad and sorry album and going gold in six weeks won’t do it (it took Eminem two weeks to go platinum). Katy Perry has a problem and where goes Perry goes Miley. Look at it this way: Eminem sold more in a week than Miley and Katy sold in a combined 14 weeks.
The advertising community is dead meat when it comes to online buying, since it is very very easy to fake your numbers of readers, indeed there are companies where you can essentially buy clicks on a cost per click basis. If you are buying it at 10 cents and selling it at a dollar the numbers speak for themselves
Heaven On Earth – Boston – Sure, they miss Brad Delp but they still got the melodies and those big ol’ guitars and it makes a melodic roar of a sound; maybe Tom can do this forever (or every eleven years) – A-
Four songs and not bad at all the guitar solo on the title track is a thing of deep beauty and the song keeps shifting gear from deep pop to sideslip jazz and back But the highlight is Marshall’s cover of Bobby Fuller’s “Never To Be Forgotten” two tracks later. On Spotify, so I guess even the great can’t fight technology – A-
What Bright Eyes understands absolute these timeless songs is that they bring with them their own memories and 12 years after they are recorded, they bring with them the memories of memories; like the memories of childhood and lost loves.
Bootsey X – Aka Robert Mulrooney, legendary Detroit rocker who performed with original punk rockers the Mutants and almost famous the Ramrods before forming his own Bootsey X And The Lovemasters, dubbed Iggy Pop fronting James Brown And His Famous Flames here. A lesson in the limitations and lack thereof in loving rock and roll.
He only performed two songs but the great vocalese Jon Hendricks, at the age of 92, came onto Van Morrison’s stage at the Theater At Madison Square Garden, and stole the show from under his nose
Well now, this really sucks. There is little doubt Spears isn’t up for anything that important at this juncture of her care and there is nothing else remotely close to cool. I guess I would have to go with Boston just because, well, they are Boston after all,
Cool Zombie – Adam Ant – Extraordinary song of drawl and whinge with the sort of clashing images that has you wonder what is going on, perhaps a reference to all the mood altering drugs Ant has used to try and level himself off – A-
I remember the 1980s as one long nightmare, never ending, never pleasant, buying the new Costello album and discovering it was Spike, being so broke I couldn’t afford a gyro before work, contemplating suicide on a daily basis and no fucking music to get excited about.
One Direction have the best selling opening week of 2013 in the UK but the story here is the revenge of the boy band, if you include Elvis (and why wouldn’t you?) that would make six of the top 10, and the entire top fives all boy band redux.
An alright, Englishy, Christmasy, feel goody type of charts, with Elle, Lily, McFly, Barlow, 1D and more with English-y sweety sticky love makes me strong-y four little word-y let’s hold hands to process guitars and programmed drums
John Cleese is so reasonable while discussing an apartment building that doubles as an abbatoir, “none of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out the windows…” though what he really wants is to be a Freemason – A
Anyone stupid enough to marry a sex addict shouldn’t whine it about and anybody who swaps Russell Brand for John Mayer is trading in models of the same car. Finally, the smug monster got caught out. Prism sounds like Katy Perry. Like they say in baseball, you are as good as your record. ‘Nuff said.
The problem with philosophy is the same as the problem with mathematics, when you’re young you almost don’t have to learn it, it comes with the original package: one plus one plus one is three or do unto others, what is good? This is good.But it changes.
Darkside – Tom Stoppard And Pink Floyd – A radio play that works as a record album that works as a radio with Stoppards rat-a-tat dialogue and concise storytelling. No, it isn’t “The Invention Of Love” but then neither is “The Coast Of Utopia”.
Love Is Love – Hello Steve Reich James Murphy for DFA Remix – David Bowie – Sure, he’s using an idea from Reich, but the way the clapping becomes the beat blows me away every time
Winner – Tom Stoppard – One of the most thrilling musical-theatrical experiences of the year has been the great Czech-English Playwright’s comedy about moral ethics inspired by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, Darkside.
Face The Crowd – Beady Eye – In the worst albums of the year sweepstake, the sophomore effort by Liam’s band is way up there. This song is remarkable in how little it has going for it – D+
The songs are just plain awful, all of them, even “Let It Go”, even “Let It Go” when sung by Idina Menzel, certainly one of the best Broadway singers of the 21st Century, even with a Idina Menzel portraying Princess Elsa, the Snow Queen -a sort of Silver Surfer who can’t control her powers
Me, I love Cher if I don’t have to look or listen to her in 2013, Like, I love her in theory even if in practise you can put the blame for Lady Gaga and Madonna nearby her. Cher always seemed like a strong, irritating woman.
M.I.A. – Terminal 5 – November 1st, 2013 – A masterpiece of modern pop with a conscience that puts former contemporaries like Madonna and Lady Gaga into the nostalgia files, while M.I.A. finds the middle ground between beats and beatings.
If Hopsin was a little better he would be major, when he is in the mood, as he is on this sideswipe at current rappers, he is very aggressively funny.
Right about now it is always touch and go with Elton John on stage, last time round he promised a greatest hits package and it sucked what there was of it anyway since half of the sucker was that crap album with Leon Russel. What a ripoff. So why am I going again on Wednesday, December 4th, 2014: well, Elton is playing a lot off Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Life Round Here – James Blake And Chance The Rapper – Haunting and beautiful, but of course that comes on the James Blake label, what doesb’t is Chance The Rapper, atonal rap so weird and in place – A-
Utilitarian in the extreme, it is an overbearing drag with lousy lyrics and embarrassing looks under the covers. Of the 18 songs there are maybe 6 goodies and two greaties and that would be more than enough on a reasonably sized album
There is something small minded in Morrissey’s not being able to be happy. It is something very Nicholas Nickleby, very Little Dorrit, in the young Paul getting beaten by ignorant vicious school masters and something much less so in Moz complaining about Travis not appreciating him enough for saving Rough Trad
“Who’s to say he didn’t save a serial killer? Or a mad bomber on a date with destiny? Or just people who fuck you up normally? Geography teachers or ticket inspectors or boyfriends who shag your best friend? People who write the small print, see over the penalties? People who go ‘I’m telling you for your own good’ and ‘can’t you read we’re closed’?”
Do it for charity, do it for the poor, do it for someone else. That way you can spend more in a night than most people will make in a life time and still feel good about yourself.
Dylan back at the Royal Albert Hall with a two hour set covering 18 songs but seven off “Titanic” which could have sunk it and brought back memories to 1965 and to 1966, from folk to rock with a lotta blues thrown in
The problem here is much the same as the problem on the entire album: the songs aren’t there. Oh the singing is powerful and felt, the instrumentation first rate, the atitude a poerfect mesh of here and now and then, but the song can’t sell it – B-
Literature is too insulated, motion pictures too social, art is wet literature, and none of them have the wham bam social compatibility. None of them matter and don’t matter as much for so many. Music is everything and without it life can be lived but man would it drag
It was with pride and humility I discovered last night that I had gone over one million entries on google. Yes, folks, we the few, the cute, the famous!! But then a friend told me he was nearly at 3M!!!
That Cities thing is from a Minneapolis radio station KTCZ, it is for charity and it takes the best live performances from the past year, guys like Passenger and fun., and it sells the albums at Target. They sold out their entire 40,000 production run in a week
Some time this summer when Passenger was blowing up he UK charts I predicted this would crossover Stateside and though, to be honest, I am not always exactly accurate in my predictions, this very appealing track was more than everybody gets it right once in a blue moon.
Thanksgiving Theme – Vince Guaraldi Trio – I tend to go along with Pauline Kael, who loathed the movies and loathed the twee twinkie doodley music. Vastly preferred the comic strip. No thanks – D+
Really, this is an amazingly lame little track, who exactly is he singing for? It is so generic it could be for really any one and it is so unspecified it seems like a general complaint about nothing. The song itself isn’t fully formed: it doesn’t coalesce in your ear.
My concept is that since it was cover songs from second wave Brit Beat bands of the early 1960s, and since these bands, the Who, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, Pink Floyd…, since these were all boy bands attractive in post- Beatle sense to a girl fanbase with pictures from “Fabulous” pasted on their walls, well, they were Pins Up, weren’t they?
In 2010, I reprinted an interview with Dave Davies and here I am going to repost a newsletter by Bob Lefsetz. I am not a huge Lefsetz fan (he is terrible on music) but I forgive him a lot for being so right about so many subjects here. read em and weep
The thing about disco bands as opposed to DJs (even though Newman has done his fair share of the latter) is that the pop showcase move and sell of disco doesn’t exist in EDM and Newman is a salesman, he wants to be popular, he wants to sell a lot lot lot of copies
September Song – Ella Fitzgerald – Not a great fit, the change in sections clumsy ups the lyric, and I prefer my Ella with a bit more tiskit in her taskit but the voice? You can only surrender to the immaculate perfection of sound and diction – A
