I'm transparent to a fault, sometimes—I write from my experience and the people around me. But I want to be one of those songwriters who can write amazing stories, like [Guy Clark's] 'Desperados Waiting for a Train.' Or John Prine. | | | | Miranda Lambert performing on "Late Night With Seth Meyers," Oct. 31, 2019.
(Lloyd Bishop/NBCUniversal/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "I'm transparent to a fault, sometimes—I write from my experience and the people around me. But I want to be one of those songwriters who can write amazing stories, like [Guy Clark's] 'Desperados Waiting for a Train.' Or John Prine."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// If you vamp on I and IV chords on a guitar in a rock or rockish band for any length of time, there's a good chance you'll eventually find yourself ripping off, consciously or not, one of the 20,000 or so rock or rockish bands before you who also have a song that starts with a I-IV guitar vamp. Kind of sort of like if you bake a chocolate cake, you may discover that the first few steps in your recipe will be similar to the first few steps in the recipes of 20,000 chocolate cake bakers who came before you. There are only so many ways you can start. In the case of "PRETTY BITCHIN'," a breezy, pretty bitchin', life's-been-good groove on MIRANDA LAMBERT's new album, WILDCARD, the rather obvious reference point is the BEATLES' "I'VE GOT A FEELING," which may or not have been in the mind of Lambert, her three co-writers and her band when they first played it. One imagines they were simply strumming G and C chords, as you do. (The Beatles song is a step higher, in A.) At some point, presumably, they realized what they were doing, had a laugh, and decided to make the laugh part of the song by adding an electric guitar break that quotes a well-known bit from "I've Got a Feeling." Haha. Great. Debt acknowledged and paid. The two songs are otherwise not very similar. No need for further discussion. Certainly no need for lawyers to get involved, which is a thing that's been happening with some frequency lately, as you may have noticed. I'm talking to you, gentlemen of YELLOWCARD. And gentlemen of Yellowcard's lawyers. And others like you. And judges and jurors who one day may or may not find themselves agreeing with you. My totally non-lawyerly rule of thumb: If you're not sure you're being plagiarized, you probably aren't. If you think someone might be paying homage to you, you're free to thank them. If you think you've never plagiarized someone, you're probably wrong. Pay it forward. Also, I just thought I'd mention there's a new Miranda Lambert album and, like all Miranda Lambert albums, it's pretty bitchin'. And she definitely once plagiarized STEVE EARLE, and as soon as someone mentioned it she said, "Oops, you're right," and they worked it out. Because when you know, you know. When you don't know, just call it rock and roll... It's FRIDAY and that means there's also new music from SUDAN ARCHIVES, MICHAEL KIWANUKA, EARL SWEATSHIRT, GANG STARR, KREPT & KONAN, TAEYEON, HOOTIE & THE BLOWFISH, NICKY JAM, PABLLO VITTAR, ROD WAVE, JON BATISTE, BOOKER T. JONES, UMI, COLD WAR KIDS, JEFF GOLDBLUM & THE MILDRED SNITZER ORCHESTRA, BRIA SKONBERG, VETIVER, A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN, TURNOVER, KELE OKEREKE, GOLDROOM, DDG, STALLEY, MONTGOMERY GENTRY, JEFF LYNNE'S ELO, JOSH ROUSE, the MAVERICKS, BLACK VIOLIN, OMNI, APOLLO BROWN, CUP (NELS CLINE & YUKA HONDA), YELAWOLF. Plus: the ARIANA GRANDE-produced CHARLIE's ANGELS soundtrack and, from the vaults, a 25th anniversary edition of REM's MONSTER and Vol. 15 of BOB DYLAN's Bootleg Series, TRAVELIN' THRU, covering 1967-69 and highlighting his work with JOHNNY CASH... ROGER ROSS WILLIAMS' documentary THE APOLLO opens in Los Angeles today and launches on HBO next Wednesday. Amazing footage of ELLA FITZGERALD, BILLIE HOLIDAY, JAMES BROWN, LAURYN HILL and more, coupled with timely and timeless stories about the Harlem theater's essential place in black music and black culture... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN introduces two of his favorite films as a guest programmer Sunday afternoon on TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES... Congrats to MOLLY NEUMAN, who's been named president of the royalties-collection platform SONGTRUST... RIP ROLANDO PANERAI, CHOU WEN-CHUNG and TOM DRAPER. | | | - Matty Karas, curator | | | |  | Alex Leonard | | How many streams do you need to buy a bread loaf or cup of coffee? Streaming revenue is usually shown as fractions of a cent. Why not see it in real terms? | | | |  | Complex | | Production is the cornerstone that every rap song is built upon, and these beats are the best the genre has to offer. Debate at will. | | | |  | Talkhouse | | Craig Hendrix (Japanese Breakfast) talks Snail Mail, Olive Garden, and the glamor of eating breakfast in a Guitar Center parking lot. | | | |  | The Guardian | | The singer-songwriter is releasing his sixth album in three years -- his best since 1997. Would he like to expand on how he made it, or why he chose his collaborators? He would not. | | | |  | Refinery29 | | Miranda Lambert is an accomplished star whose seventh album "Wildcard" drops this fall. All the tabloids want to do is talk about her personal life. | | | |  | The New York Times | | New legislation would cement the sound's rightful place at the center of this gentrifying city's culture. | | | |  | Rolling Stone | | As revenue from Spotify starts to sag for the first time, companies like Universal may need to look for new ways to boost earnings | | | |  | Music Business Worldwide | | Spotify has gotten pretty good at keeping the 'churn' rate of its paying subscribers down. The same can't really be said about its own senior executive team. | | | |  | Billboard | | A quarter century after their 21-times-platinum debut, Hootie & The Blowfish are playing some of their biggest concerts ever -- in a business that has completely changed. | | | |  | HUCK Magazine | | Hip Hop Connection, which ran from 1988 to 2009, gave MCs in the UK a platform to discover their voice. | | | |  | Newsweek | | Scientists played familiar and unfamiliar songs to a group of volunteers, and monitored their brains. | | | |  | MTV News | | The dynamic artist's 'Athena' is, in her words, the work of an 'electronic composer.' But it also marks her as a virtuoso. | | | | | Billboard | | Gender imbalance in country music has been an ongoing conversation lately that Spotify found itself at the center of last month when Martina McBride called the company out for its lack of diversity in playlisting. | | | |  | Trapital | | Both 50 Cent and Lil' Wayne's mixtapes redefined the product, distribution, and marketing for mixtapes and got the entire industry to follow their lead. | | | |  | The Washington Post | | Jon Batiste often slips some video game soundtracks into his performances on the show, but the scores were also responsible for sparking his interest in music. | | | |  | BBC News | | The ticketing company is opening a dedicated online sales system for deaf and disabled music fans. | | | |  | Fast Company | | Interpreter manager Sara Groves and a team spend weeks preparing, analyzing, and memorizing song lyrics and their corresponding signs. | | | |  | NME | | R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and Mike Mills talk 25 years of 'Monster', losing Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, and nearly writing the 'Friends' theme | | | | | Rolling Stone | | Choir director Jason White initially expected to collaborate with West for a couple weeks. That turned into 10 months -- with no end in sight. | | | | | The Guardian | | From Dry Cleaning to Sinead O'Brien and Talk Show, today's hottest indie artists often sound like they're at a poetry reading. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | | | | "If love keeps givin' me lemons/I'll just mix 'em in my drink." | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2019, The REDEF Group | | |
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