| I might do an album that has no visuals at all because you're meant to just listen. | | | | |  | Little Simz in Glasgow, Nov. 28, 2021.
(Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | "I might do an album that has no visuals at all because you're meant to just listen." | | | | New Rules, Who Dis?
Things that happened behind the scenes at the GRAMMYS while I was on leave the last couple weeks: MARILYN MANSON lost one of his two nominations for the 2022 awards, not because of the multiple allegations of sexual assault he's facing but because he wasn't actually credited on the KANYE WEST song whose Best Rap Song nomination originally included him... TAYLOR SWIFT, JACK ANTONOFF and ST. VINCENT were removed from the list of 10 collaborators included in OLIVIA RODRIGO's Album of the Year nomination after the RECORDING ACADEMY discovered their only participation in the album was having written Swift's song "CRUEL SUMMER," which Rodrigo interpolated... (By contrast, more than 100 people are listed in Kanye's nomination for DONDA under new eligibility rules introduced this year and they all get to stay—for now anyway. The Academy was still adding and removing names throughout the Grammy field as recently as last Wednesday, two days after final ballots were sent to voters.)... Singer/songwriter LINDA CHORNEY was added as a bonus sixth nominee for American Roots Song a week after the nominations were announced, for a song that isn't mentioned on her website and exists as a little-heard standalone single in SPOTIFY and other streaming services. The circumstances behind the nomination are even stranger than the circumstances that led to her first Grammy nomination a decade earlier. Chorney, who's famous in Grammy circles for not being famous, may have to write a second book and make a second documentary to explain what happened, with the caveat that her first book and film are apparently why she was nominated, un-nominated and re-nominated this time around... DRAKE, who's been sparring with the Grammys for years, decided after the nominations were announced that he didn't want the two he got, including one for Best Rap Album. The RECORDING ACADEMY agreed to remove him from the ballot, leaving those two categories with four nominees instead of five... The year's most-nominated album, JON BATISTE's FREEDOM, got a new credited producer and two new credited engineers in two corrections a week apart... Even Linda Chorney got three new credited collaborators, a week after she herself was added... And of course we already knew about the two extra nominees tacked on to each of the show's four marquee categories, including that Kanye Album of the Year nomination, after the Academy knew (and, one imagines, wasn't satisfied with) the names of the original eight nominees in each category.
Who, you might find yourself asking, is in charge here, and why, two years out from the controversial ouster of Recording Academy CEO DEBORAH DUGAN and one year out from the Grammys badly missing on the WEEKND, are they having such a hard time with the pre-execution of a show that they know is under heavier than usual scrutiny? Is there a quality control department in the house? What else is being missed or will be missed? Is the Academy losing control of its own show? Will you trust the results? Will you care?
Some of the mistakes can be blamed in part on the record companies who made the original submissions. But the show, and the final responsibility, belongs to the Academy. Will an Olivia Rodrigo sweep make everything better? Would a Jon Batiste sweep be preferable? Or will any result, no matter what it is, be a little suspect?
Scene and Not Scene
Trouble is brewing in country music polling circles, where the NASHVILLE SCENE has scrapped its long-running annual poll of country critics in response to a problematic essay written earlier this year in a different publication, PASTE, by the freelancer, GEOFFREY HIMES, who runs the poll. (In short, Himes thought it would be a good idea to coin a new genre consisting entirely of Black people who record country or country-adjacent music, and then to use the occasion to gratuitously trash a couple of the most acclaimed artists he had thus pigeonholed. Here's an archived version of the original essay, which has since been deleted. And here's a response, also published and deleted by Paste, by JAKE BLOUNT. There's been more back-and-forth that you're free to seek out if you're curious.) Apparently the Nashville Scene can't simply replace Himes because he owns the rights to the poll, and Himes can't simply take it somewhere else, even if he could find a taker, because it's a complicated poll to run and it was too late in the year for anyone else to make it happen. Which is all to say, you may have to discover ALLISON RUSSELL's, MORGAN WADE's and CARLY PEARCE's 2021 albums by yourself. (Or you can peruse the country entries in our ever-growing MusicSET "Best Music of 2021: The Year in Lists" and see where that leads you.)
Rest in Peace
Up-and-coming Columbus, Ohio, rapper KAMNUTTY, at least the 24th hip-hop artist shot to death in the US in 2021 (and the second in Columbus; Boog the Bandit was murdered in May)... DAVID LASLEY, singer/songwriter and backing vocalist to the stars.
| | | |  | | Water & Music |
| | Will music NFTs ever get their PFP moment? | | 2021 has seen a flurry of new generative music NFT project launches, but they have yet to see the same consumer demand or financial upside as their immensely popular visual counterparts, for reasons that are equal parts technical, legal and cultural. This is Part I of a five-part, collaborative research report. | |  | | The Quietus |
| | A F***ing Nightmare: DIY Artists On Living With Post Brexit EU Rules | | by Daniel Dylan Wray | | Daniel Dylan Wray talks to numerous DIY label bosses, store owners and DIY artists about a specific, career wrecking aspect of Brexit. | |  | | NPR Music |
| | Stonecoldboldness: A many-sided memorial to the writing of Greg Tate | | by Ann Powers, Hanif Abdurraqib, Marcus J. Moore... | | A critic whose writing was nearly music itself, Greg Tate - who died this week at 64 - influenced generations of writers. His colleagues, peers and followers offer a guide to his essential works. | |  | | Los Angeles Times |
| | Slim 400 becomes the latest rapper to die in gunfire. Here's a look back at prior cases | | by Justin Ray | | Here is the current status of rapper murder cases in Los Angeles, including one of (if not the) most infamous ones in music history. | |  | | Billboard |
| | The Search For New Holiday Classics | | by Steve Knopper | | At almost 2 billion streams, Michael Bublé's Christmas has become that rare thing — a modern holiday standard — and a gold mine. | | | | Billboard |
| | Let It Stream: The Label Holiday-Playlist Strategies That Keep The Clicks Coming | | by Steve Knopper | | Holiday-music generates more than $170 million annually, and streaming numbers are so massive that labels now have year-round teams to keep the plays flowing. | |  | | GQ |
| | Rick Ross's Master Plan | | by Frazier Tharpe | | The rapper has one of the most consistent catalogs on hip-hop, continuing with his new album "Richer Than I've Ever Been." But his long-term goals extend far beyond music. | |  | | The New York Times |
| | After 15 Years of Infighting, James Brown's Estate Is Sold | | by Ben Sisario and Steve Knopper | | The sale to Primary Wave Music, for an estimated $90 million, provides resources to ultimately realize the musician's wish to fund scholarships for needy children. | |  | | Pollstar |
| | The Year In Safety & Security: From COVID To Crowding, A Year Of Challenges | | by Deborah Speer | | Crowd control was a chief challenge for venues in 2021, which started with operators ramping up policies and protocols for COVID mitigation, continued with sometimes uneven mandates requiring vaccination or negative test proofs, and ended with the specter of 10 dead concertgoers after a crowd crush in front of the stage at Astroworld. | |  | | Guitar World |
| | How Chuck Schuldiner pioneered the sound of death metal and became its spiritual guide | | by Christopher Scapelliti | | The life and times of the visionary Death guitarist who set the blueprint for an entire genre. | | | when christmas comes around |
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|  | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | Are we witnessing the rise of the $9.99 creator subscription economy? | | by Murray Stassen | | Native Instruments' new product adds to growing list of $9.99-per-month subscriptions in creator tools sector. | |  | | The Ringer |
| | The Ringer's Best K-Pop Songs of 2021 | | by Kate Halliwell | | From Key to Sunmi, our resident K-pop expert breaks down the tracks, videos, and moments that ruled the year. | |  | | Stereogum |
| | Stereogum's 10 Best Country Albums Of 2021 | | by Marissa R. Moss | | In 2021 country music continued to entangle itself in the never-ending debate over what is and isn't country, and who exactly gets to belong. And, as usual, the industry itself did the bare minimum to participate in this conversation in any meaningful way. | |  | | The Line of Best Fit |
| | How Little Simz turned introversion into power | | by Hannah Browne | | Little Simz tells Hannah Browne how "Sometimes I Might Be Introvert" - Best Fit's album of the year - was built on collaboration, introspection, and ambition. | |  | | Idea Generation |
| | Steven Victor on managing Pusha T, mourning Pop Smoke and building VVW | | by Steven Victor | | Brooklynite Steven Victor got his shot in the music industry straight out of college as an intern at Interscope Records. After a few years of unpaid labor the soft spoken strategist would begin scaling the corporate ladder, landing a full time job in publicity and making in-roads through the Star Trak team to Pusha T and the Clipse. | | | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | 'Telcos have recognized that music is a major passion point for consumers' | | by Murray Stassen | | MBW interviews Tuned Global Chief Revenue Officer Spiro Arkoudis about the current state of the telco x music deal market. | | | | GQ |
| | Jason Isbell: Singer-Songwriter, Public Health Ambassador | | by Gabriella Paiella | | In October, the Grammy-winning frontman of the 400 Unit went on the road for the first time in over a year. His unflinching stance on vaccinations and public safety led to some canceled shows-but it also set the tone for pandemic-era concerts. | | | | The New York Times |
| | Vicente Fernández, the King of Machos and Heartbreak | | by Maira Garcia | | The singer's brand of machismo may have frayed, but for many, he was the ideal of what it means to be hard-working, hard-loving Mexican man. | |  | | TikTok |
| | Year on TikTok 2021 Music Report | | by Ole Obermann | | For our second annual music report, we decided to take an in-depth look at what music makes TikTok tick. | |  | | The Sydney Morning Herald |
| | Bigwigs by day, rock musicians by night: the rise of the 'dad band' | | by Madonna King | | They're captains of industry and academic luminaries by day. By night, they've returned to what they loved before their careers got in the way: making music. | | | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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