PopHeads

Just saw this and it's the first short concert I've seen! Worth a save

just saw katy's vegas residency. i was expecting decent, with a back-of-mind fear of cringe, but it was really an amazing show. she said she's been battling a cold and one could hear that, but the staging and production values were top-notch.

a couple of sections meant to provide her a breather were a little too long and not that engaging. her voice (barring the cold), her dance moves, and that face of a silent film star added up to a great show, a good deal better than i had expected and light years away from what i had feared as worst case.

Other platforms:

Spotify - https://spotify.link/3bpLBYEvuDb

Youtube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_npOgWBD3eCid6p5Bdn81fZwl3sfTwOR0Q&si=chU-SUsxzwO9qYj_

I like this version little more than its original. I prefer its more mellowness to its previous much pop; they're both good to me anyway.

Other platforms:

Spotify - https://spotify.link/aw0aAzh1tDb

Youtube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nWf2vqD6007ReAE6B2LaP_J1fyivT8lgQ&si=69-f11udhKudR8iw

Ed Sheeran's new album is magically pleasant to my first hearing because of his endearing guitar gimmicks as always.

The issue with Jann Wenner goes far deeper than a sexist, racist old fossil thinking women and black people aren't articulate enough to be considered masters of rock in his new book.

Long before this book, and this latest scandal, Wenner was a co-founder of both Rolling Stone magazine and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

For the Boomer generation, Wenner and critics like him — straight, white men — set the criteria for what constitutes good music, and whose music was worthy of being celebrated as the greatest in Western music.

And, almost inevitably, they chose the artists they related to most closely — straight white men.

What were the criteria they set for what makes music great? The things that their favourite straight white male rock stars were particularly good at.

Such as playing drums, bass, and guitar in a rock style.

The greatest lyrics were those depicting the thoughts and feelings of straight white men.

Lyrics dealing with topics of interest to women or black people — including police brutality — were deemed shallow and vacuous.

Elements that were typically outside the realm of the music their favourite straight white men performed — funky bass lines, sampling, keyboards, soulful ballads, rapping, dance — were deemed frivolous and unimportant.

They created whole hierarchies of the greatest musicians of all time, consisting entirely of straight white men, based on their criteria.

The music made by queer, female, and non-white artists was deemed by them, through their arbitrary criteria, to be frivolous and unimportant.

The music enjoyed by queer, female, and non-white communities was deemed by them, through their arbitrary criteria, to be frivolous and unimportant

Oh, and they seemed to have a bad habit of "accidentally" leaving out the black artists that their favourite straight white men copied from — Chuck Berry and Big Mama Thornton didn't make the cut for greatest rock stars, but Elvis did.

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/23/1201121174/jann-wenner-rock-hall-crumbling

@popheads @music #music #PopMusic

Other platforms:

Spotify - https://spotify.link/JXsKC8F0iDb

Youtube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kXH8y3sAlYq93kfl3dMgxru6M2LTBK0pM&si=QYicD6_L9m12WpGk

Celebrate still and rediscover the 30th anniversary album from a legendary and highly acclaimed "Hero" singer, Mariah Carey, including unreleased tracks before and her 1993 concert at Proctor's Theatre, NY. An amazing and favorite album to me.

Other platforms:

Spotify - https://spotify.link/SyV61ofPiDb

Youtube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ka3GCLGa04mw6AAWok9hbEDOTmG13Bg84&si=uHvFy-fZU4byXmgj

I just find Stephen Sanchez' first ever awaited album enchanting because of certain instruments and a mystical one and a peculiar production/format that I mostly distinguish in 50s–early 60s songs despite of more advanced music technologies typical nowadays (not the old-imitating noise/clipping which I hate why include it?). Nonetheless, let's time travel to the oldies' hops and nifty serenades.

Other platforms:

Spotify - https://spotify.link/ylJCuNoNiDb

Youtube - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n0mdmXvtFPUpPZvBOCdRTltJSPDwqDF44&si=g6IpvEbadE3wx1nk

I enjoy first-time listening this album for the first time from Doja Cat 🐈 despite I'd never delved into her discography quite thoroughly. So Impressive.

time out's article on sugababes, their one-night-only reunion concert and new single 'when the rain comes', and reclaiming their music and their name in modern times.

it's an uplifting mix of nostalgia and hope for all of us who remember them fondly.

Signed CDs may be at your local record store!

i was cruising the music site looking for backfill songs i might buy, and was rudely reminded of the state of music criticism in the 80s (to be fair, this was from a zine, but was put in front of me by qobuz, so it had some staying power).

this hatchet job on the blink-and-you-missed-it "don't you (forget about me)" by some scottish dudes called simple minds, for the soundtrack of a very niche and forgotten film, reminds me of everything i escaped. it's probably from "the big takeover" issue #17 from 1984.

i closed the tab. no sale.

For six years this was a creative and interesting Scottish band that used synths in artistic ways to go with Jim Kerr's Roxy Music-like yearning, poetic vocals to forge lovely, danceable, moody soundscapes full of promise, enchantment, and sinewy shadows. So now they get to do a hit song for a bad movie, and they suddenly turn into every cliché you've ever heard, complete with Kerr doing what he said only last year he never would: singing the word "baby" in a pop song (repeatedly at that!). They didn't write this song, but it's their name on it and they recorded it, and sure enough this awful garbage is heard everywhere after no one in the U.S. ever played one of the band's great songs outside of nightclubs. Sorry Jim, this is obviously the most forgettable thing you've done so far. Hopefully the next LP will make this look as asinine as it is, a bad one-off, but experience tells us that once you open Pandora's box, you can't close it again, especially if it yields sales instead of ridicule.

© Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover /TiVo

n.b. all good pop songs have "baby" in them. repeatedly. sorry, jack

I'm getting some Robyn Body Talk vibes with this news!

https://www.subpop.com/artists/the_vaselines

I know it's not technically pop, but there's been a lot of comparisons between Taylor Swift's Eras tour and Jimmy Buffett's career trajectory. A huge impact on the music industry.

It's been a year. Still going and playing back again. Never jaded ❤️

Rejoice for a Decade Milestone of Ariana Grande's Album "Yours Truly". 🎉 Nostalgia 🎉

Ariana's coming to town!

Starts November 12th in Seattle!!