Music in the Media

[CFC]

This is the thread to share anything that interests you that you've read or been reading related to music, artists, the music industry, album reviews or anything vaguely similar.

I'll get things going with this interesting article I read on FB yesterday:


PS Apologies for all the ? everywhere, probably best just to click the link at the bottom


*********************



Why Abba's Dancing Queen is the best pop song ever

Since its 1976 release, Abba's 'absolute best song' (according to Frida Lyngstad) has won over everyone from punks to royalty and almost caused a riot in New York. So how has the song's low-lit Friday night managed to last for ever?


By Tim Jonze


Roll your hands down a piano, from the high notes to the low, and you've mastered the intro to the most perfect pop song ever written. Feel free to congratulate yourself, although don't get carried away - you've still got three minutes and 49 seconds of Abba's Dancing Queen to learn, and trying to replicate the sheer joy and exuberance packed into that brief space of time may prove somewhat trickier.

It?s 40 years since the Swedish band released their masterpiece (fans of The Winner Takes It All might beg to differ, but does your great auntie leap out of her seat quite as quickly to that?). Back then, it hit No 1, not just in Sweden and Britain, but in countries as diverse as Mexico, New Zealand, Belgium, South Africa and the US, where it was their only chart-topper.

It?s no mystery why ? Dancing Queen is beautifully produced: catchy and euphoric, the perfect backdrop for a song that encapsulates the carefree bliss of youth. Certainly, the band knew they had struck gold before it was even finished. Frida Lyngstad told me in 2014 that hearing the music Benny Andersson and Bj?rn Ulvaeus had created for her and Agnetha F?ltskog to sing on was a eureka moment, so much so that she burst into tears: ?Out of pure happiness that I would get to sing that song, which is the absolutely the best song Abba have ever done,? she said.

What is it that elevates Dancing Queen above so many other beautifully produced, catchy, euphoric songs? Pete Waterman, who knows a thing or two about writing a hit, believes it exemplifies how the best Swedish artists are able to soak up popular trends and regurgitate them as something fresh: ?Listen to Dancing Queen and you can hear Elton John straight away, you can hear the Beatles, disco is coming along with the Bee Gees, and you can hear that,? he says. ?It?s also got what all great pop songs have ? a great first line. ?Friday night and the lights are low? ? boosh! You?re away. All great records start with a bang.?

Indeed, the record starts with such a bang that, after that initial piano roll, it catapults you straight into the middle of the chorus: an explosive opening before the song has even officially started.

It could have all been quite different. An early version opened with the less immediate line: ?Baby, baby you?re out of sight/Hey, you?re lookin? alright tonight.? Back then, the song was called Boogaloo, too, before the band?s manager Stig Anderson earned his fee by suggesting an alternative title.

The music ? which updated the laidback disco groove of George McCrae?s Rock Your Baby with Abba?s sparkling pop panache ? was finished before the lyrics were considered, which was how most of Abba?s songs were developed: ?I would play the songs over and over again,? Ulvaeus told me in 2014, ?and I would literally see images of things coming up.?

In Dancing Queen?s case, these images told the story of a 17-year-old girl on a nightclub dancefloor ? lost in the music and the moment. The sonic euphoria mirrors the freedom that the dancefloor can bring, although, as with all Abba songs, there?s a hint of what Ulvaeus called ?that Nordic melancholic feeling? to it. The teenage girl isn?t the narrator, after all, so is the listener really just an observer, looking back on their lost youth? Ultimately, the song seems less concerned with making you gaze forlornly back than it does with bringing the abandonment of your teenage years into the present, at least for four glorious minutes.

No wonder, then, that it?s such a wedding disco staple (there are only two kinds of wedding discos: ones that open with Dancing Queen, and terrible ones). No wonder that other artists have tried to channel its evergreen properties: the band may have been the definition of uncool at their peak ? perma-smiling europop stars in sequinned jumpsuits ? but that didn?t stop their more critically adored peers from borrowing from them. Chris Stein admitted to trying to replicate the song for Blondie?s hit Dreaming, while Elvis Costello ? who once admitted he viewed Dancing Queen as ?manna from heaven? ? famously was inspired by the descending octave piano chords for his hit Oliver?s Army. More recently, MGMT told the podcast Song Exploder how they purposefully stuck to Dancing Queen?s relaxed 101 BPM tempo for their breakthrough hit Time to Pretend.

Australian/Swedish twin sister duo Say Lou Lou have a particular affection for the 70s pop/disco sound (their latest release is a cover of Saturday Night Fever) but believe much of Dancing Queen?s magic rests in the lyrics: ?Dedicating a whole song to a girl wanting to dance without it necessarily having to be about romance made us feel excited and thrilled,? says Elektra June Kilbey-Jansson. ?Crowning a 17-year old girl in a nightclub a queen feels so dramatic and attention-grabbing. They would find great song titles and work it through the song with memorable keywords ? in this case swing, jive, rock, king and queen.? (Let?s be thankful once more that the band didn?t stick with Boogaloo).

While these artists have all helped Dancing Queen live on, there?s another, stronger force that?s kept it at the forefront of public consciousness: the musical Mamma Mia!. Judy Craymer, who conceived the monster hit stage show and film, believes its success has helped pass the music of Abba on from generation to generation. ?An 89-year-old would say ?that?s our song?, but children can learn it, too, almost like a nursery rhyme, and it?s very attractive to them,? she says, pointing out how countless parents have told her that the soundtrack?s version of Dancing Queen is one of their school-run staples.

Craymer credits the way the song ?explodes from the stage or screen? for its prominent role in the musical and film. She also recalls the runup to opening Mamma Mia! in New York back in 2001, when the cast were due to perform Dancing Queen as part of a free concert in Times Square. ?But the police had heard that it could cause a euphoric frenzy in the crowd!? she says, laughing. ?They had heard about the reactions the song had got in San Francisco, with people getting up out of their seats, and in the end I don?t think we were allowed to perform it.?


*********************


https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...bba-dancing-queen-people-just-surrender-to-it

 

[swilow]

^Interesting article. I never especially liked Abba, but I was involved in a dance-group at school and we performed a really camp mime to Dancing Queen. I was about 12. The video is bizarre. I think we were trying to challenge gender stereotypes as this was an all-male school, but its almost creepy when rewatching it :D

I don't especially like the band, but Polish death metal group Decapitated were recently charged with kidnapping and rape, and have ultimately plead not guilty. Its raised quite a stir in the metal scene, with some totally repulsive views coming to light as well as an interesting progressive element that that meTal scene is not known for (incorrectly too, many metal fans are very open-minded in my experience).

I will follow this with some interest. There have been metal musicians found guilty of sexual assault before (such as Infernus from Gorgoroth who was jailed for rape), but this seems to have raised more of a stir, coinciding in part with the Harvey Weinstein saga.

Band also face kidnapping charges

Members of Polish metal band Decapitated have all pleaded not guilty to charges of raping and kidnapping a female fan.

Rafal Piotrowski, Hubert Wiecek, Waclaw Kieltyka and Michal Lysejko are accused of raping an unnamed woman and holding her against her will on their tour bus after a show at the Pin in Spokane, Washington state on August 31.

In a statement issued earlier this month, the band denied the allegations, writing: “We’d like to emphasise; the Spokane Police Department has pressed charges as procedural formality, without doing so, they would be forced to release band – this is not a conviction or any indication of guilt or innocence.”

Associated Press now reports that the band’s four members each entered not guilty pleas in court on Tuesday (October 24), saying little other than their pleas. The members are jailed on $100,000 bail each.

SOURCE

 

[JoeTheStoner]

"In order to avoid the horrors of the abyss, one of the best things you can do is Legos. You follow the instructions and the thing works"

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/gy5a59/john-maus-at-the-end-of-the-world/

john maus just released "screen memories"

 

[CFC]

Spotify is not just streaming. It’s becoming the entire music industry


Amy Wang, Quartz


Few people have heard of Lauv, Russell Dickerson, Kim Petras, or Trippie Red. In a couple of months, everyone will.

Spotify—the biggest music-streaming service in the world right now, with 140 million active users, 60 million of whom are paying subscribers—this week launched RISE, a program that promotes hand-picked emerging artists. “We have the biggest distribution system in the world for streaming music, so why not use that to help young artists,” Troy Carter, Spotify’s head of creator services, said to Billboard.

Those four musicians, chosen for the first round, will get prime placement in playlists and company promotional materials, TV ads, and special live events; Carter added that Spotify wants to be “what MTV was” and “what HOT 97 was” for these indie acts and others to come. (The former gave generous play to videos from new artists and the latter is a New York hip-hop radio station; both have been vital in the ascent of many a music career.)

RISE—which follows the launch of similar emerging-artist initiatives from Apple Music and Deezer—takes Spotify squarely out of its purposed status as a mere music-streaming service. Spotify is now an authoritative discovery platform, a talent incubator with its RapCaviar playlist phenomenon, a network of popular radio stations, and also the primary way people are listening to music (well, after YouTube). The tech company is nearly a self-sustaining music industry in and of itself.

It’s perhaps that breadth that’s leading investors to look upon it so favorably. Tech-focused boutique investment bank GP Bullhound released a paper yesterday that gives Spotify a valuation of $20 billion when it goes public later this year or early in 2018. Analysts at the firm say Spotify’s current 60-million-subscriber figure is on target to grow to 100 million in summer 2018 and 500 million by 2020—giving Spotify “long-term potential of being valued at $100 billion.”

A tall order. GP Bullhound, a Spotify investor, also has some bias here. But given that Spotify is one of the main reasons the music industry is growing again for the first time in decades, it’s not too unreasonable a prediction.

https://qz.com/1110546/spotify-is-not-just-streaming-its-becoming-the-entire-music-industry/

 

[CFC]

^Interesting article. I never especially liked Abba, but I was involved in a dance-group at school and we performed a really camp mime to Dancing Queen. I was about 12. The video is bizarre. I think we were trying to challenge gender stereotypes as this was an all-male school, but its almost creepy when rewatching it :D

Lol. I like their music, and went to the ABBA Museum in Stockholm exactly this time last year. It's miles more interesting than the Beatles Museum in Liverpool anyway.

 

[CFC]

Björk: ‘People miss the jokes. A lot of it is me taking the piss out of myself’

Icelandic icon Björk is in positive mood with her new album, Utopia. In her home town Reykjavik, she gives us a sneak listen, and discusses creative control, the trouble with men – and why she started Friday flute club

by Miranda Sawyer

t’s quite hard talking to Björk about her music. This is for a few reasons, the most important of which is that she doesn’t make music to talk about it. She makes music because that is what she does (“I write one song per month,” she says, “sometimes two months”), and usually the whole picture of an album doesn’t emerge for her until very late in the process.

“OK, I will put my head into the place where I have to talk about me,” Björk says, shifting in her seat. She is feeling “a bit scruffy” – she means rough around the edges – after a night out at a gig (her friends’, twins Gyða and Kristin: “Gyða plays these kind of cello loops, it’s really meditative”).

Even off-duty, Björk is always full-Björk: interested in the off-beat and experimental. She’s worked in music for more than 30 years, so she’s called a pop star. But really, she’s an artist in disguise, often literally (at the moment, she favours delicate feather or filigree head dresses).Today, despite her hangover, she looks great, in a white dress with storm trooper shoulder-stitching, black tights, black platform shoes. There is kohl smudged under her eyes, and she’s drinking tea and chewing gum. Every so often she takes her gum out and puts it on her saucer; then picks it up absent-mindedly and chews it again.

We are upstairs above a cafe in Reykjavik, Iceland. This building was once the home of an important politician, and the rooms are small and decorated like a granny’s house: ornaments in glass display cases, Victorian side tables, antimacassars on curly-armed sofas. Björk folds herself in and out of her olde worlde chair, her body language opening and shutting according to how comfortable she is with the conversation.

At the moment, the conversation concerns her new album, Utopia. And, like I said, it’s quite hard. Though we’re trying to connect, it feels like I’m standing on one side of a rushing river and she’s on the other, semaphoring her thoughts across at me.

Björk has only recently worked out what Utopia might mean. For a long time, as is her wont, she was creating it without a huge idea, just working. Her music involves her exploring small triggers, connecting “emotional coordinates”; matching technical difficulties with musical aims; processing the results of time spent with musicians, editors, producers; arranging, recording, editing, mixing. Mostly editing. “Eighty per cent of my music is me sitting by my laptop, editing. Weeks and weeks on each song,” she says. Now it’s all done, she’s marshalling her multitudinous ideas – musical, conceptual, conscious, subconscious – trying to organise everything into a single quotable notion. She has been working on this album for two and a half years. I have heard it exactly once. Seventy-five minutes ago, in the room next door, I plugged earphones into a laptop and listened to Utopia all the way through. Straight afterwards, I walked into this room to talk to Björk about what I’d just heard. I can’t hear Utopia any other way because Björk’s last album, Vulnicura, was leaked online three months before its release date. The river between us is swirling with her experiences. I’ve barely got my toes wet.

Read the rest here

 

[CFC]

ABBA Record First New Material Since 1982

Abba's return will be either genius or disaster - but nothing in between

The Swedish four-piece, returning with new material after 35 years, have seen critics finally acclaim their pop brilliance ? but they still aren?t immune from writing turkeys

We live in an era where almost every legendary band that can re-form has re-formed, and where technology means not even death is a barrier to 2Pac or Roy Orbison taking the stage once more. The artists who refuse to return carry a certain cachet, and Abba were the most famous hold-outs of all, which makes their decision to record new material a surprise, especially because they don?t need the money.
Abba announce first new songs for 35 years
Read more

The first time around, Abba were not taken seriously as artists. The general critical consensus was summed up by a photo of legendary US rock writer Lester Bangs, wearing a T-shirt that read ?Abba: the largest-selling group in the history of recorded music? and an expression on his face suggesting this was evidence of western civilisation?s imminent collapse.

In the years since they split up, however, their stock has rightly risen to a dizzying altitude. Bj?rn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson are regularly hailed as the greatest pop songwriting team of their era; the emotional depth and maturity of The Winner Takes It All ? and indeed the personal psychodrama behind it ? is pored over in a way it never was on release; their relatively overlooked final album, The Visitors, is acclaimed as a kind of Scandi-noir masterpiece. When the BBC made an Abba documentary a few years back, you got the feeling that rock critics and hip musicians alike were queuing up to sing their praises.

Read the rest here