Neil Young, formerly part of iconic folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, is hailed as one of music's greatest. He's blended folk rock with country in innovative ways for decades, his music the blueprint of budding artists today. Loved by millions, Neil Young's music could be found on streaming platforms the world over...until 2022.
When Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccination, artists like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young called for the removal of their music from Spotify. In a short-lived movement, these artists hoped to make a statement. To "stick it to the man", if you will.
Many of the artists who pulled their music from the platform have since returned. Because, at the end of the day, Spotify is the #1 streaming platform in the world. With the most users and traction, thousands of artists thrive on the app. Artists like Neil Young became popular at times when revolutionizing through music was the edgy, popular thing to do...however, Spotify is a misdirected target in this situation. Get mad at Joe Rogan for saying it.
And recently, Neil Young announced he is returning to "low res" Spotify via his website, Neil Young Archives. He states,
"Spotify, the #1 streamer of low res music in the world - Spotify where you get less quality than we made, will now be home of my music again. My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at SPOTIFY. I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all, so I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve"
As the #1 streaming platform in music, that means you lose a lot of streams from removing your discography from the app. Coincidentally, Neil Young is releasing an album with Crazy Horse on April 20, 2024 called F##IN' UP -- a perfect time to return to the app if you ask me.
The 66th annual Grammy Awards were last night at the Crypto.com Arena in the not-so-sunny Los Angeles, California. As storms raged outside the arena, I tuned in for close to five hours of red carpet coverage and the sparkling ceremony to watch music's biggest night and make my own judgments.
At some points agonizing, the Grammys truly take their time. Packing performance after performance, people going well over their speech time, and leaving the main awards for the very end can feel never-ending. However, this year's Grammy Awards had everything: Taylor Swift announcing a brand new album, Tortured Poet's Department, Miley Cyrus getting her first two Grammy's and delivering iconic speeches and performances, nods to Barbie, a visit from Celine Dion and a few controversial decisions.
I mean, even Jay-Z took a shot at the Recording Academy for not giving Beyonce any Album of the Year awards despite having the most nominations. Taylor Swift brought Lana Del Rey on stage while accepting Album of the Year for Midnights to recognize how many artists' sounds Del Rey's influenced despite never having won a nomination. The Academy gets it wrong, and often.
Who Won At The 2024 Grammys?
Here are some winners from a few of the main categories, including the top four awards...And may I add that some of my predictions were spot on?
Record of the Year: "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus
Album of the Year: Midnights by Taylor Swift
Song of the Year: "What Was I Made For" by Billie Eilish and FINNEAS
Best New Artist: Victoria Monet
Producer of the Year: Jack Antonoff
Best Pop Solo Performance: "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus
Best Pop Duo Performance: "Ghost in the Machine" by SZA and Phoebe Bridgers
Best Pop Vocal Album: Midnights by Taylor Swift
Best Pop Dance Recording: "Padam Padam" by Kylie Minogue
Best Rock Performance: "Not Strong Enough" by boygenius
Best Country Album: Bell Bottom Country by Lainey Wilson
Best R&B Song: "Snooze" by SZA
Who Should've Won At The 2024 Grammys?
The Grammy Awards are decided by the Academy- a group of voters within the music industry who I sometimes think forget to listen to the music of the nominees. It's why Jay-Z spoke up while receiving the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award, it is quite shocking that Beyonce has never won Album of the Year.
While everyone at the Grammy's deserves their awards, multiple artists got onstage to say this is not what they make music for. Artists like Miley Cyrus said she felt this happy yesterday because she's doing it for herself. Taylor Swift thanks her fans, and says she's happiest when making songs and doing what she loves...but sometimes, the awards gods are fickle.
Olivia Rodrigo's "Vampire" went home empty-handed, which was another surprise. While GUTS may not be my favorite work of Rodrigo's, "Vampire" was a chart-topping, viral song that I truly thought would win something. SZA's SOS album was on top of the Billboard Hot 100 every week but failed to receive a mention in the top categories like Album of the Year.
Lana Del Rey, who's been nominated upwards of 10 times and wrote one of the best albums in the culmination of her already iconic discography with Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard? Received zero awards throughout the night. In a controversial move, Taylor Swift brought her up on stage so the world can recognize all Lana's done.
In the Best New Artist category, Ice Spice and Noah Kahan were betting favorites to win...but ultimately, it went to Victoria Monét.
It's been years since Cyrus has graced any sort of stage, and she didn't disappoint. Every bit as honest, exciting, and a true rockstar as she's ever been, Miley Cyrus is one-of-a-kind. From chiding the audience for not singing along to celebrating her first Grammy win during her performance of "Flowers", you could tell that Miley just wanted to have fun.
She even shared she was doing this performance so she could watch clips of it later...and also admitted to foregoing underwear. It was fun, carefree, and exactly how these award shows should be.
Joni Mitchell
You may wonder how someone with as illustrious a career as Joni Mitchell has never performed at the Grammy's. Singing a song she wrote at 21 years old, over half a century later, "Both Sides Now" was both moving and refreshing. She's won nine Grammy's herself, nominated 18 times, and has inspired the sounds of our favorite artists.
She took folk music and made it her own, and after having to re-learn how to talk (and sing) from a brain aneurysm, no one is more well-respected in the industry than Mitchell.
Luke Combs + Tracy Chapman
Luke Combs' cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" dominated the charts this year. One of the most highly covered songs in the world, and Luke Combs put his country spin on it to create a beautiful, acoustic version. It feels almost entirely his own, but his performance with OG Tracy Chapman shows that music is, indeed, art.
The song itself is a timeless classic, with Luke Combs being one of the most talented country vocalists in the game right now and Tracy Chapman reminding us the deep roots of the song.
Other Notable Grammy Moments
It was a crazy night, in all honesty...with too many moments to mention, but there are a few major points to be made:
Killer Mike won three Grammy awards including Best Rap Album, but was immediately arrested at the ceremony
Upon announcing The Tortured Poet's Department, Swifties quickly uncovered a report that ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, Paul Mescal, and Andrew Scott's group chat was once called "Tortured Men's Club" - so count your days, Alwyn.
"Water" singer Tyla won the first-ever Award for African Music Performance
Joni Mitchell's classic album Blue first tore through the emotional defenses of listeners 50 years ago today.
To commemorate the album's release, her label has dropped Blue 50, an EP that features five previously unreleased recordings from the album. Among the tracks featured are a demo version of "A Case of You" that features unreleased lyrics. There are also demos of "River" and "California" and another version of "Urge for Going," which was eventually released as the B-side track for "You Turn Me on, I'm a Radio."
Most significantly, the album features a song called "Hunter," which was cut from Blue but which Mitchell sometimes performed live. This is the first time the studio version of the song has been released.
The EP is a prelude to the box set Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968 To 1971), which will be released on October 29th. The set will contain unreleased songs and a live 1968 set at Le Hibou Coffee House in Ottawa, Ontario, recorded by Jimi Hendrix.
Blue was first released in 1971, and it has remained a classic ever since then. The album is half mystical and half crystal clear, notable for its relatability and its inscrutability — its humanness and its alienness, which comes in the form of Mitchell's superhuman talent.
And yet on the album, she is sublimely, brokenly human. A year before the album's release, Mitchell had fled a marriage proposal and embarked on a world tour, traveling to Spain, Greece, and France with her dulcimer in hand. Full of suspended chords and conflicted emotions, the album produced from these travels still shines as a deceptively simple, infinitely giving piece of work so many years later.
"The Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals," Mitchell herself said of the work. "At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either."
The album has a way of making its listeners peel back their defenses, too. "I can't listen to Joni Mitchell in a room with other people, or on an iPod, walking the streets," Zadie Smith wrote. "Too risky. I can never guarantee that I'm going to be able to get through the song without being made transparent — to anybody and everything, to the whole world. A mortifying sense of porousness. Although it's comforting to learn that the feeling I have listening to these songs is the same feeling the artist had while creating them."
Blue has been written about and analyzed so deeply that trying to do justice to it here would be a fool's errand. It's been deconstructed as the beginning of Mitchell's jazz phase, deeply influenced by Miles Davis and his Kind of Blue. It's influenced countless musicians and artists — 25 of them spoke to The New York Timesto celebrate its 50th anniversary, and reading about how much Blue means to each one of them, you start to get some idea of how vastly important this album has been to so many people.
"Joni made everything feel beautiful," says musician Mustafa in a reflection on the song "Little Green." "She's telling truths that people haven't confronted yet, like love and hope and sorrow all happening at once. And she just finds a way to help someone navigate it."
Blue is the kind of album that's there in the quiet places, that appears in the dead of night, at the end of the line, to guide you back to the present over and over again. "With Blue, Mitchell fully realized her authority; she rewrote the stories of her own life, not only in words, but by finding music that would make each word sound differently," writes Ann Powers for PR. "That's why, every time a listener turns to Blue, the path of desire and disappointment and slowly accruing wisdom the songs lay out appears in slightly different form; the songs remain in that present tense in which they were created. Maybe it's impossible to know what happened when Joni Mitchell made Blue because every time the record plays, it's still happening."
Here's to another 50 years of this album's intimate, omnipresent wonder.
Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, but sometimes you're not feeling the cheer.
Or maybe you just love sad music and want to get in the holiday spirit. Whatever your reason for listening to melancholy music, there are plenty of devastating Christmas songs to help you cozy up with a cup of spiked cider and the blues. From indie gems to old classics, are our favorites.
1. McCarthy Trenching — Christmas Song
This song (which was later covered by Phoebe Bridgers) is simply devastating.
Taylor stabs you right in the heart with this saccharine song about missing an ex-lover.
Taylor Swift - Christmases When You Were Mine (Lyrics)www.youtube.com
8. Joni Mitchell — River
Joni Mitchell's mournful reinterpretation of "Jingle Bells" is seasonal depression distilled into sound, and it's four minutes and nine seconds of glittering, devastating brilliance.
10. The Everly Brothers — Christmas Eve Can Kill You
Wait, it can?
EVERLY BROTHERS - Christmas Eve Can Kill You (1971)www.youtube.com
11. 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night — Simon and Garfunkel
This song is just "Silent Night" placed over a recording of the news, but as we all know, the news can be hard to listen to—and hearing it played against the soft sounds of Christmas makes the reports of violence and injustice even more difficult to tune out than usual.
Though it has no words, it's almost universally agreed that this song just sounds sad. That's actually because the human brain is literally wired to hear the blues in minor chords, and this song has plenty of them.
20. LCD Soundsystem — Christmas Will Break Your Heart
So apparently if Christmas Eve doesn't kill me, then Christmas Day will break my heart, even though last Christmas, I gave you my heart but the very next day you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, maybe I just won't celebrate Christmas... or maybe I'll start listening to happy music instead.
LCD Soundsystem - Christmas Will Break Your Heart videowww.youtube.com
So there you have it — the twenty saddest Christmas songs we know of. However, despite these songs, we hope you have a very merry holiday.
Despite introducing herself countless times in one of her first viral videos, the Internet spent 5 years trying to figure out who Poppy really was. The enigmatic singer, performance artist, graphic novelist, and church leader (born Moriah Pereira) has wielded ambiguity in savvy and eerie ways throughout her artistic career, creating a pastel-hued cult of mystery surrounding her multimedia Poppy project since 2015. Returning with a new "post-genre" sound that melds together shades of industrial rock, nu-metal, and ethereal hyper-pop, Poppy put out her third studio album, I Disagree, back in January. She's never been beholden to a singular sound or character, and her latest project showcases this ability to evolve as she expands her Poppy-verse to new dimensions in one of her most emboldened metamorphoses yet.
Take the music video for the album's title track, "I Disagree," which stars Poppy wreaking havoc at a roundtable of record label execs as she sings about apocalyptic ends and new beginnings. "We'll be safe and sound / when it all burns down," she chimes in a crystalline chorus amid a swarm of doomy guitar riffs before the shot closes on her overlooking a mass of flaming bodies. Despite the seemingly macabre visuals, this song—like many of the others on the album—is as much about asserting oneself against oppressive forces as it is about regrowth in the face of chaos. Out of the ashes is born a new version of Poppy, adding another layer to her evolving mythology.
On I Disagree, Poppy navigates between ethereal vocal passages before launching into thunderous, nu-metal breakdowns. This jolt in momentum can be dizzying at times but on the whole a lot of fun to listen to and definitely a refreshing break from the poptimism direction many singers are heading towards. Her alt and nu-metal influences are detectable enough: Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, and Nine Inch Nails, and even metalcore bands like Norma Jean come to mind. Poppy has been vocal about these influences in interviews, but she also prefers to refer to her latest record as "post-genre" rather than boxing it in as a "metal record." Her ability to navigate between different sounds and styles is an impressive showcase of range, which shouldn't be surprising coming from an artist who has in the past explored everything from synth-pop (on 2017's Poppy.Computer) to heady dark-pop on 2018's followup, Am I A Girl?
But one of the most compelling aspects of Poppy's career is that she'll never lift the veil too high. In an age when almost no personal detail of a celebrity is withheld from audiences, it can be refreshing to see a star who embraces these elements of spectacle, persona, and mystique. Like Marilyn Manson and David Bowie, Poppy is a master of world-building and theatrics. Though Poppy was once notorious for staying in character during interviews, she's since opened up to show her most human side yet.
Enter Poppy's uncanny valley corner of Youtube. Poppy's videos quickly made her an Internet sensation, garnering millions of views on videos like the "I'm Poppy" clip (which now has over 23 million views). She would go on to steadily release a slew of mesmerizing, often A.I.-esque videos that left people equal parts intrigued and freaked out. Is she a computer? A cult leader? The Warhol of Youtube? A surrealist performance artist pulling off an elaborate stunt to critique the pop machine? Well, as she already told us: She's Poppy.
Poppy began to shed her robo-humanoidism aesthetic on "X", the closer to her 2018 album, Am I A Girl? (the sonic embodiment of her former sugary-pop sound meeting a nu-metal sensibility). She also fleshed out these darker, moodier tendencies of Nine Inch Nails-esque rock on her 2019 EP, Choke, which was released on Diplo's Mad Decent label.
The Poppy mythology grew more entangled when she made a public statement parting ways with former collaborator Titanic Sinclair (real name: Corey Mixter), whom she was involved with in the Mars Argo lawsuit. The lawsuit is perhaps alluded to on the track "Anything Like Me," where Poppy sings fairly straight-forward lyrics such as, "I'm everything she never was / Now everyone's out for my blood" etcetera. Although Sinclair did contribute to the album and is credited on a few songs, Poppy's decision to sever ties reflects a new chapter in her artistic career, as she invariably moves towards more autonomy and control over her own sound and direction. She's also no longer working with some of the major labels that she's worked with in the past. Instead she put out I Disagree through the metal label Sumerian Records and is set to tour in support of Deftones in the summer of 2020.
I spoke to Poppy in February over the phone before she headed to perform her Boston show on the I Disagree tour. Read our conversation below.
POPDUST: So I know you're on tour right now. How has it been playing the new songs from I Disagree live?
POPPY: Great! I'm having a lot of fun, and I've been waiting to be able to do this because I have had a lot of the songs for a while, so it's great to finally be able to play it.
I saw that you've been playing a cover of the T.A.T.U song "All The Things She Said," which is incredible. What drew you to that song?
Thank you. That song has been a favorite of mine and I feel like it fit amongst the other songs very well.
In your own words, how would you describe the new sound on the album?
Well, I just call it post-genre, that's what I've been using. It's not any specific genre, as you can tell from the record, so I'd say that's the best descriptor.
When you started out creating I Disagree, did your vision for the album retain its shape throughout the process or did it go through a few different evolutions as you went along?
I just went into the process with an open mind, and I wanted to make an album with no rules, and I think we did that, and that's I Disagree. No rules.
In interviews you've mentioned that this album has a lot of different sonic influences, from Marilyn Manson to Trent Reznor to Madonna. What kinds of bands did you like to listen to growing up?
Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan, No Doubt, Blondie: I was very drawn to all of them.
I wanted to ask you about the song "BLOODMONEY" and the themes you explore on that surrounding religion. Throughout your career as Poppy, I've noticed that, while your sound grows with each album, these themes surrounding religion and/or devotion continue to crop up. Are you attracted to the aesthetic or visual elements surrounding religion?
I think some religion is fascinating, but [I] also think that people can follow blindly without asking questions. I think any religion needs to be questioned at times, and I think it's fascinating to analyze, but I don't subscribe to any one in particular.
Can you expand on what you were hoping to explore on "Bloodmoney"?
It's about hypocritical people that are a different way behind the curtain [and] which things are a lot darker behind the scenes and behind the curtain, so that's what I'm expressing.
Speaking of addressing people, the video for "I Disagree" seems to have a pretty clear message towards the established music industry. What kinds of changes would you like to see within the music industry?
That's definitely a complex question, but I don't think there's a ton that can be done in the immediate future because certain people are in positions of power that won't let ideas come through. But I think whenever you mix art and business, there's going to be compromise, and I just feel fortunate that I'm in this position where I don't need to compromise.
While making I Disagree, did you feel like you were in a position where you had more control over what you were creating?
Yeah, absolutely. It was shown to industry people after it was completed, so at that point I didn't take into account anyone's opinion because it was already done. So I did have complete control over it.
"Nothing I Need" appears to preach a kind of minimalism within a pretty sonically maximalist album. Is that something you intended?
It serves more as an interlude on the album. I wouldn't say it was intentional that it was minimal, but it allows the listener a second to breathe, because it is a lot of information as an album as a whole. The message is just being okay with being okay, and it doesn't mean settling by any means; it just means you're accepting things for what they are and things that end...you're okay with it. You're okay with starting over, and maybe things you thought you always wanted are actually things you don't need.
With this new chapter, do you ever feel like you are leaving behind your previous Poppy persona or perhaps evolving into a completely different person?
Evolution. I wouldn't say I'm leaving anything behind, because I think if I was to stay consistently the same it would be really boring, and I get bored really easily.
In terms of what's next on the horizon, I saw that you have another graphic novel coming out. Can you tell me a bit about that and how you got into that medium?
Yeah, I have been always drawn to it, and it just felt like the right time when we launched Genesis I, my graphic novel that came out before my first release. And yeah, I'm really excited for Poppy's Inferno because it comes out in July, and it'll have an album that you can play along while you read it.
With his two solo albums, Harry Styles has proven that he was always One Direction's strongest link.
The boy band's final performance in 2015 opened the doors for Styles to come into his own. Turns out, his solo artistic persona is pretty chameleonic. He channels classic rock as easily as he does pop and R&B. He can deliver soaring ballads with the same energy he devotes to high-energy barnburners. All of this is to say: Styles is a singular talent with a versatile voice and an undeniable charisma that multiplies his appeal.
Though his original work is typically great, Styles has also performed numerous impressive renditions of other artists' hits. From '70s folk to modern hits, we've rounded up the ex-1D member's best covers.
Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”
Joni Mitchell's biggest hit got another breath of life when it was covered by Counting Crows in 2002. Though the band gave the environmentally-conscious tune a more adult alternative spin, Styles takes it back to its singer-songwriter origins with a fully acoustic setup. The harmony during the chorus adds a special touch.