Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher are childhood friends who shared a love for rock-and-roll music growing up. With Kerr's vocals and bass and Thatcher's drums, together the pair created Royal Blood- manifesting their love of rock into a full-fledged rock duo sensation. The British duo have been making hits for a while now, amassing a dedicated fanbase for good reason.
Their knowledge of rock shows in their own music, playing into guitar riffs and big drumbeats that meld perfectly together. Their music quickly tops the UK charts, and together they earned the highly coveted Best British Group at the 2015 BRIT Awards- beating out One Direction, Clean Bandit, Coldplay, and alt-J. Since 2013, the band has put out four flawless studio albums, most recently Back To The Water Below.
The aforementioned album was a stylistic shift for Royal Blood, who abandoned their normal sound and tailored each song specifically- choosing instruments that sounded right for specific tracks. They completely produced the track independently, and they stayed true to Royal Blood by having fun doing it.
It can feel risky for artists to change up their sound completely, but with the duo's growing confidence in their ability to make major music...there was no better time than now. With the success of their previous album, Typhoons, Royal Blood was able to create a full album unlike anything they've ever done before. It worked.
Back To The Water Below consists of 10 flawless tracks (and two bonus singles on the Deluxe version) that switch from graceful piano melodies to dream-pop bass runs seamlessly. It blends genres of pop, rock, and alternative without missing a beat, which is a sign of a band that knows who they are. You can listen to the album here:
Their performance at Sea.Hear.Now told me all I needed to know about Royal Blood: their confidence and swagger radiates onstage...and the new tracks like "Pull Me Through" truly encompass this new era.
Kicking off their North American headline tour at Sea.Hear.Now 2023, I sat down with singer and bassist, Mike Kerr to talk the new album, tour, and more!
PD: You released your new album this month, Back To The Water Below. What was the inspiration behind it?
RB: The inspiration is kind of always about reacting to the album you made before it, you know? So the album we made before was during COVID and lockdown, so it felt more like a studio album. With this album now, we made it for the live shows. Playing live and going back to that simplicity and who we are again is the main sort of inspiration.
PD: Would you say you had playing live in mind when you wrote the album?
RB: I think we always do. We get a lot of ideas- or beginnings of ideas- on the road when we were touring. So I feel like, yeah, it was always on our minds.
PD: This kicks off your North American tour- what are you most excited about with performing live?
RB: I think it's just getting to be with our fans and getting that connection. We don't get to come here as often as we'd like...and as COVID proved, you never know when the next time is that you're going to get to be together. I think it's about being in front of people.
PD: You’re childhood friends who shared a love for rock- who were your favorite artists growing up?
RB: Favorite artists would be The Beatles, Queen, Rage Against The Machine, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, and Jeff Buckley.
PD: If you could summarize the album in a few words, what would they be?
RB: I would say melodic, English, and rock-and-roll...which I'm counting as one word.
PD: Songs like “Pull Me Through” are a bit of a stylistic shift for you guys. Were you consciously doing this while writing or did it just happen?
RB: It's mainly something that's just happening. I think when we start ideas that sound fresh, that's usually the kind of reason to continue with them. I think when you're writing and you feel like you've done it before, it's not really inspiring.
PD: What are your favorite songs to perform live?
RB: "Shiner In The Dark" is my favorite at the minute and a song called "Waves", which is the last track on the album.
The story of psychedelics is intertwined with the story of music, and tracing their relationship can feel like going in circles.
For thousands of years, artists have been using naturally-grown herbs to open their minds and enhance their creative processes. Since LSD was synthesized by Albert Hoffman in 1938, psychedelics have experienced a reemergence, blooming into a revolution in the 1960s, launching dozens of genres and sounds that focused on acid, shrooms, and all of the portals they opened. Around the 1960s, scientists also began studying the relationship between psychedelics and music, and even back then, researchers found that, when combined, music and psychedelics could have therapeutic effects on patients.
More modern studies have discovered that LSD, specifically, links a portion of the brain called the parahippocampal—which specializes in personal memory—to the visual cortex, which means that memories take on more autobiographical and visual dimensions. Other studies have found that LSD can make the timbres and sounds of music feel more meaningful and emotionally powerful. Today, psychedelic music still thrives, and you can hear flickers of those early trip-inspired experiences all across today's modern musical landscape.
"There is a message intrinsically carried in music, and under the effects of psychedelics, people seem to become more responsive to this," said the psychedelic researcher Mendel Kaelen. "Emotion can be processed more deeply. It's a beautiful narrative. It's like a snake biting itself in the tail."
All that said, psychedelics can be as dangerous as the archetypal live-fast-die-young rock and roller's average lifestyle. They can destabilize already fragile minds and can encourage further drug abuse and reckless behavior. Often, psychedelic revolutions have coincided with colonialist fetishizations, apocalyptic visions, and appropriations of Eastern culture.
However, sometimes psychedelics and musical talent can come together in a synergy so perfect that it can literally create transcendent and healing experiences. Hallucinogens affected each of these following musicians in a unique way, but their experiences with hallucinogens produced some of the greatest music of all time.
Harry Styles — She
In his revelatory Rolling Stone profile, Harry Styles spoke out about how magic mushrooms inspired his most recent album, Fine Line. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the 25-year-old apparently spent a lot of time at Shangri-La Studios in Los Angeles tripping and listening to the old psychedelic greats.
"Ah, yes. Did a lot of mushrooms here," he said in the interview during a tour of the studio. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine."
Things even got a little violent, as they often can when dealing with hallucinogens. "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place," he reminisced affectionately.
Kacey Musgraves' dreamy song "Slow Burn" was apparently inspired by an acid trip. Listening to the lyrics, you can hear the influence of psychedelics twining with country and singer-songwriter tropes. "I was sitting on the porch, you know, having a good, easy, zen time," she said of the songwriting experience, which she said happened out on her porch one evening. "I wrote it down on my phone, and then wrote the songs the next day with a sober mind."
LSD, she said, "opens your mind in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to be scary. People in the professional worlds are using it, and it's starting to become an option for therapy. Isn't that crazy?" Her affection for the drug also appears in her song "Oh What A World," which contains the lyric, "Plants that grow and open your mind."
A$AP Rocky — L$D
While A$AP Rocky's affection for LSD isn't a surprise given his propensity for writing about the drug, apparently the rapper has an intellectual approach to his psychedelic experimentation.
"We was all in London at my spot, Skeppy came through," he told Hot New Hip Hop about his experience writing LSD. "I have this psychedelic professor, he studies in LSD. I had him come through and kinda record and monitor us to actually test the product while being tested on. We did the rhymes all tripping balls."
Apparently his first acid trip happened in 2012. "Okay, without getting anyone in trouble, I was with my homeboy and some trippy celebrity chicks and…" he said in an interview with Time Out. When asked how long it lasted, he said, "Too long, man. Twenty-three hours. I was trippin' till the next day. When I woke up, I was like, Damn! I did that shit! That shit was dope. It was so amazing. It was a-ma-zing. Nothing was like that first time."
Acid changed his entire approach to music and success. "I never really gave a f*ck, man, but this time, I really don't give a f*ck," he said. "I don't care about making no f*cking hits." Instead, he focuses on creating. "It's so hard to be progressive when you're trippin' b*lls," he said. "You make some far-out shit!"
The Beatles' later music is essentially synonymous with LSD, and the band members often spoke out about their unique experiences with the drug. According to Rolling Stone, the first time that Lennon and Harrison took it was actually a complete accident. A friend put LSD in their coffee without their knowledge, and initially Lennon was furious. But after the horror and panic faded, things changed. "I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience in 12 hours," said Harrison.
Paul McCartney had similar revelations. LSD "opened my eyes to the fact that there is a God," he said in 1967. "It is obvious that God isn't in a pill, but it explained the mystery of life. It was truly a religious experience." Of LSD's effect, he also said, "It started to find its way into everything we did, really. It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn't as many frontiers as we'd thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers."
Using the drug not only helped the band create some of the most legendary music of all time—it also brought them closer together. "After taking acid together, John and I had a very interesting relationship," said George Harrison. "That I was younger or I was smaller was no longer any kind of embarrassment with John. Paul still says, 'I suppose we looked down on George because he was younger.' That is an illusion people are under. It's nothing to do with how many years old you are, or how big your body is. It's down to what your greater consciousness is and if you can live in harmony with what's going on in creation. John and I spent a lot of time together from then on and I felt closer to him than all the others, right through until his death."
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Remastered 2009)www.youtube.com
Ray Charles — My World
The soul music pioneer allegedly once described acid as his "eyes." Charles was blind, but LSD is said to have allowed him some version of sight. Though he struggled with addiction, Charles eventually got clean, though his music always bore some markers of his experiences with the subconscious mind.
Actually, blind people on LSD and hallucinogens can experience hallucinations of different kinds, though it's somewhat rare. According to a study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, this happens because during a trip, "the plasticity of the nervous system allows the recognition and translation of auditory or tactile patterns into visual experiences."
Clapton struggled with drug abuse throughout his life, and LSD certainly had an influence on him. While he was a part of Cream, he frequently played shows while tripping, and according to outontrip.com, he became "convinced that he could turn the audience into angels or devils according to the notes he played."
Before he was creating the ultimate dad rap, Chance the Rapper was an acidhead.
"None of the songs are really declarative statements; a lot of them are just things that make you wonder...a lot like LSD," said Chance the Rapper of his hallucinogen-inspired album, the aptly named Acid Rap. "[There] was a lot of acid involved in Acid Rap," he told MTV in 2013. "I mean, it wasn't too much — I'd say it was about 30 to 40 percent acid ... more so 30 percent acid."
But the album wasn't merely about acid; like much of the best psychedelic music, it was more about the imagery and symbolism associated with the drug than the actual drug itself. "It wasn't the biggest component at all. It was something that I was really interested in for a long time during the making of the tape, but it's not necessarily a huge faction at all. It was more so just a booster, a bit of fuel. It's an allegory to acid, more so than just a tape about acid," he said.
Jazz great John Coltrane was a regular LSD user who used the drug to create music and to have spiritual experiences. Though he struggled with addiction throughout his life, LSD was one drug that had a major artistic influence on him. While it's not known for sure if the album Om—which includes chanted verses of the Bhagavad Gita—was recorded while Coltrane was on LSD, many rumors theorize that it was.
"Coltrane's LSD experiences confirmed spiritual insights he had already discovered rather than radically changing his perspective," wrote Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest. "After one early acid trip he said, 'I perceived the interrelationship of all life forms,' an idea he had found repeated in many of the books on Eastern theology that he had been reading for years. For Coltrane, who for years had been trying to relate mystical systems such as numerology and astrology, theories of modern physics and mathematics, the teachings of the great spiritual leaders, and advanced musical theory, and trying somehow to pull these threads into something he could play on his horn. The LSD experience gave him visceral evidence that his quest was on the right track."
Jenny Lewis — Acid Tongue
Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis wrote the song "Acid Tongue" about her first and only experience on LSD, which happened when she was fourteen. She told Rolling Stone, "It culminated in a scene not unlike something from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—the scene where Hunter S. Thompson has to lock the lawyer in the bathroom. I sort of assumed the Hunter S. Thompson character and my friend – she had taken far too much – decided to pull a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and chase me around the house… At the end of that experience, my mom was out of town on a trip of her own and she returned to find me about 5 lbs lighter and I had—I was so desperate to get back to normal I decided to drink an entire gallon of orange juice. I saw that it was in the fridge and decided that this would sort of flush the LSD out of my system, but I didn't realize that it did exactly the opposite."
The Beach Boys' mastermind Brian Wilson was famously inspired by psychedelics, which both expanded and endangered his fragile and brilliant mind. After his first acid trip in 1965, an experience that he said "expanded his mind," Wilson wrote "California Gurls." After the trip, however, Wilson began suffering from auditory hallucinations and symptoms of schizophrenia, and though he discontinued use of the drug, he continued to hear voices; doctors eventually diagnosed him with the disease. Wilson later lamented his tragic experiences with LSD, stating that he wished he'd never done the drug.
Though it led Wilson on a downward spiral, LSD inspired some of his band's greatest work—namely the iconic Pet Sounds, which launched half a century of "acid-pop copycats."
The Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is widely believed to be the product of lead singer Wayne Coyne's LSD experimentation. This theory is corroborated by the fact that the album's cover features the number 25 (and LSD is also known as LSD-25). They also frequently reference LSD in their music, which includes an album called Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.
the flaming lips yoshimi battles the pink robots part 1www.youtube.com
Jimi Hendrix — Voodoo Child
While there is still some general contention on whether Jimi Hendrix hallucinated frequently, nobody really doubts that he did. According to rumors, the legendary musician even used to soak his bandanas in acid before going onstage so the drug would seep through his pores.
According to one source, Hendrix did more than just play music while tripping. He was also an expert at (of all things) the game of Risk.
"Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never — and me personally — ever beat him at all," said Graham Nash in an interview. "He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he's a paratrooper, and I don't know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk."
The Doors — The End
Jim Morrison was a documented LSD user, and it eventually led him out of his mind. "The psychedelic Jim I knew just a year earlier, the one who was constantly coming up with colorful answers to universal questions, was being slowly tortured by something we didn't understand. But you don't question the universe before breakfast for years and not pay a price," said John Desmore in Riders on the Storm: My Life With the Doors.
Morrison used many different drugs during his lifetime, but apparently LSD had a special place and he avoided using it while working. "LSD was a sacred sacrament that was to be taken on the beach at Venice, under the warmth of the sun, with our father the sun and our mother the ocean close by, and you realised how divine you were," said Ray Manzarek. "It wasn't a drug for entertainment. You could smoke a joint and play your music, as most musicians did at the time. But as far as taking LSD, that had to be done in a natural setting."
Morrison himself—a visionary who was also a drug-addled narcissist—was kind of the prototypical 1960s LSD-addled rock star. Alive with visions about poetry and sex but lost in his own self-destruction, he perhaps touched on something of the sublime with his art, but in the end he went down a very human path towards misery and decay.
Like many of these artists' stories, Morrison's life reveals that perhaps instead of using hallucinogens and psychedelics as shortcuts to a spiritual experience, one should exercise extreme caution when exploring the outer reaches of the psyche. When it comes to actually engaging with potent hallucinogens, that might be best left to the shamans, or forgotten with the excesses of the 1960s.
On the other hand, we might do well to learn from the lessons that people have gleaned from hallucinogens over the years—lessons that reveal just how interconnected everything is, that shows us that music and memory and nature may just all stem from the same place.
Today, September 27th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles' final album, Abbey Road.
The iconic project—whose cover bears the even more iconic image of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr striding across Abbey Road in London in 1969—received mixed reviews upon its release, but it's ultimately remembered as one of the best albums ever made.
To celebrate the anniversary, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited at the famous Abbey Road Studios, where they were met with hordes of frantic press and fans. A reissued version of the album was also released today, featuring a new mix by Giles Martin from the original master tapes produced by his father, George Martin. The reissue, which will undoubtedly sell millions of copies around the world, also comes with 23 demos and alternative recordings of songs produced for Abbey Road during the original recording process.
Not only do fans love to honor The Beatles on days of commemoration, they also continue to consume their music in record numbers. Every member of The Beatles, living or dead, continues to earn millions of dollars in royalties each year from the sale of music released as early as the '60s—music that's still being bought, streamed, covered, and inserted into movies and TV, with unprecedented regularity. In fact, all these years later, we still haven't seen a musical phenomenon consume the American consciousness quite like The Beatles, who sold 177 million albums in the USA alone, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
For a Western audience raised on music inspired by The Beatles, their music is melodically pleasing, lyrically creative, and extremely listenable. From "Yellow Submarine" to "Blackbird," they manage to create tableaus through music and melody that have lasted in society's memory: images that have seeped into countless other works of art across mediums. But that doesn't mean their music is any more special than that of their contemporaries, or any more culturally significant than music that's been made since. Yet, is there any other band, active or disbanded, whose every landmark anniversary is met with this level of commemoration, whose every 50+-year-old song is still at the forefront of people's minds? In short, no. While it's impossible to deny The Beatles' talent, why, after all this time, are they still the world's favorite band?
Darrin Duber-Smith, a marketing professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said of The Beatles' longevity, "It's remarkable for a band that stopped recording in 1970, they still have such interest." He attributes their popularity to their timing: They were the first in their category and came to represent a moment in time. "They represent the British musical invasion and the change in music that came with it," he said. "We've had other moments, like with Pearl Jam and Kurt Cobain, but nothing like the Beatles did for their time. They were a transformative band, and that has longevity." This is undoubtedly true, but there have been other transformative artists before and after The Beatles reigned, but not even Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, or Dr. Dre are honored with quite the same fervency The Beatles continue to inspire.
Many argue that the staying power of the four lads from Liverpool can be attributed to the way their music holds a mirror up to an era we long to revisit: an era of conflict, the sexual revolution, social movement, and, most of all, hope for better things to come. Others believe that we can credit John Lennon and Paul McCartney's partnership with the birth of modern songwriting, and it's that ability to set a story to music that continues to enthrall. Still, others think it's the cult of personality surrounding the members of the band themselves that continues to draw us in, a fascination that was only heightened by John Lennon's dramatic, untimely death.
Most likely, the answer is less concrete, something more poetic, like answering the world's brokenness with the simple invitation to "Come together, right now. Over me." Maybe our fascination with The Beatles is simply a result of the innate human desire to share things with other people, to find something—anything—we can all agree on. Maybe we still love The Beatles because, in a divided world, it's what we have in common.
Yesterday has a brilliant high concept premise for a movie, one that doesn't require big explosions or visual effects.
The idea is juicy enough to make it a must see. That's why it's so disappointing when Yesterday turns into a worse version of the same romantic comedy we've seen so many times before.
Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) is a struggling musician. His songs are only suited for pubs and boardwalks, and he's ready to give up on his rock n' roll dreams. But then, a worldwide blackout occurs and Jack is hit by a bus. He wakes up in the hospital and realizes that nobody else remembers The Beatles. Once he's checked and double checked to be sure he's the only one who remembers their songs, he starts playing them as his own.
This premise raises all sorts of interesting questions. If a different, non-white singer performed the same songs, would he be as successful as The Beatles? If The Beatles debuted now, would they still make it? And what's going to happen when Jack runs out of songs? The Beatles catalog is finite, after all.
But that's not the movie
Yesterday wants to be. Jack keeps getting distracted from his ascending music career by his old manager and childhood friend Ellie (Lily James). Ellie has always been in love with Jack, and Jack never noticed. Now that he's finally successful, he only begins to realize he had something greater than fame and money all along, but let her slip through his fingers.
Okay, I guess that's sweet in theory, but it's not the movie the audience came to see. Coming from screenwriter Richard Curtis, it's appallingly pedestrian. The best that the writer of
Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Love, Actually could come up with was a take on the Friend Zone? Ellie says Jack "put her in the wrong column." I guess that's the classy British way of saying it.
Ellie is right when she tells Jack he had 20 years to make his move. Ellie has a life that doesn't involve him, has other romantic prospects, and most importantly, Jack is bad for her. At this point, he's actively sabotaging her healthy adulthood. The film should be on Ellie's side, but its sympathies are misplaced with Jack.
If it feels like I'm spending too much of the Yesterday review discussing the romantic subplot, I assure you I'm giving it as much attention as the movie gives it. The fun world building of "what if the Beatles didn't exist?" only appears in hints. Sure, scenes of Jack trying to explain The Beatles to his friends are funny, and Jack and Ellie recording songs in a do-it-yourself studio is fun. But revelations of other things that no longer exist are worth exploring further than the movie does. One trivial example is that, in this world, James Corden interviews one guest at a time. Apparently, if The Beatles never existed, James Corden never did his three guests on the couch schtick either. More likely, the film couldn't afford two other celebrities for the scene.
There are hints that Jack feels guilty about plagiarism, but they're only suggested through Patel's performance, as it's not explicit in the movie. The script only implies that he's afraid of getting caught, that there may be people who know his secret. He does forget some of the lyrics, which is a worthwhile plot point. As famous as The Beatles are, Jack probably wouldn't have an encyclopedic memory of their lyrics. He also tries to throw his original songs in the mix, and of course they pale in comparison to The Beatles. That, too, could have been a worthwhile crux of the story. Would he be happy enough being famous because of other people's songs if he still couldn't get any love for his true art?
But
Yesterday wastes most of its time on rom-com shenanigans, right down to chasing Ellie to the train station before she leaves. And the film really wants Rocky (Joel Fry), Jack's incompetent roadie friend, to be endearing comic relief. I'm sure Fry is talented, but he deserves better than being forced to be a version of Rhys Ifans in Notting Hill. The movie focuses on Rocky's bumbling instead of interesting Beatles-centric material.
Richard Curtis writes great romances, but he shouldn't have tried to shoehorn one into a completely different concept. Director Danny Boyle can also do romantic or whimsical tales. as he shown with
Slumdog Millionaire and Millions. Frankly, the romance subplot is probably more out of place in Yesterday than it would have been in Boyle's darker previous movies like Trainspotting or 127 Hours. Finally, based on the film's loud, bombastic renditions of The Beatles songs, I think it's safe to say Jack's versions would not have become timeless classics like those of of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
It's not uncommon for someone to compare an artist to The Beatles, usually hyperbolically, to express their level of popularity.
But for the first time ever, someone really is as popular as The Beatles. The top three songs on the Hot 100 this week are "7 Rings," "Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored" and "Thank U, Next," all by Ariana Grande. Billboard reports that this hasn't happened since 1964, when The Beatles held the top three spots with "Can't Buy Me Love," "Twist and Shout," and "Do You Want to Know a Secret?" If her extraordinary 2018 hadn't already made it clear, this proves once and for all that Ariana Grande really is a once in a generation musical phenomenon.
In different circumstances, one wouldn't ever think to compare Grande and The Beatles because of the extreme differences in their music, the 55 year gap between their careers, and the fact that The Beatles were a band while Grande is a solo act. But, given they're the only two musical acts to have ever accomplished this kind of chart success in the history of music, it's impossible not to consider what it is Ariana Grande and The Beatles have in common. Is the unabiding passion of Arianators as well earned as Beatlemania?
The Beatles introduced ways of recording music that changed the industry, they wrote music that sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before, and they redefined the art of songwriting. They ushered in a counterculture movement that would change the world. The Rolling Stone said of the band, "The impact of the Beatles – not only on rock & roll but on all of Western culture – is simply incalculable … [A]s personalities, they defined and incarnated '60s style: smart, idealistic, playful, irreverent, eclectic…. [N]o group has so radically transformed the sound and significance of rock & roll. … [they] proved that rock & roll could embrace a limitless variety of harmonies, structures, and sounds; virtually every rock experiment has some precedent on Beatles record." That The Beatles were previously the only act to ever hold the top three places on the Hot 100 is unsurprising, well-earned, and indicative of their lasting impact on music.
So, can the same be said of Ariana Grande? She is undeniably talented, with a powerful voice and all around star quality of which fans can't get enough. But her music is engineered more than its created, with predictable lyrics and tired pop melodies — but fans don't seem to care that there is nothing particularly special about an Ariana Grande song compared to any other pop song on the radio. There is a philosophy and self image that comes with being an Ariana Grande fan that has nothing to do with the music. Fans have bought in wholeheartedly to what Ariana Grande stands for: female empowerment through the pursuit of commercial success, unapologetic self-prioritization, and a classic diva image. Grande offers fans an easy to swallow brand of resistance in a heated political moment, making them believe that in listening to her music they are somehow empowering themselves and their communities in a concrete way. Because, "didn't you see her leave that interview when she was asked a sexist question? Isn't that amazing?!" The music itself is secondary. Above all else, Ariana Grande is a remarkable feat of marketing.
While it would be easy to use this news to condemn modern pop and the taste of the American people, it's just not that simple. The music industry is convoluted and complicated in ways that George Martin probably couldn't have even imagined. If The Beatles had existed in the era of social media, viral posts, and streaming algorithms, who knows if they would have ever become the band we know and love today. They became famous because of the quality of their music and the hard-earned cultivation of a following that began in Liverpool pubs, eventually swelling large enough to launch them to America. But is that kind of organic rise to fame even possible anymore?
The Beatles didn't have to play the algorithm game, Ariana Grande does, and she's better at it than anyone else. The indistinct nature of her music is one of its greatest strengths: in sounding like nothing, it sounds like everything, perfectly tapping into the algorithms streaming platforms use to promote music to listeners. While there are decidedly positive things to be said about the fact that anyone can make music in their bedroom or on a laptop, one could also say that the sheer volume of music being made makes it extremely difficult for your average person to wade through it all and find something in an organic way. When The Beatles were on the rise and you wanted new music, you walked into a record store and there were only so many options to choose from. It was possible to really find what you loved and wanted to support. Now, it often feels easier to just stick with whatever's on the "New Music Friday" playlist on Spotify than wasting time on the limitless online selection of music.
Which raises the question of whether there is any space left in the music industry for artists who rise to fame on the quality of their music alone. Those great talents, innovators, and game changers, like The Beatles, are probably out there — but they have 1000> streams on Spotify and will never come up on your "Discover Weekly," so how will anyone ever know they're worth listening to? What Ariana Grande tying The Beatles indicates is that people really will listen to whatever they're told is popular or "recommended for them," because it's just...easier.
Brooke Ivey Johnson is a Brooklyn based writer, playwright, and human woman. To read more of her work visit her blog or follow her twitter @BrookeIJohnson.
Drake's latest song is his 12th hit to grace the Top 10 this year.
"MIA," a Bad Bunny song featuring Drake, just hit the Top 10 chart at #5, giving Drake his
12th Top 10 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 2018.
This means that Drake has bested the Beatles in their 50-year-long run of having most Top 10 hits in a single year. The iconic band's held the record since 1964, with 11 singles topping the charts that year, including "Love Me Do" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand."
Bad Bunny feat. Drake - Mia ( Video Oficial )youtu.be
12 hit songs in one year is impressive, yet Drake has a career total of 32 songs on the Top 10 chart, the most of any male solo artist. According to
Billboard, "'MIA' marks Drake's 32nd top 10 overall, the most among solo males and the third-most overall, after Madonna's 38 and The Beatles' 34. He breaks out of a tie with Rihanna (31)."
So, which Drake songs made Billboard's Hot 100 Top 10 this year? Billboard recaps Drake's finest year by listing each of the artist's hit songs with the position at which they topped the charts and the date.
No. 1 (11 weeks), "God's Plan," Feb. 3
No. 7, "Diplomatic Immunity," Feb. 3
No. 5, "Look Alive" (BlocBoy JB feat. Drake), March 3
No. 10, "Walk It Talk It" (Migos feat. Drake), April 14
No. 1 (eight weeks), "Nice for What," April 21
No. 6, "Yes Indeed" (Lil Baby & Drake), June 2
No. 2, "Nonstop," July 14
No. 7, "I'm Upset," July 14
No. 8, "Emotionless," July 14
No. 9, "Don't Matter to Me" (Drake feat. Michael Jackson), July 14
The Beatles - I Want To Hold Your Hand - Performed Live On The Ed Sullivan Show 2/9/64youtu.be
If you're a Beatles fan, here's a rundown of their former record-holding Billboard Hot 100 lineup from 1964:
No. 1 (seven weeks), "I Want to Hold Your Hand," Feb. 1
No. 3, "Please Please Me," March 14
No. 1 (two weeks), "She Loves You," March 21
No. 1 (five weeks), "Can't Buy Me Love," April 4
No. 2, "Twist and Shout," April 4
No. 2, "Do You Want to Know a Secret," May 9
No. 1 (one week), "Love Me Do," May 30
No. 10, "P.S. I Love You," June 6
No. 1 (two weeks), "A Hard Day's Night," Aug. 1
No. 1 (three weeks), "I Feel Fine," Dec. 26
No. 4, "She's a Woman," Dec. 26
Congrats to Drake! Stay tuned for more Top 10s from the man on top.
Melissa A. Kay is a New York-based writer, editor, and content strategist. Follow her work on Popdust as well as sites including TopDust, Chase Bank, P&G, Understood.org, The Richest, GearBrain, The Journiest, Bella, TrueSelf, Better Homes & Gardens, AMC Daycare, and more.
