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The Grammys Are Out of Touch

Grammys
Jason Tate

Hazel Cills, writing for The Muse:

Out of 899 people nominated for the last six Grammy Awards, a new report from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that only nine percent of those people were women. And we still don’t know the race, gender, and age breakdown of the 24,000 member Recording Academy itself, which leads to an Academy that can only conceive of excellent women artists in the form of Adele and Taylor Swift. It’s this out-of-touch mindset that is partly destroying the Grammys’ ratings, with the ceremony hitting an all-time low this year. And who would blame anyone for not tuning in, considering Best Album winner Adele disputed her own win last year?

Fall Out Boy Top the Charts

Fall Out Boy
Jason Tate

Fall Out Boy have the number one album in the country this week:

The set earned 130,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Jan. 25, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 117,000 were in traditional album sales. Mania is the group’s seventh full-length studio set and was released on Jan. 19 through Island Records. […] Mania performed particularly well with direct-to-consumer sales via Fall Out Boy’s official web store, and with vinyl LP sales. For the latter format, the album sold 13,000 copies — the biggest week for a vinyl album since the Sept. 30, 2017-dated list, when The National’s Sleep Well Beast bowed with 14,000 vinyl LPs.

This is the band’s fourth number one album.

Tom Hanks to Play Mr. Rogers in New Biopic

Tom Hanks
Jason Tate

Mia Galuppo, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:

Tom Hanks wants to be your neighbor. The Oscar winner will play TV personality Fred Rogers in biopic You Are My Friend, which has been acquired by TriStar Pictures. The feature, which is set to begin production in September, is inspired by a real-life friendship between Fred Rogers and award-winning journalist Tom Junod. The cynical journalist begrudgingly accepts an assignment to write a profile piece on the beloved icon and finds his perspective on life transformed.

Frank Turner Talks With NME

Jason Tate

Frank Turner sat down with NME to talk about his upcoming album:

I always try and have a different mental approach to each record that I make. The last album that we did was sonically and stylistically a bit of a retrenchment, a bit of an attempt to restate first principles, and I liked it, I’m really proud of that record. We cut the record in nine days with a live band and it’s quite stripped back and lean, but now it’s absolutely different. And it’s my seventh album, I feel like I’ve earned the right to expand my sonic boundaries and possibly a duty to as well. There are people in this world who want me to remake ‘Love Ire & Song’ every two and a half years and they are going to be disappointed, but at the same time I’m not taking Love Ire & Song’ away from them.

Why Didn’t Lorde Perform at the Grammys?

Lorde
Jason Tate

Jem Aswad, writing for Variety:

Sources close to the situation tell Variety that the Grammys approached Lorde about performing with other artists but not solo; one source says it was part of a tribute to the late Tom Petty involving his song “American Girl” (which would have been an odd fit for the New Zealand-born singer). Lorde declined.

That source added that the other Album of the Year contenders — all of whom are male — were offered solo spots performing songs from their respective nominated albums.

‘Women Need to Step Up,’ Says Recording Academy President

Grammys
Jason Tate

Michele Amabile Angermiller, writing at Variety:

The only woman presented a solo Grammy during the awards telecast on Sunday night? Alessia Cara, who took home best new artist. Recording Academy president Neil Portnow was asked by Variety about #GrammysSoMale and had this to say:

“It has to begin with… women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, producers, and want to be part of the industry on the executive level… [They need] to step up because I think they would be welcome. I don’t have personal experience of those kinds of brick walls that you face but I think it’s upon us — us as an industry — to make the welcome mat very obvious, breeding opportunities for all people who want to be creative and paying it forward and creating that next generation of artists.”

Gee, I wonder why no one watches this boring, too long, and completely out of touch show.

Ratings for Grammy Awards Drop 24 Percent

Grammys
Jason Tate

Dominic Patten, writing at Deadline:

James Corden’s second kick at the Grammy host can last night saw 19.81 million tune into watch music’s supposedly biggest night. That’s down 24% from the final viewership of the February 12, 2107 Grammys and the worst the CBS aired ceremony has done since 2009.

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Jason Tate

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