Pitchfork have released their list of the best 200 songs from the 1970s.
Pitchfork’s Best 200 Songs of the 1970s
The World Really Wanted Britney Spears to Fail: She Didn’t
Issy Beech, writing for Noisey, on Britney Spears:
LeAnn Rimes also said in her interview with Metro that she admired Britney. “I look at her and think it’s really amazing what she’s overcome. It’s nice to see someone come out the other side and be successful again.”
That’s the quote that deserves follow-up articles. That’s the quote. Because Britney Spears is still one of the most successful women in pop.
Travis Barker Talks Tattoos and Pain
GQ has an extensive profile on Travis Barker of Blink-182. This passage about the possibility of a Box Car Racer reunion sure is interesting:
I think we were both under the impression in the beginning that it was going to be a Blink album. Then it was like, no let’s do this cool little side project, but we won’t put an album out. Then the label heard it and wanted to put it out. Then there wasn’t going to be a tour, but they were like ah, you can do this tour. It just spiraled out of control. . . But I don’t know. [Mark’s] not in the band, so would it cause a lot of problems? Would it not? I have no idea. It’s something I can’t even wrap my head around just because I’m so proud of this album that we’re currently supporting. But I love Box Car. It was a cool album and cool sound.
Pandora Nears Deals for On-Demand Streaming
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Pandora is looking to get into the on-demand streaming game:
Pandora Media Inc. is aiming to start expanding its internet-radio service as soon as next month, offering its hallmark free tier as well as two new monthly subscription options that will mark its foray into on-demand music streaming, said people familiar with the matter.
Can they fix their shitty Flash based web app and awful streaming quality first?
Japandroids Have Been Missed
Steven Hyden, writing for Uproxx, on missing the Japandroids and how to follow up Celebration Rock:
Japandroids make music that should, theoretically, be relatively easy to produce more than once or twice per decade. And yet, when you make a record as good at being simple as Celebration Rock is, it doesn’t leave you with a lot of options moving forward. If you repeat the formula, you have to compete directly with your most beloved record (and your audience’s distorted memory of that record). If you change up the formula (assuming you’re even capable of doing that), you run the risk of losing what people liked about you in the first place.
On the End of Yellowcard
Evan Lucy has a nice interview and feature on the end of Yellowcard over at Alternative Press:
The sense of finality led Key to approach writing Yellowcard from a different angle lyrically, as well. The singer felt especially galvanized by the ability to have the album’s lyrics serve as his farewell to friends, fans and family, and he challenged himself to use each song to express a different sentiment of saying goodbye. Some, like the affecting wistfulness of “Empty Street” (“Boxing up the fireworks/cancel my parade/the street is empty tonight”) and album closer “Fields & Fences,” complete with a goosebump-inducing orchestral outro, find him staring down his rapidly approaching future as Yellowcard’s ex-frontman, while the fiery “Savior’s Robes”—with its biting chorus, “Play us a song I know/Make it an older one”—seems aimed at those who’d prefer the band’s Ocean Avenue selves be fossilized forever.
Trying to read the article and having an Ice Nine Kills video pop up in my face sure was fun.
Uber to Begin Testing Self-Driving Cars in Pittsburgh
Max Chafkin, reporting for Bloomberg, on Uber’s announcement that they will begin testing “self-driving” cars in Pittsburgh:
Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.
There will be two “safety drivers” that sit in the car and can take over at any time, but this is a step toward our driverless future. A future generation will look back on the days where we all manually drove cars around as barbaric.
Twitter Rolls Out Abuse Filters
Twitter has finally rolled out some content filters to help curb abusive behavior on the service.
When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior. Turning it on filters lower-quality content, like duplicate Tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience. It does not filter content from people you follow or accounts you’ve recently interacted with – and depending on your preferences, you can turn it on or off in your notifications settings.
NPR Gets Rid of Comments Section
NPR are removing comments from their website:
In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, [managing editor Scott] Montgomery said. That’s 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016. […] When viewed purely from the perspective of whether the comments were fostering constructive conversations, the change should come as no surprise. The number of complaints to NPR about the current comment system has been growing — complaints that comments were censored by the outside moderators, and that commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters.
Good for them. Moving all comments to our forums was the best decision I ever made.
Denver Riot Fest Times Announced
Denver Riot Fest set times have been released.
Geoff Rickly on Surviving Martin Shkreli
Gary Suarez, writing at Pitchfork, speaks with Geoff Rickly of Thursday on “surviving” Martin Shkreli. This is the first time I’ve seen Geoff publicly mention that Collect Records was originally going to put out that The Hotelier album:
We would talk about bands. He brought me the Hotelier. I didn’t know them, they were sort of a buzzy band already. But he was super into them. He was always like you’re not signing enough bands. For me, the situation was so good that I didn’t want to lose it. I probably should have pressured him to put more money into each band.
And:
I met with the Hotelier about their record, which is so good. I thought, “This is the record that could save our label, it’s so good. There’s this one song on it that’s so much better than the rest of the record that we finally have a single—a real single.” And they were like, “We can’t do it.” That meeting, I felt like somebody punched me in the stomach. And I didn’t feel like they were betraying me. I just felt like I was understanding there’s no saving it. This is it. This is done.
Reddit Won’t Turn Over IP Address of User Who May Have Leaked Twenty One Pilots’ Song
Josh Katzowitz, writing for The Daily Dot, on Atlantic Records trying to get Reddit to release the IP address of the person that leaked a Twenty One Pilots’ song on the service:
“Upon becoming aware of the Posting, Atlantic attempted to have the illegally-distributed copies of ‘Heathens’ removed from the Internet,” the label said in the lawsuit. “Despite expending significant effort and funds in this attempt, the removal efforts were ultimately unsuccessful in curtailing further widespread distribution… As a result of the need to change the release date of ‘Heathens,’ Atlantic’s marketing efforts were substantially frustrated … Sales of the ‘Heathens’ single, which were unsupported by Atlantic’s carefully-planned marketing strategy, failed to reach predicted levels, causing substantial harm to Atlantic in the form of lost single and album sales revenue.”
Univision Buying Gawker
Universion is buying Gawker for $135 million dollars.
Here’s a statement from Gawker Media owner Nick Denton: “Gawker Media Group has agreed this evening to sell our business and popular brands to Univision, one of America’s largest media companies that is rapidly assembling the leading digital media group for millennial and multicultural audiences. I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership — disentangled from the legal campaign against the company. We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism.”
Goodbye, Weatherbox
Dylan Andersen, writing on Medium, saying goodbye to Weatherbox:
Weatherbox is quite frankly, the most underrated rock band I have ever had the privilege of listening to and getting to see live. Period. They are so criminally underrated that it angers, frustrates, and even saddens me to see them go out this way. The sales/response to Flies in All Directions was clearly not wanted the label — Triple Crown Records — or the band wanted to see, but it was still some of the band’s best work to date.
‘Suicide Squad’ Soundtrack Debuts at Number One
The movie might have gotten destroyed by critics, but the new Suicide Squad soundtrack is the number one album in the country this week. Drake comes in at number two, and Skillet debuts at number three.
Of Suicide Squad’s total unit figure for the week — 182,000 — traditional album sales represent 70.5 percent. The rest of the sum is comprised of TEA (17.6 percent) and SEA (11.9 percent).