Andrew McMahon did a track-by-track breakdown for his new album:
“Submarine” was written for the second Wilderness album, Zombies on Broadway. At the time, I was living in New York making the album and I completely spun out. I wasn’t sleeping, working insane hours, and going out until the sun came up most days. It started as a lot of fun, but by the end, I’d really lost myself.
Nylon interviewed Pete Wentz:
Plus, the idea of making a pure throwback record left Wentz with a bad taste in his mouth. “Whenever artists that I love, filmmakers and bands that I love, say that something is a ‘return to form,’ I’m like, ughhhh. He’s a multi-millionaire, how is he going to make speed metal?” Wentz says. “People think they want that, but if we do it, you won’t like it. And it’ll feel inauthentic.”
But to Wentz, who often speaks in pop-culture references (and has been watching The Last of Us), making more pop-oriented music felt like reaching quarantine in a zombie apocalypse. “We figured out how to exist somehow, but we’re like, mmm, kind of existing.” The band still had an appetite to do more, like on 2018’s Mania, a heavily programmed, hip-hop–influenced album that some fans feel veered too far into pop, but it gave the band a chance to flex new creative muscles. “It was me goofing around with what you could do to mangle sound waves,” Stump says. “And that was really fun, but we did that, so I didn’t want to just go back and do it again.”
It’s an annual tradition to have a NCAA bracket challenge over on ESPN. (And the community is a great place during games.)
Apple Music Classical, a dedicated app for classical music, will be released on March 28th.
Mary Varvaris interviewed Saosin:
Oh, man, at the very beginning, it was like the wild, wild west. For bands like us, it was huge. You mentioned AbsolutePunk – that was one of the things where it was like being on a billboard in Times Square. People would go to AbsolutePunk to find out about cool music, at least at that point in time, right?
It was like, you either had to have an older sibling in high school, who was super cool and knew about all the cool bands. Or you had to know somebody that worked at an independent record shop, and they could get the cool music for you. Or you had to scour the internet and find someone who had really good taste in music, or a website, like AbsolutePunk where people could recommend things that were kind of cool, and you can trust the reviews.
Chris Welch, writing for The Verge:
At this point, it’s fair to assume that something went wrong with Spotify HiFi. Two years ago today, during the company’s Stream On event, Spotify announced a new streaming tier that would let customers enjoy lossless, CD-quality audio from the leading subscription music service.
Spotify felt the news was worthy of some star power and filmed a promotional video for HiFi with Billie Eilish and Finneas. It remains on the company’s YouTube page, and you can still read the blog post saying upgraded sound would arrive “later this year” — meaning by the end of 2021.
The exclusives for this year’s Record Store Day have been announced.
Over at the other AP:
Andrew McMahon emphasizes AbsolutePunk’s role in covering artists that other media outlets largely ignored. The former frontman of Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin, two acts that were popular amongst the community, explains “when the traditional music press was not very interested in covering my bands and other bands from our scene, AbsolutePunk was always there carrying the torch.”
Many thanks to Kelly, and to all the people that contributed to this article. Warms my little emo heart.
Jack Antonoff has won the 2023 Grammy for producer of the year:
His production credits within the eligibility window were for Florence and the Machine’s Dance Fever, the soundtrack to Minions: The Rise of Gru, Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault),” Diana Ross’ “I Still Believe,” and the 1975’s “Part of the Band.” His records with Lorde and St. Vincent qualified last year, while his work on Taylor Swift’s Midnights and the 1975’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language are eligible next year.
Emma Rot, writing for The Verge:
Based on info sourced from Netflix’s support pages, The Streamable reported on Tuesday details about its upcoming anti-password sharing efforts. But now Netflix tells The Verge it hasn’t confirmed what its setup could look like for US streaming subscribers.
Universal Music Group is in talks with big streaming platforms to overhaul the industry’s economics and direct more money towards artists, according to people familiar with the matter. The shake-up, which stands to revolutionise the way musicians make money, comes as the world’s largest music company is increasingly concerned about the proliferation of songs on platforms such as Spotify, where 100,000 new tracks are being added each day.
The industry is also contending with growing manipulation of the system, including using bots to inflate listening figures and the uploading of 31-second clips that are just long enough to qualify as a “play”.
Dustin Kensrue of Thrice talked with Spin:
“We’ve had enough space from [the anniversary albums] to where I think you get some objectivity,” Kensrue says. “You’re able to appreciate the great things that are happening without as much squirming and being like ‘Oh, that was weird’ or ‘That’s not what I would do now.’ Enough time has passed that we can just see that it was cool that we did this thing and — even though we’re all different now — there’s stuff on those albums that’s kind of cool, even if we don’t remember what was going through our heads to get there. Moving on to whatever we record next — Horizons/West, I guess — I think we’ll take some lessons from coming back and revisiting these.”
I sat talked with the Human Pursuits newsletter about growing up in this music scene, the history of AbsolutePunk, and what I’d tell my younger self:
It’s funny, I think about it and it’s exactly the type of advice younger Jason wouldn’t listen to… But it would be that you should be more willing to admit that you are wrong. Like, to understand that what you are thinking right now is not what you are going to think for the rest of your life. The convictions you have are not universal absolutes, they are not things that are going to be steady forever… To be malleable with that, and to always be questioning your own prior beliefs.
Younger Jason needed to be the best, needed to be huge, and needed to have a giant audience following everything he was writing. It took me until 8 years ago to realize that was a dream I had when I was 15. I was sitting here at 35 thinking “I don’t want that at all.” There’s no part of me that has that goal, no part of me that wants to be driven by that. But I was still allowing myself to be driven by that idea I had as a kid… Letting myself be brought down because I thought it was “a goal of mine.” I wish I would’ve realized earlier that I did not need to be stuck to these ideas that I had, and that I should always be evaluating these things. Like, what do I want to do now? What do I want to do moving forward? I hope Jason of now can take that advice and try to apply it on a more regular basis.
Fall Out Boy are on the latest episode of Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show.