Link - PAGE 49

Half Waif Breaks Down New Album

Half Waif
Jason Tate

Half Waif broke down their new album for Consequence:

Lying in bed after visiting my aunt, who has Alzheimer’s, I couldn’t sleep. I just kept fixating on the way her arm felt when I touched her — so soft yet solid — and how much love I tried to pour from my fingers, from my voice, into the vessel of her body. It’s a brutal disease and it took her away from us really quickly. But there are things that can’t be taken away. The memory of her swimming at our family’s cabin in Maine, the feeling of my fingers on her shoulder, the song. I started singing the melody of what would become “Swimmer” that night, just a loose scrap of a verse. The next day, I had this impulse to turn it into a dark pop song.

Tyler, the Creator Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Tyler, the Creator has the number one album in the country this week.

Tyler, the Creator scores his second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200chart as his latest studio effort, Call Me If You Get Lost, debuts atop the tally. The set was announced on June 17, released on June 25 via Columbia Records and earned 169,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending July 1, according to MRC Data.

Mark Hoppus Offers Health Update

Mark Hoppus
Jason Tate

Mark Hoppus of Blink-182 offered a health update during a recent Twitch event.

“On good days, I go do stuff,” he said. “I went on a walk outside today and it was the first time I’d left my house in like… five days pretty much. But this round of chemo I wasn’t totally stuck on the couch, miserable. I’ve actually watched movies and walked around and cleaned the house and hung out with my dogs. I didn’t just feel like a poisoned electrified zombie leaned up against an electric fence like I did the past couple of rounds.”

But his ability to interact with the world is limited, and Hoppus finds it frustrating. “I can’t go anywhere right now. I wanted to go to the Dodgers last night. I can’t. I want to go hang out with friends and go to a restaurant. I can’t,” he said. “My white blood cell count is way too low for me to go out, so I am stuck trying to get better. That’s alright, I’ll take it.”

Amazon Announces Vinyl Subscription Service

amazon
Jason Tate

Rolling Stone:

Amazon says that it’s selecting albums from the “golden era of vinyl,” which it defines as the 1960s and 1970s. Its music team singles out Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Miles Davis and Abba as examples of artists that fit their criteria. One Amazon user noted that the first two albums released to subscribers werePink Floyd’s The Wall and London Calling by The Clash.

Paramore’s Influence Is All Around Us

Jason Tate

Quinn Moreland, writing for Pitchfork:

Now, Paramore’s influence is being felt by a new group of artists navigating the turbulence of youth, when every heartbreak and setback can feel apocalyptic. Beyond Moriondo, the band’s sound and snarl can be heard in the gleeful middle finger that is Olivia Rodrigo’s No. 1 hit “good 4 u,” the Hot Topic thrash of Willow Smith’s “Transparent Soul,” the diaristic bliss of girl in red’s “Serotonin,” and Billie Eilish’s caustic eye-rolls. That these artists were an average of 5-and-a-half years old when Riot! was released only underscores Paramore’s staying power—and Williams’ role as a sage pop-punk den mother.

Polo G Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Polo G has the number one album in the country this week:

Polo G lands his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 as Hall of Fame opens atop the tally, earning 143,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending June 17, according to MRC Data. All three of the rapper’s charting albums have reached the top 10.

Apple Music’s Record Label Pages

Jason Tate

Zane Lowe talked with Rolling Stone about Apple Music’s new record label pages:

“We want to highlight labels that are really hyper-focused on building great quality. The labels we’re partnering with here are the ones where I want to search for their logo on the back of the record and would buy music unheard because I trust that,” Lowe says. “That to me is really the culture that we’re trying to represent from a label point of view here. In a way, this is an opportunity for us to reestablish the concept of a label as something more than just a bank. To look at the label system again as more than just a distribution model or an investment model, but actually as a place where music, art and culture is fostered in a really deliberate and very thoughtful way.”

Where’s my Drive-Thru Records page, Zane?

Paramore’s ‘Riot!’ Debuts in the Top 10

Paramore
Jason Tate

Billboard:

Paramore’s 2007 album Riot! reaches the top 10 of Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart for the first time, thanks to a new pressing on silver colored vinyl.

The set re-enters the chart dated June 12 at No. 8 with 7,000 copies sold in the U.S. in the week ending June 3 (up 1,380%), according to MRC Data, nearly all from sales of the new vinyl edition. Riot! had previously debuted and peaked at No. 20 on the June 30, 2007-dated chart. The album was issued on silver colored vinyl on May 28 as part of the Fueled by Ramen record label’s ongoing 25th-anniversary festivities.

Eddy Cue on Why Spatial Audio Is the Future of Music

Jason Tate

Billboard:

One of the first people that told me about Dolby Atmos was Adam Levine. I happen to know him, and we were in the same place, so he was like, “Have you listened to this?” And he sends me this song and he was really excited. He said, “I can’t believe what I can do with this.” It’s going to be really exciting to see how this evolves, and all of what artists are going to be able to do with this, and how exciting it is for fans and listeners to be able to do this.

So we went after the labels and are going to the artists and educating them on it. There’s a lot of work to be done because we have, obviously, tens of millions of songs. This is not a simple “take-the-file that you have in stereo, processes through this software application and out comes Dolby Atmos.” This requires somebody who’s a sound engineer, and the artist to sit back and listen, and really make the right calls and what the right things to do are. It’s a process that takes time, but it’s worth it. […]

To me, when I look at Dolby Atmos, I think it’s going to do for music what HD did for television. Today, where can you watch television that’s not in HD?

One of the advantages music has over television is you can’t take an old TV show and truly up-res it to HD because it was shot on low-quality cameras. But in the case of audio, all these things were recorded on multiple tracks, and so it’s possible to go back to a lot of the songs and be able to do this.

The full article can be read via Apple News. I’ve only just started listening to various songs mixed in this way, and some of them are downright incredible. Others, either don’t sound great to my ears, or I’ve heard the original mixes so many times something just sounds off. I am very excited to see various artists experiment with what is now unlocked in this space, however.

Taylor Swift Returns to the Top of the Charts

Taylor Swift
Jason Tate

Taylor Swift once again has the number one album in the country:

Taylor Swift’s Evermore returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart for a fourth nonconsecutive week on top, as the set vaults 74-1 with 202,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending June 3 (up 1,709%), according to MRC Data. Of that sum, album sales comprise 192,000 (up 8,307%) — marking the biggest sales week of 2021. It surpasses the previous largest sales week of the year, when Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) sold 179,000 in its first week (chart dated April 24).

Taylor Swift Set for David O. Russell Movie

Taylor Swift
Jason Tate

The Hollywood Reporter:

Taylor Swift will be back on the big screen, appearing in David O. Russell’s latest film.

The movie stars Margot Robbie, Christian Bale and John David Washington, with a massive cast that also includes Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Robert De Niro, Michael Shannon and Timothy Olyphant.

The New Regency project will see Russell direct from his own script, his first time in the director’s seat since 2015’s Joy, starring Jennifer Lawrence. Russell is producing with Matthew Budman.

Taylor Swift Breaks Modern-Era Record for Biggest Vinyl Album Sales Week

Taylor Swift
Jason Tate

Billboard:

In just three days, Taylor Swift’s Evermore has set the record for the biggest sales week for a vinyl album in the U.S. since MRC Data began tracking sales in 1991.

The vinyl edition of Evermore, released on May 28, sold over 40,000 copies in the U.S. through May 30, according to initial reports to MRC Data. That beats the record for an entire single-week of vinyl sales, held by the debut frame of vinyl devotee Jack White’s Lazaretto, when it launched with 40,000 copies in the week ending June 15, 2014. (MRC Data began electronically tracking music sales in 1991, when the company was known as SoundScan.) It’s presumed that Evermore’s vinyl sales sum will grow by the end of the tracking week on Thursday, June 3.

Olivia Rodrigo Tops the Charts

Olivia Rodrigo
Jason Tate

Olivia Rodrigo has the number one album in the country this week:

Olivia Rodrigo captures the biggest week of 2021 for an album, as her debut release, Sour, opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 295,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending May 27, according to MRC Data.

Sour also launches with the second-largest streaming week ever for a non-R&B/hip-hop album, and second-biggest for an album of any genre by a female artist.