Hayley Williams on Making Her Fashion Week Debut

Hayley Williams

Rachel Hahn, writing for Vogue:

Each season, Taymour carefully curates the artists whom she works with, based on both their shared values and their genuine interest in the brand. Last spring rising New York singer-songwriter Zsela performed alongside a verdant farmers market, while this season Taymour tapped Williams as well as Colombian-Canadian singer Tei Shi to take part in the show. “Hayley and I just met, but I was so impressed with her demeanor,” Taymour says. “She definitely has a similar energy to mine and was very easygoing…having people like that who are supportive of the brand makes the show much stronger because you can tell that they want to be there.”

Hayley Williams Talks With WMagazine

Hayley Williams

Hayley Williams talked with WMagazine after performing at New Work Fashion Week:

The ethos I think is summed up best in the title. Even if you just look at the words, ‘Petals’ and ‘Armor’ are so opposite from each other. For me, the mantra of fighting through life with a new sense of vulnerability is really important. But I think being soft like that, in my experience, requires me to be very realistic about things and find time to still hope. I think it’s been interesting going through therapy and learning a lot of things about myself and why my coping mechanisms are what they are, and all that. I just am drawn to dark narratives. I tend to cock my head and not really trust if things have this veneer. I like to earn things and I also like to know that what’s on the front of something isn’t all; I want to know that there’s stuff underneath there to dig into. Petals for Armor has a bit of all of it. There’s self deprecation, which I’m very good at. There’s also defiant angst and rage, but as it moves on it gets lighter. A bunch of real life shit.

Lil Wayne Tops the Charts

Lil Wayne has the number one album in the country this week:

Funeral is the fifth leader for Lil Wayne, and it enters with 139,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Feb. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. The album was released on Jan. 31 via Young Money/Republic Records and follows Lil Wayne’s chart-topping Tha Carter V, which was released in 2018.

Dustin Kensrue Launches New Podcast

Dustin Kensrue

Dustin Kensrue of Thrice has started the Carry the Fire Podcast.

The show aims to dig deep into those big questions through the lens of the good, the true, and the beautiful. While these days it may feel like our disagreements and divisions threaten any hope of building a broad and beloved community, could it be possible that we all share some innate common belief in the value of these three transcendentals? By exploring our differences through this common ground, I believe our individual worldviews can be enriched by our interactions, becoming more good, true, and beautiful every day. To this end, we will be speaking with people like you, from a wide variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and professions. Whether the conversation is with a musician or author, a scientist or philosopher, we will together glimpse the world anew through their unique perspectives.

The show also has a Patreon.

Spotify Acquires The Ringer

The Ringer

Spotify has acquired The Ringer.

Spotify has purchased The Ringer, Bill Simmons’ sports and culture site, the companies announced today (February 5). The move follows the streaming service’s expansion into podcasts. (The Ringer has 30 podcasts.) The Ringer, which was previously in partnership with Vox Media, also has a video network, film production division, and book imprint, as The New York Times notes.

Simmons, the former ESPN commentator who founded The Ringer in 2016, said in a statement: “Spotify has the unique ability to truly supercharge both content and creator talent across genres. We spent the last few years building a world-class sports and pop culture multimedia digital company and believe Spotify can take us to another level. We couldn’t be more excited to unlock Spotify’s power of scale and discovery, introduce The Ringer to a new global audience, and build the world’s flagship sports audio network.”

I know I’m probably not like most casual podcast listeners, but the moment any of this content goes behind any kind of Spotify exclusive wall, I’m out on the shows. Neil Cybart’s take on why Spotify spent the money here feels right to me. The economics of streaming music isn’t great and they’re betting on sports radio/talk and podcasts.

Roddy Ricch Tops the Charts

Roddy Ricch has the number one album in the country:

Roddy Ricch’s Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for a third nonconsecutive week, while Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? vaults back into the top three after Eilish’s big night at the Grammy Awards.

Overcast Launches New Audio Engine

Podcast

Marco Arment has released a version of his Overcast podcast player with “Voice Boost 2,” if you are interested in the nerdy audio side of this, he’s written up a blog post explaining it:

This is about to get nerdier, but bear with me. (Yes, nerdier than ITU broadcast-loudness standards.)

Given a loudness measurement for the incoming audio, quieter podcasts need to be amplified to reach the target. But perceived loudness isn’t the peak of the incoming audio stream — it’s more of an average. Quiet-sounding audio can still have brief moments of loud peaks.

When increasing the volume of digital audio, the biggest challenge is not “clipping” during the peaks — not having any part of the signal pass above the volume ceiling of 0 dB. (It’s a negative scale. This is also why the LUFS value above, which is closely related to the decibel scale used here, is negative.)

Billie Joe Armstrong’s Life in 15 Songs

Green Day

Billie Joe Armstrong, talking to Rolling Stone about “Minority:”

After “Time of Your Life,” I started getting into playing more acoustic guitar, and I really wanted to have more for Warning. And there was also a lot of kind of bad pop punk that was starting to happen, and I wanted to go against that genre. This felt like the next step. I had been getting into listening to more of the Kinks and the Who, who found a lot of power in an acoustic song, and used the guitar almost like a drum. “Pinball Wizard” is so percussive. I wrote this right before the election between George Bush and Al Gore. I started feeling the political wheels starting to turn toward conservatism a little bit. I think that song is sort of about declaring that you’re stepping out of the line, you’re not part of the sheep, and trying to find your own individualism. It felt like we were diving into something that was more conceptual for sure.

I’d like to go back and rerecord that album. It was right when Pro Tools started happening. I want to go back and just do everything more live, because I think “Minority” live is a lot better than it came out on the album. But that’s just one of those things that you think about too much.

Warning is still my favorite Green Day album.