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We Got New Motion City Soundtrack Thanks to Stephenie Meyers

Motion City Soundtrack
Jason Tate

Stephenie Meyers, yes, the author of the Twilight novels, reveals on her blog:

There was this one song by one of my favorite bands—it was such an amazing encapsulation of Edward’s mindset throughout Twilight, the despair and the hope and the despair again. The joy of first love plus the sure knowledge of impending tragedy. Perhaps because it was such a specifically Edwardian song, it never found a place in a Bella-centric movie. So it just sat there, being perfect for a story that was only in my head. The band never released the song. It only existed on an old submissions CD and my personal Midnight Sun playlist. 

I’ve been listening to this song for a decade, all by myself.

When I realized that Midnight Sun was actually going to happen, that I was going to be able to finish it, my mind quickly turned to the playlist. There was pruning to be done, adding, subtracting, searching for songs that captured what I needed… but then this big problem. It wouldn’t be the Midnight Sun playlist without THE song. Which didn’t officially exist.

Skip to the happy ending: with an assist from Alex the Amazing, I was able to get in touch with the band and to my great joy, they were willing to help out. So here is THE song. I hope you love it as much as I do, though I’m not sure that’s possible. From the very excellent band Motion City Soundtrack, I give you Crooked Ways.

Spotify CEO Talks Future of Music Releases

Jason Tate

Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, talked with Music Ally about how he sees the music industry going forward:

“There is a narrative fallacy here, combined with the fact that, obviously, some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough,” said Ek

“The artists today that are making it realise that it’s about creating a continuous engagement with their fans. It is about putting the work in, about the storytelling around the album, and about keeping a continuous dialogue with your fans.”

Ek cited Taylor Swift’s activity around her new album ‘Folklore’ as just one recent example of an artist benefitting from that kind of effort.

“I feel, really, that the ones that aren’t doing well in streaming are predominantly people who want to release music the way it used to be released,” he said, as the interview ended.

Couple thoughts:

  • As someone that loves the album experience, I hate this. I barely remember to listen to singles when they’re released and then forget they ever came out. Fine, I’m getting old, but shouldn’t the next “model” for releasing music actually be one where artists can release music in various ways, that they think best suits their art, and make a living doing it?
  • Taylor Swift, and artists of her size, are usually the exception, not the rule.
  • Spotify is worth $50 billion and barely, if at all, making money. That’s not sustainable. There’s a reason they’re spending so much money on premium podcasts and other content that’s not related to music.
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Frank Turner Blogs About Indoor Test Gig

Jason Tate

Frank Turner has penned a blog about doing a socially distanced indoor gig:

Last night I played an actual, real-life, no-fooling, human-attended GIG. The first one since March 15th in Southend-On-Sea. In the interim I’ve done 26 livestream shows, but this was the first one with people in front of me, rather than my phone, my wife and my cat. It was quite an evening. […]

This is not the start of a series of shows like this – that’d bankrupt everyone involved. But it was, as I say, a gesture of cooperation, an attempt to feel out the situation with an eye to taking steps in a better direction. But most of all it was a fucking GIG. 

Things I’ve Found Hiding on the Backstreets

Brian Fallon
Jason Tate

Brian Fallon, writing at Spin:

In a time when concerts may feel like a distant memory, I find myself thinking of the ones I’ve seen — either in person or on film — that stands out as a reminder to keep me company during the waiting. With that, let’s look back at a career-defining, career-inspiring concert that was arguably undefeated among Gods and humans. I’m talking about the cold, presumably damp, and absolutely electrifying night of Nov. 18, 1975 at Hammersmith Odeon (as it was then called) in London, England. This is the site where a virtually unknown (at least to British audiences at the time), Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band would take a crowd of 3,000+ (seated) souls and usher them into the upper gates of holiness, known as New Jersey. 

Musicians Sign Open Letter Demanding Clearance for Campaign Songs

Rolling Stone
Jason Tate

Rolling Stone:

The letter calls for major political party committees in the U.S. to “establish clear policies requiring campaigns to seek consent of featured recording artists, songwriters and copyright owners before publicly using their music in a political or campaign setting.” […]

The letter’s signees include the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Sia, Regina Spektor, R.E.M, Lorde, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Rosanne Cash, Lionel Richie, Pearl Jam and Green Day.

Juice WRLD Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Juice WRLD once again topped the charts this week:

Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die holds atop the Billboard 200 albums chart for a second week, as the set earned 162,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending July 23 (down 67 percent), according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. 

The Chicks came in at number three:

The Chicks debut at No. 3 with the trio’s first album since 2006, Gaslighter. The set launches with 84,000 equivalent album units earned, with 71,000 of that sum coming from album sales. Gaslighter is also the best-selling album of the week, and it bows at No. 1 on the Album Sales chart.

The National’s Aaron Dessner Talks Taylor Swift’s New Album

Taylor Swift
Jason Tate

The National’s Aaron Dessner talked with Pitchfork about working on Taylor Swift’s latest album:

So when [Taylor] reached out, I had this large folder of ideas that were pretty well on their way. She was very clear that she didn’t want me to edit any of my ideas; she wanted to hear everything that was interesting to me at this moment, including really odd, experimental noise. So I made a folder of stuff, including some pretty out-there sketches. A few hours later, she sent “cardigan,” fully written in a voice memo. That’s when I realized that this was unusual—just the focus and clarity of her ideas. It was pretty astonishing. Over the next couple months, this would just happen; all of a sudden, I’d get a voice memo. And then another. Eventually, it was so inspiring that I wrote more ideas that were specifically in response to what she was writing.

Update on Bandcamp Fridays

Bandcamp
Jason Tate

Bandcamp:

We started Bandcamp Fridays back in March to support artists impacted by the pandemic, and in the past few months the music community has come together in a huge way: in just four days, fans put more than $20 million directly into the pockets of artists and labels. […]

Because the pandemic is far from over, we’ll continue to hold Bandcamp Fridays on the first Friday of every month until the end of the year. A more detailed calendar is below.

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Dave Grohl Pens Essay in Defense of Teachers

Foo Fighters
Jason Tate

Dave Grohl, writing at The Atlantic:

Every teacher has a “plan.” Don’t they deserve one too? My mother had to come up with three separate lesson plans every single day (public speaking, AP English, and English 10), because that’s what teachers do: They provide you with the necessary tools to survive. Who is providing them with a set of their own? America’s teachers are caught in a trap, set by indecisive and conflicting sectors of failed leadership that have never been in their position and can’t possibly relate to the unique challenges they face. I wouldn’t trust the U.S. secretary of percussion to tell me how to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” if they had never sat behind a drum set, so why should any teacher trust Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to tell them how to teach, without her ever having sat at the head of a class? (Maybe she should switch to the drums.) Until you have spent countless days in a classroom devoting your time and energy to becoming that lifelong mentor to generations of otherwise disengaged students, you must listen to those who have. Teachers want to teach, not die, and we should support and protect them like the national treasures that they are. For without them, where would we be?

Underoath Is Raising the Bar for Livestream Concerts

Underoath
Jason Tate

Bryan Rolli, writing at Forbes:

The other goal of the Underoath: Observatory is to compensate for all the touring revenue lost this year. Early metrics suggest the band will easily achieve that. When Facebook published their new online store early a few Thursdays ago, 100 fans placed orders within the hour. The band played up the technical hiccup, emailing refunds and inviting fans back the following Monday with the code “UNDEROATHPATIENTZERO.” 

Roughly 80 people opened the email; within the first 10 seconds of relaunching the store, 280 people had visited the site with a conversion rate of $800 per email. Underoath passed the six-figure threshold in the first two days of sales. 

Not only does the Observatory have the potential to match the gross of a major six-week tour, but without the accompanying expenses—buses, gas, flights, hotels, freight and a full road crew—the band members and limited crew could walk away with significantly more money in their pockets. 

Not bad, not bad at all.

Juice WRLD Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Juice WRLD has the number one album in the country this week:

Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die makes a smashing debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, capturing the largest week of 2020 for any album, as it earned 497,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending July 16, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data.

The set registers the largest streaming week of 2020, and the fourth-largest streaming frame ever for an album.

John Lewis Passes Away

Jason Tate

The New York Times:

On the front lines of the bloody campaign to end Jim Crow laws, with blows to his body and a fractured skull to prove it, Mr. Lewis was a valiant stalwart of the civil rights movement and the last surviving speaker from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

More than a half-century later, after the killing in May of George Floyd, a Black man in police custody in Minneapolis, Mr. Lewis welcomed the resulting global demonstrations against police killings of Black people and, more broadly, against systemic racism in many corners of society. He saw those protests as a continuation of his life’s work, though his illness had left him to watch from the sidelines.