Logic Tops the Charts

Logic has the number one album in the country this week:

Logic notches his third No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind debuts atop the tally.

The set starts with 80,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending May 16, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 24,000 were in album sales. Confessions was released on May 10 via Visionary/Def Jam Recordings.

Carly Rae Jepsen Talks With Idolator

Carly Rae Jepsen

Carly Rae Jepsen talked with Idolator:

It is like picking a favorite child! I definitely had my favorite songs and it felt like betrayal to kill some of my babies and my darlings, but it was necessary. I don’t have a team that is stickler for dates, saying things like, “We need an album this year.” I used to have a few people like that around me, but I’ve learned to build myself a team with creatives that know me. They are business savvy enough to tell me that 200 is enough and we have to start narrowing it down.

Even my A&R came to the house in the narrowing down process and he kind of got to a point where he was like, “All right! I’ve done it, I’ve picked my top 22.” I was like, “That’s still not helpful.” In the end, I realized that this is the beginning of an era and I can store some songs away for projects to come. I’m equally excited for what I hope will be a Side B or Part 2 of the album, because there are songs that were just important as these ones.

Why Hayley Williams Is Starting a “Sanctuary of Self Love” at Bonnaroo

Hayley Williams

Courtney E. Smith, writing at Refinery 29:

Williams says the part of her new plaza she’s most looking forward to are panels she’s arranged, which span from education on CBD to a forum on sexual assault and the weight of that trauma. “The first time we started talking about the panels I was apprehensive because I wondered who would want to come to a festival to sit and listen to people talk?” Williams says. “But when I thought about the nature of community and connection being part of why people come to festivals in the first place — it’s to not only see their favorite artists, but to connect and feel.”

Carly Rae Jepsen Talks New Album With NPR

Carly Rae Jepsen

Carly Rae Jepsen talked with NPR about her upcoming album:

Our first single, “Now That I Found You,” was very much that euphoric, kind of top-of-the-mountain feeling. “Feels Right,” as well, has a very summery vibe to it. Maybe “Automatically in Love,” as well, which has a very ’90s feel to it; I was driving with Mariah Carey in my head around the time that we worked on that song. And then on the other side of the spectrum, I think the more intimate ones would be “The Sound” and “Right Words Wrong Time.”

Tom DeLonge Talks With Kerrang

Tom Delonge

Tom DeLonge sat down to talk with Kerrang:

“I get it – trust me, I love blink and it’s given me everything in my life,” Tom says. “And, you know, I plan on doing it in the future. But right now there’s just no way – I have way too much going on because Angels & Airwaves is a part of To The Stars, and that’s why it works.”

Blink-182 in Second Place in Hall of Fame Fan Vote

Blink-182

Blink-182 is currently number two in the in-museum “vote your choice” fan vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Since the start of the year, Blink-182 has led the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s in-museum “Voice Your Choice” fan vote. But a new contender has emerged.

Motley Crue overtook first place in the kiosk-driven voting this weekend. The popular ‘80s metal band has been surging since the release of “The Dirt” on Netflix in March.

Vampire Weekend Top The Charts

Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend have the number one album in the country this week:

Vampire Weekend scores its third No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, as the band’s Father of the Bride bows atop the list.

The set earned 138,000 equivalent album units in the week ending May 9, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 119,000 were in album sales. Both sums represent the largest for any rock album in 2019.

Spotify’s Postal Address Insanity

Josh Centers, writing at TidBITS:

Apparently, Spotify requires address verification to try to ensure that all family members are in the same household, so presumably, those addresses need to be entered identically. Did my wife type out the word “bypass” in our address, or did she use an abbreviation? Did she put our box number on the first or second line? Wanting to make sure I got it right, I asked her to check the address format on her account.

The Brave Explosions of Charly Bliss

Charly Bliss

Charly Bliss talked with Stereogum about their new album:

“I went through a long period of time where I felt I was the reason that we weren’t progressing, because we weren’t playing with any bands that had women in them. I was like, ‘Oh, everything I’m singing about is wrong, my voice is wrong, my voice is hyper-feminine,’ she says. “I felt it was so not what everyone else was doing. We would play with these all dude bands, like every show we would play would be like us, four white dudes, five white dudes, six white dudes, and then like me. Then I think lyrically, too, I write from a very feminine perspective and I’m not at all ashamed of that, but when I first started with our band I felt really ashamed of that. I was like, ‘Maybe I am the problem.’”

Don’t sleep on this album.

Taylor Swift Talks With Entertainment Weekly

Taylor Swift

Alex Suskind, writing at Entertainment Weekly:

Then, during the Reputation Tour, she had an epiphany: that despite the caricature that she thought had been created of her, there were many people who saw what others had simply refused to. “I would look out into the audience and I’d see these amazing, thoughtful, caring, wonderful, empathetic people,” she says. “So often with our takedown culture, talking s— about a celebrity is basically the same as talking s— about the new iPhone. So when I go and I meet fans, I see that they actually see me as a flesh-and-blood human being. That — as contrived as it may sound — changed [me] completely, assigning humanity to my life.”

Charly Bliss Quit Their Day Jobs

Charly Bliss

Charly Bliss talked with MTV about their really awesome upcoming album:

Hendricks is made of these moments. “Part of it is I have no chill, I’m a super intense person,” she says. “I remember back in high school, I’d become obsessed with one person, and felt like I was madly in love with them. I’d drive around in my car and cry about them, and I remember thinking: No one has ever felt this much, no one knows what this feels like.” That teenage feeling — the one which isolates you in your intensity, as though the whole world’s going down on a sinking ship — has extended into Hendricks’s adult life and Charly Bliss’s latest album.

PledgeMusic Headed for Bankruptcy

Money

Benji Rogers, writing on Medium:

I went back into PledgeMusic just over three months ago as a volunteer to try and help the board and team turn around and sell the company, but I am sad to report that this effort has not met with success and that PledgeMusic will shortly be heading into administration.

I cannot begin to appreciate how all of you affected artists are feeling about this and I am deeply sorry for what you have been through.

I ask all of the fans to please understand the awful and near impossible situation that this has put the artists that you love and supported in, and as such I ask you to bear with them as they do their best to make any obligations to you right.

Sum 41 Talk With Kerrang

Sum 41

Sum 41 talked with Kerrang about their new album:

Lyrically, this is a weird record for me. I never know in advance what I’m going to write about – it’s a case of getting those first couple of lines out, and then I get the gist of where I’m going with it. I have a very stream-of-consciousness way of doing things. With this album, though, I didn’t want to go down the path that my subconscious was leading me, and I tried to fight it. I was reluctant to make a sociopolitical album, but it’s really hard to ignore everything that’s going on in the world – you can’t not have an opinion on things. I was trying to stop myself from writing anything that sounded politically ‘of the times’, but every time I tried to change the lyrics it all stopped making sense.