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Juice WRLD Tops the Charts

Jason Tate

Juice WRLD’s Death Race for Love spends a second straight week at number one:

A trio of previous No. 1s follow Death Race, starting with Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, which holds at No. 2 with 66,000 equivalent album units (down 9 percent). Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born soundtrack is steady at No. 3 with 40,000 units (down 16 percent) and A Boogie Wit da Hoodie’s Hoodie SZN climbs 6-4 with a little more than 33,000 units (down 2 percent).

‘Parks and Rec’ Cast Reunites for Ten Year Anniversary

Parks and Rec
Jason Tate

The cast of Parks and Recreation reunited for the show’s ten year anniversary last night:

“The show had an argument to make,” Schur said. “The argument was about teamwork and friendship and positivity, being optimistic and not getting cynical and believing that people can do good and believing in the power of public service and believing that if you work hard and you put your head down and believe in the people around you who are part of your team, that good things are possible. That you’ll achieve the things you want to achieve, and I don’t feel like we left anything on the table. I feel like the show sort of made its argument. And we also — maybe this was like a preventative measure or something — we did jump ahead to the year, like, 2074.”

Instagram Is the Internet’s New Home for Hate

Instagram
Jason Tate

Taylor Lorenz, writing at The Atlantic:

Instagram is teeming with these conspiracy theories, viral misinformation, and extremist memes, all daisy-chained together via a network of accounts with incredible algorithmic reach and millions of collective followers—many of whom, like Alex, are very young. These accounts intersperse TikTok videos and nostalgia memes with anti-vaccination rhetoric, conspiracy theories about George Soros and the Clinton family, and jokes about killing women, Jews, Muslims, and liberals.

Apple Updates AirPods

Jason Tate

Apple has updated their AirPods:

Apple today announced new AirPods, the second generation of the world’s most popular wireless headphones. AirPods revolutionized the wireless audio experience with a breakthrough design and the new AirPods build on the magical experience customers love. The new Apple-designed H1 chip, developed specifically for headphones, delivers performance efficiencies, faster connect times, more talk time and the convenience of hands-free “Hey Siri.” AirPods come with either a standard charging case or a new Wireless Charging Case for convenient charging at home and on the go.

I use mine every single day and they’re one of my favorite purchases in a long time. Holding out to upgrade until the battery dies or they release them in black though.

New Hayley Williams Interview

Jason Tate

Cariann Bradley, writing at L’odet:

I told Zac that if all three of us feel good about it, we do it. In moving forward, if the three of us are happy, then we will just do whatever we want to do. If that means collaborating with each other, bringing other friends in to collaborate — there are seven band members when we tour. We’re all friends and we all make music in different parts, together. So I feel like, yes, I want to be in Paramore. I never want to have to put out a press release that says we’re over or that I quit or that we’re taking a hiatus, which is essentially a marketing ploy these days. I would rather it just be. It just is a part of each of our DNA. If we choose to move into it as a brand and put a name on these songs and make a new t-shirt, then awesome. But I’ve been in a band with them since I was 12; I don’t think the band is going anywhere. As long as we’re friends, the band just is. It’s just in us.

This whole interview is fantastic.

Inside Garageband

Rolling Stone
Jason Tate

Amy Wang, writing at Rolling Stone:

Patrick Stump was livid. On a lurching tour bus rigged with a wobbly Jenga tower of recording equipment, the singer and Fall Out Boy frontman had been trying to lay down demos for the band’s second album — it’d been hours, fiddling with rubber cords and finicky software — and nothing was working well together. Stump can still precisely recall the panic in the moment he finally finished the rough sketch of a song only to see the whole apparatus glitch and crash on his computer. “I just lost it, screaming in the back of a bus,” Stump tells Rolling Stone, a decade and a half later. “When you’re being creative, you just want to get your idea out. When you’re composing, time is everything, because you’re thinking the second guitar has to do this and the background vocals are going to do this and you just want to get it all out as quickly as possible. I thought: I’m not going to be able to do this.”

Madly clicking around on his laptop in search of a new route, Stump happened to open one of its pre-loaded programs. While he’d heard of Garageband, a piece of free software shipped with all Mac computers, he’d thought it was more toy than tool — and no one else was giving it much attention then, in the early 2000s. “But I opened it that first time and never looked back,” says Stump, who talks about the software with a particular fondness, as if remembering his meeting with an old friend. “I just started recording, without having to learn a new program, which was always one of the scariest things about music.”

I really enjoyed this article looking at the 15-year history of Garageband.

Fall Out Boy Is Sued for Overuse of Llama Puppets in Videos, Marketing

Fall Out Boy
Jason Tate

Jonathan Stempel, writing at Reuters:

Fall Out Boy was sued on Friday by a stuffed animal company that accused the rock band of illegally exploiting the wearable, life-sized llama puppets it made for a music video by featuring them in other videos, a tour and an extended-play album.

In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, seeking damages its lawyer said could reach millions of dollars, Furry Puppet Studio Inc said Fall Out Boy did not have permission to use the puppets anywhere other than its 2017 video for its song “Young and Menace.”

Now that’s a title I never expected I’d write.

MySpace Says It Lost Years of User-Uploaded Music

Jason Tate

Shannon Van Sant, writing at NPR:

MySpace — the once-dominant social media platform that was largely subsumed by Facebook — may have lost a decade’s worth of music uploaded by users, the company says. […] According to several media reports, it posted a message on its site recently reading, “As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from MySpace. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

William Ryan Key to Play Yellowcard Set at Slam Dunk 2019

William Ryan Key
Jason Tate

William Ryan Key talked with RockSound about performing a Yellowcard set at Slam Dunk:

Now that I’ve ventured out in to doing my own music, it’s pretty distant from the music that Yellowcard was making. So if I was going to play a solo slot it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to play this indie folk post-rock sound that I’m making. Also I feel like it’s a cool for these types of festivals to be able to represent Yellowcard in some way. I’m not trying to revive the band or get anyone pumped up for a reunion but those songs are a big part of us and mean a lot to the fans. It’s a nice way to pay tribute to all of those who supported the band over the years. In essence I’m now playing cover songs!