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Natalie Shay – “The Edge” (Video Premiere)

Natalie Shay
Adam Grundy

Today indie-pop singer Natalie Shay has returned with a new single and lyric video for “The Edge.” The song is about a painful situation between herself and her friendship with her best friend dissolving quickly. Shay mentioned, “This is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever released, and as the feelings are still very raw, I’m hoping to find closure in this.” If you’re ready to cry along with Natalie Shay, you’ve come to the right place. I was also able to catch up with Natalie for a brief interview below.

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Patrick Stump Does Some Interviews

Fall Out Boy
Jason Tate

Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy talked with NME:

The lead single may have that classic Fall Out Boy energy but, according to Stump, “it’s not a throwback record”.

“I didn’t want to go back to a specific style, but I wanted to imagine what would it have sounded like if we had made a record right after ‘Folie à Deux’ [Fall Out Boy’s divisive 2009 album] instead of taking a break for a few years,” said Stump. “It was like exploring the multiverse. It was an experiment in seeing what we would have done.”

And:

Stump then told NME that it took a “while” for the band to agree on the vision for ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ with producer Neal Avron [who’d previously worked on 2005’s ‘From Under The Cork Tree’, 2007’s ‘Infinity On High’ and 2008’s ‘Folie à Deux’] acting as the “catalyst”.

“He was a little hesitant because he doesn’t really produce records anymore,” explained Stump. “He’s gone onto bigger and better things. Pete was a little hesitant as well because he didn’t want to do a throwback record, but I asked him to trust me. Neal has this ability to get the best out of us, so I really fought for him to be involved. He finally said yes, Pete said yes and as soon as that happened, it was like swimming for a fish; it just happened so naturally.”

And with Kerrang:

I probably can’t talk about it yet, but it was the first song we wrote – it was written long before we got Neal onboard, long before COVID-19, and there’s a couple of things in there that I think people would be very surprised to hear lyrically. Pete was talking about the state of the world, and it seems like he landed very surreptitiously on what was about to happen (laughs). So there’s something magical to me about the way that happened. There’s a little bit at the end that directly references COVID, that was added after the fact, but the rest of it was all just Pete thinking about the world and, well, it’s been a weird bunch of years, hasn’t it?

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Paramore Profiled for Billboard

Paramore
Jason Tate

Billboard:

The band wrote the album’s closing track, “Thick Skull,” a marked sonic departure from After Laughter, on day one. “It had these shades of a few different eras of us being music fans, loving heavy, drone-y, almost shoegaze-y moments,” says Williams, also citing York’s clashing guitar patterns, Farro’s thunderous bursts of drumming and even her own rare piano playing on the song. “I was like, ‘Man, this sounds like a band I would love.’ ”

And:

“We don’t want to be a nostalgia band,” Williams says today, reflecting on that speech. “But I think what I felt was a mixture of vindication and also a lot of anger. I was really surprised that I had so much anger well up in me because I was like, ‘Wait a minute. They’re treating us like a prize now,’ but like, Fat Mike [of NOFX] used to tell people that I gave good rim jobs onstage when I was 19 years old. I do not think that that’s punk. I don’t think that’s the essence of punk. And I feel strongly that without young women, people of color and also the queer community, I just think we would still be where we were then.

“It felt like justification to be able to have the mic and to be one of the last bands that played,” she continues. “We hung out with My Chem a few minutes before we went on [on] the last weekend, and I think they feel very similarly about how they were received. And what it comes down to is that the fans are the ones with the power because otherwise, us and My Chem wouldn’t have been headlining that thing. And I think that’s beautiful.”

Whitney Walker – “Heather From Here” (Video Premiere)

Whitney Walker
Adam Grundy

Today is the perfect day to share the latest single and music video from Whitney Walker called “Heather From Here.” In this great sounding track from the singer-songwriter, Walker channels the best part of rustic rock into a heartfelt message of hope. Walker shared:

I used to write songs really quickly, but I stopped being able to write songs as fast when I got sober. It took six or seven years until I could write like that again. I was living in Amesbury, Massachusetts at the time and going through a long breakup with my then fiance. I hated it there. Used to call it ‘Lamesbury.’ It’s right on the water, and kinda has a big class disparity, somewhere between working class and hoity-toity. But this turned out to be a fertile songwriting time for me. I was always channeling the Pixies and Lou Reed in my head. I wrote it on acoustic guitar and it ended up being one of the more under-adorned songs on the album, and the only song on the record without Dana. This was the last song we recorded for the record, and it went quick. I recorded at Will Bradford’s house here in Portland [Maine], and he has this really cool vocal booth. Will [Bradford] played bass, lead guitar and keys. Brooke did the backing vocals. Her range is great as it isn’t what she normally sounds like on TheWorst records. It was very much a label [RascalRecordZ] affair.

If you’re enjoying the sound Whitney Walker went for here, you can check out his full-length record, A Dog Staring Into a Mirror on the Floor, on March 3rd.

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Inside Twitter’s Dumpster Fire

Twitter
Jason Tate

The Verge with a behind-the-scenes look at Twitter’s collapse:

It’s an open secret that many employees who remain at Musk’s “hardcore” Twitter are actively looking for other jobs. Even the most publicly cheerful Twitter workers can’t fully mask the despair. On December 29, one tweeted a selfie, smiling in front of an empty office, with the hashtags #solowork, #productivity, and #findingperspective.

Musk himself is starting to appear defeated. Tesla shares started 2022 trading at nearly $400. By September, Tesla’s stock price had dropped by 25 percent. It plummeted again after Musk bought Twitter and ended the year at $123. Investors are begging Musk to step away; Tesla employees are too. 

A real shame.

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