music
2021 Grammy Awards: Winners List
The 2021 Grammy Awards, the annual ceremony recognizing achievements in the music industry, takes place in Los Angeles on Sunday night. Beyoncé leads all of this year’s contenders with a total of nine nominations, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year. Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa are each nominated for six Grammys, while our own 2020 Artist of the Year Phoebe Bridgers is in contention for four categories, including Best New Artist. Other notable nominees include Megan Thee Stallion, Fiona Apple, HAIM, Billie Eilish, Brittany Howard, and the late John Prine. BTS have earned their first-ever Grammy nomination in a performance category as their song “Dynamite” is up for Best Pop/Duo Group Performance. Additionally, Talking Heads, Selena, Salt-N-Pepa, an...
2021 Grammy Awards: Watch Video of the Performances
The 2021 Grammy Awards take place on Sunday night, featuring performances from BTS, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, HAIM, and the live debut of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s Silk Sonic. Also slated to perform are Harry Styles, Post Malone, Bad Bunny, Brandi Carlile, Miranda Lambert, Brittany Howard, Chris Martin, DaBaby, Lil Baby, and John Mayer. This year’s ceremony will take place under strict COVID-19 protocol from the Los Angeles Convention Center. All of the scheduled performers will appear on site, while other venues will be used to announced the winners of each category. The audience will be limited to performers, nominees, and a small number of their guests. Over the course of the evening, we’ll update this post with video of each perform...
AI Robot Rapper FN Meka Releases New Single “Speed Demon”
From Bot Dylan to digital film curators, there’s a whole wide world of AI robots out there slowly encroaching on human skills, and FN Meka is the latest to join the bunch. The bot, who’s credited as being the world’s first AI-powered robot rapper, just released a new single called “Speed Demon” that’s already making waves on TikTok. According to a press release, FN Meka is powered by Vydia, a distributor that provides a platform for his label, “which lives in a dimension somewhere between the human world and the virtual world, empowering not only these unique creators, but the teams behind them.” Together, they’ve released a handful of singles like “Moonwalkin” and “Internet” in addition to this new track. What’s a robot rapper sound like exactly? Well, “Speed Demon” isn’t all that inventi...
Song of the Week: Lucy Dacus Delivers a Wrenching Ballad with “Thumbs”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Lucy Dacus delivered a wrenching ballad that left all of us speechless. Some songs end and sit in the pit of your stomach for the rest of the day, so visceral and affecting that they can’t be shaken. Lucy Dacus’ raw, devastating new release, “Thumbs”, is such a song, offering a gothic revenge fantasy that lingers long after the four and a half minutes have passed. Extremely minimal in production, “Thumbs” is also nearly formless, unfolding more like a whispered secret, twilight confession, or piece of local mythos than traditional...
Future Islands Cover Tina Turner’s Hit “We Don’t Need Another Hero”: Stream
Future Islands have shared a new cover of Tina Turner’s classic 1985 hit “We Don’t Need Another Hero”. Stream it below. The track was recorded as part of Future Island’s new live session on SiriusXMU. While the majority of the set saw the band stripping down material from their new album As Long as You Are for an intimate radio performance, it was the cover song that stole the show — in part because their ’80s-inspired sound was born from classics like this Golden Globes-nominated single from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. As is to be expected, Future Islands glam up the Turner classic with a lot of bouncy ’80s synthpop. Leader singer Samuel T. Herring takes a smoother approach to his vocals, giving each word proper enunciation and gusto without ever overdoing it. Meanwhile, there’s some spar...
Jahblend – Puella
Don’t miss this brand new song piece of music from coming from Jahblend – “Puella” out now. The wait is finally over the dancehall enigma Jahblend delivers his first and official single of 2021. Puella, the P.Priime concocted riddim is a feel-good tune marinated by Jahblend’s mettlesome vocals as he declares his unyielding love to a special someone “Puella”. Unlike his 2020 release title ‘By Force’ which tackles sexual assault head-on, “Puella” (Latin word for woman), sees the dancehall general open his heart vulnerably in order to intimately tune into the frequency of that of his beloved. After closing the decade by staking his claim in the Afro dancehall space and setting lofty heights with his debut Compos Mentis, Jahblend delivers “Puella” alongside evidence of his multifaceted s...
Posthumous Tony Allen Album to Feature Damon Albarn, Danny Brown, Skepta & More
Last year, legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen was working on a new album when he suffered an aortic aneurysm and passed away at the age of 79. His collaborators have finished what he began, and the posthumous release There Is No End will arrive on April 30th, the anniversary of his death. You can catch a preview with lead single “Cosmosis”, which was co-written by Damon Albarn and features Skepta and Ben Okri. Allen pioneered the Afrobeat sound, drawing influences from American jazz, Ghanian highlife, and Yoruba polyrhythms to develop new grooves that continue to resonate today. He built his towering reputation by collaborating on over 30 albums with Fela Kuti, and his skills were so advanced that when he left to pursue a solo career, Kuti hired four drummers to replace him. Allen ...
Weird Al’s Bad Hair Day Turns 25: Mike Mills, Dave Pirner, Chris Ballew, and Portugal. The Man Discuss the Parody Classic
By the time the mid-’90s rolled around, “Weird Al” Yankovic had already recorded “Eat It”, “Like a Surgeon”, “Yoda”, “Fat”, “Spam”, “Smells Like Nirvana”, “Bedrock Anthem”, and dozens of other iconic parodies. He’d been a comedy legend for a decade. And yet somehow the accordion-playing mad genius found a way to reach another echelon with the landmark release of 1996’s Bad Hair Day. On the back of hits like “Amish Paradise” and “Phony Calls”, the record introduced Yankovic to a whole new generation of fans. Moving a record-shattering 1.3 million copies in its first year, it was his highest-charting effort to that point, topping off at No. 14 in the US and cracking the top 10 in Canada. Over the years, its renown only grew, until in 2019 it became one of just eight comedy records to achieve...
Spoon Share Tom Petty Covers “Breakdown” and “A Face in the Crowd”: Stream
Spoon’s Britt Daniel (photo by Heather Kaplan) and Tom Petty (photo by Philip Cosores) Spoon have shared covers of the late Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and “A Face in the Crowd”. Stream both songs below. The Texas indie rockers recorded both tracks live at the Catacomb in Austin, with “Breakdown” originally being broadcast as part of Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash, a virtual tribute concert that took place last fall. Back in 2017, Spoon lead singer Britt Daniel explained to Stereogum why “A Face In The Crowd” is his favorite Tom Petty song. “Divine Fits (Daniel’s other band) played ‘You Got Lucky’ at just about every gig we had. What an insane single. It’s got an intense lyric and the most powerful, creepy guitar riff and somehow Dan was able to tap into that attitude every time. It was ...
Selena Gomez Unveils New Revelación EP: Stream
Selena Gomez has unveiled her first Spanish-language record, the Revelación EP. Stream it below using Apple Music or Spotify. Her first studio release since 2020’s Rare, Revelación is a pop and reggaeton project that features DJ Snake, Rauw Alejandro, and Myke Towers. According to Gomez, this celebration of her Mexican heritage may never have come together if not for the coronavirus pandemic. The singer has long struggled with anxiety and depression, and in 2015 she was diagnosed with lupus, a condition that required chemotherapy and a kidney transplant. When she wasn’t feeling sick, she felt pressure to keep working, and as she explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the enforced rest of quarantine caused a shift in her perspective. She said, “The Spanish reco...
BTS Perform “Dynamite” at MusiCares’ Music on a Mission Concert: Watch
BTS helped kick off this weekend’s Grammy festivities with a rousing performance at MusiCares’ Music on a Mission virtual benefit concert. Appearing remotely from the Peace Hall at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, our 2020 Band of the Year performed their Grammy-nominated song “Dynamite”. Notably, the performance featured Jungkook on drums. Watch the replay below. In lieu of its traditional Grammy “Person of the Year” kick-off concert, MusiCares held Friday night’s Music on a Mission benefit to raise proceeds for members of the music industry severely impacted by the pandemic. Other performers included HAIM, Jhené Aiko, H.E.R., and John Legend. The concert is available to replay through March 19th via MusiCares’ website. BTS are also slated to perform during Sunday’s G...
Thundercat Teams with Ace Hashimoto on New Song “VAPORWAVES”: Stream
Chicago-born producer and singer Ace Hashimoto has recruited fellow multi-hyphenate Thundercat for his new song “VAPORWAVES”. Stream it below. The breezy track has a funky bassline and features Hashimoto and Thundercat contemplating the meaning of life. “After the end of the world, when it’s all said and done,” Hashimoto sings. “There’s no sign of life, but somehow life will still carry on / Could it mean our existence not grand as we thought?” Hashimoto originally released “VAPORWAVES” earlier this week as an exclusive on his Patreon page, and warned fans it would only be available on YouTube “for a limited time only.” In a lengthy update, the musician shared his inspiration for the song. “This song is about existential crisis and I believe it was that concept that led me to feeling free ...
