#because they would make her a better songwriter and artist and performer

[terrainofheartfelt]

"DAUGHTER" is such a SONG and I have not gotten over how Beyonce just wove in a 17th century Italian aria?

so like the thing about "Caro mio ben," is that practically every novice vocalist learns to sing it. it's from these anthologies that a 2X Italian Songs and Arias and every voice student learns at least 2 or 3 of these because they are certified good pedagogical tools for learning vocal technique. which means every single person who studied voice (classical or musical theater or just took some voice lessons in high school) has heard this aria.

and it is a pretty little song. it's nice to sing. I learned it when i was a college freshman and learning how to use my instrument. and i am just obsessed that Beyonce Knowles Carter has absolutely taken the same kind of training (because she wouldn't still be wailing if she didn't) learned this little Italian aria from some long forgotten opera by some long forgotten composer, and decided that she liked it so much she would throw it in her country album, and in her country album's MURDER track.

like, she took two of the best women country Genre Songs: Goodbye Earl & Jolene, and merged them to create GOODBYE JOLENE, and she just peppered in this Italian. which may be a reference to "choir boys and altars" but "Caro mio ben" is entirely secular and not sacred at all, which makes it a curious choice, especially since she's used Schubert's Ave Maria in one of her songs before! ("Ave Maria" on I Am Sasha Fierce). actually the text of Caro mio ben roughly translates to

Believe me, my love, when we're apart from each other, my heart languishes. I am faithful to you but I'm always sighing, cease being cruel! it's too much pain!

so it's less about evoking holiness and more about the emotional depth behind the story this and the couple songs preceding it are telling. like!!! crimes of passion! yeehaw! italian!!! she did that!

Queen B is nuts and a classical music girlie and I love her for this. ARTISTE!!!!!

[barblaz-arts]

I know you've been making a lot of art of it lately, but out of curiosity, what's your opinion on Hazbin Hotel in general? I'm referring to both the show and the fandom here. Just curious.

God. What a loaded question. Are you ready? Bcuz I'm fresh from Vaggie discourse on twitter and I have a lot to say.

I think that Hazbin Hotel seems worse than it is for people who know the fandom but haven't actually watched the show. Honestly, I think it's a fine show. It isnt super incredible and I'm not gonna sing praises about how deep and thought provoking it is or whether it's an artistic masterpiece. It never tried to be that and was never advertised as such(to my knowledge) anyway. I just had a lot of fun. Like, yeh sure the cussing in the dialogue can be a bit much, especially in ep 1, but there are different writers in other episodes, so it gets better. It can be super crude yeh, but I grew up watching things like the Scary Movie franchise and other dumb american movies (yes, i was too young for them. yes, i still watched them), so it's pretty tolerable for me. It also helps that Charlie is the main character. That's one of the main reasons why I watch HH but dont watch HB. It's probably a fun show, but without a sweetheart like Charlie to balance things out, I'd just get tired of the sex jokes and mean jokes.

Compared to my last hyperfixation, I think I have more things to love about Hazbin Hotel, believe it or not. With Netflix's Wednesday, I had already been an Addams Family fan for a while and hung on because I loved the family and eventually Enid and wenclair. The show itself was honestly meh... so far! I'll give season 2 another shot.

But with Hazbin Hotel, it catered to a lot of things I've always loved. Found family with a bunch of misfits? We didnt get to see it much bcuz of the fuckass 8-ep per season format we have nowadays, but its fine its there! The juxtaposition of a kind hearted woman in a harsh world? Love love Charlie for that, I watched the show in the first place because of her. A canon lesbian lover with a "fuck the world cuz my world is you" type of love for the protag? Fuck yes. How very Pearl-from-Steven-Universe of Vaggie. And the music? The music is soooo good. I didn't know the songwriter prior to watching, so I was nervous about the songs, but I knew most of the theater actors they cast(still cant believe Jeremy fucking Jordan is Lucifer) so I figured even if the songs are mid, at least the performances would be topnotch. And they were! But the songs were a pleasant surprise. Sam Haft did real damn well. I still listen to the soundtrack to this day.

The fandom, however, is probably the worst one I've been in. And I've been in a lot in my big age... Just... lacking media literacy, and based on the replies I get when I say something on twitter, it seems a lot of them lack reading comprehension and just plain emotional intelligence too.

There's a lot of criticisms about this show that I honestly think is fair. Pacing, character design, overuse of the F word, whatever. But in my opinion, claiming that Hazbin is a male-centered show is an unfair misconception that is mostly the fault of the fandom.

Bcuz, sure, the male characters are uber popular. Alastor, Vox, Lucifer, Angel Dust and the many web of ships they're involved in went trending every few business days. But come on now. How often does a fandom even have their main protag as the most talked about character? This has been going on for ages. Just because the boys have the most merch and fics and fanarts and thirsty fans doesn't mean that they had the spotlight for most of the show itself. It only meant that they were the ones the viewers paid attention to, in a fandom filled with people drooling over the next tumblr sexyman and toxic yaoi ship of the month.

But if you actually look back at what the show gave us so far, the boys didnt outshine the women. I actually think the women got to do more and be more as characters than the men did. Let's take a look at the male characters.

Alastor was not in all the episodes. In fact, he was MIA in two out of the eight episodes. In all the episodes he was in, he was a mere side character. His purpose in season one was to stir the pot and be the intriguing mystery that occasionally quips. But he was not the one whose deeper thoughts were explored and whose character and goals was challenged THROUGHOUT the show, merely alluded to at the VERY END of the season, which is hardly him taking the spotlight away from Charlie. If you merely looked at the fan content of him, you'd think he were a father figure to Charlie(or a love interest. whatever) and that he has developed a soft spot for the Hazbins deep down in that cannibal heart of his. But if you pay attention to the show, he never had even a meaningful one on one conversation with the Hazbins. The only time that happened is when (a)he threatened Husk's life (b)when he constantly mocked Charlie while she was down in the dumps and used this as an opportunity to manipulate her and (b)when he told Niffty watching the crew sure can "make one sentimental", even tho he had taken no prior opportunity to bond with them! There's no foundation for all the fandom's claims that he could be redeemed bcuz of a budding fondness for the group, but that's all you see of his fan content(aside from the horniness). I dont have any problem with his lack of an actual relationship with the Hazbins bcuz I believe redemption for him is not what the show is going for, but it's frustrating to see people interpreting it that way BUT not seeing how horridly developed it would be if that is the case, meanwhile they turn around and say that Vaggie and Chaggie as a ship "had terrible development".

Then we have the male Vees. Vox was only ever in episode two, and was essentially a youtube reactor in episode 8. He was in ep 4 but had no speaking lines. We only know of his obsession with Alastor and the toxic relationship he has with Val. Val, meanwhile, is merely shown as the sex obsessed fiend behind Hell's sex industry and Angel's abuse. They did what they needed to do with minimal screentime. It was fine, but that's IT. Despite what little CANON gave so far, you have hundreds of people writing essays and fics and fanarts about them being complicated characters. But to reiterate, this does not mean that they are bad characters or that they don't deserve the fame. But to say that these men are better written within canon than the women is such a bold statement when most of the depth they knew of these characters were lore drops given before the show and their own speculations as they dug into the shallow soil of what the show has so far.

I'm not gonna speak about Angel and Lucifer. Because I think they were characters who were legitimately well-explored so far.

Now onto the women. So many of them were given the opportunity to have their characters challenged or given the agency to push characters and the plot forward or give you intrigue about implications of what's to come for the characters and the plot. I've talked a lot about Charlie and Vaggie. So let me talk about the other, terribly underrated women of Hazbin.

Velvette and Carmilla were the ones who advanced the subplot in the war against Heaven. Because of Carmilla's love for her family despite being a demon, an angel was killed. It gave Heaven the excuse to escalate things, but it also gave Charlie hope later on in the season that they're not powerless. Carmilla was also the first demon shown to make selfless actions that is contrary to what is expected of demons, making it proof that Charlie's belief that demons deserve a second chance isn't unwarranted. She's an interesting character, as an overlord who hangs on to power but clearly has morals. But how often do you see people writing essays about her? Eating up the fact that she's a powerful overlord but would sacrifice anything for her daughters? If Carmilla were a man, hundreds of girlies would be drooling over the crime boss who has a soft spot for his daughters.

Meanwhile, Velvette got to demonstrate why exactly she's an Overlord despite being the youngest demon in there. She's calculating and observant. She gives off a haughty vibe and constantly boasts about how she's young and fresh, but she isn't naive. During that meeting, she paid attention to Carmilla and Zestial's relationship. In order to find out who killed the angel, she riled everyone up, and when she got the feeling it was Carmilla, she mocked Zestial so that Carmilla could slip up. By playing these Overlords who are older and more experienced than her, Velvette showed what exactly her asset was to the Vees and why she's a threat, something that Vox and Val have yet to be given the opportunity to do when they were busy eye-fucking Alastor and literally fucking Angel. But in fan content about the Vees, Velvette is almost treated as an after thought to the boys...

Then we have the Seraphs. Not only were their designs gorgeous, their dynamic and presence as characters had impact to the plot and main characters.

Emily is a much needed character to show that this story isn't meant to tell you that Heaven = bad; Hell = good. There is good and bad in both, and it is so important for the protags to know that they have an ally in Emily who represents the true virtues that heaven is supposed to uphold. And I love the confrontation she had with Sera when her own view of what's right and good was challenged. We got to see the strength of her character and started the seeds of what could be heaven's acceptance of Charlie's goals.

Sera is such an interesting character to me. She was also important to show that not all angels were sadistic like Adam and Lute, but not in the same way Emily was. I have no idea so far which direction this show would go with her. But I'm intrigued by the fact that she seems to be driven by fear, unlike Adam and Lute's cruelty. She knew Lucifer and was there when he was cast out for his disobedience. Whether everything she's doing is to prevent that from happening again remains to be seen, and I'm looking forward to this kind of subplot for her.

And then Rosie! I really really look forward to seeing more from her. Spoilers aside, something I barely see people talk about is how interesting it is that Rosie is every bit the leader that Charlie hopes to be. Rosie is able to be a respected overlord in her own faction without needing to sacrifice her love for showmanship and music and her positive disposition. When we were officially introduced to her, they show how she seems to care about actually taking care of her people, not JUST ordering them around, by talking to them personally and giving advice. That's exactly what Charlie wanted to do for her people, isn't it? The hotel to Charlie was what the emporium was to Rosie. They have a lot of similarities that could set up for Rosie to be the one to teach Charlie in becoming a leader. Now whether that's a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen, but it is rather compelling.

So yeah! With all that said, I really dont think this show ignores its women at all. Just because a bigger part of the fandom gravitated towards the men doesn't necessarily mean its a misogynistic show so far. But if certain people are claiming that the women are badly written, then I hope they also own up to the fact that their blorbos are just as shallowly presented within the show, maybe even more so. Which wouldn't even be a bad thing! Since when did a show or character have to be amazingly written for a person to like them? That's just no fun at all. All I'm saying is... Fuck this fandom's double standards, hiding behind claims that it's the writing's fault when the problem is they couldn't be bothered to think about the women.

[dd-is-my-guiltypleasure]

David Duchovny: ‘The X-Files took up my life, but it was a miracle’

It's behind a paywall so if somebody has access I would love to read the article

Update : got it, thanks @aimsies-mctaymellburg

David Duchovny: ‘The X-Files took up my life, but it was a miracle’

As Fox Mulder in the hit sci-fi show, the actor and singer peddled fringe conspiracy theories. Now the 63-year-old says Mulder’s paranoia is everywhere.

In hindsight it wasn’t a great idea for me to kick off an interview with David Duchovny by suggesting that he was a musical dilettante. You’re most likely to know Duchovny, of course, as Fox Mulder, the conspiracy-theory-guzzling FBI agent in The X Files, one of the biggest shows of the Nineties, watched at its peak by 30 million in America alone. Perhaps you saw him as the womanising writer Hank Moody in Californication or the 1960s detective Sam Hodiak in Aquarius. You may even have read some of his five books.

Duchovny, a New Yorker living in Los Angeles, is less known for music, although he’s been making rather decent folk-rock for a decade — songwriting, playing guitar and singing in a honeyed drawl. His 2015 songHell or Highwater has been streamed more than a million times while Layin’ on the Tracks, from 2020, has pointed lyrics about a certain politician (“It’s a killing joke that no one laughs at/ A stupid orange man in a cheap red hat”). He has released three albums, with a fourth due next year, and this month plays Latitude festival in Suffolk and the 2,000-capacity Shepherds Bush Empire in London.

So does the 63-year-old feel that he should no longer be seen as just a musical dabbler? “That’s part of a lazy person’s perception,” he says, bristling slightly. “It’s a lens through which people want to see me. I think music is an innocent art form — you listen to it and you have a response. To bring any kind of baggage to bear on it in the beginning seems to me to be dishonest, but that’s the way things go.”

YouTube clips of recent shows suggest people were having a lovely time, I say. This doesn’t have the soothing effect intended. YouTube footage lingers “because of the horror of the cell phone”, Duchovny says. “It’s a pet peeve of mine.” Is he tempted to ban them at his shows, as artists from Prince to Bob Dylan have? “I don’t know that I can enforce that view on anybody.”

For Duchovny, it’s as much about phones limiting his performance as it is about the audience not living in the moment. “To do something unique or for the first time, to reach for a note or play a different melody — all these are chances you might take if you weren’t inhibited by the fact that somebody is [recording] it,” he says. “You’ve got to be able to fail and the ubiquity of cell phones makes failure scarier than it needs to be.”

Failure is the key to another of his jobs: podcasting. In his series Fail Better, he adroitly interviews guests including Bette Midler, Ben Stiller and Sean Penn about their failures. “I feel like I’ve been failing my entire life,” Duchovny said on launching it in May. That may sound strange from a man with English degrees from Princeton and Yale, who has won a Golden Globe for The X Files and another for Californication.

Is he familiar with Elizabeth Day, the British journalist who has hosted a successful podcast called How to Fail since 2018? When Duchovny announced Fail Better, Day tweeted: “I might invite David Duchovny on @howtofail to discuss his failure to be original.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he says. “If she wants to be rigorous in her thinking, she would investigate what my approach to failure is. I don’t know what her approach to it is. My sense, since failure is universal, is that there’s room out there for more than one discussion.” This is a rather po-faced response to what seemed like a playful comment from Day, and surprising because Duchovny has a wicked sense of humour. He can also afford to be more magnanimous, given that his podcast is at No 12 in the UK chart and hers is at 54.

Gillian Anderson, his X Files co-star, certainly likes his podcast, writing this week on Instagram that she had listened to all of the episodes and found them “intimate and vulnerable … very smart questions, although I wouldn’t expect anything else from you [David]”.

“It’s very sweet,” Duchovny says. “I will email her and thank her. I’m sure somebody running my social media is … I don’t really like to be on social media.” Later that day his Instagram account replies to Anderson’s post: “Thank you for listening, you have an open invite [to appear on his podcast]!”

That encounter would be worth hearing because his relationship with Anderson is fascinating. Despite their chemistry in The X Files there were rumours of friction — although they looked to be getting on swimmingly when they appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show in 2016 to publicise the return of the show, which ran for two more seasons.

When asked by Kimmel about frostiness between her and Duchovny in the Nineties, Anderson collapsed into giggles, laid her head in Duchovny’s lap and put any froideur down to the dampness of Vancouver, where the series was shot. Her hair kept going frizzy, she explained, and “for every single take we’d have to stand there and blow dry my hair again”.

“And I got pissed at that?” Duchovny asked.

“Well, I think it added to the tension,” Anderson said.

“It kinda makes me sound like an asshole,” Duchovny replied.

Anderson had nothing to do with him leaving The X Files in 2002, he says now. “That was just me wanting to have a family, but also to try other things. It had kind of taken up my life. There was no animosity with the actual show and the people that I worked with. I am proud of the show — it was culturally central in a way that it’s very hard to do these days in a fragmented landscape. There’s so many lightning-strike aspects to it that I can’t help but think of it as some kind of a miracle.”

The X Files gave conspiracy theories a kind of nobility — “the truth is out there”, as its tagline ran. Now they are more widespread and pernicious. “Mulder’s way of looking at the world was through conspiracy and that was the fringe at that point,” Duchovny says. “It doesn’t seem to be so fringe any more. It’s really the world that [The X Files creator] Chris Carter foresaw happening almost 30 years ago. He’s almost clairvoyant in that case.” Is Duchovny more evidence-based than Mulder? “Not at all. I’m an artist — I am associative-based and I see poetry as science and science as poetry.” So are there some conspiracy theories that he buys into? “No, I’m talking about art. I think conspiracies are mostly just lazy thinking.”

One failure that has shaped Duchovny is that of his marriage to the actress Téa Leoni, who starred in Bad Boys and Deep Impact. They married in 1997 and have a daughter, West, 25, and a son, Kyd, 22, but divorced in 2014. “That darkness does deepen you. It makes you more empathetic and humble,” Duchovny says. One of the themes of his podcast is “the difference between humiliating and humbling. Often we focus on humiliation in our culture. I don’t see any positives coming from humiliation, but I see a lot of them coming from humility.”

One wonders if the reference to humiliation has something to do with Duchovny checking into rehab for sex addiction in 2008. Could him playing the bed-hopping Hank in Californication be a case of art imitating life? “People never tire of trying to figure that out,” he says with a sigh. “But to me, that’s not what acting is about. I don’t look for things that are mirroring my life in any way.”

Well, there are parallels in Reverse the Curse, the 2023 film that Duchovny directed, starred in and adapted from his book Bucky F***ing Dent. He plays a would-be novelist who has “sacrificed his artistic dream to put food on the table”. His father, a publicist, did the same, publishing his debut at 75, the year before he died. The film has some really funny scenes, including one where Marty and his son have a farting competition in a motel room that ends up smelling like “an aquarium that fed a sock”. That may have come from a line in Aquarius where someone says something similar about a police station. “I might have ripped it off, I’m not sure,” Duchovny says. “ You can ask Elizabeth Day about that.”

David Duchovny will perform at Latitude festival, near Southwold on July 25 and 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, W12 on July 27

[twopoppies]

"I would like Harry to be remembered for his great songwriting skills, his voice and the great performer he is, but everything is so overshadowed by the rest that in 20, 30 years I don't know if he will be remembered as one of the greatest of our generation (and he deserves it so much). I just think there's too much noise overshadowing his music"

I'm the say ranting anon as yesterday and I was gonna leave it at that but I saw this and I think is an interesting topic so I'm gonna rant a little bit more (sorry in advance).

It's impossible for anyone to know how is Harry gonna be remembered 30 years from now but what we can do is trying to compare him with the artist we consider legends today.

Lets take Elton John, Freddy Mercury, Prince, George Michael, Madonna, Whitney Houston and David Bowie for example... Each and every single one of them is considered a legend, the most successful in their field, the ones current artist use as inspiration and what they aspire to be. You know what else they have in common? Careers full of rumors, cheating scandals, drugs scandals, gay scandals, failed marriages, fake marriages, money problems, etc, etc, etc.

But those are no the things they're remember for, at the end their music and their art is soo good and made such an impact that all the "noise" sorrounding their careers just take a passive role.

I mean, as a fan, leaving through the rumors and all the nonsense is annoying as fuck and I would love if when I spoke about Harry people ONLY asked me about his music because he is so much more than his supposed girlfriends but what can I do?

And of course it is possible to be successful in the industry without playing the game, I wasn't trying to imply Zayn isn't but there's levels to that success, at least in the eyes of the general public.

Like let's be honest, all 5 of the boys has had a successful solo career so far but which one of them is more likely to achieve the legend status your anon is talking about??? Everyone under the sun knows the answer is Harry.

And why is that? It's not because he's has a powerful voice or because he's an excellent lyricist or because he's and incredible performer. Of course he's all that. But the reason he has achieved so much and is probably get the legend status someday is because how his team has marketed him. I'm sorry but without Columbia and the azzoffs Harry wouldn't be where he is today 🤷‍♀️ They're horrible people but they sure as hell know what they're doing and Harry is happy with their job and where his career is going so...

Yep. Marketing really does make a difference.

There’s something unquantifiable about the artists you mention, though. Take Madonna, for example. Cyndi Lauper came out at the same time. She had a much better voice. Her singles were huge. She had a great look. She definitely had fans (still does), but Madonna had that extra something that drew the masses in and kept them there (and oh my god did she have scandals and gossip galore—some of them very purposely manufactured).

And I agree with you about the Azoffs/Sony/Harry’s team. They’re taking him where he wants to go.

In reference to this

[fortheturnstiles]

hi kiki <3 of all my mutuals I think your opinion on a complete unknown is the one I care most about…so 🎤….?

OKAY here goes . [also thank you this ask made me smile.. you wanna hear from little ol me ? :o) hehe]

the gist is i didn't like it but i didn't really expect to like it very much so i don't really feel let down by it necessarily. I'm already really picky when it comes to biopics and i only tend to like the stuff that's either really outrageous (i.e. Ken Russell's Lizstomania, All that Jazz if that counts) or formally unconventional (i.e. I'm Not There) and the rest of the stuff that gets churned out of the major hollywood studios is a complete turn-off for me. I watched Walk the Line for the first time a few weeks ago because i thought hey why not see where this guy is coming from. and maybe being a fan of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story prior to ever seeing Walk the Line ruined it from me but it was maybe the corniest movie ever made, or at least could possibly make about johnny cash. which theoretically should be difficult. but not for mr james mangold. Beyond the general cheesiness of the whole thing i was left wanting a lot more about how Johnny Cash fit into a larger musical scene / moment that he was apart of and the history of country music coming out of nashville in tandem with rock n roll which was just not what that movie was going for at all unfortunately.

NOTE: SOME VAGUE SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AHEAD IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING. medium length ramble incoming. if you want to read some slightly more concise thoughts from me on the movie here is the review i posted on letterboxd

All this is to say is i was going in with EXTREMELY LOW expectations. Other than I thought the performances would probably be really solid and they indeed were!!! Timmy was great i think he did an incredible job and his physicality and all of his mannerisms were very evocative and embodied as Bob. His voice was also pretty good and i like how his speaking voice became more unintelligible as the movie went on that made me smile. his mannerisms also changed and shifted as time went on throughout the movie which was a good choice imo since he starts out so young and malleable and then gets more jaded and hardened as becoming Famous often does to a guy. The musical performances were also better than I expected them to be but I have mixed feelings about them still.. i don't like that they chop a lot of the verses out of the songs to make them shorter. Within the movie itself the beats for a lot of the song sequences feel exactly the same and it got old very quickly, aside from the song to woody + hard rain's a-gonna fall + i'll keep it with mine scenes which i wholeheartedly enjoyed.

my main issue is i just think it makes absolutely zero sense to make such a bland and artistically unadventurous biopic about BOB FUCKING DYLAN. And i know that the timeline it takes place over is based on the book that was used as the source material but i think it ends right before stuff actually got interesting for him in terms of his turn away from acoustic folk music. and all that stuff is documented in Dont Look Back + No Direction Home so what reason do i have to watch this new movie then? i guess to see timmybob flirt with and kiss and proceed to fumble beautiful women ... most of the Strong negative feelings i have about this movie are due to the extremely flat characterizations of both sylvie(suze) and joan. I think both of their roles as creative and political/philosophical influences on Bob are minimized to the point of nearly nothingness. Sylvie does a bit of whipping bobby into shape and encouraging him to release an album of his original music but her political influence on him and his songwriting is understated or mostly to completely omitted. which bums me out. Bob and Joan's relationship is dramatized in a very strange way with them making it seem like they would have these Moments of Passion and randomly on and off just hooked up with each other and were also in the scene performing around and with each other etc but like. omits anything about bob and the baez family knowing each other . which maybe is a purposeful choice i guess maybe they didn't want to be involved but idk the whole thing makes the bob/joan relationship strung very thin and not very Involved when they certainly were Involved. to a degree. whatever i guess i dunno i think there is maybe an interesting movie that could be in there but wowwww was it just such a beat-for-beat rehash of Walk the line and all subsequent musician's-rise-to-fame biopics. and surprisingly very safe and not artistically or intellectually challenging piece of work for a man who was so famously strange and controversial and difficult to figure out that they make the climax of the movie about it. and it just goes by like a cloud of smoke . perhaps i have too much bias for the work of Todd Haynes but I truly just think I'm Not There is such a great movie about Bob Dylan the artist and the symbol/icon that there doesn't need to be anything else. and the documentary filmmaking about Bob Dylan the artist/symbol/icon as well as the Man (as much as he allowed it to be) that already exists is great. i feel so Old Man Yells at Cloud over how useless this movie is for me. I do hope that it works for some people, especially people who are new to Bob. If this can be a gateway to dylan for them that's beautiful and I am happy. but it didn't work for me

[notyouraryang0dd3ss]

https://www.tumblr.com/shitswiftiessay/749223380728889344/taylor-sees-her-prot%C3%A9g%C3%A9-out-charting-her-for-the

saw this in the anti tag and i have so many things to say (it's gonna be a bit long):

one: those tweets prove further that the reason taylor keeps coming on billboard hot 100 lists is because swifties are chart obsessed and have no problem streaming her songs all day if it means it'll appear on charts. they've got nothing else going for them except 'she keeps topping the charts' because there is zero songwriting, melody, performing or visual talent in any of her songs or tours.

two: taylor distanced herself from/turned on olivia (i still don't know the details of the deja vu suing case so i won't make assumptions as to what exactly happened between them) as soon as olivia started threatening her fame. in my biased opinion, i would also say that olivia is a better songwriter and overall artist than taylor (i love her guts album), and taylor didn't like seeing that a young artist could potentially outshine her. so they're not friends anymore. taylor then latched on to sabrina because she wasn't as threatening to her career as olivia was, but now that espresso has the potential to top taylor's song on the charts, swifties are turning on her too. and if this continues, i have no doubt that so will taylor. (side note: espresso is such a fun summer bop!)

it's extremely pathetic that taylor feels so threatened and insecure because of up-and-coming 20-something year old artists despite being arguably one of the biggest pop artists in the world right now.

i also feel bad for both sabrina and olivia. imagine just starting out in the music industry, and your childhood idol seeming so eager and genuine in being your best friend, but completely flips around when you show any potential of being successful. taylor is a vile person.

also! you are my fav anti ts blog! i love your takes on all this stuff. keep doing what you're doing queen

“you are my fav anti ts blog!” omg stop 😳 i’m blushingggggggg

sorry this took me so long to respond to. personal life events are occurring and i also have the attention span of a goldfish now for some reason. im going to answer in order of your points:

one: swifties are the streaming farms they keep accusing sabrina of using. also taylor swift herself has probably bought and used streaming farms more than any other person on the spotify top 10 list. its this and taylor is sinister enough to drop new releases to block artists from getting #1’s (she did this recently with billie right?). also swiftie chart obsession just shows how insecure they are??? toxic by britney spears never went #1 and its her most popular song. i’ve never seen a fanbase as insecure as swifties because the way they lash out over even the perception of a threat towards taylor is just…so inappropriate? its such a disproportionate reaction to whatever the “threat” is (in this case, charting). like the fact swifties keep coming into the anti tag just demonstrate how intensely insecure they are. no other fanbase is so fragile they go out of their way to go and bully people for not liking their fave. like its usually the other way around, antis harassing stans. but you have swifties coming into the anti tag (where we appropriately tag and do not engage with swifties) and harassing us? for not liking her? in the anti tag? its really a testament to their insecurity that they must bulldoze anything that threatens them and their fave. which ties into the second point-

two: wasn’t sabrina like olivia’s opp because olivia’s ex cheated on her with sabrina? is that correct? that’s makes it so nasty that taylor went out of her way to purposely befriend sabrina after cutting ties with olivia. and immature! and petty! and just reflective of how low taylor stoops to make people feel like shit! not only that, but someone who is almost half her age! how awful do you have to be to do that? olivia is more talented than taylor and poses a massive threat to taylor because the music they both make appeals to the same demographic of people. the problem is olivia is actually a part of that demographic, which threatens the fuck out of taylor. how lame do you have to be to feel threatened by other female artist success all the time? and not only that, but the same people you know who adore you (and therefore easier to manipulate because you know they will trust every word out of your mouth) because you’re their childhood idol? what a horrible person.

and espresso is a reallyyyyyyy good pop song!!!

[goodold-fashionedlovergirl]

The whole jury topic hasn’t left my head, so I thought I’ll put my notes down here.

I've also put down who the German and Austrian jury was (not names but jobs) so I'd be interested if anybody knows who was in your countries jury and if it's as imbalanced as the ones I found.

So my first opinion is that I am not against jurys overall, however, I think they need an overhaul.

Jurys exist because some time ago people said that Eastern European countries just give each other all the votes and this is unfair. That is obviously not true and also Juries don’t stop voting blocks (looking at you, Greece and Cyprus).

In my opinion, the role of the Jury should be an impartial judge of the music that is presented, and give votes to the countries that send songs that aren’t very accessible to a viewer when you hear it the first time.

Technical the jury has a set of things they should look out for when voting:

Vocal capacity of the artist(s)

Performance on stage

Composition and originality of the song

Overall impression of the act

For example, The Swiss song Watergun was memed because a Swiss guy sings about not wanting to be a soldier. He won’t be because he is lucky enough to live in a country that is historically neutral. As a viewer, you think this is silly and make jokes. You might get turned off from voting for him because you disagree with the message that he sends out. If you are in the Jury of a country this shouldn’t matter. You should have heard the song, and thought “This man has extremely good vocals, I’ll mark him up for that”.

(Also, not sure if everybody is aware of that: the jury doesn’t vote on the same show we saw on Saturday - there is a Jury Finale the day before. Apparently, Norway had some troubles with her vocals on that day which is why she got a lower score.)

I’m also gonna say this: the categories mentioned above absolutely do not warrant Loreens incredible lead in the Jury votes (as a reminder, she had 340 points. Israel the second placed only got 177 points) I don’t think a 163-point difference is that fair, what did Loreen do that was so much better compared to Noa Kirel? The stage show was impressive for both, I don’t think either of the songs was particularly original.

On the other hand, Blanca Paloma from Spain only got 95 points. Eaea is a song that I had to listen to about 6 times before it clicked for me, so it’s not a very accessible song. However, she has amazing vocals (I’d go so far to say she was the best female vocalist on that day), and the staging was great. To be honest I thought she would be in the top 3 of the jury vote just for that.

This is why I’m now thinking that the Jury didn’t do the job that I think they have. I did a quick google and found out about some of the juries of the evening:

Austria:

Editor of a radio channel (Alternative/ pop is mainly played there)

A music journalist

A journalist for the culture editorial office

A Schlager singer

a bass player for a pop band (that was a bit hard to find as the first thing you find of this guy is that he makes lamp)

Germany: 

an actress/singer who was in Eurovision in the 70s, 

a pop-singer and songwriter

a music agent who got started as the drummer in a pop band 

the singer of a pop band who was also in the talk of representing Germany this year

the head of music of a radio channel - from a quick google search the radio station mainly plays pop

5 people 4 of them are in pop music. Not quite diverse is it?

I have also looked if I can find who was in the Swiss jury this year but didn’t find anything yet. (I looked for the German-speaking countries, as I am German speaking)

However, just from the 2 juries, I think I know where one of the problems is: they are extremely pop music focused.

To get a meaningful jury vote, I would love to see some diversity. Get songwriters in there. Or maybe a theatre director? All countries have a national opera, I’m sure some staging driector could judge on the performance on stage. A vocal coach who isn’t just in pop music. I also think that 5 people isn’t big enough to get the diversity you need. Make it 10 people! And don’t add people who are on a radio station, they will vote for what they can play.

Also why I am not about to say that the jury needs to be abolished completely, this is the Televote only score:

Blanca Paloma is an incredible singer as already said - it’s just not a song you hear once and love immediately. Also, I may be biased but Austria doesn’t deserve only 16 points. 

Unfortunately, the running order has a big input into the Televote score. Example: maybe you are still out, come home late and decide to switch on Eurovision during song 10. Or you just forget what song #5 sounded like.

Some of you might take notes for every song and decide who you call for after careful consideration. I can say that I don’t do that, I have my favourite that I vote for and I’ve decided that a few days if not weeks before the show.

But I don’t think the jury should have so much power. I think a 75 % public vote and a 25 % jury vote would be fair. This way the public that pays for every vote is more powerful, while songs that could be overlooked by the general public can still get a shot.

[thepopcloud]

i can definitely see sabrina having a really big album rollout if she plays her cards right. releasing espresso just before performing at coachella was an extremely smart move from her and her team. so i really hope we get to see more smart decisions like that in the near future.

my advice would be to let espresso marinate more with the general public, maybe let it reach top 5 on the hot 100 or maybe even the number 1 spot. and when it starts to fall out of the top 10 spots (and i'm not talking about those weeks where a big artist releases an album and they occupy all the top spots e.g taylor with ttpd, maybe dua this week, and billie soon with her new album, weeks like these don't count), once they see espresso falling out of the top 10, that's when they should release a new single. cause we want to still have the public's attention when we're releasing our new single okay.

i can see the new single happening in early/mid june. and it should sound completely different from espresso, cause we don't want to bore the public, but it should still be upbeat and easily digestable and also have those playful lyrics that we've grown to love from her.

i don't think there's going to be a third single cause the album is probably going to be short (11 songs maybe), because my girl was busy with eics and the eras tours (but u never know). i can see the album dropping in august, cause her team would want for her to drop it while she still has the public's attention. and it should be accompanied by a single. and for this single we need something that says "I'm here to stay", like that moment when the public think they know exactly what they'll be getting from you, but then you surprise them with something even BETTER. that's the type of single we need.

for the bsides on the album, we need like 2 or 3 bops other than the singles that people would stream the album for, along with some slower tracks with the personal songwriting that we've seen on eics that the people can go back to. i would say take what worked on eics and just keep it up but also switch it up a little, give us something new, sth fresh, sth that would make us think "ooh girl we didn't know you could do this". the album needs to gag the locals. period.

so yeah that's how i can see sabrina playing the long game and truly cementing herself as the next pop girlie. because she's finally found a sound that works for her personally and that she's comfortable with, and at the same time fills a void that pop listeners have been feeling these past few years and makes them want to come back for more.

[thesinglesjukebox]

OLIVIA RODRIGO - "OBSESSED"

She's the press conference, we're the conversation...

[7.09]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: As previously noted, all of Olivia Rodrigo's art-punk moments are perfectly calibrated toward critics who wish that 1993 never ended, but it's a schtick that works. If Rodrigo was not a tremendously skilled performer, both as vocalist and actor, this would feel tedious. The way she sneers and whispers and whines functions incredibly in her system; the music is slightly too pristine (Dan Nigro, for all of his skills as a producer, has still not figured out how to make distorted guitars sound not-Mutt Langeian), but Rodrigo's calculated derangement elevates her surroundings into something glorious. It helps that the lyrics -- co-written by Annie Clark, who tried and mostly failed to access this kind of heat the last three albums -- are actually caustic and not just fake-mean. The spite is self-directed, the call coming from inside the house. [9]

Alfred Soto: Annie Clark's responsible for the intentional melodic cul-de-sacs in the verses, I assume, while the star and Dan Nigro took care of the chorus' expected clatter. I wouldn't mind "Obsessed" on the radio played between "Like That" and "Fortnight," but she's done better than its metaphoric flatness. [6]

Oliver Maier: Didn't realise there were other bonus tracks, I've been too busy rinsing "so american" [8]. This one is another showcase of Rodrigo's efficient songwriting style: funny, expository verses line up the pins for a bowling ball hook to come screaming down the lane and annihilate them. [7]

Andrew Karpan: "Obsessed" is her sharpest rawk record yet, containing the best application of this guitar riff I’ve heard in a decade. In elevating her conceit to a literal ex-lover battle royale, perhaps something of a gender-twist on Scott Pilgrim, she turns it into something that provokes, like all good Olivia records do. A torch song for nostalgia culture, trapped by the soft, easy comfort of foreclosing on the dreams of yesterday’s future, trapped inside a past whose sounds it will never escape. “I remember every detail you have ever told me, so be careful, baby,” she says. Don’t say we weren’t warned.  [7]

Leah Isobel: I usually enjoy Olivia's intellectual approach, but "Obsessed" feels so precisely, studiously engineered to be the kind of song that teenagers call "sapphic" that it ends up losing me. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: "I like [Olivia] with the melodies, I don't like [Olivia] when she acts tough." [3]

Nortey Dowuona: Somehow this is not the most unflattering portrait of a theater kid whose talent and charm won't win them the undivided loyalty of their partner, and by extension their audience, that we're covering this week. But at least in four years/four months/yesterday we won't be regretfully disavowing it, so full points! [10]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Teenage romance at its most entertaining: unhinged, mean-spirited, and untethered from reality. Olivia, ride those "la-da-da-da, da-da-da"s all the way to the bank. [8]

Mark Sinker: My favourite bassline, my favourite MBV callback, my favourite mood… [10]

Isabel Cole: For me, Rodrigo’s defining moment as an artist remains the opening of SOUR: not “brutal,” which is a bop, but the little intro, where she cuts off some dramatic strings to announce before the guitars kick in: “I want it to be, like, messy.” I find that moment endearing because it feels like she’s trying to convey that she’s aiming for a certain artistic rawness, but doing so in a way that undermines her goal by calling attention to the effort involved in striking the pose. It's a sweetly teenaged thing to do, the musical equivalent of cutting up your jeans just so. Unfortunately, the reason I think about it whenever I hear one of her songs is that I can never quite shake the sense that she’s playacting at all these big emotions. Her vocal affectations -- bananies-and-avocadies whisper-singing, a deliberately tuneless wail -- are common enough in the pop girl universe, and I have nothing a priori against them, but on her they always feel like affectations, lacking pathos or bite. She sings like she’s doing an imitation of someone else, even though she writes her own songs. Sometimes she serves up a jam regardless, but on “obsessed” the hooks are not landing. The track is too muted for tension or darkness, too polished for its own rock-star fantasies. [4]

Katherine St. Asaph: I hate that I don't hate being pandered to this hard. [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

read your TS post and honestly just find it quite interesting that so many things you criticize when it comes to bts whether some members as people or artists...are all present in TS if not even more, and suddenly when it comes to this white woman that is an awful performer, write the same kind of dull repetitive music always clutching at the same topics, doesn't renew herself as an artist, is full of white feminism bullshit, and a chart obsessed person are all things you never seem to mention. Like the biased perspective when it comes to her is quiet something by all her fans.

Because I don't discuss Taylor Swift in this blog. This isn't a freaking Taylor Swift blog.

And also, because I don't care. She never promised anyone anything, she never set herself up as a role model or beacon for social injustices like BTS did. Taylor fans either aren't running up and down every known platform screaming how much of an activist she is the way armys do with BTS. Taylor isn't called BulletproofGirlz and her fans aren't called Adorable Representative M.C. For Youth. She never went from being Yes I'm the voice of the underdogs and the misunderstood to it being just a concept and god forsaken debut name.

You sound insufferable so I won't really reply to more than this and I won't look for the post myself, but there's actually a post where I make fun and criticize armys who were "disappointed" in BTS because they said something misogynistic or homophobic. I actually think it's on the verge of IDIOTIC to look for artists to stan/like only so you can bring up their "good deeds" and make yourself feel better. Because you're literally the only one cares about this online moral competition.

In that same post I said I don't care that BTS don't speak on feminism because they're not women, and because I have real people, local heroes to look up to.

In fact, the only time I ever mentioned being slightly disappointed that they didn't use a gay couple, was on the permission to dance MV. If anything, most if not all my posts are actually making fun of armys for believing BTS to be, and talking about them as if they were the biggest activists that ever lived. I don't even talk about them, I talk about the perception army has of them.

And if you're that Beyonce fan, let's not even go there. Link me to Beyonce's many acts supporting feminism. Representation is not enough, I mean donations or posts calling awareness to women's isuess. She doesn't write her own music, either, which is something I have repeatedly seen seen pjms/hive call out vkook for.

Also another thing Taylor never claimed to be: a performer. Everybody knows she's not a performer. She knows she's not a performer. She never promised people anything, so why would I expect her to put on a show? Why would I feel cheated and robbed if I went to her concert and she didn't do full choreography when I know she never did?

I don't think she's a bad songwriter at all, and even the moments when she is (because there are songs I don't like and songs I never listen to), I'm okay with it, too. I'm not a fan of people only to say "look at me I'm a fan of this person that makes me so much better than all of you". I've always liked her songs, and I still like them and I do think they're good. If you don't think so, I really don't give a fuck.. like seriously.

You know what, if you wouldn't have had the need to just argue for the sake or arguing, you would've seen me post an ask I have on drafts about her album where I specifically mention that I agree her sound is stale in this album. Because I do like people a lot and still have my own personality and opinions.

I've always liked her for her music, and I still like her music. If I criticize BTS is for things they used to do, but stopped doing. It's about things they used to be, but stopped being. If someone goes from making good music, to doing music I think it's terrible of course I'm going to have an opinion. I love Harry Styles' first two albums but think as it was is ugly and the whole album is terribly wrong - and I've said it. Like two tweeks ago I was here, sharing old BTS songs because I still think those songs are good. Why am I not allowed to say that at some point they started making bad music? Why amd I not allowed to say they used to do great coreographies and now they're all out of synch and dance poorly?? Taylor never did some of that and then stopped doing it, so what exactly am I going to call her out for?

"The things you never seem to mention" have you realized that I just don't discuss Taylor in this blog? Because it's not a Taylor blog, it really isn't deeper than that. We're only talking about her now because of her album, otherwise I've posted about her what - 5 times in the span of years???

I thought Jimin crying in MOTS concert online was kind of silly considering he was paying million dollars for rent at that time while many people were out of jobs. I can empathize with him and it was sad to see him cry because I'd been rooting for him to go on tour and do everything he wanted to do, because I like Jimin as a person and an artist - so I'm simply rooting for him. I can feel all that while simultaneously being aware of how privileged he was, and still is. And that his pain was bad, but when put in the context of the pandemic, his life wasn't on the line. Jimin himself said in an interview that he was thinking about how young he is and how much money he's earning and what to do with it. Not in an obnoxious, arrogant way but as a form of self-reflection. I respect that. He knows that he's got more money than the regular person, but he also goes through hard times mentally.

Jimin donates so much money every year and has been doing it for a long time - I think that's amazing and I share the posts that report on it because I really believe it's awesome and It's exactly what I would do if I had the money. I was particularly moved when he donated money to buy polio vaccines.

But I'm not asking him to do any of it. I'm not waking up every other thinking "I hope Jimin does some charity today so I can yap about it to losers on tumblr." It's simply not something I think about Jimin or ANYONE. If he does, it's good. If he doesn't, I'll still like him.

I bring this up to repeat something I've said about Jimin and BTS a million times: I don't pity them.

I don't pity Taylor either and I'm not asking anything from her.

Likewise, I'm able to read the lyrics "you wouldn't last a day in the asylum where they raised me" and know that it's just a lyric and giggle at the memes that make fun of that because she's lived a fairly awesome life. That's songwriting to you, btw. Not everything is literal.

I've never been interested in Taylor Swift's life, and I've spent literal years not knowing one single thing about it, but if she said "new music this friday" you bet I was going to be there, waiting for it. Same goes for Harry Styles and so many other people I listen to. And I've talked a dozen times about how I'm hoping it'll get to the point where I'll be able to be that kind of Jimin fan, as well. Where I don't care what he does or where he is, but I'll still be always curious to hear his new music.

[mr-divabetic]

"You can go around all your life singing stuff that’s just basically a song,” Shirley Brown said. “But I think you are supposed to relate to what’s happening—inner feelings.”Shirley Brown sang in church in West Memphis, Arkansas, until she was discovered at age 14 by Albert King, blues guitarist and singer, singing at the Harlem Club in Brooklyn, Illinois.  She worked with Albert for a period of nine years (where he was her manager), and rubbed elbows with Soul luminaries such as Johnnie Taylor and Little Milton. Blues legend Albert King persuaded Shirley Brown to sign with Stax Records and release her smash single “Woman To Woman.”  Soul Express describes Woman to Woman as a milestone in the history of Southern soul music. Starting with a dramatic rap, it tells of a woman determined to hold on to her man and tell it over the phone to her rival.  Hello, may I speak to Barbara. Barbara, this is Shirley. You might not know who I am, but the reason I'm calling you is because I was going through my old man's pockets this morning and I just happened to find your name and number. So, woman to woman, I don't think it's being any more than fair than to call you and let you know where I'm coming from.”

Woman to Woman, lovingly referred to as the soul soap opera, was written by James Banks, Henderson Thigpen, and Eddie Marion. The songwriters offered the song first to Inez Foxx, who passed on it. “She didn't want to do it. She felt like the rap part in the beginning of the song was for a male artist, and a song like that with a rap would be better for a person like Isaac Hayes," James Banks told Soul Express. 

The song's recording took more than one session. But Bobby Manuel, who played guitar on the sessions, said, “The recording session (for Woman to Woman) was magical. We all knew it was a hit record. Everybody was really excited."  Shirley was nominated for a Grammy for Best R&B Performance, Female, but Aretha Franklin and Ain't Nothing like a Real Thing won that year. Millie Jackson, who was also nominated in the same category that year, told QuestLove on his podcast that Aretha should have been excluded from being nominated in that category because her recording failed to meet the qualifications. 

"Woman to Woman" reached No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 22 on the pop charts. The song proved so popular that Country Music legend Barbara Mandrell covered it, and Lonnie Youngblood talked to Barbara and blew his horn on the mid-tempo answer song, Man to Woman. A year after the song's success, Stax Records folded.   Shirley Jones chased her dreams to New York City, where Clive Davis signed her to his Arista Records label. . “I was one of the first soul singers he (Clive) signed. I was there before Whitney and Aretha. Clive said that if we could ever get the right material, we could have a hit. But he felt that the material was too Southern. He didn’t want that Southern soul sound.  Clive and Shirley Brown didn't see eye-to-eye in the direction of her music. "Clive Davis wanted me to do a Bette Midler song or something like Barbra Streisand. I could probably sing those kinds of songs, but I didn't feel them." In early 1977, Shirley’s first Arista single, a soul ballad called Blessed Is the Woman (With a Man like Mine) was released.  “I’ve always been a great admirer of Aretha Franklin,” Shirley Brown admits. Some people feel that Shirley Brown and Aretha Franklin are similar to the Isaac Hayes/Barry White situation." Some people speculate that Clive felt she sounded too much like Aretha Franklin and he jeopardized her career to boost Aretha's.    “Clive wanted to make Shirley like Whitney, "says Bobby Manuel. "He wanted to take somebody that had those chops, who could sing like that… and take them pop.  The marriage really didn’t work.  He was sending us pop songs, and she just wasn’t into them.” Luther Vandross loved Shirley Brown. I would buy up all her albums in the UK for our tour bus and his dressing room. 

After Shirley left Arista, she signed with several other labels. She still continues to make beautiful music. Some wonderful songs in her catalog include “I Ain’t Gonna Tell”, “Love Is Built On A Strong Foundation,” and the soul ballad,  "I Need Somebody to Love Me."

[twopoppies]

I completely understand your anons point about playing the game to survive in the industry, however I do tend to think that its kind of counterproductive if someone wants to have a long and memorable career.

I don't think everyone needs to play the game the way Harry, Taylor or more recently Sabrina do to be successful. If we think about Adele, Noah Kahan or Chappell Roan they are or are becoming extremely successful without having to sell their souls to the business - and what do we know about them? Just how good their music is.

The way Harry plays the game, makes it feel so much less about art or music that it kind of obscures the great artist/musician he is. I think ultimately I would like Harry to be remembered for his great songwriting skills, his voice and the great performer he is, but everything is so overshadowed by the rest that in 20, 30 years I don't know if he will be remembered as one of the greatest of our generation (and he deserves it so much). I just think there's too much noise overshadowing his music.

Hi, love, I think the problem with this way of looking at the situation is that Adele was always marketed as a powerhouse Voice™ and a great songwriter. That will most likely be remembered that way because those were her big selling points. Noah Kahan and Chappell Roan are terrific artists, but they're newer to fame, they're not nearly as well-known as Adele or Harry (or Beyoncé, or whomever), and we have yet to see if they'll become legends. We also don't know where they want to go with their careers.

With Harry, he's always been marketed for his sex appeal. That was his main selling point in 1D. Coming from a boyband meant he was never taken seriously as a musician. I absolutely agree with you that Harry is so much more interesting as a singer/songwriter/performer than as a constant fixture in gossip columns. However, I think Harry's goal is to become a legend, have his art mean something, and have it remembered. My guess is that his team knows this, and that's their goal, too. We may not like their methods or understand their route, but I think they know how to get him where he wants to go better than we do.

He's much more highly respected for his music, lyricism, and performances now than he was after HS1 dropped. So a lot of what they're doing is working. I'd love for the days of PR girlfriends and rumors about who he's sleeping with to be over. I guess we'll just have to see where things go.

[ukrfeminism]

5 minute read

Only 18% of headliners at the UK's top festivals this year are female, Sky News analysis has found.

Women are seen as too much of a "risk" for the top slots because of a perception festivalgoers prefer watching men, as well as the pool of female talent still being too small, music industry experts say.

Industry figures also called on Glastonbury to do more to bridge the gender divide.

Across 104 festivals this summer, only a fifth (20%) of headline acts are fronted by women, compared with almost four-fifths (78%) by men and 2% by non-binary people.

At the biggest festivals, with over 30,000 capacity, this is even lower for women at one in six (18%).

And if you count the total number of performers on stage during headline slots, only one in 10 (11%) are women.

According to our research, while women are still behind men across the board, they are more popular with fans on YouTube, Google and the radio, than they are with festival promoters when booking headliners.

Meanwhile, the likes of Glastonbury, Isle of Wight Festival and Latitude don't have a single female-fronted headliner on their main stages this year.

Bucking the trend, is the British Summer Time Festival in London's Hyde Park which just announced Lana Del Rey as its final headliner.

Glastonbury, which is releasing its final 2023 tickets on Sunday, faced a backlash in March after it revealed the Arctic Monkeys, Guns n Roses and Sir Elton John will headline its famous Pyramid Stage this year.

Folk rocker, Cat Stevens, is also booked for the Sunday afternoon "legends" slot despite rumours Blondie was due to take it.

Organiser Emily Eavis said the female headliner they had planned, widely rumoured to be Taylor Swift, had to pull out due to a tour clash.

Women 'too much of a risk'

Eve Horne is a producer, singer-songwriter and founder of Peak Music UK, which mentors female and non-binary artists and producers. She is also on UK Music's Diversity Taskforce and is a board member of Moving The Needle, which works to improve female inclusion in the industry.

She says there was hope that the devastating impact of COVID would make industry bosses prioritise inclusion and diversity.

"If anything it did a 360 and went backwards," she tells Sky News.

"Everyone started going for the money again and saying there's too much risk in putting women as headliners."

Eve claims promoters repeatedly tell her that festivalgoers of all genders prefer watching men perform more than women.

"It's about money at the end of the day and we still have old white men gatekeeping the industry," she adds.

John Rostron, chief executive of the Association of Independent Festivals, which represents 105 UK events, says the problem stems from there being a smaller pool of female artists for promoters to pick from.

"A headline slot might be the pinnacle of an artist's live career.

"There are plenty of barriers for any artist to get there, but for women there are maybe triple the number of barriers, so the talent pool at the top is smaller.

"We have to wait for them to come up and then be open to booking them."

The problem gets worse at larger festivals where big acts charge high fees and promoters have to meet those costs with ticket sales - and are also accountable to shareholders.

"You can't say that a male band sells more tickets because they're men," he adds. "But you can say that they sell more tickets than another band when that's been proven to be true."

YouTubers and radio DJs choosing more women

Sky News looked at YouTube views and radio play to see how popular female-fronted artists are on those platforms. "Female-fronted" refers to acts with a female lead performer.

They were far better represented on both platforms than they were at the top of festival billboards.

On YouTube, in the 12 months to the end of March, female-fronted artists made up 35% of total music views, while their male counterparts were 65%. Non-binary-fronted acts were at fewer than 1%.

Almost half (24) of the 50 most searched for artists on Google in the same period were also female.

Both data sets suggest fans do want to consume female-fronted artists.

On the radio, they have averaged roughly a third (32%) of plays between 2019 and now, with male acts at just under two-thirds (65%) and non-binary at 3%.

So far in 2023, the gender balance has been almost equal, with female and male artists both at 48%, with the remainder non-binary.

Six of the top 10 songs played on the radio so far this year are by female solo artists including Miley Cyrus's Flowers - the most popular song of 2023 so far.

Increases in non-binary representation are largely down to a small number of artists, such as Sam Smith and Olly Alexander.

At festivals there are signs of progress. Across all stages almost three in 10 (29%) acts are female-fronted - up by almost 2% on the five-year average.

But that progress isn't reflected in headline slots.

'Glastonbury can afford inclusion managers'

By contrast, the Mighty Hoopla, a 25,000-person festival in south London, has had no male-fronted headliners since 2018.

Olly Alexander headlined in 2018 and is returning this year.

It offers a "platform to LGBTQ+ performers" and ensures at least 50% of performers are female and non-binary across the whole line-up.

Cassie Leon, who heads-up inclusion for the festival, says with their audience, it's "relatively easy" to commit to a diverse line-up.

"Part of queer culture is trying to uplift women as much as possible," she adds.

Asked how other festivals should improve female representation, she says more staff should be hired specifically to promote inclusion.

"It's everybody's issue, from the agents to the festivals to the places finding the talent," she says.

Specifically on Glastonbury, she adds: "If you can afford Elton John, you can afford inclusion managers."

While Britain's biggest festival might be less profit-focused than others, raising funds for charities and reportedly paying artists a fraction of their usual fees, smaller festivals still seem to do better at booking female-fronted headliners.

Jungle and drum and bass artist Nia Archives is headlining two indie festivals this year - We Out Here in Dorset and Outlook in Croatia - as well as playing at Glastonbury.

"It's a hard one for me," she says "because I know I'm being given those opportunities but also recognise that not everybody has those opportunities."

Heavy metal and rock among worst offenders

Other than the Mighty Hoopla, no festival in our database has had more than a third female-fronted headline acts between 2018 and now.

Six have had none at all since then - Isle of Wight, Download, Kendal Calling, TRNSMT, Slam Dunk Festival and Bloodstock Open Air.

With half of the worst offenders coming under rock and heavy metal, John Rostron, of AIF, which represents Bloodstock Open Air, says things are "particularly difficult" across those genres as there is a "much smaller talent pool".

Bloodstock's festival director Adam Gregory shares his view.

"There is a shortage of female-fronted bands coming through the ranks," he says, adding that headline slots are booked according to the "strongest available offering".

John also points to the way some major festivals sign up artists exclusively - preventing them from playing other events.

"Someone playing third at Reading might be perfect to headline one of our smaller festivals, but they can't. Both organisers and artists have a responsibility to say no to exclusives."

'Ethical' promoters

There are groups trying to make a difference.

Not Bad For A Girl, a DJ collective based in Manchester and London, formed four years ago to "create a platform for female and non-binary DJs" - running their own events, performing at others, and on the radio.

They wear signature pink balaclavas in a bid to "eliminate conventional beauty standards" after members were denied opportunities on account of their gender.

Founder Martha Bolton says they actively support diverse talent, for example by "having two events and using one as a cash cow, so the other can promote an up-and-coming artist".

She adds that big organisations like Glastonbury have a responsibility to set the standard for the industry.

"It needs to be the bigger people taking that jump for the rest of us who can't afford the risk."

No accountability

There is no official regulator of the music industry in the UK, so no official means of accountability when it comes to gender diversity.

UK Music, which has its own diversity taskforce, acts as a trade union, and connects smaller associations that represent specific parts of the industry.

Keychange is an EU-funded diversity programme that asks its 600 signatories (41% of which are festivals) to commit to at least 50% female inclusion. By the end of 2021, 64% of signatories had met the target.

But neither body is legally binding.

In an interview with The Guardian in March, Emily Eavis said Lizzo, who will perform just before Guns N Roses on the Pyramid Stage, could "totally headline" but the rock band were already booked.

She reiterated that female inclusion is "top of our agenda", having committed to 50:50 representation in 2020 and secured more than half female and non-binary acts for 2023 so far.

In its diversity statement the festival says it is "working alongside experts in equality and anti-discrimination" on an internal review.

"We try our best and we obviously aim for 50:50. Some years, it's more, some years, it's less," Eavis told the BBC earlier this year, adding it's "looking like we've got two female headliners" for 2024.

But she added that despite being the biggest festival in the country, it is not just down to her to make change.

"We're trying our best so the pipeline needs to be developed. This starts way back with the record companies, radio. I can shout as loud as I like but we need to get everyone on board."

Sky News has contacted Glastonbury for further comment.

[13eyond13]

what are your thoughts on yoko's relationship with john and yoko herself?

Ohh man, it's definitely complicated for me, but here are a few of the things I think:

(1) it's weird to me that Yoko actually approached Paul first! Though I guess that makes John allegedly asking Paul not to steal Yoko from him at some point make a bit more sense to me too...

(2) it's also weird to me that Yoko basically stalked John until he finally liked her back (also pretty ironic to me that John insinuated at some point that he thought Linda was a predatory groupie of sorts toward Paul, considering how he got with Yoko)

(3) it's WILD to me the way John broke up with Cynthia by just moving Yoko in their house while she was away on a vacation and then letting her find them together like that... talk about ouch

(5) VERY ODD timelines going on with John and Paul's relationships around this point in the lore, what with John hooking up with Yoko directly after Paul hooked up with Linda and then getting married within a literal week of each other... definitely competitive and definitely almost like they were swapping one life partner for another (I don't think I believe McLennon ever literally hooked up w/ each other, but I DO think they were extremely close to the point that they didn't truly have enough room in their lives for other close relationships whenever they were really "on" with each other, that their songwriting partnership was almost literally a marriage, and that at least right up until the breakup of the band they were basically romantically in love with each other in how they felt about each other as well)

(4) I feel like John basically treated Yoko like a bodyguard of sorts and was blatantly trying to make Paul jealous with her whenever he was feeling especially vulnerable during the Beatles breakup, and also let her take a lot of the blame for things going sour at times, which was really unfair and unkind to her, even if she was voluntarily down to play that role for him as well

(6) I DO think John and Yoko probably did love and artistically inspire each other and had a friendship in a real way (like how they said they had similar childhood wounds so understood each other because of that or whatever). But even so I also think that a lot of the magical/transcendent love image they portrayed of their relationship was incredibly performative and often done to project a certain image and get a certain reaction and whatever else (and things like their separation and John's so-called "Lost Weekend" definitely point to that being the case at least some of the time). I think Yoko was incredibly enabling of some of John's worst impulses and personality traits, too (Iike his arrogance and his endless navel-gazing and his paranoia), and that a lot of why he liked her was BECAUSE of that. I feel like they are quite similar in many ways as well... I think they both love being kind of provocative and edgy and on display and trying to sound a bit wiser and more profound than maybe they actually are half the time too, haha. In a way I feel like she gave him the chance to finally fully lean into the extremes of his impulses and his emotions that he'd felt somewhat held back by by being in the Beatles for so long, for better or for worse...

To me two of them together are often the epitome of this meme:

And also, even if they did have genuine feelings or love for each other, I think that Yoko likely had quite a few cynical/practical and self-interested reasons for initially getting with and then staying with John, too (like his money and his power and his fame).

(7) I think as a couple they would drive me absolutely crazy to be around because of how immensely codependent they were and how self-involved and exhibitionist about their love and their relationship they were, that's just REALLY not my cup of tea (like that time that John insisted on playing an audio recording at a Beatles business meeting of him and Yoko having sex... what the actual fuck John hahaha)

(8) I definitely don't think she single-handedly broke up the Beatles. I think that John and Paul and the other guys broke up the band themselves, and that things like Brian Epstein's death played a much bigger role in the disintegration of the band than she did (they have said similar things themselves, that it was more so a problem of them not knowing how to manage themselves once Brian was gone and then allowing other ill-intentioned people come between them and take advantage of them and turn them against each other, etc... Yoko's presence during their jamming and recording sessions obviously made things awkward at times, but it was John's choice to include her like that in the first place). I also think that the four guys DID probably need some more space from each other and to try to grow as individuals and artists outside of the band unit by that point in their lives as well. It's just a shame that things went so sour in the process of them trying to find their footing again and trying to branch out a bit...

(9) I definitely don't know everything about John and Yoko's story yet, but one of the parts that I was probably the most interested to learn about was their struggles to conceive (there are just a lot of things I find interesting about it, idk... how both of them were kinda bad parents to the kids they had already with other people, but still bound and determined to try again to be parents nonetheless, the sketchy stuff like how their drug usage was probably affecting their fertility, how much older than John Yoko actually was (which I didn't realize until I heard how old she was when she finally gave birth), the (imo kinda disturbing) fetal heartbeat art they made out of one of the miscarriages, the surprise that was Sean finally coming along after years of trying, and how they decided to raise him together and so on...

(10) I actually like some of Yoko's weird-ass music and art at times, but find her hard to warm up to and relate to as a person. And I don't think I'd be paying all that much attention to her or what she made in the first place if she hadn't gone and hooked up with one of the Beatles. Mostly I guess I appreciate what she adds to the band's lore, almost like she's an essential and interesting yet controversial and divisive character in the hypothetical HBO drama series about the band

[daveinediting]

As I said yesterday, it will continue to be my penance to proclaim Charlie Kester was right until the end of my days because I blew him off out of hand when I was a young adult and he was a teacher then department head of the Music and Video Business Associate of Arts degree program at the Art Institute of Seattle back when there was such a thing.

In my defense, the things he said were so stupid.

One of the things he just wouldn't, would not let go was to relentlessly promote the act of professional networking which seemed completely phony to us, this idea of making professional connections to further our careers.

Phony.

Phony.

Phony.

And yet.

And yet during my last quarter at the Art Institute, I started working with a friend there on a documentary that began a string of further documentaries, two music videos, and a demo video for a kind of dating show sponsored by a local paper. Very quickly we became fast friends chasing our careers together.

Shortly before I enrolled at the Art Institute, I scored a night job with a local cable channel that turned into a daytime video crew position for both studio and remote work. That work led to positions at KOMO TV as a floor director and Chyron operator for news, talk shows, and sports... and at Small World Productions as an office assistant position that turned into an assistant editor position that turned into an editor position as well as online editor position as well as a digital editor position as well as a motion graphics designer and then music composer. I also picked up additional work through another producer who used to work at the UW.

Everything everything everything was and is somehow tied to that UW video unit and all the people with whom I embarked on my career. 

They knew me, knew what I could do, and when there was a specific need...

I got the call.

Networking.

Professional. Networking.

So when my daughter hit high school, I told her that, in pursuit of a role in a musical that would happen later that year... I told her to make sure she was known for three things:

Her abilities.

Being directable.

And being the best collaborator.

Because high school performing arts is filled with people who think think they've got game but they don't. Who have got game but are undirectsble. Who don't have game or do have game but are a pain in the ass to work with.

A pain

In the ass.

The same is true once you get to college. So I told my daughter that the point of college wasn't the degree (although credentials are nice). The point of college was to jack into the network that flows from the college into the professional world.

To do that?

Make sure everyone knows what you can do and how great you are at it.

Be directable.

Don't be a pain in the ass.

Because those three things and people definitely are gonna give you the call.

And so it was. 

She impressed the right person who brought her on board their sound production pipeline that led to a band that led to a second, additional band, that led to the fulfilment of her own music brand.

A little offshoot of those opportunities during college was a door job she got at a local club where she met a fellow artist who had her do some writing and performing on their upcoming album that led to some big concerts at the Triple Door in downtown Seattle and also led to her entry into the local winery circuit as a solo acoustic performer.

So then at some point last year an old friend reaches out to ask if she'll talk to their high school band class where she pitches them on, you guessed it, professional networking.

She even points out there are better guitarists out there, better keyboard players... but she's the one who gets the call.

'Cause people know what she can do (musician, vocalist, lyricist, guitarist, keyboard player, songwriter, arranger, sound mixer, and producer).

She collaborates like nobody's business.

She's fantastic to work with.

And they wanna work with her.

So.

I reached out to Charlie on Facebook and LinkedIn—looooooong overdue—to ask if he was still in the area but mostly to thank him profusely.

For imparting such an enduring lesson.

😊

[privmu]

MARLEY JUNE ROSE

AGE: 34

BIRTHDAY: April 13th, 1990 

RELATION: Full sibling

TYPE: Twin

GENDER: Ciswoman

PRONOUNS: She/Her

ORIENTATION(S): Demipansexual

FACE CLAIM: Melissa Benoist

JOB/SCHOOL

JOB: Songwriting Professor, Indie Artist

ALUMNI?: Alumni

ABOUT

Marley Rose felt like life was never the same after her dad walked out the door when she was ten years old. It taught her that most things in life were temporary. She took the loss hard, though she never considered herself a daddy’s girl. In fact, she felt much closer to her mother. Perhaps it was that: she saw the way his absence broke her mother’s heart. Marley didn’t understand much about the heartbreak that her mom was experiencing, but still, she wanted to do something to make her mom feel better. She would hide away in her room, grabbing a journal and a pen and would start writing. Whenever she had been sad, she liked to listen to music. Perhaps if she wrote her mom a song, she would start to feel better too. She would go to her mom, presenting the lyrics – she would have her mom hold the paper while Marley stood there, singing her heart out. At the time, the lyrics weren’t great, but Millie Rose appreciated them like it was the best song she’d ever heard. “You’re going to win a Grammy one day for these songs, Marley,” Millie would tell her, with so much conviction in her voice. Marley believed her.

It was easy, the way Marley fell in love with music. She heard it everywhere that she was. In the way her steps sounded against the tile of her kitchen, the wood of their porch. The way it sounded when her mom was in the kitchen, or preparing for an interview. The hustle and bustle of the school hallways - she heard music in all of it. It didn’t take long for Marley to beg Millie to put her in any type of lessons that she could: voice lessons, guitar lessons and piano lessons. Soon enough, Marley’s schedule had become completely taken over by anything and everything music. To Marley, it felt like she was put on the earth to make any type of music at all. She felt more like herself when she was singing, writing songs or playing an instrument. As much as she wanted to share this with the world, she couldn’t seem to get people to pay attention at first. It seemed as if she faded into the background and most people didn’t notice her until they were bumping her shoulder. They’d say sorry, of course, but they wouldn’t even look at her. She was lonely at times, but at least she had her music.

Marley knew that she was lucky. Her mother had money, which meant she was able to try as many things as she possibly wanted to. She had every opportunity given to her, and she took it every chance she got. While the spotlight scared her (mostly because she was used to people ignoring her), there were times where her mother would ask her to perform for her friends (which was a lot of people), and she did. Marley was never sure if they were clapping because they loved Millie, or because they truly thought Marley had a gift. In high school, she was able to join their Glee Club – these people were interested in her songs, her opinions and even more so, they agreed that Marley had a gift. She finally felt like she fit in somewhere. These people understood her: music really was everything.

After high school, Marley traveled to Los Angeles. She knew that if she wanted to make a career with her music, that Los Angeles was the best place to be. There was also Pacific State University, a place for people just like her. Kids and family of those who were famous, just trying to make her own way. She figured it was the best place for her to be. Once again, she embraced the Glee Club there, and had the best time in college. Around this time, she finally started sending EP’s to different record companies, doing shows anywhere that would let her play. She started to have a small following, and decided to release her music independently. There weren’t a lot of fans, of course, but enough to keep her going. Every show she did, there was a familiar face in the crowd. Every once in a while, there was a person who would talk to Marley about how much her music meant to them. And that’s what she was doing it for: to connect to people.