Beach House Loft Dream Pop Into a Lush New Realm With ‘Once Twice Melody’: Album Review

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s been a long time coming — two years, in fact — but the Songwriters Hall of Fame has confirmed that its twice-pandemic delayed 51 Annual Induction & Awards Gala will take place on Thursday, June 16, 2022, at its longtime location, the Marriott Marquis New York’s Times Square.The 2022 date, originally set for June 10, 2020, will induct previously announced songwriters, Mariah Carey, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Ernie Isley / Marvin Isley / O’Kelly Isley / Ronald Isley / Rudolph Isley / Chris Jasper (the Isley Brothers), Steve Miller, Pharrell Williams / Chad Hugo (the Neptunes), Rick Nowels and William “Mickey” Stevenson. Master songwriter Paul Williams will be receiving the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award and Universal Music Publishing Chairman-CEO Jody Gerson will receive the Abe Olman Publisher Award.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s almost become a model in recent years: If a song’s a hit, the copyright-infringement lawsuits follow, and Dua Lipa was clobbered with two of them in four days last week. Her global hit “Levitating,” which has spent 68 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, has drawn two lawsuits from songwriters claiming the song infringes on their compositions, according to multiple media reports.The first was filed March 1 by a Florida reggae group called Artikal Sound System, claiming that Lipa’s song lifts from their relatively obscure 2017 track, “Live Your Life.” That complaint includes little specific detail beyond claiming that the two tracks are so similar that it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” In the second, more-detailed legal complaint, filed on March 4 in New York, songwriters L.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorRepublic Records has appointed David Wolter executive vice president of A&R,label  co-president Wendy Goldstein announced today (March 7). He is based in Republic Records’ New York headquarters.Throughout his career,  Wolter has signed or worked closely with artists ranging from Gorillaz to Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers. At Republic, he will oversee upcoming releases for Benee, Greta Van Fleet, Jimmy Fallon and others, in addition to signing new talent.Prior to joining Republic Records, Wolter had been an executive VP of Virgin Records at Capitol Music Group since 2017.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorHipgnosis Song Management has acquired the song catalog of Leonard Cohen, poet, novelist, performer and one of the most influential songwriters of the past 50 years. The Canadian-born artist, who died in 2016 at the age of 82, is an inductee of both the Songwriters Hall Of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.Hipgnosis has acquired rights in all 278 songs and derivatives written by Leonard Cohen, including “Hallelujah,” which has been covered more than 300 times.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOutsider music and outsider art have been bedfellows in just about every sense since the two art forms have existed, and that collaboration is celebrated and explored in the Outsider Art Fair, taking place at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York this weekend.The exhibit — which is celebrating its 30 th year and is billed “the only fair dedicated to showcasing self-taught art, art brut and outsider art from around the world” — features more than 60 international exhibitors, including works from the Michael Stipe Collection as well as an exhibition of psychedelic art curated by Fred Tomaselli called “Field Trip: Psychedelic Solution, 1986 – 1995.”The latter is filled with work from the likes of pioneering underground cartoonist/Zap Comix artist Spain Rodriguez, R Crumb, Robert Williams, Rick Griffin, S. Clay Wilson along with original artwork related to artists like Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield and the Who — there’s even the original drawing that spawned the Grateful Dead’s logo along with the origin story as well as preparatory drawings for the Jerry Garcia solo album “Compliments Of” from 1974 by artist Victor Moscoso.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Weeknd has announced dates for his “After Hours Til Dawn” stadium tour, which launches in his hometown of Toronto on July 8 and heads across North America before wrapping in Los Angeles on Sept. 2 and then moving overseas.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorNeneh Cherry’s 1989 hit “Buffalo Stance” casts a long shadow: A dance classic about inner-city life that combines a punk attitude with an irresistible beat and melody. The song, from her equally classic debut album “Raw Like Sushi,” reached No.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter what we’ve all been through in the past two years, every concert feels like a miracle, but a Dua Lipa show more than most. On the surface it might be easy to underestimate the heavy emotions associated with her “Future Nostalgia” album, which was famously released on March 27, 2020, just as the horrors of the pandemic were becoming clear: It’s a dance-party album that arrived at seemingly one of the worst possible times in human history for a dance party album, when there were no parties and the only dancing was done on our own.Yet instead of striking a sour note or seeming like a cruel taunt, it was many people’s escape, their comfort food, their crying blanket — a reminder not only of what we couldn’t have, but what we hoped to get back as everyone wondered, without exaggeration, when or if we’d ever be at a concert or on a crowded dancefloor again.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMissy Elliott, Wizkid, Ozuna, Kali Uchis, Anderson .Paak & the Free Nationals, Jhené Aiko and many more will perform at a new festival in New York called LetsGetFr.ee, taking place at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens on August 20-21, with a special opening night gala on the 19 th.The festival, which also features Jorja Smith, Yendry, El Alfa, Ferg, Lido Pimienta, Flatbush Zombies, Tems, ​​Bomba Estéreo, Major Lazer Sound System and many more, is presented by Afropunk festival founder Matthew Morgan and longtime partner Jocelyn Cooper in partnership with global creative agency Anomaly.The full lineup appears below.According to the announcement, the festival is “the largest diversity-focused, purpose-driven music experience in the U.S. Its mission is to close the equity gap for Black, Brown, Asian, and other underrepresented people in the entertainment industry, with the aim of achieving a diversified workforce across all levels in the industry by 2030.” The festival pledges that it will only work with brands and companies who commit to long-term systemic change.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorCharli XCX has dropped the latest single from her forthcoming album “Crash,” just days before her appearance on “Saturday Night Live” (which was originally scheduled for December but postponed due to omicron) and will perform the song on the show.According to the announcement, the song, which is accompanied by a video directed by Imogene Strauss and Luke Orlando, is one of the first Charli wrote for the album. The disco-fied song is a collaboration with the brother team of Justin and Jeremiah Raisen (a.k.a.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe transition from bedroom pop to one of New York’s biggest stages is not an easy one — the intimate sound and emotions of the loosely defined style are almost the polar opposite of the big gestures and loud volume it takes to fill a major venue. Yet two of the genre’s most popular (and youngest) artists, Clairo and Arlo Parks, did it with ease Thursday night before an impressively full crowd at New York’s historic, 6,000-capacity Radio City Music Hall.Parks, 21 — who is nominated for two 2022 Grammys — is already a major star in her native England and is the more animated performer of the two, although Thursday’s show represented a big step up from her last area performance (at the 650-capacity Music Hall of Williamsburg in September).

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorGrammy nominated rapper Jack Harlow, Variety’s Hitmaker cover star, dropped what is presumably the first single from his next album late Thursday: “Nail Tech,” his first new solo release since his major-label debut album “That’s What They All Say,” released 14 months ago.Just hours after it dropped Kanye West took a break from promoting his new streaming service to give the song and Harlow a big (if loaded) cosign: “This n—a can raaaaaaap bro,” West wrote on Instagram. “And I’m saying n—a as a compliment Top 5 out right now.” (Hear the song and watch the video below.)Harlow was quick to respond with effusive thanks.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOn the face of it, Grammy-winning R&B singer Leon Bridges and left-field alt-rock Khruangbin, led by guitar wizard Mark Speer, seem a very unlikely combination. But Bridges started pushing the boundaries of the vintage soul sounds of his 2015 debut, “Coming Home,” almost immediately, veering off into more organic, esoteric directions with the two albums he’s released since then — particularly his latest, “Gold-Diggers Sound” — and collaborating with everyone from Kacey Musgraves and John Mayer to Bun B and the Avalanches.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorDua Lipa has parted ways with her longtime management firm, Ben Mawson and Ed Millet’s TaP Management, a source close to the situation has confirmed to Variety. However, the source says that contrary to other reports, the singer is not currently taking meetings with other management companies, although presumably she will at some point in the future.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s a fair bet that anyone who clicks on this article does not need a backstory on Woody Guthrie — legendary singer-songwriter, activist, poet, artist, writer of “This Land Is Your Land” and many other standards and the single greatest influence on Bob Dylan and a generation of musicians.But as a stunning, just-opened exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum shows, there was much more to him than his most well-known songs might indicate. Most striking of all, as manuscripts of his writings show, he was an amazingly deft wordsmith who would have made a hell of a rapper — and many of his verses and casual writings show a rustic, ribald sense of humor that is rarely present, or at least rarely obvious, in most of his songs.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Clive Davis pre-Grammy gala has been called off for this year, but that’s not stopping the legendary mogul from throwing a big party — his 90 th birthday is April 4, the day after the big show, and he’s throwing a star-studded bash at Casa Cipriani in New York two days later, on Wednesday the 6th, a rep for Davis confirms to Variety. The event is sure to include a guest list that outshines even his famously star-studded pre-Grammy parties — while many of these names are longtime Friends of Clive, the New York Post says invitees include Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, David Foster, Katharine McPhee, Pat Houston, David Geffen, and entertainment lawyer Allen Grubman, as well as label heads such as Monte Lipman, Tom Corson, Rob Stringer and Julie Greenwald. Davis wrote on the invite: “I personally hope you will one day be told that the next birthday you celebrate will be your 90th.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorElectronic duo Milkblood have signed with Loud Robot, the record label from JJ Abrams’ company Bad Robot, and dropped their new song and video, “No Mind.” The track is featured in the end credits of the forthcoming film “Uncharted,” starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg; the video for “No Mind” highlights scenes from the film.Milkblood consists of music producers Pat Morrisey and David Dahlquist — who have worked with SZA, Hayley Kiyoko, Weezer, Saint Jhn and others — with video director Mike Diva (Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, Run The Jewels).In 2020, Morrisey and Dahlquist launched the group with their debut single “Sick of Being Honest,”  made during lockdown. The video for the track, directed by Mike Diva, has garnered almost 13.8 million views on YouTube to date.According to the announcement: From there, the three creators conceived an entire world-building narrative around Milkblood.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorKeith Richards & the X-Pensive Winos, Mavis Staples, Hozier, Warren Haynes, Melissa Etheridge, Allison Russell and more will headline the sixth annual Love Rocks NYC benefit concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre on March 10.Larkin Poe, Tyler Bryant, David Shaw, Anders Osborne, Celisse, Ivan Neville, Jimmy Vivino, Maggie Rose and Connor Kennedy will also appear on the bill, with Will Lee serving as musical director.The concert is presented by the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and will benefit God’s Love We Deliver. It is executive produced by fashion designer John Varvatos, NYC real estate broker and prominent concert producer Greg Williamson and concert/events producer Nicole Rechter.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBritish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé has announced her forthcoming album, “Let’s Say for Instance,” will be released on May 6 via Chrysalis Records.Sandé has enjoyed enormous chart success in her native England, with her debut album, “Our Version of Events,” selling nearly five and a half million copies to date and becoming the biggest-selling album in the U.K. for 2012 (and the second-biggest for 2013).

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorChristina Yuna Lee, a senior creative producer at the digital music platform Splice, was murdered over the weekend inside her apartment in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York. She was 35.The suspect, Assamad Nash. who allegedly was seen on security video following Lee into her apartment, has been arrested and charged in connection with Lee’s stabbing death, according to New York 1 and other local reports.