Glass Animals, Ari Lennox, Yaeji Set for Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival This Summer (EXCLUSIVE)

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorEarlier this month, in the hours after the release of “Solar Power” — the title track from Lorde’s forthcoming third album, due in August — the two songs people kept mentioning as possible inspirations were George Michael’s “Freedom 90” and “Loaded” by British rockers Primal Scream.In an interview shortly after the song dropped, Lorde said Primal Scream had given their blessing to the song.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorA year on from the “Blackout Tuesday,” during which the music industry paused to take a look at its racial policies and plan to reform them, how is it doing? According to both last week’s USC-Annenberg “Inclusion in the Music Business” study and a “report card” released over the weekend by the Black Music Action Coalition — a 200-plus-member organization formed around this time last year — it’s doing fair-to-badly.BMAC’s 37-page report takes a look at dozens of

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMore than two weeks after Ariel Emanuel stepped down as a Live Nation board member after 14 years, the Department of Justice announced that he and fellow top Endeavor officer Mark Shapiro resigned their board positions after the DOJ expressed antitrust concerns, according to a DOJ statement Monday (June 21). The DOJ’s concern was that Emanuel’s and Shapiro’s “positions on the Live Nation Board created an illegal interlocking directorate,” i.e.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorA2IM’s Libera Awards are the Grammys of independent music, the one time in the entire year that a huge percentage of that community gets (relatively) dressed up and gathers for a night of celebrating the indie sector’s wins and its continued vital importance to the global music world and economy.For obvious reasons, for the past two years the awards have been held virtually, but that didn’t stop the community from gathering around their laptops again to celebrate as

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSongwriters Hall of Fame inductee Nile Rodgers was unanimously re-elected to serve a second three-year term as Chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the SHOF Board of Directors at its annual board meeting held on June 11.A cofounder of Chic and cowriter of nearly all of that group’s songs, Rodgers has worked with a galaxy of stars over the course of his career as a songwriter, producer and deeply innovative guitarist, including David Bowie, Diana Ross,

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBack in the day, one of the great perks of being a music writer was “Free CDs and Tees” (t-shirts).

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorRepublic Records, Sony Music Publishing and Spotify were among the big winners at last week’s Clio Music Awards.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs previously reported by Variety, Imran Majid and Justin Eshak officially have been appointed Co-CEOs of Universal Music Group’s legendary Island Records label, effective Jan. 1, 2022.Eshak and Majid will join Island from Columbia Records, where they were previously co-heads of A&R.The appointment, effective January 1, 2022, marks a return to UMG for Majid and Eshak, who met at UMG’s Republic Records in 2004 where they worked as A&R executives.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorHaim, St. Vincent, Charli XCX, Lauv and more will headline the 2021 All Things Go Music Festival, which makes a big move up to the 20,000-capacity Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday, Oct.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBlack and underrepresented artists may be heavily represented on the charts, but the music companies that release, promote and tour those artists have a long way to go when it comes to diversity in their executive ranks, according to “Inclusion in the Music Business: Gender & Race/Ethnicity Across Executives, Artists & Talent Teams,” an authoritative new study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt’s not exactly an iron-clad guarantee — especially by Drake standards — but the superstar rapper said on Saturday that his long-delayed “Certified Lover Boy” album, which he’d originally promised would be out in January but then changed his mind, will be out by the end of the summer.On Saturday night, Drake sat down for a rare interview on Caffeine after an appearance at Ultimate Rap League’s N.O.M.E. XI battle-rap event, where he staked $50,000 on the winner.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorRCA Records has announced a new partnership and label deal with Loud Robot, the record label from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, to release new musical talent.To kick off this partnership, Nnena, the first musical signing to Loud Robot, today releases a brand-new track and video for “Heart Moan,” the second track from her forthcoming debut EP “Bipolar AF,” which is set for release on June 25.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt is remarkable how few people know that the same person produced Bob Dylan’s three defining early albums (as well as “Like a Rolling Stone”), the first two Velvet Underground albums, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s debut “Freak Out” and pivotal music by jazz legends Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor (including tracks with John Coltrane), among many others.It was Tom Wilson, a visionary music producer who died in 1978 at the age of 47.He was even the man who in

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOn the heels of the forthcoming Rolling Loud festivals in Miami and Los Angeles comes the three-day Rolling Loud New York 2021, taking place place October 28 – 30th at Citi Field with headliners Travis Scott, J.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBruce Springsteen’s top-grossing “Springsteen On Broadway” show will return this summer for a limited run of performances at New York’s St. James Theatre.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorH.E.R. and Ingrid Andress will join the star-studded performer lineup for the 2021 CMT Awards while Anthony Mackie, Busy Philipps, Iliza Shlesinger and Michael Strahan have been added as presenters, the network announced Monday (June 7).The two artists will duet with previously announced performers: Fast-rising R&B star H.E.R.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorTo celebrate New York’s apparent reopening, Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning a large-scale performance by multiple acts in Central Park and is working with veteran producer and executive Clive Davis to help organize the talent, according to a report Monday in the New York Times.No acts have been confirmed for the show, which is tentatively set for Aug.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorNew York’s City Parks Foundation returns to live, in-person performances this summer with the announcement of the shows planned for the 2021 season of Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage, New York City’s largest free outdoor performing arts festival. SummerStage shows will be returning to Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, and The Coney Island Amphitheater.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOne year ago today was  “Blackout Tuesday” — during which the music industry took a work pause to protest police violence against the black community and consider its social justice policies and efforts in the wake of the murders by police of George Floyd, Breona Taylor and so many others over the years.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorWilco frontman Jeff Tweedy will be the first performer at Brooklyn Made, a new, 500-capacity music venue opening in the borough’s Bushwick neighborhood this fall.Tweedy will open the club with a special two-night run of shows on September 30 and October 1, followed by Greg Dulli on October 2 and Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue on October 4 and 5.  The current full lineup is listed below; tickets for all shows will go on sale at noon on June 11.“This venue is truly