Noel Gallagher became Tidal’s latest critic
Honestly, when are Jay Z and his music-service-owning buddies going to catch a break? Like Mumford & Sons and Lily Allen before him, Gallagher offered his pretty scathing opinion on their app, Tidal. A sample of his thoughts: “I think ultimately with the spiel they came out with, it was like, ‘Do these people think they’re the fuckin’ Avengers?’” Do they ever, Noel?
The Who were announced as Glastonbury’s final headliner
One of the Who’s recent 50th anniversary gigs may have been a “disjointed ragbag of a show”, but that hasn’t stopped Glastonbury from bringing the old boys back to headline the last night of this year’s festival. Even if the veterans aren’t to your taste, at that point during the event, you’ll likely have been so ground down by the mud and unexpected burning sunshine that it won’t matter who is playing the Pyramid stage as long as you can get home in one piece.
A Texas law chief called Snoop a ‘dope-smoking cop hater’
That feels a little harsh, doesn’t it? If you haven’t been following this riveting story, a Texas state trooper was reprimanded in April for appearing next to Snoop Dogg in a photo taken at SXSW festival. Not only was officer Billy Spears ordered to receive counselling by Texas state officials, he then sued his department in April for damages (I suppose suing them “on the grounds of being ridiculous” wouldn’t hold up as well in court). It turns out one of Texas’s top officers sees Snoop as a weed-smoking cop hater, who “lampooned” Spears in the photo. All this over one mediocre backstage shot.
Kanye’s Brits performance won’t face an Ofcom investigation
Fire, a crowd of guys in hoodies and ITV’s awful attempts at bleeping out the word “nigga”: it could only be Kanye West’s Brits 2015 performance. Ofcom received 151 complaints about the heavily censored single All Day, but the media regulator decided not to take the matter any further. This feels like as good a time as any to remind everyone that the word nigga is not the same as the n-word, when the latter is used as a racial slur. As American author Ta Nehisi-Coates has written, words gain meaning from specific contexts.
The Blurred Lines plagiarism case still isn’t over
Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke won’t be going down without a fight. They may have lost the initial plagiarism case over the similarities between 2013 single Blurred Lines and Marvin Gaye’s 1977 track Got To Give it Up, but the pair’s lawyers have filed a motion calling for a new trial. Is round two on its way? We’ll see.
Prince announced a Baltimore gig in honour of Freddie Gray
The Purple One doesn’t, despite what I like to imagine, just spend his time running through his music vault wearing a shimmering onesie. He gets political, too. Since taking the “black lives matter” hashtag to the Grammys stage in February, he’s announced a Rally 4 Peace concert, in response to recent unrest in Baltimore over Freddie Gray’s death while in police custody last month. The gig will likely feature a song, devoted to Baltimore and Gray, that Prince recently recorded.
Hot Chocolate’s Errol Brown died, aged 71
Hot Chocolate frontman Errol Brown died in the Bahamas this week, according to his manager. Brown was behind hits like You Sexy Thing, which was given a boost in 90s film The Full Monty. Hot Chocolate cropped up in the UK charts between 1970 and the mid-1980s. Though Brown’s solo career never matched the group’s success, he was awarded the MBE in 2003 and given an Ivor Novello award in 2004 for his contribution to music. He had been fighting liver cancer.
A study said the Beatles did little to revolutionise music
Here’s a research-based sucker punch to the gut for Beatles fans who go on about the Fab Four’s game-changing impact on music. Apparently, they’ve not affected trends in chart-topping music as much as early 90s hip-hop artists. Measuring the make-up of songs may feel like a clinical way to quantify something as nebulous as influence, but we’ll leave that debate to naysayers in the comments section.
Lauryn Hill cancelled a gig in Israel, amid some controversy
Mostly, the singer-songwriter ditched her plan to play a show in Israel because she’d not been able to set up a corresponding concert in the Palestinian territories. In the name of political fairness, she pulled out of the show three days before she was scheduled to perform. Fair enough.
U2 tried to make New Yorkers pay attention to them on the subway
When will Bono just leave New York alone? Clearly the Big Apple has it in for him, after he sustained multiple injuries while cycling in Central Park last year – injuries that, he said, may make him unable to play guitar. But he can still sing. And apparently nothing will keep him away. Vaguely disguised in sunglasses, hats and the odd fake beard, he and the rest of U2 played an acoustic rendition of Angel of Harlem in Grand Central station, perhaps aiming to catch out the small sliver of people who hadn’t been bombarded by the band’s iTunes-released album last year.
