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reviewsbyliam · 9 months

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Robbie Z

INTERVIEW #01

18.09.2023

Written by LW

Photos via @iamrobbiez (IG)

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Waking up and realizing the life you're living isn't exactly what you desire anymore and deciding to pursue your passion, move to a city in another country and devote yourself to trying to become somebody in the world can be an extremely scary thought for many, but not for this one person.

Today, the first guest on my blog that has been kind enough to sit and speak with me about the stories behind not only himself but also his music and the pain and happiness that has accompanied him along the way is aspiring independent artist, Robbie Z.

L: Hey, Robbie! Thank you for taking the time to speak with me about yourself and your career today, I really appreciate it! You are the first artist to be interviewed on my blog, so it is an absolute pleasure of mine to accommodate your story today!

R: Hi Liam, so nice to meet you! Congratulations on starting your blog! This is really cool, good luck with it! And thank you for having me as your first guest, it's an honour!

L: Thank you so much, Robbie! It's kind of crazy and I cant thank you enough for the opportunity to do this together, now let's get into it!

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L: You started your professional career in 2018, it's now 2023, whats the journey been like for you?

R: Ahh, it's been so exciting! Music is what I want to do long term. It's my passion, so growing up doing that and learning from my mistakes has been amazing. It's an amazing thing that I started so young to be honest. I always knew I wanted to do this; I started recording covers in 2014, when I was 11/12 and started writing my own music when I was 15 in 2017! So, when I was around 14, I thought "huh.. I wanna do that? Then I might as well start now if I wanna get good at it young." Because when I started I was really bad haha… but it also helped me get thick skin in terms of bullying etc. it's been amazing, but it's truly only the beginning!

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L: I've seen that you have inspiration from Iggy Azalea, who else in the music industry compels you to want to do more?

R: I've always been a fanboy.. Some incredible women besides Iggy who "raised me" as an artist are definitely; Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus. More recently, I've been really loving Madison Beer, Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX, Taylor Swift.. I get really inspired by these artists to work hard and achieve all my goals. It really drives me forward.

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L: The vibe of The Butterfly Trap is very fresh, a total feeling myself energy, but it also includes emotional parts that relate to the listeners life - what kind of vibe can we expect from the new project?

R: Ahhh, thank you! Writing the first EP, I was kind of in a tough spot mentally.. I wrote it from the ages of 18 to 19 and I was going through a lot of stuff that I couldn't understand in my life which made me very confused, sad, angry… This new project is totally different.

First of all, it's elevated in terms of quality in the songwriting, recording etc. Secondly, in "The Butterfly Trap", I was really vague while talking about the struggles.. Masking them in a lot of metaphors. I was afraid to speak of these topics in songs as I was still going through what I was going through while writing. This new project "Dear Diary," is more so me reflecting on situations whilst also having fun, a less anxious, more out going alter-ego of mine! But, as fun as it is, it also has some deep messages that really cut deep for me and it just even feels a little uncomfortable when someone listens to some of these new songs as they're so personal to me. Hence the name, "Dear Diary". It's supposed to be inspirational and honest, but it also talks about lots of different topics such as following your dreams, getting your dreams taken away from you, one sided love, letting yourself live freely.. It's basically 6 different diary entrees of mine put into songs.

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L: I've noticed you have a lot of unique sounds. Do you enjoy being multi genre and having the ability to switch flows whilst also being able to use sounds that seperate you from the rest?

R: Honestly? I love mixing genres. I love rap verses with pop hooks, rock hooks, punk, ballads, anything. But, I've been spending time trying to find my sound and I think I've finally found one that is just perfectly me, right now. This new single '5 Dollars & a Dream' is exactly what I would want to be remembered with regarding the genre, flow, lyrics etc. I don't want to give myself any labels as a "pop artist" or a "rock artist" etc. I just consider myself a rapper/singer who likes to change. But Pop Rap is what I would describe it as if I have to!

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L: 5 dollars + a dream (a song that is beautiful by the way and extremely reminiscent of Iggy's earlier work which I LOVE entirely) , whats the story behind this track and what was the process like behind making it?

R: Oh my god, thank you so so much!! This song means the most to me so I really appreciate the nice words. The story behind the track… I think it's pretty straight forward to be honest, which is why I'm a little afraid of people hearing it. It's about knowing what you want to do, having started that and just following your dreams (as lame as it sounds). The song talks about some parts of my story, which I've never been vulnerable about in songs before. And not letting myself give up. Making the song was an absolute blast. One night a few years ago I was in my bed, in my home town in Bulgaria, and I thought of the phrase "I got five dollars and a dream…" with the melody and I wrote it down, then last year as I was packing up to move to London, I wrote the first verse which goes like "I took all of my belongings and I put them in a suitcase…" Initially I wanted it to be a song I write for my first album one day, but it just felt right so I brought it to my producer "SojBoj" , we made the instrumental and a demo and then I wrote the second verse and recorded it! It was really fun!

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L: There is a lot that goes into being an independent artist, how has that been for you so far? Have you had any label offers yet?

R: Being indie or signed each have their own ups and downs / good and bad sides, it just really depends on what an artist wants.. For me? I've been fortunate enough to grow, learn and find myself as an independent artist. I couldn't imagine starting out with a record deal from the beginning. But now I feel I'm ready to get signed and get this party started. Being indie obviously gives me the opportunity to have full creative control which I'm not willing to sacrifice. Whilst it's not for everyone, for me, when the right deal comes, it'll definitely be something I do, because the connections and resources a label has are so worth it for a young artist like me.

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L: Who have been your main musical inspirations behind this new project thats coming later this year?

R: Ahh! Well, whilst there hasn't been a specific one, I'd say, of course I'm always super influenced by Iggy Azalea; especially her first album 'The New Classic'. '5 Dollars & a Dream' is actually kind of inspired by her song 'Work'. But I'm also now inspired by a lot of punk rock music, more contemporary pop-rocky songs, A lot of just everyday things that I romanticise and turn into songs. Sonically, I make what I want to hear, putting my own input on the kind of music I like. Like a mixture of everything I like, quite literally.

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L: You're doing a show at the Metre Squared In London after the single drops, are you excited to perform and what should people expect to see?

R: I love performing! Back in Bulgaria, I had some performing experience, but when Covid hit, it was hard to get performances.. I did a car-concert, it was super fun! I was in a big truck performing to around 100 cars! I was an opening act for a drive-in movie theatre. When I moved to London though, that is when it really started for me with the performances. I've done some shows the past year that amazed me with the amount of people who came to have fun and listen to music, but also the people who actually know my songs and connect with it, it's my favourite thing in the world. The show is coming up on the 14th of October in Metre Squared in London, and tickets for that show are on sale now! I'm super excited. It'll be the first time I perform my EP, prior to it's release!

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L: With your new music coming very rapidly, and a show coming up around the corner, are you looking forward to what the future holds for you and where your art will take you?

R: I am a very goal orientated person, I've got lots of big and smaller goals that I will accomplish soon. I don't like sharing those before they come true, but I have to say; I've got something that I'm working really hard for that I really hope to get to do within the next year. Plus also, always lots of new music! I've got stuff planned for even after the EP, and my releases will become more often too!

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L: For our last question, Robbie, I want to ask you - who in the music industry, whether it be a singer, rapper, producer, writer, absolutely anyone, who would you love to work with the most and why?

R: There's a bunch of people I admire and would find it an honour to work with, but off the top of my head, I'd say a producer that I would really want to work with one day is Jack Antonoff! He's incredible, it seems like to be so much fun working with him. Dan Nigro is another one, he created Olivia Rodrigo's first two albums with her, he's amazing! Artist-wise, Iggy Azalea. She inspired me to start all of this craziness, she helped me find my path when I was really young and I just admire her for a hundred other reasons, it would be CRAZY. I think maybe a song of mine with Ice Spice or Charli XCX would be so fun too! Me and Charli XCX have to make a song about cars together one day!

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L: Well, Robbie, it has been absolutely beautiful and a true pleasure speaking with you and getting to hear your thoughts about your music and everything to do with your grind! I would also like to thank you for letting me hear your new single prior to release! I am excited for whats to come from your career given the product that we already have from you and the world should prepare themselves for the undeniable force that is yourself!

R: Thank you so much for having me, Liam. It means so so much to me, the questions were great, they made me think deeper and I really enjoyed it!

L: I'm glad to hear that, Robbie! Once again, thank you SO much for being my first guest on my blog and hopefully this wont be the last time we speak! I look forward to hearing your new EP!

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To anyone reading; Robbie Z's new single '5 Dollars & a Dream' from his new EP 'Dear Diary,' comes out this Friday, September 22nd!

It'd mean the world to me, as his interviewer and to him as an indie artist if you gave it a listen!

You can also buy tickets to his upcoming show on October 14th at Metre Squared in London in his INSTA BIO (@iamrobbiez)!

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thejoyofviolentmovement · 24 days

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Acclaimed British post-punk outfit THE THE was founded by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Johnson back in 1979 and through various iterations and configurations, Johnson and his collaborators have developed a sound and approach that seems to inhabit its own difficult to define genre: music of long shadows, high hopes, channeled anger, feverish passions and sweetly disturbing poignancy that meshes elements of pop, rock, blues, folk and soul among others while spanning alienated electronics to twisted cinematic soundtracks, guitar tumbling swing to crimson ballads, rants and prayers to diaries and hymns. Over the course of their 45 year history, Johnson and company have released only five full-length albums of original material, 1983’s Soul Mining, 1986’s Infected, 1989’s Mind Bomb, 1993’s Dusk and 2000’s NakedSelf. Having a long-held reputation for being unpredictable, the band has also tackled covers, such as 1995’s Hanky Panky; film soundtracks, including 2009’s Tony, 2010’s Moonbug, 2014’s Hyena and 2019’s Muscle; art installations, a the Radio Cinéola podcast series; 2017’s moving, 84 minute documentary/multimedia project The Inertia Variations and various book publications including 2018’s Matt Johnson biography Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life and Times of Matt Johnson & THE THE. 2017’s The Inertia Variations took inspiration from British poet John Tottenham’s 2005 book of the same name — particularly the idea of “brooding, abstraction and evasion” getting in the way of the creative process. The Inertia Variations eventually resulted in not just the documentary, but also the Radio Cinéola Trilogy triple album box set. At the end of The Inertia Variations documentary, Johnson was filmed performing a new song live in his studio, “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” an energy to his older brother Andrew Johnson, an artist professionally known as Andy Dog, who died in 2016. “It was not an easy song to write,” he says. “That was the first time I’d sung in many years. I enjoyed it but found it very emotional.” The experience prompted Johnson to revive THE THE as a live band — and it lead to the sold-out 2018 The Comeback Special world tour. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the release of the accompanying live film and album until 2021. And of course, the pandemic also delayed the intended start on the writing and recording of first THE THE album in almost 25 years, Ensoulment. Instead, Johnson and company released a series of 7 inch singles that started with 2017’s “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” 2020’s “I WANT 2 B U,” and last year’s “$1 ONE VOTE!” The 12-song Ensoulment is slated for a September 6, 2024 release through Cinéola/earMUSIC. The album reportedly contains echoes of the acclaimed British outfit’s multifaceted and lengthy musical past, however, it’s richly representative of the mercurial band’s here and now. The album continues Johnson’s long-held reputation for being unafraid to tackle the inherent emotional complexity of the human condition — in particular, intimacy in an age of alienation; democracy in a post-truth age; empire and vassalage; the seemingly inexorable rise of AI and more. And yet, the album is rooted in hope. “It’s vital to be hopeful,” Johnson states. “And I hope people get out of the album what we put into it. It was created under very happy circumstances, with a great vibe amongst the band and all the people that worked on it. There was a lot of thought, a lot of work, a lot of love, a lot of laughter!” The album’s material were further refined in rehearsals, just before a six-day recording sessions at Bath, UK-based Real World Studios, where Johnson was joined by long-standing band members James Ellen (bass), DC Collard (keys), Earl Harvin (drums) and Barrie Cadogan (lead guitar). The album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who worked with the band on Infected and Mind Bomb. The album also features contributions from Gillian Glover (backing...

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#New Audio #New Single #post punk #Single Review #Single Review: Cognitive Dissident #Single Review: THE THE Cognitive Dissident #The The #THE THE $1 One Vote!#THE THE Cognitive Dissident #THE THE Dusk #THE THE Hanky Panky #THE THE I WANT 2 B U #THE THE Mind Bomb #THE THE NakedSelf #THE THE Soul Mining #THE THE We Can&039;t Stop What&039;s Coming #Warne Livesey

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sjjnyc · 10 months

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dream workshop with charmaine bee

I'm very happy that I had a chance to take a dream workshop facilitated by charmaine bee; a dream tender, herbalist, swimmer and host of the Dream Support Hotline. Below, I share about how Lavender came into my life (I choose Lavender to work with during the workshop), my dreams related to death and my experiences strengthening a practice of documenting my dreams.

How did I meet Lavender?

In 2018 I met performance artist mayfield brooks and since that time, I have attended several of their performances, movement workshops and even got to participate in a dance film they created in 2021 called "Whale Fall". One time I went to one of their Improvising While Black workshops at 122CC - Ninth Street Studio via Movement Research where we drank Lavender tea. I had never had Lavender tea before and remember it being really fragrant, oily and extremely relaxing. It must have left an impression on me because ever since then, I've day-dreamed about working with Lavender off and on, eventually getting some at my go-to herb store in Brooklyn. Years later (i.e. this year actually - 2023), I would see a jar of Lavender Honey during my Valentine's Day trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I knew I just had to have it! And when I didn't have Lavender in my life, this plant still found a way to me, particularly as an herbal hand salve from my friend and herbalist, Katie Calcaterra of Big Love Botanicals. I can see why mayfield worked with Lavender as a performing artist because it's so calming, and for some reason I want to connect this plant to my dreamtime. I drink Lavender tea with Milky Oats sometimes while I make this website. Even though I've always known about Lavender, I didn't really start paying attention to the plant until the Improvising While Black movement workshop with mayfield.

Tending to our dreams: making time to acknowledge them

I really enjoyed charmaine's workshop; it gave me a lot to think about, particularly how I record my dreams. We talked a lot about the ways we can document our dreams whether by journaling or remembering them using a voice recorder app on our phones. I've mostly recorded my dreams with a voice app, but I do want to explore writing my dreams down. I'm really inspired when I learn about other people's dream journals; for example, "MISA TSURUTA EXPLORES THE INFLUENCE OF THE CULTURE ON DREAMS" is an interview by Charmaine Li in a dope dream focused online magazine called ONEIRIC.SPACE. Li talks about a Buddhist priest who kept dream journals for a large part of this life that are still available today. Read an excerpt from the interview below:

I wanted to ask you about one of the prominent dreamers in Japanese history named Myōe (1173-1232) that you’ve spoken about at the IASD conference. Could you introduce us to him?

"Myōe was a Buddhist priest who lived in the twelfth century during the transition from the Heian period to the Kamakura period. During this time in Japanese society, the power shifted from the aristocrats to the warriors—so the samurais. As a child, Myōe lost his parents and was then sent to live in a temple. He wanted to be a Buddhist monk early on and went on to study the Kegon sect of Buddhism, which he wanted to rejuvenate and preserve. He was very critical of his Buddhist peers at the time and was so devoted to his practice that in one instance he cut off his ear to prove it. Later on, Myōe founded and led the Kōzan-ji Temple in the mountains of Toganoo, near Kyoto. He’s very well-known for keeping dream journals from the age of 19 to 58—and they still exist today. They’re actually kept in a few different places around Kyoto. It’s quite amazing that we still have access to these dreams records from the twelfth century".

Months later I would read an Instagram post by Queens-based poet Sherese Francis about their research on Benjamin Banneker's dream journal. Shout out to Sherese because learning about this opened up my dream explorations even more! I did a brief google search on Banneker's dream journal and Google brought me to a book called "The Scribes of Sleep: Insights from the Most Important Dream Journals in History" which was recently published June 22, 2023! And honestly, this is what I needed to find because I feel like I want to create a robust practice of recording my dreams, but I haven't taken it seriously. Until now.

Documenting our dreams with the possibility that they could be shared publicly one day could be an interesting way to continue communicating with and even inspiring others when we are long gone. We could also view this as ancestor work in the form of left-behind dream writings and other embodiments. Imagine a dream journal (day and night-time dreams) as an extension of your legacy as well. In another vein, it's totally fine to record our dreams only for ourselves, and even our (chosen) families, and not offer them to the public. There's a variety of ways to connect to and share our dreams.

Sharing a few of my dreams on the internet

These dreams (and a few more) will only be available to listen to until the end of October. Thank you for taking time to look at my website and listen to my dreams.

Dream Transcript:

I had this dream that I was, I could choose between going to this really nice trailer or this home. But I just remember choosing a home, and then changing my mind and said oh I have to tell grandma, oh I was in this trailer. I can't remember it at all, but I just remember some kid that I knew taking me to their, taking me to a house but it was a trailer, I don't know. And we went upstairs and there was this table filled with all these gorgeous herbal medicines. I just remember there was this lotion, this lotion with . . . it had Calendula and Rose in it. This lady also said there was molasses. There were just these beautiful medicines to dig through. She asked me . . . I just remember looking out and seeing this beautiful expansive sky, and her saying, "do you want to go home?". I remember thinking this is so different than being in New York, being in the city. There was so much more to that dream. But the thing that really stuck with me was . . . those gorgeous medicines.

*dreams are recorded right after I wake up

Dream Transcript:

Oh, see I didn't even record. I just said in my last dream that I was dreaming a lot, but I remember . . . walking past this tiger that was like, split open, and its body had been deteriorating in a pool of water. And it's eyes were wide open and there was someone else dead next to him. Like a Black woman, and I don't know who it was, but I think I was looking for her. I remember thinking water is connected to wealth and also violence. There was a lot going on in this dream, like, I was in this dark house and I grabbed some fruit, but it was so dark and . . . I don't know, it was like I was in different worlds . . . I don't know if I'm dealing with ghosts, I don't know. Okay, now I'm going to look up what a dead tiger means, because tigers have always represented God to me, so . . . let's go see what this means.

*dreams are recorded right after I wake up

PROMPT: Record your dreams (I especially encourage using the voice app on your phone) and listen to them in six months with some snacks! I personally like eating fruit, nuts, jerky, cashew yogurt ect when I listen to my dreams!

Lighting Candels: Dreams about death

**Trigger Warning: I talk about death**

I have had a lot of dreams about death; whether I am actively passing away myself, or I have died already and observe a group of people conducting my funeral rites, to dreaming of ghosts, which are different than the dead people I dream about, who some if not all know they are dead, to dreaming of my great-grandmother's voice and visiting her as she asks me "what am I doing here?". It wouldn't be the first-time I find myself with people who have passed away in my dreams, and they ask me in one way or another what I'm doing there. Me, I'm like - what am I doing where? Where am I?

My reaction to these dreams at first was like . . . Okay . . . lol . . . it was odd but I never thought too deeply about them. Then I started having more and more dreams related to death, and then I started paying attention. I noticed I wasn't scared in any of these dreams (and there's more details about them that I'm not sharing here), and it got me thinking about how death and ghosts in particular are portrayed in film. More on this later.

These dreams have stayed with me (and I don't usually remember my dreams, but as I always say, when I remember my dreams it's because I'm supposed to and/or something is being communicated to me), and I've tried to make sense of them, but I don't have any answers I'm completely sure of. I do know that the more I have acknowledged these dreams, the more they come to me. I feel like acknowledging dreams and the dream world in general is telling this world "I am open to you".

Back to the portrayal of ghosts - kids movies can truly be healing. Check out the section of this website where I talk about my favorite films and TV shows I watched during my time in Arizona, and how #adulting is not always what it's cracked up to be. Anyway, hang tight with me, I know this is a lot of words, but I really want to share this.

Last Fall I watched 28 Days Haunted; a reality tv show that sends paranormal investigators and psychic-mediums to some of the most haunted houses in the United States. I personally didn't like this show at all because there was this overwhelming focus on evil, fear and trauma. If I could write Netflix, I'd tell them to take the show off their streaming service and cancel it. Even though I know the participants signed up for the experience, I can't imagine what they were going through.

After watching that show I had to cleanse my aura and remember there are other portrayals of death and ghosts, like "Coco" (2017 -video clip shown below), "Casper" (1995), "Haunted Mansion" (2003), "Ghost" (1990) and even "Beetlejuice" (1988) and "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2003). A bit of fright like the Sixth Sense (1999) is okay (not opposed to snuggling up with friends/bae and watching a scary movie), as long as I know there are other ghost stories out there and find balance around different representations. Death, funeral rites, ghosts ect shown through magical realism, fantasy, comedy and more is cool. It's worth it to contemplate how all these things are being served to you.

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Well, I've written so much and think I will end here: the more I think about death and all that it is connected to, for example, the soul, how different families and cultures honor and remember a person's life, grief, dreams, the ancestral realm, mediums, God, the unknown and more, it feels like a really rich and tender topic to explore.

#dreams #dream journal #lavender #herbalism

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trafficsitespeed · 2 years

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Trippie redd lifes a trip youtube

Let us know if you'll be tuning in to Life's A Trip down in the comments. Following its premiere, a new episode will launch every other day. Produced by Trooper Entertainment, the eight-episode Snap Original series is set to premiere on June 5th. He then reflects on each of the aforementioned social issues before adding, “I want to listen to understand what’s wrong with the world and become part of the solution.”Ĭheck out the full trailer for the new series above. We can’t afford to look the other way anymore.” “I lost a friend to the opioid crisis and even more to gun violence. “I’ve lived through wildfires and pandemics,” explains the "Excitement" singer. The trailer for the upcoming show pans through visuals of Black Lives Matter protests, wildfires, and Los Angeles residents before Trippie eventually chimes in. After months of teasing, Trippie Redd has dropped his new album, Life’s A Trip.The 14-track LP is lead by his Travis Scott collaboration Dark Knight Dummo. It will also highlight charitable organizations like Without Shelter, CA Innocence Project, and Ghetto Gastro.

Questions of how Gibb connected with the rapper and his team will have to go unanswered for now Gibb hasn. Based in Los Angeles, the docuseries will additionally feature several other names in music as guests including Miguel, Machine Gun Kelly, and G-Eazy. The cover art to Trippie Redd’s 2018 debut album, Life’s a Trip, released Aug. He also added collaborations with everyone from Travis Barker to Clean Bandit to Lil Baby.As Hype Beast reports, the multi-platinum artist will focus on different topics surrounding race and policing through conversations with the LAPD, the homeless crisis through conversations with residents of LA's Skid Row, wrongful incarceration, mental health, drug addiction, and food insecurity. Trippie Redd to me prior to this was just some meme soundcloud rapper who looked like a zombie but after a few listens I realized how much I liked it.

Iann released a two-track bundle, Still Here, which includes his second collaboration with Trippie Redd, "shots in the dark" that currently has over 30 million streams and video views worldwide. I almost turned it off, but I didnt and thankfully, im glad I didnt, cause while LIFES A TRIP is by no amazing, but its highs are unbelievably high and made me a fan. 1400 Life’s A Trip Limited Merch Trippie Redd ×. It’s safe to say that before Friday’s release of Life’s A Trip, 19-year-old Ohio rapper Trippie Redd was quite simply one of the. Shop our selection of Trippie Redd today. OneThousand Projects, LLC / Uproxx Studios. You can also upload and share your favorite Trippie Redd desktop Life Is A Trip wallpapers. Rapper and singer Iann Dior joins, Trip At Knight Tour following his biggest year to date, he earned a number 1 Billboard Hot 100 for his feature on the single "Mood" with 24KGoldn, which spent 10 weeks inside the Top 10 and is now 4x Platinum. Searching for 1400 Life’s A Trip Limited Merch We’ve got Trippie Redd tops starting at 67 and plenty of other tops. Tons of awesome Trippie Redd desktop Life Is A Trip wallpapers to download for free. This album serves as the sequel to his 2018 debut studio album, LIFE’S A TRIP. TRIP AT KNIGHT, is Trippie Redd’s fifth studio album and his second project of 2021, following the February 2021 release of the rock themed deluxe edition of his album, Pegasus. Sign In Listen Now Browse Radio Search Sign In LIFES A TRIP Trippie Redd. Stream songs including Together, Taking a Walk and more. His debut studio album, Life's a Trip, from 2018 and second album, !, in 2019 both reached the top five of the Billboard 200, while his fourth mixtape, A Love Letter to You 4, in 2019, topped the Billboard 200 chart, and his third studio album Pegasus in 2020 reached number two spot on the Billboard 200. Listen to LIFES A TRIP by Trippie Redd on Apple Music. Michael Lamar White IV, aka Trippie Redd first broke into mainstream rap with his debut mixtape, A Love Letter to You, in 2017, which turned gold in 2019, and its lead single "Love Scars," the mix came in at number 64 on the Billboard 200 and 32 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts.

#Trippie redd lifes a trip youtube

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joshjacksons · 3 years

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Joshua Jackson interview with "Mr Porter" (2021)

Minutes before Mr Joshua Jackson joins me in a booth for a Friday afternoon drink at a vibey hotel bar in Santa Monica, he’s confronted by his past. Or rather, a woman in her early twenties who is binge-watching Dawson’s Creek, the teen show about a close-knit group of high-school friends coming of age in a sleepy American town, which made Jackson incredibly famous between 1998 and 2003. The series, which also made household names of Ms Michelle Williams and Ms Katie Holmes, went off air 18 years ago, but is now streaming on Netflix, to the bemusement of Jackson, who played lovable rogue Pacey Witter. “This girl was like, ‘Are you...?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am. He got old. I’m sorry to break it to you,’” he says, before ordering an iced tea and a charcuterie board to tide him over until dinner time. “It always surprises me when young people say they’ve just got into Dawson’s Creek. I’m like, ‘Is it a costume drama to you? Do you feel like you’re watching a historical documentary?’”

The idea of a Friends-style reunion episode or a Sex And The City revival feels equally far-fetched to Canadian-born Jackson, now 43 and wearing it well in a pale green linen shirt and tailored linen trousers by Oliver Spencer that complement his fading brown hair and Cali-tanned skin.

“I don’t know why you’d want to [bring it back],” he says. “Nobody needs to know what those characters are doing in middle age. We left them in a nice place. Nobody needs to see that Pacey’s back hurts. I don’t think we need that update.”

And Jackson doesn’t need Dawson’s Creek. From Mr JJ Abrams’ sci-fi series Fringe (2008-2013) to the Golden Globe award-winning The Affair (2014-2019), from Ms Ava DuVernay’s ground-breaking true-crime drama When They See Us (2019) to the recent Ms Reese Witherspoon and Ms Kerry Washington-produced Little Fires Everywhere (2020), he has commanded the small screen – with a collection of dynamic and diverse work – ever since.

His latest role as Mr Christopher Duntsch, the Texas surgeon convicted of gross malpractice when 33 of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them and two of them died, in chilling Peacock crime drama Dr Death, is only stepping his career up another gear.

“I’ve never played anyone irredeemable before,” says Jackson, who is joined in the eight-part series (based on the 2018 Wondery podcast of the same name) by Messrs Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin. “He is charming, gregarious and has a high-level intellect, but he’s also a misogynist, probably a sociopath, certainly a narcissist and a complete incompetent who is incapable of seeing himself.”

If Duntsch is terrifying, then Jackson’s portrayal is even more so. The artist formerly known as Pacey is virtually unrecognisable (thanks to prosthetics) in the opening scene, but the real challenge for Jackson was allowing himself to view someone who is so “spectacularly evil” as a human being in order to walk in his shoes. “It’s a more damning portrayal of the man to make him into a human being, rather than just make him the bad guy,” he says. “He really believes he’s the hero, he’s the genius and that he’s the victim, so once I got past my own judgment, all the other things fell into place.”

Jackson might have his pick of stellar roles – and challenges – now, but it has not happened by accident. Take it from someone who has been in the business since landing his first job aged 14 in Disney’s live-action movie series The Mighty Ducks, opposite Brat Pack alumnus Mr Emilio Estevez.

“You try to make it look like it happens accidentally,” he says, “but there is no way to do this and not be ambitious. I’d say I’m extremely ambitious because I’ve been doing this cutthroat job for nearly 30 years. I’m in the pay-off phase of my career now. One of the benefits of surviving for as long as I have is you get to learn from your own mistakes.”

Such as? “I wouldn’t say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ because it all becomes bricks in a path, but [after Dawson’s Creek] I was not choosy enough about the things I was doing. You get stuck. You start trying to perform the performance you think people are hoping to see you do. I was so used to working all the time that I just worked all the time. There was definitely a conscious moment in my mid-twenties when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying the work that I was doing. My manager at the time just said, ‘Take a breath. You’re burnt out.’”

The turning point came in 2005, when Jackson was offered a role in the two-hander Mr David Mamet play A Life In The Theatre, opposite Sir Patrick Stewart. “God bless him, Patrick could have made my life miserable because I had no idea what I was doing, ” he says. “I hadn’t been on stage since I was a kid and now I was in the West End in over my head. But it reminded me that I actually enjoyed being an actor, that it’s not about the red carpet or travelling around the world. What I really enjoy is working on good material with good people.”

It’s no surprise Jackson’s time on Dawson’s Creek led to a career crisis. From the ages of 19 to 24, he lived with his fellow cast mates in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming day in, day out, in an arrangement he likens to college. “You get to the end and they’re like, ‘Here’s your degree. Go live now. You’re an adult. Go out into the world,’” he says.

But most graduates don’t have to deal with global fame. “It’s transitory. You’re only ever cool for a moment and then you become much less cool. I was always pretty dubious about flatterers,” he says, recalling a time he was stung in London in the mid-2000s. “I went on a date in Hyde Park with a woman whose name I will not use – she was socialite-famous – and she was acting completely bizarre, looking over her shoulder the whole time. I came to find out that she had hired a photographer to follow us through the park and gave a whole story to the tabloids about how I was going to meet her family.”

It was his growing fortune, rather than fame, that caused Jackson the most anxiety. “Suddenly, at 19 years old, I was making more in a week than most of my friends’ parents would make in a year,” he says. “It was lovely to have the money, but it was that feeling of nobody is worth that kind of money. You feel like a fraud and it took me a long time to forgive myself for not being the thing that I was perceived as.”

Born in Vancouver, but raised in Topanga, California, until he was eight (before moving back to Vancouver following his parents’ divorce), Jackson bought his childhood home in 2001 and lives in it today with his wife, British Queen & Slim actor Ms Jodie Turner-Smith, and their 15-month-old daughter.

“My father unfortunately was not a good father or a husband and exited the scene, but that house in Topanga was where everything felt simple, so it was a very healing thing for me to do,” he says. Fast-forward to 2021 and his baby daughter now sleeps in her father’s childhood bedroom. “There was a mural of a dragon on the wall in that room that I couldn’t believe was still there, years later. The owner [who sold him the house] said, ‘I knew it meant a lot to somebody and that they were going to come back for it some day.’”

Becoming a first-time parent during a pandemic sounds stressful, but it afforded Jackson months at home with his wife and child that his normal work schedule wouldn’t have allowed.

“I now recognise how perverse the way that we have set up our society is,” he says. “There is not a father I know who works a regular job who didn’t go back to the office a week later. It’s robbing that man of the opportunity to bond with his child and spend time with his partner.”

Despite his obvious career ambitions, fatherhood has changed Jackson’s priorities in “every possible way”, he says. “It’s 100 per cent changed how I approach my work and my life. That has been made so clear to me in this past year. For me to feel good about what I’m doing day to day, my family has to be the central focus.

“There are plenty of things left for me to do, but now the thing that gets me excited is experiencing the world through my daughter’s eyes. I can’t wait to take her scuba diving. I can’t wait to take her skiing. I can’t wait to read a great book with her. I’m not worried at all she’ll be a wallflower. She’s been a character from the word go.”

Jackson met Turner-Smith, 34, two days after his 40th birthday. He had been single since his 10-year relationship with German actress Ms Diane Kruger ended in 2016. “I was not looking to fall in love again or meet the mother of my child, but life has other plans for you,” he says.

The couple met at a party. Turner-Smith was wearing the same The Future Is Female Ejaculation T-shirt Ms Tessa Thompson’s character, Detroit, wears in the 2018 film Sorry To Bother You. “That’s what I used to break the ice. I shouted, ‘Detroit!’ across the room. Not the smoothest thing I’ve ever done, but it worked. We were pretty much inseparable from the word go. It was a whirlwind romance and I can tell my daughter I literally saw her mother across a room and thought, ‘I have to be next to this woman.’”

A self-confessed “useless” shopper, Jackson gives his wife full credit for his current wardrobe. He is jewellery-free, apart from a wedding band and a gold signet “JJ” ring on his little finger (a present from his wife), and discovered tailored sweatsuits (by Stampd and Reigning Champ) in the pandemic.

“Jodie has influence in the way that a wonderful wife encourages you, through love, to dress well. She was like, ‘We’re going to throw away all the sweatpants from your past and I’m going to get you some that actually make you look like an adult male and you will still feel comfortable around the house,’ and I’m like, ‘What an amazing idea!’ Who knew you could get sweatsuits that actually look good on your body?”

Jackson’s style has evolved, he says, “from slovenly teen to it’s-nice-when-your-clothes-actually-fit-you”. The penny dropped after he auditioned for his former co-star Estevez, who was directing the 2006 Mr Robert Kennedy biopic Bobby. He said to me, ‘You only got this job because I know you. You came in here to play a very well-put together 1960s political operative and you’re wearing jeans and a hoodie.’

“I had to grow up a little bit. We are very much raised in Canada to never, ever show off, so it took me a while to recognise it’s OK to look good when you go out.”

Still, when you’ve grown up in front of the camera, “every pimple literally documented”, and lived (very successfully) to tell the tale, you can probably be forgiven for the odd fashion faux pas.

“I wore a silk Ascot to an event once in Paris and I still have nightmares about it,” he says. “I looked like Fred from Scooby Doo, but you live and learn.”

#joshua jackson #interviews #jodie turner smith #dawson's creek #dr death #fringe #emilio estevez #mr porter #patrick stewart #michelle williams #katie holmes

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ggukkieland · 4 years

Text

📕CURRENT READS (2020 October)

🌹 Fics I’ve enjoyed reading this October, with some few unread ones (still have 4 to 5 days to finish!). Waah I have read a lot 😲 I can’t believe I’m almost complete with this list 🥳. Usually when I post and organize the list, half of it are still on #toread status. I thought of curating Halloween-themed fics 🎃 but I ended up reading any genre anyway😁.

Again, credit goes to these awesome writers! Sending them lots of love and virtual hugs 🥰🤗💜🥰🤗💜🥰🤗 .

✅ - done reading | S (smut) F (fluff) A (angst)

🥕[Ongoing Series - to check weekly]

Still reading the ongoing series from last month’s reading list, whenever there is an update 😊

I Feel You in my Heart by @purpletaecup - MYG | exes au, second chances, some chapters have smau elements | A, S, F (really good story development 😭)

[7/?] nearly 2 months after their divorce, yoongi and y/n wade through the aftermath of the fallout by themselves. yoongi is moving on with someone else while y/n finds herself stuck in waves of anxiety and depression. soon enough, they are brought together again by an unfortunate accident

If it Harms None, Do What You Will by purpletaecup - JJK | smau, comedy, supernatural au, fantasy au, witch!reader, demon!jungkook | F, S 🎃

[6/?] it’s the beginning of October and green witch y/n has been preparing for all of the spooky activities she needs to do for all hallow’s eve. one of her older friends gives her a ritual candle for protection. a couple of drops of blood and a wonky magic circle later, there is a high level demon sitting on the floor of her living room.

We Live with a Ghost by @smaubts - JJK | smau, comedy, ghost au, roommates au | F 🎃

[6/13] when jungkook convinces his roommate, y/n, that their house is haunted by an evil ghost, they decide their best option is to contact with it and make it leave but end up summoning an actual ghost by accident.

Swan Black by CharWrites [AO3] - JJK | fantasy, supernatural, enemies to lovers, dark fantasy, apocalypse, Fae!Jungkook, Fae!Yoongi, Fae!Taehyung, LOTR/Mortal Instruments/Labyrinth vibes | A, S (I love this! It’s like watching LOTR 😍) 🎃

[10/?] So's twin brother, Jimin, has been kissed by darkness: an evil that has spread across the land and has claimed many souls. They only have weeks until the darkness consumes him. Once consumed, he will be governed by the unsullied: a powerful race of Dark Fae that has overtaken the world.

So seeks out a rogue Fae Prince, Kook, who is her only hope, if she can survive his deadly charms and irresistible lure especially when he is much more interested in possessing her, mind body and soul.

Third Wheeling by @taetaewonderland - MYG | strangers to lovers au, ceo!yoongi | A, F, S 🥰

[1/?] Min Yoongi is a strict man. Time is money to the CEO of Kisung Connected. He isn’t interested in conventional things or wastes of time. He’s an asshole. But, you didn’t realize until it was too late. Until you met him at the club and it changed your life forever.

Bad Friends by @hollyxqx- MYG | friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, neighbor au, college au, fwb au | A, S, F (what a good angst 😥)

[1/3] hooking up with your childhood best friend was never your plan, but neither was falling in love with him either. he’s troubled but his heart is gold. when you move away for college, things start to take a turn.

House of Lilies by @suqakoo - JJK | mafia au, arranged marriage au | A, F, S

[3/?] Jeon Jungkook is the only heir to Dal Gurimja. He is the poster child for mafia bosses. He’s a feared hit-man among the underground world, and a successful CEO among the socialites of Seoul. Pair him with a castaway girl who’s been out of society for twelve years, and… what do you get?

Your Eyes Tell by @njkbangtan - JJK | soulmate au, enemies to lovers au, roommates au, sugar baby (but not really), slow burn | A, F

[5/?] You live in a world where people see in black and white. The solution to finally see the colors? It’s simple. You need to meet your soulmate and look at him in the eyes, but what if the person bound to you is already contented with the monochromatic world? What if…Jeongguk, your soulmate, is already in love with someone else?

I hate u, I love u by @bbangpanmen - JJK | fwb au, friends to lovers au, smau | A

[17/23] he uses you to forget her; you let him because you love him.

Puzzle by @kimvvantae - JJK | fwb au, friends to lovers au, college au | A, S, F (I’ve read this before, around 2018-19 and I thought it was discontinued. Glad there’s an update ^_^)

[7/?] the line between friendship and something more has never been crossed - but that changes after a break up and a drunken night, when you not-so-accidentally cross this line to something much more. what happens when after this accident your non-matching puzzle pieces seem to match in a way you’ve never imagined?

The Lesson/Min Boy by @adventuresinwonderlust - MYG | bad boy!yoongi, dom-sub elements, enemies to lovers, brat!reader | S, A, F

[6/8] No summary provided but it’s the twisted story between bad boy Yoongi with angsty backstory and this brat/rich kid. I really liked how it was written though. I made a mistake of reading part 4: Two Months Too Long, which should’ve been the 6th story to read if you follow the author’s sequence.

Popular-ish by @hansolmates - JJK | popular!jungkook, college au, fwb to lovers, shy!oc | F, S, A

[9/?] drabble series: you are way out of jungkook’s league. Or is it the other way around?

Date Me by @latetaektalk - JJK | enemies to lovers, fake dating au, rich kid au | A, F,

[prologue + 1/?] when obnoxiously rich and spoiled frat boy jeon jungkook comes up to you one day and asks you to fake date him for money, you definitely should have said no. because before you knew it, you were going on insta dates with him and having lunch with his equally obnoxiously rich and spoiled friends.

All Over You by @zibermuda - JJK | enemies to lovers, nerd!jk, fuckgirl!reader | S, F

[2/?] you don’t usually go for the quiet, nerdy type, but Jungkook’s by far the best looking guy in your year. You just can’t help yourself. You have to have him. Small hiccup; he hates you

Effortlessly by @gyukult - JJK | friends to lovers, neighbors au,

[8/?] “Reciprocate feelings?” Jungkook crosses his arms before he continues, “They should know that you’re the only girl in my life.“ Jungkook has been your best friend and neighbor since you could remember, but what you can’t recall is when your feelings began develop for him.

HEI$T: A JJK Fic by lucidly [AO3] - JJK | heist au, action, bangtan are thieves, vigilante au | A, S

[3/?] Six years after being thrown into the world of forgery, espionage, and heists, Mona and her team face competition like never before: The Bulletproof Boy Scouts, a fabled Korean gang of thieves that everybody seems to know, but no one has seen. When she comes face to face with all 7 of them, Mona knows: they're real, and this job won't be like the others. For years she has followed the money, but could it be time that she follow her heart instead?

🥕[Completed AUs/Series- to read]

✅ - done reading (also there seems to be a lot of JJK fics)

Creep @xjoonchildx - MYG | S, pwp, yandere ✅

Guilty @xjoonchildx - KNJ | A, S, mafia au, second part of Guarded AU (an awesome JHS series)

Chapter One: How Odd Chapter Two: Incheon Mall Tube Tops Final Chapter: Is Something Burning? Epilogue: Better Than Okay

Paddle with Me @yoongs-jeontae - JJK | A, S, enemies to lovers, camp counselor au, pwp ✅

Hate Me @themfchase - JJK | S, collegel!au, enemies to lovers au, fuckboy!jk, pwp ✅

Devil in a Blue Suit @yeojaa - JJK | F, S, idiots to lovers, established au, good boy!jungkook

main story ✅ + drabbles ✅

Sweetest Crush @minjoonalist - JHS | F, S, brother’s best friend au

Fake Love @aquaminwrites - JHS | F, S, A, fake dating au, enemies to lovers ✅

Faded Love @jamaisjoons - PJM | A, S, marriage au, infidelity ✅

Brown-Eyed Baby @vinterjeon - JJK | A, S, F, exes to lovers, single dad!jk

01 02 ✅

Why We Got Married @ktheist - KTH | F, S, arranged marriage au, slow burn ✅

Lonely Hearts Club @dovechim - JJK | S, F, enemies to lovers, wedding au ✅

Come to Me @jeonsweetpea - JJK | S, A, F ,friends to lovers, college au ✅

Satan on the Strip @noir0neko - JJK | S, A, demon!jungkook ✅ 🎃

No Face @seokoloqy - MYG | A, S, F, demon au, supernatural au ✅ 🎃

Take a Chance @crystaljins - JJK | A, Hanahaki au, co-workers, very angsty but Seokjin provides comic relief

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 ✅

The Lottery Offering @skswriting - JJK | A, F, S, werewolf au, sort-of arranged marriage au ✅

A Beautiful Epiphany @onherwings - JJK | A, S, F, friends to lovers, unrequited love, artist!jungkook ✅

Au Naturel (sequel) - drabble, established au ✅

Broken Dreams @ddaenysus - JJK | A, soulmate au, unrequited ✅

And Mended Hearts (sequel) - A, S, soulmate au, college au ✅

Coin Toss @yoondoze - JJK | A, mafia au, detective au, exes au, plot twist 👀 ✅

I Knew It Was You @hoseokmylovesworld - JJK | S, F, werewolf au, college au ✅ 🎃

Little Blue @pars-ley - JJK | F, S, friends to lovers, college au, with TW ✅

Little Blue Pill @dreamescapeswriting - JJK | S, pwp, friends to lovers ✅

Smitten @megahwn - JJK | F, S, arranged marriage au, strangers to lovers au ✅

Hit Me with Your Best Shot @namfine - JJK | S, pwp, martial arts, friends to lovers ✅

Slow and Steady @yoonia - JJK | S, A, artist!jungkook, infidelity, established au ✅

Cockblocked @mercurygguk - JJK | A, S, F, friends to lovers, roommates au ✅

everything I ever wanted (drabble) - morning after ✅

What are you Afraid Of? @cupofteaguk - JJK | F, avatar the last bender au

Part 2 (prompt: if you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed) - avatar au, F, S

demon-etized @jungkxook - KNJ | S, youtube au, ghost hunter au 🎃

Spellbound @jeonseok - JJK | F, slight S, demon au, crack, romcom ✅ 🎃

Raising Demons (sequel) - fluffy, smut, established au, crack ✅ 🎃

What’s in a Name? @minsimagines - JJK | A, F, demon au, soul selling scenario, romance

01 02 03 ✅ 🎃

The Big Yellow School Bus [15k] fringesofsanity [AO3] - JJK | S, A, F, noona, fwb au ✅

once bitten, twice shy [5.6k] obiwrites [AO3] - JJK | A, F, implied S, exes au, parents au ✅

Lose Somebody [26k] @kooala - JJK | A, F, slight S, exes au, camping au ✅

Oh What a World [100k] @taestybae - PJM | A, S, F, fake marriage au, fallen idol au (been wanting to read this since July (!), will finally get to reading this 🥰)

series masterlist [18 chapters + epilogue]

🥕[Drabbles]

okay I just realized they’re all JJK drabbles 😅

Incandesce @eunoiabliss - 544 words | JJK | fantasy au, fluff ✅

Forgetful Confession @suhdays - 991 words | JJK | fluff, slight angst, college au, friends to ??? ✅

Club @taleasnewastime - 2k | JJK | fluff, bestfriends ✅

JJK Reincarnation drabble @ktheist - 571 words | JJK | F, reincarnation (?) | love love this 🥰 ✅

Pup @whipped-for-kpop-fics - 1.5k | JJK | F, humour, werewolf au, established au | this is cute and funny 🤣 ✅

A Line Crossed @underthejoon - 723 words | JJK | A, bodyguard au ✅

Rousing Rendezvous @rookiegukie - 1.5k | JJK | smut, frenemies with benefits, modern royalty au ✅

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tessandscottforever18 · 2 years

Text

Mar 14

SHAWN MENDES GETS SPIRITUAL AS HE EMBARKS ON HIS BIGGEST TOUR YET

The pop star will perform at Samsung + Billboard Present THE STAGE at SXSW on March 19.

I hit a low point a few years ago,” Shawn Mendes admits, his brow furrowing beneath his shaggy curls.

The sun is setting over a Santa Monica, Calif., apartment complex, and Mendes is leaning forward from his seat as he explains a recent major life change: his embrace of spirituality. It started with meditation to bring a little balance to his chaotic life of pop stardom. That turned into reading religious texts, which turned into a deep dive on the Bhakti movement in Hinduism. For nearly a year, Mendes has spent every Thursday meditating and discussing scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita with Jay Shetty, the author of Think Like a Monk.

“I think everybody has a moment where they just decide it’s time to kind of do something different,” says Mendes matter-of-factly. Now spirituality is “a part of my life that is much bigger than I actually even let on.”

It also provided an anchor as the pandemic turned his life as a road warrior upside down. Since signing to Island Records as a 15-year-old in 2014, Mendes had rarely taken much of a break from touring, often previewing and workshopping future hits for live audiences. Not being able to immediately perform his 2020 album, Wonder, was frustrating — but it also presented its own opportunity. “For years, it was run and gun, constant movement, and from a really young age,” says Mendes’ longtime manager, Andrew Gertler. “I don’t think he got the time until recently to really even go, ‘What do I care about?’ ”

Mendes has accomplished a mind-boggling amount at the age of 23: four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, 10 top 20 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, stadium shows opening for Taylor Swift while his friends were taking algebra tests, headline arena tours before he was of legal drinking age. With his string of pop-rock anthems — from the shimmering “If I Can’t Have You” to sensual singalongs like “Señorita,” with former girlfriend Camila Cabello — he has earned the adoration of adult-contemporary radio listeners and tween streamers alike, cementing his transformation from teen Vine sensation to one of the most bankable artists in pop.

Yet as Mendes prepares to embark on his fifth studio album, as well as his most expansive tour to date, he describes a quarter-life crossroads. After a few years in which the pandemic drastically shifted his priorities and his personal life received a new level of tabloid scrutiny, Mendes — who has long been candid about the pressures of the spotlight — is wrestling with his creative future. He speaks openly and thoughtfully about how the hit singles and sold-out shows are no longer the end-all and be-all they once were.

“There was a long while where I was convinced that you just had to write big songs,” he says. Now he’s thinking about a different kind of endgame: “the type of music that I want to make, what I want to hear and what is important to me.”

It helps that Mendes has found success when he has stepped outside his comfort zone. “In My Blood,” the lead single from his 2018 self-titled third album, leaned into a louder rock sound, with lyrics that focused on Mendes’ struggles with anxiety. “The night that song was coming out, I was like, ‘I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life,’ ” he recalls. Instead, “In My Blood” earned Mendes both praise for its vulnerability and a Grammy Award nod for song of the year; it also became one of his most enduring radio hits, reaching No. 1 on the Adult Top 40 chart during a moment when guitars were scarce on pop formats. (For his part, Mendes is glad that time has passed: “I love the sound of guitar rock, and now everything is guitar rock. Watching Olivia [Rodrigo] take that sound by the horns in an insanely talented way is fun to watch.”)

Two years later, fourth album Wonder offered a wide-ranging mix of wall-of-sound pop, synth-driven power ballads, bass-heavy club tunes and heart-on-his-sleeve lyricism, with Mendes co-writing and co-producing nearly every track. Still, while Wonder debuted atop the Billboard 200 and included the top 10 Hot 100 hit “Monster” — a Justin Bieber duet about the pitfalls of fame — the album lacked the type of top 40 staples that Mendes has supplied for years. It has earned 513,000 U.S. equivalent album units, according to MRC Data, whereas Mendes’ previous three albums have all topped 2.5 million. “For the first time in his career, he was really at the helm,” Gertler says. “It takes creative risk to do that, and you have to be OK with the fact that some things are going to work and some things aren’t. But from a musical standpoint, Wonder is my favorite album he has ever made.”

Mendes wants to continue that approach on his next project, for which he’s already “writing a ton.” He’s working closely with Mike Sabath (Lizzo, Meghan Trainor) and has been drawing inspiration from acts ranging from Bon Iver to Paul Simon to Coldplay — performers that don’t “put themselves in a box,” as he puts it. Mendes and Cabello joined Coldplay frontman Chris Martin onstage at Global Citizen Live in New York last September to sing the band’s “Yellow” — and Mendes was so inspired by the experience, he hit the studio the next day to work on “It’ll Be Okay,” a dramatic piano ballad he co-created with Sabath and released in December as a one-off single.

“I think he really cares deeply about what he’s singing and how he’s singing it,” Martin says of Mendes. “I don’t think he’s just in it for the fame or just in it for the money or anything like that. I think he holds the responsibility that he has really well because he has been a teen idol and everything. The music could be the last thing on his mind, but I think it’s at the forefront of his instead. He wants to sing things that really hit people deeply, and I think he’s getting better and better at doing that. So I just champion him all the way.”

Mendes’ next album will also be his first with new leadership at Island, which announced Imran Majid and Justin Eshak as co-CEOs last June after president/CEO Darcus Beese stepped down in early 2021. Now one of the label’s flagship artists, Mendes says his interactions with the new label heads have him feeling excited about his future.

“I got along with them really quickly — they’re just generally positive, about life and the industry,” Mendes says of Majid and Eshak, who were previously co-heads of A&R at Columbia Records. Gertler also points out that much of Mendes’ core team has remained through the regime changes, including Mike Alexander (Island’s newly appointed GM), Sharon Timure (now Island’s head of marketing) and Ziggy Chareton (a longtime Island A&R manager who now shares management duties with Gertler), making up “a nucleus of amazing people who really understand Shawn.”

Before Mendes can officially begin his next album cycle, however, he’s committed to his vision of presenting Wonder on the road with a 73-date tour kicking off in Portland, Ore., on June 27. In addition to a European trek that begins in late spring 2023, Mendes will hit global markets that he hasn’t yet visited in Asia and the Middle East, and he’ll also likely play more stadium dates than usual, including in Latin America, according to longtime touring agent Matt Galle. “We’re not trying to rush,” says Galle of Mendes graduating to bigger venues. “Obviously, we all believe that’s going to happen, and he’s going to be there everywhere at some point. But it’s also important to realize that he’s only 23 — he’s going to have a long career.”

It’s easy to forget how young Mendes is — partly because he has been in the spotlight for such a long time already and also because he lives a low-key life offstage. (His fondness for early bedtimes has earned him the family nickname “Grandpa.”) Since the beginning of his career, Mendes has avoided the types of controversy that often plague young stars adjusting to a bright spotlight — no arrests, no Notes app apologies, nothing that would cause concern for his cross-demographic listenership. Mendes and Cabello, whose duet “Señorita” became his first Hot 100 No. 1 hit in 2019, spent two years as paparazzi magnets before ending their romantic relationship last November, but Mendes says the tabloid focus never bothered him — “I honestly don’t care,” he says with a friendly shrug — or made him lose his focus on the music. “He has always been really good at cutting through the clutter,” says Gertler.

And for Mendes, the path ahead is clear: more shows, more albums, more opportunities to push himself. “I never want to stop playing, even if I’m playing for 10 people in a bar,” he says. “And I only want to play bigger shows if I get to do it by making music that’s authentic.”

The day before our interview, Mendes was 15 miles away at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., taking in the Super Bowl halftime show alongside his pal Niall Horan. As Mendes watched Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem deliver hit after hit at halftime, he wasn’t focused on the setlist or stage setup — instead, he kept thinking about how each artist had changed the contours of the mainstream and shifted popular culture in the process. “In Da Club,” “Family Affair,” “Lose Yourself” — those songs are all timeless in Mendes’ eyes. That’s the bar he has set for his own music.

“For me, it’s not to be like, ‘I have to change the world,’ ” says Mendes, an earnest smile breaking across his face. “I’m just saying, that’s where my ambition goes — to influence culture. I want to honor the opportunity that I’ve been given as an artist, to make something very true.”

#shawn mendes #billboard #billboard magazine #sxsw #sxsw music festival #sxsw music festival 22

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lmjupdates · 3 years

Text

Q&A: Lauren Jauregui On Finally Sharing Her Solo Debut, ‘Prelude,’ Being Vulnerable, Alicia Keys And More

After three years, Lauren Jauregui has finally shared her debut solo effort, 'Prelude.'

This has been a major and well-earned week of celebrating for Lauren Jauregui. It started, last weekend, with back to back Halloween parties. She had a lot of fun going out and dressing up both nights. The first night she says, "I was a last minute Playboy bunny energy. It was like a French maid corset situation that I put ears on and made something out of nothing kind of energy." Then night two she was a mermaid.

But Halloween comes every year. So those parties absolutely paled in significance for Jauregui to the one she got to hold last night (November 4) with friends and family. After years of working on her debut solo effort, the EP, Prelude, is out today.

As I found when I spoke with her earlier this week, nothing is going to match her excitement and pride at finally being able to share the very personal record, which she executive produced and co-wrote every track, with her fans.

I spoke with her about the record, what she learned being in a writing session with Alicia Keys, the artists she admires — from SZA to Summer Walker — for their vulnerability and much, much more.

Steve Baltin: Does it feel a bit surreal to finally be at this place of album release?

Lauren Jauregui: Yeah, actually, that's the exact feeling. It's like, "For real? Just this easy. You just let it go like that?" Because I feel like a mom. I know that's probably an insult to mothers, 'cause it's a whole other kind of process. But I feel like these are my children that are coming out of me and that are about to be released into the world. And there's this sense of calm, readiness, intertwined with this sense of disbelief and intertwined with this light nervousness.

Baltin: So how did you finally know that November 5th, 2021 was the day to give birth?

Jauregui: To be honest, I don't even know if it was a decision like that. I finally signed with AWAL, as my distribution company, and it was the time that made sense. Because everything was ready. I had already finished everything. I was in master mode and just getting the final touches on the master's in my twentieth mix I was on. And it was ready. So why not was the question.

Baltin: You started 2018, and now it is three years later. We've gone through a global pandemic, the whole world seems to have shifted 86 times during the last three years. So have these songs changed a great deal for you in the last three years?

Jauregui: Yeah, so this is what's interesting about these songs. Even though I've grown into the woman I am now from the girl, I was then they still stand the test of time to me. Like they still resonate with very human feelings that people are still definitely going through and feeling. I think that's one of the beauties about being so honest in my work, is that I'm speaking to universal truths, human truths that we all go through in our own ways. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about music, getting to express and then having other people resonate with your expression. But yeah, it's like they've taken on different lives, they mean different things now. They're applicable to other relationships, some of them. They have their own lives, which I think is really cool, personally. [chuckle] But they're still the same structurally. I just embellished them and made them more complete than they were when I wrote them.

Baltin: Are there songs from others that have changed for you as a fan?

Jauregui: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, I heard some of the songs when I was younger and they were bops. I loved the songs, but I hadn't really connected to the full project. And then when I was like 19 or 18, I think was when I heard that full project talked about and for the first time, which is blasphemous to say. But I did, and it changed my life because I was like, "Wow. The way that she connects to her lyric and the way that she connects to her message and conveys it." That is so inspiring, and so that's her album, and I could still listen to that top to bottom every day. It's still relevant and as I grow through life, the songs grow with me. As I learn more about myself, as a woman I think I would be. And I hope my project can do that for people too.

Baltin: For your project what are the songs for you that particularly grew with you or that have changed?

Jauregui: I think "Sorry" is like that. And I think "Colors" is like that, 'cause they're just like explorations of self and dealing with the downs of life and moving through them in some sort of deep vulnerability, but trying to find the strength in that. So I think that thematically that continues to mean different things to me as I get older.

Baltin: What was it about Vic Mensa that made him the right fit? And how did you guys come together?

Jauregui: Yeah, so "Scattered" was a song that I wrote and produced in 2019. And I just sonically really wanted to invoke that unresolved tension inside of myself of like, "I don't feel like myself, but I'm asking for help." And that's why the chorus changes happen the way that they do, they kind of take you into a little bit of an uncomfortable place on it, like ear wise. Yeah, I think Vic is an amazing fit because he is so honest in his expression as well lyrically. And he talks very openly about his struggles with mental health, and I think his perspective is important. Especially in a time like this where we're all coming to terms with the fact that we are walking around this globe, emotionless, f**king disconnected beings refusing to connect to ourselves and each other because we're also scared all the time. And I think that Vic does a really good job of communicating that, and I think that that's what the song was communicating. And so yeah, he just bodied it.

Baltin: How has the response been to the fact that, in a way, you're calling people out, because by making yourself vulnerable at a time when everybody doesn't know how to talk you're pointing that out?

Jareguai: A lot of people don't know how to communicate their feelings, and I think that there's some artists who explore that complexity, and then there's artists who ignore that complexity and just make stuff that they think other people will like. And I think that that's obvious when you listen And these are the songs that resonate with me and I think my only intention for them is that they resonate with others in the same kind of way. They are cathartic for me to get out of myself, that they're cathartic for people to listen to and maybe connect with themselves a little more.

Baltin: Are there moments on the album that surprised you when you go back and hear them?

Jauregui: Yeah, "Sorry" is definitely one of those for me and yeah, all of them, but I think "Colors" is also one of those for me, when I listen to it. Sometimes I listen to it when I'm in a place of completely past that space of doubt, and then other times I listen to it, like right when I'm in one those deepest pits of the doubt. And I hear it, and I'm like, "Woah, wait no, we have to pull ourselves out of this."

Baltin: When you look at being vulnerable in music and I think it's such an awesome thing too because there are certain artists who do it well, and there are certain contemporary artists who do it well.

Jauregui: I have a lot of respect for SZA and Summer Walker, like the two of them in the way and H.E.R., the way that they express themselves in their songwriting is really, really, really spectacular, I think. My collaborators, Vic and 6lack for sure, are like that to me, 6lack is an insane writer and I'm so connected to his spirit, he's a Cancer like me. And like I said, SZA is someone that I really admire as a songwriter. She does an incredible job of articulating her experience and her pain and her joy and her confusion with life and just her experience. And I really love that about her. Kali Uchis as well, does that. I think she's a sick songwriter just in the way that she expresses herself and tells her story. And there are contemporaries of mine, Kehlani, I think does the same, there are contemporaries of mine that are friends of mine that I think are really just talented in that regard of being able to articulate Jhene Aiko as well. I think I would add to that list. And Summer, like I said, Summer Walker, I think she's really talented, her penmanship and just the way that she articulates her reality and her feelings. And that's what's important to me when it comes to listening to this music.

Baltin: Are there those artists that you've gotten to be around that have inspired you with the fact that they just carry themselves like they belong?

Jauregui: Yeah, definitely. Anderson.Paak is one of those people for me. He's like a good friend of mine and has always been just really cool and real, and just has always acknowledged my gifts and respects me as an artist. And so that's been really cool. I think Ty [Dolla Sign] as well, when he and I were together he taught me a lot. And he took me under his wing a lot, even if it was subconscious in his reality. For me, just watching him work and be the savant that he is, and his talent, and seeing his work ethic just really taught me a lot vicariously. And he is just cool, like he just knows who he is and does what he does. I think Alicia Keys. I was in a writing session with her one time and seeing her in her vulnerability and her rawness, and her process, was really inspiring to me because I admire her so much as a songwriter and as an artist. Before I was in that session I was rigid about it needing to be perfect before somebody could hear it or it needing to be a really good melody in order for me to even suggest it. Like that fear of failure, that fear of it's sounding bad and people thinking that I'm not talented because of that. But yeah, I just learned a lot from that experience as well. It was just like relaxing into the truth of who you are and knowing that even if you're imperfect, the perfection comes from exploring that imperfection.

Baltin: What are the moments from this record that you are most excited to do live, and do them in front of an audience and see how audiences respond to songs off Prelude?

Jauregui: Honestly, I'm just excited all around for the experience of feeling people in front of me while I sing again, [chuckle] but I am really looking forward to singing "Scattered" live. I'm looking forward to just feeling the crowd, feel their feelings out with me for their own reasons. I think that's one of the most magical things about music is that it's a frequency and it enters people's bodies, whether they know it or not. The words enter your subconscious, even if you don't know it, so I'm excited to feel that. And see whoever it is that it inspires.

Link: (x)

#lauren jauregui #interview #postedbymarina

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sugar-petals · 4 years

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Can u introduce yuzuru to us the caro way?👀

so you want to know about the one and only. ♡😌

yuzuru hanyū (25) of sendai, japan: the most beautiful ice prince with a heart of gold.

….an artist clearly not of this world, he’s been sent to us from another realm. 19 world records, two olympics won, dubbed the greatest figure skater of all time. and the most precious bean on top of that.

but let’s start from the beginning, shall we ♥︎

so, want to spot yuzu on the ice? use this checklist. slender silhouette, an even slimmer waist, feather-like outfits (he sketches those himself; the fandom lovingly calls him swanyu), soft blushy face. he has great androgyny.

outside of performances, you see him either with a deer’s gaze or the brightest, biggest eye smile. also, he’s usually found sitting with his wife:

which is the ice 😄 these two are together forever. you can discern yuzu from a mile away by how he treats his working ground.

there is a purity to him. you’d not guess that this is one of the most ardent athletes if you didn’t see what’s around his neck after competitions. the guy’s cuteness is as compelling as his skating technique.

look for it: yuzu’s face is super suave and rosy up close, even after his most energetic performances. some men are handsome, others pretty, he is both.

even acoustically, he’s hard to miss. applause is all around, and he’s highly expressive. if you see a crying young man getting the high score, that’s yuzuru hanyu. you’ve not seen more beautiful happy tears.

and score reactions, anyway:

so, aye loves, the rumors are true. a cutie-pie off the ice, animated, a real unabashed meme — yuzu is easy-going, talkative. cheery, cheeky, one of a kind. his facial expressions are a league of their own.

if you thought this is the sort of guy who watches cat videos, you are correct 😄

yuz-uwu hanyu, everybody:

his undoubtedly feline behaviour is often unexpected, it stands out with its adorableness, too. a sweetheart par excellence.

and, how else could it be: vice versa, the big beast on the rink. he’s cutesy, dorky, very well-spoken in daily life, but when it comes to skating, his seriousness escalates. you blink once and suddenly hanyu is a bedazzling, strutting lion :’D his performances stun with confident elegance.

he becomes full of ardor, drama, and focus. you’d never suspect so much fire burns in him. a showman and ambition icon, hands down.

his skating is dynamic, perfected, and emotional. if you want to see art and the extra mile, tune in when hanyu competes.

the downside is; more light, more shadow. it leaves him crawling on the ice afterwards. yuzu performs so hard, it’s worrying.

he delivers it all. you won’t believe it:

this guy is an asthmatic.

the symptoms aren’t as bad as they used to be, but there are still regular attacks. he said that he’ll never take it as an excuse and often recalls how he started skating because of it. he’s a badass, extremely inspiring. yuzuru defies all limits, including gravity. his jumps have legendary status.

off the rink, you guessed it: he turns into a wholly different person.

it all dissolves completely when he’s dorking around again.

don’t let it deceive you, he’s the no other option than first place type. he could not be any more decorated with titles, he achieved the grand slam in all competitions as of 2020. and still, king of sportsmanship hanyu is respectful and smiley towards all colleagues and never lets anyone feel left out. especially when it comes to his juniors (e.g. yuma kagiyama, 16, below) which says a lot about him.

he bows in every direction before an audience, too. lower than a 90° angle, even. this is more polite than any existing formality in japan.

talk about audience: i introduced fellow japanese skater shoma uno last week, who’s more uncomfortable with social contact and aggression. yuzu, extrovert he is: the exact opposite. he withers away with no people and competition. he’s befriended rivals, had crises over not having someone who could challenge him. when a competitor retires, he’s the one crying in their arms (e.g. with team mate and bff javier fernandez from spain below).

beside his competitive spirit and princely wow factor, hanyu is popular for his winnie pooh tissue box that he caresses, squeezes, and carries everywhere. he loves good luck charms & rituals, pooh is the most important one.

fans throw pooh plushies on the ice after his performances because of it. since it’s gotten so intense, yuzu recently started cleaning them up himself on top of the flower girls for the upcoming skater who could get delayed otherwise. (more about what happens with the piles of plushies later.)

so, the burning question is.

what made yuzuru hanyu emerge so outstanding an entertainer? how does someone causing so much uproar become like that? it’s not just what kind of appearance he was given, although he really looks his part to a T. you don’t have to be an insider to see it right away.

like literally to a fault. and you can tell the way his blades sound on the ice is different. it’s soft even if he does the most hardcore quadruple jumps. i think it’s because his drive to do this is a higher one, hanyu has an altered relationship with the ice. where his devotion comes from has a more severe reason so, massive trigger warning.

this is no exaggeration: yuzuru is considered a hero to the japanese. a survivor of the earthquake 2011, he narrowly escaped the collapsing rink in his hometown on that very day. he’s often talked about how the ice shattered underneath his feet and it was the moment that defined his life forever. he could have been dead by the age of 16. his motivation has been set ever since. this man is compelled by something bigger, that’s why you hear it and you feel it. he wants to skate not just for himself but others and seize every day.

youtube

much of his copious charity work — that’s where all the pooh plushies go — went to mend the consequences of the tsunami ever since, he’s looked upon as a great hope in japan. the minister gave him the people’s honor award in 2018.

now you know why yuzuru has such a fanbase and treats the ice as sacred, you see it in every gesture. his manners are without a single flaw, he helps staff repair the ice after performances.

you might think it’s odd, but he honors the ground. he’s invested in the integrity of it. that’s why he’s the best skater. it’s gratitude and the will to live fully.

he hates to fall on the ice, he hates to damage it. alongside his feathery weight, that’s why the sound he makes while gliding along is so tender.

i think that’s also why hanyu’s signature element is the ina bauer. it doesn’t rely on brutal force, instead this element slides across the rink like a swan. yeah, oh my god.

it’s his most well-known dramatic move. the way he surrenders into it.

hanyu’s back arch and perfect split allow him to do elements no other male skaters can. his biellmann spin, for instance. i know, it’s ridiculous.

and those are just two elements of dozens and dozens. hanyu is a kinetic wizard. i highly rec this record-breaking delivery of his olympic program. in front of his home crowd! he’s just… mind-boggling. i live for his smiles here.

youtube

exceptional skater, exceptional mentor: it’s time we look at another puzzle piece that made yuzu the way he is. the masterful brian orser is hanyu’s beloved coach. missing gold by just one mistake at the olympics 1988, brian is now committed to give others what he couldn’t have— successfully so.

orser took the ice prince to gold twice, this hasn’t happened in 66 years. brian is the nicest and most supportive pooh carrier and yuzu’s utmost rock. hanyu’s talent rests safely in these hands.

he gets strict about punctuality lmao! but other than that, his guidance is gentle. canadian he is, brian’s courteousness mixes well with yuzu’s politeness. their bond is strong. as. hell.

brian picked up yuzu from rock bottom several times. most fateful being hanyu’s accident with a fellow skater during competition warm-ups nov 2014. they collided at a high speed, it was unspeakably nasty. yuzu got knocked out for half a minute and had grave breathing problems but still decided to skate on with what later turned out as an almost-concussion. brian was the most worried ice dad in the world that day.

yuzu cried and crouched and bled like mad and my heart has been broken ever since. i hope he never suffers like that again. promise me you don’t search up the video, it’s a harrowing watch like a stab to the chest. sadly enough, hanyu’s body has still been a notorious wreck, esp. ankle issues regularly give him a hard time 😔

it hurts like a bitch with every jump landing but he takes meds and still manages to win, god knows how. sometimes even with crutches on the podium. at his worst, he’s still the best, it’s a tragedy.

he’s been recovering, or always is, but he pushes himself through injuries. his ambition and perfectionism are boundless. the cause is more important to him than his well-being. this is not an easy guy to stan once you see how he sacrifices and self-destructs. so, it’s good someone protects him.

mostly from himself because nobody has profoundly surpassed hanyu. he has let himself no choice than to contest himself. not even health, only age can stop yuzu. i think that brian understands this ‘curse of a genius’ effect. his mere presence can make hanyu say these rare words:

his two other coaches contribute to that. tracy wilson (left) has proven to understand his playful side the best while ghislain briand (right) helps yuzuru deal with his fears. so you got 3 people taking care of the golden boy. brian once said: “he is very sheltered” and you can see it’s true.

yuzu eased into learning english and communicates well with his coaches. like with everything, he studies hard and often forces himself to speak during interviews to practice. his skills are astounding. his speaking voice is also very soothing, very amicably low and high alike. yuzu is highly intelligent. he always says something eloquent and interesting.

now, privately, hanyu is very much like you’d expect someone so devoted to skating would be like. he doesn’t go out, has no social media, can’t eat nor sleep very well. no cameras allowed during practice. it figures he is attached to winnie pooh, think about it. in the cartoon, pooh is someone who sleeps, eats, and engages with friends plenty.

these are the things hanyu can’t do, doesn’t have time/energy/incentive for. he is barred from balance in life but can at least admire this little carefree plushie for it. especially because pooh represents eating lots while yuzuru doesn’t have a good relationship with food (he says it doesn’t go well with jumps etc.), hanyu lives vicariously through him.

what’s more, you have to see how he throws himself onto others and never wants to let go, yuzuru is extremely cuddly.

to the degree that mere social customs can’t meet how much he really needs. so, what else can he resort to, he loves mascots and plushies. it’s how the tale goes in japan generally, tough work ethic, high responsibility, high pressure, so people turn to cute fluffy things.

he always fondles pooh’s head, even pretends he’s come to life so he has someone to snuggle with. i think that his isolated lifestyle doesn’t help. so, he gets his affection at least there, you can see how happy it makes him. and again: he does this all for charity.

that’s why fellow skaters are so important to hanyu. it really brings out his social spirit and comforts him best, it’s so wholesome. i’ve not seen someone react so relieved to being embraced, like he’s not been touched for months. skating this, skating that. at the end of the day, hanyu wants love.

as he once said, what motivates him is to express himself in the first place. hanyu is a romantic. it’s written all over him. it reflects in his music choices, his elegant motion, how he designs his outfits:

… and how thoughtfully he talks about marriage. he has big plans for starting a family and coaching after he retires. i won’t be the only one squeezing lucky charm pooh in my imagination so it turns out well for him. please make this heart of gold heal and see all his wishes come true ♡🐻

#thank you for attending this talk ❄️⛸#i need a moment this was emotional #figure skating #yuzuru hanyu #brian orser #anon #cub mail 🐅#long post #team japan

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taylizmasterpost · 4 years

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Jake Gyllenhaal and Jealous Liz (October 2010 - February 2011)

Now, there’s a lot to say about Jake and Taylor. The time they got together was a time when he was promoting his movie, Love and Other Drugs, and she was about to drop Speak Now. So at first glance, it look a lot like a traditional PR stunt. However, they do not have a first public meeting -- something that Taylor has with a lot of her other PR relationships (think Calvin at the Fund Fair or Harry at the KCAs), and seemed generally more camera shy.

Jake’s costar in Love and Other Drugs, Anne Hathaway, was also single at the time, and arguably a PR relationship between the two of them would’ve drummed up significantly more buzz for the film, so stunting with Taylor seems an odd choice.

Jake also reportedly annoyed Taylor with how much he wanted to hide from the press, which is interesting. I’m not totally certain if they were real or not, but I’ll put all of their stuff in here, because it’s interesting to note Liz’s reaction to all of it, despite her relationship:

23 October 2010 - Emma Stone hosts SNL. Both Taylor and Jake G show up to support her, supposedly they’ve already started dating at this point and this was their first public appearance together.

"They walked around together backstage, but they were careful not to be seen too close. It was hard to tell if they were together, but everyone was shocked that she brought him," a source told People magazine.

Notice the lack of public meeting. Strange that they just showed up together dating.

24 October 2010 - Liz tweets about listening to Never Grow Up

October 2010 - Taylor writes All Too Well, the first of the three “Nashville songs” -- All Too Well, State of Grace, Stay Stay Stay-- that were written for the Red album before she moved to LA, based on the fact that she said she started writing for Red slightly before Speak Now was released.

We also know All Too Well has to have been written in 2010 because what the copyright record for it says:

Now, it seems to me that this is too soon to be about Jake. It’s obviously a breakup song, and Taylor and Jake have only just started dating (unless they had a secret dating history we don’t know about). It would be weird for her to be writing all this about him while they’re still dating.

All Too Well could be about any of the three women I’ve spoken previously about in this masterpost. However, I’m going to try to make the case that this song is for Liz:

All Too Well is Liz’s favorite song from Red. She has said so on multiple occasions. Years later, when she came to watch Taylor’s Reputation tour in Glendale, Taylor even played it for her as the surprise song. Sure, it could just be that Liz is just a fan, but the song fits where we are in the timeline. Liz has moved on with someone else. Taylor is trying to get over it, but she can’t help but think back to the past she remembers “all too well.”

If the song is about a woman, lines like “back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known” reads to me as Taylor making a (possibly unfounded) dig at closeting. All Too Well also carries the bad driving metaphor with “almost ran the red,” which runs throughout a lot of the other Liz songs on Red, and which Liz will later reference herself in her own music. The lines in the bridge about “asking for too much” and “running scared,” remind me of Taylor insisting she was single during Valentine’s Day, despite spending it with Liz, only to turn around and miss her once Liz got a boyfriend. Lines about loss of innocence are also interesting, when we think about that L Chat post about Liz from earlier...

Of course, obviously, you can think this song is about whoever you want. If you wanna claim it for JH or Joe Jonas or Taylor Lautner or maybe even some girl Taylor went to high school with, be my guest. I personally don’t buy it being about Emily in a post-Dear John world, and the timeline doesn’t read as Jake to me, so I’m giving it to Liz!

25 October 2010 - Speak Now is released. In the album’s prologue, she specifies that the song “Long Live” is for her band, which is interesting to me, considering that the bridge of the song sounds like it might be about a relationship, and the secret message of the song is “For you,” which sounds oddly specific:

Will you take a moment? Promise me this That you’ll stand by me forever But, if God forbid, fate should step in And force us into a goodbye If you have children someday When they point to the pictures, Please tell ‘em my name

The secret message for Mine is “Toby,” which is the name of the actor who played her love interest during the song, making it make no sense for the song to be about him (and, in my eyes, making it more likely she was trying to cover up who the song was really for). We’ve already discussed Story of Us having “CMT Awards” and Back to December having “Tay,” so I won’t beat you over the head with those.

Unlike the original handwritten lyrics to Sparks Fly, which featured the lyric “Get me with those brown eyes, baby,” the version that Taylor put on the Speak Now album had the lyric “hit me with those green eyes, baby,” with the eye color presumably being changed because Liz has green eyes:

The secret message for Sparks Fly is “Portland, Oregon,” which is where Taylor and The Agency covered Tom Petty’s song American Girl in May 2009 during the height of early TayLiz.

26 October 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted together in Brooklyn getting lunch with Emma Stone:

Liz does a sound check for Taylor for the Today Show. A video later gets posted on YouTube and someone leaves this comment noting Taylor and Liz’s chemistry:

31 October 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in Big Sur together and stay at California’s Post Inn Ranch.

Liz spends Halloween with her boyfriend:

1 November 2010 - Taylor’s appearance on Ellen airs. Ellen asks her about Jake. Taylor says “I’m always optimistic about love. Yes, always, sometimes.”

2 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in Santa Barbara together. They get ice cream, interact with fans, and Taylor reportedly laughs at everything Jake says.

16 November 2010 - Jake attends the Love and Other Drugs premiere alone. This is interesting to me, considering if this was a PR relationship you would’ve thought he’d bring Taylor as his date. Still, Paula made some weird decisions in her time as Taylor’s publicist (like putting her with a carousel of 18 year olds), so this could just be Paula thinking that Taylor showing up at the premiere with him would be too obviously read as a stunt. Doesn’t rule it either way. Still, I think Anne would’ve been a better choice for PR for this.

Mid November - Perez Hilton alleges that Jake has picked up Taylor on his private jet to fly her to London because she was “feeling lonely.” Jake was in London promoting Love and Other Drugs so this seems very stunty to me personally.

22 November 2010 - Taylor attends the American Music Awards and wins Favorite Female Country Artist.

Liz tweets congratulations at her and seems generally excited.

24 November 2010 - Love and Other Drugs is officially released in theaters.

25 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake spend Thanksgiving in Brooklyn with Jake’s family.

26 November 2010 - Liz seems to have spent Thanksgiving with Jason:

27 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in a coffee house in Nashville:

And, maybe in response, Liz makes this weird and vaguely jealous Tweet:

Now, I don’t know what this means. Maybe the “you” refers to Liz and she’s having what Carly Rae Jepsen would call “boy problems” -- feeling torn and overburdened between a best friend and boyfriend:

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Or, perhaps, the “you” in this Tweet refers to Taylor, and Liz is trying to say that Jake is “using her up,” maybe meaning taking up her time. Or maybe Liz wasn’t referring to any of this. We can’t really know. Still, it’s interesting.

29 November 2010 - TayLiz hang out and Liz tweets about it. Perhaps to make up for the lack of time spent together since they both got boyfriends.

30 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake have coffee in Nashville:

1 December 2010 - Taylor writes a MySpace post about the CMTs.

Liz tweets about watching Glee, meaning she’s the one who got Taylor hooked on the show and therefore interested in Dianna. Hilarious.

2 December 2010 - Taylor calls Love and Other Drugs a “good movie” when asked about it, and won’t say anything more. She also adamantly refuses to talk about her personal life (This gives me 2018/19 Joe vibes, whatever that means).

3 December 2010 - Liz tweets that her favorite song on Speak Now is Last Kiss. She also tweets at Jason about his cooking:

5 December 2010 - Jake is asked about Taylor and says this:

“One of the greatest parts about being in a relationship is the intimacy you share, but it can be difficult if you’re being watched the whole time.”

This reminds me so much of what Taylor’s currently saying about Joe. Interesting, looking back on it.

7 December 2010 - Jake and Taylor do the “maple latte” pap walk stunt in Brooklyn with Maggie and her daughter. This is the only series of photos of them that I think was a set-up, but that means it’s pretty gross this is the one they chose to bring a child into:

I think the reason this was so obviously a pap walk was to get the “maple latte” in the shot. I’ve already speculated that Taylor had written All Too Well prior to her relationship with Jake, and this stunty pap walk would make sense if she needed to use him to cover for it.

8 December 2010 - Liz makes another weird vague possibly jealous tweet:

Now, in the context of Mine possibly being about Liz and Taylor saying that song is about her “tendency to run from love,” it’s possible Liz is shading Taylor’s pap walk with Jake the previous day. This tweet feels very “back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known.”

However, maybe she’s just really happy with Jason. I don’t know. I don’t know these people.

9 December 2010 - Taylor and Jake drive around LA, Jake yells at the paps.

Compare these to those photos with Taylor Lautner earlier in the timeline. These are not nearly as staged. Take away from that whatever you will.

13 December 2010 - Taylor turns 21. Liz and Caitlin bring her a pizza. Liz tweets at Taylor that she’s changed her life. This is supposedly the birthday that Jake didn’t show up to that The Moment I Knew is about. Liz and Caitlin bringing her pizza if she’s sad about it would make sense...

31 December 2010 - Taylor and Liz spotted together in Nashville. They get Pei Wei and JustJared calls Liz a “gal pal.” Taylor seems upset, possibly about her whole Jake birthday thing. Or possibly something else.

Liz tweets about going for a run and listening to Speak Now:

5 January 2011 - Taylor and Jake break up.

19 January 2011 - Taylor and Jake are spotted together by fans in Nashville, first at a coffee shop and then at dinner. Jake did not have any other business in Nashville, so it can be assumed he came there to talk to Taylor:

CONCLUSION: Were Taylor and Jake real? I don’t know. They really only ever did that one pap walk and didn’t seem to publicly promote each other’s work, as far as I could find, despite both releasing projects while together. The one pap walk they did seems to maybe have been to cover for All Too Well, which had possibly already been written (likely about Liz) before Jake and Taylor started dating.

Were those tweets from Liz jealousy? Or am I reading too much into it?

Either way, Taylor’s had her fun, and now it’s time to maybe start thinking about getting back together with Liz. There’s just one problem: her boyfriend.

The Speak Now Tour Begins (February 2011 - May 2011)

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sinceileftyoublog · 3 years

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Indigo De Souza Interview: Compassion for Different Modalities

Photo by Charlie Boss

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Calling from her home near Asheville, North Carolina earlier this month, singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza is getting ready to go on tour behind her terrific sophomore album Any Shape You Take (Saddle Creek). Like everyone, she’s anxious about navigating the current COVID-19 landscape, but how she and her band adapt to a live performance and play the multi-dimensional songs that make up the record seems to be of little concern. I guess if I was as talented as De Souza, I wouldn’t be worried, either. Released last month, Any Shape You Take is a stunning series of ruminations on love and relationships, platonic and romantic, that span a number of years in De Souza’s life. Raised in a conservative small town in North Carolina by a mom who was an artist, De Souza doesn’t shy away from the fact that her family did not fit in. At the encouragement of her mother, she leaned into her artistic visions, making music as early as 9 years old, releasing her first EP in 2016.

After self-releasing her (very appropriately titled) first album I Love My Mom in 2018, De Souza signed to indie stalwarts Saddle Creek, who rereleased her debut and supplied her with the means to craft a much larger-sounding follow-up. Working with prolific secret weapon co-producer Brad Cook, her first proper label release occupies an incredible amount of genre territory. “This is the way I’m going to bend,” announces De Souza on auto-tuned synth pop opener “17″ before, well, bending in a number of different directions. “Darker Than Death” and “Die/Cry”, nervous songs that were written years ago, sport fitting build-ups, the former’s slow hi hats and cymbals giving way to jolts of guitar noise, the latter’s jangly rock taking a back seat to yelped harmonies. Songs like “Pretty Pictures” and “Hold U” reenter the dance world, the latter an especially catchy neo soul and funk highlight, a simple earworm of a love song. In the end, whether playing scraped, slow-burning guitar or rubbery keyboard, De Souza’s thoughtful and honest meditations center the emotionally charged album, one of the very best of the year.

De Souza takes her live show to the Beat Kitchen tonight and tomorrow night (both sold out) with Dan Wriggins of Friendship opening. Read our interview with De Souza about the making of Any Shape You Take and her songwriting process.

Since I Left You: On Any Shape You Take, there seems to be a good mix of folks you’ve worked with before and folks you’re working with for the first time. What did each group bring to the table?

Indigo De Souza: Brad Cook was co-producing. It was my first time working with a producer on something. That was crazy. He was very supportive of everything and very encouraging. It was nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of who wanted to encourage my vision. I also worked with Alex [Farrar] and Adam [McDaniel] from drop of sun studios in Asheville. They’re both just so sweet and talented. They were engineering but also helped with production as well. I ended up getting really close with Alex, and me and Alex finished out the album together doing vocal overdubs and random overdubs. It feels like he did a lot of production on the album and was a star for me in the process. They were all great to work with. It was interesting to me to have so many people working on the album.

What I realized after the fact, [though], was that it was kind of distracting for me to have so many brains working on it. It taught me I actually feel very confidently about my vision for songs, and I can trust myself to have ideas for my own songs. I think I was scared going in that I was going to come up blank in that scenario because it was such a high-pressure thing, getting on a label and making a high-production album. But I definitely thrived in the space. It was really fun.

SILY: It shows in the finished product. There are so many different styles and subgenres within the record. Do you listen to all the types of music that show up on this record?

IDS: Yeah, for sure. Mostly, I listen to pop music and dance music. That’s probably my most daily genre. I don’t listen to a lot of music daily, though. I listen to music probably a couple times a week when I’m in the car, but it’s so random, and the genres I listen to are pretty random. It depends on my mood. I think when I’m writing, it’s the same way, whether I’m writing a poppier or rock-based song. They’re different moods for me.

SILY: How do you generally approach juxtaposing lyrics with instrumentation?

IDS: With writing, it’s different every time the way they fall into place together. I do notice that one of the more common ways it happens is I’ll be going about my day and hear a melody in my head and start humming it and realize I’m making it up, that I have no record of it before. I’ll start attaching feeling to the melody, depending on what I’m feeling, and at first I’ll be singing gibberish with the melody, but I’ll usually get some headphones on and plug into the computer so I can sing into a microphone. I’ll mess around with the melody and sing random words until something true to me kind of sticks. That’s usually how it goes. Sometimes, I [do] sit down and it comes out in one breath, like the song is already written in my mind.

Honestly, it’s so normalized how songwriting is. It’s such a strange, magical thing that people can write songs that have never been written before. [laughs]

SILY: Thematically, there are a lot of songs on Any Shape You Take where you’re feeling doubts about a relationship, like on “Darker Than Death”. Someone’s feeling bad, and you’re wondering whether it’s you making them feel bad. And on “Die, Cry”, you sing, “I’d rather die than see you cry.” On the other hand, there are some songs like “Pretty Pictures” where you know your place more within the relationship, and you know what’s eventually gonna happen to it. How do you balance those feelings of doubt with knowing what’s gonna happen?

IDS: It’s funny, because the first two songs you mention were written a very long time ago when I was in the only very long-term relationship I’ve ever been in. I was very confused in that time and was having a hard time in general with my mental health. “Pretty Pictures” is the newest song on the album, a last minute addition because another song we had on there didn’t really fit. We looked through my demos folder and chose “Pretty Pictures”, the most recent song I had written at the time, and recorded it for the album. They’re totally different times in my life, and how you said it is definitely how I was. There’s a time I was more confused, and now, love is more simple in my life, and I can process things and see how they are, have compassion for different modalities.

SILY: I love the line on “Way Out”, “There are no monsters underneath your bed, and I’ll never be the only thing you love.” It’s a very logical statement in the face of unbridled emotion that can make you think illogically. Is that contrast something you think shows up throughout the record?

IDS: Within love, over time, I’ve realized that there’s not one person for anybody. There’s a lot of fluidity in the ways people can feel towards other people. That line is definitely a nod to allowing people to love many other people and not taking it personally.

SILY: From a singing perspective, you have a lot of different vocal stylings on the record. I found it interesting you led it off with a track where you’re super auto-tuned. Can you tell me about that decision?

IDS: “17” originally was this demo I made in 2016 or 2017. It was a very old demo. In 2018 or so, I brought the demo to my band at the time, and we created a live version of that song that was nothing like the recording that you hear. The recording was so weird and had a lot of auto-tune and higher-pitched and lower-pitched vocals. We had a live version we played for a while that’s on Audiotree. Whenever we were recording Any Shape You Take, we started to record it the live way and realized it wasn’t feeling right. We listened to the old demo, and it gave this wake up kick to everyone. We got excited by how the demo sounded because we hadn’t heard it in so long. We realized we wanted to record it based on the demo. So that song sounds very similar to the way the demo originally sounded.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album title?

IDS: There are so many layers to the album title. [laughs] It came to me mostly because the album takes so many musical shapes but also so many emotional shapes. It feels like a lot of the themes in the album are about change and acceptance of change and acceptance of a full spectrum of feelings of pain and grief and allowing people to take many forms. It was mainly inspired by the fact that I’ve taken so many forms in my life and am witness to the way changing forms yourself can either push people away or pull them in closer. I’ve always been so appreciative of the people in my life who allow me to take so many different forms and are still there to witness and care about me, whether we’re close to each other or far away. That’s the main reason I wanted to call the album Any Shape You Take. The most beautiful kind of love you can have is allowing someone to be themselves and shift in and out of things freely.

SILY: Is your live show faithful to the studio versions of the songs, or did you have to learn how to adapt the songs to the stage?

IDS: A lot of them sound very similar to the recording. We’ve been having so much fun practicing them and playing them live.

SILY: Is there one in particular you’re most looking forward to playing?

IDS: I love playing “Bad Dream”. That’s just a crazy song to play live because it’s so loud and rowdy. [laughs]

SILY: You have that falsetto in the middle of it, too.

IDS: Yeah. It’s so fun.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, reading, or watching lately that’s caught your attention?

IDS: I’m excited that one of my favorite authors, Tao Lin, just put out a book I haven’t been able to get fully into. It’s called Leave Society. I just got it in the mail last week. Other than that, I’ve just been so, so busy with interviews and work on the computer and with my manager, staying on top of this crazy shift happening on top of my life. I haven’t taken in a lot of media. I was just watching Love Island recently because I wanted to shut my brain down. Somebody was telling me about Sexy Beasts last night, which sounds insane. I’m excited to watch that.

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 3 years

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To Make A Hero – Maria Brink and Andy Biersack ‘Dark Nights: Death Metal’ Interview

Countless iterations of Batman have been created since the character’s DC Comics debut in 1939. He’s been a detective, a Dark Knight and a key member of The Justice League. Of course, the crime-fighting anti-hero also leapt off the page and onto the screen for TV shows and movies such as the 1960s Batman live action TV show, the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series, and even a 2018 Batman Ninja animated film. Now, fans can see — and hear — their favorite action hero in a completely new way with Dark Nights: Death Metal motion-comic series and soundtrack.

The multi-medium endeavor is based on the comic book mini series of the same name written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Greg Capullo. The official soundtrack was produced by Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, Watchmen), who recruited over a dozen musical artists to contribute to the songs. Two such artists are Andy Biersack (Black Veil Brides) and Maria Brink (In This Moment), who came together for the song “Meet Me In The Fire.” Both Biersack and Brink also have speaking roles in the motion-comic.

“I got a call saying that they were doing this series,” Biersack recalls, “and asked if I wanted to do the voice of Batman. For me, not only was it a dream come true, but it was huge to have a creative outlet in a time where there was nothing that could be done.”

Biersack is, of course, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic that kept non-essential workers home for months on end.

“It was this weird period where we couldn’t do anything creative. So to be able to, in some cases, record the audio here in my home studio and pretend to be Batman for a few hours a day was awesome.”

Biersack’s undying love for the anti-hero is well-established, but In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink also professes to adore comic books.

“I’ve always loved them and been fascinated by them,” she says. “I actually got into them more when I was older ⁠— I like all fantasy stuff. I got to have the voice of The Hand, which was so cool. In the middle of COVID, all of us were looking for creative outlets to keep our minds occupied, so it felt like a blessing for sure. To me what was so exciting was to bring in all the musicians and have all of their voices taking on this new storyline. I really loved the creativeness of converging both of these worlds.”

The storyline of the mini series is based on the concept of a dark multiverse, which sees multiple alternate realities and alternative versions of Batman. Told through visuals, dialogue, and music, this project is complex in both content and form.

“What I really liked about this project,” Biersack continues, “is that you have an opportunity to see those iterations individually and how they play into the same storyline. To have every version that you love in the same story is a pretty exciting thing. Especially if you watch the series that they made, you get to see the whole history of this character.”

For the Black Veil Brides frontman, it speaks to the greatness, versatility and longevity of Batman as a whole.

“As someone who enjoys comic book character creating and world-building, I love the idea of having a character that can stand the test of 80 years and have all of these variations, and the validity of one is the same as the other. You can have the Adam West chummy, joke-y Batman and you can have the Frank Miller angry, grumpy, murderous Batman — and they’re both valid versions of the character.”

For Brink, collaborating with Biersack and producer Tyler Bates on their cinematic track “Meet Me In The Fire” was about much more than Batman.

“When I was writing it,” she explains, “I wasn’t just thinking about it in terms of the comic book, but the world in general. That give and take, the struggle, the fight and the power; people wanting to stand with each other and having to go through hard times together — especially where we were all kind of at [with COVID] when we were writing this song. There’s gonna be hard times and you might have to walk through some flames and get your feet burnt.”

Biersack adds, “The idea of Batman, or any character, is there’s some initial injustice that causes them to become the hero that they ultimately become. In those ways, there’s so many parallels to the idea of those moments of absolute darkness or sadness that we all face. And in a year where not only was the world changing on a literal level — a virus that’s traveling everywhere and putting people in danger — but also socially, there were so many changes and important things that occurred last year. The best value that you can have in life is to not just have something difficult to occur, but to learn from it and grow from it.”

So in a time when lives are literally on the line every day, how do these two prominent rock musicians define what it truly means to be a hero?

“I guess a hero to me is someone who really stands up for others,” Brink says. “Someone who really cares about other people and who will risk themselves and whatever it takes to empower other people. It’s selfless. The doctors risking their lives to help these sick people — they’re heroes. They could die.”

“Also just on a more personal level,” Biersack adds, “anybody in your life who inspires you to be a better version of yourself is tremendously heroic. I think if you can find it in yourself to be a hero for yourself and for everyone around you, that is the most important virtue possible. If you aren’t trying your best to be better than you were yesterday, ultimately I don’t know that you’re spending your time that wisely.

“I think at the end of the day,” he continues, “the message that rock n’ roll has always been about is to not put everyone else up on that pedestal. Rise to the challenge yourself and be the hero that you want to see.”

You can catch Black Veil Brides and In This Moment on tour with Ded and Raven Black on their North American The In Between Tour starting Sept. 17.

#maria brink #in this moment #Andy Biersack #Black Veil Brides #2021 interviews

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dailyexo · 4 years

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[INTERVIEW] Lay - 200819 Rolling Stone India: “How Lay Zhang Claimed The Throne of M-pop”

"The singer-songwriter and producer offers an in-depth look into his latest record ‘Lit,’ his evolution as an artist and finding the balance between East and West

When I last spoke to Lay Zhang in 2018, he was embarking on an ambitious but daunting journey to bring Mandarin pop aka M-pop to the world. “I hope they think, ‘This artist isn’t bad,’” he had said with some trepidation in his voice. “I hope that they find my music special and maybe… they’ll want to learn more about me and Chinese music.” The singer-songwriter and producer aspired to create a true hybrid of traditional and modern music, a sound that defines our generation’s ability to package the past for the future.

Zhang, more commonly known by his stage name LAY, first debuted in 2012 as a member of world-famous K-pop group, EXO. Although he remains a member of the group, he’s spent the last couple of years in China to focus on a solo career and spotlight his own country’s burgeoning pop scene. It’s a process he kicked off with his second studio album Namanana in 2018, but he was still some time away from realizing his dream of pushing Chinese pop to a global stage.

It’s been nearly two years since our conversation for Rolling Stone India’s November 2018 cover feature, and any signs of trepidation are a thing of the past for LAY. We could chalk it up to him being two years older and wiser, but I’d like to think it’s because he kept his promise to bring M-pop to the world. If Namanana was just a dip in the pool of fusion experimentation, his latest studio album Lit is the deep dive.

“It is the evolution of M-pop for me,” LAY explains. “I wanted to take it to another level. When you hear the Chinese instruments, you know it is a different sound and vibe. The style is more pop, R&B, and hip-hop influenced with the Chinese instruments thoughtfully mixed in.” Comprising a total of 12 songs (all written and co-produced by LAY) Lit was released as two EPs instead of one LP; the first dropped in June while the second made its appearance in July. Nearly every track presents a fresh blend of traditional Chinese instruments like the hulusi, guzheng, flutes and gong with modern genres like trap, R&B, soul, hip-hop, future bass, dubstep and more. It’s a complex, refined and intricate record, utilizing production techniques that clearly outline LAY’s growth as an artist over the past two years. In retrospect, Namanana comes across a slightly more naive record–innocent and optimistic with a hope that international audiences would embrace both M-pop and LAY. Lit however seeks to take a different path and carves out the future LAY envisions with cool confidence and fearless production.

The tracks seesaw smoothly from Mandarin to English and back, with LAY showcasing both his vocal and rap skills. It’s an extremely powerful and expansive album, hair-raising at some moments due to the sheer surprises the artist packs in (at one point I hear what sounds like the tabla on “Call My Name” and it catches me totally off-guard.) Some of the collaborators on the record include big names like hip-hop hitmaker Murda Beatz, Grammy Award-winning producer Scott Storch, composer and producer Mitchell Owens and Grammy-nominated songwriter Mike Daley to name a few. For the title track “Lit,” LAY recruited China-native Anti-General who created a vicious and chilling trap/dubstep beat to complement lyrics that decimate LAY’s haters, gossip-mongers and the media, challenging them to come forward and take him down if they dare. The track sees the singer-songwriter rightfully crown himself a ‘king’ and leader in the music industry.

If that wasn’t enough, the music video for “Lit” is without a doubt one of the best released in 2020. With hundreds of extras, dancers, impeccable CGI and a compelling storyline, it’s more movie than music video, portraying LAY as a warrior king who refuses to be defeated. As executive producer, music director and co-choreographer on the project, LAY pays homage to China’s rich history and culture with tons of historical references and traditional symbolism. I tell him I particularly loved the symbolism of a white lotus emerging untouched and pure from the black ink–representing LAY’s rise in the industry–and he shares that the magnificent dragon that appears at the end was his personal favorite. “It was super important that we added it in,” he says. “It represents my wishes, aspirations and my relentless desire to always pursue perfection in the works that I create. I want my dancing, visuals, and music to be the very best it possibly can be.”

Lit is also thematically more complex and layered than any of LAY’s previous works, exploring concepts that revolve around confidence, love, fame, the media, success and more. “The album continues to explore chasing your dream,” the singer explains. “This time it’s about more personal things in my life. Like hometown, family and self-doubt.” A phonetic play on the word for lotus (莲 / lian) in Mandarin, ‘lit’ is a clever pun used to describe LAY’s similarity to a lotus and his prowess as a musician. He named the album after the lotus because of the symbolism of it growing and blossoming from dirt or mud. The lotus also continues the theme of duality with Lit’s two-part release, and, according to LAY’s team, “represents a new birth plus a new sound in the midst of all his past achievements.”

The album’s success more than speaks for itself– when the pre-order for Lit went live on China’s QQ Music streaming platform, nine certification records were instantly broken as it surpassed 1.5 million pre-orders within seven minutes and 19 seconds. This immediately pushed the EP to Number One on QQ Music’s daily and weekly album sales charts. Lit has also made LAY the best-selling artist in China in 2020, with a whopping 2.5 million records sold. It’s a testament to his drive and determination as an artist, the attention to detail and refusal to back down. The record’s international success was no less, hitting top 10 positions on iTunes charts across 32 countries, bagging 21 Number One spots and firmly cementing LAY’s position as the global megastar that he is.

Some things however, never change; brand deals, TV shows, multiple singles, EPs and collaborations keep his schedule completely booked and– just like back in 2018– it’s extremely tough to pin him down for a conversation. He’s currently in the middle of filming a reality show and has several other projects in the pipeline, but still makes the time to catch up and answer a few questions for Rolling Stone India. In this exclusive interview, LAY details his most successful record yet, the journey of finding the balance between East and West, dealing with the dark side of media attention and why the relationship between an artist and their fans needs to be a two-way street.

Congratulations on the release and tremendous success of Lit! It is an absolutely phenomenal record and I was thrilled to see you explore so many new streams of production. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of making this album and do you feel you met your own expectations for it?

For this album I wanted to mix in Chinese traditional instruments and tell Chinese stories. It is the evolution of M-pop for me. I wanted to take it to another level. When you hear the Chinese instruments you know it is a different sound and vibe. It is hard to say if I met my own expectations. As an artist you never ever feel your work is perfect. You can always find spots where you can improve. But I think what I was able to do with my team in the time we had was great.

You dove deeper into the fusion of tradition and modernity on this album than Namanana—there was a larger variety of Chinese instruments used as well as bilingual wordplay with language in the lyrics. In what ways do you feel you’ve evolved as a producer and songwriter since that album to Lit?

I am still trying to find the right style and combination to share my music and Chinese culture with the world. Lit was an example of my growth. I had this desire to include traditional stories and instruments from Chinese culture. Trying to find the balance with the Western music was challenging. I had to think and spend a lot of time arranging the chords around and fitting everything together. Also with this album I am talking about things in a more personal level and taking time to explain with more of an artistic style. I feel like I am growing up on this journey.

Lit is the first part of a series of EPs which will make a whole LP—why did you want to release it in this format and when did you begin working on the record?

I split it into two parts to give time to people to listen to it. I feel like if I released 12 songs at once, people may not give enough time to listen to each track. But when there are just six tracks each time, then it gives people time to listen more carefully. I started this project maybe early 2019.

The title track “Lit” is about your battle with the media, hateful netizens and malicious comments/rumors. Does it get easier over time to deal with this obsessive analysis of your life or does it never really ebb away?

It will always bother you, but over time you learn to deal with it. You focus on it less and less and back on what you love doing. When I make my music or learn dance or do anything I love, I kind of forget about it. Just focus on your goals and dreams and everything else becomes background noise.

The music for “Lit” is, in my opinion, the best of 2020 so far. Can you tell me a little about your role as the executive producer and music director on this project? How did the concept come about?

I was very involved in the project. I oversaw a lot of things that happened and discussed with almost everyone on the team on how to achieve my vision. When I was making the song I was thinking about how do we share Chinese culture. I thought filming in an ancient palace would catch people’s attention. It took off from there when discussing with the director. We started adding more and more elements of Chinese culture. We were trying to tell the story of Xiang Yu, a warlord who rebelled against the mighty Qin Dynasty but wasn’t able to conquer China. I’m Xiang Yu, but I’m trying to change my fate and succeed in my goal.

You incorporated Chinese Peking Opera in the music video version of the track and visual elements of Peking Opera in the album art for “Jade”–What was the motivation behind that decision and is there a particular story that the opera section references?

I wanted to bring people back in time to ancient China. I reference the traditional Chinese story of Xiang Yu and his love, Concubine Yu, so then I added in select passages from the Peking Opera Farewell My Concubine which tells their tragic story.

You displayed your incredible skills in dancing in this music video and you recently talked about how dancing was a way for you to show the audience who you are. Did you feel a sense of relief that the audience can see you or understand you a bit better after the release of “Lit”? Can the audience ever truly understand an artist?

It feels good to know people can see me and understand me more. I don’t think people can ever understand an artist completely. But they can relate to many things. I think that is a challenge for an artist to see how they can use their music to connect with people. It is a worthy challenge.

How do you hope that the artist you are today crafts the Lay Zhang of tomorrow?

I always believe in working hard and improving. I hope that the Lay Zhang of tomorrow continues to keep looking for ways to improve his art. I hope he never gives up his dreams.

Last time we spoke, we talked about Asian traditions represented in global mainstream pop culture. Now as you’ve grown as a megastar, you are one of the leading names in pop filling that space, bringing your heritage to the stage. Why is it important for our generation to see ourselves and our histories represented on these platforms by artists?

It is important for people to remember where they come from. They should know their own history and how their culture came to be. Also, it lets other people know another culture and have a deeper understanding. It can stop miscommunication and it helps people be closer to each other.

Why do fans need to see themselves in an artist? Does it work the same on the other side, do you as an artist see yourself in your fans?

I want fans to be able to relate with an artist. It is important for a fan to see themselves in artist and an artist to see themselves in a fan. When you can see each other you are able to understand each other better. You can connect with each other and really feel things.

I absolutely love the ‘Re-Reaction’ videos you have been doing for years and it means a lot to your fans that you take the time to do it. Why did you want to do this series and what does it mean to you to be able to connect with your fans like this and see them react to your work?

I am curious to know what fans and people think of my work. I want to know where I can improve. I want to keep growing as an artist. But also I want to let my fans know that I am reading their comments and I see everything they say.

Other than releasing more music, what are the rest of your plans for 2020? Do you have any film projects that you’re looking at taking up or are you planning on doing something completely different?

I am busy filming a TV drama and a few reality TV shows for the rest of 2020. A very busy schedule.”

Photo links: 1, 2, 3, 4

Credit: Rolling Stone India.

#EXO #EXO M #Lay #200819 #exo im #exo m im #lay im #p:news #t:news #fs:rolling stone india #comeback:Obsession

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thekillerssluts · 4 years

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Will Butler explains how his Harvard degree developed into his second solo album

“Yeah, it’s terrifying,” Will Butler says, pondering how it feels to be releasing music away from the umbrella of Arcade Fire.

“It’s the classic thing about all writers,” he continues. “The creative process makes them wanna puke the whole time they’re writing something, then they read something back and it makes them feel worse, then a year later they read it and think ‘yeah, it’s okay’. It’s a glorious experience, but it really makes your stomach hurt.”

On the one hand Will Butler is well accustomed to this writing process, being a multi-instrumentalist in the Canadian indie-rock band fronted by brother Win - Arcade Fire. But on his own terms, it’s an entirely new process. Butler’s second solo album Generations arrives five years after his debut Policy, a collection that rattled with a ramshackle charm and what he describes now as a ‘consciously very unproduced’ sound. Arcade Fire wound down from their Everything Now tour in September 2018, leaving Butler with the last two years of playtime. Most musicians, particularly those accustomed to big album cycles, set aside their downtime for family or other musical projects. Somehow Butler’s managed to do both while also completing a masters degree in Public Policy at Harvard.

“I went to school for a variety of reasons but there was an artistic side to it too,” he says. “I have always tried to let music and lyrics emerge from the world that I’m in; you fertilise the soil and see what grows. It was a way to better understand where we are, how we got here and what's going on. You know, ‘where am I from? What's going to happen?’” Both of these questions explored in his degree are used as fuel for Generations.

It’s easy to imagine an album by somebody who’s just pursued a Public Policy MSt to form in reams of political commentary, probably set to an acoustic guitar. However, Butler instead engages character portraits soundtracked by a broad range of thrilling sonics. Opener “Outta Here” is shrouded by a monstrous bass that lurks beneath the depths of the instrumentation before bursting out midway through. “Got enough things on my plate without you talking about my salvation,” he screams.

While the cage-rattling “Bethlehem” is mania underpinned by a thrashing guitar and bubbling synths that help lift the track to boiling point.While there’s no current world leaders namechecked or any on-the-nose political commentary across the LP, the angst of its contents is instantly tangible, backed by the intellect of somebody who’s spent the past few years studying the ins and outs of government processes. A perfect combination, you could say.

This fuel was partly discovered through Butler reconnecting with the music that defined his teenage years: namely Bjork, The Clash and Eurythmics. While these influences certainly slip into frame across Generations, they were paired with something of an unlikely muse: “I got into this habit of listening to every single song on the Spotify Top 50 every six weeks,” Butler explains. “So many of them are horrible, terrifying and just awful but there’s something inspiring about how god damn avant garde the shittiest pop music is now. Just completely divorced from any sense of reality - it’s just layers upon layers upon layers - it’s amazing. It’s like Marcel Duchamp making a pop hit every single song.”

We turn from current music to current events. Navigating Covid-19 with his wife and three kids in their home of Brooklyn, a majority of 2020 has been caught up in family time for Butler. “The summer’s been easier because everybody’s outside, whereas in spring it was like ‘it’s family time because we have to lock our doors as there's a plague outside.’” While being surrounded by the trappings of lockdown since his second solo album Generations was completed in March, the album itself wriggles with the spirit of live instrumentation, which at this point seems like some sort of relic from a bygone era."I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people."

The source of this energy can be traced back to the way the songs came together; they were forged and finessed at a series of shows in the early stages of the project. “It just raises the stakes. You can tell how good or how dumb a lyric is when you sing it in front of a hundred people,” he reflects. “It’s like ‘are you embarrassed because what you’re saying is true?’ or ‘is it just embarrassing?’ It’s a good refiner for that stuff. I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people.”

Like his day job in Arcade Fire, Butler’s solo live group is something of a family affair - both his wife and sister-in-law feature in the band, alongside Broadway's West Side Story star, and the student of the legendary Fela Kuti drummer, Tony Allen. Together this eclectic mix of musicians conjures an infectious spirit through the raw combination of thundering synths and pedal-to-the-metal instrumentation; an apt concoction indeed for lyrics that are attempting to unhatch the bamboozling questions that surround our current times.

The timing for Butler’s decision to study Public Policy couldn’t have been more perfect, with his course starting in the Fall of 2016. “I was at Harvard for the election which was a really bizarre time to be in a government school, but it was great to be in a space for unpacking questions like ‘my god, how did we get here?!’” he reflects, with a note of mockery in the bright voice.

“I had a course taught by a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur. The class was essentially on race in America but with an eye towards policy. The class explored what was going to happen in terms of race under the next president. The second to last week was about Hilary Clinton and the last week was about Donald Trump. We read riot reports - Ferguson in 2015, Baltimore in 2016, the Detroit uprisings in the ‘60s and Chicago in 1919 - it's certainly helping me understand the last 5 years, you know. Just to be in that context was very lucky.”

As we’ve seen with statues being toppled, privileges being checked and lyrics of national anthems being interrogated in recent months, history is a complex, labyrinthine subject to navigate requiring both ruthless self-scrutiny and a commitment to the long-haul in order to correct things. The concept of Generations shoots from the same hip employing character portraits to engage in the broader picture.

The writing, at times, is beamed from a place of disconnect (“had enough of bad news / had enough of your generation”), from a place of conscious disengagement (“I’m not talking because I don’t feel like lying / if you stay silent you can walk on in silence”) and from a place of honest self-assessment (“I was born rich / three quarters protestant / connections at Harvard and a wonderful work ethic”).

“I’m rooted in history to a fault,” he says. “My great grandfather was the last son of a Mormon pioneer who’d gone West after being kicked out of America by mob violence. He wanted to be a musician which was crazy - he got 6 months in a conservatory in Chicago before his first child was born. He always felt like he could have been a genius, he could of been writing operas but he was teaching music in like tiny western towns and he had all these kids and he made them be a family band and they were driving around the American west before there were roads in the deserts - literally just driving through the desert! He would go to these small towns and get arrested for trying to skip bills and just live this wild existence.”

Butler’s grandma, meanwhile, was just a child at this point. She went on to become a jazz singer with her sisters and married the guitar player Alvino Rey. “The fact that me and my brother are musicians is no coincidence,” he smiles. “It’s not like I decided to be a musician, it’s down to decisions that were made at the end of the 19th century that have very clearly impacted where I am today. The musical side of it is very beautiful, it is super uncomplicated and a total joy to have a tradition of music in our family...but also in the American context - which is the only context I know - it's also these very thorny inheritances from the 19th century and beyond that influence why my life is like it is.

“For me it’s like, ‘I made my money because my grandpa was a small business owner’ or ‘my grandpa was a boat builder and got a pretty good contract in WW2 and was able to send his kids to college’. Both of which are so unpoetic and unromantic but it is an important thing to talk about, that's a personal political thing to talk about; there's horrifying and beautiful aspects there.”

The lament of “I’m gonna die in a hospital surrounded by strangers who keep saying they’re my kids” on “Not Gonna Die” could well be croaked by somebody on the tail end of a life lived on the American Dream. At times, Butler plays the characters off against each other, like on “Surrender,” which chronicles two flawed characters going back and forth played by Butler’s lead vocals and his female backing singers that undermine his memory; “I remember we were walking” is cut up with the shrug of “I dunno” and “maybe so”. “I found having the backing voices there gave me something to play with,” he explains. “Either something threatening to the main character or something affirming to the main character, just providing another point of view.”

Elsewhere, “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know” explores the feeling of being unsuitably equipped to unravel the complexities that surrounds us day-to-day. “The basic emotion of that song is very much ‘I don’t know what I can do’ which is an emotion we all have,” he ponders. “There’s also the notion that follows that, like ‘maybe don’t even tell me what to do because it’s going to be too overwhelming to even do anything’.”

Some of these portraits materialised in the aftershows Butler began hosting while on Arcade Fire’s Everything Now tour which found him instigating conversations and talks by local councilman, politicians and activists on local issues. “On some of the good nights of the aftershow town halls, you’d feel that switch away from despair and into action,” he says smiling. “The step between despair and action is possible, that sentiment isn’t spelled out lyrically on the record but it’s definitely there spiritually.”

“I learned anew what a treasure it is to have people in a room. Getting humans in a room can be absurd. And we were having from 5,000 to 15,000 people in a room every night, most of them local. I’m very comfortable with art for art’s sake; I think art is super important and it’s great people can like music that's not political. It was sort of like ‘well we’re here and I know a lot of you are thinking about the world and you’re thinking about what a shit show everything is. You want to know what we can do and I also want to know what we can do!’ So I put on these after shows.”"The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change."

Butler would find a suitable location near the Arcade Fire gig through venue owners who were often connected to the local music and comedy scenes to host these events. “The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change. Arguably, the most important way is through the city council and state government. The New York state government is in Albany, New York. The shit that happens in Albany is all super important so I wanted to highlight that and equip people with some concrete levers to pull.

“In Tampa we had people who were organizing against felon disenfranchisement, like if you’ve been convicted of a felon you couldn’t vote in Florida, and something absurd like 22% of black men in Florida couldn’t vote and there were people organising to change that - this was in 2018 - and you could just see people being like ‘holy shit, I didn't even know this was happening!’

“These were not topics I’m an expert in - it’s like these are things that are happening. The thought was trying to engage, I’m sad to not be doing something similar this Fall, I mean what a time it would have been to go around America.”

Understandably the looming 2020 election is on Butler’s radar. “It doesn't feel good,” he sighs. “I’ve never had any ability to predict, like 2 weeks from now the world could be completely different from what it is today. There was always a one-in-a-billion chance of the apocalypse and now it's like a one-in-a-million chance which is a thousand times more likely but also unlikely. It’s going to be a real slog in the next couple of years on a policy side, like getting to a place where people don’t die for stupid reasons, I’m not even talking about the coronavirus necessarily just like policy in general. Who knows, it could be great but it seems like it's going to be a slog.”

There’s a moment on the closing track “Fine”, a stream-of-consciousness, Randy Newman-style saloon waltz, where Butler hits the nail on the head. “George [Washington], he turned to camera 3, he looked right at me and said...I know that freedom falters when it’s built with human hands”. It’s one of the many lyrical gems that surface throughout the record but one that chimes with an undeniable truth. It’s the same eloquence that breaks through as he touches on the broad ranging subjects in our conversation, always with a bright cadence despite the gloom that hangs over some of the topics.

The live show is without a doubt Arcade Fire’s bread and butter. While Butler questions how realistic the notion of getting people in packed rooms in the near future is, he reveals the group are making movements on LP6. “Arcade Fire is constantly thinking about things and demoing, it's hard to work across the internet but at some point we’ll get together. It probably won’t be much longer than our usual album cycle,” he says.

You only have to pick out one random Arcade Fire performance on YouTube to see Butler’s innate passion bursting out, whether it’s early performances that found him and Richard Reed Parry adorning motorbike helmets annihilating each other with drumsticks to the 1-2-3 beat of “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)” or the roaring “woah-ohs” that ascend in the anthem of “Wake Up” every night on tour. It’s an energy that burns bright throughout our conversation and across Generations.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/arcade-fires-will-butler-new-solo-record-generations

#Arcade Fire #generations #will butler #interview #hq

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writemarcus · 3 years

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Heartbeat Opera Announces 2021-2022 Season

Highlights include MESSY MESSIAH, FIDELIO, and more.

by Chloe Rabinowitz

Aug. 10, 2021

HEARTBEAT OPERA will return to the in-person stage for its eighth season this year. Heartbeat's 2021-22 season kicks off in September with a free outdoor screening of BREATHING FREE, their visual album that connects Beethoven's Fidelio with the work of Black composers and lyricists such as Harry T. Burleigh, Langston Hughes, and Anthony Davis to manifest a dream of justice, equity, and breathing free. BREATHING FREE builds on Heartbeat's 2018 work with incarcerated singers and prison choirs, and continues its exploration of race and the American prison system. Then in December, Heartbeat's beloved annual drag extravaganza, MESSY MESSIAH, returns after six years of Halloween shenanigans for a new Christmas special. Looking ahead to winter 2022, Heartbeat plans to go on its first-ever tour, remounting its production of FIDELIO, which Joshua Barone of The New York Times called "urgent, powerful, and poignant," for seven performances across four cities, kicking off at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Heartbeat will later present its pilot production of NO EVIL projects, QUANDO, ossia Project "0," which is co-produced with Long Beach Opera and refashions music from Verdi's operas La Traviata and Don Carlo and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice into a 25-minute short film. Heartbeat also continues to work on its first-ever commission, THE EXTINCTIONIST, an opera by Heartbeat Co-Music Director Daniel Schlosberg, librettist Amanda Quaid, and Heartbeat Co-Founder & Resident Director Louisa Proske. The Extinctionist wrestles with climate catastrophe and with one woman's unorthodox choice, with the goal of presenting its world premiere in winter 2023.

At the helm are Artistic Director Ethan Heard, Associate Artistic Director Derrell Acon, Co-Music Directors Jacob Ashworth and Daniel Schlosberg, and Managing Director Annie Middleton. Heartbeat Opera was founded in 2014 and has since grown from an indie "start up" into an internationally recognized player, consistently hailed as a leader in envisioning the future of opera.

The 2021-22 Season

BREATHING FREE, a visual album

September 18 at Pier 63, Hudson River Park Trust At dusk A free outdoor screening with live performances (Additional future screenings TBA)

Focusing on Black empowerment in the arts

Featuring excerpts from Beethoven's Fidelio, Negro Spirituals, and songs by

Harry T. Burleigh,

Florence Price

Langston Hughes

Anthony Davis

Thulani Davis

Director:

Ethan Heard

Filmmaker: Anaiis Cisco

Creative Producer: Ras Dia

Co-Music Directors: Jacob Ashworth & Daniel Schlosberg

Movement Director: Emma Jaster

Watch Breathing Free Trailer

2021 Drama League Award Nominee for Outstanding Digital Concert Production

In 2018, Heartbeat collaborated with 100 incarcerated singers in six prison choirs to create a contemporary American Fidelio told through the lens of Black Lives Matter. In 2020-the year of George Floyd's murder, a pandemic which ravages our prison population, and the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth-they curated a song cycle, brought to life in vivid music videos, mingling excerpts from Fidelio with Negro Spirituals and songs by Black composers and lyricists, which together manifest a dream of justice, equity... and breathing free.

Jamilyn Manning-White in DRAGUS MAXIMUS, photo by Andrew Boyle

MESSY MESSIAH

December 16 at 8pm and December 17 at 7 and 9:30pm at Roulette in Brooklyn

Directed by

Ethan Heard

Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth

Arranged by Daniel Schlosberg

Watch WNET's ALL ARTS feature on Heartbeat's drag extravaganzas

Heartbeat's beloved annual drag opera extravaganza returns in all its glory this December. Over the past seven years, Heartbeat has presented six fabulous extravaganzas at venues across Brooklyn: Hot Mama: Singing Gays Saving Gaia; Dragus Maximus: a homersexual opera odyssey; All the World's a Drag! Shakespeare in love...with opera; Queens of the Night: Mozart in Space; Miss Handel; and Purcell's The Fairy Queen. These interdisciplinary celebrations playfully mix opera classics with pop culture and drag to create an otherworldly experience that encourages audience members to embrace opera in new ways.

This year, the show moves to December-just in time for Christmas. Featuring familiar tunes by Handel, Tchaikovsky, Berlin, and many more, this naughty pageant celebrates the holidays with wit and warmth. Expect tradition...with a peppermint twist.

Kelly Griffin in FIDELIO, photo by Russ Rowland

FIDELIO

Heartbeat's first tour

February 10, 12 & 14, 2022 at Met Live Arts, New York City February 19 at The Mondavi Center, UC Davis, California February 22 at The Scottsdale Performing Arts Center, Arizona February 26 & 27 at The Broad Stage, Santa Monica, California

Music by Ludwig van Beethoven Original libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner & Georg Friedrich Sonnleithner Adapted & Directed by Ethan Heard Arranged & Music Directed by Daniel Schlosberg New English Dialogue Co-Written by Marcus Scott & Ethan Heard Featuring Derrell Acon (Roc), Curtis Bannister (Stan), Kelly Griffin (Leah), Victoria Lawal (Marcy), Tim Mix (Pizarro) and more than 100 incarcerated singers in six prison choirs

Heartbeat was planning to take its Fidelio on tour in 2020, the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. Then the pandemic hit, affecting incarcerated people especially and forcing them to postpone the tour. Then George Floyd was murdered, sparking a much-needed racial reckoning. Now, with humility and a renewed sense of purpose, Heartbeat has the opportunity to bring the tour back and even expand it. The story of their Fidelio is more urgent and timely than ever:

A Black activist is wrongfully incarcerated. His wife, Leah, disguises herself to infiltrate the system and free him. But when injustice reigns, one woman's grit may not be enough to save her love. Featuring the voices of imprisoned people, this daring adaptation pits corruption against courage, hate against hope.

Heartbeat is thrilled to continue its work on this Fidelio, updating the libretto for our current moment, deepening the company's commitment to anti-racism in all that they do, collaborating more with their prison choir partners, sharing the production, and sparking important conversations. This tour is Heartbeat's largest and most ambitious venture yet. They have the opportunity to reach thousands of new audience members, including hundreds of young people, in four cities across the country.

QUANDO, ossia Project "0"

In-person screenings w/live performances in NY and Long Beach, April 2022 A co-production with Long Beach Opera The pilot production of NO EVIL Projects

Creative Produced by Derrell Acon Music Directed and Arranged by Daniel Schlosberg In-person screenings with live performances in New York and Long Beach in April 2022 (dates TBC)

Some of the most beautiful and famous music from the operatic canon becomes the landscape for this fierce social satire of sex, activism, and the performance of everyday life. Music from Verdi's operas La Traviata and Don Carlo and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice are repurposed and refashioned into a 25-minute short film that follows a starry-eyed young couple as their night on the town unravels into a surrealist swirl of decadence, intrigue, and ultimately, vengeful justice.

The short film, a co-production with Long Beach Opera and produced by Heartbeat's newly-appointed Associate Artistic Director Derrell Acon, will be screened as is, and then followed by a second presentation that features live composer-performers actively disrupting and reconstituting the music from the score for a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience. No two performances will be the same, as the ending will change with each iteration of the live performances, and audiences will be challenged to re-examine their perceptions of art and its role in societal transformation.NO EVIL is an initiative meant to create a self-replenishing fund of seed money for new projects in the opera field by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) creators. Acon is in conversation with OPERA America, the Sphinx Foundation, and other industry colleagues about the full structure of NO EVIL Projects, which has an anticipated launch of 2022.Says Acon: "As Arts Equity Specialist for the OPERA America New Works Forum, I had the opportunity to facilitate all-BIPOC adjudication panels for granting, and was deeply impressed by the nuance of perspective and intentionality centered in those discussions. I am convinced that the financial barriers experienced by marginalized creators in the field require even more attention and action-and, frankly, MONEY!"

THE EXTINCTIONIST

A new one act opera

Music by Daniel Schlosberg

Libretto by

Amanda Quaid

, based on her play

Directed, Conceived, and Developed by

Louisa Proske

Music Directed by Jacob Ashworth

World Premiere Production Coming in Winter 2023

During the 2020-21 season, Heartbeat Opera commissioned its first-ever opera, The Extinctionist, a one-act work that grapples with the catastrophic effects of climate change and one woman's unorthodox choice to sterilize herself to save the planet and become the very first "Extinctionist." The dark comedy turns one woman's body into the battlefield of our political anguish, conflicting desires, and individual responsibility.

This past May, The Exctintionist was featured in The New York Times, which chronicled Heartbeat's longtime commitment to reimagining classic works and its new expansion into commissioning. A semi-staged production of the opera was presented in May 2021 at PS21 in Chatham, New York, and the world premiere is slated for Winter 2023.

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