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Flex admitted that she gave it to him when he aired it. Also, she'd already publicly entangled Chapman into the story, which removed any reasonable chance to claim plausible deniability. Pitchfork did a writeup that gives the longer answer: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/why-tracy-chapman-would-probably-win-her-lawsuit-against-nicki-minaj/
Contrarian POV: I've seen a lot of COVID-era late night performances, and they usually tend to be either obviously live or intentionally shot as a music video. This is the first I've seen that's a little bit of both, and it's jarring. Whether the audio is one take or not, the video is clearly multiple takes - there are camera angles where cameras would be visible, and occasional points where the editor had to choose between syncing with the vocals or the drums, and the other is out of sync. I don't know why it bothers me, but it detracts from what's otherwise a solid tune - it makes the whole thing feel a little bit fake. If you want to perform, perform. If you want to do a music video, do a music video. Don't try to split the difference to make it "perfect".
Dave's actually acknowledged that he played "Exhausted" for Kurt, and that Kurt liked it and thought they could do something with it. (He indicated that Kurt wanted to redo the lyrics, but otherwise saw it as a potential Nirvana song.)
My favorite note about MTV's airing the video: Within a couple of weeks of that 120 Minutes debut, they had so many phone calls from people who couldn't figure out the lyrics: they ran a version that had the lyrics running across the bottom of the screen. (One of my early viewings was that version.) For me, I had the misfortune of catching the last 30 or 40 seconds of the song the first three or four times I saw the video - I always seemed to arrive on MTV right as it was finishing. But I distinctly remember seeing that lyrics-crawl version, even if it didn't air it for very long.
To be fair, Vig gets really good sounds, so he has a hand in it - there's just something about that last bit of processing that he has trouble with. (Chris Lord-Alge, who was the industry's go-to mixer in the early 00s, had a lot of the same trouble with drums up until American Idiot - they always sounded a bit cardboard-y.) One of my favorite Andy Wallace mixes - just huge drums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t72MSLmHpJE
And especially to see what song was #5 that week.* I'm eagerly anticipating the rage posts we might get from Tom when he gets into the 90s. (And I'm quietly hoping that he'll have a feature like The Alternatives to go alongside The Number 2s and The 10s.) * "2 Legit 2 Quit" by MC Hammer
You're right, but Kurt credits him with the main guitar riff, too. Kurt: "Dave came up with the drum beat..." Krist: "...and the riff" Kurt: "...and the riff! He came up with the drum beat and then he showed me the riff..." https://youtu.be/fiwhwy7S4qA?t=337
Minor aside: the drum sound really isn't Vig - it's Andy Wallace. Vig has always struggled with drum sounds (the Foos' Wasting Light is a good example), and you can hear that on the "Devonshire" mixes. Wallace knows how to make a drum set sound massive. It's one thing about Nevermind that I feel like gets underplayed: Wallace doesn't get nearly enough credit for how the album sounds. (Though he did end up becoming the industry's go-to mixer in the 90s because of it.)
I remember that year after the Black Album came out - my metal friends were really conflicted. You had the folks who felt like that was what the band should always have sounded like, and loved seeing them get their due via MTV. But then you had the folks who hated seeing them get huge (even if they felt like they deserved it) who still thought Justice was the more "true" Metallica sound. There seemed to be consensus about their sellout status once they showed up on MTV with short hair and tailored threads. (Mike Inez's infamous "Friends don't let friends get 'Friends' haircuts" jab on his bass on AIC Unplugged.)
Tom will probably talk about that once he gets into the 90s, but the Hot 100 was really stacked against anything on alternative radio, especially at that time. The Hot 100 was really focused on radio airplay and single sales. With "Teen Spirit", a lot of its success came from MTV, and kids were buying Nevermind, not the single. There were also very, very few alternative radio stations in the country in 1991 - and most of them didn't replay songs over and over as hard as a standard Top 40 radio station did, so it didn't get as many spins. Top 40 stations mostly ignored the song at first, since dance-pop was still the dominant format at Top 40, and "Teen Spirit" just didn't fit. Eventually, though, they didn't really have a choice. But it took months, and that spread out its popularity - MTV put it in rotation in September, and it hit its Hot 100 peak in January.
Also - Alec got confused there - it's the only song on Nevermind where the band got shared credit. (Off the top of my head, they also got shared credit on "Scentless Apprentice" - Dave wrote the main riff.)
The thing about Nirvana "refusing to play Teen Spirit live": it's actually mostly myth. If you go through the available 1993 and 1994 setlists, they still played it nearly every night. How it started: David Fricke attended the second Aragon Ballroom show where the band didn't play it (they played it the first night), and asked Kurt about it. Kurt made it sound like it was something that was consciously happening on a regular basis, and Fricke wrote it into the January 1994 Rolling Stone cover story. At that time, there wasn't any way to independently verify that detail.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/0671581c46532e28b22d0fdddf7cc1ab/769778775b951662-7d/s540x810/09a84f25cea44355ce402669bbc39e1b7d273a36.jpg
Same clip, way better audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrc7HIb5bbQ Btw - I think this was their US network television debut. The thing that always struck me about this performance - not only in how bonkers it is - but how Jim basically holds the band together. You can almost see the Mars Volta / Sparta split happen on stage.
Nirvana's performance of "Something in the Way" for the BBC always felt like something that might end up in a movie trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uGpj58uvUo
Those three albums are among the finest in rock, and I'll be in a possible minority to say that Earth and Sun and Moon is the best of the three. I think the title track is the only one on it that I don't absolutely love - just a killer album front to back. It's hard to find without spending a minor fortune, but the complete MTV Unplugged from 1993 is brilliant as well - and not something that's commonly heard anywhere. It's not quite Unplugged in New York, but it's really damned close.
I was doing the math for per song, not per album. They count 10 songs as 1 album, so 1250/album = 125/song. (I definitely wasn't clear, though.)
The trick is that Billboard doesn't publicize their methodology for the Hot 100. You might be right. (The album chart is actually a lot more favorable than that - roughly 125 song streams to one download.) The problem is that they weight streaming the most heavily for the Hot 100 so the metric gets thrown. Again, they're unclear as to what that means, but I'm more in line with counting downloads higher than anything else, even if kids are more likely to stream. Germany apparently runs their chart based on revenue, which would probably be a lot more fair for everyone involved.
More steps, for example: 1) Video spins should not count as a music play for the Hot 100. Videos should count on their own chart. 2) Purchases should count at least equal to streams, if not (significantly) more. Currently, streams are the highest count, then radio airplay, then purchases. That's delusional: purchased plays aren't trackable, but should count as a multiplied stream. A purchase is a commitment: that should count for something. Changes like those would go a long way to help minimize the dominance of meme-laden bullshit on the Hot 100.
Per my earlier diatribe, this isn't even close to enough to absolve Billboard's uselessness. But it's a start.
Stereogun - dual barrels locked and loaded
This is an awesome surprise. A Wildflowers collection has been on the table for a while, and was a major part of the legal battle between Petty's widow and children last year. I didn't realize that they'd settled the cases a few months ago. If you're wondering what this collection might sound like (and haven't heard this yet), "Somewhere Under Heaven" from the Wildflowers sessions was released in 2015, and it's awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po4o9idSaOo
100% agreed. (I knew I was forgetting something.)
I think this is the one takeaway of the Hot 100 that I might agree with. If you just count #1s, it is a different story. But the chart itself is so screwballed. The record I was mainly thinking of was when Scorpion came out and Billboard got in a tizzy that Drake had scored seven of the top ten songs on the Hot 100. That's a stat that Billboard likely never tracked/reported before that moment. (And they had to underplay the fact that the Beatles had the entire top 5 that week, which Drake did not.) Their two accomplishments could not have been more apples and oranges. And that's the only major type of Hot 100 "success" that some artists can have right now. Drake dropped a 25-track album, and people focused on seven of them. It would be difficult-to-impossible for any major artist to have a long series of #1s in this environment, given the financial incentive of releasing large albums for the streaming royalties. Instead of #1s, he's got 200+ Hot 100 appearances in ten years, more than anyone else.
I agree with a lot of that. Some of this is my error in phrasing. It's less that I want to see old music count; it's more that I would love for there to be a general understanding that the Hot 100 is not an important chart anymore. It's not the accomplishment that these narcissists (or Billboard) wants it to be. If a #1 on the Hot 100 used to be an Olympic gold medal, it's now a first place ribbon at the neighborhood swim meet. (You're right: the manipulation isn't new. But it's so bad now that it feels like many of these artists are just buying their own medal at the local trophy store.) You're right about the olds not knowing newer artists, but I think the disconnect has never been wider. There's a way-longer discussion there - just the absence of the type of unanimity that, for example, everyone listening to the same radio station(s), used to provide. (I feel like "Call Me Maybe" might be the last single that everyone and their uncle knew just because of how it was played basically everywhere.) Billboard can't fix that. But they could easy publicize other charts as hard as they do the Hot 100, and I think music coverage in general would be better for it. But I suspect there's more cheap money in it for them by encouraging the narcissists to open their wallets. (I do find it weird that Billboard sometimes allows old tracks - like Mariah Carey's infamous Christmas tune - re-chart on the Hot 100. I haven't stared at the methodology, but it makes the process that much stranger.)
I have no judgment on this song itself. It is what it is. But, at some point, music journalism needs to have a full on reckoning with how functionally useless the Billboard charts are now, thanks to Billboard's systematic cluelessness and need to stay relevant. Songs on the Hot 100 (and new music in general) have never been less popular to their moment in time than they are right now. Part of that is the fragmentation of popular music: the individualization of what people listen to. We're not all hearing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Call Me Maybe" at the same time. Comparatively speaking, people aren't listening to "Trollz" the same way they listened to those tracks. The other part of that is Billboard's own manipulations. The Hot 100 is no longer tracking anything remotely close to the overall average of what people are listening to. Old songs are intentionally excluded because they would stomp everything on the chart if they weren't. Trying to count video plays, etc, as "spins" also warps the total number of listeners in favor of those with meme videos (like this one). I'll use this example: Drake "beating" the Beatles' records on the Hot 100. In terms of overall average, we will never see another band as popular as the Beatles were in 1964. As known a "celebrity" as he is, Drake's musical fame is not even remotely close to theirs. Maybe in a certain age group, but not across all ages; not as unanimously as the Beatles at that time. The Beatles set that record during a time that the Hot 100 was mainly based on two things: single sales and radio airplay. Even their record was actually a fluke: it only happened because Capitol declined to release the band's first singles, and Brian Epstein found indie labels to release them. 1964 saw many of those singles reissued, along with Capitol issuing new ones, and they all charted. Key note: album tracks were not eligible for that chart. Drake's record? Everything is eligible. That's a tremendous difference, and almost entirely the reason that he broke the record. Also, Drake didn't need to manufacture physical singles, so he had a substantial advantage. Imagine what that April 1964 chart would have looked like if it could have included the Beatles entire catalog, not just the physically released singles. Think about how many songs from Sgt Pepper's and The White Album would have charted (and been top ten) upon those albums' releases had it been possible to track what people were actually listening to. Right now, Billboard only cares about their own relevance. If a bunch of narcissists want to climb over each other to show off how "important" they are every week, Billboard is more than happy to play ball. Billboard needs someone to break the old records in order to have their own name in print, even if the comparison between the eras and accomplishments is entirely unfair. They want to be as viral as the music on their charts. Music journalism should stop enabling them, even if the reporting draws hate-clicks. /end rant
Jason Narducy (bass) said on Instagram that they recorded this two years ago during the sessions for Sunshine Rock. (I'm guessing it got left off when Bob decided that Sunshine Rock was going to be a "happy" record.) https://66.media.tumblr.com/2971fb2e1663745517bf131a841d7afc/60fb489b8375cd9f-04/s400x600/c6bd6ca7ff58f6eee907c8a78ce275ed658e296a.png
I'll echo the comment that Billy himself at one of the 9/11 benefits: For 25 years, this song was basically a science-fiction joke aimed at people who hectored that NYC was going down in flames. It's so entirely bizarre that it now carries this serious undercurrent of "we will get through this", after at least the third major NYC nightmare (in 19 years) that he's performed it. I mean, this is how old this song is (great performance from 1978): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46IGAbJbykI
I probably should have put /s on that - it seemed like we drifted back to the Billboard days of video ads and Taboola. I know it's not something you could implement in a weekend, but any chance you might consider a Pay-To-Make-The-Ads-Go-Away tier, a la Barefark or Ars? I'd be a day-one signup on that, and I'm assuming I'm not alone in that. Great content is worth paying for. I'm always a little worried that Video Ads like that will just push people to use ad blockers, which just compounds the problem.
Also, fuck Stereogum's new autoplay video ads. What is this, Billboard?
I guarantee the problem here is that the promoters are basically running an MBA-led Ponzi scheme: using sales of tickets for future shows to cover expenses for the current ones. Right now, they're ever-loving fucked because there aren't any shows coming up, but they can trickle out the current holdings to minimally cover their asses. If everyone took a full refund all at once for everything, they would be completely dead. (I bet they'd declare bankruptcy first.) The idea of locking a show as "Postponed" with no date on the horizon (and, in some cases, still selling tickets to those shows) and holding the money in perpetuity should not be legal.
This summary leaves out a huge part of the story: that all of the mentioned artists dropped out of the suit before this. The only remaining plaintiff was Tom Petty's ex-wife. The other artists quit the class-action, but reserved the right to re-file in the future. That signals that there was something seriously wrong with the case being presented, and therefore not entirely a surprise that Universal would win.
That Monkees tune was genuinely one of my favorite songs from the summer of 2016. https://youtu.be/fntWTgMV7jY
Stellar acoustic version of "Sink to the Bottom": https://youtu.be/NXOGdLZjq7c
And I non-ironically love his playing the floor and the phone in this Accelerate outtake ("On the Fly"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBQoylOgPzI
He put in some solid work on those late R.E.M. records. Dug this tune a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiEBDdiS34E
I'm probably in the minority, but I've always thought that the song "End of the World" started out as was better than the one it ended up becoming. Especially this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nq0XWTdsAc
If they did, it feels a bit tasteless. For the confused: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/press-f-to-pay-respects (At this point, it's used on sites like Reddit when someone gets owned or, probably more often, when someone self-owns - you'll see a string of "F" posts afterward.)
"for the first time since entering rehab at an Eddie Money tribute show" Wow, that's a weird place to go to rehab.
It was Vedder's "off-the-deep-end" year, too, where he was really trying to run away from their success. When Pearl Jam went on tour later that year, the rest of the band flew and used tour buses - Vedder drove himself around the country in a van.