Month: February 2023

Motown Records has weathered major changes in the last year, not the least of which include the exit of chairwoman and CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam in March 2021, and is now is planning a restructuring that will bring it back into the fold of Capitol Music Group. With that, layoffs have been initiated, Variety has confirmed, with at least three high-ranking executives being impacted.

In a statement, first published by Billboard and obtained by Variety, a Motown spokesperson said: “As Motown returns to the Capitol family, certain positions that had been created when we became a stand-alone label have since become duplicative. These employees are leaving the company and our People, Inclusion and Culture department is helping them find new opportunities — either within or outside of UMG.”

Motown is home to such top-selling rap, hip-hop and R&B acts as Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, Migos, City Girls, Erykah Badu, Brandy and Ne-Yo. It was started in 1958 by Berry Gordy and went on to shape the sound of popular music throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and influence practically everything that came after. While it started as a standalone label, it’s had several corporate parents within Universal Music Group. Its latest iteration took shape in 2014, when Habtemariam took on the dual role of president of Motown along with her executive position at Universal Music Publishing Group. That same year, UMG dissolved the Island Def Jam Music Group and moved Motown to Los Angeles to operate out of the Capitol Tower.

Habtemariam’s leadership led to the signing of Motown’s partnership with Atlanta-based Quality Control, which brought Migos, Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, City Girls and others to the label. Quality Control was recently acquired by HYBE America in a $300 million-plus deal though its recordings remain within the UMG family.

Motown joins several media and music companies that have announced layoffs in the past few months. Among them, Showtime, Amazon, Vox Media and Disney have begun to trim jobs as a reaction to the economic global climate, and the challenges plaguing several sectors of the market.

For more stories like this, follow us on MSN by clicking the button at the top of this page.

Click here to read the full article.

Pick up on these good vibrations.

A UK researcher is revealing the songs most likely to make listeners feel happy — and it all boils down to a simple formula.

Dr. Michael Bonshor, who teaches music psychology at the University of Sheffield, claims the winning combination for a joyful score is: A major key, 7th chords, 137 beats per minute, a strong beat, four beats in every bar, and a verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure.

It’s what reportedly makes “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys one of the world’s happiest songs, along with “I Got You” by James Brown, “Get the Party Started” by Pink, and “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel.

“Previous studies have found songs are perceived as happy if they are in a major key, with a sweet spot of approximately 137 beats per minute,” Bonshor said in a statement to media outlets.

© Provided by New York Post

Upbeat songs with a certain cadence and key are believed to elicit more joy.Getty Images/Maskot

“We like ‘7th chords’ as they add interest; regular chords use three notes, whereas ‘7th chords’ add an extra note which provides a sense of musical ‘tension’ and ‘relief.’”

The catchy tracks tend to be pop songs with repeated riffs, a strong beat and a bright tone.

see also





© Provided by New York Post

These cheesy ‘80s pop songs are the best for beating stress: study says

“We like high volume when it comes to how our happy songs are made, with notes played in a bright and bouncy way by instruments such as trumpets or electric guitars instead of mellower instruments,” Bonshor added. “Finally, a repetitive rhythm or guitar riff that people can latch onto and becomes memorable is the cherry on the cake.”

To put the happiness formula to the test, producers Jamie P and Oliver Price created an upbeat track called “The Lighter Note,” which was commissioned by UK yogurt brand Müllerlight. Available on Soundcloud, the lyric-less tune is bright, cheery and fast-paced — according to Bonshor, the perfect song to evoke happiness.

© Provided by New York Post

Tunes such as “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys match the musical formula Dr. Michael Bonshor touts.Getty Images

In a Brit-based poll recently commissioned by Müllerlight, 71% of the 2,000 respondents revealed that music has a powerful impact on their overall mood, with 64% of people saying they use music to spark joy.

Past studies have linked music to influencing moods, behaviors and even concentration.

Research published last year showed that students who jam out while studying actually earned higher GPAs, while another 2022 study found that surgeons who listened to AC/DC in the operating room were quicker and more accurate.

“It is possible that music with high rhythmicity could provide a tempo to keep up the speed of the performance and thus enhance task performance,” German researcher Cui Yang, of Heidelberg University, noted in the journal Langenbeck’s Archives of Surgery.

The word “loser” — denoting someone unsuccessful in life — is in the title of Every Loser and the name of the band that plays on it. But does it describe Iggy Pop? Maybe, if the pop charts are what measure success, but artistically, Iggy’s anything but a loser. He has never had an album crack the top 10 or a single in the top 20, but he’s inarguably one of the most important and influential rock artists of all time. At age 75, it’s shocking that Iggy is not only still alive but also making surprisingly relevant music. This is his most consistent, fully realized album since Brick by Brick (1990). It’s maybe even his best in more than four decades since New Values was released in 1979.

Loser-winner and low-high dichotomies have defined Iggy throughout his career. He grew up in a trailer park but was the brilliant valedictorian of his high school. He smeared himself with peanut butter, cut himself with broken glass, abused drugs, was institutionalized, and hung out with his “Dum Dum” Stooges bandmates. At the same time, his records were produced by sophisticates like John Cale and David Bowie, and on his weekly BBC 6 radio show, he shows off his considerable musical erudition. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2010), winner of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2020), and a recipient of the Polar Music Prize (2022).

Since 2003, when he reunited with the Asheton brothers, Iggy has been reliving — in chronological order — the various stages of his career. The remnants of the 1967-1970 Stooges came back together from 2003-2009. Following Ron Asheton’s death, what was left of the 1970-1974 Stooges reunited from 2009 to 2016. After that, Iggy revisited his Berlin period (1976-1978) with the help of Josh Homme on Post-Pop Depression. This new album skips over his 1980s artistic slump and goes right to the Iggy of Brick by Brick.

Like Brick by Brick, Every Loser features Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses on bass and is helmed by a super-producer (Don Was in that case; Andrew Watt in this one). Both records lie somewhere between Iggy’s rawest studio albums (Fun House and Raw Power) and his smoothest work (Blah Blah Blah).

That place between raw and smooth is where pop-punk lives, and it’s no coincidence that Iggy has collaborated with Green Day and Sum 41 in the past. Pop-punk is the topic of Every Loser’s most frenetic track, “Neo Punk”, which features Blink-182’s Travis Barker on drums. It’s fast and ferocious but goes down easy. It’s about the genre’s godfather outlasting many of the punks and keeping pace with the much younger musicians the punk movement inspired. Some of the lyrics are undoubtedly autobiographical: about driving a Rolls Royce, being a Gucci model, and getting rich off his songwriting royalties (thanks to Bowie). Other parts of the song are more aspirational — to date, Iggy hasn’t ever been “triple platinum” or had “a spot on The Voice” — but he deserves those things, and they sound great coming out of his mouth.

After “Neo Punk”, “All the Way Down” completes a powerful one-two punch in the album’s midsection. Following Stone Gossard’s fuzzy, hard-grooving guitar riff, Chad Smith’s frantic drumming carries the verses, and Watt’s muscular bass joins him in propelling the music forward on the choruses. A minute-plus coda featuring a wailing guitar solo by Watt carries the song to a satisfying conclusion. Iggy sings about fighting the high-and-mighty “gods in heaven” with their oil and gold, who put out “phony shit” like “foam rubber Hollywood breasts” to the rest of us, who “boil” in our changing climate and “get old”. 

The lead-off track and first single, “Frenzy”, is another of Every Loser’s appealing, uptempo rockers. Here, Iggy’s full of hate, telling off all the pricks, dicks, and douchebags, in a frenzy for attention, waiting for people to give him “a try” and “shut up and love” him before he’s dead and gone. The lyrics echo something Iggy told The New Yorker in 2019: “To spite those who don’t like me, I want to make 80.” Like “Neo Punk”, this song has a pop-punk edge with a clean sound and a singalong chorus. At its close, the staccato guitar riff builds to a climactic, wah-wah solo from Watt as Iggy repeatedly shrieks the song’s title. 

Aside from Iggy’s commentary about being unable to use drugs anymore, the fourth rocker on Every Loser, “Modern Day Ripoff”, is a throwaway, with a forgettable riff and keyboards aping “I Wanna Be Your Dog”. In a recent interview with Apple Music, Iggy explained that this song was recorded towards the end of the sessions for the album after he started to lose steam. 

In contrast, a number of Every Loser’s poppier, mid-tempo songs are more memorable. “Strung Out Johnny” recalls 1980s synth-driven new wave. Watt and Josh Klinghoffer’s keyboards lead the way, the full-on punk choruses provide extra wallop, and vocoder backing vocals shepherd the song to a smooth landing. The lyrics tell a classic, cautionary tale about drug addiction, one that has been told many times before, but they come off as knowing and meaningful, not trite.

“New Atlantis” is Iggy’s paean to Miami, his home since the 1990s. The city is “lying low” and “sinking slow”, but her “magic” is only growing stronger since people — from “Colombian pushers and murderers” to “American swindlers and Slavic thugs” — are all seeking “love and beauty” there. Like the soft pastels gracing the Art Deco buildings on South Beach, the smooth, melancholy parts of the song stand out: Iggy’s baritone, Klinghoffer’s piano, and Watt’s acoustic strumming and backing vocals. Complementing them are more energetic elements that keep the track moving: Watt’s electric guitar, Smith’s cowbell, and McKagan’s bass (which beautifully doubles Iggy’s vocals).

“Morning Show” wistfully expresses Iggy’s awareness of the loser-winner dynamic as he grows old. Though he has never been popular enough to sell a ton of records, he has always been famous and charismatic enough to appear regularly on talk shows. As Iggy gets ready to be interviewed again, he reflects on his aging and the popularity that has always eluded him. He puts up a front (he’ll “fix” his face before the broadcast and is “crispy on the outside”), but within, he’s in pain (he can’t hide the “hurt” on his face, and he’s “juicy” on the inside, where he cries). Because he’s so old, the future is “hopeless”, which makes each day he has left feel “delicious”. The “clown” he once was is dead, and now, he bleeds “red” on the inside, not the outside. It’s unusually vulnerable, touching stuff. 

Like “Morning Show”, “Comments” is a poignant reflection on Iggy’s career and aging. Again, he’s seeking approval from the public, viewing online comments about him, wondering whether they’re “right”, feeling “cold” as he scrolls through, and looking for a “soulmate” he knows he won’t find there. At the same time, selling his face to Hollywood is “paying good”, probably in a way that his recording career hasn’t. Iggy has appeared in many films over the decades and in advertisements (not just for Gucci but also for Paco Rabanne, Schweppes, Stumptown, Swiftcover, and Orcon).

“Comments” also includes the line that gives Every Loser its name — “every loser needs a bit of joy” — followed by the observation that winners know not to “look back”. Continuing to ponder his mortality, Iggy observes that the problem with life “is that it stops”. For a song filled with deep, dark sentiments, the instrumentation in its chorus is uncharacteristically uplifting, with 1980s synth lines from Klinghoffer buoyed by bright, hi-hat 16th notes played by the late Taylor Hawkins (someone Iggy surely assumed would outlive him).

Difficult to decipher but compelling nonetheless, “The Regency” concludes Every Loser. It’s one of the last-ever recordings featuring Taylor Hawkins, and his star shines brightly here. The guitar and bass are pure Smiths, which makes sense, considering the genesis of this album was Watt’s request for Iggy to guest on a Morrissey record. Regency generally refers to a period when someone other than a monarch is appointed to lead a country because the monarch isn’t able to, but Iggy doesn’t seem to be singing about that.

In the cartoon video for the song, The Regency is a hotel, but Iggy appears not to be singing about that. So, maybe this song is about something else entirely? “There’s a very interesting relationship between the parking business, the banks, and the stadium business,” Iggy told Apple Music in reference to this track. “The real money is in that parking lot. It’s a really big business.” Whatever the term “regency” means to Iggy, this song, like others on the album, addresses his longstanding fight against the powers that be. He battles the fakes and phonies: a “nose job”, a “con job”, a molester, those who fill “cold” stadium parking lots with “victims”, one girl sleeping with a rock star she doesn’t love, and another who “once believed” but now just “winks and spreads her knees.”

After more than 35 minutes of masterful music, does Iggy seem to be a winner, a loser, or somewhere between the two? Maybe his final words on the album provide an answer. “I fought them to a draw,” Iggy sings. “While I’m alive, uncompromised, I’m stepping out the door.” Perhaps Iggy has neither fully won nor entirely lost, but most importantly, he has remained — and will remain — true to himself right to the very end.

© Provided by Augustman
pop music sleep

© Provided by Augustman

When thinking about what kind of music might help you enter a deep, restful slumber, there’s a good chance soft, ambient, instrumental music might come to mind—and for good reason. Previous research suggests that slower, low-tempo music with non-danceable rhythms is most likely to aid with sleep, but a new study offers a different perspective. The study, conducted by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark, found that more upbeat, catchy pop music and songs are often featured on playlists that people use to help them sleep at night.

The researchers analysed a total of 225,626 songs from 985 playlists on Spotify that are associated with sleep before separating the tracks into six distinct subcategories.

Three of the subcategories align with the typical characteristics of sleep music: slow, low-tempo, acoustic instruments, no lyrics, etc. The other three subcategories, however, feature music that is faster and higher-energy, including pop songs such as “Dynamite” by BTS—which appeared on the sleep playlists 245 times, the most of any song—and “lovely” by Billie Eilish and Khalid.

“It was surprising to see the degree of variation within the music that people use for sleep,” Kira Vibe Jespersen, PhD, a co-author of the study, told Verywell. “Based on previous studies, we were expecting the music to be from many different genres, but I had not anticipated that many variations in the music characteristics.” So does pop music really help you sleep better?

How can music help you fall asleep?

© Provided by Augustman
Image Credit: cottonbro studio/Pexels

According to Michael K. Scullin, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, one of the main reasons music might help someone fall asleep is fairly simple: it can help you relax.

“Music listening could serve as a distraction from internal thoughts and ruminations,” Scullin said. “[It can] fill your head with tunes rather than your worries. Some people also live with roommates or in noisy environments, and playing music could help to mask other noises that would keep someone awake.”

Tana Bao, FNP-BC, an expert in sleep medicine, told Verywell that music is also known to improve anxiety, which greatly impacts sleep.

One 2016 study found that music helped reduce stress and anxiety, and yielded better sleep quality for sleep-disturbed pregnant women. And a 2022 meta-analysis of 21 controlled studies showed that music listening had a significant effect on alleviating anxiety.

“People naturally feel happier when listening to music they enjoy, and these positive feelings subsequently set the stage for a better night’s sleep,” Bao said.

From a sleep hygiene perspective, it’s well established that maintaining a consistent bedtime routine is extremely important, she added, and incorporating music into said routine might help someone sustain their nightly regimen.

Why does pop music work better for some people?

© Provided by Augustman
Image Credit: Fath/Unsplash

According to the study, while some may argue that music with high energy and danceability would be counterproductive for relaxation and sleep, research shows that the brain is better able to relax when it can predict what’s coming. If someone has heard a song repeatedly, as many people do with pop songs, listening to the track requires minimal focus and energy from the brain.

And if a song is very repetitive, as pop songs tend to be, it is predictable by nature and quickly becomes familiar, which could also facilitate relaxation, the study explains.

“If we think about music helping sleep because it distracts one from internal worries, masks outside noises, or is otherwise a comforting part of the bedtime routine, then it makes sense that one would listen to familiar music at bedtime,” Scullin said.

And, according to Bao, it might also simply come down to personal preference. The kind of music that might relax someone likely has a lot to do with whatever kind of music they genuinely enjoy listening to, she said.

Perhaps this is why studies that have tried to pin down the most effective genre for sleep have resulted in inconsistent findings: An Australian survey found that classical music was the most frequent genre mentioned as a sleep aid, while this new study found pop, ambient, and lo-fi to be the most popular among sleepers—with classical music ranking as the 7th on the list.

But if you’re experiencing insomnia, Scullin said listening to music shouldn’t necessarily be the first trick you try. Instead, it’s best to give stimulus control practices a shot.

“Put simply, only use the bed for sleep,” he said. “Any type of activity that is exciting, stressful, or otherwise counter to drowsiness should be kept to a different room. Smartphones and other technologies are great tools and sources of entertainment, but if you’re having difficulty sleeping, it’s best to keep them out of the bedroom.”

If that doesn’t work, however, you could always try incorporating music you enjoy into a consistent nightly routine.

“Optimising a sleep routine to help promote a routine at bedtime can, for many, likely be improved by adding music guided by personal preference into the mix,” Bao said.

If you’re having trouble sleeping at night, you should first try reserving your bed solely for sleep and removing all devices from your room. If that doesn’t work, you could try incorporating familiar music that you enjoy—regardless of genre—into a consistent bedtime routine.

This story first appeared on www.verywellhealth.com

(Credit for the hero and featured image: cottonbro studio/Pexels)

© 2021. Health Media Ventures, Inc. . All rights reserved.  Licensed from Health.com and published with permission of Health Media Ventures, Inc. . Reproduction in any manner in any language in whole or in part without prior written permission is prohibited.

Health and the Health Logo are registered trademarks of Health Media Ventures, Inc. Used under License.