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“Sometimes I’m trying to create this amazing world in my songs that’s like, not actually reality,” says Wild Pink’s John Ross. Photo: Mitchell Wojcik “Nothing ever means nothing,” John Ross declares on “Amalfi,” a song off his band Wild Pink’s fantastic third album, A Billion Little Lights . It could be an unofficial motto for the New York rock trio. From the band’s early EPs and 2017 debut album, Wild Pink has always committed to the idea that details matter, small or otherwise. In his songs, Ross scatters one-off thoughts and lines from conversations across detailed scenes and landscapes, often rendered in just a few lines. Specificity is his strength, whether he’s referencing a landmark or a movie. On A Billion Little Lights , more than ever, that maxim extends to the songs themselves. “I wanted the record to sound as big as it did in my head,” Ross says on a morning phone call. That meant doubling down on the synthesizers and pedal steel that had rooted Wild Pink’s previous album, 2018’s Yolk in the Fur , while incorporating fiddle, saxophone, and backing vocals. The result is a sonic tapestry as rich as the scenes Ross creates in his lyrics. Up close, a single pedal-steel part can astonish; stepping back shows how meticulously it figures into the vast expanse of the larger song. The album as a whole works this way, with the songs flowing into one another: “The Shining but Tropical” already popped and crackled when it arrived as lead single, but it comes in like an explosion after the hushed song before it, “Bigger Than Christmas.” It all amounts to the year’s best rock album so far — and there’s no better time to experience it than today, now that Wild Pink has followed it up with a nother collection of glistening songs, the EP 6 Covers . Some of the choices are clear influences on A Billion Little Lights , from Bruce Springsteen (“When You’re Alone”) to Shane MacGowan and the Popes (“Lonesome Highway”), while others are just plain fun, … [Read more...] about Wild Pink Found Beauty Where it Didn’t Exist to Make 2021’s Best Rock Album

Peter Coyote. Photo: Miikka Skaffari/FilmMagic What would a Ken Burns documentary be without its measured, authoritative narration? In The West , The National Parks , Prohibition , The Dust Bowl , The Roosevelts , The Vietnam War , The Mayo Clinic , and now Country Music , actor Peter Coyote delivers hours of often dense, complex text — full of facts, figures, quotes, and grand unifying ideas — in a manner that Burns refers to as “God’s stenographer.” His calm, cowboy-around-a-campfire timbre is basically the voice of America, at least within the orbit of PBS. Generations of kids first met Coyote as the embodiment of authority — he played Keys, the head scientist in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial — but the man himself has lived a Zelig-like life. Growing up as a secular Jew with communist relatives during the McCarthy era, Coyote was an early convert to political activism and the counterculture. “I saw grown-ups weeping in my living room,” he says. “Men and women who were broken by lies the government was telling.” As a young man, he was invited into Kennedy’s White House after staging a protest against nuclear testing during the Cuban missile crisis, threw himself headlong into a decade of drugs, Hell’s Angels, and commune living , narrowly escaped being drafted to Vietnam by pretending to be a cold-blooded marauder, helped run the California State Arts Council for eight years, and then decided to become an actor. These days, he’s also an ordained Zen Buddhist priest. Coyote has lent his voice to a plethora of ads and documentaries over the decades, but his decades-long relationship with Burns is something special. Vulture spoke with both men about Coyote’s unequaled voice, their unique recording process, and how they handle political disagreements. Peter, how did you get into the narration game? Peter Coyote : I was broke after ten years in the counterculture and I needed a way to make some money. I wasn’t an actor at that … [Read more...] about The Golden Voice Behind All Those Ken Burns Documentaries

Geiger and Wilson. Photo: Iris Gottlieb On Switched on Pop , we talk to songwriters and artists about how they make great songs . Most are written with two or more people in the room . Something we’ve never done before is pair two of the best songwriters in the business to explain how they create a successful collaboration. Teddy Geiger is a Grammy-nominated songwriter who’s written and produced countless pop No. 1s over the last decade. (You’ve likely heard her work with Shawn Mendes , Lizzo , Leon Bridges , and Christina Aguilera , to name a few.) She’s also been a critically acclaimed solo artist since the mid-2000s, and recently released a single called “Love Somebody” written with fellow in-demand music minds Ricky Reed and Dan Wilson, the latter the bandleader of Semisonic, famous for 1999’s “ Closing Time .” Wilson’s also a Grammy winner and the co-writer of Adele’s “Someone Like You” and “ Ready to Make Nice ,” by the Chicks . He recently shared his top songwriting and collaboration tips published as a deck of cards called Words and Music in Six Seconds . In this week’s episode of SoP , he and Geiger join co-hosts Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan to lay out the ground rules for collaboration from Wilson’s deck through the case study of Geiger’s “ Love Somebody .” ( This conversation originally aired as part of this month’s On Air Fest 2021 ; below are excerpts from it .) Nate Sloan: Songwriters usually collaborate in daylong, intimate in-person co-writes, but “Love Somebody” came together remotely as part of Ricky Reed’s streaming Nice Live series . Teddy, would you have previously done remote sessions like this and did letting go of the ideal songwriting session change your creative process at all? Teddy Geiger: Yeah, it’s hard being in a room with people like Dan and Ricky, it’s intimidating. So it was [less pressure] to be able to have some space in between, where I wouldn’t be … [Read more...] about 5 Rules of Great Songwriting Collabs, According to Teddy Geiger and Semisonic’s Dan Wilson

Maybe country music isn’t your thing. That’s fine! Most things are not everyone’s thing. Something that is everyone’s thing, however, is Beyoncé. So if you skipped the 2016 Country Music Association Awards under the illusion that you don’t like country music, boy did you mess up. Because Bey was there, and she performed her country song “Daddy Lessons,” and it was exactly as excellent as this sentence has heretofore led you to believe it would be. Adding to that excellence is that she took the stage with the Dixie Chicks, who have made a habit of performing “Daddy Lessons” on tour . Oh, and the Beyoncé feat. Dixie Chicks version is now available for your consumption. Since we’ve all learned a lesson or two about genre-boxing our very best performers, watch above, and when you tire of that, listen below. … [Read more...] about Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks Dominate the 2016 CMAs With ‘Daddy Lessons’ Performance

March 19, 2021 - 07:16 GMT Andrea Caamano BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty forced to apologise after upsetting fans by liking 'offensive' tweets about Union Flag Naga Munchetty has apologised to fans after being called out for liking "offensive" tweets about a Government minister's Union flag, which featured on the backdrop of a video call that took place during Thursday's show. MORE: Naga Munchetty reveals lockdown hair transformation in post-workout selfie The BBC Breakfast presenter, 46, and co-host Charlie Stayt faced criticism after the pair joked about the size of the flag and drew attention to a picture of the Queen during an interview with Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick. Loading the player... WATCH: Naga Munchett gets the giggles after Charlie Stayt's comments about guest's Union flag Ending the interview, Charlie told the guest: "I think your flag is not up to standard size, Government interview measurements. "I think it's just a little bit small, but that's your department really. It's just a thought." READ: BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty shares inspirational post after celebrating 46th birthday MORE: BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty's home with husband is 'a big change' While the guest did not respond, Naga was seen trying to control her laughter before adding: "There's always a flag. They had the picture of the Queen though. In the Westminster office I am assuming." Naga apologised at the end of the day via Twitter Taking to her Twitter account later in the day, Naga said: "I 'liked' tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. "I have since removed these 'likes'. This do not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken. Naga." The presenter's fans were quick to react, with many sharing they thought her apology had come "too … [Read more...] about BBC Breakfast’s Naga Munchetty forced to apologise after upsetting fans by liking ‘offensive’ tweets

Photo: Artwork © Helen Marden. Photo: Robert McKeever. Courtesy Gagosian. Helen Marden spent the pandemic year painting and with family, her life slowed down but not in every way a bad way. “I felt lucky,” she says, “but extremely sad.” Despite her privilege, it’s not as though she wasn’t in the viral crosshairs: She’s almost 80, and her husband of over 50 years, Brice Marden , has been stalked by cancer. A number of her friends died of COVID, including one of her closest, the architect Edward Tuttle , whom she remembers meeting on the Greek island of Hydra back in the 1970s as if it were yesterday. “He was like 27, and I knew I was going to love him” — Helen is confident in her first impressions, as she seems at first to be in most things. “He had an Enter the Dragon T-shirt on and, I think, pearls,” she says. We’re sitting together, masked up and vaxxed up, at Gagosian’s first-floor gallery on Madison (the floors polished black, her hair Warhol white), surrounded by the lacquered tropicality of her paintings, eddies of plume-y pink, yellow, blue, and gleaming white, many shining with seashells, for an exhibition she has called “ Bitter Light a Year. ” Helen Marden and Brice Marden. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images There is a hard-candy determination in the work and, one suspects, in her. Helen is a fierce and imperious globe-trotting grande dame who has known several generations of pretty much all the accomplished and interesting people worth knowing. They flock to the Mardens’ many homes: the eclectic Greenwich Village townhouse, the place on Nevis in the Caribbean, the one in Marrakech, the mini family compound upstate in Tivoli, the place they’ve had for decades on Hydra. Actually, the two, since they gave the one at the top of the hill (at some point, it was just too many stairs) to their daughters: Melia , the chef, known for the Smile , and Mirabelle, who co-owned for a time the gallery Rivington Arms, where both … [Read more...] about Helen Marden’s Bitter, Lucky Light