Smooth Jazz

Swedish DJ Avicii released a striking, minimal music video for "You Be Love," his hit single featuring rock singer Billy Raffoul. The song is from his EP, AVĪCI, released in August.

The video, directed by TNT, conveys a love story told through the subtle poses and expressions of statues. The song's devotional message is relayed by the pale, stark figures. Two female figures reach appear to reach for one another while their faces cycle through an array of emotions from hope to anger to love.



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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club released new song, "Echo," the latest preview from the group's forthcoming new album, Wrong Creatures.

Unlike the album's opening single "Little Thing Gone Wrong," which leaned more toward BRMC's trademark ragged garage sound, "Echo" takes a more atmospheric, uncluttered approach. The song, as the title suggests, echoes the enthralling sound of Eighties rockers like Echo & The Bunnymen.



Longtime Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds collaborator Nick Launay produced Wrong Creatures, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's first album since 2013's Specter at the Feast. The album was created in part while drummer Leigh Shapiro.
"I find myself writing about death a lot," frontman Peter Hayes previously said of Wrong Creatures in a statement. "I find myself having a discussion with death, which sounds dark. For me, it's dark humor."

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Neil Diamond announced Monday that he would retire from touring after being recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.



Acting on his doctor's advice, Diamond immediately canceled the upcoming Australian and New Zealand legs of his 50th Anniversary tour, the singer revealed on his website.

"It is with great reluctance and disappointment that I announce my retirement from concert touring," Diamond said in a statement. “I have been so honored to bring my shows to the public for the past 50 years. My sincerest apologies to everyone who purchased tickets and were planning to come to the upcoming shows."
Although the Parkinson's diagnosis ended Diamond's 50-year career as a live act, the 77-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted singer hopes to continue making music.

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On the eve of his 85th birthday, legendary record producer Quincy Jones covered a lot of controversial ground in a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine.



The frank interview touched on lighter fare, like astrology (he's a Pisces) and dating Ivanka Trump, to why race relations and feminism are imperative movements right now.

Jones gave many opinions about the music industry (namely, that it no longer exists), but is optimistic about artists like Bruno Mars, Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar, Sam Smith and Mark Ronson. The verbose 28-time Grammy winner had plenty of hot takes about the musical legends he's worked with over decades, from Michael Jackson to the Beatles to Cream.

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Kanye West made another rare onstage appearance Saturday when the rapper performed his "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" during Kid Cudi's concert at an Adidas event in Los Angeles.



West also introduced Cudi – who wasn't listed among the scheduled performers – at Adidas' 747 Warehouse St. event, a two-day all-star event tied to the NBA All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles.

The two-minute cameo comes four months after West made his last onstage appearance, where the rapper again dropped by a Kid Cudi concert – this time at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom – to perform that Life of Pablo track.
That November 2017 visit marked West's return to the stage in nearly a year; prior to that, West last appeared onstage on November 19th, 2016, the site of the rapper's infamous Sacramento concert where – after arriving 90 minutes late and performing for 15 minutes – West went on a long rant that lashed out at Jay-Z and Beyoncé.

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3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Hip-Hop's Multibillion-Dollar Rise by Zack O'Malley Greenburg
In the past 20 years, hip-hop has produced enough wanna-be Warren Buffetts to fill the biggest strip club in Atlanta. But, according to Forbes editor Zack O'Malley Greenburg's new book, only a trio of artist-entrepreneurs have risen to a status that rivals the corporate titans: Jay-Z, Dr. Dre and Diddy. What sets them apart? "[They] built their fortunes by creating a 24/7 head-to-toe lifestyle," Greenburg writes, having branched out into movies, sports management, alcohol, fashion, TV, music streaming and beyond.

The Yacht Rock Book: The Oral History of the Soft, Smooth Sounds of the 70s and 80s by Greg Prato
In the late 1970s, there wasn't a name for the smooth, AM-friendly music made by the likes of Hall and Oates, Orleans, Kenny Loggins and the Doobie Brothers. But a series of viral videos retroactively dubbed it "yacht rock," as it appealed to a very white, upscale audience and an odd number of songs had nautical themes. Greg Prato's oral history tells of the rise, fall and semi-ironic resurgence of the genre, including new interviews with John Oates, Jim Messina and more. "It's amazing this style came to be," Fred Armisen writes in the foreword. "It must take an incredible amount of restraint to play that gently." A.G.

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh
In the summer of 1968, Van Morrison was a rock & roll refugee, an Irish blues poet on the run from his homeland after a bitter fling with pop stardom. Down and out in Boston, he wrote the songs that became one of rock's most beloved masterworks, Astral Weeks – and then blew town as suddenly as he'd arrived. In this fantastic chronicle, Ryan Walsh unearths the time and place behind the music. Morrison fell into a Boston underground scene full of outrageous characters – like Mel Lyman, the folkie harmonica player turned cult leader with a tribe of acid-crazed worshippers. Future rock legend Peter Wolf was a radio DJ spinning the blues on the overnight shift. Lou Reed was often hanging around town, sharing hippie tracts on ritual magic with friends like Jonathan Richman. Walsh even catches up with Morrison's long-lost flower-child bride Janet Planet, now selling her love beads on Etsy, who tells him, "Being a muse is a thankless job, and the pay is lousy." R.S.

Women Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives by Holly Gleason
Now that Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Margo Price and more are smashing country's glass ceiling with progressive songwriting and attitudes, there's probably no better time for Women Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives. "Part history, part criticism," in the words of editor and journalist Holly Gleason, these 27 essays, all penned by women writers and musicians, celebrate female country heroines: household names (Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn) and those who deserve more attention (rockabilly wildcat Wanda Jackson, jazz pianist Lil Hardin, who once played behind Jimmie Rodgers). Rosanne Cash writes lovingly of her stepmother, June Carter Cash, for supporting her dad Johnny: "If being a wife were a corporation, June would have been the CEO." Grace Potter pays respect to the voice, musical versatility and wardrobe of Linda Ronstadt, calling "Blue Bayou" her "comfort food." In a previously unpublished mash note written when she was a teen, Taylor Swift rhapsodizes over big-voiced Sixties crossover queen Brenda Lee, calling her someone "who mastered the sound of heartbreak so flawlessly that she made audiences not only identify with her but believe her."

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Grammy-nominated singer Khalid joins fellow emerging R&B talent Sabrina Claudio on her new song "Don't Let Me Down." Khalid's verses weave around Claudio's, mirroring her heartfeltthoughts with his signature wistful tone.

The song focuses on two lovers laying out their desires and reservations, yearning for the other to invest in the relationship. Claudio begins with a vulnerable opener: "Do you feel me here giving you love? Do you see me here opening up?" she sings over a bed of synths. The track builds toward the chorus with light, dancehall-inspired percussion.

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Prince's Paisley Park is hiring an archives supervisor, Pitchforkreports. The late singer's private estate and production complex outside Minneapolis was turned into a permanent museum in 2016.

According to a job listing posted on American Alliance of Museums' career website, the full-time position is in the Archives Department, which is considered a confidential work area. The position entails maintaining and monitoring the exhibits, maintaining and updating the archival database system, photographing and scanning artifacts, assisting with exhibition installations and training staff, among other requirements.

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Live Nation came out with a suspiciously good deal this week. The entertainment company, in honor of National Concert Week, announced 1.5 million $20 “all-in” tickets that fans can purchase to attend more than 2,000 performances across its slate of upcoming summer music shows. Artists involved in that offering include Arcade Fire, Halsey, Maroon 5, Post Malone, and the Smashing Pumpkins.

The $20 tickets have no hidden fees attached, and they aren’t a one-off gimmick – rather, they’re smart business strategy that also pays off for fans. One of the reasons Live Nation is floating such a sparkling deal is that consumer demand for live music these days is at record levels, giving concert-runners a guaranteed market. (Live Nation could also be using the discount to fill up some emptier venues. It’s likely making money, not losing it, here.) While the company has not yet responded to request for comment on whether it will unveil more of these deals in the future, it did offer up a fixed-rate, buffet-style festival pass last summer and a similar combination deal for country music in January. With artists now also exploring new models of pricing, concert tickets may soon be much less of a strain on fans’ bank accounts.

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Post Malone set a new record for most streams in a week and established the best-selling week of 2018 as the rapper's Beerbongs & Bentleys opened atop the Billboard 200.

The album opened with 461,000 total copies in its first week of availability, with the majority of that total the result of a record-breaking 288,000 streaming equivalent albums, or SEAs. In total, tracks from Beerbongs & Bentleys were streamed over 431 million times this week to cruise past the previous record holder, Drake's More Life, which accumulated nearly 385 million streams upon its release in March 2017, Billboard reports.

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