HOT: Kanye/MAGA Fallout
When Kanye West proudly showed off his MAGA hat and professed his love for Donald Trump on Twitter last week, his musical peers responded less than enthusiastically. Several publicly expressed their disappointment in West’s endorsement, which Janelle Monàe pointed out was being “used as fuel by oppressors to continue to oppress black people, minorities.” As if on cue, Trump — who seems elated to finally have a successful and non-white entertainer’s support — proved Monàe’s point. When the crowd at a Michigan rally seemed to boo after he asked if there were “any Hispanics in the room,” Trump said, “In all fairness, Kanye West gets it,” apparently trying to suggest that the rapper approves of his administration’s work in terms of minorities. In fairness, West saved millions in ad dollars for his forthcoming album by getting the president to be his unpaid hype-man. (Kanye is holding firm on his stance, even releasing a song about it.) Besides themselves, if there is one thing extreme narcissists love, it’s apparently other extreme narcissists.
WARM: Charts as Protest
Music lovers in the U.K. sometimes use the sales charts to make a statement, like when they raged against the vapid Pop machine and earned a 17-year-old Rage Against the Machine song a coveted No. 1 slot at Christmas in 2009. The latest campaign is more political, encouraging targeted purchases to put Green Day’s 2004 track “American Idiot” at No. 1 the week of July 13, coinciding with a U.K. visit from the U.S. president.
COLD: ABBA Returns
The shrinking “bands that will never reunite” list just got smaller. ABBA, once the most successful musical entity on Earth, has recorded new music and plans to release a single called “I Still Have Faith in You” in December. The members of the Pop quartet, who repeatedly swore they’d never get back together, will also tour… kinda. ABBA has been working with American Idol creator Simon Fuller on his latest endeavor, which has been creepily described as “developing hyper-realistic digital humans in the field of entertainment.” The “avatar tour project” (as the group called it in a statement) would enable the band to hit the road without travel headaches, but it would also mean missing out on an astronomical payday. In 2000, ABBA reportedly turned down $1 billion for a world tour.
This article appears in Apr 25 – May 2, 2018.