Ehhh, she kinda passed over into Mainstream Faux-Indie Sensation a year or two ago when everyone basically couldn’t stop gushing about this or that about her live shows and now she’s the “If you only see one act at this festival which is every festival because she plays all of them everywhere, SEE HER” person.

Might as well work it for all it’s worth. If you can sell albums to some people whose music sophistication stops at Taylor Swift, hey do it. You can still make weird art records that nobody gets but everyone claims to once you cash the checks too.

Holy shit Michael loving the enthusiasm

Twitter is like if someone developed a funnel that filtered the waste products from the engine of your brain, and diluted it down to 140 characters.

I feel like if any of these people -all of whom I think I like?- actually talked their issues out, even in the most banal way, they would come to more reasonable conclusions than these teenage-‘you know who you are’-vaguebooking antics.

Sounds like he’s angling for an ‘Ed Droste: Suck My Cock’ single off 1990. Clever play.

I mean, is he really in the wrong? Maybe not appropriate to say in an online format as a somewhat famous person, and I don’t know the personal history so I can’t comment on it, but I agree 100% with his comments on Taylor Swift™. In her early days, she used to have people come out for the finale too and would cover their songs (James Taylor, Miss Paramore, and although he didn’t come out, she hilariously covered Lose Yourself for a show in Detroit). Perhaps this is just the continuation of that tradition, but it doesn’t really feel that way. She wasn’t the globe conquering force she is today, so those moments did feel like general homages/tributes to friends or cities she was in. But now, St. Vincent and Beck? Lebron James? Chris Rock? Matt Leblanc? MATT LEBLANC? What’s the point to bringing these people out in such a high profile way, especially when most of her audience could care less? So she stays in the public eye on her terms, instead of as tabloid bait. And so she gets coverage from music websites everyday from her tour about new people she’s bringing out. I think she’s been in the news on Pitchfork everyday now. And I get the tabloid stuff. I actually can’t think of when the last time her serial dating was brought up in the news (granted, I don’t follow this stuff, but even then I would still come across it now and then). But still, it is a very fake and calculated kind of thing meant for the internet and exposure on news media. Take it as you will, and I actually mean no connotation, good or bad, from the comparison, but I see Taylor Swift’s public persona in much the same way as I see Hillary Clinton’s: cool, calculating, adept at spinning, and somewhat transparently selling a product. You could see it in the VMA/Nicki Minaj thing: her comments were out of place, but fairly innocuous on the face of it, and all about immediate public de-escalation and reconciliation. It is very impressive, but I think people are seeing the falseness of it and are calling her out on it. But it is just the nature of the pop music machine these days, and Taylor Swift is the central cog in that terrible machine.

Now I’ve just written a long paragraph on Taylor Swift, comparing her to Hillary Clinton. Please kill me.

That’s a weird thing to say about someone else’s asshole.

“hey fans! you know those songs you love? they’re lazy and they suck. you have awful taste in music. also, have you ever heard a year one violin student on a record before? you haven’t? then you are in for a real treat with this next one! fuck you!”

But do you guys like my Bad Blood poster or what?

“Done with friends who aren’t ride or die”
What the hell does that even mean? Am I that out of the loop? Is that a thing people say? Is that from one of them rap musics?

Down vote me all you want. The fact is that the Grateful Dead remaining members have reunited for several shows with many configurations since Garcia’s death. The only time since Garcia’s death that they went under the GRATEFUL DEAD name was this summer.+

This is a music news/blog and it would be nice for us readers to be respected. The first article that was posted by Tom “John Mayer Joining The Grateful Dead for Tour.” It wasn’t mentioned that Lesh wasn’t playing with the band. I read the comment section and a poster commented that it was without Phil Lesh, that changed the story. It could have been an honest mistake but as a reader I shouldn’t have to get the facts from the comment section.*

This story on the other hand is deliberately misleading for anyone with any hint of historical knowledge of the Grateful Dead. I clicked from my RSS feed and I was under the assumption that Lesh was on board from the title. I’ll also assume that is what you wanted us to assume before clicking on the article.

+Money grab or a tribute to the 50 year anniversary is irrelevant.
*I would like to note that there was no link Billboard story to RTFA myself, I shouldn’t have to use a search engine to find the facts for an article on a music news site.

Yeah, pop punk by rich kids done very well. Blah. They really laid down the blueprint that Good Charlotte followed impeccably during their early years.

The commend here are amazing and not the good kind. The sad kind. Music doesn’t have to be deep and introspective to be good and Pop music can be just as good. Talking about artists and bands selling out makes you sound like a twat.

I’ll let you know when I want yours.

This is such an embarrassing comment made worse because of the lack of irony and the fact you people believe in your myopic try hard bs. It’s hilarious. Fact; Pop music can be excellent. Fact: not all ‘indie’ downlow artists are paragons of ‘real’ music. Get over youselves. Absolute clowns

I completely agree…but, if I’m being honest… I felt that unfold in my own life more with Rush. I also saw it reflected the handful of times I saw Ani DiFranco live, Willie Nelson as well. Bruce & his family invited me to Christmas dinner in 2001. He was INCREDIBLY interesting & interested. When he drove me back to the train station we were stuck in some traffic & I wound up asking him all sorts of supersonic aerodynamics questions. He dove in hard…My questions never ran out because his detailed enthusiastic answers never ran out. I figured he was far too complex & engaged than the major label A&R & execs I’d encountered could possibly have tolerated…and Iron Maiden’s consistent career all made a lot of sense. He also told me something I’d suspected, that Steve Harris was the real tinkerer of the group. I asked what Steve’s rack was made up of & how he developed the 3 finger gallop, Nicko’s hairpin tempo changes etc…got some great answers. It was very reassuring to meet this man who’s expression had played such a strong a role in my mythology & find out that, he was essentially the nerdy frontman of an indie band, that STILL wasn’t interested in conformity on any level. cooooool.