No One Reads These
4 A’s worth sharing this week: Cécile McLorin Salvant tells us about her day, while T-Pain tells the naysayers to “shut up,” Brian May is named the greatest guitar player of all time, and more…
Here are four things (A’s) we thought were worth sharing this week:
A1. Cécile McLorin Salvant tells us about her day. With the dawn of social media, fewer people are showing how life ebbs and flows between joy and indifference, happiness and hurt. Salvant began using her captions on Tik Tok as a means to talk about her day and recent thoughts.
I’m still ambivalent about this posting business, can you tell? It reeks slightly of desperation coming from me, but here we are. I like the idea of writing here because no one reads these.
A2. Greatest guitar player of all time. Queen legend, Brian May recently nudged out Jimi Hendrix to top Guitar World’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. His response was, perhaps unsurprisingly, very humble and very real.
What’s my reaction to being named Guitar World’s greatest guitarist of all time? I take everything like that with a pinch of salt, really, ‘cause you can’t say who’s best. The nice thing about guitar playing is that everybody’s different. You can’t really rank people. — Brian May
You can’t really rank people? It doesn’t stop them from trying!
A3. T-Pain tells naysayers: “shut up.” Known for his auto-tuned vocals, T-Pain changed the industry with his sound when he first came on the scene, bringing a new vibe. He reflects on being only nineteen years old when he started having big success, telling Leila Fadel of Morning Edition, “I was just sitting outside McDonald's hoping someone would give me a dollar for two cheeseburgers. I wasn't ready for millions of dollars right then.”
Since his rise to fame, T-Pain has performed using his voice sans-auto-tune, in his NPR Tiny Desk performance and in his latest release, an album of covers.
A4. New music this week: from boygenius—the indie supergroup of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus—who released their first full-length album, aptly titled The Record (Apple Music/Spotify), this week. Regarding the making of the follow-up to their beautiful, complicated, self-titled 2018 EP, Bridgers said, “It was not like falling in love, it was falling in love.” The new album Timeless (Apple Music/Spotify) by Davido “finds the afrobeats kingpin refusing to dwell on the past—catharsis comes through living, and embracing the future” (Clash Music). And, Chlöe begins to find her new footing as a solo artist with her debut album In Pieces (Apple Music/Spotify). “She allows her arrangements to mirror the euphoria of the lyrics; serene in her lust and untouchable in her confidence” (NME).
And as a bonus, check out friend of Foray, Chloe Borthwick’s latest song Don’t Ghost Me on Apple Music/Spotify.
Poll: When you first sit down at the piano, what do you play?
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Charlie & Amy + Alexandria
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