Music Dump - Rihanna's K-Pop SXSW Bluejuice on Springsteen's One Direction

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The Song Machine: The Hit Makers Behind Rihanna by John Seabrook (The New Yorker): If you're a fan of my Number Ones series at TheVine, this is pretty much compulsory reading. Seabrook hangs out with Stargate and Ester Dean, the producers and 'top-liner' respectively, who are responsible for hits for everyone from Beyonce to Kelly Clarkson to Rihanna (hear, for example, Ester Dean's demo version of Rude Boy, which actually works better than Rihanna's). It excellently explains how the music you hear on chart radio is put together, and there's lots of eye-opening quotes and fascinating stories. For example: “It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, the president of Roc Nation, and Dean’s manager, told me recently. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre-chorus, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge.” The reason, he explained, is that “people on average give a song seven seconds on the radio before they change the channel, and you got to hook them.”

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On The Far Slope Of The Uncanny Valley by Nitsuh Abebe (Pitchfork): Just recently lots of musicians and music writers have gone to South By South West in Austin, Texas, in order to be/find the next big thing. Abebe too, but here he's thinking more about what it's like to be at such events: "One thing to keep in mind is that SXSW currently functions, on some level, as a giant machine for converting boredom into tweets." Abebe has a keenly trained eye for human behaviour, and it's fascinating to see him wrestle with being around a whole lot of other people who fancy themselves as cultural anthropologists. And, if it's cultural anthropologists who are the tastemakers, might they be missing the point about what makes people really love music.

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Seoul Trained: Inside Korea's Pop Factory by David Bevan (Spin): K-Pop! You can see it on weekend mornings on SBS's Popasia, and if you do, those filthy big hooks will get stuck inside your brain immediately (if you're anything like me). But how do they make it, you ask? Well, funny you ask, because David Bevan's article for Spin explains all! And the process by which one of the big K-Pop factories makes this music is fascinating; it's a postmodern Motown, a factory line production, where artists are groomed for years until they're ready for the pressures of the big time. And it's a strange teen-girl-obsession world, where manufactured bands on their roster have amassed large fan bases before the band has a name let alone before they have released music.

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Bluejuice: Dead Man Walking by Rohan Williams (Scene Magazine): Bluejuice frontman Jake Stone always struck me as a good guy, and it's a bummer to read this interview, because Stone is not in a good place right now, despite being in a fun band that a lot of people enjoy. In fact, the interview is a trainwreck; he's clearly finding life without his ex pretty hard and can't shut up about it. What makes the interview more interesting than simple rubbernecking however, is that Stone answers Williams' questions in the spirit of total honesty. He answers questions with things a lot of musicians very commonly think, but usually don't say out loud: "My album is too long", "Those songs aren't as good", "We haven't made it", "We're not this other band, but I wish we were", "We tried to please the critics", etc. (I once played onstage with Stone as part of a benefit concert, a little before Bluejuice were as well known, and I remember him being very preemptively apologetic about being in this fun silly band -- as if I was an indie snob judging him for not being in a band that sounded like, I dunno, Bluebottle Kiss.)

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Rock Against Rockism: Why Liking The Boss Is Not Conservative by Emily Mackay (The Quietus): Right now, pop is in ascendancy. People are writing articles about Stargate and Ester Dean in New Yorker magazine, indie bands fall over themselves to say they like pop music, and, well, there are few people on the planet cooler than Robyn. And, sure, aging ponytailed rock snobs who don't get this stuff, who get excited over another so-so Dylan album like Together Through Life, well, they are irritating. But, says Mackay, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rock is awesome! I mean, guitars! Bass! Drums! The lesson for today, kids, is that we should rate all music equally. Speaking of the Boss, you saw him help Jimmy Fallon cover LMFAO's 'Sexy And I Know It', right?

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Is Our Live Music Scene In Crisis? by Matt Shea (Mess+Noise): Wherein regular TheVine contributor Matt Shea talks to the proprietors of some of Australia's best live music establishments - the Annandale, the Grace Emily, the Oxford Art Factory, The Workers Club - about how they're travelling in the current market. The one Melbournian Shea asks seems to think that things are thriving, but elsewhere there's a mixture between hope and some grim-sounding words (The Annandale's long-running saga of legal setback after legal setback is slightly heartbreaking, for example).

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How Indie Labels Changed The World by Richard King (The Guardian): In the 1980s, the London indie record label/shop Rough Trade was big. According to King, at times, it was responsible for about 30% of British music sales. Bands on their label (The Smiths, for example) had top 20 singles. Rough Trade did it by being flexible and innovative; King argues that you can see this flexibility and innovation all through the music industry these days, and especially through modern indie labels like XL (who have made just a little bit of money recently off some singer, who they mostly let do her own thing, called Adele).

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So Pitchfork Finally Reviewed One Direction's Stunning Debut Album... by Billy Wilder (billywilder.tumblr.com): It's strange, I can't find it on Pitchfork's site? But Wilder seems to have a screenshot of their review of boy band One Direction! And it's not quite what you'd expect from Pitchfork. I mean, they gave the album 9.6! (I bet Wilder was a little tickled that Mark Richardson liked his post on Tumblr. Also, see Maura Johnston at the Village Voice's (serious) pro-One-Direction article at the Village Voice!)

Tim Byron