Feel-good stories, lord knows we could use some feel-good stories these days. Here's Dutch producer AMMAR JUNEDI explaining how a guy who was uploading type beats to YOUTUBE when he was 17 has a cut on an ARIANA GRANDE album at age 20. "I’m still just in my room in Rotterdam making beats on my laptop," he tells Genius, "and she’s like the biggest pop star in the world." He doesn't know how to feel about this. I do. It feels good. Here's MEGAN THEE STALLION and producer LilJuMadeDaBeat (if ever a name resisted our impulse to put names in all-caps, this is it) chatting, in glorious studio-geek detail, about how they came up together, from making beats together in a living room to making, well, Megan Thee Stallion records. Familiarity breeds trust in this case. "Even if I didn't make the song with him," says Megan, "I still send him everything I record because I feel if he not liking that s***, then it might not be goin' hard." He grew up hearing other people's songs blaring through the neighborhood from faraway sound systems, "and I always just wanted my beats to do that... I want people to hear mine from that far away, too. Subconsciously, I'm trying to break their speakers every single time." How can you not root for him? Who else is doing the work in living rooms, in studios and behind office desks to turn dreams into hits? Here are 88 "Hitmakers and Hitbreakers" behind 2020's biggest songs, courtesy Variety... The bipartisan HITS (Help Independent Tracks Succeed) Act—the acronym doesn't quite work but OK—has been introduced in the US House and US Senate. It would allow artists and producers to deduct all their recording expenses in the year they're incurred rather than amortizing them over several years, which would bring music production tax law in line with TV and film tax law. And hopefully it will be a little easier to pass than previous acronym-based attempts at getting Congress to provide pandemic relief to the music industry... Pop and rock on TV: SELENA: THE SERIES, which is actually a two-part biopic, drops today on NETFLIX (advance word has been lukewarm), while MARIAH CAREY's MAGICAL CHRISTMAS SPECIAL arrives on APPLE TV+. JULIEN TEMPLE's SHANE MACGOWAN doc, CROCK OF GOLD, and JAMES ERSKINE's BILLIE (as in HOLIDAY) are available on-demand from various providers, and MORGAN WALLEN gets a second chance at SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, two months after screwing up his first chance with a little bit of Covidiocy... RADIO DISNEY—whose groundbreaking programming helped launch pop stars like DEMI LOVATO and MILEY CYRUS—and the newer RADIO DISNEY COUNTRY are being shuttered as part of Disney's cost-cutting efforts... "I'm a cat. I can do what I want"... It's FRIDAY—and it's the last scheduled BANDCAMP Friday, so a lot of these will be Bandcamp links—and that means new music from SHAWN MENDES, RICO NASTY, DEZRON DOUGLAS & BRANDEE YOUNGER (one of my favorite ongoing collaborations in music), TISAKOREAN, YOUR OLD DROOG, SIGUR RÓS, KELLY MORAN & PRURIENT, RESPIRE, JOAN OF ARC (long-running Chicago band's swan song), GONE IS GONE (members of MASTODON, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE and AT THE DRIVE-IN), NICK CAVE & NICHOLAS LENS, YUNGBLUD, RUSSELL DICKERSON, YUNG BABY TATE, DJ SCHEME, YXNG K.A., PLAYTHATBOIZAY, KHRUANGBIN (or, rather, a Khruangbin-curated "LateNightTales" mix), SUN-EL MUSICIAN, LEE RITENOUR, ADAM RUDOLPH, NIC DALTON & HIS GLOOMCHASERS (Nic is my Platonic ideal of Australian indie-rock, also he signed my band to his label some years back, those two things aren't necessarily related), LAVENDER DIAMOND, LOST HORIZONS, JORDANA, QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS, KASS RICHARDS, SERENA ISIOMA, ALEX MAAS, CALEXICO, BAAUER, TIMMY TRUMPET and STEVE PERRY... Oh, and this limited-edition vinyl 12-inch from THOM YORKE, BURIAL & FOUR TET (related consumer advisory)... Speaking of Bandcamp Friday, this cool new tool from HYPE MACHINE can turn any SPOTIFY playlist into a Bandcamp shopping list, with direct links... RIP ANDRE GAGNON.