Too Soon?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, in a country that was tired of wearing life-saving masks about a day and a half after people started wearing them a year ago, that people would just as quickly tire of having to pretend they were outraged by a popular singer yelling the N-word in public on a drunken Nashville night. DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS spotted two cracks in the wall around MORGAN WALLEN this week: SPOTIFY, which had stopped promoting Wallen on its playlists, has quietly re-added his single "SOMEBODY'S PROBLEM" to its popular COUNTRY COFFEEHOUSE playlist, where—you can't make this stuff up—you can now hear Wallen crooning about a woman who's "somebody's problem, and somebody's problem's about to be mine." And Knoxville radio station WMYL has broken ranks with its peers by putting Wallen back on the air after an online poll of its listeners—and whoever else jumps on online polls—overwhelmingly supported the singer. The poll went up three days after Wallen was banned at almost every country radio station in the US. It hasn't been much of a punishment, as punishments go. You can still buy Wallen's music and you can still stream it on demand at Spotify and everywhere else. And people are doing that. He's now had the #1 album in the country for six weeks running. (Does that mean album buyers and downloaders are OK with that word? Does it mean they're not OK with so-called cancel culture? Or does it mostly mean, as the Atlantic's SPENCER KORNHABER suggests in this smart piece, that people will run out to buy and play music by anyone who's in the news for pretty much any reason, whether it be Morgan Wallen or R. KELLY or MICHAEL JACKSON or TEKASHI 6IX9INE?) Wallen can't tour, but neither can anyone else. He expressed contrition in a raw YOUTUBE video in which he asked fans not to defend him. "The time of my return," he said, "is solely upon me and the work I've put in." It seemed a sincere apology. But it's been all of three weeks since he was caught. These things take time. They *should* take time. Wallen hasn't had time to process all he needs to process. The country music community hasn't had time. There are important discussions going on in public, and hopefully many more discussions going on behind closed doors. The issues go way beyond Morgan Wallen. Taking him off the radio for a while doesn't solve them and reinstating him doesn't mean everything's better now. But it sends a signal that everything's OK. And everything is not OK.

Filmbillies

Two Billies, one documentary, one feature: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY, which drops today on Apple TV+, charts BILLIE EILISH's rise to pop stardom in very real time. Documentarian R.J. CUTLER began shooting it in 2018, when she was recording her first album. Cutler on Eilish's parents: "You see them living in denial. You just see them hoping that she’s never gonna grow up. Not because they don’t want Billie Eilish to grow up, but because parents don’t want their children to grow up. It’s the most human thing in the world"... THE UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY, out today on Hulu, is LEE DANIELS' biopic focusing on the Federal Bureau of Narcotics' relentless pursuit of the jazz singer, who it considered a threat to national security because—you can't make this stuff up—she wouldn't stop singing "STRANGE FRUIT." "These stories were not told," says ANDRA DAY, who plays Holiday. "They were intended to never be told."

It's Friday

And that means new music from rock singer/songwriter JULIEN BAKER, who plays all the instruments on her "unruly, complex, and gorgeous" third album... Composer, producer and JAZZ IS DEAD label founder ADRIAN YOUNGE, seeing out Black History Month with AMERICAN NEGRO... Grown-up YOUTUBE pop star MADISON BEER... Electro/hip-hop explorer JIMMY EDGAR... Memphis rapper DUKE DEUCE... WILLIE NELSON paying tribute to FRANK SINATRA... Hyperpop veteran DANNY L HARLE... Chicago blues singer and slide guitarist JOANNA CONNOR... And albums from CLOUD NOTHINGS, YOUNG BUCK, DENZEL CURRY & KENNY BEATS (remixes), BLANCK MASS, JEFF MILLS (released earlier this week), DJ SURGELES, MOUSE ON MARS, SMERZ, NERVOUS DATER, NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS (released Thursday), ARCHITECTS, CURREN$Y, SHORDIE SHORDIE & MURDA BEATZ, PAYROLL GIOVANNI & CARDO, CASEY VEGGIES, JOE CHAMBERS, THUMBSCREW (MARY HALVORSON + MICHAEL FORMANEK + TOMAS FUJIWARA), BEN MONDER, SAM GENDEL, MENAHAN STREET BAND, DAX PIERSON, BRIJEAN, CALIBRE, WESLEY SCHULTZ (LUMINEERS singer's solo debut), DALE WATSON (instrumentals), SEAN DELLA CROCE, SARA PETITE, BONES OWENS, ALLY VENABLE, ALICE COOPER, KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD, the MELVINS, LOST HORIZONS, SYDNEY SPRAGUE, GLITTERER, PLAGUE WEAVER, MOONSPELL, EPICA, EVERGREY, DREAMWELL, NIGHTSHIFT, NOFX, KARIMA WALKER, LUCY SPRAGGAN, KUMI TAKAHARA and MAXIMO PARK.

Also: The UNDEFEATED/ESPN's BLACK HISTORY ALWAYS: MUSIC FOR THE MOVEMENT VOL. 2 featuring BRENT FAIYAZ, TINASHE, FREDDIE GIBBS and others... A deluxe version of FREDDIE GIBBS & MADLIB's PIÑATA with 83 tracks... PJ HARVEY's STORIES FROM THE CITY STORIES FROM THE SEA demos... A fourth volume of STEREOLAB's SWITCHED ON comp series... And a 1990 NEIL YOUNG live album.

Rest in Peace

LOUIS CLARK, who bridged the pop, rock and classical worlds as an orchestrator for ELO and creator of HOOKED ON CLASSICS... Rock guitarist DAVE PHILIPS, who played with FRANK BLACK, JACK LOGAN, TOMMY STINSON and GUIDED BY VOICES.