Time After Time After Time

Instead of 7 million new (and old) singles and albums showing up on the internet as a massive midnight data dump, as usually happens on new music Fridays, ADELE's single "EASY ON ME" arrived on American streaming services early, at 7pm ET/4pm PT Thursday (in sync with its midnight release in England). About 6.98 million other records followed exactly five hours later, but not YOUNG THUG's eagerly awaited PUNK, which straggled in at 3am New York time. For someone trying to keep with all this stuff, this felt civilized, a chance to luxuriate in a variety of new music offerings one at a time, and I'm wondering if this might be a better model for release days in general. There are so many hours in a day. Why not stagger releases instead of everyone trying to cram through the same door at the same time? Make it like an old-school TV schedule. Just a thought for a Friday morning.

Did Someone Say It's Friday?

Yes they did, and that means YOUNG THUG has officially gone PUNK, not quite in the GREEN DAY sense, although there are plenty of guitars on the Atlanta rapper's second album, but more (or less) in the SOUNDCLOUD rap sense, and also in the sense of wanting to tell, in his words, "real life stories. The whole album is purified. It's just real." JOEY RAMONE understands... Brooklyn's XENIA RUBINOS digs deeper into her electronic impulses and her Cuban and Puerto Rican roots on UNA ROSA, an ambitious third album that doesn't defy genre so much as it seems to swim through all of them... FINNEAS, best known as Billie Eilish's producer/brother, lets his inner pop/rock singer/songwriter take a stroll in the spotlight on OPTIMIST, which includes that song about buying tickets to a concert six months hence, which is either a pandemic song disguised as a love song or the reverse; you choose... REMI WOLF has been a ski racer and an "American Idol" contestant and "you never quite know what’s going to come out of Wolf’s mouth next and whether it will be rapped, crooned or belted to the rafters," writes LINDSAY ZOLADZ. JUNO is her full-length debut... The WONDERFUL WORLD OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG ALL STARS is a stellar group of New Orleans jazz players, including Wycliffe Gordon and Nicholas Payton, who pay tribute to Satchmo on A GIFT TO POPS (with cameos by Wynton Marsalis and Common)... JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT make good on the bandleader's promise to record an album of songs by Georgia artists if the state went blue in the 2020 elections. Among the artists covered on GEORGIA BLUE are REM, James Brown, Cat Power, the Allman Brothers and Vic Chesnutt... In the catalog department, the BEATLES drop their massive LET IT BE (SUPER DELUXE) box set, featuring remixes, alternate mixes, outtakes, jams, etc., and MAC MILLER's 2014 mixtape FACES arrives on streaming for the first time.

Plus new music from COLDPLAY, PINK PANTHERESS, JOY CROOKES, PAYROLL GIOVANNI, the NEW 1017 (compilation from Gucci Mane's label feat. Pooh Shiesty, Foogiano and more), GRAFH (album title of the month: "Stop Calling Art Content"), the ZAC BROWN BAND, FRANK CARTER & THE RATTLESNAKES, TOM MORELLO, DOS SANTOS, CIMAFUNK, JULIA SHAPIRO, TERRY RILEY (with Julian Wachner, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Novus NY), SANTANA, RYAN HURD, TOBY KEITH, DILLON CARMICHAEL, CASSADEE POPE, ZACK FOX, SURFBORT, DEAN WAREHAM, WHIT DICKEY/WILLIAM PARKER/MATTHEW SHIPP, FIRE-TOOLZ, KACY HILL, AVENUE BEAT, CHELSEA CUTLER, DISCLOSURE (DJ-Kicks mix), LE REN, BLACKSTARKIDS, DARK MARK VS. SKELETON JOE (Mark Lanegan and Joe Cardamone), the MELVINS (go acoustic), VANISHING TWIN, ANGÉLICA GARCIA, SIR WAS, MOUNT LIBERATION UNLIMITED, KATELYN TARVER, STEPHAN MOCCIO, POKEY LAFARGE, BAKER BOY, LILLY HIATT, JOHNNY MARR, the GEORGIA THUNDERBOLTS and HANK MAY.

And, right, the ADELE single.

Etc Etc Etc

TED GIOIA peers into an unusual crystal ball that apparently can see six or seven hours into the future and makes 12 eerie predictions for the future of music, from "Record labels will gradually lose both the ability and desire to develop new artists" to "listeners will have favorite new songs, but not know (or care) about the name of the artist" to "A huge portion of 'music profits' will actually go to tech companies," and the whole thing is deliciously dry, but there's an implicit, unasked question floating just below the surface of each and every prediction, which is that if you could have seen all this coming six of seven *years* ago, would you have been happy? Would you have tried to do something about it?... Another secret GRAMMY committee says no to another album. This time, the comedy committee has deemed BO BURNHAM's INSIDE (THE SONGS) ineligible for a comedy nomination because it officially isn't funny, it's officially a "compilation soundtrack for visual media" (which, admittedly, doesn't sound funny), and if you're wondering why it can't be both, that's not a funny question and we'll have to deem that ineligible, too... In what may be the most creative application of the Copyright Act of 1976 ever attempted, SONNY BONO's widow, MARY BONO, has been trying to reclaim the copyrights to his SONNY & CHER songs from various music publishers, but also from CHER, who received a 50 percent stake in the songs in their 1978 divorce settlement. That's according to Cher, who's suing Mary Bono for $1 million in damages and asking a judge to enforce the divorce agreement. "The Copyright Act allows Sonny’s widow and children to reclaim Sonny’s copyrights from publishers, which is what they did," Mary Bono's lawyer told the LA Times. I got questions, babe.

Rest in Peace

Up-and-coming R&B singer EMANI 22, killed in an accident at age 22... Longtime Metropolitan Opera Orchestra concertmaster RAYMOND GNIEWEK.