Is true love possible in the age of streaming?

Prepare yourself: I have a big question to hit you with on this fine Friday morning.

Hello! Thanks to everyone who joined in on Wednesday’s discussion about large concerts being exclusively for the rich. I had a great time reading your thoughts - we’ve got a great group of people growing here!

I especially enjoyed Sarah’s reply – a list of every show she’s attending in October: Louis Baker, Tami Neilson, Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders. They’re all local artists, all playing small-to-medium-sized venues, all near her home in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

They’re all relatively cheap, too, at least when compared to what big international acts charge for stadium shows that don’t come here anyway. Sarah says she has no need to travel to Australia to see great acts perform live. “I’m a happy customer,” she says. “I can have my home comforts, and live concerts too.”

For today, I have a question. It’s a big one, especially for a Friday morning, so grab a coffee and let’s get into it. Ready? Good. Here it is. Thanks for being here. I appreciate every single one of you.

-Chris

When did you last fall head-over-heels in love with music?

Big question, right? So let me clarify. I don’t mean you played a song once, went, ‘That was pretty good,’ added it to a playlist, then continued your day. What I mean is, when did you last blast a song on repeat, over and over again, Googling the lyrics, learning every line word-for-word, consuming that song so much it was like it became a part of you?

If you’re reading this newsletter it means you’re perhaps a little like me: addicted to music, listening constantly, keeping on top of trends, subscribing to at least one (probably quite bad) music streaming service, checking out what the algorithms are serving up, buying concert tickets you can’t afford, same with vinyl, and refreshing a fair few news websites too. Music soundtracks your life.

So you probably find songs you like all the time. Here’s what I do: I listen and if I like them, I add them to one of the various playlists I have set up to catalogue new music. Sometimes those new additions will get played a few times, then begin to annoy me, so I’ll delete them pretty quickly.

But sometimes, something will connect, will find my sweet spot, will impact me in a way others don’t. I had that experience recently with ‘either on or off the drugs’, a song from JPEGMAFIA’s excellent new album I Lay Down My Life For You. It’s a perfect two minutes and 20 seconds of looped soul samples, simple guitar riffs and demure raps that will satisfy anyone craving College Dropout-era Kanye West.

Even now, after about 40-or-so listens, those opening moments make me melt into a puddle…

I’d say that happens every two or three weeks, when a song I can’t get enough of suddenly finds itself with 30, then 40, then 50 listens. Other recent examples: Bon Iver’s ‘S P E Y S I D E’ remains on high rotate, as does Nilüfer Yanya’s ‘Just a Western’ and Fazerdaze’s 80s-indebted masterpiece ‘Cherry Pie’.

I love those songs. They’re great songs. But they’re single songs. So, today, I have another question for you: when did you last feel that way about an entire album? When did it feel like a record had connected so deeply with you that it felt like it was made exclusively for you? Like Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’, or Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral? In the age of streaming, does that still happen for you? Can it?

For me to answer that, I have to look at how my relationship to music has changed. Up until this year, I thought I knew what I liked, that my tastes were locked in place, that they wouldn’t budge. I like hip-hop, alt-rock, metal, dubstep and indie-rock, in that order. I thought I was too old to change.

But it’s been a year. I’ve been through some stuff. So I’ve used music in a different way. I’ve needed music that calms and soothes me. Charli XCX’s brat is great, obviously, but it’s way too much for the kind of mood I’ve often found myself in. For the first time in my life, I’ve started falling asleep with music playing. That music is often calming: chill folk songs or ambient hip-hop beats or spaced-out acoustic jams.

The album I’ve turned to time and again, the one that seems to hit me every time, a record I seem to hear new and interesting things in with every listen, one that, as soon as it begins playing, makes me feel instantly relaxed, at ease, at peace, at any time of the day, is something I wouldn’t have given the time of day to even a year ago.

It’s The Ghost Pop Tape by Devon Hendryx. I found it while researching JPEGMAFIA’s ‘either on or off the drugs’. Hendryx is his alter ego, and he released this way back in 2016. It’s woozy and weird, full of strange soundscapes and weird samples and vocals that float in and out of the mix. I put on some headphones and it makes me drift away…

So, I want to hear from you. Tell me the last album that you fell in love with, the one you got so obsessed with you couldn’t stop listening to it. Does it still happen? Can you fall in love in the age of streaming? I’d love to hear your answer to that question.

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Everything you need to know.

• Get ready for brat summer to hit Aotearoa: As was widely hinted right here, Charli XCX is almost certainly headlining next year’s Laneway festival. Posters in the pop star’s favourite tinge of green have gone up around Auckland suggesting that she’ll receive top billing when the February 6 festival’s line-up is released on Wednesday. The only question is: what’s happened to Chappell Roan?

• Vulture has thoughts on exactly that. In a piece titled ‘Chappell Roan got too famous too fast,’ writer Nate Jones suggests the star’s priorities have become misplaced, with her recent political commentary proving she’s become an artist who “seems more concerned with anonymous commenters than her own fan base”. It ends with this: “She’s locked in a losing battle: The more time she spends responding to every possible criticism, the harder her job will be.”

• Dam Native is joining the line-up for The Others Way, making the seminal Aotearoa rap group’s comeback plans complete. Last week I spoke to front man Danny Haimona about his group’s lost classic Kaupapa Driven Rhymes Uplifted finally getting the re-release treatment. Today, Dam Native is confirmed to join the November 30 festival along with Soaked Oats, Erny Belle, Diggy Dupé and Theia, along with a Flying Out all ages stage. Honestly, bang-for-buck, this is the country’s best value festival; go look at the full line-up, and get your tickets here.

• Boy George is another act heading here for five dates on the Timeless Summer Tour in January. One problem: will he be allowed into the country? For RNZ, Gill Bonnett points out the 80s star is yet to apply for his visa, something he’ll need to be able to play those shows. Remember, in 2009, Boy George was sentenced to 15 months in jail for assault and the false imprisonment of a male escort. “It is recommended that he should make an application for a visa where we can then assess his character,” an Immigration NZ spokesperson says.

• Meanwhile, why is Sean Combs’ private jet in Auckland when he’s locked up facing dozens of sexual assault charges? Stuff may have the answer.

• Three music documentaries that should be on your radar: Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara tells the story of someone who impersonated the band online for years, building relationships that got very real with hundreds of fans. It looks wild. Meanwhile, Chris Brown: A History Of Violence will chart the many allegations, accusations and charges the R&B singer has faced for violence and abuse. Here’s the trailer. And R Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey features Joanne Kelly dropping a “heartbreaking secret” about her disgraced dad, who is serving 20 years for child pornography and enticement of minors for sex.

• Lauryn Hill was offered $5 million to headline this year’s Coachella, but turned it down because reunited ska band No Doubt would be above her name on the poster. That’s a little nugget that’s come from a lawsuit from Hill’s Fugees bandmate Pras Michél over the cancellation of a Fugees tour, which cites her “narcissistic tendencies”. Hill has fought back, and it’s getting nasty: Stereogum has the details.

• Earlier this week we had a new song from The Cure (it ruled), and that seems to have opened the floodgates for more gloom-pop bands to return. The Horrors, a brilliant and consistently underrated act from Southend-on-Sea (go listen to Skying immediately), have returned with an ace new single. ‘The Silence That Remains’ is exactly what you want out of them: moody, dark, twisted, grim, explosive and quite long. I dig it…

Bonus beat.