Music industry

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

The wicked exploitation of Ariana Grande

By rights, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande should be at the peak of her profession. She won acclaim for her performances in the Wicked films – the first one of which she was Oscar-nominated for – and has consistently released successful albums, including last week’s new record petal. Under normal circumstances she would be looking forward to continuing her world tour, Eternal Sunshine. And next year, she was slated to make her London stage debut opposite her Wicked co-star Jonathan Bailey in Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday In The Park With George. There is, however, one rather significant issue with this, which has been discussed in the media with a mixture of prurience and genuine concern.

ariana grande petal

Tuesday

Zoe Strimpel

Sabrina Carpenter mainstreams cutesy violence towards women

With a deliberateness that did not escape critics and onlookers, the Carpenter-fed algorithm had suddenly decided to choke us on her sweet and frothy song "Espresso" in such a relentless fashion that we soon ended up drinking it down, begging for more. “Move it up, down, left, right, oh, switch it up like Nintendo,” I and plenty of other people too old for her dire Gen Z, Taylor Swiftian fare, found ourselves singing it anyway, day and night, on its release last year. “Say you can't sleep, baby, I know. That's that me espresso.” Sleep was certainly not improved by the earworm of the song.In fact, I thought at first that Carpenter was a bot because the songs are such calculated, algorithmic pop, from top to bottom.

Sabrina Carpenter

Wednesday

Christopher Sandford

Bernie Taupin is more than just ‘Elton John’s lyricist’

It takes only a couple of hours by train from the southern reaches of rural Lincolnshire to central London. But for seventeen-year-old Bernie Taupin, leaving home in June 1967 to try his luck in the big city, the journey might as well have been to a distant planet, such was the gulf between his life as a casual farm-laborer and his ambitions to become an internationally acclaimed songwriter like his heroes Hank Snow or Merle Haggard.

taupin

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Did the music industry enable R. Kelly?

From our UK edition

As Harvey Weinstein was to film, so Robert ‘R.’ Kelly has been to the music industry. An energetic and profligate figure who enjoyed enormous commercial and artistic success in his heyday, Kelly’s downfall, with his convictions on nine charges of sex trafficking and racketeering, is now total. It looks likely he will be given a life sentence for his crimes, and few, other than his most devoted admirers, will be mourning his entry into the penal system.  Yet Kelly’s fate, while richly deserved, is not the end of the story. Instead, questions have to be asked of those who were around him while he behaved egregiously behind the scenes.