Vox: All Posts by Kelsey McKinneyhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2021-07-01T13:03:11-04:00https://www.vox.com/authors/kelsey/rss2021-07-01T13:03:11-04:002021-07-01T13:03:11-04:00Bill Cosby rape allegations: What you need to know
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<figcaption>Bill Cosby rape allegations currently number 15 | Jemal Countess/Getty</figcaption>
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<p id="BfQX6t">After being in prison for nearly three years, 83-year-old comedian Bill Cosby was released on June 30 after Pennsylvania’s supreme court overturned his sexual assault conviction. To be clear, the decision <a href="https://www.vox.com/22557691/bill-cosby-pennsylvania-released-commonwealth-david-wecht-andrea-constand-metoo-sexual-assault">doesn’t exonerate Cosby</a> but strikes down his conviction on constitutional grounds. </p>
<p id="HxaYil"><a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/5/1/17304196/bill-cosby-conviction-sentencing-hypocrisy-metoo">Sixty women have accused Bill Cosby</a> of sexual assault in incidents occurring from the early 1960s (when Cosby was a young comedian and TV star on the rise) to the late 2000s.</p>
<p id="3VhUEV">The women tell similar stories: They say Cosby either drugged them or that they lost consciousness and awoke to discover or suspect they’d been assaulted. This pattern of behavior flew under the radar for years, but the allegations gained more attention right ahead of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/10/9/17933746/me-too-movement-metoo-brett-kavanaugh-weinstein">Me Too movement.</a></p>
<p id="vBolFq">Cosby was convicted of assaulting just one woman: Andrea Constand. However, it’s still possible another prosecutor will pursue cases involving other women.</p>
<p id="kbr1d0">As <a href="https://www.vox.com/22557691/bill-cosby-pennsylvania-released-commonweath-david-wecht-andrea-constand-metoo-sexual-assault">Vox’s Ian Millhiser explains</a>, Cosby’s release is the result of a “rambling” and “duplicative” court opinion. A press release that the district attorney sent out in 2005 regarding Costand’s allegations against Cosby — combined with Cosby’s later, incriminating testimony in a civil lawsuit — had the same effect as a formal immunity deal.</p>
<p id="QTni2S">Without intervention from the US Supreme Court, that conviction is likely to remain off the table. And under the Pennsylvania court ruling, Cosby cannot be retried on the same charges.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2014/11/19/7249041/bill-cosby-rape-sexual-assualt-supreme-courtConstance GradyIan MillhiserAnna NorthP.R. LockhartAlexia Fernández CampbellLaura McGannTreva B. LindseyJen KirbyKaren Turner2021-03-14T23:42:08-04:002021-03-14T23:42:08-04:00The difference between the Grammys’ Song, Album, and Record of the Year categories, explained
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<figcaption>H.E.R. accepts the 2021 Song of the Year Grammy for “I Can’t Breathe.” | Kevin Winter/Getty</figcaption>
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<p>Here's how to keep them straight.</p> <p id="mTnN7V">There are just four categories at the Grammy Awards where artists from all musical genres compete against one another — Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. In these four races, country artists bump up against R&B musicians, and they both take on pop stars. If an artist wins one of these awards, they'll make headlines and get to give a nice speech during the awards telecast.</p>
<p id="oity6P">But the Grammys’ many, many categories are already steeped in confusing industry-speak, and the top four awards are no different. With the exception of Best New Artist, it's easy to confuse the other three.</p>
<p id="7qS6yP">Here's everything you need to know to keep these categories straight.</p>
<aside id="FDoHMN"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"10 winners and 1 giant loser from the mostly enjoyable 2021 Grammys","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/22330930/grammys-2021-winners-losers-beyonce-megan-thee-stallion-taylor-swift-racism-controversy"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="kMkpmS">Album of the Year</h3>
<p id="be9JZ4">The Album of the Year award is the most prestigious Grammy there is, the rough equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar. The category honors an entire LP, from the first track to the last, and everything about the production of the album's sound.</p>
<p id="yCL4Us">Originally, the Album of the Year award went only to the album’s main artist. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Album_of_the_Year#History_and_description">Today</a>, the album’s producers, sound engineers, mixers, and songwriters are also honored, as are any featured artists who appear on the album. Generally, if you participated in creating a significant portion of the album (defined as at least 33 percent of its playing time), you get a golden gramophone. </p>
<p id="mEuLxL"><strong>How to remember it: </strong>The whole album gets an award! Some people confuse Album of the Year with Record of the Year, since albums used to be on physical records, and the two terms are often used interchangeably in common parlance. But singles also used to be on physical records, and you wouldn't call a single song "Album of the Year."</p>
<p id="UEu1H2"><strong>The 2021 nominees for Album of the Year are:</strong></p>
<p id="MlHRi0"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21337131/taylor-swift-folklore-image"><em><strong>Folklore</strong></em></a><strong> — Taylor Swift — WINNER</strong></p>
<p id="Wsy8Gm"><a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/27/21196890/dua-lipa-future-nostalgia-review"><em>Future Nostalgia</em></a> — Dua Lipa</p>
<p id="K3Fbsi"><em>Women in Music Part III</em> — Haim</p>
<p id="LG3pl4"><em>Everyday Life</em> — Coldplay</p>
<p id="Ki5fos"><em>Chilombo</em> — Jhené Aiko</p>
<p id="9dgaj0"><em>Black Pumas </em>(Deluxe Edition) — Black Pumas</p>
<p id="fnCjZV"><em>Hollywood’s Bleeding</em> — Post Malone</p>
<p id="prtJur"><em>Djesse Vol. 3</em> — Jacob Collier</p>
<h3 id="pItWgc"></h3>
<h3 id="4pHyJc">Record of the Year</h3>
<p id="Mfnpr4">Record of the Year is often confused with Song of the Year, since both awards go to individual songs. But the distinction is actually somewhat simple. The Record of the Year honors, first and foremost, the performing artist. Song of the Year honors the songwriter.</p>
<p id="Z9ftyN">Record of the Year is given to the performing artist, the producers, the sound engineers, the master engineer, and the sound mixers.</p>
<p id="SBKgA7"><strong>How to remember it: </strong>Instead of thinking of "record" as a physical, spinning record, think of it as the product of a recording studio. Everyone who would be in a recording studio working on the Record of the Year–winning song receives a golden gramophone for this award.</p>
<p id="SjcDhK"><strong>The 2021 nominees for Record of the Year are:</strong> </p>
<p id="B1DIur">“Colors” — Black Pumas</p>
<p id="CbTjtM">“Black Parade” — Beyoncé</p>
<p id="AHLGbF">“Rockstar” — Da Baby feat. Roddy Rich</p>
<p id="m8mTu6">“Say So” — Doja Cat</p>
<p id="RYqkHS"><strong>“Everything I Wanted” — Billie Eilish — WINNER</strong></p>
<p id="0c6HTS">“Don’t Start Now” — Dua Lipa</p>
<p id="0oOPWT">“Circles” — Post Malone</p>
<p id="DXA7iV">“Savage” — Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyoncé</p>
<h3 id="EwT8gw"></h3>
<h3 id="x90pBS">Song of the Year</h3>
<p id="80V5jM">The Song of the Year Grammy doesn't actually honor the performer of the winning song. Instead, it goes to the person or people who wrote the song.</p>
<p id="C18MD1">It's easy to confuse this award with Record of the Year because there is often overlap in who is accepting the award. For example, if an artist has songwriting credit on their nominated song — a pretty common occurrence — then the artist might accept the award and give the speech. But they are receiving the award for writing and constructing the song’s lyrics and melodies, not for their performance of the song.</p>
<p id="Y9zOku"><strong>How to remember it: </strong>Try to think of it as Songwriter of the Year, rather than just Song.</p>
<p id="IW7etr"><strong>The 2021 nominees for Song of the Year are:</strong> </p>
<p id="hMpq8S">“Black Parade” — Denisia Andrews, Beyoncé, Stephen Bray, Shawn Carter, Brittany Coney, Derek James Dixie, Akil King, Kim “Kaydence” Krysiuk, and Rickie “Caso” Tice (Beyoncé)</p>
<p id="DI3QEm">“The Box” — Samuel Gloade and Rodrick Moore (Roddy Ricch)</p>
<p id="X9gtSd">“Cardigan” — Aaron Dessner and Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift)</p>
<p id="fc3RrF">“Circles” — Louis Bell, Adam Feeney, Kaan Gunesberk, Austin Post, and Billy Walsh (Post Malone)</p>
<p id="VOUbE8">“Don’t Start Now” — Caroline Ailin, Ian Kirkpatrick, Dua Lipa, and Emily Warren (Dua Lipa)</p>
<p id="1T3NAb">“Everything I Wanted” — Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell (Billie Eilish)</p>
<p id="MolkQk"><strong>“I Can’t Breathe” — Dernst Emile II, H.E.R., and Tiara Thomas (H.E.R.) — WINNER</strong></p>
<p id="YSplG6">“If the World Was Ending” — Julia Michaels and JP Saxe (JP Saxe Featuring Julia Michaels)</p>
<p id="A2p4yS"></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/22325931/grammys-song-album-record-year-difference-categories-explainedKelsey McKinneyJen Trolio2020-01-26T23:40:21-05:002020-01-26T23:40:21-05:00The difference between the Grammys’ Song, Album, and Record of the Year categories, explained
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rKbl39FkXNo61vw4t1jzeKJRlMQ=/56x0:3612x2667/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53213691/1202187136.jpg.37.jpg" />
<figcaption>Billie Eilish accepts the trophy for Best New Artist at the 62nd Grammy Awards. She also won Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year. | Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here's everything you need to know to keep them straight.</p> <p id="loXetr">There are just four categories at the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/6/18127597/grammy-awards-2019-nominations-winners-news-updates">Grammy Awards</a> where artists from all musical genres compete against one another — Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. In these four races, country artists bump up against R&B musicians, and they both take on pop stars. If an artist wins one of these awards, they'll make headlines and get to give a nice long speech at the awards telecast.</p>
<p id="oity6P">But the <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/11/14588062/grammy-categories-so-many-record-song-album-performance">Grammys’ many, many categories</a> are already steeped in confusing industry-speak, and the top four awards are no different. With the exception of Best New Artist, it's easy to confuse the other three.</p>
<p id="7qS6yP">Here's everything you need to know to keep these categories straight.</p>
<aside id="FDoHMN"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and Lil Nas X lead the 2020 Grammy nominees","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/24/21077427/grammy-nominations-2020-lizzo-billie-eilish-lil-nas-x"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="kMkpmS">Album of the Year</h3>
<p id="be9JZ4">The Album of the Year award is the most prestigious Grammy there is, the rough equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar. The category honors an entire LP, from the first track to the last, and everything about the production of the album's sound.</p>
<p id="yCL4Us">Originally, the Album of the Year award went only to the artist credited with the creation of the album, and to the album's producers.</p>
<p id="nR9oVx">But starting in 1999, with Lauryn Hill's win for <em>The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill</em>, the sound engineers and mixers of the album have also been honored, as have any featured artists who appear on the album. If you participated in the creation of the sound of the album, you get a golden gramophone. However, the album's songwriters are not included in this award.</p>
<p id="mEuLxL"><strong>How to remember it: </strong>The whole album gets an award! Some people confuse Album of the Year with Record of the Year, since albums used to be on physical records, and thus, the two terms are often used interchangeably in common parlance. But singles also used to be on physical records, and you wouldn't call a single song "Album of the Year."</p>
<p id="UEu1H2"><strong>The 2020 nominees for Album of the Year:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li id="7GpF5x">
<em>Thank U, Next</em> — <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/11/9/18068408/ariana-grande-thank-u-next-pete-davidson-resilience">Ariana Grande</a>
</li>
<li id="seuD7s">
<em><strong>When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?</strong></em><strong> — </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/18/18412282/who-is-billie-eilish-explained-coachella-2019"><strong>Billie Eilish</strong></a><strong> **WINNER**</strong>
</li>
<li id="cBmBe0">
<em>i,i</em> — Bon Iver</li>
<li id="L2akCH">
<em>I Used to Know Her</em> — H.E.R.</li>
<li id="L8u7G6">
<em>Norman Fucking Rockwell </em>— <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/30/20853231/lana-del-rey-authenticity-career-norman-fucking-rockwell">Lana Del Rey</a>
</li>
<li id="norcTL">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/21/18700831/lil-nas-x-new-7-ep-review-stream"><em>7 EP</em></a> — <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/9/18301990/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-billboard-chart-hot-100">Lil Nas X</a>
</li>
<li id="cG17ZA">
<em>Cuz I Love You </em>— <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/23/20976665/lizzo-grammys-2020-fans-critics-body">Lizzo</a>
</li>
<li id="KxXfAe">
<em>Father of the Bride</em> — Vampire Weekend</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="pItWgc"></h3>
<h3 id="4pHyJc">Record of the Year</h3>
<p id="Mfnpr4">Record of the Year is often confused with Song of the Year, since both awards go to individual songs. But the distinction is actually pretty simple to remember. The Record of the Year honors, first and foremost, the performing artist. Song of the Year honors the songwriter.</p>
<p id="Z9ftyN">Record of the Year is given to the performing artist, the producers, the sound engineers, the master engineer, and the sound mixers.</p>
<p id="ZEq3oM">The award directly correlates to the way song copyrights are created. For every song, there are at least two copyrights: The first goes to the songwriter, and the second goes to the performer. Those copyrights determine how a song’s contributors get paid, and how much they are paid. The people who make the sound of the song (not the words and melody) own the "Sound Recording" copyright. Hence, Record of the Year.</p>
<p id="SBKgA7"><strong>How to remember it: </strong>Instead of thinking of "record" as a physical, spinning record, think of it as the product of a recording studio. Everyone who would be in a recording studio working on the Record of the Year–winning song receives a golden gramophone for this award.</p>
<p id="SjcDhK"><strong>The 2020 nominees for Record of the Year:</strong> </p>
<ul>
<li id="GJ7L0N">“Hey, Ma” — Bon Iver</li>
<li id="eOfx3V"><strong>“Bad Guy” — Billie Eilish **WINNER**</strong></li>
<li id="CX78pz">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/18/18188549/ariana-grande-7-rings-video-twitter-reaction-rich-people">“7 Rings”</a> — <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/30/18119496/ariana-grande-thank-u-next-music-video">Ariana Grande</a>
</li>
<li id="Vi9DGs">“Hard Place” — H.E.R.</li>
<li id="c799gI">“Talk” — Khalid</li>
<li id="xXcB0S">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/4/5/18295966/old-town-road-lil-nas-x-billy-ray-cyrus-country-rap-debate">“Old Town Road”</a> — Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus</li>
<li id="68gj9j">“Truth Hurts” — <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/3/20829761/lizzo-2020-democratic-candidates-barack-obama-hillary-clinton">Lizzo</a>
</li>
<li id="P1BWlh">“Sunflower” — Post Malone and Swae Lee</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="EwT8gw"></h3>
<h3 id="x90pBS">Song of the Year</h3>
<p id="80V5jM">The Song of the Year Grammy doesn't actually honor the performer of the winning song. Instead, it goes to the people who wrote the song.</p>
<p id="C18MD1">It's easy to get this award confused with Record of the Year because there is often overlap in who is accepting the award. For example, if an artist has songwriting credit on their nominated song — a pretty common occurrence — then the artist might accept the award and give the speech. But they are receiving the award for writing and constructing the song, not for their performance of it.</p>
<p id="ORjUPG">Legally, this side of the copyright is known as the mechanical copyright. (Its name stems from the invention of mechanical pianos.) That copyright only goes to the songwriter, as does this award.</p>
<p id="Y9zOku"><strong>How to remember it: </strong>Try to think of it as Songwriter of the Year, rather than just Song.</p>
<p id="IW7etr"><strong>The 2020 nominees for Song of the Year:</strong> </p>
<ul>
<li id="RBH2Wn">“Always Remember Us This Way” — Natalie Hemby, Lady Gaga, Hillary Lindsey, and Lori McKenna, songwriters (Lady Gaga)</li>
<li id="rfJP3D"><strong>“Bad Guy” — Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell, songwriters (Billie Eilish) **WINNER**</strong></li>
<li id="DRbAkI">“Bring My Flowers Now” — Brandi Carlile, Phil Hanseroth, Tim Hanseroth, and Tanya Tucker, songwriters (Tanya Tucker)</li>
<li id="lGE9M6">“Hard Place” — Ruby Amanfu, Sam Ashworth, D. Arcelious Harris. H.E.R., and Rodney Jerkins, songwriters (H.E.R.)</li>
<li id="WuJ9Xx">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/16/20808670/taylor-swift-lover-single">“Lover”</a> — Taylor Swift, songwriter (Taylor Swift)</li>
<li id="IINAQE">“Norman Fucking Rockwell” — Jack Antonoff and Lana Del Rey, songwriters (Lana Del Rey)</li>
<li id="T3yYbO">“Someone You Loved” — Tom Barnes, Lewis Capaldi, Pere Kelleher, Benjamin Kohn, and Sam Roman, songwriters (Lewis Capaldi)</li>
<li id="6yKqHZ">“Truth Hurts” — Steven Cheung, Eric Frederic, Melissa Jefferson, and Jesse Saint John, songwriters (Lizzo)</li>
</ul>
<p id="A2p4yS"></p>
https://www.vox.com/2017/2/12/14593894/grammys-album-song-record-of-the-year-differenceKelsey McKinneyJen Trolio2019-04-05T07:00:00-04:002019-04-05T07:00:00-04:00A-Rod loves the baseball emoji. But what does he think it means?
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<img alt="Baseball emojis arranged in the shape of a question mark." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-3f6fAxyU0y9n4XAdnn0ls1BeCk=/160x0:1760x1200/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63344365/AROD_EMOJI3.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>A-Rod’s use of the baseball emoji in Instagram comments is somewhat baffling. | Javier Zarracina for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Lucky me [red heart] [baseball] [green checkmark].”</p> <p id="chW43W">The emoji weren’t the point, or at least they weren’t supposed to be. </p>
<p id="6x0MfB">In late January, singer, actress, and <em>World of Dance</em> judge Jennifer Lopez posted a thirst trap on Instagram. Like many famous person ’grams, it was screengrabbed by Comments by Celebs, an Instagram account that tracks celebrities’ online activity. In the photo, Lopez wears a rose-colored bikini top and high-waisted leggings, and has six visible abs. As one of her 90 million followers, I knew that she was on some kind of crash carb-cut with her then-boyfriend (now fiancé), former Yankee Alex Rodriguez, and it showed.</p>
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</div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BtPcX-uFsyO/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Waiting on you, @marcanthony. #CommentsByCelebs</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/commentsbycelebs/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Comments By Celebs</a> (@commentsbycelebs) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-01-30T02:05:32+00:00">Jan 29, 2019 at 6:05pm PST</time></p>
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<p id="u82Oep"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BtPcX-uFsyO/?utm_source=ig_embed">Comments by Celebs’ post</a> featured replies from two notables: “OMG [heart eyes]” Lopez’s ex, P. Diddy, had written, spawning headlines like “<a href="https://www.instyle.com/news/jennifer-lopez-p-diddy-comment-instagram">P. Diddy left a Thirsty Comment on Jennifer Lopez’s Instagram.</a>” The tension of J. Lo’s old love commenting on how good she looked was too much for the internet. But right below Diddy’s reply was something much more confusing: A-Rod’s comment. </p>
<p id="984S8F">“Lucky me [red heart] [baseball] [green checkmark].”</p>
<p id="K3qPPs">“Why,” I thought immediately, “would you comment on the very sexy photo your girlfriend posted with the ball from a sport that 1) you played and 2) was not even in season at the time and 3) had nothing to do with the photo? What does a baseball have to do with J. Lo’s abs?”</p>
<p id="7bg4Iz">We all use emoji in specific, strangely private, and often deeply boring ways. Psychological studies about emoji use are still in their infancy but are already finding that the use of emoji has a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297758167_An_exploration_of_psychological_factors_on_emoticon_usage_and_implications_for_judgement_accuracy">direct correlation to our self-esteem</a> and our awareness of how we present online. Like verbal tics or writing tendencies, we have habits in when and how we use an emoji. DJ Khaled, for example, has taken ownership of the key emoji. Taylor Swift reclaimed the snake emoji during her “Reputation” tour. But no one’s emoji usage has ever confused me as much as Alex Rodriguez’s.</p>
<p id="1Ys1Pw">Rodriguez played 22 seasons of Major League Baseball with the Seattle Mariners, the Texas Rangers, and the New York Yankees. He is now a sports broadcaster and works <em>Sunday Night Baseball</em> for ESPN. So it makes sense that the baseball emoji would be a common one for him to use, but the way he uses it — only in comments, never to talk about baseball — is seemingly illogical. </p>
<p id="mixZzp">Here is an incomplete list of times A-Rod has used the baseball emoji: He commented, “coconuts [red heart] [baseball],” on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BsHYuIlAlRt/">a photo Lopez posted of her snuggling two of her children</a>. He commented, “blockbuster! [baseball] [fire],” on a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BqQRt5vALXb/">promo post for her movie <em>Second Act</em></a>. He commented, “Way to go Honda [sic]! [red heart] [baseball] [green checkmark] [thumbs-up] [fire],” on J. Lo’s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BtRR7kQg4Fq/">Instagram of Hoda Kotb</a>. He regularly responds, “Thanks man [baseball],” to comments on his own Instagrams. All of these are from the past six months.</p>
<p id="R0Ch8s">Sometimes he just responds to comments on his own Instagram with a single baseball emoji. </p>
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</div></a> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BvpUJbxgIzY/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">A perfect Saturday afternoon. Family. Friends. And a game at @yankees Stadium! #PinstripePride #NYC #BronxBombers #HomeSweetHome @mlb @jlo @egt239</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/arod/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Alex Rodriguez</a> (@arod) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-03-30T20:16:41+00:00">Mar 30, 2019 at 1:16pm PDT</time></p>
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<p id="5UhYmy">Other athletes frequently use sports ball emoji, but usually to signify that a given post is about a given sport. This makes sense! Jessica Mendoza, for example, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BvkVoEflDmT/">captioned her Opening Day post on March 28 with a baseball emoji</a>. A-Rod <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BvmnQ94g2Uf/">did not</a>. In fact, since January 13 (when he posted a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsl2GnaACK_/">photo of him wearing his 2009 World Series ring</a>), A-Rod has not used a baseball emoji to caption one of his own photos. This is despite posting several <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BtEFXUrAfb4/">photos of him playing baseball</a> and one <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BujtH6IADW6/">particularly cute video</a> of him signing a ball for a kid in a New York park. This week, Lopez posted a photo of the couple with kids at the Yankees game. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BvqC-gnAqzZ/">Rodriguez commented</a>, “fun [red heart],” but no baseball emoji? For Alex Rodriguez, the baseball emoji is more than just a literal indication that some baseball is happening. The baseball emoji is, well … honestly, I have no idea. </p>
<p id="9dDvzK">(Neither Rodriguez nor Lopez responded to multiple requests for comment.) </p>
<p id="9LdrOG">I tried to get a good answer. When A-Rod offered to answer questions on his Instagram, I jumped at the opportunity. He did not respond, and sadly, since then, he’s used fewer baseballs. I emailed everyone’s press representatives and did not even get a response. No one wanted to explain the baseballs.</p>
<p id="jtP5vI">After weeks of trying to divine the meaning of this completely irrelevant and absolutely absurd commenting tic, I came to my last resort: the fans. I took my folder of screenshots to Opening Day at the Washington Nationals stadium on March 28. The Nats were, notably, playing the Mets (A-Rod’s Yankee rivals). I attended the game alone and began asking people around me what they thought this could mean. With their input, I have come up with three theories of A-Rod’s baseball emoji usage for you: </p>
<h3 id="qomCwZ">Theory one: A-Rod just really likes baseball and doesn’t understand emoji</h3>
<p id="g1KiDU">“Oh, my god, this is exactly how my dad uses emojis,” said baseball fan Brian S. as he stood next to me in the hot dog line. “Isn’t it?” He handed my many screenshots of A-Rod’s baseball emoji to his father, who looked confused. “This isn’t how I use emojis,” Brian’s father said. But Brian was adamant. Upon reviewing his father’s comments on his own Instagrams (many thumbs-up and quite a few briefcases to talk about work), Brian had a point. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="D2p8zN"><q>“Oh, my god, this is exactly how my dad uses emojis”</q></aside></div>
<p id="4HbYEy">Brian’s dad, upon being shown his own comments, conceded. “I think it’s just like how we all use certain words more than other words, though,” he said. “Like, my parents said words so I say them and maybe no one else does.” </p>
<p id="yfGCYO">It is possible that the baseball emoji, sadly, mean nothing. It is possible that A-Rod has simply used them enough that they now appear on his frequently used emoji screen, and so (like Brian’s dad) he just punches them in at the end of whatever he is commenting on. For Brian’s dad, a frequently used emoji, confusingly, was a green heart. “Why do you use the green heart?” I asked. “I don’t know. I like green,” he said. Which brings us to our next theory. </p>
<h3 id="3LDR1k">Theory two: the baseball is a symbol of love to A-Rod</h3>
<p id="Q1I0zf">A-Rod’s entire life is baseball. He announces. He played. He thinks about baseball constantly, and he seems to genuinely love the game. Maybe he loves the game so much that the baseball actually symbolizes love to him. “I baseball you,” I imagine A-Rod saying accidentally to J. Lo. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="lGdG6n"><q>“Dude, don’t you send your girlfriend that flower emoji in, like, every other text?”</q></aside></div>
<p id="dS6YIj">I posited this theory to the people sitting around me sometime during the seventh inning. A man sitting a couple of rows ahead of me who was clearly eavesdropping turned around and smirked at me. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Dude, don’t you send your girlfriend that flower emoji in, like, every other text?” his friend asked, and he hit him on the shoulder. I did not ever get a clear answer on what the flower was supposed to mean. </p>
<p id="21igcS">None of the men liked this theory as much as I did, but then I showed them an Instagram of J. Lo’s from January 1 where the pop star is snuggled up with two of her children in a cozy chair, all of them asleep. “Coconuts [red heart] [baseball],” A-Rod commented. They relented that this was a plausible theory. </p>
<h3 id="zYh93U">Theory three: the baseball is a code for when the commenter is <em>actually</em> A-Rod </h3>
<p id="1dtfL2">Many celebrities use social media managers or assistants to run their accounts for them. In fact, many of A-Rod’s Instagram captions use the kind of scripted copy that seems likely to have come from a social media expert trying to optimize engagement. “What’s your handicap?” he asks after a video of him swinging a golf club. </p>
<p id="BGKL6q">Maybe, just maybe, the baseballs are a code for the real A-Rod, a kind of signature in a sea of comments. “Here, it is the real me,” the baseballs might say. “This is not just a ‘like’ from a random person; this is me, the baseball, and I love this.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="ew7hYq"><q>“These read like every drunk comment I’ve ever posted”</q></aside></div>
<p id="ufof8f">A young woman named Katy pointed out to me a couple of A-Rod’s comments on J. Lo’s February 10 Oscars post. The first reads, “Gorgeous!!! Next year - I will be wearing a hat too!! [red heart] [Dominican flag] [sunglasses] [green checkmark] [baseball] [thumbs-up] [fire explosion].” The second reads, “Why are you so gorgeous macha? You killed it tonight. Hurry up and come to bed [green checkmark] [baseball] [sunglasses] [red heart] [Dominican flag] [fire explosion].” </p>
<p id="EWOh6F">“These read like every drunk comment I’ve ever posted,” she said. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="nW5ElX">
<p id="ydfsof">Before noticing A-Rod’s tic, I never used the baseball emoji. Though I’m a serious baseball fan and often text about games, my text use doesn’t usually include emoji. I rarely reach for them when writing a caption or a comment on someone else’s post. But since noticing A-Rod’s habit and realizing how much joy it’s brought me, I’ve started using them more. Recently, a friend (knowing this obsession) commented “[baseball] [heart] [fire]” on a selfie I had posted. It was a joke, but it was a kind of sweet transference of love. “I noticed you find this funny and like it,” the comment seemed to say. “I’ll use it here to make you laugh.”</p>
<p id="LhEJiZ">A few weeks ago, Jennifer Lopez posted a photo on Instagram taken from over her shoulder. It was posted two days before she and A-Rod co-announced their engagement with ’grams posted at the exact same time. The pair are on a boat, it seems, the sky all blue and clear ahead of them. “Down time [blue heart] [baseball] [film camera],” she wrote. </p>
<p id="ZThjFc">Maybe the baseball stood for A-Rod and the movie camera for her, the blue heart for both of them. Or maybe, I like to think, she was using emoji the way he uses them: playfully, kidding, and radiating adoration. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/5/18293736/arod-instagram-alex-rodriguez-baseball-emojiKelsey McKinney2017-07-10T09:20:02-04:002017-07-10T09:20:02-04:00Why Katy Perry’s new brand of “purposeful pop” has sparked such backlash
<figure>
<img alt="Glastonbury Festival 2017 - Day 3" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GFp4mE8ClLanPNnY_Nrxsk45bGE=/0x0:5000x3750/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55619369/800585458.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Katy Perry performs on day 3 of the Glastonbury Festival 2017 | Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With her poorly received new album <em>Witness, </em>the singer went from bubblegum queen to pop’s dark horse.</p> <p id="ELALCQ">No one makes a hit like Katy Perry. Since the release of 2008’s <em>One of the Boys</em>, the bubblegum-pink pop star has been bathed in the flattering magic-hour glow of public approval, basted every hour upon the hour with the glittering light of a beloved icon. With every album, she’s handed over another No. 1 banger (“I Kissed a Girl,” “Firework,” “Roar,” et al.), and her loyal subjects have blessed her for it. She became the first woman (and second artist ever) to snag five No. 1 hits on a single album, 2010’s <em>Teenage Dream</em>. Her concerts are always sold out, and for almost all of her career, her critical reception has been nearly as welcoming as her public one. </p>
<p id="SaB91c">But somewhere between 2013’s <em>Prism</em> and the early-June release of <em>Witness</em>, the bottom dropped out of the bucket of Katy Perry adoration. It may be a simple matter of overexposure, or it may be something more nuanced, but whatever it is, the conversation around <em>Witness</em> has been decidedly lacking in excitement and heavy with criticism. </p>
<p id="PchHtQ">At the Washington Post, Chris Richards <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/katy-perrys-half-woke-no-good-very-bad-album/2017/06/12/c2b2b694-4f84-11e7-be25-3a519335381c_story.html?utm_term=.a0ebdd15c414">said of <em>Witness</em></a><em>,</em> “Perry sounds like she’s trapped in a purgatory, pantomiming progress, giving an endless pep talk to her own reflection.” <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/review-katy-perrys-witness-w486805">Rolling Stone wrote</a> that the album causes her to blend in with everyone else on the radio. As Lindsay Zoladz <a href="https://theringer.com/katy-perry-witness-album-review-fdfa40192473">wrote for the Ringer</a>, “Perry has been faltering so publicly that she’s become an object of morbid fascination.”</p>
<p id="s7OLlr">No doubt about it, the tide seems to have turned on Perry in 2017, and the tone of the backlash surrounding her suggests why: We want our pop stars to be confident, distinctive, and powerful, not someone soul-searching on an arena tour. In 2017, Katy Perry no longer seems like a bubblegum-pop queen. She seems lost. </p>
<h3 id="iyn071">Perry’s <em>Witness</em> debuted at No. 1, but you wouldn’t guess it from the reviews</h3>
<p id="jP0vr5">Katy Perry looks different in 2017. She has a drastic short blonde hairstyle that gives her an androgynous look, and she’s no longer surrounded by the glowing aura of critical praise. The pinnacle of this truth arrived in the wake of her May 20 <em>Saturday Night Live </em>appearance<em>, </em>where she performed two singles from her newest album: the Migos collaboration “Bon Appetit” and the diss track “Swish Swish,” featuring Nicki Minaj. </p>
<div id="yKAdUe"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cx1pQiETQm4?rel=0&amp;controls=2" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="OirgkJ">“What the hell happened to Katy Perry?” Keith Murphy <a href="http://www.bet.com/music/2017/05/24/katy-perry-migos-opinion.html">wrote for BET</a>, calling the performance “cringe-worthy” and arguing that Perry’s blatant co-opting of black culture made it “hard to believe you were witnessing the same woman whose brazenly feel-good music once compelled a bar filled with Black folks to sing along to her anthemic fist pump of a hit ‘Roar.’” </p>
<p id="exj83r">Murphy isn’t alone in his distaste for Perry’s most recent incarnation. The critical response to <em>Witness</em> has been overwhelmingly negative; on the review aggregator Metacritic, the album has a paltry <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/witness/katy-perry">52/100 rating</a>. Every single Perry has released from <em>Witness</em> has been met with hesitation and a raised eyebrow by critics and casual fans alike. </p>
<p id="FBm6ls">Written by pop music giants Max Martin, Ali Payami, and Sia Furler, the album’s first single, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um7pMggPnug">“Chained to the Rhythm,”</a> is a dancehall-disco hybrid that debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. But it quickly fell from the chart. The second single, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPI-mRFEIH0">“Bon Appetit,”</a> was met with immediate criticism: Chris Willman at <a href="http://variety.com/2017/music/news/katy-perry-bon-appetit-song-review-1202402920/">Variety</a> called it “bubble-smut” and said it was so likely to make listeners gag, it “should come with its own Heimlich maneuver, just in case.” Anna Gaca at <a href="http://www.spin.com/2017/04/katy-perry-migos-bon-appetit-review/">Spin</a> called it an “infuriating kitsch concoction,” and Jon Caramanica at the New York Times said it was Perry “in her least convincing mode — dance-floor diva.” </p>
<p id="UZWfGD">The album’s most recent single, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0ZVaFO7cGE">“Swish Swish,”</a> was almost completely ignored critically while headlines <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-entertainment-news-updates-may-katy-perry-ruby-rose-taylor-1495212020-htmlstory.html">focused on</a> the track’s reference to the ongoing feud between Perry and Taylor Swift. The feud, it seems, is the only thing interesting enough to maintain public interest in this album, which, more than any ranking system, is evidence that the public is no longer on Perry’s team. This became increasingly evident when Swift returned her catalog to streaming services on the exact same day as Perry’s album release, diverting attention away from her work and toward their feud, purposely or not.</p>
<aside id="RIYPOF"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Taylor Swift puts all her music back on streaming, continues to be a PR genius","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/6/9/15766576/taylor-swift-spotify-streaming-katy-perry"}]}'></div></aside><p id="yjTNGG">None of these songs, to be clear, are awful. “Chained to the Rhythm” is a bit slower than Perry’s more massive hits like “Roar” and “Teenage Dream,” but it’s still a banger that could slot in on any club playlist and could have gotten massive radio play. Even the weakest of the three singles, “Bon Appetit,” is no more garish or loaded with sexual innuendos than older hits like “Peacock” or “California Gurls.” </p>
<p id="wKln34">But even in the midst of all this critical backlash, the album is performing fairly well. “Swish Swish” is still on the Billboard Hot 100, though not in the Top 40, and <em>Witness</em> debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200 with 180,000 album units. That gives Perry her third No. 1 album and the biggest debut from a female artist since Lady Gaga’s <em>Joanne</em> on November 12, 2016. Critical drubbing or no, star power still sells albums, and Katy Perry has plenty of it. </p>
<p id="wqJviS">But there’s more at work here than a shifting critical consensus. The larger cultural exhaustion over Katy Perry seems to be less about her music and more about how she’s chosen to present herself and the album in 2017.</p>
<h3 id="Dw4D0p">The backlash to <em>Witness</em> begins with Perry herself</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Katy Perry speaks at a Hillary Clinton event" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/y9NN3tt6Kqq5YMtLt8k2iu_W138=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8817087/GettyImages_621867122.jpg">
<cite>Noam Galai/FilmMagic</cite>
<figcaption>Perry on the Clinton campaign trail in 2016.</figcaption>
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<p id="hYxYHL">At the 2017 Grammys, Perry said that her fifth album was “definitely a new era for me,” characterizing its arrival as “an era of purposeful pop.” </p>
<p id="FDAZ1z">This wasn’t a single statement made on a red carpet; it was the beginning of a campaign. The entire promotional agenda around the album was centered on its place in the political conversation. For 96 hours, Perry <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2017/6/9/15768142/katy-perry-livestream-witness-album-promo">broadcast herself live</a> in her apartment on YouTube, performing an essentially nonstop filibuster sprinkled with phrases like “safe space,” “rebirth,” and “unity and communication.” </p>
<p id="a75lLz">“I feel very empowered,” she says in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/arts/music/katy-perry-witness-interview.html?_r=1">a profile</a> titled, pointedly, “Katy Perry Woke Up. She Wants To Tell You All About It” in the New York Times. “[I feel] extremely liberated, liberated from the conditioning of the way I used to think, spiritually liberated, politically liberated, sexually liberated, liberated from things that don’t serve me.”</p>
<p id="ULQk9u">The publicity around <em>Witness</em> positioned it as a political album in an era when everything is politicized, and suggested a kind of radicalism that’s frankly missing on the album. This disconnect between Perry’s perception of her career and album — or at least how she chose to hype them — and those of fans and critics seems to be at the root of the Perry backlash. Katy Perry proclaimed herself a warrior for political change and purposeful social action, but then didn’t deliver on that. </p>
<p id="LYVqxE">There were hints of that broken promise before <em>Witness</em> even came out, going back to the February release of “Chained to the Rhythm,” which Perry characterized as the outgrowth of her dismay over the 2016 presidential election. </p>
<p id="NHcaoQ">“This was after the election and I was kind of depressed and, you know, I definitely didn't want to write a club banger,” Perry <a href="https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/chained-rhythm-helped-katy-perrys-depression-after-donald-trump-won-us-election-1607925">said</a>. “The more you dive into it, it has a different subtext."</p>
<p id="nxvXWK">That statement was an open invitation to read into that subtext, and “Chained to the Rhythm” did not live up to the scrutiny. In a piece titled <a href="http://www.complex.com/music/2017/05/katy-perrys-failed-journey-to-wokeness">“Katy Perry’s Failed Journey to Wokeness”</a> for Complex, Maria Sherman argues that Perry’s fluffy song combined with her promise that it is, in fact, more than that, makes the whole song feel disingenuous. “At no point does she direct her frustrations anywhere specifically — there’s nothing concrete in the language,” Sherman writes. “To create purposeful music, you need to state a purpose.” </p>
<p id="7xLvia">Perry’s disingenuousness extends into even murkier territory. Throughout her career, Perry has ignored the line between appreciation and appropriation consistently enough to get her dubbed the <a href="http://thegrapevine.theroot.com/katy-the-queen-of-cultural-appropriation-perry-is-at-1790885633">“Queen of Cultural Appropriation”</a> by the Root back in 2014. She wore dreadlocks in the video for <a href="https://www.vevo.com/watch/katy-perry/this-is-how-we-do-(official)/USUV71401531">“This is How We Do,”</a> she did a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXqcjgX-I9E">geisha performance</a> to “Unconditionally,” and she was <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/katy-perry-walks-like-an-egyptian-in-dark-horse-music-video">criticized</a> for her depictions of Egyptian culture in “Dark Horse” — all of which came roaring back into the conversation around her in the midst of the “purposeful music” campaign for <em>Witness.</em></p>
<p id="7Zcv5B">Cultural appropriation isn’t a new fad in pop music. Madonna, who has undergone far more reinventions than Perry and survived, has been culturally appropriating her entire career. So has Gwen Stefani, and dozens more. But in the context of Perry’s “purposeful music” statement, it feels even more galling, and harder to ignore. In characterizing herself and her album as political agents for change, Perry has opened herself up to more scrutiny, which she’s struggled to live up to. </p>
<p id="RkMpjT">In the publicity for <em>Witness</em>, she’s tried to confront these criticisms of herself. On the latest episode of civil rights activist <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pod-save-the-people/id1230148653?mt=2">DeRay Mckesson’s podcast</a> <em>Pod Save the People,</em> Perry apologized for her appropriative behavior throughout her career, and claimed oblivion. “I didn't know that I did it wrong until I heard people saying I did it wrong,” she said.</p>
<p id="RIY6I1">Somewhere along the way, she changed her tune from effortless oblivion to conscious revolutionary, changed her <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9lQFBaVwAAAyyU.jpg">Twitter bio</a> to “activist,” and suddenly seemed to be begging to be taken seriously, setting the stage for <em>Witness</em>’s difficult entry into the world. A lack of awareness is passable when you’re trying to create bubblegum anthemic pop, but when you’re trying to create “purposeful pop,” it just doesn’t fit. </p>
<p id="EFocgb">Encapsulating all of this is the larger problem that Perry’s songs about feuds between billionaires and watered-down social statements squished next to praises of cunnilingus just don’t feel relevant to the realm of popular music right now. They aren’t personal enough or honest enough to become emotional tsunamis like Lorde’s <em>Melodrama </em>(which supplanted <em>Witness </em>at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart) or Frank Ocean’s <em>Blonde</em>. They aren’t political enough to raise consciousness like Kendrick Lamar’s <em>DAMN.</em> Instead of functioning as a “defining era,” <em>Witness </em>reveals confusion on Perry’s part about what exactly she’s trying to do. </p>
<p id="SFlhHB">Perhaps if <em>Witness</em> had been all bubblegum pop and catchy bangers, or if Perry had slipped political and social comments into her songs without hanging her marketing campaign on them, both the album and Perry herself may have come out looking better. It might have made her seem outdated or out of touch, but at least she wouldn’t seem so lost. </p>
<h3 id="rgkh2h">Despite the backlash, Perry is still one of the biggest pop stars in the world</h3>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rVkU2VI3Dn2ioxmIq8pAA8d7Tuo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8817107/GettyImages_695417366.jpg">
<cite>Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic</cite>
</figure>
<p id="2OhkGd">Katy Perry hasn’t left the spotlight almost since her debut. Even though it’s been four years since her last album, Perry didn’t take much of a break. The Prismatic World Tour didn’t end until October 2015. In the middle of that, Perry performed at the Super Bowl, turning dumb sharks and corny, ridiculous props into one of the most memorable halftime shows of all time. She released a single for the 2016 Olympics, “Rise,” a track Jason Lipshutz at <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7686081/katy-perry-chained-to-the-rhythm-woke-political-review">Billboard</a> called a “stopgap single ... undercooked as a radio song and a motivational tool.” She declared her support of Hillary Clinton for president <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/katy-perry-offers-write-hillary-713915">way back in June 2014</a>, offering to write a campaign theme song. Most of 2016 she spent <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270134/democratic-convention-2016-celebrities">on the campaign trail</a>. </p>
<p id="Llmnph">There’s a theory that pop stars’ popularity works in cycles: In order to be cherished on the scale of the biggest stars, a pop star needs to be missed by her fans. We’ve seen this most recently with Taylor Swift’s vow to disappear for a bit before her next album. It’s a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/anne-hathaway-syndrome?utm_term=.xlK9wJoRE#.ar0R4elJv">well-known and studied</a> publicity phenomenon that any famous woman (the trend doesn’t really apply to men) who spends too long in the spotlight will have the public turn on her at some point. </p>
<aside id="o7Cv2f"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Anne Hathaway’s love-hate-redemption publicity cycle is a familiar (and sexist) one","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/10/15179082/anne-hathaway-publicity-cycle-hathahaters-jennifer-lawrence-taylor-swift"}]}'></div></aside><p id="GjCLbn">Being missed does wonders for an artist, and Katy Perry hasn’t given the culture a chance to miss her. A fan base more excited for the long-awaited return of Katy Perry probably would have received <em>Witness </em>better. That’s not to say it’s a great album, but neither was <em>Prism</em>, which was also criticized heavily (Metacritic: 61/100). <em>Prism</em>, though, had two No. 1 singles, “Dark Horse” and “Roar,” and sold 100,000 more copies in its first week than <em>Witness</em>. </p>
<p id="5irgcc">But while Perry’s cultural omnipresence might be part of the reason this album is underperforming by Perry’s historic standards, it doesn’t by <em>any means</em> mean that she’s doomed. Ultimately, critical perception doesn’t matter at all to Katy Perry, who, as one of the world’s biggest pop stars, can tour and make a gazillion dollars regardless of how people feel about her new album. As a point of comparison, Lady Gaga’s <em>Art</em><em>p</em><em>op </em>— which was met with fatigue and criticized harshly in retrospect — still toured for an <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6363749/rolling-stones-lady-gaga-wrap-up-tours-on-top">estimated gross of $83 million</a>. </p>
<p id="6BsVV5">Both Gaga and Perry are right on the heels of a reinvention album. Following her country-inspired <em>Joanne, </em>Gaga will have to pick a direction for her next album, just as Perry will have to decide whether to stay “purposeful” or retreat back to bubblegum when the time comes to follow up <em>Witness</em>. Ironically, this album, <a href="https://theringer.com/katy-perry-witness-album-review-fdfa40192473?gi=d93eec140d5e">as the Ringer’s Zoladz wrote</a>, might be what transforms Katy Perry into the dark horse she’s always seen herself as, positioning her for a comeback of sorts. </p>
<p id="OUx2yb">Maybe it’s overexposure that’s induced the Katy Perry fatigue, maybe it’s the veil of sincerity she’s brought to her music and persona, or maybe it’s just that America doesn’t want her songs right now. But Perry and her album aren’t flopping in terms beyond critical perspective and public fatigue. <em>Witness</em> is still among Billboard’s Top 40 albums, Perry’s still pulling in <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7841811/katy-perry-makes-history-third-riaa-diamond-song-award-roar">massive sales certifications</a> and plotting a nearly year-long <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7841811/katy-perry-makes-history-third-riaa-diamond-song-award-roar">world tour</a>, and she recently <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/katy-perry-offers-write-hillary-713915">signed a $25 million contract</a> to be a judge on the reincarnated <em>American Idol</em>. Katy Perry likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Put out enough bangers and America can forgive all sins.</p>
<p id="hlwdUD">Like many celebrities who suffer a career misstep, Perry will probably return to public favor in due time — she’s still too much of a cultural force not to. She promises as much on “Swish Swish” saying, “Imma stick around / for more than a minute / get used to it.”</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/10/15847350/katy-perry-witness-backlashKelsey McKinney2017-04-25T09:10:02-04:002017-04-25T09:10:02-04:00The vinyl resurgence is real, but it won’t save the record industry
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/04NPkbgqrtupBwjsyJIKATX4AwI=/0x0:5019x3764/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/54426005/GettyImages_187592228.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Frederick Bass via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vinyl is an easy savior figure for an embattled industry. But it’s more complicated than that.</p> <p id="NtgOCv">A vinyl record is breakable: not terribly, but obviously. Pull it from between the sheaths of its cover, and the rings shine. Drop it, and it won’t shatter — but bend it, and it’ll snap. To keep a vinyl record in good condition, to make sure it will last to be a thing that can survive you, you have to be careful with it. You have to appreciate its very existence.</p>
<p id="88bCCQ">For years, critics and market researchers have treated the vinyl medium’s resurgence in the digital age with the same kind of tentative caution. Connoisseurs are grateful for the format’s return, for the permanence and tangibility it offers. But vinyl’s resurgence is always tinted by a looming question: Is vinyl really back, or is it just a trend?</p>
<h3 id="EdwktW">Vinyl is selling, but it can’t save the industry</h3>
<p id="2NY6Lu">For the 11th year in a row, Nielsen Soundscan <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2017/nielsen-releases-2016-us-year-end-music-report.html">reported</a> an increase in vinyl albums sold in the United States. Consumers bought 13 million vinyl albums in 2016, an increase of 10 percent over 2015. That’s more vinyl records sold last year than from 2008 to 2012, the heralding of the genre’s comeback, combined. Compare that data with sales of CDs (down 16.3 percent) and digital sales (down 20.1 percent), and vinyl is the only music format with stable sales; everything else is in rapid decline.</p>
<p id="1mS98y">The Nielsen Soundscan numbers make clear that the only sector of the music industry that’s succeeding these days is vinyl, which makes it an easy “savior” for a music industry that hasn’t figured out how to make money off streaming as other physical formats continue to decline. Due to the streaming market, artists are making less money off listens to their music than ever before, and major (and minor, indie) labels haven’t figured out how to reliably make money without physical sales. Many of these labels are now pinning their dreams of the profits of yesteryear to these spinning plastic disks that sell at higher prices for nostalgic value. </p>
<p id="TLJ1j6">But the vinyl obsession is still difficult to predict, making it a problematic savior figure. </p>
<p id="hj8K70">Using the midyear vinyl numbers in July 2016, Michael Nelson<a href="http://www.stereogum.com/1889324/weve-passed-peak-vinyl-here-comes-the-collapse/franchises/but-whos-buying/"> argued for Stereogum</a> that not only have we reached “peak vinyl” but we’d passed it. Nelson looks at the year-over-year increases in percentage sales of vinyl from 2012-’16 midyear reports to show a bell curve (14.2, 33.5, 40.4, 38.40, 11.5), and uses this to argue that the bell curve will continue downward. “If that arc continues on that trajectory (and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t), vinyl sales are gonna plateau sooner than later,” Nelson argues. “And not long after they plateau, they’re gonna crater.”</p>
<p id="YtR948">Nelson’s not alone in his fear that the vinyl obsession might be a Band-aid to the industry’s profit issues more than a solution. Doomsday rhetoric around vinyl began in 2015 when Marc Hogan wrote a piece for Stereogum titled <a href="http://www.stereogum.com/featured/have-we-reached-peak-vinyl/">“Have We Reached Peak Vinyl?”</a> which argues that because the music industry has lost any semblance of an idea for how to make money off art, vinyl is a doomed product.</p>
<p id="bm6ze0">Both Nelson’s and Hogan’s arguments gloss over a key factor in the life of vinyl records, though. </p>
<h3 id="VpNbfu">True vinyl success might not actually be a win for the labels</h3>
<p id="aJiAJw">Both of those Stereogum pieces write about vinyl in the context of the ever-in-danger record store, the majority of which closed <a href="http://charmicarmicat.blogspot.com/2008/04/death-and-life-of-great-manhattan.html">fairly quickly</a> over a very <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6406630/vinyl-records-comeback-music-industry-record-store-day">brief period of time in the early 2000s</a>. This was a shock to the industry, and signaled a lack of interest that very quickly led to a lack of profit. Without stores to ship new music to, how could consumers find it? </p>
<p id="31qCby">Some of the concern regarding where and how the actual vinyl transaction occurs has been mitigated as major corporations like Amazon begin to offer robust vinyl selections. But all of that vinyl — the vinyl that Nelson’s and Hogan’s articles are concerned with — is newly produced and pressed. And therein lies the complicating factor in vinyl’s supposed savior status. </p>
<p id="RkTZO8">“What these mainstream stats never capture is the massive secondhand market and independent stores that have never gave up on vinyl,” Dominik Bartmanski, the author of<a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/vinyl-9780857857316/"> <em>Vinyl: the Analogue Record in the Digital Age</em></a>, tells me. “That's important, and these sections of the market continue to be important for vinyl's relevance as an economic good, and above all a cultural good.”</p>
<p id="DBOkf7">Anecdotally, when I think about the vinyl albums I (a music person) bought in 2016, this assertion makes sense. Of the 10 vinyl albums I bought in 2016, I purchased seven of them secondhand at record stores. None of those seven albums got counted in the Nielsen consumer report, and the year-over-year change in percentage of secondhand albums bought isn’t counted at all right now. </p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8yxByFCip5YQD-GMh2wm7mwhCGo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8400053/GettyImages_527468894.jpg">
<cite>Stuart Freedman via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A man browses through secondhand records.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="XADVgQ">My experience isn’t unique, either. Many people buy secondhand vinyl because labels reprint very few older albums. Sure, if you want, say, David Bowie’s <em>Aladdin Sane</em> (a 1973 album), you can buy it as a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aladdin-Sane-180-Gram-Vinyl/dp/B01AJZ8EBM">new edition</a> on Amazon for about $13 — but that’s because Bowie died last year, and consumer interest in his records shot up. But what if you wanted to buy another 1973 album, like <em>Call Me</em> by Al Green? You can buy that on Amazon, but <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Call-Me-GREEN-AL/dp/B007929EX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490363663&sr=8-1&keywords=call+me+al+green+vinyl">it’ll cost you $43.12</a>. At the secondhand shop in my neighborhood, I found it for $17.89. </p>
<p id="LvY5u9">Unlike some other formats, vinyl records hold up over time, meaning their secondhand market is pretty well-stocked (not to mention those records that are handed down between generations). To find an obscure or specific album from the original vinyl era, you’ll very likely have to go to a secondhand shop, where it’s been purchased from a previous owner. Under this model, the question then becomes: Which part of the music industry is vinyl expected to save? </p>
<p id="G5aEsr">Let’s say I take my shiny three-year-old Lana Del Rey <em>Born to Die</em> vinyl to a secondhand store. When I bought it the first time at a concert, everyone made money: Lana, her label, the songwriters and engineers, the people working the booth. But on second sale, only two people make money: me and the owner of the secondhand shop. That’s how all secondhand sales work, but if vinyl’s resurgence is mainly taking place in resale markets — which I’d argue it is — it’s not going to help the industry at large at all. </p>
<h3 id="de9SvT">Vinyl doesn’t seem to be going anywhere</h3>
<p id="4Dc5N6">Because the secondhand market is untraceable and doesn’t really make any money for the greater industry, almost all of the focus (both in vinyl-as-savior narratives and in doomsday narratives) is on how well <em>new </em>vinyl is selling. And while it’s selling better than CDs and digital albums, it might not be sustainable for the larger industry. </p>
<p id="Ednblq">The discussions around peak vinyl and whether or not vinyl will continue to boom often circle around a deeper, greater fear: that the music industry is broken in a way that cannot be fixed. Because the industry is still largely controlled by major labels, and there is no clear way to pay artists for work that is streamed hundreds of thousands of times, only to make them a few hundred dollars, vinyl has become a false messiah for an industry that’s forgotten how to make a profit.</p>
<p id="n8kpeh">“The drop-off in CD sales after the industry’s 1999 peak coincided not only with Napster but an early-2000s U.S. recession; meanwhile, real wages for Americans on average have<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/"> barely budged</a> in decades,” Hogan<a href="http://www.stereogum.com/featured/have-we-reached-peak-vinyl/"> wrote for Stereogum</a>. “To a degree, the fate of the current vinyl boom is inextricable from what happens to the broader economy.”</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YeSS91vUL_puQmgIQ6GcZQ45Fuc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8400077/GettyImages_670940572.jpg">
<cite>Frederic J. Brown /AFP/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Employees at Erika Records work in the record pressing plant in Buena Park, California.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="vAmeKv">To a degree, Hogan is right. During the next recession, consumers will probably buy fewer $20 vinyl records, just like they will buy less organic food, and fewer hardcover books, and less bespoke fashion. But that doesn’t mean those trends will die, or even that they won’t be able to recover. In the last US recession (in 2009), for example, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/12/first.borders.bookstore.closing/">book sales took a huge hit</a> that some stores, like Borders, never recovered from. Since the economy has recovered, book sales have returned — and, as with vinyl, they’ve mainly returned to <a href="http://publishingperspectives.com/2016/01/independent-bookstores-thrive-in-digital-age/">independent </a>and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-the-age-of-amazon-used-bookstores-are-making-an-unlikely-comeback/2015/12/26/06b20e48-abea-11e5-bff5-905b92f5f94b_story.html?utm_term=.dfbccc04d04c">secondhand stores</a>. </p>
<p id="j4laEh">One thing is clear:<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/27/7922989/music-sales-2014"> Vinyl is not going to fix the greater problems</a> with pay in the music industry. But that doesn’t mean vinyl itself is dying.</p>
<p id="wei38B">“I do not think the rekindled interest in vinyl is a passing trend, or a mere retro fashion or a short-lived vintage craze,” Bartmanski tells me. “If mainstream demand continues to grow, new pressing machines can be built, and prices are likely to grow too; if it plateaus and stays at this relatively healthy level, it means it can live on, certainly in cities with vibrant music cultures.”</p>
<p id="rn0gdH">The resurgence in vinyl, as Bartmanski’s book argues, doesn’t just show us something about the music industry; it shows us something about ourselves. “Music is more than data, more than convenience,” Bartmanski says. “Vinyl's an equivalent of quality slow food in music consumption.”</p>
<p id="b61gue">And that seems to make all the difference in whether people perceive vinyl as thriving or dying: satisfaction. According to Bartmanski, people buy vinyl because it sounds different (<a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/4/19/5626058/vinyls-great-but-its-not-better-than-cds">not better, just different</a>), and because it’s an object they can hold in their hands. Consumers are attracted to vinyl because they like the big-format art covers, and they like to keep the music in their collection. Sometimes they even buy vinyl just because they like how fragile it is. Just because the format can be broken doesn’t mean it will.</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/25/14412928/vinyl-resurgence-record-industry-secondhand-salesKelsey McKinney2017-02-13T09:46:07-05:002017-02-13T09:46:07-05:005 winners and 4 losers from the 2017 Grammys
<figure>
<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-5qptjOW7skF_13F10hCogmseOQ=/0x0:5472x4104/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53215855/635004064.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>For the second time, Adele took home three of the big four Grammy awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year. | Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adele and Beyoncé each stole the show in their own unique way. </p> <p id="fDnhvp">Every year, the biggest stars in music get together to watch each other perform, walk a red carpet, and balance an armload of golden gramophone statuettes. </p>
<p id="PEFFTL">And every year, the actual presentation of Grammy awards becomes less and less important. Though the Recording Academy hands out 84 categories’ worth of awards every year, only the biggest get handed out during the show, and even those get pressed for time. </p>
<aside id="EwWcjL"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Grammys 2017: the complete list of winners","url":"http://www.vox.com/2017/2/12/14592102/grammys-2017-winners-list"}]}'></div></aside><p id="RQ4wEg">Instead, the biggest night in music is about performance, be it in a musical number, behind a podium, or on the red carpet. <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/2/11/14587698/grammys-2017-winners-nominations-biggest-moments-beyonce">The 59th Annual Grammy Awards</a>, held on Sunday night, weren’t the best performance the music industry has ever put on. </p>
<p id="9wsCWx">The pacing was off, there were plenty of poorly timed jokes, and there were more mistakes than moments of gold. But no matter how good the show is, the Grammys are always one of the most talked about nights in music. </p>
<p id="cbRxML">So let’s take a look at the night through its most instantly iconic and most utterly uncomfortable moments. Because this is, after all, a night all about winning, we’ll be breaking the night down by handing out golden gramophones to the winners, and pitying the utter losers: </p>
<h3 id="ljSnBz">Winner: Adele</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards - Press Room" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ydbU_6o-pa0ZtvP4UAhBKAT7hQo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975693/635009924.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Hard not to be a winner when you’re holding four Grammys.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="xBq0tt">Adele cried no fewer than three times at the Grammys on Sunday. </p>
<p id="mdrEFG">For the second time, she took home three of the big four Grammy awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year. Adele also won all three of the major awards in 2012 for her 2011 album <em>21</em>. And this year’s Grammys, in all aspects, revolved around Adele. The opening shot of the night was her singing “Hello,” and the final shot was of her hugging her producer Greg Kurstin. </p>
<p id="AhHWrW">Had she not won almost every major award of the night, though, the biggest moment of the show would have still revolved around her. Adele was supposed to sing a slower-paced, more emotional version of George Michael’s “Fastlove” in tribute to the singer, but no more than five bars into the song, she <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/2/12/14594578/adele-george-michael-grammy-tribute-fastlove">stopped the performance</a>, saying that she had to, “get this right,” and she started the performance over again. CBS bleeped out her response to the mess-up, but she could be seen mouthing an f-bomb. It was a moment of perfectionism and displayed the humility that she would continue throughout the night. </p>
<aside id="WBweVi"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Why Adele beat Beyoncé for Album of the Year","url":"http://www.vox.com/2017/2/13/14595352/adele-beat-beyonce-grammys-why"}]}'></div></aside><p id="i4nse8">In what will probably become the most talked-about moment of the night, Adele claimed that she <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/13/14595210/adele-beyonce-grammys-2017-album-of-the-year">could not accept the award for Album of the Year</a>, saying that she thought the award belonged instead to Beyoncé for her stunning album <em>Lemonade</em>. Earlier in the night she told Beyoncé from the stage, “I want you to be my mommy.” </p>
<p id="Pf2pXd">Adele did not actually hand over her gramophone to Beyoncé during the ceremony, but her acknowledgement that Beyoncé was yet again shut out of the big four Grammy categories, despite creating an incredible work of art, was an important, considerate, and seemingly sincere thing to do. Her intentions will almost certainly be questioned and dissected in the next few days, but Adele has never been a very good actress, and her shock and immediate deference to Beyoncé’s work certainly shows appreciation and reverence. </p>
<h3 id="6LxGYd">Winner: Beyoncé</h3>
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<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards - Show" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jzhFX3fo3_AVuSCCfcMaXaG2byg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975697/635009078.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Beyoncé made the Grammy stage her playground.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="gVn8c4">There are very few rooms where Beyoncé isn’t a winner. Despite losing out to Adele on her major nominations for the night, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/2/12/14594212/beyonce-grammy-performance-2017">Beyoncé still put on an incredible show</a> during her performance to close out the telecast’s first hour. She started the set with a hologram interactive of her, her daughter Blue Ivy, and her mother interacting in various poses that <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/12/14594294/grammys-2017-beyonce-love-drought-sand-castles-goddess-references">represented</a> fertility, femininity, and regality. She wore a halo of gold reminiscent of Pacheco’s 1621 <em>Immaculate Conception</em> painting of the virgin Mary, surrounded by dancers wearing halos of their own. Beyoncé was showered with flowers as she sang two of <em>Lemonade</em>’s slower songs: “Sandcastles” and “Love Drought.” </p>
<p id="oYGgNJ">“Women like her cannot be contained,” Beyoncé’s voiceover said at the beginning of the performance, and she definitely could not be at this year’s Grammys: She took home Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video, and when Adele professed how much she loved <em>Lemonade</em> from the stage, Beyoncé’s eyes shone with tears. </p>
<p id="G997Zt">Though she may have lost the big three awards to Adele, nothing about Beyoncé’s behavior could label her a loser. </p>
<h3 id="YCo9Nf">
<strong>Loser: </strong><strong>s</strong><strong>ound </strong><strong>m</strong><strong>ixing</strong>
</h3>
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<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards - Roaming Show" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KQNYB_dYXFPV5GYlqBWUxs1WmDM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975703/635012664.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS</cite>
<figcaption>Nobody can tell what Lady Gaga and Metallica are singing.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="vRXvUt">It’s incredibly difficult to mix the sound for an arena performance, much less for more than a dozen different performers using separate stages and backing sounds. But it’s also impossible to forget how difficult it is to engineer sound, because the Grammys never make it look easy. Every year, there is at least one technical blip in the Grammys’ three-hour-plus telecast, but it was truly astounding how many issues this year’s ceremony had.</p>
<p id="OTRFPw">Most notable was Adele’s f-bomb-laden pause during her in-memoriam tribute for George Michael. It would be easy to blame the stumble on Adele, especially given her <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/15/11011820/grammys-2016-adele">rocky performance at last year’s Grammys</a>; but, as was the case then, too, problems like this almost always happen when an artist can’t hear themselves in an earpiece due to poor mixing. </p>
<aside id="6ypAAm"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The 7 Grammy performances worth watching","url":"http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/13/14593806/grammys-2017-7-performances-worth-watching"}]}'></div></aside><p id="JqkbJ0">Adele’s flub was the most obvious flaw of the night, but far from the only one. </p>
<p id="sG6WZJ">When Tori Kelly walked on stage to participate in the Bee Gees tribute, I barely even registered her messing with her earpiece, because so many people had done it before her. Alicia Keys’s alto was mixed lower than Maren Morris’s, making their voices blend together instead of sounding distinct and full. Metallica’s James Hetfield’s microphone wasn’t working at all during the first half of the group’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/2/12/14594696/grammys-lady-gaga-metallica-performance">otherwise-passable set with Lady Gaga</a>. </p>
<p id="TlwU1b">These kind of sound issues might be more acceptable at the Emmys or Oscars, but when the entire show depends on the sound, it’s pretty important to get the mixing right. </p>
<h3 id="7eoCT8">Winner/Loser: political commentary</h3>
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<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards - Show" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R1SpsPO6XYuYHqKWQLRTzKYmtJM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975709/635001522.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A Tribe Called Quest ignites the Staples Center.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Fi9TML">For the first two-thirds of the Grammys, every single political reference was halfhearted at best. </p>
<p id="xz3nGS">Paris Jackson started off the night’s blithe political references with a reference to #NODaPL. Laverne Cox referenced a future Supreme Court case. <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/12/14594386/katy-perry-grammys-2017-performance">Katy Perry</a> wore an armband with the word “Persist” and stood in front of the preamble to the Constitution projected on a wall. The president of the Recording Academy even called on the president and Congress to “update music laws” and “support the arts.” All of these movements, no matter how well-intentioned, felt fairly empty during such an otherwise glitzy night. </p>
<p id="ujRXkW">Then, in one of the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/2/12/14594898/busta-rhymes-grammy-performance-2017-president-agent-orange">most riveting moments of the night</a>, Anderson .Paak joined A Tribe Called Quest for a performance bedazzled with political statements. Standing on the center stage, the group thanked “President Agent Orange” for the <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/29/14432362/trump-muslim-ban-statement">Muslim ban</a> and had backup dancers knock down a wall onstage. The group ended the performance with raised fists; “Resist. Resist. Resist,” was chanted as the set ended, concluding the show’s only outwardly political statement with real heart and guts.</p>
<h3 id="WBArQx">Loser: Joy Villa</h3>
<div class="c-float-right"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards - Arrivals" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ckzxm19Pd6ZtQRT2JXCas86Y2C0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975661/634957942.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Now you know who Joy Villa is!</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="Vreevl">Joy Villa, who goes by the stage name Princess Joy Villa, made the first headlines of the night, arriving on the Grammy red carpet wearing what looked like a giant white poncho, only to strip it off in front of the paparazzi to reveal a dress sporting Donald Trump’s signature campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” in vertical sparkling letters. </p>
<p id="LVK2ah">A multiracial artist actress and singer, Joy Villa wasn’t nominated for anything at this year’s Grammys — her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/joyvilla/?hl=en">Instagram profile</a> says she’s a “Grammy Considered Artist” — abut she still managed to snag her own piece of the spotlight with her puzzling fashion statement. That may be a win for her PR people, but it wasn’t really a win for her.</p>
<h3 id="VFksUu">Winner: David Bowie</h3>
<p id="odhZuV">In his entire music career leading up to this year’s Grammys, David Bowie had only won a single regular Grammy — Best Video, Short Form in 1985 for “Jazzin’ for Blue Jean.” (He was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.) That means that until tonight, Bowie had never won an award for his work as an individual artist. </p>
<p id="WNR7Yj">Before this year’s show even began, though, Bowie — who received an <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/15/11011792/grammys-2016-gaga-bowie">in-memoriam tribute treatment at last year’s Grammys</a> — took home four posthumous awards: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical (<em>Blackstar</em>), Best Rock Performance (“Blackstar”), Best Alternative Album (Blackstar), and Best Recording Package (<em>Blackstar</em>). And in winning Best Rock Song during the live show, Bowie won for every category he was nominated in. </p>
<h3 id="jIPDDY"><strong>Loser: James Corden</strong></h3>
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<img alt="The 59th GRAMMY Awards" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4noIgpmkS9QxM7GqUYgMSh9dKpc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975719/635018786.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS</cite>
<figcaption>James Corden drove this home, too.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="UPRF1W">The Grammys, possibly jealous of every other awards show, decided to bench LL Cool J this year and hand the hosting reins over to late-night personality, “Carpool Karaoke” host, and CBS mainstay James Corden. </p>
<p id="ydypvw">Corden began the night by falling down a flight of stairs, and then wearing one shoe to sing a constructed rap meant to kick off the night in spectacular fashion, I guess. </p>
<p id="id9uQt">Part of the reason the Grammys have never had a traditional host like other awards shows, though, is that the Grammys are already packed full of performances. The show does not need Ellen DeGeneres creating a group selfie, because it has a dozen superstars performing choreographed sets. </p>
<p id="0Mut41">The addition of James Corden to the Grammys’ already-crowded night not only added a mess of gimmicky moments that were completely unnecessary (a joke about Corden’s parents swinging, for example), it took away from the already little time allotted to the actual award winners: The show played off Greg Kurstin when he tried to give speech after Adele for their Song of the Year win, and yet made plenty of time for James Corden to do an extended Carpool Karaoke gag. </p>
<p id="LV5Uw1">That’s not necessarily Corden’s fault — CBS chose him to host for a reason, after all — but he frankly can’t out-perform most of the big names on the Grammys stage, and it was cruel to make him try. </p>
<h3 id="AfUlCg">Winner: Chance the Rapper</h3>
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<img alt="59th GRAMMY Awards - Show" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/t7jGCgDqmuJbRZ5ftHFUE0AJq64=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7975723/634999666.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for NARAS</cite>
<figcaption>Chance the Rapper had a big, breakout night.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="D3EmKc">The two things Chance the Rapper is most well-known for are his gospel inspiration and being an independent artist — and he took every chance to hammer both of those brands home at this year’s Grammys. </p>
<p id="3rHJml">The Chicago performer kicked off the night with a Best New Artist win for his mixtape <em>Coloring Book</em>, an R&B album laden with Gospel references, and used his moment in the spotlight to continually repeat “glory to God,” while accepting his award. And when he won Best Rap Album, he dedicated it to “the indie artists who’ve been doing this stuff for a long time.” </p>
<p id="mPkWGp">Where Chance truly shined, though, was in his performance toward the end of the show, when he sang “How Great” with a full choir and gospel-music superstar Kirk Franklin. Even though his mic was turned down so low you could barely hear him, he was dynamic, and he moved straight into a high-energy rendition of “Blessings,” pacing back and forth and jumping around the entire stage. </p>
<p id="91ZRRm">Chance’s dependence on gospel inspiration may be nearing its tipping point, but for tonight, it served as a perfect conduit for his impressive talent.</p>
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<h4 id="hr3FXe">Watch: Adele turns acceptance speech into Beyoncé tribute</h4>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/13/14595430/grammys-2017-winners-and-losersKelsey McKinney2017-02-12T19:15:42-05:002017-02-12T19:15:42-05:00Why the Grammys have so many categories
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<img alt="Beyoncé holds the award for Best Contemporary R&amp;B Album in 2007. That award no longer exists." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/p5gUn2u4G-MfDm6vb6UVez3OHTE=/0x71:3292x2540/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53204757/73293723.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Beyoncé holds the award for Best Contemporary R&B Album in 2007. That award no longer exists. | Vince Bucci/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The logic behind the awards’ 84 different honors, explained.</p> <p id="KSj9MG">When the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/2/11/14587698/grammys-2017-winners-nominations-biggest-moments-beyonce">2017 Grammy Awards</a> are held on Sunday, February 12, only a handful of winners will be announced during the <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/10/14575750/grammy-2017-live-stream-time-channel-online">performance-filled ceremony</a> that airs on live TV. </p>
<aside id="KbEXax"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Beyoncé dominates the 2017 Grammy nominations with 9 nods for Lemonade","url":"http://www.vox.com/2017/2/11/14587780/grammy-nominations-2017-nominees-beyonce-adele"}]}'></div></aside><p id="1KISwe">But the Grammys will hand out awards in literally dozens of less glamorous categories before the live broadcast begins.</p>
<p id="KVwpMd">Just what are these categories? What's being rewarded? Read on.</p>
<h3 id="znbn7a">1) Why are there so many categories?</h3>
<p id="n10rpA">The Grammys are a massive awards show. There are 84 total categories where someone can take home an award, and, believe it or not, there used to be more than 100. The current categories run the gamut from Song of the Year to Best Metal Performance and everything in between. There are so many categories because they must cover any song written in a given year — yes, even your cover of "Take on Me" done in the style of traditional Inuit throat singing.</p>
<p id="YmmyfK">Here is the full list of every <a href="https://www.grammy.com/nominees">Grammy category</a>.</p>
<h3 id="RpsTTg">2) Why does it matter how many categories there are?</h3>
<p id="nue4Fh">Awards are only as important as they are difficult to receive.</p>
<p id="PfmvS1">Take the <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/11/14238736/oscars-2017-89th-academy-awards-nominations-winners-biggest-moments">Academy Awards</a>, for example. There are only 24 categories that a person can win an Oscar in, and they vary in prestige. For male actors, for example, only two people (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor) can say they are an Academy Award winner in a given year. You only have so many chances.</p>
<p id="GLBorl">The Grammys give out almost four times as many awards as the Academy Awards, and they vary only slightly in prestige. The distinction between the award for Rock Song and the award for R&B song isn't one of quality. It's one of genre.</p>
<p id="ecbs3K">At the Grammys, talent is split into so many different categories that winning an award doesn’t matter nearly as much. It would be like if the Oscars split the Best Picture category into nine genres of movie and awarded each film a gold statue.</p>
<p id="K2OCNn">But there <em>are</em> a few higher-prestige awards — four of them, to be specific.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Taylor Swift won three Grammys in 2016: Album of the Year and Best Pop Album for 1989, and Best Music Video for “Bad Blood.”" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/K-vgdeyzbdURnkOYyCXdHZGP75k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7971647/510512760.jpg">
<cite>Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Taylor Swift won three Grammys in 2016: Album of the Year and Best Pop Album for <em>1989</em>, and Best Music Video for “Bad Blood.”</figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="6yx7sG">3) What are the biggest categories?</h3>
<ul>
<li id="9TbQUW">Record of the Year</li>
<li id="sPpwgZ">Album of the Year</li>
<li id="DBjYM5">Song of the Year</li>
<li id="rJDPt5">Best New Artist</li>
</ul>
<p id="Aii4xR">These four awards are the big guns of the Grammys. Winning one of them means an artist gets to give a speech during the primetime broadcast and have a picture of her kissing her trophy plastered across the internet.</p>
<p id="L6j863">Winning a Grammy can increase sales for artists who receive their awards during the live show, a boost known as the <a href="https://www.grammy.com/news/grammy-effect-boosts-album-sales">“Grammy effect.”</a> In particular, since 2001 the Album of the Year Award has historically bumped sales by at least 50 percent and sometimes by more than 900 percent, according to data gathered by <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/02/14/172035944/a-brief-history-of-the-grammy-sales-bump">NPR</a>.</p>
<p id="3Ws2JZ">If you're lucky enough to be awarded a Grammy during the awards’ live broadcast (an honor usually limited to the big four categories and the best albums in rock, country, R&B, and rap), your album will see a sales bump. Beck, who won Album of the Year in 2015 for <em>Morning Phase</em>, saw a sales bump of <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6465937/grammys-sales-bump">945 percent</a> after the Grammys. Taylor Swift's <em>1989</em>, which won Album of the Year in 2016, <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6889403/grammy-gains-charts-taylor-swift-kendrick-lamar-hamilton">saw a sales bump of 91 percent</a> after its win. </p>
<p id="s6SdKd">But that high is short-lived even for a big four winner. Can you name the Best New Artist from 2016? (It was Meghan Trainor.)<em> </em>What about Rap Album? (Kendrick Lamar’s <em>To Pimp a Butterfly</em>.) Maybe you can't name the last Oscar winner for Best Picture, either, but at least you immediately know what that <em>means</em>. (It was <em>Spotlight</em>, by the way.)</p>
<p id="ntEaxF">Winning more than one Grammy in a major category can bring a much bigger increase in sales, however. After Adele won three of the big four awards in 2012 (Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year for her album <em>21 </em>and its song “Rolling in the Deep”), her post-award sales bounce was 207 percent — and she has since sold more than 10 million copies of the award-winning album. This year, something similar could happen to Beyoncé, or again to Adele; both women are nominated in multiple categories, including Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year.</p>
<p id="wOlxgG">But it's not like Adele or Beyoncé was hurting for sales before the Grammys. Paradoxically, you're more likely to win multiple trophies in the big four if you're already a big seller.</p>
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<img alt="Sam Smith won big at the 2015 Grammys, taking home four trophies including Best New Artist, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year.&nbsp;" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1z1UYKOHYlVjeLD6WCdsJwMBopg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7970871/463038764.jpg">
<cite>Frazer Harrison/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Sam Smith won big at the 2015 Grammys, taking home four trophies, including Best New Artist, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year. </figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="HAdayx">4) What is the difference between Song of the Year and Record of the Year?</h3>
<p id="XzRkJp">The answer is actually much simpler than it might seem.</p>
<p id="i73Qtd">Song of the Year is an award for a song itself, not the performance of a song. It is awarded to the songwriters who wrote the lyrics and melody.</p>
<p id="chgF7g">Record of the Year is the award for a song in its entirety, as it appears on an album. It includes the artist's performance of the song, the song’s production values, the song’s recording engineering, and the mixing of the performance. Record of the Year is awarded to the winning song’s producers, mixers, and engineers, as well as the performing artist.</p>
<h3 id="Fg1yVQ">5) What is the difference between a Performance award and a Song award?</h3>
<p id="hGTfKX">In almost every genre there are two awards — one for the year’s best song and one for the year’s best performance. For example, in 2016, Best Rock song went to the members of the Alabama Shakes for "Don't Wanna Fight." But Best Rock Performance went to "Circe" by Ghost. This could seem confusing, but it's almost exactly the same as the distinction between Record of the Year and Song of the Year.</p>
<p id="AUNN4Z">Song awards are given to songwriters. Performance awards are given to everyone involved in a song, including the performing artist. If the Grammy powers that be wanted to make the difference less confusing, they could rename Record of the Year to Performance of the Year.</p>
<p id="x8mIkr">All of this has to do with the way songs are written and copyrighted. In fact, there are two copyright owners to every single song. The first copyright, known as the mechanical copyright, belongs to the people who write and compose the song. (Its name stems from the invention of mechanical pianos.) The Best Song award, then, honors the songwriters behind massive pop stars. The second copyright belongs to the performer.</p>
<p id="fSIJXT">However, because so many artists write their own songs, it's possible to win both Best Song and Best Performance for the same track. For example, in 1971 Paul Simon won the Grammy for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year, because he both wrote and performed the Simon & Garfunkel song "Bridge Over Troubled Water."</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Alicia Keys holds her 2002 Grammys, one of which was for Best Female R&amp;B Vocal Performance, an award that no longer exists.&nbsp;" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vuHnq5UgR6RYKBPWTL_OTG7ZF5U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7970879/72442928.jpg">
<cite>Vince Bucci/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Alicia Keys holds her 2002 Grammys, one of which was for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, an award that no longer exists. </figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="yMlp5O">6) Are the categories the same every year?</h3>
<p id="SJRske">No. When the Grammys debuted in 1959, they had just 28 categories. At the 53rd Grammys (in 2011), there were 109 categories. Since then, the Recording Academy has consolidated some of the categories to cut down on awards glut:</p>
<p id="Lbfpu9">According to the <a href="http://www.grammy.org/recording-academy/announcement/faq">Grammys website</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p id="yxogF1">In early 2009, The Academy embarked on its first-ever comprehensive evaluation of the GRAMMY Awards structure and process. A great deal of research, discussion, and evaluation led to a call for change, embracing the idea that a transformation of the entire awards structure would ensure that each genre would be treated in parity to others.</p></blockquote>
<p id="Co3q1A">Between 2011 and 2012, the Grammy committee cut 31 categories, including Best Rock Solo Vocal Performance, Best Urban/Alternative Performance, and Best Contemporary Jazz Album. You can see <a href="https://www.grammy.org/files/59th_guidelines_quick_reference_guide.pdf">a breakdown of the categories here</a>. Since then, the Grammys have added a handful of categories, to put the current total at 84.</p>
<p id="SITm6b">The most important change made was the removal of the distinction between male and female soloists. Instead of Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, there's now just Best Pop Solo Performance, which pits artists like Beyoncé and Justin Bieber against each other. The change also removed many of the R&B genre's distinctions, including Contemporary R&B. This later led to the creation of the Urban Contemporary category in 2011.</p>
<h3 id="KcDSPm">7) How do songs get nominated in a category?</h3>
<p id="xPrzuX">The <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7976729/grammy-voting-process"><strong>nomination and voting process</strong></a> for the Grammys is complex. Members of the Recording Academy are allowed to nominate candidates in the big four categories and then in up to nine genre categories. But those votes might not actually count: The nomination votes are tabulated, but then a private committee decides on the actual nominees.</p>
<p id="J0v1AQ">Once the nominees are chosen, all Recording Academy members get to vote for the winners of the big four awards, as well as the winners of up to 20 genre categories. The secret committee (presumably) does not intervene.</p>
<p id="BadOVK">If you have more questions about how the Academy selects the award winners, you can find all the answers in Vox’s <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7976729/grammy-voting-process">Grammy voting explainer</a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/2/11/14588062/grammy-categories-so-many-record-song-album-performanceKelsey McKinney2016-12-26T09:00:01-05:002016-12-26T09:00:01-05:00The music theory principle that unifies 2016’s radio hits
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q3Fg8zoREAstDlLDI5PEgBRTKtM=/0x0:1400x1050/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52431657/Justin_Bieber_Sorry_2015_1500x1500_e1450728864520.0.jpeg" />
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<p>To understand this year’s Top 40, you need to understand ambiguous key centers.</p> <p id="1rMi6s">Every year, the songs that become staples on the American Top 40 charts have a tone. In 2008, that tone was pure optimism, with songs like Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” and Colbie Caillat’s “Bubbly.” In 2015, the songs were minor-key and kind of frantic: songs like Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space,” and Hozier’s “Take Me to Church.” This year, the songs are even more similar: They all sound like songs for dancing and crying, songs whose uncertainty could go on for a minute or for 40.</p>
<p id="fUd0uG">What’s so interesting about 2016’s pop hits, though, is that so many songs with this tone (and there are a lot of them) get there through the same exact music theory principle.</p>
<p id="C9cdX6">I first noticed the 2016 tone in<strong> </strong>the Chainsmokers’ “Closer,” featuring Halsey, when it played immediately after Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” on a playlist I was creating. (Like other songs mentioned in this piece, “Sorry” was technically released in 2015, but it remained at or near the top of the charts for a good chunk of this year, which makes it a 2016 hit for the purposes of this exercise.) Despite being performed, written, and produced by entirely different people, there was something in the chord structure that made the two songs sound the same.</p>
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<p id="jx7sPY">I couldn’t figure it out, so I called Owen Pallett and asked him to listen to both. Pallett is a brilliant pop music theorist who is a frequent Arcade Fire collaborator and an art-pop auteur. “The one thing I noticed,” he told me, “is that they have ambiguous key centers.”</p>
<h3 id="xoQSxV">What’s an ambiguous key center?</h3>
<p id="t7bL2N">Usually in popular music, it’s incredibly clear which chord is the “home base” in any song. Normally a song’s key center is the last note or first note in every four-bar loop. Even the most basic music theory training would make it very easy to recognize the key of a song on Top 40 radio on first listen.</p>
<p id="2nmD7a">Take the Beatles’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOuu88OwdK8">“She Loves You”</a> as an example: In the chorus, when they sing “She loves you / yeah, yeah, yeah / With a love like that / you know you should be gla-ad” — the key of the song is the note that “glad” ends on, G major. </p>
<p id="yqpgbA">Without getting too technical: A key is defined by the note that the scale you’re using starts on, and consists of all seven notes in that scale. Of course, most songs use more than one chord, but they always return to the principal chord of the song’s key. In the case of the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” that key is G. Typically, a major key is more upbeat and positive. It sounds comfortable and expected. A minor key sounds more dissonant and potentially sad. </p>
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<p id="MzPEUf">Normally it’s obvious which key a pop song belongs in. But in a song with an ambiguous key center, the chords are arranged in such a way that it’s difficult to tell which chord is the home base. Sometimes this is achieved by never actually playing the note the song is based on, as in Charlie Puth’s “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” featuring Selena Gomez. In this case, the song uses the chords A, B, C-sharp minor, and G-sharp minor, chords that could belong in three different keys (E, C-sharp minor, or G-sharp minor). Sonically, though, the song <em>sounds</em> most like it’s in E major. </p>
<p id="EdZydd">Or sometimes it happens because there are only a few chords in the song but two of them sound like they could be the key center, like in DNCE’s “Cake by the Ocean,” which uses E minor and A minor back and forth over and over again. </p>
<p id="YFHd7E">“It sounds more intellectual than it is when you hear it,” said Ethan Hein, an adjunct professor of music and doctoral student at Montclair State and NYU, when I asked him about all this. “All it means when you hear it is that you’re just kind of floating and drifting. The songs are a little more open-ended.”</p>
<h3 id="HCgaC8">Ambiguous key centers aren’t new, they’ve just become more popular</h3>
<p id="W3pKz4">The chords and notes used in 2016’s biggest hits aren’t unique; they’re the same exact ones we’ve been hearing since the invention of <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/music/ito/history/">modern music around 1750</a>. But by shifting a few notes here and there, current pop artists can keep their songs from sounding predictable and give them a more open-ended tone. Instead of landing back on the chord we expect it to, these songs lift back up into another note, making the song more buoyant, surprising, and dynamic. </p>
<p id="kidAng">Even ambiguous key centers aren’t a <em>new</em> thing, per se. Ambiguous key centers were very common chord structures for classic rock songs. That’s because the biggest influence on classic rock was the blues, which still had key centers, but the rules were totally different. And that, both Hine and Pallett agree, plays a big role in why we are seeing the emergence of so many ambiguous pop songs right now.</p>
<p id="eo5CQe">“This music, it tends to start in black culture, and then young white people and young hipsters kind of make it its own. That’s going back to jazz,” Hine said. “That’s kind of been the history of American music. And it’s definitely what’s happening here.”</p>
<p id="W7SkQq">Inspired by hip-hop and the rise of less formulaic popular music by R&B singers and producers, white artists have begun (intentionally or unintentionally) creating songs that mimic that music within their own genre. A great song by Solange Knowles or even a song like Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” has less predictability than a standard pop song because it draws on jazz music, which, while predictable in its own way, has an entirely different setup.</p>
<p id="9EkFyE">This has been happening for a little while in modern popular music.<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/03/katy_perry_s_teenage_dream_explaining_the_hit_using_music_theory.html"> Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”</a> (2008) denied listeners the root key to create a sense of weightlessness. And D<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/03/daft_punk_s_get_lucky_explained_using_music_theory.html">aft Punk’s “Get Lucky”</a> (2014) was completely unclear on what its key even was. </p>
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<p id="DQFhc0">“It’s interesting because, at least in the history of Western art song, there’s never been nearly as much of a preference toward ambiguous key centers as there is in current pop music,” Pallett told me. </p>
<h3 id="JCHAcc">Ambiguous key centers make songs emotionally dynamic</h3>
<p id="nHvWff">What all of the ambiguous pop songs of 2016 are doing is using the major key and its relative minor to keep the listener guessing about whether the song is happy (major) or sad (minor).</p>
<p id="40OfcB">A perfect example of this is Major Lazer’s “Cold Water” featuring Justin Bieber, which could either be in F-sharp minor or A major. Though there’s a backing EDM-inspired beat to this song, Justin Bieber’s voice sounds more somber and serious than uplifting. Take, for example, a couplet in the first verse: “So take a deep breath and let it go / You shouldn’t be drowning on your own.” It’s about the sweetness of reckless love, right? Or is it about a destructive relationship? </p>
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<p id="Qy68Pl">“This is one of those things where I firmly believe that this kind of analysis is like a biopsy,” Pallett noted. “Whoever wrote the chords and the melody, I don’t think that they were consciously, like, sitting down to create an ambiguous key center.”</p>
<p id="PEPMz3">He’s right. It’s totally possible all of these artists ended up at these song feelings individually and unintentionally. </p>
<p id="M94Gkx">“I do feel like it’s really hard to communicate with millions of different people, and if you’re doing it successfully, it does mean that you’ve really tapped into something,” Hein told me. “And it does feel like everyone tapped into this one thing. There’s something bigger than any artist or listener here.”</p>
<p id="LnxWt8">In 2016, the big unifying factor of white pop was the ambiguous key structure: a sonic space that sounds buoyant and light, and isn’t quite sure if it’s happy or sad. That waffling — between happiness and sadness, between fear and joy, between major and minor — does seem incredibly apt in this year. If 2016 taught us anything, it’s that our country is deeply divided on almost every issue. For every political or emotional event that happened this year, it seems like half of America felt happy and the other felt sad. It’s pop music’s job to appeal to both of them, and by using ambiguous key centers, these artists managed to do just that. </p>
<p id="6thmjG"><em>Here’s a playlist of songs with ambiguous key centers that landed in the Top 40 this year: </em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/12/26/13956220/top-40-ambiguous-key-centers-bieber-chainsmokers-adeleKelsey McKinney2016-12-20T13:30:01-05:002016-12-20T13:30:01-05:0015 songs that prove there was still goodness to be found in 2016
<figure>
<img alt="Beyonce in the video for “Formation”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9NDZwpN6syzA-Qv3qzqGzQiEdAo=/39x0:1221x887/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52383077/1401x788-m2yyj01r.0.0.jpeg" />
<figcaption>Way back in January, Beyoncé’s “Formation” gave this year a rallying cry.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Amid the garbage fire that was this year, music thrived.</p> <p id="KnFRv0">If 2016 was good for anything, it was music. Yes, we lost a few truly brilliant minds in <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/1/11/10749394/david-bowie-dead-songs-legacy">David Bowie</a>, <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11480300/prince-dead-57">Prince</a>, Sharon Jones, and <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/11/11/13597192/leonard-cohen-dead-songs-genius">Leonard Cohen</a>. But on the whole, music thrived in 2016. Massive pop stars dropped albums overnight, albums that had eluded us for half a decade suddenly appeared, and captivating new names rose from nothing. To pick a top 15 songs in a year like this feels almost dismissive, cruel even. </p>
<p id="JMC85X">So instead of picking the absolute best songs — those that stretched the boundaries of the medium or genre — we’re redefining “best” to mean songs that made this year, in its deepest and darkest moments, feel a little bit less like a raging garbage fire. </p>
<p id="xqACqC">These songs together create a 1,000-foot view of this year. They are songs that made an impact, and songs that didn’t. Songs that hit No. 1, and songs that didn’t chart at all. They are songs by women, by people of color, by debut artists and seasoned veterans. But mostly, they are songs that are good and feel good. </p>
<h3 id="MtSqoY">1) “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd feat. Gucci Mane</h3>
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<p id="dp7V1k">“Black Beatles,” the hit single off Atlanta hip-hop duo Rae Sremmurd’s sophomore album, is an irresistible jam. It’s fitting that it became the soundtrack to so many people’s <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mannequin-challenge">mannequin challenge</a> videos, where frozen people struggled to keep their limbs and heads unmoving as the incredible bouncing beat just begged them to move. An ode to rock-star style and swagger, “Black Beatles” takes a party anthem and makes it into an arena-worthy masterpiece. This is a song for everyone: young bloods, old geezers, weirdo girls with green hair, dealers, and haters. </p>
<h3 id="701MTC">2) “Formation” by Beyoncé</h3>
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<p id="zSclan">Beyoncé dropped “Formation” the weekend of the Super Bowl, and then quickly stole the halftime show from Chris Martin with a team of Michael Jackson–inspired, Black Panther–derived backup dancers. With “Formation’s” hoarse whispering intro, Beyoncé Knowles Carter entered a new dimension, a realm where she’s not only a force of pop music but also a driver of political conversation. It’s a song steeped in New Orleans bounce music that shredded the already fragile genre boundaries in which critics threatened to constrain Beyoncé. With the music video’s sinking police car imagery and a rallying cry of “I just might be a black Bill Gates in the making,” Beyoncé gave the thriving Black Lives Matter movement an anthem. </p>
<h3 id="Zol4Mi">3) “Your Best American Girl” by Mitski</h3>
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<p id="n57FSm">The best art tackles life in all its complexity, instead of paring it down to its simplest concepts. On “Your Best American Girl,” Mitski unabashedly discusses the American dream, femininity, girlhood, parental expectations, and racial dynamics, all in three uncontainable minutes. The song’s verses are gentle, lilting things that rise and rise into the roar of a chorus steeped in anger. This isn’t a female-empowerment anthem arrived at easily; it’s the product of years of reflection and frustration, simmered until it thickens into something rich and substantive. </p>
<h3 id="ow22qn">4) “Angels” by Chance the Rapper feat. Saba</h3>
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<p id="Vnuea8">“I got my city doing front flips,” Chance the Rapper crows at the beginning of “Angels,” and nothing seems truer in 2016. Culturally speaking, this was a great year for Chicago: Not only did the Cubs win the World Series but two homegrown, mega-talented hip-hop stars joined forces to create an incredible song. With a church choir background and a steel drum, Chance the Rapper delivers a song that truly exemplifies black joy. It’s beautiful, it’s energetic, and boy is it happy. </p>
<h3 id="mhF0a9">5) “Female Vampire” by Jenny Hval</h3>
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<p id="YVrv97">“It hurts everywhere,” Jenny Hval whispers at the very end of “Female Vampire.” It’s a single line that forces listeners to reconsider the preceding three minutes of shining synths, breaking vocals, and gradual growing dance beats. Before the end, the song has the feeling of falling into a trance — but that whispered line makes obvious just how laden with emotion “Female Vampire” is, its thumping beats less a disguise than a plea for help. It’s gorgeous in its pain. </p>
<h3 id="2KPYMP">6) “Tennessee Song” by Margo Price</h3>
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<p id="a2j1dR">Watching Margo Price perform feels like stepping into a time capsule. Wielding an acoustic guitar and sporting a teased bouffant hairstyle, she looks like something out of a different era — and she sounds like it, too. Though 2016 was not the best year in history for country music, this 33-year-old Midwesterner quietly released one of the year’s most underrated albums, <em>Midwest Farmer’s Daughter</em>. “Tennessee Song” is warbling and toe-tapping and just the right amount of twangy. “In this world, we won’t be long,” Price sings, but it sure seems like she’s here to stay. </p>
<h3 id="ufsI0S">7) “Soy Yo” by Bomba Estéreo </h3>
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<p id="eZK1JJ">Choosing the most sonically addictive riff from 2016 would be a difficult task, but the climbing flute that backgrounds Bomba Estéreo’s “Soy Yo” is a strong contender. The song rose to prominence thanks to its viral music video, which follows a young girl with giant glasses who is so self-confident she cannot bother to care what popular girls or older basketball players think about her. But part of what makes that video such fun to watch is that “Soy Yo” has a lilting buoyancy to it that very few songs in 2016 had. It’s just, well, happy. </p>
<h3 id="RLEVE3">8) “That Old Black Magic” by Bob Dylan </h3>
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<p id="eJP9Ph">It was a good year for Bob Dylan. He became the first musician ever to <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/13/13268436/bob-dylan-wins-nobel-prize-literature-2016">win the Nobel Prize</a> for Literature, and the first American to win the prize in more than a decade. But he also released an excellent — if a little weird — cover album of songs made famous by Frank Sinatra. Dylan takes a song that, in Sinatra’s voice, is beautiful, enchanting, and as mushy as love songs come, and makes it menacing. Which means “That Old Black Magic” does exactly what great covers are supposed to do: honor the original while making the song his own. </p>
<h3 id="r3T6NQ">9) “Don’t Touch My Hair” by Solange Knowles</h3>
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<p id="dR7Vri">Ethereal, quiet, and steely, Solange Knowles’s “Don’t Touch My Hair” has soul. A display of activism as specific as the individual hairs that grow from a black woman’s head, “Don’t Touch My Hair” is a song built on tiny decisions that have a deep impact. The song’s quiet lyrics and plummeting vocal runs are built atop a thumping drum beat so rhythmic it feels more like a human heartbeat than a sonic effect. “Don’t Touch My Hair” is grooving, emotional, beautiful, and the first song in a long time to make a cowbell sound cool. </p>
<h3 id="IJWdtf">10) “Sister” by Angel Olsen</h3>
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<p id="oczzXV">In eight minutes of dreamy, lush chord progressions and glimmering symphonic effects, Angel Olsen evolves away from her standards with “Sister.” The first two glittery pop songs to emerge from her album <em>My Woman</em> (“Intern” and “Shut Up and Kiss Me”) are quick-paced soft-bangers perfect for a party playlist. Listening to “Sister,” though, is like listening to an artist find a space just for herself. “She came together like a dream / that I didn’t know I had,” Olsen sings — a line that describes this song as much as anything else. </p>
<h3 id="Y4mp4M">11) ”Adore” by Savages</h3>
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<p id="wWpFQ5">Starting from a simple walking bass line, “Adore” is darker than most of the songs on this list — but it’s also incredibly rich. “Is it human to adore life?” Jehnny Beth sings over a steely guitar line, and that’s just the beginning. As the song progresses, the guitars become more discordant, the bass line gets faster, and Beth’s voice grows angstier and angstier until she’s screaming a “truth that cuts like a knife.” </p>
<h3 id="JGhPLU">12) “Nostrum” by Meshuggah</h3>
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<p id="Rjjb3t">Swedish metal band Meshuggah’s “Nostrum,” the second single from this year’s <em>The Violent Sleep of Reason</em>, is as chaotic as this year felt. This is a heavy, hammering monster of a song, laden with snare drums and rapid, cascading guitar riffs that evoke the feeling of tumbling down a too-tall flight of stairs. There’s some gorgeous drum work behind all that noise, and a few frenzied guitar parts that create really enjoyable rhythmic interplay. But really, the appeal of this song lies in screaming and thrashing along — which was sometimes exactly what this year needed. </p>
<h3 id="pBHTXP">13) “Needed Me” by Rihanna </h3>
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<p id="IAKIjp">The biggest hit from Rihanna’s 2016 release <em>Anti</em> was far and away the No. 1 single “Work,” featuring Drake. But deeper in the album, in a place less warm and inviting, is the stunning track “Needed Me.” Here, Rihanna is icy, almost unfeeling. With its strung-out vocals and twisting, climbing chord progressions, “Needed Me” is Rihanna at her absolute best. </p>
<h3 id="0Qbpqi">14) “Ultralight Beam” by Kanye West feat. The-Dream, Kelly Price, Kirk Franklin, and Chance the Rapper </h3>
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<p id="s5gvAy">Part gospel and part hip-hop, “Ultralight Beam” is Kanye West at his gentlest, a song with such emotional weight it propels the rest of <em>The </em><em>Life of Pablo</em> forward. West is a divisive character in any room, and the biggest hit on his 2016 album, “Famous,” became that less because of its quality than the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/12/10981946/kanye-taylor-fight">reality TV–worthy</a> <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.vox.com/2016/7/6/12053398/kanye-west-famous-art-exploitation&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjg7ejqooPRAhXMdSYKHW7gA1oQFggFMAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNH6fDtpA56FJkpI6SR5t4MBvXR0mA">drama it inspired</a>. By contrast, “Ultralight Beam” is not dramatic, but rather a soft, prayerful rumination on the world and the spiritual realm. It’s an unhurried reminder that hip-hop can be beautiful, careful, and insistent even when it’s slowed down. </p>
<h3 id="latQ4m">15) “Gold” by Kiiara</h3>
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<p id="E81ocv">Kiiara’s “Gold” is a hit made by the people. After uploading it to SoundCloud last summer, the more or less unknown 21-year-old Illinoisan struck gold: In 2016, her song was streamed on Spotify more than 238 million times. That success soon bled into more traditional music outlets: “Gold” started getting radio play, peaking at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. Listening to “Gold,” it’s easy to see what made the out-of-nowhere track so enticing: With her sliced-and-diced vocals and a choppy electronic beat, Kiiara created something that’s just unstable enough to be addictive. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/2016/12/20/13921136/great-songs-2016-beyonce-kanye-bob-dylanKelsey McKinney