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    Bite me! How Apple’s download chart became a new battleground for pop – and politics

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    Over 20 years after its launch, Apple’s online music store has found a surprising new life – as a battleground for online turf wars. Last week, at least five songs rose to the upper reaches of the Apple Music (formerly iTunes) download charts, powered by different internet factions. Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion fans waged war against each other as foot soldiers in the rappers’ feud; Britney Spears fans mass-bought the singer’s years-old songs Liar and Selfish as a way to troll her ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, who released a song also called Selfish last month; and rightwing media influencer Ben Shapiro encouraged his fans to drive Facts, his new rap song with Canadian former wrestler Tom MacDonald, up the charts. Far from a measure of objective popularity, the chart reflected political biases, years-old feuds and outright pettiness.Fans mobilising to push certain albums or songs up the Apple Music download charts is nothing new – in 2018, a group of Mariah Carey fans mass-bought the singer’s 2001 flop Glitter as part of a campaign called #JusticeForGlitter. But musician and writer Jaime Brooks says that the cratering of the digital download market in recent years – around 152m digital songs were sold in the US in 2022, less than half of 2018’s 412m – has allowed campaigns that are smaller and far less coordinated than #JusticeForGlitter to disproportionately affect the charts. “I don’t think anybody’s actually using their phones and iTunes to listen to files any more, except people who have not upgraded their setup since 2012 – there are a lot of people like that in America, but not enough to sustain these huge numbers,” she says. “This [downloading] is a purely performative gesture – it only ever happens as a result of some kind of factional culture war that somebody has the money and inclination to try to represent on the charts.”Indeed, a lot of these sales campaigns have an implicit or explicit political meaning. Shapiro’s song, naturally, is part of an attempt to “own the libs”; Spears fans see their trolling of Timberlake as a kind of punishment for his perceived mistreatment of the singer when they dated, and for the unapologetic pose he has since adopted. In Megan’s song, she references Megan’s Law, a piece of legislation that requires the government to make information about sex offenders public, which many saw as a shot against Minaj, whose husband is a registered sex offender; Minaj’s song accuses Megan of falsely accusing Tory Lanez of shooting her.These relatively niche buying campaigns seem small fry in comparison with two campaigns led by the American conservative establishment last year. In July, Jason Aldean’s single Try That in a Small Town was sent to No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after its video was pulled from Country Music Television amid criticisms, including that it was racist, which Aldean denied. In August, the total unknown Oliver Anthony debuted at No 1 with his libertarian – and, some say, QAnon-pandering – single Rich Men North of Richmond.Kristin Robinson, a senior writer at Billboard, says the Aldean song in particular was not just driven by his fans, but by onlookers who saw the track as a cause to support. “Anchors on Fox News and other kinds of conservative talking heads led a fandom – not in the musical sense but in a political sense – to support that song,” she says. That both songs were in the country space, she says, only helped. “Country music still does quite well with sales in general, because country tends to be a bit of an older audience that has more buying power, or might not be as technologically savvy.”View image in fullscreenSales also have a disproportionate effect on the Billboard charts. A single sale counts for 150 streams, which is why astute fans tend to focus more on downloads than the kinds of “streaming parties” that some fanbases hold. Brooks says that education on the charts – the ways in which certain formats are weighted more heavily than others, and how a fairer chart might be implemented – has been led by K-pop fanbases. “They’ve developed among themselves a whole ideology about this type of thing, and they really did teach the pop fan community about how this stuff works,” she says. “That’s factoring into the current situation, where you had Megan fans organising to try to put big numbers on the board to fight back against Nicki.”Of course, few of these campaigns create their desired impact. While Megan’s Hiss debuted at No 1 – with around 100k in sales, 29.2m streams and 2.9m radio impressions – Shapiro’s song debuted at No 16, Timberlake’s at No 19 and Minaj’s at No 23. Brooks says that, either way, we’re likely to see more of this in coming years, as music consumption drops on the whole and pop music becomes more tied in with celebrity and politics. “Politics is sort of eating music – in the case of the Ben Shapiro thing, it’s enthusiasm driven by the political media industrial complex, and with Britney v Justin, it’s the celebrity industrial complex,” she says. “It’s all ultimately pointless – it’s people competing to be into the virtuous product v the non-virtuous product. But ultimately, it’s all the same shit.” More

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      ‘Being mean will only rally her fans’: Taylor Swift is winning whether she backs Biden or thumps Trump

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      The 2024 US presidential election campaign, lacking any defining story to tell and with a prevailing lack of enthusiasm in a rematch of candidates in their eighth and ninth decades, last week settled on Taylor Swift – and an endorsement she may or may not make – as its defining obsession.On one side, expectations emanating from the Biden re-election camp were that the 34-year-old superstar would cast her influence over tens of thousands of Swifties their way; on the other, furious Republicans who at first sought to denigrate and wrap her in conspiracy theories, and later thought better of the strategy.Rolling Stone reported that allies of Donald Trump were pledging a “holy war” against Swift if she sides with the Democrats in November. Some theorised that the National Football League is rigging games for Swift’s Kansas City Chiefs boyfriend, Travis Kelce, to sweeten the Democrats endorsement hopes.Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed that the Shake It Off hitmaker had been converted into a psychological operations asset four years ago. The Pentagon hit back, saying: “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.”However, not all Republicans are on board with the attacks on Swift. “I don’t know what the obsession is,” presidential candidate Nikki Haley told CNN. “Taylor Swift is allowed to have a boyfriend. Taylor Swift is a good artist. I have taken my daughter to Taylor Swift concerts. To have a conspiracy theory of all of this is bizarre. Nobody knows who she’s going to endorse, but I can’t believe that’s overtaken our national politics.”While many are preoccupied with whether Swift can cross nine time zones to make it back from an Eras Tour concert in Tokyo to see her boyfriend play in next weekend’s Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl in Las Vegas (she can), the intensity of political questions surrounding Swift mirrors the febrile nature of the election 10 months away.View image in fullscreenDoubtless, Swift could offer politicos lessons in values-based messaging, audience understanding and building genuine connections with fans or voters. Last week, Trump argued that he is more popular than her, even if the values-based narratives he presents are often more aligned with self-victimisation than self-empowerment.A survey last year by Morning Consult found 53% of American adults are Swift fans. There are almost as many men as women, almost as many Republicans as Democrats, including baby boomers, millennials, Gen Xers and young adults from Gen Z. In other words, a constituency that could make or break a national political campaign.The recent Republican primary in New Hampshire indicated Trump’s weaknesses with women, who make up much of Swift’s fanbase. But recent polling, too, has shown that Biden’s ratings and support among young voters has dropped and he’s now closely tied in the 18-34 demographic with Trump.“They’re not crazy about Biden,” says Democratic party consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “If they turn out at all, it may be to oppose Trump and with no intensity at all. But if you’re having trouble with younger people, and you need to do something, what better way to cure the problem, or at least show that you are sensitive to it, than to get Taylor Swift out?”David Allan, professor of marketing at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, who teaches a Swift-focused course, says the Republicans will have to navigate the singer.“Republicans need to be careful with Taylor because she’s extremely popular with all-demographic women and some men. You don’t want to appear to be mean because it will only rally her fans,” he says. Conversely, attacking Swift could bring its own counter-intuitive, culture/class war rewards.“You know she’s having some effect if Fox News is attacking her,” Allan says. “For Trump, having Taylor Swift against him gives him something to talk about.” A salient lesson comes from the Dixie Chicks – now the Chicks – who wrecked their careers before the Iraq war when singer Natalie Maines said from a London stage they were ashamed to be that President George Bush was from Texas.In Swift’s documentary,Miss Americana, her father fretted that an overt political position could put her in the same position as the Chicks. But Swift is now believed to be too big to be commercially vulnerable.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs the music industry newsletter Hits Daily Double put it: “Her domination of the marketplace from every conceivable angle is next-level. But she just seems to get bigger, and to rule every area she enters – the rerecorded albums, the massive tour, the blockbuster movie of the tour, the NFL games where her mere presence changes the center of gravity.”Whether or not Swift goes two-feet in with Biden, Allan adds: “It’s getting to that point in the 60s that if Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell didn’t speak out about the Vietnam war it would hurt them with their fans. If she doesn’t do something, even if just to help to get out the vote, it will hurt her authenticity.” In September, Vote.org reported more than 35,000 new political registrations, a 23% jump over last year, after Swift urged her 280 million Instagram followers to sign up.Swift, who was politically cautious until she endorsed Tennessee Democratic senate candidate Phil Bredesen in 2018 (he lost) and then Biden in 2020, has not shown any interest in being adopted by political factions. A 5,000-word New York Times essay that claimed her as more than just queer-friendly was criticised for making overreaching assumptions.View image in fullscreenBut US candidates often seek show business endorsements. “The tradition goes back at least 60 years when [John F] Kennedy brought out Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Judy Garland and others to go stump for them, and country music stars, who have come out mostly for Republicans,” Sheinkopf notes.Other musical endorsements include the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd for Jimmy Carter. But musicians including Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga couldn’t push Hillary Clinton over the line in 2016, and it hasn’t hurt Trump to use Village People’s gay paradise anthem YMCA as a walk-off song, which crowds greatly appreciate.Swift might not even need to formally endorse Biden, Sheinkopf adds. “Even to put it out as rumour makes Biden look less like he’s 81 years old and more like he’s listening to younger people, their subcultural desires and what they feel about things.”For Swift, he says: “She gets to become a decision-maker, and an even larger figure in American and international life. Her public persona becomes as important as her music and that means she’ll make a lot more money.” More

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      ‘I did all that I could’: A look back at the life and career of Harry Belafonte – video

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      Harry Belafonte, a trailblazing Caribbean-American artist, has passed away at the age of 96 due to congestive heart failure, according to his spokesperson who gave the news to the New York Times. Belafonte was a multifaceted talent who made an indelible impact on music and film. He was not only a chart-topping singer but also a renowned actor and television personality, known for his captivating performances in films such as Buck and the Preacher and Island in the Sun.

      However, Belafonte’s legacy extends far beyond his artistic achievements. Throughout his career, he used his platform to advocate for racial and social justice in America and around the world. Belafonte was a prominent civil rights activist who worked closely with Dr Martin Luther King Jr and was a key figure in the movement for racial equality. More

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      Harry Belafonte, singer, actor and tireless activist, dies aged 96

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      Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist who broke down racial barriers, has died aged 96.As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in Africa; and supported leftwing political figures such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.The cause of death was congestive heart failure, his spokesman told the New York Times. Figures including the rapper Ice Cube and Mia Farrow paid tribute to Belafonte. The US news anchor Christiane Amanpour tweeted that he “inspired generations around the whole world in the struggle for non-violent resistance justice and change. We need his example now more than ever.”Bernice King, daughter of Dr Martin Luther King, shared a picture of Belafonte at her father’s funeral and said that he “showed up for my family in very compassionate ways. In fact, he paid for the babysitter for me and my siblings.” The Beninese-French musician Angélique Kidjo called Belafonte “the brightest star in every sense of that word. Your passion, love, knowledge and respect for Africa was unlimited.”Belafonte was born in 1927 in working-class Harlem, New York, and spent eight years of his childhood in his impoverished parents’ native Jamaica. He returned to New York for high school but struggled with dyslexia and dropped out in his early teens. He took odd jobs working in markets and the city’s garment district, and then signed up to the US navy aged 17 in March 1944, working as a munitions loader at a base in New Jersey.After the war ended, he worked as a janitor’s assistant, but aspired to become an actor after watching plays at New York’s American Negro Theatre (along with fellow aspiring actor Sidney Poitier). He took acting classes – where his classmates included Marlon Brando and Walter Matthau – paid for by singing folk, pop and jazz numbers at New York club gigs, where he was backed by groups whose members included Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.He released his debut album in 1954, a collection of traditional folk songs. His second album, Belafonte, was the first No 1 in the new US Billboard album chart in March 1956, but its success was outdone by his third album the following year, Calypso, featuring songs from his Jamaican heritage. It brought the feelgood calypso style to many Americans for the first time, and became the first album to sell more than a million copies in the US.The lead track was Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), a signature song for Belafonte – it spent 18 weeks in the UK singles chart, including three weeks at No 2. His version of Mary’s Boy Child was a UK chart-topper later that year, while Island in the Sun reached No 3. He released 30 studio albums, plus collaborative albums with Nana Mouskouri, Lena Horne and Miriam Makeba. The latter release won him one of his two Grammy awards; he was later awarded a lifetime achievement Grammy and the Academy’s president’s merit award.Bob Dylan’s first recording – playing harmonica – was on Belafonte’s 1962 album, Midnight Special. The previous year, Belafonte had been hired by Frank Sinatra to perform at John F Kennedy’s presidential inauguration.Belafonte maintained an acting career alongside music, winning a Tony award in 1954 for his appearance in the musical revue show, John Murray Anderson’s Almanac, and appearing in several films, most notably as one of the leads in Island in the Sun, along with James Mason, Joan Fontaine and Joan Collins, with whom he had an affair. He was twice paired with Dorothy Dandridge, in Carmen Jones and Bright Road, but he turned down a third film, an adaptation of Porgy and Bess, which he found “racially demeaning”.He later said the decision “helped fuel the rebel spirit” that was brewing in him, a spirit he parlayed into a lifetime of activism, using his newfound wealth to fund various initiatives. He was mentored by Martin Luther King Jr and Paul Robeson, and bailed King out of a Birmingham, Alabama, jail in 1963 as well as co-organising the march on Washington that culminated in King’s “I have a dream” speech. He also funded the Freedom Riders and SNCC, activists fighting unlawful segregation in the American south, and worked on voter registration drives.He later focused on a series of African initiatives. He organised the all-star charity record We Are the World, raising more than $63m for famine relief, and his 1988 album, Paradise in Gazankulu, protested against apartheid in South Africa. He was appointed a Unicef goodwill ambassador in 1987, and later campaigned to eradicate Aids from Africa.After recovering from prostate cancer in 1996, he advocated for awareness of the disease. He was a fierce proponent of leftwing politics, criticising hawkish US foreign policy, campaigning against nuclear armament, and meeting with both Castro and Chavez. At the meeting with Chavez, in 2006, he described US president George W Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world”. He also characterised Bush’s Black secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as being like slaves who worked in their master’s house rather than in the fields, criticisms that Powell and Rice rejected.He was a frequent critic of Democrats, particularly Barack Obama, over issues including Guantanamo Bay detentions and the fight against rightwing extremism. He criticised Jay-Z and Beyoncé in 2012 for having “turned their back on social responsibility … Give me Bruce Springsteen, and now you’re talking. I really think he is Black.” Jay-Z responded: “You’re this civil rights activist and you just bigged up the white guy against me in the white media … that was just the wrong way to go about it.”He continued to take occasional acting roles. In 2018, he appeared in the Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman. In 2014, 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen announced he was working with Belafonte on a film about Paul Robeson, though it wasn’t developed.Belafonte was married three times, first to Marguerite Byrd, from 1948 to 1957, with whom he had two daughters, activist Adrienne and actor Shari. He had two further children with his second wife, Julie Robinson: actor Gina and music producer David. He and Robinson divorced after 47 years, and in 2008 he married Pamela Frank, who survives him. More

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      Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift chaos triggers US Senate antitrust hearing

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      Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift chaos triggers US Senate antitrust hearingSeveral politicians voice concerns about dominance of ticket sales company after botched release for singer’s tour A US Senate antitrust panel will go ahead with a hearing on the lack of competition in the country’s ticketing industry after Ticketmaster’s problems last week managing the sale of Taylor Swift tickets.Tickemaster’s parent company, Live Nation, has blamed presale problems for Swift’s Eras tour – the pop superstar’s first US tour in five years – on “unprecedented demand” and an effort to keep out bots run by ticket scalpers.After registered fans struggled with glitches for hours to get tickets in the presale, and tickets quickly began appearing for resale for as much as US$22,700 (£19,100, A$33,500), Ticketmaster cancelled sales to the general public. It later claimed the demand for Swift tickets “could have filled 900 stadiums”.Swifties know: the Ticketmaster fiasco shows America has a monopoly problem | Arwa MahdawiRead moreSwift has said it was “excruciating” for her to watch fans struggling to secure tickets and that she had been assured Ticketmaster could handle the demand.The chaos attracted the attention of US politicians, many of whom have voiced concerns about how dominant Ticketmaster has become after it merged with the entertainment company Live Nation in 2010.Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, has said he will launch a consumer protection investigation into the company after his office was bombarded with complaints from Swift fans.The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also criticised the merger. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in,” she tweeted. “Break them up.”On Tuesday the senator Amy Klobuchar, who will chair the panel, and the senator Mike Lee, the top Republican on the committee, announced the Senate hearing would go ahead. They have yet to provide a date or a list of witnesses.“The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve,” Klobuchar said. “We will hold a hearing on how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry harms customers and artists alike.”Ticketmaster denied any anti-competitive practices and said it remained under a consent decree with the Department of Justice after the 2010 merger, adding there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree”.“Ticketmaster has a significant share of the primary ticketing services market because of the large gap that exists between the quality of the Ticketmaster system and the next best primary ticketing system,” the company said.Klobuchar was one of three lawmakers who argued in a letter on Monday that Ticketmaster and Live Nation should be broken up by the Department of Justice if any misconduct was found in an ongoing investigation.The department has proven in recent years to be much more willing to file antitrust lawsuits against giant companies – including the ongoing December 2020 lawsuit against Google – and to fight mergers. Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsTaylor SwiftUS SenatePop and rockMusic industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Tom Morello: ‘We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in the US’

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      Rage Against the MachineInterviewTom Morello: ‘We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in the US’Alexis Petridis Lockdown and ‘looking after the grandmas’ may have kept the Rage Against the Machine guitarist away from recent protests – but he refuses to be silencedSat 9 Oct 2021 09.00 EDTTom Morello has made more than 20 albums, as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine – the political rap-rock band who have sold 16m records, and whose 1992 track Killing in the Name has become a perennial protest anthem – and of the bands Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. He also plays solo under the name the Nightwatchman, and has toured with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. His unique approach to the guitar, which he has self-deprecatingly described as “making R2-D2 noises”, has led to him regularly being voted as one of the greatest guitar players of all time. His latest album, The Atlas Underground Fire (released on 15 October), features a series of collaborations recorded in lockdown – with Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Damian Marley and Bring Me the Horizon, among others. He is a celebrated “nonsectarian socialist” political activist, famed for performing at demonstrations – he played at Occupy events across the US and Europe – and a co-founder of the nonprofit “social justice” organisation Axis of Justice.You recorded your new album in lockdown. Did the pandemic also mean you missed out on the ongoing protests in the US?Not only was there a global plague to contend with, there was the US political situation and the white supremacy comeuppance, all happening at a time when I was locked down with my 97-year-old mom, my 90-year-old mother-in-law, and two kids going crazy trying to learn remotely. I was unable to be on the literal frontlines for the first time in my adult life, because I’m trying to keep the grandmas alive, you know. So in the middle of the George Floyd protests I recorded a song called Stand Up, with Imagine Dragons, the great trans soul singer Shea Diamond and Bloody Beetroots as well. I was trying, from the bunker, to contribute in any way I could. But you’re absolutely right: that’s my bread and butter. I’m at the front of that march for 30 years, and now, you know, there’s a plumbing problem, or one of my kids broke a window with a basketball, so that’s my dayEven though you weren’t physically present, Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name was chanted at the Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, but it was also chanted by pro-Trump supporters in Philadelphia. How did that feel?First of all, there’s no accounting for stupidity. There’s a long list of radical left anthems that are misunderstood by bozos who sing them at events like that, from Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land to Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA to John Lennon’s Imagine – those people have really no idea what the hell they’re singing about. The one thing that I speak to in all of those instances is that there’s a power to the music that casts a wide net, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. In that net, there will be the far-right bozos, but there will also be people that have never considered the ideas put forward in those songs and are forced to consider those ideas because the rock’n’roll is great. You can either put a beat to a Noam Chomsky lecture – no one wants that, but there’s going to be no mistaking what the content is – or you can make music that’s compelling.So you don’t try to serve people with a cease-and-desist order when they misuse your music?When they were using Rage songs for torture in Guantánamo, we sued the state department, but no. My take is: “Go enjoy the rock’n’roll. You look like fools, but go enjoy the rock’n’roll.”How did you feel about the events of 6 January?We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in this country. Interestingly, one of my dreams has always been to storm the Capitol, but not with a bunch of all-white, rightwing terrorists, you know? The ugliest part about it is how they have co-opted the idea of standing against the Man, at least in the US. There can be no nuanced thinking, like: “Yes, big pharma is horrible, but getting a vaccine to save your grandma is good.” It’s a dumbed-down version of resistance. But I grew up in Trump country [in suburban Illinois], I know people from there. They’re decent people. It’s not their fault for being fucked over by the oligarchy for decades. Now what do we do to find a way to really resist the stuff that is destroying the planet, that’s causing working people’s lives to be worse than their parents’ were? Poverty and hunger kill more people than anything else on the planet and they are human-made problems. Those are the things that we need to be digging into, rather than being sidetracked by this carnival barker bullshit.The opening track of your new album is called Harlem Hellfighters. You were born in Harlem – isn’t there a story that one of your ancestors helped found the New York mafia?The Harlem Hellfighters were an African-American military unit in both world wars. They were known for their bravery and then coming home and getting done over by racist Americans – their story is very compelling. But there was a Giuseppe Morello who was known as the Clutch Hand, who came from Sicily. He was one of the founders of one of the “five families”, and apparently not a pleasant chap. There may be some cousin-like links between me and him. He was short, had one hand that was really messed up and he got the job done by murdering people.He eventually met the end that a lot of people met in that line of work.The new album also features Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen singing AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. How did that come about?We have history with that song, from when I toured with Bruce and the E Street Band. We were in Perth, [near] the home of [late AC/DC frontman] Bon Scott. One night, I went to pay my respects to his grave. I came back to the hotel and saw Bruce in the bar. Over the next couple of days, we started rehearsing Highway to Hell at soundchecks. We found ourselves in a Melbourne football stadium, playing to 80,000 people. Eddie happened to be in town. A lightbulb went off. I knocked on the dressing room door and said: “Bruce, we’re in Australia – Highway to Hell is like the unofficial national anthem. What if we open the show with it, with Eddie?” It was an apex moment in rock’n’roll history. If you think you’ve seen people go apeshit, you haven’t because you weren’t there that night.You recently appealed for help in getting a group of girls out of Afghanistan. What happened?Lanny Cordola, who was a member of the 80s metal band Giuffria, found the religion of love and moved to Afghanistan to help street kids. He took in these orphans and girls who had had tremendous trauma in their lives and started a school where they used music as a rehabilitation tool. He reached out to me and asked if I wanted to do a song with them, so we did a cover of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). I played the guitar solo. We became video friends – the girls would send birthday greetings, we’d send hellos. And then their world turned upside down. They’re marked. They were playing western music taught by an American teacher. Their school is destroyed. They’re in hiding right now. We were not able to get them out in the initial push, and now it’s just a matter of keeping them safe. There’s a lot of people who want to help, but as of right now, they’re still there. But they’re safe.During lockdown, you taught your son Roman to play guitar and he ended up collaborating with the 11-year-old drummer and internet sensation Nandi Bushell. How did that come about?They wrote the song, I produced it. Nandi is spectacular – an effervescent soul of joy that the world needs now more than ever. She called up and asked if I wanted to do a song, and I said: “I’d love to, but I’ve got a kid here who’s your age who really can take it from here!” So I said to Roman: “Throw some riffs at me, man”, and he came up with a couple of hot riffs. I put an arrangement together and sent it to Nandi, and asked her what she thought. She said: “It sounds epic!” like she does. And she wrote the lyrics and played the drums on it – she just murdered it, she’s so great. One of the best drummers in the world happens to be 11 years old! It was a reminder of why you started, you know? It was pure joy, pure excellence, pure rock’n’roll.You mentioned your mum earlier. You’ve said before that she’s the most radical member of your family …Yeah, it’s funny – in our discussions at the table, she’s taking positions that I’m just like: “Mom, really?” But that’s always been my household. When I went out into the world, I realised that not every household has these kind of internationalist ideas, the thought of always, always standing up for the person on the lowest rung of the ladder. We were in a middle-class, conservative, ethnically homogenous suburb. She was a teacher at the high school and she taught the kids about Cesar Chavez and the Grape Boycott, Malcolm X, anti-colonialist African studies. I assumed everybody’s mom was like that.She also set up the anti-censorship group Parents for Rock and Rap in the late 80s …Yeah! It was really where the rubber hit the road. She was in a conservative suburb that was trying to censor heavy metal and hip-hop, so that’s where you fight the fight. This was before Rage Against the Machine – nobody knew my name. She was always on some radio show with Ice-T.You’ve said in past interviews that there is a section of your fans who would prefer to deny that you’re Black. Why do you think it bothers them?That would be a better question for them than me, but it bothers them – oh, let me tell you, it does bother them. I think it’s cos it upsets the false narrative they have that music that sounds like mine can only be made by people who look like them. And then me and Slash pop up to say: “No!”Quick GuideSaturday magazine ShowThis article comes from Saturday, the new print magazine from the Guardian which combines the best features, culture, lifestyle and travel writing in one beautiful package. Available now in the UK and ROI.Photograph: GNMYou were criticised recently for your friendship with the rightwing rock star Ted Nugent. What on earth do you two talk about?I got asked to make a video for his 60th birthday. At that point, Ted had become this rightwing caricature, but I really loved his records back in the 70s, so I said yes. I took two tacks: “Things adolescent Tom Morello learned about the birds and the bees from Ted Nugent”, and “things you might be surprised to find Tom and Ted have in common” – like free speech and rock’n’roll. Anyway, he called me up afterwards and we had a discussion about it. People go fucking nuts when you say you’re friends with someone who has his views. I’m very happy to go toe-to-toe with Ted when he gets on his racist stuff, his misogynist stuff, his Trump stuff. I don’t know how often people cause Ted to abandon his opinions these days, but I believe that’s been the case on more than one occasion.The Atlas Underground Fire is released on 15 October on Mom + Pop records.TopicsRage Against the MachineMetalPop and rockUS Capitol attackUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Rockin' in the free world? Inside the rightwing takeover of protest music

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      “Did you know that Born in the USA is actually an anti-Vietnam war anthem?” Since Donald Trump embraced the 1984 Bruce Springsteen song during rallies, the lyrics have prompted so much explanation it now borders on cliche. Yet it’s no less unsettling for it, becoming a prime example of a startlingly widespread trend for the right wing to co-opt music about struggle and progress.President Ronald Reagan made the first attempt to gloss over the context of the song’s ironically upbeat chorus after the release of the Born in the USA album. Reagan name-checked Springsteen during a New Jersey rally in an attempt to connect the musician to a “message of hope” for America. Springsteen’s opposition to its use didn’t affect the fervour for the song from Trump and his supporters. As Barack Obama noted in an episode of his podcast series with Springsteen this month: “It ended up being appropriated as this iconic, patriotic song. Even though that was not necessarily your intention.”Neither has the Clash’s status as leftist punk icons been a sticking point for Boris Johnson, who named the band one of his favourites in 2019; nor has Rage Against the Machine’s socialism and anti-police stance been a problem for anti-mask truthers and Trump diehards, who last year blasted the band’s Killing in the Name at a Trump rally.Neil Young had to weigh in after Trump repeatedly used his anti-America song Rockin’ in the Free World at campaign events. In a since retracted lawsuit, Young said that he couldn’t “in good conscience” allow his music “to be used as a ‘theme song’ for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate”.The latest example comes from anti-lockdown protesters who, positioning themselves as oppressed, have contorted Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It into an anti-mask anthem. While the band’s guitarist Jay Jay French describes what has been called a quintessential American protest song as speaking “to the disenfranchised everywhere”, the band support social distancing, mask-wearing, and vaccination. “The fact that a health crisis solution has been politicised and characterised as a threat to someone’s personal civil rights is just impossible to comprehend,” he says. On their anti-lockdown track, Stand and Deliver, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison went further by using the language of liberation to deliver their message.Kevin Fellezs, associate professor at Columbia University, is researching “freedom musics”, a tradition through which artists and their communities “articulate their aspirations for individual or collective liberation”. Stand and Deliver twists the tradition, he says, blurring concepts of freedom and slavery with lyrics such as, “Do you wanna wear these chains / Until you’re lying in the grave?” He accuses Morrison and Clapton of “pursuing self-interest at the expense of a larger social good or need”.Elliott H Powell, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, says that this is especially troubling given pop music’s use by marginalised artists “to critique systems of domination and subordination … and to imagine life outside of these systems”, citing Public Enemy’s Fight the Power and Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. By hijacking these forms and their languages, says Powell, the right wing dismisses and diminishes the social movements that use them. “It attempts to say that the anti-mask and anti-lockdown movement is no different from other freedom struggles,” he says. “It’s obviously a false equivalence when we follow the flows of power.”Linguistic and thematic appropriation is part of popular music history. “Long ago, Americans figured out ways to enjoy Black music while also being racist, while also being white supremacist,” says Jack Hamilton, a professor at University of Virginia. “Being able to separate out these things is an unfortunate feature of American popular music audiences – probably popular music audiences everywhere.”It’s been that way for centuries, according to Noriko Manabe of Temple University, who says that, in 17th-century England, folk songs were reinterpreted and rewritten by opposing social and political groups. Similarly, in 18th-century America, songs that were once used by loyalist or anti-loyalist groups in England were adapted by warring federalist and republican factions. Manabe says that popular music has always been an effective organising and emotion-rousing tool.She recently studied the sounds made during the storming of the US Capitol, where attackers chanted, “No Trump, no peace”, an inversion of Black Lives Matter’s “No justice, no peace”. “That is such an abomination of the original ideological framework that it makes me extremely mad,” says Manabe.Beyond the emotional triggers, Hamilton says the co-opting is part of an effort to link conservatism to rebellion and the idea that to be conservative is to be rebellious. This crops up in younger conservatives and Trump supporters, and even more visibly in anti-mask and anti-lockdown movements. “The anti-mask movement, at least on its face, is about, ‘Don’t tell me what to do,’” says Hamilton. “You can find that all over popular music. There’s so much pop music about freedom and being able to do what you want.”The journalist Charles Bramesco, who has analysed hate groups’ attempts to use work by the likes of Depeche Mode and Johnny Cash, echoes Hamilton’s assessment. “The persecution complexes of far-right groups compel them to gravitate toward language about oppression and rising up,” he says. “A lot of the music that touches on those themes happens to be made from a perspective completely alien to their own.”Benjamin Teitelbaum, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Colorado who studies music in far-right nationalist and white supremacist movements, says the far right’s use of music has deep roots. “The biggest stars in the [far-right] scene, the biggest financial initiatives, the largest gatherings, the ways that people identified themselves, all of those things had to do with music throughout the 1980s and 90s in particular,” he says. “Music often plays an outsize role for political causes that don’t have a lot of parliamentary, democratic or revolutionary options for themselves.” Teitelbaum cites the British National Party’s record label, Great White Records, as a vehicle for building power in lieu of institutional acceptance: “If you’re not going to win at the ballot box, you can still gain victory through symbolic expression like music.”In the 80s and 90s, these expressions were explicitly nationalist and fascist, with acts such as punk band Skrewdriver, Norway’s Black Circle bands, and the international music festival Rock Against Communism providing a musical staging ground for skinhead white nationalism and neo-Nazism. But in the 2000s, these movements began a significant rebrand, branching into rap (Germany’s Dissziplin), reggae (Nordic Youth in Sweden), singer-songwriter and pop forms (such as Swedish singer Saga). Teitelbaum says their songwriting message was: “We just love ourselves, we just want to be ourselves, I love our people so much and we’re dying, someone help us.”This shift, he says, dilutes the power and clarity of music that legitimately uses themes of struggle. “We know the chorus of Born in the USA, but we kind of hum through the rest of it.” Even Killing in the Name, written by strident leftwingers, isn’t immune: “If it keeps occurring in these [rightwing] settings and for these purposes, it will acquire those meanings.”Teitelbaum, who recently researched the growing far-right youth movement in the US, says that this dynamic demands more than ridicule. “We can be struck by the idiocy of it, but we should also be struck by the traces of intelligibility that are floating around there,” he says. “Calling them stupid isn’t gonna do anything. This act of appropriation is not taking place in a vacuum.”As Twisted Sister’s French says, “all any artist can really do is to publicly shame the user into stopping the use”. But artist rebukes and social media parody can only do so much to staunch the appropriation – the far right’s acceleration of this tactic could demand a more comprehensive, proactive approach. Fellezs says better music education could be necessary. “I don’t mean to teach children ‘good music’ so they won’t want to listen to ‘bad music,’” he says. “What we can do is educate, empower and encourage people to listen with a critical ear.”Powell agrees. “If we remain committed to following and critiquing the flows of power in how they manifest and operate in these songs, then the power of such music will not be lost.” So let’s remember Born in the USA for what it is: a portrait of a racist America focused on foreign wars while its economy flounders. Sound familiar? More

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      in US Politics

      Jon Bon Jovi on wealth, love and his ugly tussle with Trump: 'It was seriously scarring'

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      Jon Bon Jovi is singing Livin’ on a Prayer to me. No, this is not another crazy lockdown dream; it is actually happening.“Tommy used to work on the docks …” he begins, strumming a guitar he produces out of nowhere, his still impressive bouffant (“I’m the only man in my field brave enough to let it go grey!”) bouncing in time to the music.I later look up how much it would cost to hire Bon Jovi for a private party. “More than $1m” is the best estimate. All I did was ask if he was tired of being asked about his 1986 megahit. The answer, apparently, is no.“Union’s been on strike, he’s down on his luck …” he continues.Going from the zero of lockdown to the zillion miles an hour of a Bon Jovi private performance is a helluva ride and I tell him I might pass out. He laughs the laugh of a man who is neither unaccustomed nor averse to female adoration.“That song, God bless it. But my God, who knew? Not us, I can assure you. It was created on a day when none of us had any ideas, we just had a conversation and it came out of that. I’m sure happy my name’s on it!” Bon Jovi grins.So he didn’t know it was a hit when he wrote it?“Not at all. I remember walking out of the room with Richie [Sambora, his band’s second most famous but now former member] and I said: ‘Eh, it’s OK. Maybe we should just put it on a movie soundtrack.’ Richie looked at me and said: ‘You’re an idiot – it’s really good.’ I said: ‘I just don’t know where it’s going.’ But it didn’t have that boom boom boom bassline yet, so it sounded more like the Clash.”Did it buy him a house?Bon Jovi looks at me as if I had asked about the woods-based habits of bears.“It bought a lot of people houses,” he says.Bon Jovi, 58, is talking to me on Zoom from his house in New Jersey. “I am the crown prince of New Jersey,” he declares, which is probably true – he named one of his biggest-selling albums after the state and has stayed firmly loyal to his home turf. (Although I think we both know that if Bon Jovi is the prince of New Jersey, its king is Bruce Springsteen.) From the tiny amount I can see, his house looks lovely – wood-panelled walls and not over-flashy. “My life is much more normal than one would imagine,” says the sixth wealthiest rock star in the world, sandwiched on that list between Sting and Elton John. “There are no platinum records hanging anywhere in my house. The trappings of rock stardom were never a part of my home.” He and his wife of 31 years, Dorothea, have four kids: Stephanie, 27, Jesse, 25, Jacob, 18 and Romeo, 16, and for a long time, he says, “my younger kids weren’t quite sure what I do”.We are talking today because the latest single, Story of Love, from his album 2020, is about to be released in the UK. Anyone whose image of Bon Jovi is still locked in the Livin’ on a Prayer era – the big guitars, the bigger hair – will be somewhat taken aback by 2020. It is a thoughtful look at the past year, addressing gun control (Lower the Flag), the coronavirus crisis (Do What You Can) and the Black Lives Matter movement (the disarmingly beautiful American Reckoning). Perhaps you are thinking that you don’t especially need Jon Bon Jovi’s thoughts on BLM, but reason not the need: as he has done throughout his near 40-year career, he offers solid music and heartfelt lyrics, and, really, hats off to the man for engaging with the moment because Lord knows he doesn’t need to do anything at all any more. When lockdown hit, instead of running off to a house on the beach, Bon Jovi washed dishes every day in JBJ Soul Kitchen, one of the two community kitchens he set up near his home, where meals are provided through donations or volunteering. As celebrity efforts go, that probably beats posting a video of yourself singing Imagine.But just singing about the human cost of the US’s gun laws will count to many as taking a side. Does he worry about alienating any of his fans? “There are men on my stage who see things differently, but I don’t let our differences come between us. I never wanted to become a captive to the stage. How I live my life’s up to me,” he says.When we first speak, Bon Jovi is 48 hours from performing in a televised celebration for Joe Biden’s inauguration. This is his second inaugural event, after singing for Obama in 2009. Bon Jovi first started palling around with politicians when “a governor by the name of Bill Clinton” contacted him in the early 90s, and he has been actively involved since. “If Al [Gore] had got in I’d have been secretary for entertainment,” he jokes. In 2015 he allowed the Republican and then New Jersey governor Chris Christie to use his music in his presidential campaign. Springsteen has repeatedly rebuffed requests from Christie, a superfan, to play at his events. Does he disapprove of Springsteen’s refusal to reach across the aisle?“I don’t know how Bruce has treated Chris, so I can’t comment on that. But I would be a hypocrite if I told you I write songs that claim to be a witness to history, and then don’t listen [to the other side],” he says.Would he let Donald Trump use his music?He recoils as if physically attacked. “No! No no no! On every issue we wholeheartedly disagree, from how he handled the Covid crisis to immigration to the Paris accord – everything! No! No!”Bon Jovi and Trump have an extremely weird history. Back in 2014, the singer, along with some Canadian investors, tried to buy the NFL team the Buffalo Bills, outbidding Trump. But there was suddenly strong anti-Bon Jovi feeling in Buffalo, NY, with “Bon Jovi-free” zones and negative graffiti, stemming from the rumour that he and his partners would move the team out of the city. Bon Jovi fiercely denied that, but the Bills ultimately went to a third bidder and that was the end of that – until three years ago, when it emerged, inevitably, that the anti-Bon Jovi campaign had been started by Michael Caputo, a political strategist, who had been hired by Trump.“I was really shocked at the depths [Trump] went to. He wasn’t even qualified to buy the team, because you have to submit your tax returns, and he never filed the paperwork. Instead, he did this dark shadow assassination thing, hoping to buy the team at a bargain basement price. But I just couldn’t understand how this misinformation was being put out there. It was seriously scarring,” Bon Jovi says, eyes wide.After Trump failed to get the team, he stomped off and ran for president. Maybe you should have just given him the team, I say.“Yeah, for the sake of the world, he definitely should have got the team. Oh well,” he chuckles.Caputo later worked for Trump when he was president and was questioned as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was reported last September that Caputo had orchestrated a pressure campaign for official reports into the Covid crisis to be altered to be more flattering to Trump.“I guess we lived a page of Trump’s playbook in Buffalo,” says Bon Jovi.How did it feel to see his nemesis become president only two years after the battle in Buffalo?He hesitates. “Well, like all Americans, I have to support the office of the president – look how political I’m sounding! I’m trying to stop myself from bullshitting. The truth is, I was really disappointed.”Often in interviews Bon Jovi can sound a little monotone and bored, talking about the same things he has been talking about for decades. But today he is strikingly engaged and I ask if that’s because we’re mainly talking about politics rather than music.“Ha! Well, everyone’s an armchair quarterback when talking about politics,” he says.So he’s not thinking of pivoting to politics, spending his days arguing with Republicans such as Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell?“Or Chuck Schumer,” he adds, naming the Democrat leader in the Senate for balance. “It’s a shit existence – selling yourself and your soul. Hell no.”John Bongiovi Jr was born and raised in New Jersey, the son of two former marines. He started making music as a kid and wrote Runaway, which would be his first hit, when he was 19. By 21 he had a record deal and a band, of which he was the name, the face and the boss (“More like a benevolent dictator,” he insists). Initially they were marketed as a hard rock band. They certainly looked the part – big hair, tight trousers – but Bon Jovi had a different plan.“I said: ‘I want a tour with the Cars and Bryan Adams and all these pop groups,’ and my manager said: ‘No. You’re going to learn how to play with Judas Priest and Kiss and the Scorpions. Those audiences are loyal; pop audiences are fickle,’” he says. So they were packed off to open for Judas Priest, “a heavy metal band I’d never listened to,” Bon Jovi says. They won over audiences but he must have cut an unusual figure backstage: unlike pretty much everyone else on the 1980s hard rock scene, Bon Jovi never suffered from substance abuse issues. This has obviously worked in his favour: even aside from his unusual, maybe even unique career and marital stability, Bon Jovi at 58 looks like a man who spent his youth on yoga retreats as opposed to hanging out with Aerosmith. But how did he resist when he was so young?“To be honest with you, I didn’t have the capacity to handle drugs. I didn’t find joy in it, and I didn’t need to bury myself emotionally, so what was the purpose?”Was that because he had a reasonably stable childhood?“Mine was as fucked up as anyone else’s, but not enough to start using drugs. I saw a lot of friends die or there was havoc in their personal lives, but I just didn’t have the need or desire,” he says.When the band made their third album, Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi was “so over” being marketed as something he wasn’t that he took back control and worked on telling stories. The music was still rock, but the lyrics were about Tommy and the docks. The public loved it, and Slippery When Wet sold gazillions, its singles You Give Love a Bad Name, Wanted Dead or Alive, Never Say Goodbye and, of course, Livin’ on a Prayer becoming the inescapable soundtrack of the mid-80s. This was followed by New Jersey (Bad Medicine, I’ll Be There for You, Lay Your Hands on Me), and then the shift to the 90s, when Bon Jovi cut his hair and softened the rock a little (Keep the Faith, These Days) and became increasingly known for his ballads (In These Arms, Always). He sold more than 100m albums, at which point he moved into acting, which he was unexpectedly good at, in Moonlight and Valentino (hunky painter), Ally McBeal (hunky plumber) and Sex and the City (hunky photographer). Did he mind being the rent-a-hunk?“Hell no – I never went to the Shakespeare Company!” he laughs. “Nobody had been able to do both [music and acting]: Madonna, Sting, Phil Collins – you tried and failed. I was so anxious to get work I said: ‘I will do the small role, the hunk, just to get enough of a résumé.’”Yet he hardly needed the money. He talks about wanting to learn “humility” and (of course) “loving the craft”, all of which sounds like a euphemism for just needing a change. Producers told him that if he quit making music they would give him bigger parts but Hollywood’s appeal had already waned.“I got the house in Malibu, saw the guys who are looking over your shoulder to see if they should go talk to someone else. That whole lifestyle was so vapid to me. I couldn’t wait to get away from it,” he says.Critics sneer that Bon Jovi – the band and the man – have become too corporate, too cheesy. This isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s missing the point about why Bon Jovi – the man – is such an enduring phenomenon. He has always been a control freak, over himself and his band, as he admitted in his 2000 hit It’s My Life, and he knows what’s needed for his band to survive. His very un-rockstar-like stability has helped. He married his high school sweetheart, and has been with her more than 40 years. “She sat down next to me in history class, and that was it,” he says. His bandmates Tico Torres and David Bryan have also been with him since the beginning. Disruptions to plans upset him inordinately: he says the Buffalo debacle took him five years to get over. The departure of Sambora in 2013 upset him so much that he said he was plunged into “a dark place” for three years. Are he and Sambora in touch now?“No. He chose to do what he did, but my heartbreak is I personally loved having him in the band – I loved my band. But there was not a chance in the world that we would discontinue because of his inability to go on,” he says, the sensitivity still audible.At Bon Jovi’s suggestion, we talk again two days later after the inauguration. To many people’s surprise, instead of relying on the band’s back catalogue, he performed the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun. “I never felt like I needed to sing a song more. It was cathartic,” he says. Initially I missed the usual Bon Jovi bombast, but as the sun rose behind him as he sang, there was no denying that the man knows what works in the moment. But the recording of my private performance of Livin’ on a Prayer? That will last for ever.Bon Jovi’s album 2020 is out now. The new single, Story of Love, will be released on Friday 29 January. Visit bonjovi.com. More

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      in Elections

      The inauguration music: Biden trumps Trump with singers you actually know

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      Whoever was in charge of booking the talent for Joe Biden’s inauguration clearly had an easier task than their counterpart in 2017. Donald Trump’s transition team promised the world a performance by Elton John. Instead, performers at various inauguration events included Tony Orlando, of Knock Three Times and Tie a Yellow Ribbon fame; a fading post-grunge band called 3 Doors Down; country singer Toby Keith; and a woman who came second on America’s Got Talent. Elton John, it transpired, hadn’t confirmed and evidently had no intention of playing. Here was a lesson for unscrupulous gig promoters everywhere about announcing an act before they sign up.
      In fairness, they managed to grub up one actual musical legend – Sam Moore, one half of 60s soul duo Sam & Dave, who performed at a pre-inauguration event called Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration. But the swearing-in ceremony itself featured only a choir and military band – a climbdown from Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, who had Aretha Franklin sing at his 2009 ceremony followed by Beyoncé in 2013. An excruciating nadir was reached when a Bruce Springsteen tribute act called the B Street Band withdrew from an inauguration eve gig. When the tribute bands start telling you to do one, you’re in trouble.
      Under the circumstances, almost anything would have been an improvement, but Biden’s team proved capable of drawing in some major stars: the Celebrating America TV special that followed the inauguration was hosted by Tom Hanks and featured Justin Timberlake, Foo Fighters, Demi Lovato, Jon Bon Jovi, John Legend and the real Bruce Springsteen.
      At the inauguration itself, Lady Gaga sang the national anthem wearing an enormous red skirt and something you would have described as a brooch in the shape of a dove were it not the size of her head; by her standards at least, she’d dressed down for the occasion. She belted out The Star-Spangled Banner in potent Broadway style, before Jennifer Lopez showed up to perform a medley of America the Beautiful and This Land Is Your Land. More