Harry Styles, "As It Was"

In the last few years, a slew of Billboard Hot 100 chart records were broken that until recently would have been unthinkable.  Some of these new records are truly mind boggling.  For nearly twenty five years, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men held the record for the most consecutive weeks at #1 with "One Sweet Day".  For two decades, nothing came close to matching it.  Who could possibly defeat the kings of slow jam R&B and the most successful female solo artist ever?  Destiny had seemingly taken over. But in 2017, Luis Fonzi's "Despacito" became the summer jam to end all summer jams and tied the record.  And two years later, the record was smashed by a complete unknown.  When "One Sweet Day" dominated the charts, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey had twelve #1 hits between them, tens of millions in albums sales, and nearly unlimited promotional support behind them.  Lil Nas X was armed with a $20 beat and an obscure Nine Inch Nails sample.  If the CMA hadn't banned "Old Town Road" from the country charts, prompting a wave of free publicity and the remix with Billy Ray Cyrus, it probably comes nowhere close to topping the Hot 100 for nineteen weeks.  But it happened, and you'll never find a more unlikely megasuccess story in the history of pop.  

There are other ways to measure the success of a hit song.  The Hot 100's methodology has changed many times during its six decade history.  The 90's were a particularly confusing time.  To be considered for the Hot 100, a single had to exist as a physical product.  But since those were peak CD buying years, many artists didn't bother releasing physical singles, they simply "released" a "new" song to radio as a means to stoke their album sales.  The songs weren't new because they were readily available on the CD album, but the labels would simply signal the record stations to start playing track three instead of track six and voila, there was a "new" single.  Thus you had the strange conundrum of completely unavoidable 90's hits that didn't chart due to this bizarre technicality, at least until the rules were changed around the end of the decade.  

This is to say that prior to streaming and digital downloads, ranking chart hits by the number of radio plays was as good a metric as any, and remains an effective measure of a song's impact even today.  The record for the most weeks at number one on the "Radio Songs" chart (formerly the "Hot 100 Airplay" chart) used to be held by the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris".  Ask anyone who lived through 1998 and they'll confirm that you couldn't go five minutes without hearing it.  It topped the airplay chart for an unthinkable eighteen consecutive weeks.  For the next twenty plus years, nothing approached this number.  Then in 2020, The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" crushed just about every chart record imaginable.  Most weeks in the top five.  Most weeks in the top ten.  First song to remain in the top ten for an entire year.  Most weeks in the Hot 100.  And not least, most weeks atop the "Radio Songs" chart -- 26 weeks, or nearly 50% more than the ostensibly unbreakable record formerly held by the Goo Goo Dolls.  

Michael Jackson's "Bad" was a blockbuster album, all the more amazing considering it was the follow up to one of the most mythical pop music albums of all time.  Michael hit number one with a record five consecutive singles from "Bad" (later tied by Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream").  With nine singles released in all, it dominated the charts for two solid years.  And yet, those five number one songs spent just seven weeks cumulatively at the top of the charts.  Drake spent 29 weeks at number one with three songs in 2018.  It's simply an unprecedented time for chart records.  Add worldwide blockbusters like Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" to the mix, and one could easily argue that five of the ten biggest hits ever have occurred just in the past half decade. This isn't all hyperbole, last year Billboard officially declared "Blinding Lights" as the biggest hit of all time. 

What else can possibly happen?  Well, let's take Harry Styles.  His song "As It Was" it now in its fourteenth non-consecutive week at number one, tied for fourth most all time.  But more remarkably, it set a record by hitting number one five times this year. What's more, each time it was knocked out of the top spot, it fell to number two and stayed there.  That makes a total of 23 consecutive weeks in the top two (another record), a near six month run of pure dominance. The song itself is remarkable too, and not only because its this decade's answer to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer".  The propulsive, mechanical drumming, atmospheric keyboard in the foreground and subtle Fleetwood Mac-like guitar picking in the background, it's all there.  The song is ready to be digitally inserted into any roller rink movie scene from the 80's at your leisure. 

   

It's a wonderful song.  Just about all these new chartbusting songs are great.  This in itself feels novel.  The 90's were packed with awful number ones, the previously mentioned "One Sweet Day" is typical of sappy, tuneless R&B of the time that found success purely based on star power and vocal calisthenics.  What is happening?  Are we in a golden age of songwriting and producing?  I think we might be.  Music production has become a superstar endeavor unto itself, the Swedes and Americans who shaped the sounds of the late 90's and 00's have spawned a new generation of curious and creative disciples.  The artist-producer relationship feels more important and more symbiotic than ever.  

However, this recent article in The Ringer gives me pause.  The success of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" has solidified an ongoing trend, where catalog music is rapidly growing at the expense of contemporary music. Songs might top the charts for multiple weeks but completely fail to become cultural touchstones and are forgotten a few years later.  Song and album sales are cratering, it's mostly about streaming now, which puts catalog artists on more of an equal footing.  Songs released yesterday and those released forty years ago are both one simple click away.  Does this mean that the charts are more top heavy in favour of the most popular artists?  That is, are there fewer contemporary artists competing for chart spots than before?  With less competition, it will be easier for a great song to dominate.  

Alex Ross, "Listen To This"

I have just discovered that I never wrote a proper review of Ross' "The Rest is Noise", although I alluded to the book's profound affect on me in posts like these from two years ago.

"The Rest Is Noise" was an instant classic upon release, you can easily find breathless praise for it in various corners of the internet, and somehow it took me ten years to get around to reading it.  This book was as close to a Pied Piper moment in music literature that I'm likely to experience in my lifetime.  

"Listen To This" is an enjoyable companion piece for those already enamored by Ross' writing.  Based mainly on long form pieces written mainly for the New Yorker over the years, Ross continues to make complex musical concepts accessible, all while focusing on the context behind the music and the personalities of those who made it.  The autobiographical first chapter, "Crossing the Border From Classical to Pop", provides the context behind the context.  The author grew up in a household steeped in classical music and nothing else.  He only became exposed to other genres of music (alternative, punk) during his college years, before drifting back to his first, true love once more as a writer for the New Yorker and other publications.  

I view the strengths of "The Rest Is Noise" through this lens.  The strongest chapters focus on explaining classical music and its culture to The Rest of Us.  "Inside the Marlboro Retreat" is a charming profile of this difficult to access breeding ground for America's finest young talent.  Part musical summer school, part rehearsal boot camp, Ross takes a deep dive into the environment that brings out the best in a performance artist.  Every page is packed with amusing anecdotes and wild personalities.  His essays/profiles of Schubert and Brahms closely examine the whys behind the development of their careers, while engaging in some mild psychoanalysis that illuminates more than criticizes.  

His profiles of contemporary non-classical artists were less successful.  Only in the Bjork profile did I feel that I learned something profound about the artist and their passion for pursuing musical inspiration.  Other profiles (Dylan, Radiohead, and "The Edges of Pop") come off as an outsider's view, importing musical descriptors from the classical world into the pop and rock worlds in an attempt to intellectualize the appreciation of their art.  On a somewhat unrelated note, I found it amusing how Ross interviews Dylan-ologists who analyze the minutiae in his lyrics and name drop academics who had nominated Dylan for a Nobel Prize.  The article was written in the late 90's, and the tone of the piece good naturedly plays along with these absurd proclamations.  All in good fun ... until, of course, Dylan really did win the Nobel Prize twenty years later.  

Ross is at his best as a historian, describing the evolution of a concept or style.  Equally well, he can take a seemingly well-known subject (like Brahms) and take the reader back to another, describing the real time trials and predicaments of the hero composer much like an epic balladeer would.  But sometimes the long form article comes off as merely that -- long.    

Herbert von Karajan, "Orchestral Spectaculars from Handel to Bartok" (Warner Classics)

Karajan's recorded legacy is massive, with more recordings than any reasonable human could possibly keep track of.  Box sets should simplify matters for consumers by concentrating more of the best music in one place, but there are so many Karajan sets (on multiple labels) that even collecting box sets is a daunting task.  No matter your feelings on Karajan the person or the musician, he's so ubiquitous as a recording artist -- even more than thirty years after his death -- that it's almost impossible to ignore or avoid his work.

This 13-CD set was culled from a larger 80-something CD Warner box, and represents an intriguing period in Karajan's career.  And based on the quality of the music represented here, he may have never been better.  Most of this material was recorded before he became entrenched in Berlin.  The repertoire contains a number of unusual gems that he never recorded again.  This is highlighted in the (far too brief) liner notes, in an essay that takes a subtle jab at Otto Klemperer, who became the director of the Philharmonia once Karajan started devoting most of his energies to his work in Berlin.  That is, whereas Karajan recorded a more varied selection of composers with the Philharmonia, Klemperer chose to narrow the orchestra's scope and focus on the "standard German repertoire".  Separated from the commercial intention of this essay (to hype the product you just purchased), the truth is a bit more complex.  Klemperer was also well known for playing contemporary music when he was younger.  It's true that he focused more on the standard German repertoire as he got older, but he was a master interpreter of that style and recorded countless reference recordings that entrance and fascinate even today.  Karajan, on the other hand, couldn't match Klemperer's talents in that repertoire even though he went back to the well far too often (how many Beethoven symphony recordings did he make, anyway?).  Karajan did stellar work outside of the Austro-German classics whose standards he was expected to uphold as the director in Berlin, but you have to dig a bit through his catalog to discover that.  Hence, this box.  

The first three discs are all Sibelius and they're uniformly outstanding.  Compared with many other highly regarded Sibelius conductors, Karajan ignores many of the varied dynamics and tempo changes.  Somehow it always works regardless.  He captured the raw emotion of Sibelius in a very unique way.  These Sibelius recordings, both in mono and stereo, make this box a keeper all by themselves.  

Over time I have been pleasantly surprised to discover how good Karajan was with opera intermezzi and overtures.  His disc of Rossini overture cooks, there certainly isn't a more fun disc in the set, although the Offenbach operetta works come close.  

The version of Debussy's "La Mer" is unquestionably a classic -- moody, dizzying, and grandiose in equal measures, expertly capturing the complex morphology of the work.  The two versions of Handel's "Water Music Suite" are also highlights.

Naturally there are a few misses.  Berlioz's "Symphony Fantastique" doesn't come close to nailing the manic, hallucinogenic energy toward the end.  He could have taken a pass on Czech music.  In Dvorak's "Symphony No. 9" and Smetana's "Vltava", Karajan misses the essence of the unfamiliar cultures being represented in the music.  This wasn't a general flaw -- his "Finlandia" is incredible (two versions on this set) and he was also great with Shostakovich (not featured on this set).  Perhaps there was something about Czech composers that he simply couldn't master.     

The LSO/Simon Rattle Mahler 2 at the BBC Proms -- did it live up to the hype?

The reviews coming out of this August 24 event were out of this world, with fans and critics rushing to proclaim it as one of the all time best performances of Mahler's 2nd symphony.  

With a clean 80-minute run time, this was one of the faster Mahler 2's.  That's usually a good thing with this work, because the undoing of many a Mahler 2 comes from the conductor trying to insert too much drama and sentimentality into the performance, often resulting in slow tempos that exhaust the players and the audience long before reaching the conclusion.  Dudamel conducted a very game Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Mahler 2 during the 2011 Proms.  Although it brought down the house amongst the Dudamel superfans on that evening, the performance ran well over ninety minutes with several moments of dreadful stagnation, as noted by some commentators at the time.  Faster tempos can make for more "exciting" Mahler, but may downgrade the power of the symphony's most spiritual, emotional moments.  After all, this is a symphony of struggle, whose eventual resolution (we must die in order to live in order to get closer to G-d, and when we do so we all win) is the culmination of a hard fought battle whose outcome is in doubt until the very end (the interpretation of many, but certainly not all, conductors over the decades).  The faster the tempo, the quicker the struggle, and the "easier" it becomes, perhaps.  These are generalizations, but in the hands of a talented conductor almost anything is possible.  

Rattle's first movement funeral march trampled afoot more reminiscent of a rousing sports march rather than a solemn dirge-like march filled with uncertainty and dread.  By its end I managed to talk myself into believing in what Rattle was going for.  The movement was less of a mortality statement by a nervous and paranoid individual (Mahler), and more of an extended overture to a Hollywood blockbuster featuring G-d and Satan duking it out over a series of brimstone explosions and quick camera cuts.  Not my preferred interpretation perhaps, but certainly one I was willing to give a chance to.

The second and third movements were brisk, enjoyable, and thoroughly unsentimental in my view.  Just passing glimses at memories past, which is perfectly fine.  The "Urlicht" was beautifully sung, and indeed, the solo and choral singing were consistently stellar on the evening.  

The fifth and final movement was the symphony's undoing.  Rattle's strict adherence to tempo created an insistent, metronomic momentum that sapped the drama out of the music where it was needed most.  There are countless interesting moments in the finale that can be enhanced by the conductor through modifications in the mood and tempo.  By the first appearance of the "Aufersteh'n" from the chorus and the response from the orchestra, I started suspecting something nefarious was afoot, as if the insistent tempos were brought on by a curfew or a dinner reservation that nobody other than Simon Rattle was privy to.  

Many have made note of the fact that Rattle conducted without a score.  Mahler 2 is one of his signature pieces that helped grow his career in no small part.  Certainly he knows the work as well as anyone and is capable of getting by without a score.  Here I must ask -- why the fascination in conductors working without a score?  I can drive without a seatbelt, but why would I want to?  Why take the unnecessary risk?  Is it a macho thing?  What happens if the orchestra gets badly out of sync or if the conductor has a brain lapse?  Is this supposed to be akin to a soloist performing without sheet music in order to demonstrate their mastery over the material?  Because conducting is (should be) a completely different sort of performance skill compared to the job of a soloist.  My point is that when you conduct without a score, you must work more by feel and can't possibly recall all the miniscule details and adjustments that could be used to enhance the work in real time.  

Finally, the finale reached the last three minutes at which point the tempos ground to a halt and the symphony reached a monumental, cataclysmic conclusion, albeit one that felt stapled on to a completely different performance that had been delivered to that point. When Mahler 2 ends, more often than not, that the part that rings in the ears after the last note has sounded, and that singular feeling is what kept the RAH buzzing for minutes afterward. But let's not kid ourselves. This was not a great Maher 2, let alone one to be remembered for all times.  It was suitably thrilling in large chunks, and featured many heartstopping moments, but Rattle certainly could have done better.