Streaming Services and Platforms

Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley Reflects on 40 Years of ‘Last Christmas’: It’s ‘Part of the Fabric of Christmas’ – ‘Last Christmas’ Makes it To First Place in UK in 2024

Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley Reflects on 40 Years of ‘Last Christmas’: It’s ‘Part of the Fabric of Christmas’

Wham! make chart history as Last Christmas takes festive number one spot for second time in a row

December 20, 2024

Wham! have made chart history, with Last Christmas becoming the first song to be crowned Christmas number one two years in a row.

‘Last Christmas’ Tops UK Charts for Second Consecutive Year as Anniversary of George Michael’s Death Looms

Michael died unexpectedly at the age of 53 on Christmas Day 2016

By Ingrid Vasquez
Published on December 20, 2024

It’s a bittersweet time of the year as Wham!’s “Last Christmas” reaches the top of the UK charts for the second year in a row.

On Friday, Dec. 20, the Official Charts Company announced that the 1984 track, released by the duo made up of Andrew Ridgeley and the late George Michael, had become the first song in chart history ever to clinch two consecutive Christmas Number 1 victories.

The achievement makes the beloved track, written and produced by Michael, this week’s most streamed and physically purchased song.

Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley reflects on 40 years of ‘Last Christmas’: It’s ‘part of the fabric of Christmas’

by Chuck Arnold
Dec. 20, 2024

When Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley first heard George Michael give up his heart on “Last Christmas,” he knew the beloved yule tune was something special. lastChristmasNYP

The magic moment happened when the holiday spirit hit his late bandmate in his childhood bedroom in London.

“We were killing time around his mom and dad’s house. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the soccer was on TV,” Ridgeley, 61, told The Post. “And George disappeared upstairs [where] he had a little Fostex four-track recording studio, which used a cassette tape to record four tracks onto. And [he] came back about an hour later and said, ‘Andy, Andy, you gotta come upstairs and listen to this!’”

What Ridgley heard “written on the spot” was the beginning of the “Last Christmas” journey to 40 years of festive feels.

“He’d written the bare-bones keyboard track, the basic drum track and a bit of the verse and the chorus,” he recalled. “And it was an amazing moment … I knew it was a hit record. We’d had a few by then, so we were able to recognize them when we heard them.”

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Kate Bush’s Stranger Things Triumph Reminds Us of the Joy of Discovering Music Through Film and TV

Kate Bush’s Stranger Things Triumph Reminds Us of the Joy of Discovering Music Through Film and TV

A foreward.

In my late 40s and older, I’ve talked to people in their 20s while I’ve resumed taking college classes again, and some of them are totally unfamiliar with mainstream artists of the 1980s, such as Billy Idol and Duran Duran.

I have no idea how teens and 20 somethings today – with the incredibly easy access to music via You Tube and free sign ups to streaming services such as Spotify – can be so lazy and ignorant about music.

When I was a teen in the 1980s, I was not only interested in music I grew up listening to in the 1970s and 1980s, but also music from previous eras (my mother used to play me music from the 1950s – Elvis, The Platters, Buddy Holly and so on).

As a teen in the 1980s, I would’ve given my right arm to have had something like Spotify or You Tube back in the 1980s. I would’ve spent every waking moment just checking out different contemporary genres as well as pop, rock, country western, classical music – everything! – from previous decades and centuries.

All we had back then, though, were the radio and the occasional musical variety shows on the three main networks.

I am not saying it’s wrong to discover a great song that is decades old via a new movie or television show, but I don’t know why kids today are so ignorant about music, when they have such easy access to it – kids today do not have to wait for a great song to appear in a movie – they can go research music from the past in an instant, FOR FREE, on their cell phones and iPads.

Kate Bush’s Stranger Things Triumph Reminds Us of the Joy of Discovering Music Through Film and TV

Excerpts:

Liz Shannon Miller
June 3, 2022

This week, in the aftermath of Stranger Things Season 4 debuting, English singer/songwriter Kate Bush experienced a remarkable renaissance, as her iconic 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” became a chart-busting hit across multiple streaming services.

Over the course of Memorial Day weekend, the song reached the top 10 on Apple Music in 34 different countries, becoming one of the most-Shazamed songs of the week and getting permanently stuck in every viewer’s head — hopefully music supervisor Nora Felder is feeling pretty good about her accomplishment.

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Vinyl Album Sales Surpass Music CDs in 2021

Vinyl Album Sales Surpass Music CDs in 2021

1 Out of Every 3 Albums Sold in the US in 2021 Were Vinyl LPs – (paywall)

Indie retailers sold almost half of all vinyl LPs, while Taylor Swift was the format’s top-selling artist — accounting for 2.6% of total sales.

Vinyl Records Reach Highest Sales Numbers In Last 30 Years

In 2021, vinyl albums constituted more than 25% of physical album sales in the UK.

Driven by Adele, vinyl and CD sales both went up in 2021, data says

January 11, 2022

Streaming has been dominating the music industry for years now, but 2021 saw a notable rise in sales of physical albums, thanks in part to the success of Adele’s latest album.

Both CDs and vinyl experienced high sales in 2021, according to an annual year-end music data report from MRC Data, released this week.

….”In recent years, I notice customers preferring to physically own music, other than streaming, usually in its best form (vinyl),” said Tobago Benito, owner of record store DBS Sounds, in MRC’s data roundup.

He attributes that rise both to the inclusion of record players in movies and television, but also to the joy people get from digging for a certain vinyl in a record store, one that may “bring back wonderful memories,” he said.

The rise in vinyl sales is also a significant jump from just one year ago, in 2020, when vinyls made up 27.5 million of physical music sales, about 40% of all total sales. To now make up just about half of total sales is significant.

…But one surprise from last year was the uptick in CD sales in the U.S., which went up by 1.1% — from 40.2 million sales in 2020 to 40.6 million in 2021. CD sales have been in steady decline for years, so the fact that they did not actively decline last year could be significant.

One reason for the bump in sales was the release of Adele’s “30” and Taylor Swift’s “Red (Taylor’s Version).”

The Target CD version of “30,” which contained three bonus tracks, helped the CD version of the album sell 378,000 copies in its first week — the biggest CD sales week of 2021, MRC said. Just a week prior, “Red (Taylor’s Version)” sold 146,700 copies.

The Official Top 40 best-selling vinyl albums and singles of 2021

The top vinyl list includes popular releases by Lana Del Rey, Adele and ABBA.

Vinyl outsold CDs in the US for the first time in decades – (paywall)

Vinyl Earns Biggest Sales Week Since 1991

by Brad Callas, Dec. 29, 2021

Vinyl just had its best sales week in three decades.

Americans bought 2.11 million copies of vinyl records in the week ending on Dec. 23, marking the biggest sales week for vinyls since MRC Data began tracking music sales back in 1991, Billboard reports. It’s a 45% increase from the week prior (1.46 million), suggesting the spike can be attributed to the holiday shopping season.

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‘Every Breath You Take’ is the Ultimate All-Round Song (According to Science)

‘Every Breath You Take’ is the Ultimate All-Round Song (According to Science)

November 16, 2021

Why ‘Every Breath You Take’ Is the Ultimate Song

‘Every Breath You Take’ is the ultimate all-round song (according to science)

by Mano Sundaresan
November 13, 2021

Some songs will never go away, like “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. The_Police

The song was a sensation when it was released in 1983, topping the Billboard Hot 100 charts for eight weeks….

Its popularity is a little surprising, though, because it’s not a particularly flashy song. Its arrangement is flat and monochromatic, with a snaking guitar line, placid drums and Sting’s faint and reverb-y vocals. …

So why has it lived on? Some new research might explain it.

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MTV Turns 40 – Articles About this Anniversary from Various Sites

MTV Turns 40 – Articles About this Anniversary from Various Sites

August 4, 2021

I still have cable TV – I know a lot of people use streaming platforms these days – but there are actually two Mtv channels on cable. There is the channel that is in the top 100, and a secondary Mtv channel over the 100 or 200 range (I think my cable company has Mtv at channel 234 or something).

Most rock, dance, rap, and pop music is pure trash these days, but I periodically stop and watch the secondary Mtv channel now, because they actually play music videos all day long – just like back in the 1980s. mtvlogo

Because most of today’s rock and pop singer are bland, and the majority of their music is hideous, though, I cannot stand to watch very much of it.

I do remember when the first and only Mtv channel more or less played music videos all day back in the 1980s.

40 Years of MTV: the channel that shaped popular culture as we know it

Excerpts:

by Adam Behr

MTV’s first broadcast on August 1 1981 opened with footage of a shuttle launch and the words “ladies and gentleman, rock and roll”. The first song, however, was The Buggles’ distinctly poppy single –appropriately enough, Video Killed the Radio Star.

MTV’s effect on record sales was quickly noted. During the channel’s initial rise and 1980s heyday, it helped to kick-start the careers of stars such as Cyndi Lauper, and launched others – like Madonna and Michael Jackson – into the stratosphere.

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The Sudden, Lucrative Gold Rush for Old Music by Andy Greene and Kory Grow

The Sudden, Lucrative Gold Rush for Old Music by Andy Greene and Kory Grow

The Sudden, Lucrative Gold Rush for Old Music

Excerpts:

As the giants of classic rock contemplate retirement, music execs are dreaming up increasingly bold new ways to eke value out of their brands, images, and back catalogs

June 8, 2021

….Up till now, living, breathing classic-rock icons like the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and Bob Dylan haven’t had to worry much about tending to their respective flames. Touring, merch, and clever marketing of their catalogs have sustained them for well over six decades.

But the pandemic has kept them off the road for more than a year, and several of them are reaching an age where road work won’t be possible much longer. “Mick Jagger is 77,” Jampol says [Jampol has managed the estates of the Doors, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and Tupac Shakur] “At some point you’ve got to go, ‘I’m going to enjoy my grandkids.’”

It’s at that point when a band or artist, and the team around them, faces a crucial question: How can the afterlife of a career in rock maintain, or even surpass, what that act achieved in their prime?

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‘The Phil Collins Effect’: Older Pop Stars Given Hope by Former Genesis Singer’s Cultural Resurrection

‘The Phil Collins Effect’: Older Pop Stars Given Hope by Former Genesis Singer’s Cultural Resurrection

Before I get to the links and excerpts, I wanted to say how strange I find it that today’s teens and college kids apparently do not seek out older music!

When I was a teen in the 1980s, I would’ve given my right arm to have technology such as You Tube or Spotify, which would allow me to listen to all genres of music from any year FOR FREE.

But no! Back then, if I wanted to hear different genres, older music, and so on, I had to borrow the cassette tapes or vinyl albums of friends and family.

Buying a new album back then was around $9.00 or so, which to me at that time, was a lot of money.

But today’s kids don’t seem to be using You Tube and streaming services to sit and look up music from the 1940s onwards – they all seem to be listening to the non-melodic, entirely forgettable bilge that today’s 20-something bands and singers keep pumping out.

If you have the availability of something like You Tube, which allows you to look up and listen to many types of older bands and singers for free, why not use it?

‘The Phil Collins Effect’: Older pop stars given hope by former Genesis singer’s cultural resurrection

How Phil Collins became cool (no, really)

Why the Phil Collins Effect gives older stars hope
by Mark Bridge
May 31, 2021

He was hailed in the Eighties as a breath of fresh air but derided in the Nineties as naff personified.

Phil Collins has found favour, however, with a younger generation of music lovers transfixed by the drum fill that lifts In The Air Tonight.

The rapid trajectories of the former Genesis drummer’s popularity have led academics to refer to the Phil Collins Effect (PCE) as a phenomenon worthy of study that can apply to other veteran recording artists.

‘The Phil Collins Effect’: Older Pop Stars Given Hope by Former Genesis Singer’s Cultural Resurrection

May 31, 2021

The “Phil Collins Effect” has been identified by academics after a return to popularity for the former Genesis drummer and frontman.

The highly-influential musician, who appears to attract equal levels of admiration and derision, became one of the best-selling artists of all time during a hugely successful solo career in the eighties.

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