NEWS/FEATURESARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2017

17

Rachel Platten performs on NBC’s Today Show at Rockefeller Plaza on Oct 27 in New York. (AP)

Musicians and husband and wife Faith Hill and Tim McGraw perform dur-ing their Soul2Soul Tour at Barclays Center of Brooklyn on October 27,

2017 in New York City. (AFP)

McCartney Prince

LOS ANGELES: Antoine “Fats” Domino, who died Tuesday at 89, was one of the main pioneers of early rock and roll, infl u-encing virtually everyone who followed him — including, not least, the Beatles, who covered his songs and met him on one of their fi rst trips to the United States. On Thursday, Paul McCartney issued a statement on his website remembering the legendary rocker.

“Rest in peace Fats Domino, the great rock ‘n’ roll pianist and singer who thrilled us in our early days in Liverpool,” he writes. “His hit records like ‘Ain’t That A Shame’, ‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘I’m In Love Again’ and many others introduced us to the sounds of New Orleans rock ‘n’ roll. We were excited to meet Fats once in his home town of New Orleans. (RTRS)

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LONDON: Paisley, pop hits and of course purple are coming to London’s O2 arena in a new exhibition of personal memorabilia of the late singer Prince.

“My Name is Prince,” features over 200 items including customised guitars, award statuettes, notepads of handwritten lyrics and elaborate costumes that featured in his music videos and feature fi lms.

The singer died of an accidental drug overdose in 2016. But organisers said he had a played a role in laying the founda-tions of the exhibition. (RTRS)

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LOS ANGELES: William Patrick Corgan — a.k.a. Billy Corgan, founder of the Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan — shared a cover of Miley Cyrus’s 2013 hit pop song “Wrecking Ball” as part of the “Cover Room” segment on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” The cover, which was fi lmed backstage, features Corgan’s trademark quivering voice and an acoustic guitar, lending the song a more stripped and clean feeling as opposed to Cyrus’ synth-heavy original. He doesn’t spare the intensity, however, and nails all the soaring notes in the challenging song.

Cyrus has since tweeted her support for Corgan’s performance, telling him to “rock on” and joking the she would like to see him perform it in reference to the song’s music video where Cyrus did just that. (RTRS)

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark: Little Rock’s police chief says his department is looking for the best way to monitor possible danger at per-formances and events without discouraging musicians from coming to Arkansas after a shooting during a rap concert this summer left 27 people injured.

Variety

B-Real (left), and Tom Morello of Rage perform at the Voodoo Music Experience in City Park on Oct 27 in New Orleans. (AP)

The Little Rock Police Department has twice sent letters of concern this month to a concert venue hosting a hip-hop show, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

reported.Police Chief Kenton Buckner stressed

that his department hasn’t demanded the cancellation of a show or pressured venues

to do so. He said the department is trying to balance ensuring safety while protecting the free speech of artists and concert-goers. (AP)

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SPRINGFIELD, Ohio: Singer-songwriter John Legend has returned to his home-town in Ohio for a night of high school football.

The Springfi eld News-Sun reports Legend was in Springfi eld on Friday night to see two local high schools, Kettering Fairmont and Springfi eld, play. His wife model Chrissy Teigen and young daughter Luna also were there.

Legend is the winner of Grammy, Acad-emy and Tony awards for his work.

Springfi eld is 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of Columbus, Ohio’s capital. (AP)

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PARIS: One of France’s top rap stars was sentenced to fi ve years in prison on Friday for ransacking the shop of his rival Booba and beating up a sales assistant so badly he was left in a coma.

Rohff, whose real name is Housni Mkouboi, was given the stiff sentence by judges in Paris in light of the serious nature of the violence, his criminal record and his inconsistent version of events. (AFP)

Downie’s farewell album intimately universal

Jessie Ware shows her rangeBy Jill Lawless

Jessie Ware, “Glasshouse” (Inter-scope Records)

No doubt about it, Jessie Ware can sing. The London-born singer-song-writer has a versatile voice that can whisper and soar against a musical palette drawing from soul, R&B, jazz and pop.

“Glasshouse,” her third album, fi nds that powerful voice in search of a dis-tinctive sound.

The 12 songs in the collection effec-tively showcase Ware’s range. She can go from a murmur to a scream against a disco bassline in lead single “Mid-night.” She can croon soulfully on “Thinking About You.” She can bathe the listener in a soothing balm on the lush “Stay Awake for Me.”

In lyrics partly inspired by the birth of her fi rst child last year, Ware re-fl ects on love and loss. It’s not exactly Amy Winehouse-level soul baring but it delivers on the seductive, bossa nova-tinged “Selfi sh Love” (“Why do I do these things/I break you down just to get my way?”)

Ware is clearly an artist with person-ality, but at times seems overwhelmed by the album’s busy production. “Alone” is a catchy ballad honed to within an inch of its life. There’s more freedom on “Your Domino,” an ap-pealing slice of Eurodisco fun.

The album is most effective when it slows down — as it does on the aptly named “Slow Me Down” and on “Hearts,” which lets the emotion in Ware’s voice shine through.

Album closer “Sam,” a lovely acoustic ballad about family co-writ-ten with Ed Sheeran, has a tenderness and directness that much of the album lacks. Sometimes simple is best.

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Gord Downie, “Introduce Yer-self” (Arts & Crafts)

Gord Downie was blessed with the chance to say goodbye and he makes the most of that opportunity on “Intro-duce Yerself,” a 23-song farewell to friends, family, bandmates and others which leaves a lump in your throat and a smile on your face.

Downie was the frontman of The Tragically Hip and a genuine Cana-dian icon. Mourning for his death from brain cancer at age 53 on Oct. 17, about 18 months after his illness was revealed, was led by Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau. The band’s tour in the summer of last year was his public exit and “Introduce Yerself” is its intimate counterpart.

Recorded over two, four-day ses-sions in January 2016 and this Feb-ruary, many of the songs, mostly co-written with producer Kevin Drew, from Broken Social Scene, are fi rst takes relying principally on guitar, pi-ano and drums. On one tune, clattering hockey sticks provide the percussion.

Some of the dedications are relative-ly easy to decode, as with “Bedtime” (tucking in one of his children), “Love Over Money” (about his Hip band-mates), or “My First Girlfriend.” For others, like album closer “The North,” it’s good to know about Downie’s ad-vocacy for Canada’s indigenous peo-ples or, concerning the title track, his late struggles with memory loss. A handful, like “A Better End,” “Snow-fl ake” or “Yer Ashore,” seem even more mysterious or intimate.

EmotionalThe emotional charge of the tunes is

impossible to miss and if you can some-times hear the music stretching to catch up with the words, or vice versa, it’s an indication of the album’s urgency.

Downie said “each song is about a person,” but with so much being ex-pressed in such a poetic way, it’s in-evitable that many, many more will be touched.

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Turnpike Troubadours, “A Long Way from Your Heart” (Bossier City/Thirty Tigers)

The sound of the road permeates the latest release from The Turnpike Troubadours, a hard-charging six-piece band out of Oklahoma that’s been honing its earthy sound for four albums now — and would displace some of the schlock at the top of the country charts in a world with a little more justice.

On their latest release, “A Long Way from Your Heart,” the band fol-lows singer-songwriter Evan Felker into the space between country and rock with well-crafted tunes that, while they might not break into new and original regions of the stratosphere, do hurtle forward on the wings of muscu-lar playing.

The Troubadours have honed their craft in the honky-tonks of Oklahoma and Texas for years now and it shows.

The playing is tight, the songs conver-sational and engaging. It feels like hav-ing a drink with a friend who can’t set-tle down but tells stories that are warm, personal and funny.

Consider “The Housefi re,” a nar-rative about waking up in a burning house that sounds like it really hap-pened. It’s not deep, just vivid, and like much of the band’s work, honest and straightforward.

The same holds true on the album’s best song, “The Hard Way,” which matches vaguely confessional lyrics with the band’s natural forward pro-pulsion.

“Now I’m headed out with the same unrest,” Felker sings with urgency. “Tried to tear it down but it was un-impressed.”

Restless? Absolutely. But headed somewhere great? Don’t bet against it.

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Lee Ann Womack, “The Lonely, The Lonesome & The Gone” (ATO Records)

After a long sojourn, Lee Ann Womack got her mojo back on 2014’s “The Way I’m Living,” and now she’s returned to her native East Texas to make “The Lonely, The Lonesome & The Gone,” as good an album as she’s ever done.

Produced again by her husband, Frank Liddell, the set relies more on Womack’s songwriting than before. She co-wrote six of the 14 tunes, including down-on-your-luck opener “All the Trouble” and the desolate “Hollywood,” portraying a relationship (barely) going through the motions.

The magnifi cent “He Called Me Baby” comes down somewhere between Charlie Rich’s version, a country chart-topper, and Candi Staton’s soulful read-ing, while her take on popular murder ballad “Long Black Veil” emphatically transmits its needless tragedy.

On “Mama Lost Her Smile,” she searches in vain through a box of photo-graphs only to fi nd that “you don’t take pictures/of the bad times/we only want to remember all the sunshine.” During “Somebody Else’s Heartache,” another Womack co-write, she makes a convinc-ing case that the misery is still hers, too.

The album was recorded mostly at Houston’s SugarHill Studios, where Womack got to sing fellow Texan George Jones’ redemptive “Take the Devil Out of Me,” who cut his original version nearly 60 years ago. (AP)

Music

Caesar blazes trail

Michael’s album topsUK charts after 27 yrsLONDON, Oct 28, (Agencies): George Michael’s chart-topping 1990 album “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1” returned straight to number one in the British charts on Friday, 10 months after the British pop star’s death at the age of 53.

The remastered record sold over 56,000 copies to come fi rst in the charts in the largest fi rst-week sales

for a re-released album in charts history.

The album was reissued to coincide with a new docu-mentary about the star’s rise to fame.

Its instant appeal matches the success of the original re-lease — Michael’s second solo album after he left the duo Wham! — which also shot straight to number one in Sep-tember 1990.

It went on to sell more than eight million copies worldwide.

Michael — who was found dead on Christmas Day last year — personally oversaw the remastering of the record prior to his death.

It includes an “MTV Unplugged” set from 1996 and a previously unreleased track, “Fantasy”, featur-ing Nile Rodgers.

The album was released following the airing earlier this month on British TV of the fi lm “George Michael: Freedom”, which the singer had also been personally guiding before he died.

David Austin, Michael’s manager, long-term col-laborator and close friend since childhood, said the team behind the efforts were “incredibly proud” to have immediately topped the charts.

“It’s no great secret that George was a perfectionist and it shows, he was over everything from its incep-tion to its fi nish and it’s a blessing and rare gift to be guided by such genius,” he added in a statement.

Michael, one of the most successful British artists ever, enjoyed album sales of more than 115 million, alongside Andrew Ridgeley in the band Wham! and then as a solo artist.

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What do Stevie Wonder and Kylie Jenner have in common? They’re both fans of rising R&B singer Daniel Caesar.

The golden-voiced Canadian singer, who also counts Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Rick Rubin and Erykah Badu as admirers, has built a strong celebrity fan base, thanks to his smooth, soulful R&B sound.

Caesar calls Wonder “one of my favorite songwrit-ers of all-time,” and said meeting the iconic musician left him star-struck.

“He came in and asked to hear (my) song again. And that was probably the craziest part to see Stevie Wonder vibe out to a song I wrote,” Caesar, 22, re-called. “I was very shook. ... I’ll never forget that mo-ment.”

Caesar’s encounter with Jenner was similar. She attended a listening party for his full-length debut al-bum, “Freudian,” released in August.

“I was honored. She’s really dope, very down-to-earth. She introduced herself to me the fi rst time I met her,” he said. “She’s like, ‘Hi, my name’s Kylie.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. I know.’”

“Freudian,” the follow-up to several EPs, debuted at No. 16 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart. The project was produced by Matthew Burnett and Jordan Evans, the duo who produced Eminem’s Grammy-winning No. 1 hit “Not Afraid,” as well as songs for Drake and others. Burnett and Evans also manage Caesar.

Caesar released “Freudian” independently, though he said he and his team met with major record labels to see their vision.

“We’d go to the meetings and some were good and some weren’t as good,” said Caesar, thinking that the label executives “can’t possibility care about what we’re doing as much as we do.”

Decided“We decided to bet on ourselves. And I’m happy

we did,” he said.Apple Music has supported the project, picking

Caesar to be its “Up Next Artist” for September. The album’s lead single, “Get You,” recently reached gold status, and Caesar earned nominations at this year’s BET Awards and the JUNO Awards.

“It’s reassuring because we just made this music ‘cause we like how it sounded, ‘cause we wanted to make it. And the fact that it’s resonating with so many people, it’s reassuring,” he said. “I have more confi -dence because of it.”

Caesar said his infl uences include Kirk Franklin, the Beatles, Frank Ocean and D’Angelo, whose al-bums inspired his sound on his debut.

He also said Canada, where he grew up, has had an impact on the album.

“My music’s pretty friendly,” he said, laughing. “Canada has a lot of nice guys.”

Caesar is on a North American tour that wraps Dec. 20 in Toronto, where he recorded the album. He will visit Europe for concert dates next year.

“I was a little nervous about it. I’m a home body and low energy, but I love it,” he said of being on the road. “I don’t want to go home. I kind of want to stay on the road forever.”

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Grammy-winning producer RedOne says that what the world needs now is positive music, and he’s teamed up with Latin superstar Daddy Yankee to de-liver it.

RedOne on Friday released “Boom Boom,” a new single featuring French Montana, Fifth Harmony’s Dinah Jane and Daddy Yankee, whom he credits with taking it to the next level.

“I had the song fi rst, I had French Montana in it, I had Dinah Jane in it, and ... I felt the song was almost there but needed that extra thing,” RedOne said Thurs-day in an interview with The Associated Press.

“After thinking about Daddy Yankee I was like, ‘I’m going to try to get Daddy Yankee no matter what, I don’t care how but I will do it’. ... Thank God it hap-pened. He loved the idea, he loved the song. We went in the studio and the chemistry between me and him was so on point. ... I was blown away. We just con-nected as we always knew each other.”

RedOne, who has produced Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj, calls the song “an explosion of positive energy the world needs at this time.” He wrote and produced it, and also sings on the track, which samples “Lady (Hear Me Tonight)” by French house duo Modjo.

A video, fi lmed in Los Angeles, various locations in Morocco and different parts of the Saharan Desert, had more than 8 million views by noon Friday.

Michael

Music