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Kevin Parker of Tame Impala has sold his complete song catalog to Sony Music Publishing. The deal expands Parker’s longstanding relationship with SMP, which has published him since 2009, and includes all of his works released as Tame Impala as well as his writing credits for other songs, including his contributions to Dua Lipa‘s new album Radical Optimism, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 this week.
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Parker has also expanded his publishing deal with Sony to include the administration of the full catalog as well as future works.
The Australian mutli-hyphenate musician has made an indelible impact on music since he began his psychedelic rock band in 2008. Through the project, Parker has released four albums — InnerSpeaker (2010), Lonerism (2012),Currents (2015) and The Slow Rush (2020) — all of which were solely written, produced, recorded and mixed by Parker.
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Along with Tame Impala, Parker has also written and produced for a number of top acts, including Travis Scott, Dua Lipa, Mick Jagger, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, The Gorillaz, Mark Ronson, The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, Flaming Lips, A$AP Rocky, Lil Yachty, Don Toliver, Daft Punk, Miguel, and Australian children’s group The Wiggles. Rihanna also covered his Tame Impala-released single “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” (which she retitled “Same Ol’ Mistakes”) on her acclaimed 2016 album ANTI.
Parker says of the deal: “The idea of passing on ownership of my songs is one that I don’t think about very lightly, at all. They are the fruit of my blood, sweat and creativity over all the years I’ve been a recording artist and songwriter so far. I have a lot of love and trust for the Sony publishing family and have only had great experiences with Damian Trotter and the rest of the gang worldwide. I don’t think my songs could be in any safer hands than Sony’s, and I’m excited for the future and happy I can keep working with them on whatever the future brings…”
“I have always admired Kevin Parker and I believe he is one of the most versatile songwriters of our time,” says Jon Platt, chairman and CEO of SMP. “Kevin has built a catalog of songs with incredible range and enduring power, and he has always stayed true to his vision. It is a privilege to represent his music, and we are committed to broadening his legacy of success.”
Damian Trotter, managing director of Australia for Sony Music Publishing said: “Kevin is a singular talent whose creativity and dedication to his art has enthralled fans and artists since he arrived on the music scene. Having worked with Kevin since before the release of the first Tame Impala album, it has been thrilling to witness his rise to success worldwide, which is so well deserved. We are proud and humbled to be taking custodianship of this iconic catalogue of songs and to be continuing our relationship with Kevin in this exciting phase of his music making career.”
The Project
Blondshell arrived April 7 on Partisan via Knitting Factory. and included the artist’s 2022 debut single “Olympus.”
The Origin
Sabrina Teitelbaum wanted to be a singer since she was a kid growing up in Manhattan. In 2015, she moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California’s Popular Music Program, and eventually launched a solo pop project called Baum. But it wasn’t until she wrote the broody and slow-burning “Olympus” that her career clicked, and Blondshell was born. Producer Yves Rothman encouraged her to write more songs in the same raw and rock-inspired style, which she recalls felt “intimidating” at first. But the songs, most of which make up Blondshell, tumbled out quickly. “It was just obvious to me that this stuff was more who I am,” she says now.
The Sound
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Teitelbaum was raised on rock greats like The Rolling Stones and is a big fan of The National (she says the band’s black-and-white album art for Trouble Will Find Me inspired her own debut cover). At the same time, having grown up in the 2000s, she was listening to pop icons like Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Gwen Stefani, “and all these people who had higher belting ranges,” she recalls — adding that for a long time, she thought that she had to sing that way, too.
It took a song like the confessional “Sepsis,” one of her favorite songs to perform live, to make her rethink that approach. “It’s just in a good place for my voice,” she says of the track. “And when I started writing the album, particularly with ‘Sepsis,’ I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do that. I’m just gonna sing in the most comfortable part of my voice.’ It’s fun to sing that one because it’s just easy.”
The Record
Blondshell had a “relaxing celebration” when her album arrived, performing at Amoeba on release night and heading to the beach the following day. Blondshell debuted at No. 88 on Billboard’s Top Current Album Sales chart, becoming her first entry on any tally. Of signing with an indie label, she says “I didn’t wanna press that button that was like, ‘This is exactly who I’m gonna be for the rest of my career.’ I really wanted the freedom to change that up … I’ve been thinking about, ‘What did I bring in as references for this album?’ And it was a lot of 90s guitar driven music. I am always gonna have that as a reference, because that’s the music that I love.”
The Breakthrough
Though Blondshell only debuted in 2022, the artist says getting to this point – where in recent months she’s played her favorite venue The Fonda and made her late night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon – has required years of work: “First [it was], ‘How do I even get on Spotify? How do I meet producers and how do I go to sessions?’ Just years of step-by-step. And then, ‘What do I wanna sound like as a performer? What do I want my show to look like?’
“I was getting kind of scared the last couple years because I was like, ‘I don’t know what I would do in a long term kind of way if it wasn’t music,’” she recalls. “I think people put so much pressure on musicians, especially women, to know exactly who you are as an artist at such a young age, and to find success and all these ideas — like, ‘If you’re not having success by the time you’re like 25, then it’s not gonna happen.’ All these messages that got sent while I was growing up were kind of freaking me out for a period of time.”
The moment that started to shift, she says, was when she played her first show as Blondshell last summer: “That felt like a big moment, because I put ‘Olympus’ out and I think people hadn’t heard that kind of music [from me]. Some of my friends hadn’t heard it, people I had worked with. And then I got to be like, ‘See, I’ve been working really hard at this thing and getting this live show ready,’ and I got to show people.”
The Future
Blondshell is already excited for her next album, on which she wants to be more experimental, while still rooted in rock. She cites PJ Harvey as an artist who’s released successful but “weirder, progressively” indie-rock albums over the course of her career. “I wanna just play around with different structures and stuff like that,” she says.
She’s also taking note of who she believes to be stellar vocalists. “I feel like there’s a lot of artists right now that are really good live,” she says. “That’s the thing I’m looking at in other artists who are ahead of me or further along in their career.” She mentions Ethel Cain and Willow in particular, whose Coachella performances she keeps seeing clips of online. She also mentions a superstar she has been inspired by since she was a kid: Miley Cyrus. “I love her,” says Blondshell. “I was just watching videos of her singing yesterday and it takes so much work to sound that good and to be that consistent.”
The Piece of Advice Every New Indie Artist Needs to Hear
“While you’re in the process of making the music, don’t think about how you’re gonna put it out. Don’t bring the business parts of it into the actual writing. I would say leave those elements – and also leave your expectations about whether or not people will connect to it – outside.”
The Indie Artist/Band You’re Currently Obsessed With
“I like Wednesday a lot. Listen to ‘Formula One.’”
The Most Exciting Thing In Music Right Now
“I see a lot of singer-songwriters making indie feel more mainstream right now. And I think guitar music becoming popular again is sort of part of that. I also feel like it’s kind of like, indie sleaze is back. I think people are craving that energy. But I don’t know, I just feel like there’s more space for different kinds of music to be popular on a more mainstream level right now.
But more importantly, there being more room for other types of music than just three genres. And [knowing] your references can be very different. I think people might be surprised that I absolutely love Miley Cyrus. There’s a lot of very indie artists who love her. I saw her on the street once, I had my sister’s dog and she said, ‘Can I say “hi” to the dog?’ And I was like, ‘You’re Miley Cyrus.’ I was with my family and my dad was like, ‘Who is that? You’re blushing.’ I was like, ‘Are you f–king serious? It’s Miley Cyrus, and yeah, I’m blushing. You don’t have to call me out.’ It was kind of iconic of him, actually.”
On release night for The Record, the celebrated debut album from supergroup boygenius, the band can hardly contain their excitement. “I”m so f–king stoked,” says Phoebe Bridgers.
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Julien Baker adds that though she’s a bit overstimulated, “I’m trying to let it be bliss.” She then speaks to Bridgers directly, excitedly telling her of the text messages she’s received from former bandmates The Star Killers — alerting her how it was 10 years ago to the day that they released their first DIY record on a small Memphis label.
“Are you f–king kidding me?” replies Bridgers, with a cartoonish gasp.
“I almost started crying because it’s been 10 years of me trying to make music with friends and people who care about me, and it’s cool to still be doing it,” continues Baker. “I don’t want it to be a glory-esque, ‘We made it!’ type thing — it’s more complex of a feeling than that. It’s that I still love this in the same way that I did at that moment.”
It’s that exact love — for their craft and one another — that unites boygenius. It informed much of the supertrio’s widely acclaimed 2018 self-titled debut EP and is undoubtably what threads its first full-length together. “I hope that the ethos of our band and relationship is infectious to people,” says Bridgers. “And just seeing that it pays off when you make offerings to each other,” adds Lucy Dacus, saying that part of the magic of this band is that as three musicians with thriving solo careers, they each want to carve out the time to make music together.
And when they do, the results are unmatched by any of them solo. The Record (released March 31 on Interscope) debuts at No. 4 on this week’s Billboard 200 (dated April 15), the highest-charting entry on the tally for any of the members. It also enters at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Vinyl Albums chart, with the format accounting for 67% of the album’s overall first-week units.
“We were told, if we were lucky, maybe we were going to break top 10. And then it was, actually, maybe we could break top five. And the fact that it’s [No. 4] is cool,” says Dacus, noting that Bridgers was the one to tell them during band practice. “We celebrated by playing the songs.”
Ahead, the band will keep the celebration going with a Coachella set and tour that, according to Dacus, is “at a scale none of us have done before” — and that Baker can only tease as “rock and roll.”
Below, Bridgers, Baker and Dacus discuss the joy of uncomplicated love and why everyone – not least of all themselves — are so obsessed with boygenius.
The fandom surrounding this band is palpable. What do you think drives it?
Lucy: I think since a lot of the boygenius fans are fans of the three of us they have been following along separately and maybe understand that we had to carve out the time for this. I think people know this is a rarity and that there’s no guarantee that it’ll continue. Like, we will continue to be boygenius and be friends, but we also will get back to our own things. So I think people have this awareness that to be present with it now is really to be existing in a moment. We demand presence from each other and I think our fans feel very present with the work and that is a feeling that feels harder to come by as you get older — not to be a Boomer.
You previously talked about some nerves over who was going to bring up becoming a band again. Between then and now, did any anxieties ever creep in?
Dacus: We’ve been holding the idea of this for two and half years — of course there’s been anxiety around it. We’re all people that experience anxiety. But even despite hiccups, I think overall I would still say that it’s been smooth sailing. Because we all still like each other, we all still like the thing.
Bridgers: We got a bad review that made it seem because we have a great relationship with each other, there is no complexity to it. What a way to live. There’s more complexity in this relationship than any relationship in my life.
Dacus: I have a hard time talking about it to other people.
Baker: Totally.
Dacus: Because people can’t relate.
Baker: It’s stupid to have people not be willing to perceive that people can love each other uncomplicatedly, like it must be untrue.
Bridgers: It must be Oasis or fake. And Oasis is fake, that fighting was fake.
Baker: And getting back to the writing, so much of the record is in conversation with each other.
Bridgers: But we’re so f–king spoiled. The reviews have been amazing. We worked really hard and it’s great.
Dacus: I love to stretch my humility with you guys.
Bridgers: I have no humility about this band. I’m just like, “Yeah it’s tight,” or f–k off.
Dacus: Maybe we are annoying.
Baker: We are.
Bridgers: Fuck yeah.
Phoebe you’re now a label boss with your Dead Oceans imprint Saddest Factory. When you were taking label meetings for Boygenius, did you ever consider signing the band?
Bridgers: I think we all wanted a new experience. And also it’s very important that we’re equals — so it’d be weird to have an extra line — which is why we didn’t even sign to any of our labels that we’re signed to. And it has been a f–king treat to be having a first experience with these dudes.
How did you celebrate the release?
Dacus: We [went] to Sound City where we recorded the EP, and we haven’t been back there together since then, and [we listened] to the record in full with a couple people who worked on it and just got in our feels.
The Record sold especially well on vinyl. Why was it important to have the format available on release date?
Dacus: We know that our fans are excitable people, like us. And so having it available when it came out, just felt like a momentous occasion. And I’m a vinyl person too. I think we all have favorite record stores. So we try to do stuff to keep those alive when we can.
During the writing process, was there a specific lyric or song you were all especially excited to share with one another?
Baker: I’m trying to think of a song that I didn’t want to send y’all…
Dacus: I do remember showing “Leonard Cohen” to Phoebe and Julien and Phoebe just like, making this face like, “F–k you.”
Bridgers: Like, “Hey, I wrote you a song,” and it’s just a f–king roast.
Baker: You getting dragged.
Dacus: I’m sorry. I literally call Phoebe an idiot in the song.
Bridgers: You’re making eye contact with me being like, [singing] “You are an idiot.”
What’s the most tattooable lyric on the album?
Bridgers: Oh my god.
Dacus: “I wanna be happy.”
Baker: I was gonna say that.
Bridgers: That’s tight, that’s hella tight. I think that is going to be the climax of the record, and it being the last huge moment that happens. Just the arch of the album, with the singles, and then ending there at the revisiting of our EP — I don’t know, it makes me emotional as f–k.
Baker: It makes me emotional, because it’s you revisiting unhealthy thoughts [and] being coaxed into potential and awareness of possibility for being happy.
Dacus: My girlie exhibiting growth.
Bright Eyes fans who missed last year’s first-in-a-decade tour of Conor Oberst and his bandmates Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott will get a second chance at seeing the trio this Friday, when tickets go on sale for eight new Bright Eyes shows at small venues across the Midwest and South as he tours ahead of his performance at the Corona Capital festival in Guadalajara, May 21.
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Demand for the brief tour is expected to be high as Oberst and crew follow up last year’s extensive U.S. and European tour in support of their 2020 record Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was, which debuted at No. 36 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
While the 2022 tour generally received positive reviews from fans — including a July performance at LA Greek’s Theatre that music writer Jeff Miller described as “moving with confidence, playing with heart, and still foraging his woe-is-me persona in a wholly relatable way” — the tour did struggle midway through, with Oberst even walking off stage during a May gig in Houston.
But Oberst and the band were able to iron out the issues and close 2022 with a kinetic and powerful set at the Corona Capital festival inside Mexico City’s sprawling Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. From opening his set with anxious and frenzied rendition of his 2020 album opening “Dance and Song” to taking the guitar for a shaking and exhausting ride through “Old Soul Song,” Bright Eyes crew delivered a set that went as close to the edge of Oberst’s discontent as anyone dare venture.
Starting May 10, the 42-year-old Omaha native and his bandmates will perform at the famed Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, First Avenue in Minneapolis and the brand-new Salt Shed in Chicago on May 12, before heading south for a second chance in Houston where he will once again perform at the city’s famed White Oak Music Hall, almost exactly one year from the anniversary of the cancelled 2022 gig. It’s an audacious move, and while his camp is cautious not to overhype his return, it’s encouraging for many to see him face the past on his own terms.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Central. Purchase tickets here.
BRIGHT EYES 2023 TOUR DATES
May 10 – Milwaukee, WI – Pabst Theater
May 11 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
May 12 – Chicago, IL – Salt Shed
May 13 – Columbia, MO – Rose Park
May 14 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom*
May 15 – Little Rock, AK – The Hall
May 17 – San Antonio, TX – Aztec Theater
May 18 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
May 21 – Guadalajara, MX – Corona Capital Guadalajara
Bright Eyes Spring 2023 Tour Dates
THE ALBUM
Heavy Heavy, out Friday (Feb. 3) on Ninja Tune
THE ORIGIN
Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham ‘G’ Hastings formed Young Fathers in a nightclub in Scotland, and after a series of false starts, including a stint as a “psychedelic boy band,” they honed in their sound on Tape One and Tape Two, a pair of mixtapes recorded with producer Tim London that established them as the kind of band to rap over the “Be My Baby” beat. After winning the Scottish Album of the Year award with Tape Two, they released their debut album, DEAD, in 2014. That year, the album beat out projects from critically beloved acts like FKA Twigs and Damon Albarn to win the Mercury Prize.
From there, the band just kept working, putting out the lower-fi but even more ambitious pop record White Men Are Black Men Too in 2015. After the release of 2018’s relatively streamlined Cocoa Sugar, the pandemic forced a break from touring and recording, but the downtime proved invigorating for the band.
THE SOUND
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Ask Young Fathers what they sound like, and they’re happy to call what they make pop music. There are soaring hooks and efficient song structures. It feels organic while listening, but try describing their sound and it gets a lot more complicated: it’s too intricate to be lo-fi, too raw to be hi-fi, too poppy to be “alternative hip-hop,” too harsh for easy listening. The most frequent comparison is TV on the Radio, but that doesn’t quite work, because Young Fathers aren’t really a rock band, either.
Whatever their sound is, it’s dense – taking elements from various musical genres and cultures, less as a manner of pastiche than what the band members are thinking and feeling at that particular time. While Heavy Heavy is some of their most purely joyful work to date, Hastings doesn’t view that as a deliberate decision.
“We’re not trying to make concept albums,” he explains. “We’re not trying to make anything other than what’s based on the spontaneity that happens when we’re together.”
THE RECORD
Heavy Heavy was named for that aforementioned density: as with previous records, it’s still fairly minimal, but this time what’s there is blown out. The project finds the trio, this time working without their mentor Tim London, honing even further on their sound, which is a mood of simultaneous celebration and paranoia.
On “Drum,” lyrics like “Feel the beat of the drum and go numb/have fun,” co-exist with the lines “They’re gonna get you either way/whether you cry about today or die another day.” Even the sequencing of the album feels like you’re with the band in the studio as they dart between ideas: “Tell Somebody” gradually builds into a sense of euphoric, heavily saturated desperation, right before the unexpected jazz piano on “Geronimo” provides a serene comedown. Meanwhile, there’s a gospel rave-up on “Sink or Swim,” a 6/8 stomp on “I Saw” and the delightfully bizarre, bouzouki-led “Ululation,” where Bankole’s sister, Tapiwa Mambo, takes the lead and vents in Shona.
The last song, “Be Your Lady,” is everything that makes Young Fathers unique in one three-minute blast, alternating between a soulful piano ballad and erratic drum breaks (created by a literal drum machine accident while recording), as the band members take turns shouting, “Can I take 10 pounds worth of loving out of the bank, please?” in different accents. It’s almost zany in its audaciousness, but winds up a loving tribute to Bankole’s different identities as a Black Scottish man. “I switch back and forth in different accents [in conversation] because ] I’ve been able to spend time in Nigeria and the United States. So it’s all a mishmash of that and being born in Scotland.”
THE FUTURE
Bankole admits that “Be Your Lady” is the most challenging new song to pull off in rehearsals: “The drum machine is not really syncopated or in time, and you can’t really catch it!” The trio is planning on bringing their intense live show across Europe in April, including the Roundhouse in London. There are also several songs from the sessions that didn’t make the record – not due to their quality, but because they didn’t fit in the sequencing – so there might even be more music in the pipeline.
THEIR FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR
Hastings: “EMS Vocoder 2000 are transcendent keyboards.” When asked about real-life synthesizers versus software synths, he continues: “I have them, but usually the whole thing has already been made by things that you can touch. The whole premise is anybody can hit anything in the studio and for soft synths it’s not really the same because it’s more fiddly.”
THE ARTIST THAT THEY THINK NEEDS MORE ATTENTION
Hastings: “I’ve heard the new music that Law Holt has done that’s not out yet, and it’s one of the most radical-sounding things I’ve heard ever. Callum Easter is also a great musician and has great pop albums that have this dark side to it, but they’re still these beautiful pop songs.”
THE THING THAT THEY THINK NEEDS TO CHANGE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Hastings: “There should be more creatives. People who are not artists should wake up every morning, look in the f–king mirror, and say ‘I am not an artist’ a hundred times.”
Bankole: “If you work with creative people, it doesn’t automatically make you a creative [person].”
Hastings: “And if you’re not an artist, don’t try to be the artist, and f–king listen to them.”
THE PIECE OF ADVICE THEY BELIEVE EVERY NEW INDIE ARTIST NEEDS TO HEAR:
Hastings: “Being able to describe yourself. ‘Cause the industry is not about to understand you in any f–king way. You have to be able to be precise and even when you are that precise, it still won’t f–king connect. But at least it can convey something.”
Bankole: “I think it’s important to be match-ready, but there is a real thing of over-rehearsing, to the point where you are blocking yourself from being spontaneous, and having room to wiggle about within the moments in the different environment every time.”
You may know Phoebe Bridgers for tracks like “Kyoto,” “Moon Song” and “Motion Sickness” or her best new artist Grammy nomination, but the 28-year-old indie-pop darling is much more than a musician. Bridgers has been using her platform to speak out against injustices, and she’s staying vocal as Teen Vogue‘s October cover star.
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Bridgers chatted with Teen Vogue news & politics editor Lexi Mcmenamin on a variety of topics, including abortion rights and LGBTQ+ visibility in rock and pop.
Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.
Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and with the rise of female and genderqueer artists in rock such as Mitski and Pom Pom Squad, Bridgers said it’s sad that the community has been forced to identify with white boys for decades.
“I think it shows you how desperate we’ve all been for any f—ing representation,” Bridgers told Teen Vogue. “I also think at the heart of it, it’s just wanting to be understood.”
Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.
Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue
As far as who has access to abortion, Bridgers believes white middle-class and upper-class people are always going to have access to reproductive-health resources, whether it’s flying to another state or family assistance.
“It’s just so much harder for the people that it was already hard for, so I like the organizations that are making life easier for those people,” she said.
Phoebe Bridgers is Teen Vogue’s October cover star.
Chloe Horseman/Teen Vogue
In her interview with Teen Vogue, Bridgers notes that women shouldn’t let anyone freak them out about abortion “because unless you’re doing it in an unsafe way, there are resources for you if you’re trying to get one — and you should f—ing have one for whatever reason,” she continued. “It’s super safe. Shout-out to Planned Parenthood. I was very held during it.”
Bridgers, who has been open about her own abortion story, also discussed the experience with The Guardian ahead of her appearance at Glastonbury in June. The artist said she didn’t give much thought before posting on social media about her experience at Planned Parenthood, adding that her decision to have an abortion was not an emotional one. “I wasn’t f—ing emotional at all,” she told The Guardian. “Hormonally crazy! But I don’t think you should assign ‘it tore me up’ to me. No! I don’t think about it as a baby, of course not.”
Bridgers was inspired to first share her story via social media after Politico leaked the Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade. “I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour,” Bridgers tweeted. “I went to Planned Parenthood, where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy. Everyone deserves that kind of access.”
Read the full story on Teen Vogue.
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