The term listening party has always thrown me off. It’s almost a tease in the name itself – sometimes they’re cool experiences, other times they’re not as cool as they’re made out to be, maybe due to the host wanting a large turnout just so they can guarantee they’ll have a line that stretches around the block.
For the non-writers outside of the Hollywood sphere, there’s been a change happening lately that’ll likely impact how your favorite shows are made. Last month, the ATA (Association of Talent Agents) failed to update its policies in accordance with their contract with the WGA (Writer’s Guild of America), which expired on April 7th. As a result, the WGA asked its members to fire their agents if they did not comply with the WGA’s demands of a change of contract, which has to deal with how agents are paid via staffing and payments of their clients.
“The adults are talking!” exclaimed Julian Casablancas during a pause in the show. He’d revisit this phrase a few more times in the evening, but one could tell from the abrupt stop and the crowd chanting “New song! New song!” repeatedly, as well as roadies scrambling about trying to re-arrange the gear for an unexpected change in the set list, that the audience was in for a treat. “I’m gonna try my best on this one,” Casablancas confessed before the Strokes ripped into the new addition to their repertoire. “Are you not entertained?” he teased near the end of the new song.
An anomaly occurred just a little less than a month ago, when Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” charted on the Country Billboard chart. It was, at that time, maybe taken as a joke. But then you started listening to it… and you couldn’t really tell what the song was. Was it a country song, but made with hip-hop instruments? Or vice-versa? Regardless if it feels like a glazed-donut dipped into an orange 7/11 Big-Gulp, the song itself represents perhaps a new age in contemporary music.