By Kerry Doole
People apparently preferred SpongeBob to Maroon 5
One Twitter user even showed where fans' allegiances lied with a simple poll. For Spongebob he asked people to retweet his tweet and for Maroon 5 he asked them to like it. Spongebob won...by a landslide. – Johnni Macke, eOnline
The artless spectacle of Maroon 5 at the Super Bowl
Adam Levine can be magnetic onstage, but his songs sound benign and computer-generated, smoothed to the point of incomprehensibility. There is simply no way to find purchase in them. You hear them playing faintly as you disembark the elliptical machine, and you forget them by the time you whip your towel into the laundry bin. – Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker
How the NFL blew it with the Super Bowl
With this year’s game being held in Atlanta, one of the capitals of hip-hop and one of the most important black-majority cities in America, it was hoped that talent would jump at the opportunity. That never happened. – Alan Cross, Global News
Maroon 5 supply Super Bowl with a ‘WTF was that’ moment
The Super Bowl felt like an early April Fool’s joke with Maroon 5 turning in the least innovative performance of all-time at the major event. – Paul Cashmere, Noise11.com
'More than just a stage': why performers at the Super Bowl are in the hot seat
Entertainers engaged in Super Bowl festivities in Atlanta this past weekend simply can't avoid the elephant in the room: the National Football League's ongoing treatment of Colin Kaepernick, a former star quarterback who remains unemployed after protesting against racial inequality. –Jessica Wong, CBC News
Neil Young gets the band back together for a pair of Winnipeg shows
The Winnipeg shows come with the added bonus of also playing with Crazy Horse in the more intimate venues. – Kevin King, Winnipeg Sun
How to watch Neil Young's Winnipeg concert from home
Neil Young Archives will livestream Monday's concert with Crazy Horse on Facebook. – CBC News
The death of Buddy Holly foreshadowed the greatest, most inspired rush of rock music in history
Sixty years ago Sunday a tiny plane carrying Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens crashed into a snow-specked Iowa cornfield. – Joel Rubinoff, Torstar News Service
Local Hero: Kiana "Rookz" Eastmond takes the helm at Manifesto
The festival and urban arts organization's newly minted executive director has big plans for building sustainability and bringing it back to its roots. – Chaka Grier, NOW
Beyonce will give you free concert tickets for life if you'll only put down that goddamn delicious rack of lamb
Today, the one-woman empire known as Beyoncé has stepped up. Queen Bey is offering fans the chance to win tickets for life for all concerts featuring her and/or her equally high-wattage husband, Jay-Z. The initiative is part of the Greenprint Project, which looks to improve the environment by getting people to switch to plant-based meals. – Mike Usinger, Georgia Straight
The best Toronto concerts to catch in February 2019
The always unpredictable Deerhunter, the end of a party institution, one of hip-hop's best live acts and more shows we're looking forward to this month. – Staff, NOW
Cultural confusion spawns a celebration of roots for Cree singer-songwriter
“A lot of us are trying to grasp and find our cultures again but there's a mixture of colonized attitudes that mingle with it — one elder will say one thing, another will say something else — so you don't really understand where you are. It's a lifelong learning path.” – Kristen McArthur on her Cree background. – Roger Levesque, Edmonton Journal
Attention music lovers: N.S. radio station selling its entire vinyl collection
Mix 94.1 and Zed 97.9 are going digital and need to offload thousands of records. – CBC News
Xenia concerts carve out a place to bring classical music to autistic children
An anxious mother chases after her laughing daughter as she dances around the grand piano. A smiling father sweeps his daughter into his arms after she playfully swats the keyboard. – Willam Littler, Toronto Star
International
B-sides that became big hits
"Black Water" became the Doobie Brothers' first-ever No. 1 song when a savvy Virginia disc jockey discovered it after he flipped over one of their singles. WROV-AM was situated near a tributary of the Roanoke River called the Blackwater, and listeners quickly made the song a local anthem. – ultimateclassicrock.
Jordan Wright of City of Sound talks new EP and technology
Jordan Wright of the alternative rock band City of Sound chatted with Digital Journal about their new EP "Silent Empire 1," and he spoke about the impact of technology on the music industry. – Markos Papadats, Digital Journal
John Scofield: ‘There was all this great music in the 60s when I became a music fanatic and all that stuff led me to jazz’
For a guitarist who has spent a lifetime performing with some of the biggest names in jazz, from Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker to Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock, John Scofield sounds strangely wary of the prospect of stepping out onstage alone. – Yorkshire Evening Post
Oscars to feature all Best Song nominees on telecast after all
As recently as last week, reps for three of the tunes were being told there was no time for them, but nominee solidarity may have factored in. – Jon Burlingame, Variety
Ken Burns’ ‘Country Music’ documentary to premiere Sept. 15
The eight-part, 16-hour series on the history and significance of the country music genre, will premiere Sunday, Sept. 15 through Wednesday, Sept. 18, and Sunday, Sept. 22 through Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m.-10 p.m. ET on PBS. – Jessica Nicholson, Music Row
The state of stardom
Everybody does not know your name. No one is as big as they used to be in the pre-internet era. No one reaches everybody, no one is known by everybody, never have individual stars meant less. Platforms are the stars, from Spotify to Facebook to Amazon. You can be famous and broke. – Bob Lefsetz, Celebrity Access
Shelved: Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine
The album was shelved, perhaps by Apple’s label, or, according to her own admission, by Apple herself. – Tom Maxwell, Longreads
Snoop Dogg facing legal issues from Canadian hockey team over weed company logo
The Toronto Maple Leafs think the Leafs by Snoop trademark too closely resembles their own branding and will “confuse” people. – High Times
Mariah Carey's Saudi Arabia performance pleases youth, anguishes women activists
The international pop sensation had earlier defied the call of Saudi Arabia based women rights activists to boycott the concert and called her performance a step towards promoting gender equality. – international Business Times
Marshmello just played a live set to 10M people in the video game Fortnite
Fortnite players could watch the virtual show for free, so long as they made sure their avatar available at the concert’s location (Pleasant Park). – Tim Ingham, MBW
Killer Mike runs wild on Netflix
Killer Mike is not a conventional rapper — or a conventional thinker for that matter. The 43-year-old Atlanta- based Grammy Award winner, entrepreneur and social activist decided to channel his unorthodox views into a six-part docuseries on Netflix called Trigger Warning with Killer Mike. It recently debuted and is available to all subscribers. – Rodney Ho, Cox
