A Belarusian court has sentenced the members of dissident rock band Nizkiz to two years of prison labor after finding them guilty of “organizing and plotting actions grossly violating public order.” After President Alexander Lukashenko won a sixth term in the country’s disputed 2020 election, mass protests broke out. Nizkiz released the song “Rules,” which became a protest anthem, and filmed the song’s music video at the site of one of those demonstrations. The government also placed the band on its official registry of extremists, effectively banning its music and making its fans targets for prosecution.

The post Brickbat: Stop the Music appeared first on Reason.com.

By now, the formula for musical biopics has become so familiar that it’s become background noise: A young person with talent and a dream sets out from lowly beginnings, gets lucky, has a spree of success, wanders into a dark place as fame and fortune take their toll, and finally finds a way out, becoming a legend in the process. Sometimes this makes for passable entertainment and even allows for some stylistic pizazz; more often it makes for by-the-numbers stories built around middling impressions of famous singers. 

Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla takes a different approach: Although it spans much of the career of Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), it shifts the focus to someone in his orbit, his young girlfriend and eventually wife, Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny). 

Here, the rise and fall of one of America’s most popular singers is witnessed at a remove, by an outsider brought—one might say lured—into his world. And the focus is not so much on recounting the highlights of his already famous career than on dramatizing the behind-the-scenes domestic life of someone in his orbit. It’s a quietly remarkable film that, as with so many of Coppola’s works, places a young woman’s experience at the center of the story, giving her agency even in the midst of what amounts to a real-world fantasy life. 

When we first meet Priscilla, she’s sitting at an officer’s club in Germany at the end of the 1950s. A man in uniform approaches and asks if she’d like to join him and his wife at a party—and not just any party. Presley, who was in the military, was stationed nearby, and they’d be going to his house. You can see the apprehension in her eyes, the inhere suspicion about an older man who wants to hang out with a girl who was just a freshman in high school. But you also see the appeal to a teenager who feels trapped, lonely, and bored while stationed in an unfamiliar country. She convinces her wary parents to let her go and eventually falls for Elvis’ charms. 

One can imagine a less subtle movie that portrays the age and power gap between a famous heartthrob and a high-school girl as simple exploitation, especially in the age of warnings about groomers and age-gap relationships. 

But Coppola’s film, which is based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, delivers something far more nuanced, something that doesn’t simply treat Priscilla as a helpless individual who is acted upon. Rather, the movie shows Elvis using his power, his fame, his mumbling charm to get what he wants—but also that Priscilla herself wanted to be with him, wanted the life of wealth and glamour that he offered, the escape from the mundanities of life with her mother and stepfather. 

Even as she becomes something more like a trapped woman, with the mercurial Elvis dictating what she must wear, refusing to let her work, and demanding that she stay home alone for long stretches while he films movies (and has widely reported flings), she retains a real sense of agency. More than anything, the movie is about Priscilla’s discovery that her life is her own, that she exists independent of the strange whims and peculiarities of a famous man. 

All of this is captured with Coppola’s signature deftness—the desaturated low-light photography, the moody pop soundtrack, and the focus on scenery and objects that have defined her work going back to The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, and Lost in Translation. There’s a carefully calibrated, almost textural quality to all of these movies and the worlds they depict, a world of tactile luxury that is fascinating but empty. Like all of those movies, Priscilla follows a young woman of privilege who finds herself surrounded by beautiful things in an uncanny, yet ultimately disappointing, world. Unlike so many rote musical biopics, it’s not about becoming a legend; it’s about a woman becoming herself. 

The post <i>Priscilla</i> Is an Elvis Movie That Isn't About Elvis appeared first on Reason.com.

The internet (or at least the most “online” right-wing corners of it) is abuzz about the hit new song “Rich Men North of Richmond” from heretofore unknown country/folk singer Oliver Anthony.

Released late last week, the song features a solo Anthony on his guitar as he belts out, with great sorrow and personal hurt, lyrics complaining about the falling value of the dollar, the heavy burden of taxation, welfare recipients’ purchase of junk food, and the sex trafficking shenanigans of Jefferey Epstein.

Rich Men North of Richmond has been uploaded to all major streaming platforms and will show up there in a few days.

Im still in a state of shock at the outpouring of love I've seen in the comments, messages and emails. I'm working to respond to everyone as quickly as possible. pic.twitter.com/iScaYp9AWQ

— Oliver Anthony (@AintGottaDollar) August 11, 2023

These ills and many others can be blamed, as the title suggests, on “those rich men north of Richmond” and their totalitarian aspirations.

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do

Anti-elitism is not the most novel sentiment for a folky country song.

Still, some genuinely funny lines (“I wish politicians would look out for miners, and not just minors on an island somewhere,” and “if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”) made funnier still by Anthony’s incongruously soulful performance add life and originality to the song’s generic populism.

Sure, one might quibble with the idea that food stamps are primarily responsible for driving up taxes and inflation, even if they are spent on fudge rounds. But the song’s not meant to be a white paper. If you don’t take it too seriously, you can have a fun and light-hearted time jamming out to the surprise viral hit.

Regrettably, people have begun to take the song much too seriously indeed. Rolling Stone notes that the song has been a hit with much of the online right, which has treated the song as this generation’s ballad for the forgotten man.

Conservative personality Matt Walsh praised it for supposedly injecting some flesh-and-blood beauty into this sterile world. “The main reason this song resonates with so many people isn’t political. It’s because the song is raw and authentic. We are suffocated by artificiality,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The main reason this song resonates with so many people isn’t political. It’s because the song is raw and authentic. We are suffocated by artificiality. Everything around us is fake. A guy in the woods pouring his heart over his guitar is real.

pic.twitter.com/aj0p1n8fh0

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 11, 2023

Over at The Federalist, Samuel Mangold-Lenett describes the song as “a haunting, bittersweet lamentation for an America that existed not too long ago but may never exist again” and one that “depicts a deep yearning to return to a version of America in which people were not plagued by existential economic and cultural woes every moment of every day.”

The love fest is not an exclusively right-wing affair either. Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) sees within the lyrics a “path to realignment.”  Now that rural voters’ hearts have been laid bare by the song, they can be won back over to progressive politics.

a. I think progressives should listen to this. In part, bc it’s just a good tune.

b. But also bc it shows the path of realignment. Anthony sings about the soullessness of work, shit wages and the power of the elites.

All problems the left has better solutions to than the right. https://t.co/pQ64yFeBBd

— Chris Murphy ???? (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 14, 2023

Perhaps this reaction is what one might expect for a song with lyrics that are themselves a little “too online.” Nevertheless, people need to get a grip.

Contra Walsh, the right-wing meme politics running through the lyrics is exactly why the song resonates with people. If the song were instead an authentic recounting of getting drunk or being unemployed, the track probably would have gotten about as much attention as Anthony’s earlier releases.

Sad country songs speaking to poverty and social anomie didn’t start with food stamps and “Epstein didn’t kill himself” memes. Something tells me that the people who kept coal country folk songs like “Which Side Are You On?” alive had some economic and cultural anxieties as well. And the fact that Anthony has the musical equipment and technology necessary to sound good and reach a mass audience from his backyard suggests the times we live in aren’t so lean after all.

And while it gives me no pleasure to burst the bubble on Murphy’s working-class realignment, not every song sung by a sad guy with a guitar is a window into the soul of blue-collar America. The Epstein lyrics probably should have made that clear.

Still, just because Matt Walsh and Chris Murphy like the “Rich Men North of Richmond” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Like other pieces of right-wing musical media (think MAGA rap), it’s catchy and fun. It’s even more fun when you don’t take it that seriously.

The post Fun, Silly Anti-Tax Ballad 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Goes Viral for Some Online Reasons appeared first on Reason.com.

Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It is a well-informed, witty, sometimes confessional account of fandom in the age of social media. Part journalism, part history, and part memoir, Kaitlyn Tiffany’s book stretches back to the days before there even was an internet (she dredges up sneering press accounts of bobbysoxers and Beatlemania, including the inevitable moments when reporters couldn’t tell that teens were pulling their legs) and revisits cyberspace’s first colonists (“Before most people were using the internet for anything, fans were using it for everything”). But her focus is on a modern fandom, one she participated in herself: the devotees of the boy band One Direction.

Here she finds a microcosm of everything else online: inscrutable in-jokes, networked power, conspiracy theories, and the human impulse to forge an identity and a community with people who share a passion. This world may feel familiar even to readers who have never stanned a celeb in their lives. “There is no such thing as fan internet,” Tiffany concludes, “because fan internet is the internet.”

The post Review: <i>Everything I Need I Get from You</i> Gives a Fangirl's View of the Internet appeared first on Reason.com.

A viral song this month showed one of the potential uses—and a future battleground—in the realm of artificial intelligence (A.I.). On April 4, an anonymous internet user named ghostwriter977 uploaded a song titled “heart on my sleeve” to all the major streaming platforms, including Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok. The song sounds like a collaboration between pop superstars Drake and The Weeknd, but neither is on the track: ghostwriter977 used A.I. to simulate the artists’ voices.

Generative A.I. analyzes existing pictures, video, text, or audio, and uses the patterns it finds to create new media. So if a user asks a generative A.I. platform for a song in the style of Drake, it can analyze the artist’s existing lyrics and recordings of his voice to generate an impersonation of a Drake song. So far, it’s unknown what software or platform ghostwriter977 used, nor whether they used A.I. to create the entire song or just the vocals.

Reactions from within the music industry have been mixed: In response to an earlier example of an A.I. faking his voice, Drake posted on Instagram, “This [is] the final straw AI.” Meanwhile, electropop musician Grimes tweeted, “I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty.” She added, “I think it’s cool to be fused [with] a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright.”

I think it’s cool to be fused w a machine and I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright

— ???????????????????????? (@Grimezsz) April 24, 2023

“heart on my sleeve” is not completely convincing. The vocals sound processed and the music sounds cheap and tinny.

But Universal Music Group (UMG) found it convincing enough to have the A.I.-generated track pulled from most major platforms. The original YouTube link now says the song was pulled “due to a copyright claim by Universal Music Group.” A UMG spokesperson told the BBC that “the training of generative AI using our artists’ music…represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law” and “demonstrate[s] why platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists.”

But it’s not clear whether the song actually violates copyright law. “Right now, everybody’s struggling with how to think about that question,” Chris Mammen, an attorney and expert on intellectual property law, told VICE. “Because it’s not literally a recording. We have a precedent for impressionists, who can go out there and make a living sounding just like celebrities. That’s not a violation of anything. This is something in-between. Is there anything wrong with it? And if so, what exactly?”

For example, companies typically use YouTube’s Content ID system to take down copyrighted material automatically. But as The Verge reported, UMG has been unable to use Content ID for the fake Drake song because it doesn’t own the copyright. It’s also unclear whether ghostwriter977 could even hold the copyright: According to the U.S. Copyright Office, only “the human-authored aspects” of an A.I.-generated work are copyrightable. Music and entertainment lawyer Kurt Dahl tells Reason that “the critical issue is what amount of human creative input or intervention will suffice to make AI-generated musical works copyrightable.”

Instead, UMG has issued notices for individual uploads because the song contains an audio tag often featured on songs produced by hip-hop producer Metro Boomin. Since Metro Boomin did not produce “heart on my sleeve,” UMG has claimed (so far successfully) that the inclusion of the tag constitutes copyright infringement.

But what if ghostwriter977 decided to re-upload the song without the producer tag? Mammen told VICE that any potential claim would then come down to a couple of other considerations, like Drake’s and The Weeknd’s “right of publicity“—the rights of celebrities to control their likeness.

Mammen said a claim could also stem from whether “Drake’s body of copyrighted work [was] used to train the AI.” The law has yet to weigh in on the use of copyrighted material to train an A.I. Getty Images is currently suing Stability AI, claiming that it improperly used millions of Getty’s photos without a license to train its Stable Diffusion image generator.

Software giant Adobe is “developing a compensation model” for contributors whose photos are used to train the company’s generative A.I. program Adobe Firefly. But it should be clear by now that there’s no going back: As Reason‘s Ronald Bailey recently wrote, federal attempts to regulate A.I. are more likely to “slow progress way down, deny consumers substantial benefits, and make sure that only Big Tech wins, all while not increasing safety or lowering risks.” And a moratorium on A.I. development “would certainly delay access to the possibly quite substantial benefits of new A.I. systems while doubtfully increasing A.I. safety.”

So is it possible to live with A.I. and adapt to the new technology? Grimes’ plan to give artists use of her voice in exchange for splitting the proceeds is one possibility.

“If an artist contributed enough input to make a copyrightable work using Grimes’ vocals, then in theory her proposition would work if that artist agreed to it,” Dahl says. However, “if the artist didn’t offer to share the royalties, then we would come against the hurdles in the Ghostwriter/Drake song.”

Grimes may have the best idea of how to live in our A.I. near future: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The post A Fake Drake Song Shows the Potential for A.I.'s Future appeared first on Reason.com.

We’re barely two months into the reunited rump of Pantera touring again, and the legendary heavy metal band is already at the center of a free speech scandal.

Earlier this week, music news site Consequence reported that the band has been booted from the lineup of two German music festivals and had a scheduled performance in Vienna, Austria, canceled as well. Concerts organizers haven’t been explicit about the reasons for the canceled performances.

The reporting thus far suggests it’s in response to a 2016 incident when Pantera lead singer Phil Anselmo threw out a Nazi salute and shouted “white power” at a tribute concert to the band’s murdered guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbot.

The organizer of the two German festivals said in a translated Facebook post that after “many intensive conversations with artists, our partners and you, the festival fans, we have continued to deal with the criticism together and decided to remove the band from the program.” The organizer for the Vienna show hasn’t said why the band’s performance was canceled.

After the 2016 incident, Anselmo issued an initial video statement in which he explained the salute and “white power” remark as a joking reference to his consumption of white wine backstage and that he would not be apologizing.

When that statement failed to quell the outrage, Anselmo issued another, longer video apology in which he conceded his actions were in poor taste and said he deserved the criticism he was receiving.

At first glance, this is just the typical cancel culture dust-up. A performer does something offensive and then apologizes, leaving everyone else to argue about how serious the offense was, whether the criticism was proportionate, and how necessary additional condemnation or disassociation is.

Free people in a free society can have different views on that and act accordingly. (As a longtime fan, I’d happily go see a Pantera show today, and I’d be irritated with someone else exercising their free speech rights to pressure a venue into taking that opportunity away from me.)

But the cancellation of Pantera’s Vienna show raises some serious concerns about actual government censorship.

Brooklyn Vegan reports that Vienna’s local Green Party (which controls 16 of 100 seats in the local legislature) called for the Pantera show in that city to be canceled.

“Vienna in particular has a special historical responsibility to oppose any form of right-wing extremism. The appearance of Pantera is completely incompatible with this responsibility,” reads a translated statement from Die Presse. “Therefore, it can only mean for Vienna: No stage for a Hitler salute, no stage for Pantera!”

This is an explicit demand for censorship coming from a political party with members in government. Were it to have happened in the United States, it would raise serious First Amendment problems. On the flip side, had Anselmo’s Nazi salute scandal happened in Austria, he could have faced legal consequences given the country’s ban on Nazi salutes and symbols.

The fact that Pantera’s Vienna show was, in fact, canceled after this demand means that the demand for censorship was effective.

This is particularly concerning in Austria where free speech rights are not as absolute as they are in the United States. Music venues are likely more susceptible to government pressure as a result.

It’s one thing if people want to double-bass drum Anselmo out of polite society by not going to his shows and demanding concert organizers not host him. It’s another thing entirely when political parties participate in these demands for censorship.

One needn’t be a fan of “5 Minutes Alone” to see the free speech problems that raises.

The post Concert Organizer Bows to Politicians' Demands, Cancels Pantera Show appeared first on Reason.com.