Songwriting Music Headlines & Industry News
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Sam Smith and Normani’s long-running copyright fight over “Dancing With a Stranger” is moving toward a jury trial after a federal judge refused to end the case in the defendants’ favor, leaving jurors to potentially decide whether the 2019 hit infringed an earlier song built around a strikingly similar central…
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Kareen Lomax has spent years writing songs that ended up in other artists’ catalogs and lending her voice to records by Diplo and others. On NAJI, released September 18th, she gives that accumulated experience the scale of a full album built entirely around her own story. The 13-track debut arrives…
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A finished song is remarkably good at hiding its own history. By the time the master plays, the chorus sounds inevitable. The vocal seems attached to the track rather than recorded on top of it. The drums push exactly where they should. A harmony that appears for four seconds can…
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A new song comes on and, within seconds, something feels familiar. Not the melody. Not the lyrics. Maybe not even the style. Underneath all of that, the chords move in a way the ear seems to recognize. One creates motion, another keeps things suspended, and another makes everything feel as…
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Change the tempo of a song by a surprisingly small amount and the song itself can seem to change. A vocal that felt relaxed can suddenly sound impatient. A drum groove can become heavier or lose its pocket. A lyric that had room to land may start rushing past. Slow…
