when mitski said "i don't think i can stand to be where you don't see me" and phoebe bridgers said "i'm gonna kill you if you don't beat me to it" and florence and the machine said "i love you so much i'm gonna let you kill me" and taylor swift said "i would die for you in secret" and mitski said "i say your name in hopes you'll hear it in the stars" and lorde said "i love you 'till you call the cops on me" and bleachers said "you steal the air out of my lungs you make me feel it" and the civil wars said "i don't love you but i always will" and there's so much art about killing and being killed and take it all, take my whole heart straight out of my chest, it's yours, it's always been yours
(via Harry Belafonte, 96, Dies; Barrier-Breaking Singer, Actor and Activist - The New York Times)
Harry Belafonte, who stormed the pop charts and smashed racial barriers in the 1950s with his highly personal brand of folk music, and who went on to become a dynamic force in the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 96.
A: “What do you mean “get off”? That’s just the way I am.”
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: “I want to be remembered as a diva from beginning to end who never compromised in what she felt about racism and how the world should be, and who to the end of her days consistently stayed the same.”
Q: But isn’t life about evolving and changing?
A: “Not for me.”
/ Brantley Bardin interviewing legend-with-an-attitude with Nina Simone in Details magazine, January 1997 /
Born on this day: lacerating, regal and fierce High Priestess of Soul Nina Simone (née Eunice Kathleen Waymon, 21 February 1933 – 21 April 2003). I’d argue Simone was at her artistic zenith between 1964 – 1966, when she recorded essential statements like “I Put a Spell on You”, “Work Song” (“I left the grocery store man bleeding …”), “Ne Me Quitte Pas”, “Wild is the Wind”, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, “I Hold No Grudge” and especially “Four Women” (“I’m gonna kill the first mutha I see …”). Pictured: portrait of Simone by Herb Snitzer, 1959.
Honestly worst case is if the current trend of anti-intellectual nonsense continues it's setting the stage for another wave of cultural reactionary backlash against social progress and minorities like we saw in the 1980s and are kind of in the midst of right now.
An excerpt from my Captain America music paper, for I just made a seriously disgusting discovery:
"The other appearance of the breaking-up-of-the-Avengers theme is during the Siberia fight, where it is played twice. The first time it plays is when Friday tells Tony, “You can’t beat [Steve] hand to hand,” and it continues as Tony tells Friday to analyze his fight pattern and she does it, up until Friday says, “Countermeasures ready,” and Tony grabs Steve’s shield. The second time it plays is shortly after Steve disables Tony’s suit, and shortly before Steve, exhausted and injured, slides off Tony’s suit and onto the ground; this plays until Steve helps Bucky off the ground and starts to walk away with him. Now, as the previous use of the Avengers-breakup theme helps show that Civil War was more of an Avengers movie than a Cap movie, this use actually happens to show how the film is more of an Iron Man movie than either of those other two. For considering that the theme was obviously meant to have the most impact after Steve broke the arc reactor, the fact that it first shows up a little before then is quite notable: and when exactly it shows up is very revealing. It first appears when Tony does not exactly have the upper hand (though Steve is doing no damage despite pummeling Tony’s suit), but then it stops when Friday allows Tony to get the upper hand over Steve and seriously hurt him, and then it resumes again when Steve is able to thwart Tony and disable his suit.
Such use of the music that symbolizes the Avengers team splintering seems to be the movie implying that if Tony had won the fight, whatever fracture the Avengers were experiencing would be less severe, but it is solidified now that Steve won the fight. Now, this is very much not true, as the entire Siberia fight was literally Tony trying to kill Bucky because he was upset, while Bucky tried to avoid this and Steve defended Bucky: and while Tony did some really despicable things throughout the movie, successfully killing Bucky and/or Steve while he was having a temper tantrum is something he would never be able to come back from. But considering the lengths the movie went to to try to make it seem like Tony was justified in doing this and not acting monstrously, it is not surprising that these fraudulent efforts extended to the music. And curiously, the Avengers-breakup theme does not play when Tony provokes Steve into dropping the shield, even though that is much more symbolic of the Avengers breaking up than Steve preventing Tony from killing him and Bucky. But that, too, might have painted Tony in a bad light, and the movie avoided such a thing at all costs. Civil War is seriously messed up."
Truly, the more one examines this mockery of a Captain America film, the more it becomes clear just how thoroughly rotten this movie is, and how it is most definitely not Cap 3.
I will never forgive Sia. I will never forget what she did.
I can't hear any of her songs or see her name without getting physically ill.
Her actions were such violent, such personal attacks at the Autistic community, and clearly instead of listening to urgent criticism, she lashed out & claimed victimhood.
She showed her true colors as a manipulative, ableist bully & a coward.
HARRY BELAFONTE (1927- Died April 25th 2023,at 96.Congestive Heart failure). American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Caribbean-American pop star, he popularized Jamaican mento folk songs which was marketed as Trinbagonian Calypso musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, "Jump in the Line", and "Jamaica Farewell". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He also starred in several films, including Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Belafonte won three Grammy Awards (including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award), an Emmy Award,and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category and was the oldest living person to have received the honour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Belafonte
But the star has gone, the glamour's worn thin
That's a pretty bad state for a state to be in
Instead of government, we had a stage
Instead of ideas, a prima donna's rage
Instead of help, we were given a crowd
She didn't say much but she said it loud