Bi-Weekly-ish newsletter #20🥊 w/ cool people pushing cool things, Val Kilmer's A.I. voice, music on TikTok, music on Stranger Things and NFTs on tour.
Dearly beloved bi-reader!
Celebratory edition number 20 here!
All good stuff!
No filler, all killer!
Read and enjoy this edition!
Your Friday and your weekend!
Marcel
1. How To Sell The Cool: Miles Davis, Devo and Lou Reed's Classic Scooter Commercials .
One of the social media internet algorithms recently presented me with an article on mid-80s Honda Scooter commercials. The Honda Motor Company was trying to get people to think of its new Honda Elite scooters, which looked like they were straight from Akira, as the latest and coolest way of getting around.
Through their agency Wieden + Kennedy Portland, the company enlisted a series of highly unlikely but amazing spokespeople including Devo, Lou Reed, and, to my surprise Miles Davis.
Miles Davis doesn't do much but lend an air of cool to the scooters by casually leaning on them. Synth-pop quartet Devo makes conformity cool and actively urges riders to wear the band's uniforms, while individuality is optional and to be obtained through the various scooter color options.
Lou Reed's advert captures scenes of New York City life. Some are friendly, others dangerous, all of them eighties-modern. "Walk on the Wildside" is playing as Reed basks in the glow of poor lighting with his trademark aviators and perm and flicks a smile before a saxophonist comes in with the song's sax solo.
Love Lou Reed, love Devo, love Miles Davis, and all the commercials below sure make scooters look cool; too bad they're goddamn deathtraps.
2. How Val Kilmer’s Iceman is voiced by A.I..
I have yet to see it, but I hear positive stories. The long-awaited blockbuster sequel to Top Gun, "Top Gun: Maverick" is here, and next to everyone's favorite cultist, Tom Cruise, the film brings back Val Kilmer as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky. I learned earlier this week that Kilmer can no longer speak because of throat cancer complications. In a recent interview, his daughter Mercedes uncovered a fascinating detail about how the filmmakers managed to use advanced A.I., developed by a company called Sonantic, to get his voice in the movie regardless. The results are stunning.
Sonantic is a startup that has developed "human-quality" synthetic voice know-how for the video games and leisure business. They enable game developers to access expressive, realistic voice acting. The company is now providing voice for film and automotive features as they also just announced a partnership with Mercedes.
The video below showcases how their software works and showcases an entire A.I.-generated conversation with various intonations and emotions.
Exciting? Yes!
Scary? Double yes!
3. Why is everyone talking about Kate Bush?
Minor spoiler alert warning!
Something I have seen, and I can tell you is outstanding, is season 4 of Stranger Things! The recipe for this season is the same. A group of, by now, teenage friends ends up in a conflict with a gang of 80s ghouls and goblins while dealing with various coming-of-age themes.
What has also stayed the same is that the show has excellent music; this goes for both the original score by Austin-based synth band SURVIVE, which sounds 80s without sounding like it's actually from the 80s, as well as the soundtrack. Stranger Things has consistently boasted great tracks throughout all seasons, and season 4 even kicks it up a notch with Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God!)" as a recurring key track.
The show's Music Supervisor Nora Felder, also known for the soundtracks for Californication, Ray Donovan, and What We Do In The Shadows, in an interview with Variety, explains what they had to do land this song.
Shortly after the show’s premiere, "Running Up That Hill” peaked on various global charts, three decades after it did so on its initial release, and continues to appear in TikTok after TikTok. This led, the usually quite quiet Kate Bush, to issue a statement thanking her new fans:
"You might've heard that the first part of the fantastic, gripping new series of Stranger Things has recently been released on Netflix. It features the song, Running Up That Hill, which is being given a whole new lease of life by the young fans who love the show – I love it too!"
Coincidentally, or maybe it's just the sign of the times, the highly recommended music essay channel, Trash Theory made a video entitled "Running Up That Hill, How Kate Bush Became The Queen of Alt-Pop." The video perfectly outlines the background and meaning of this now again popular song, which is apparently about switching genders to understand each other better, and of Kate Bush, the artist in general.
If you're not sick of that song, do check it out below, it is excellent, and she's even more impressive than you'd think, or depending on your age, you remember.
4. What happens after TikTok songs go viral.
Speaking of the virality machine that can catapult a musician into the pop culture stratosphere known as TikTok!
The explanatory journalism website Vox and data analysis website The Pudding wanted to know what happens between a song going viral and an artist becoming a bonafide success.
After several months of spreadsheets, data deep-dives, and interviews, they followed the numbers to track what happens to artists after they go viral and how the interaction between labels, streaming platforms, and artists is shapeshifting, giving significantly more leverage to the latter.
Makes you wonder about those, maybe not so crazy, Island Boys!
Have a look below and get up to speed!
5. The Weeknd Partners With Binance for First "Crypto-Powered" World Tour
The Weeknd has partnered with cryptocurrency exchange Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volumes, to produce the first-ever music tour to integrate Web3 technology, dubbed the After Hours Til Dawn Tour.
In collaboration with the creative business incubator HXOUSE, Binance created an exclusive NFT-line and co-branded tour merchandise. Attendees' virtual ticket stubs will provide access to commemorative NFTs, giving fans access to unique future experiences. Both The Weeknd and Binance will donate 5% of these NFT sales to the XO Humanitarian Fund.
I'm not sure that claiming this as the first artist-world tour with integrated Web3 technology is entirely truthful. Integrating Web3 technology, in my opinion, constitutes a bit more than co-branded merchandise and selling NFTs as merch. If anything, this cooperation does prove that Web3 developments are ongoing despite cryptos' recent free fall, and iterations are continuing on how the music industry can integrate Web3 technology into its business models and possibly hopefully creative output.
Stay tuned to see what they all come up with.
That's it for this edition.
I will be out and about in Barcelona for Sonar and Cannes for Cannes Lions in the following weeks. Connect with me by hitting reply if you want to meet for Cerveza and Tapas or Oysters and Rose.
Enjoy your weekend and talk soon.
Marcel