Sturgill Simpson Unloads on State of Country Music Industry
Sturgill Simpson has a lot to say about the current state of the country music industry, and he’s done keeping it to himself. Minutes before the Academy of Country Music named the first recipient of the Merle Haggard Spirit Award, the crossover star published a 1,100 essay “venting about the unjust treatment of a bonafide American music legend.” In the essay, he condemned the exploitative way the industry has celebrated Haggard since his death in April of this year, noting how the country music industry contributed to Haggard’s feeling “forgotten and tossed aside” in the last decade of his life and career in favor of the mainstream artists and sound country music has been “pumping down rural America’s throat for the last 30 years along with all the high school pageantry, meat parade award show….” And it goes on from there. As big of a country music heavyweight as Sturgill Simpson has become in the last couple of years, it’s hard to see whether his justified words will see any sort of vindication. For further reading, you can read Sturgill’s entire essay here. (Billboard)
TV Spots Coming for Britney Spears Biopic and Series About Roc-A-Fella Records
The real-life trials and tribulations of musicians continue to feed into the revenue machine of the television industry as one network begins production on a made-for-TV-movie about one of pop music’s biggest megastars and another begins development on a series about the rise and fall of a hip-hop label. Lifetime is jumping on the Britney bandwagon, working to create a Lifetime Original Movie based on the personal and professional lives of Britney Spears, a project that reportedly does not have the blessing of Spears herself. At the same time, actor and music producer Damon Dash is working to create a brutally honest television series based on the rise and fall of Roc-A-Fella Records, the label co-founded by Dash, Kareem Burke, and Sean Carter. The label gave starts to rappers like Jay-Z and Kanye West before selling out to The Island Def Jam Group in 2005 after relations tensed between the label’s founders. Both projects are projected to debut next year. (FACT Mag & Billboard)
-Taylor Wallace
