Stuff I Find

Music 'taste'

Hi all,

1.I don’t talk about music very often because my music ‘taste’ isn’t something I’m either proud of or feel like foisting it on others, but it is something that gives me a lot of pleasure. One of my recent discoveries/favourites is the album released by Raye. Raye is a singer/songwriter who apparently has written songs for the likes of Beyonce, but her record company kept stringing her along demanding one more song or hit before they would give her an album of her own. Recently she blew her stack and decided to go out on her own and released an album called ‘This Music May Contain Hope’. You may well have heard the first release from this album called ‘Where is my husband’ which mixes a big band sound with the kind of rapid lyrics normally associated with something like rap, only its not rap. My favourites from the album is ‘Joy’ which introduces her singer sisters and if this song doesn’t get you dancing around the room (whether someone is watching or not) I’m afraid we may not be friends. A beautifully written and inspiring piece of creativity.

2.Spotify is slowly getting better with AI. By that I mean my dog could come up with more and better ideas for the application of AI to most of the common applications which everyone uses, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and telling myself that they don’t have access to the compute for the demand. Hurrumph. Anyway, I’ve recently discovered an AI playlist from Spotify called ‘My Rediscover Weekly’ which is a playlist made up of songs I’ve listened to but haven’t played or skipped in the last six months and it updates itself every Monday. This neatly solves that problem where you can get stuck in a groove of listening to the same songs when you have a deep list of other songs you also enjoy but don’t get round to listening to again. It makes the most of your music taste and it’s very effective at reminding me what I’ve been missing. There’s also a similar AI-driven playlist which creates a playlist of 50 songs from my ‘Wrapped’ (Spotify for ‘Best of year XXXX’). Worth searching for.

3.I think most of you will be familiar with Jimmy Carr but for anyone who isn’t, Jimmy is a well spoken comedian who’s know for rapid fire dick jokes which are delivered in a well-educated sounding accent. He’s also famous for a tax evasion scandal a few year’s ago. I’ve seen him live and he is very good and as a result is a wealthy man. Recently he’s become a voice in the male movement alongside people like Scott Galloway and Jordan Petersen, talking about his own experiences as a man and presenting a new philosophy on what modern masculinity should be about. I recently heard him on the ‘Diary of a CEO’ podcast and he was excellent. As a result I bought his book ‘Before & Laughter’ which lays out his philosophy in a self help style, and I’m very much enjoying it so I thought I’d let you all know.

Look after yourself,

Ben