Monday Music News

12/18/2017

Jasmine Albertson

Björk released her latest album Utopia last month and has been steadily pumping out music videos ever since. Following the visuals for "The Gate," "Blissing Me," and "Utopia" comes the official video for album opener "Arisen My Senses." The video stars Björk and her Utopia co-producer Arca, with Björk emerging from a giant womb as some sort of winged creature. Frequent collaborator Jesse Kanda made the video in tangent with Björk and Arca. The video cannot currently be embedded but is available here, via WeTransfer. [ Pitchfork ]

Swedish folk sister duo First Aid Kit is returning with a new album, Ruins, in early 2018. Ahead of its release, the Söderberg sisters recorded a session for BBC Radio 2, taking on holiday standard "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and doing a folky rendition of Lorde's "Perfect Places," off of this year's Melodrama. The duo took to Twitter to explain the choices, calling the Lorde song, “one of our fav songs of this year that we were thrilled to have the chance to cover.” They said of their holiday song choice: “We’ve always loved the melancholy of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ The Judy Garland version brings us to tears. It was quite a treat to get to record this for our @BBCRadio2 session. We hope you enjoy it.” First Aid Kit will play the Moore Theatre on Sunday, January 28. Ruins is out January 19 on Columbia. [ Paste ]

Run the Jewels stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert over the weekend to collaborate on a holiday song called "Jingle Jingle (Santa Party)." As the duo previously did last year on their collaboration with Colbert for "The Halloween Wiggle," the duo ruined Colbert's attempts at a wholesome song by making things very real. Their politically charged lyrics go in on Trump, drones, the discrepancies between a white child's Christmas and a black child's, and how Santa's a perv. Last Friday, Run the Jewels shared an apocalyptic video for "Call Ticketron." Run the Jewels will be performing at the Key Arena on Friday, March 9 with Lorde and Tove Stryke. [ Paste ]

Morrissey has received a large amount of backlash ever since his interview with German newspaper Der Spiegl, in which he defended both Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey against the charges of sexual abuse against them. He then restated those claims in a separate interview with The Sunday Times. Because of this, he claims his recent album Low in High School hasn't gotten the kind of airplay or charting that it may have before. In a new video uploaded to his nephew's YouTube account, Morrissey makes a State of the Union Address to go in on the "hateful press" who have derailed his career. It's worth noting that at no point in the video does Morrissey consider that perhaps he said something awful or make any sort of apology. On Saturday, Morrissey stopped by CBS This Morning to play a three-song session. [ Under the Radar ]

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