What do an R&B singer- songwriter, a genius playwright, a rock ‘n’ roll legend and a California hitmaker all have in common? To any practical person, they are all insane. But they’ve also come together as subjects for the four- part docuseries “Song Exploder,” hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway, which emerged from the popular podcast of the same name. Each episode focuses on one of these iconic musical artists and takes fans on a televised journey, revealing how their most beloved songs were created. The guests chosen for the series are Alicia Keys, Lin-Manuel Miranda, R.E.M. and Ty Dolla $ign. At first glance, these artists and their creations have little in common. Yet, there is one underlying commonality in their operations: feel first, build later. The core of being an artist is absolute lunacy. It’s to stumble upon something — a feeling — that just works, and to try to deliver it to an audience in a fathomable way. There’s nothing about it that makes any rational sense, and that is precisely what makes it so profound. Whether you’re a creative yourself or just a music fan, it’s difficult not to be moved by how much genuine passion this series is built with. Besides hosting the podcast and show, Hirway is a musician and composer, and his love for the craft is always evident. He asks questions that are strictly about the music, gives himself as little screen time as possible and ends each episode by playing the song being examined in its entirety. The people who make this show aren’t concerned with cheap gimmicks. They’re just as big of fans as we are, and they’re dying to get inside the minds that have created such monumental works of art. Nobody encapsulates that honest love for music more than Alicia Keys. So it makes sense that she was the chosen guest to kick off the show. In her episode, she breaks down her 2020 song “3 Hour Drive” which features younger R&B artist Sampha. For Alicia, songwriting is a joyful process. She explains how adding fewer instruments can actually make a song “feel bigger,” a remark that captures the stripped down beauty of her music. She and Sampha begin by singing out words to a composition, until they finally land on the phrase “three-hour drive.” The small line strikes a chord with both of them for very different reasons. It’s a complete instinct, and they chase it down until they emerge victorious with a full piece. If Alicia’s songwriting process can be described as tender and honest, then Lin-Manuel Miranda’s is completely manic. The brilliant rapper-playwright is a lovable dork, absolutely obsessed with finding just the right feeling. In one of the more memorable moments of the show, he recounts how he thought of the idea for the Hamilton standout song “Wait For It” while riding the train to a friend’s party. While fast-walking through the streets of New York, he quietly and shakily sings the chorus into his phone, hastily trying to get it down. When he arrives at the party, he leaves after half a drink. Breaking down the intro track to his debut album, Ty Dolla $ign talks about how important the “car test” is to him. He is driven by the need for everything to sound just right, and to do so, he’ll go through five bass players until he finds one he likes. To make a bigger sound on his song “LA,” he spent $75,000 of money he did not have just to hire an orchestra for one part of a single song. Artists are crazy. To make something great, you have to be willing to chase down a shapeless idea that may not make sense to anyone else. And you have to be willing to commit to it. There’s no right way to do it. There aren’t any steps to follow that will guarantee you arrive at your destination. To many people, operating in that gray area is terrifying. But to an artist, that pursuit is the only thing worth doing. “Song Exploder” celebrates the tremendous amount of time, effort and human emotion that goes into everything an artist does, and how insane you have to be to do it well. Contributor Ben Servetah can be reached at bserve@umich.edu. The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts 12 — Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Live music in the age of COVID-19: an evolution 2020 was supposed to be the most revenue-generating year the live music industry had ever seen. In fact, live music revenue is predicted to double by 2030, and this long-term growth is expected to stay consistent despite the 75% drop in revenue this year due to COVID-19. Looking at the numbers, investors and analysts have an optimistic view of live music and firmly believe that the industry will rebound as soon as people can safely gather once again. While it’s easy to say that live music is simply hitting a slight bump in the road from a bird’s eye view, this temporary hold on live shows is slowly changing the live music scene and testing what consumers are willing to pay for when it comes to watching their favorite artists perform. At the start of the pandemic, artists were quick to get creative and utilize the limited tools they had to engage with their fans. As artists canceled shows, many took their talents to social media where they’d host livestream performances from their living rooms. We saw big acts like The National host weekly livestream shows, Miley Cyrus’s Instagram talk- show “Bright Minded” and we even saw smaller artists like Jordy Searcy take a similar approach through his weekly livestream shows as well as his surprise “house shows” where he would perform for fans in the Nashville area at their doorsteps. As the pandemic dragged on, however, the artist community realized that live streaming free performances was not going to pay the bills, and suddenly ads for paid livestream “concerts” emerged on many artists’ platforms. In fact, we can look to some of the strategies implemented by artists and see how this new situation is changing the way we think of live music and how artists run their brands. At the start of the pandemic, Erykah Badu took her music to her own platform, Badu World Market, where she set up her own virtual concert experience independent of any venue or concert series. What’s fascinating about Badu World Market is that it was set up by Badu and her team exclusively and also incorporates merchandise and music sales. Badu’s website, which enables her to keep every aspect of her brand centralized and under her control, offers a model for other artists to follow in which they can own more of what they make instead of dividing their brand among various streaming platforms, merchandise vendors and concert venues. Strict limits on social gatherings also raise the question of when big artists will be able to return to large stadiums and concert halls. Prior to COVID-19, big names in music —Taylor Swift, Drake and Harry Styles, to name a few — were selling out massive stadiums and arenas, but whether fans will be able to return to those venues in the foreseeable future remains uncertain. While these artists have had to take a break from performing, there may be a new opportunity for smaller artists to take advantage of this lull. Quinn XCII jumped on this opportunity to expand his following by performing “drive-in” concerts in Cleveland. Videos on his Instagram show dozens of cars spread out across a parking lot with fans singing along from the trunks of their cars. While watching a show from your car is nothing like a true in-person concert experience, it’s clear that fans will jump at any chance to go to an in-person show in whatever form that might look like. Quinn XCII’s drive-in shows sold out quickly, and other artists have jumped on the bandwagon and scheduled outdoor, socially- distanced concerts like Lauren Daigle’s “Autumn Nights,” a drive-in concert experience in Nashville. While artists seem to be finding their way amid the chaos, concert venues themselves have not been faring well. In fact, The National Independent Venues Association predicts that 90 percent of their 3,000 members will go out of business by the end of the month. We’ve already seen the harsh effects of the virus on the live music industry as major music venues have closed their doors permanently, including the Majestic Theater in Detroit. Though artists have some flexibility and creative liberty to find new ways to generate revenue, the closing of live music venues could be devastating to the music industry in the future. Already, artists are competing for spots at venues booking all the way into 2022, making it difficult for up-and-coming artists to catch a break and have the opportunity to perform live. Like everything else we’ve seen through this pandemic, the music industry is becoming increasingly competitive, and as artists fight for their time on stage, the smaller, less-well- off acts could get left behind or have to work harder to build a following and make those in-person connections with fans. Yet at the same time, artists have already surprised us with their resilience and creativity when it comes to engaging with audiences, and perhaps the challenges that lie ahead will be opportunities for them to get creative and evolve the music industry as we know it even further. Daily Arts Writer Kaitlyn Fox can be reached at kjfox@umich. edu. KAITLYN FOX Daily Arts Writer RCA RECORDS LABEL Five-year-old TikToker’s album is a post-ironic win Emily Montes is 5 years old, TikTok famous and may have just dropped one of the most important albums of the year. Not much is known about Emily. I heard about her through my friend Brad, and I have no idea where he heard about her. According to Emily on her song “Untitled,” she “blew up on TikTok.” However, take a short look at Emily’s TikTok and you will see that her videos are more along the lines of a kid who took her mom’s iPad on a road trip and is now filming out the window, rather than content that would cause her to go viral. Her most viewed videos have around 26,000 views, which is still modest for someone claiming to have “blown up,” and it is impossible to tell whether these views came before or after her debut album. As you’ll come to understand throughout this article, though, if you want to ask questions, you’re completely missing the point. The self-titled album Emily Montes is 14 songs and spans five total minutes. Five of those songs are also titled “Emily Montes.” Throughout the album, Emily’s high-pitched voice is heavily auto-tuned to the point where it is sometimes difficult to listen to, and the beats push the typical musical boundaries, mixing electronic sounds with hard-hitting 808 drums. What is so strange is that, musically, this album is right in line with the trap- hyperpop sound that has been festering in the depths of the internet and is now coming to the surface of popular culture through artists like Charli XCX and 100 gecs. For a five- year-old girl to be able to hone in on that unique sound seems unlikely and, truthfully, impossible. However, as I said before, the more questions you ask, the more you’re missing. Who cares if she purposefully crafted an album whose tone matches this growing electropop scene? I hope it was an accident. That would be way funnier. Created during the COVID- 19 pandemic, each song is a small vignette that explores themes of loneliness, existential dread, complete and total arrogance and everything else that comes with being five years old in quarantine. In one of her songs titled “Emily Montes (Breakup),” she sings over a piano, “Laying in my bed / Voices in my head / A broken heart / I’m missing you.” The next song, titled “Emily Montes (Corona is Crazy)” transports us to a trap beat where Emily raps “This virus is crazy / It’s the end of the world! / Boom, Boom, Boom.” As quickly as it starts, the song ends and “Frozen” begins, in which Emily asks, “I’m outside, it’s frozen / But where is all the snow?” In just three songs that amass to 45 seconds, Emily investigates mental health, her broken heart and climate change (I think?). It is these disjunct and sometimes contradictory messages that make the album so impactful. So often during this strange time period, I have felt as though I couldn’t control anything around me, and this album feels just like that. You never know what version of Emily you’ll get next. She may be depressed, spirited, hopeful or angry. She may be completely neutral. She may drop a diss at Travis Scott and Chance the Rapper for no particular reason. She may just rap about how much she loves Roblox. You have no say. Emily runs the show. While the sound is distinctive and the message powerful, my true obsession with “Emily Montes” is that it really feels like the product of all internet culture ever. Complete vulnerability layered behind nonsensical tangents and the absurd fact that this was all created by a five-year- old girl perfectly encapsulates the diluted sense of irony currently defining internet culture, which now feels impossible to decipher between authenticity and complete sarcasm. The response to the album only serves to highlight this point. Her fans on Twitter vehemently argue that Emily Montes is the album of the year and that she has reinvented the rap scene. The tweets themselves seem genuine, but the fact that they are tweeting about a five-year-old girl’s five- minute album in the first place creates a clear level of irony within them. These people, like me, may actually love the album. And these people, like me, might be totally joking. And likely, both are true. LEO KRINSKY For The Daily ROUTENOTE NETFLIX Podcast-turned-TV show is an ode to artists’ lunacy BEN SERVETAH For The Daily Read more online at michigandaily.com “Song Exploder” celebrates the tremendous amount of time, effort and human emotion that goes into everything an artist does, and how insane you have to be to do it.