#37 - Lumberjackman 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! It’s been an eventful kickoff to May: a writers’ strike disrupted late night shows, the MET Gala paid homage to Karl Lagerfeld, Shaq and Keanu Reeves (yes, John Wick) are releasing new music, and Taylor Swift announced her re-release of Speak Now during her first show in Nashville (we were there) 🤠

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of Jackman. by Jack Harlow.

2. 🔀 Playlist Updates: tobi lou, BLÜ EYES, MacKenzie Porter, and Goth Babe.

3. 💿 This Week in Music: $25 concert week, Rock & Roll HOF Inductees, Ed Sheeran wins copyright infringement case.

4. 🎙️ Hot Mulligan is our artist of the week.

Rating Rationale: After gaining mainstream approval for his first two studio albums, Jackman. feels like a return to his mixtape roots with a focus on post-fame introspection. Throughout the album, he makes it clear that he’s the “hardest white boy since Eminem,” but still with something to prove. The album invokes a mood very much like Drake’s Nothing Was The Same, reflective backing tracks paired with sincere lyrics that acknowledge permanent life changes associated with fame: the societal pressures of living up to a standard set by others, the constant struggle between modesty and narcissism, and reflections of his friends and family while being away from home. One of the highlights of the album is the lyrical style used in songs, with lots of alliteration and parallelism. Give a listen to “It Can’t Be,” and “Is That Ight?,” two of our favorites.

This Week in Music 💿

🤑 $25 Concert Week: Listen Up! Starting May 10th at 10 A.M., LiveNation is celebrating Concert Week by discounting 3,800 shows across the country for just $25.

🏆 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees: Your inductees are Willie Nelson, Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine, Missy Elliot, Sheryl Crow, George Michael and the Spinners, and Chaka Khan (sampled by Kanye for “Through the Wire”).

💼 Ed Beat the Case: Ed Sheeran was found NOT GUILTY for the copyright infringement case brought up by a Marvin Gaye songwriter against “Thinking Out Loud.”

5️⃣ CNCO No Mayo: CNCO is to La Banda as One Direction is to The X Factor, and unfortunately, CNCO will be experiencing the same fate as One Direction. Earlier this week, the five Latin boy band members announced their separation.

💯 100 Top 100: NBA Youngboy becomes the youngest artist to land 100 song entries into Billboard’s Hot 100. This comes after his intention to adopt Mormonism (this is real) after being under house arrest in Utah, which has subsequently led him to finally squash his beef with Lil Durk (we covered this hip-hop industry rift in a previous edition). We applaud NBA Youngboy for turning a new leaf.

🔴 Nicki’s Collaborative Process: If you ever wondered which songs Nicki Minaj chooses to jump on, look no further. Also, don’t forget to read the comments.

🤔 Biebs on the Track: Complex Canada ranked Justin Bieber’s 15 best features. What do you think of the rankings?

✌️ BREAKING NEWS: Aerosmith will be peacing out after their upcoming final tour. Their tour trailer is so good that we’ve included it below.

👨‍⚖️ YouTube Union: YouTube Music contractors recently unionized with the Alphabet Workers Union after a vote of approval by the NLRB, setting a temporary precedent for the first officially recognized union of tech workers at Google. This has important implications and is something to keep an eye on.

🧝 Elf Tech: AI is the tech buzzword for 2023, and it’s quickly evolving the copyright and legal landscape of the music industry. While most larger artists and record labels see AI as copyright infringement, Grimes has doubled down on “killing copyright” by releasing her GrimesAI-1 VoicePrint on her website, elf.tech.

🤖 Shutting Down AI: Believe, the parent organization of TuneCore, a music publishing and distribution service, is joining the rest of the traditional music industry in shutting down AI deepfakes. Spotify has also targeted the AI music app, Boomy, shutting down their ability to upload songs into their platform.

📱 It’s time to BeReal: BeReal has rolled out a new integration with Apple Music, allowing users to share what music they’re currently listening to. This comes after BeReal’s integration with Spotify.

🍋‍🟩 LimeWire Tokens: LimeWire has raised $10.4 million in their LMWR token sale to help onboard “major” artists to their platform.

🚀 New Launches… and Closures: Myxt, an AI-based collaborative music workspace, recently raised a $2 million seed round. Winamp, a music player originally released in 1997 for Microsoft Windows, is reintroducing itself as an audio aggregator and tool for music creators. Mixtape platform, Spinrilla, has agreed to pay $50 million in piracy damages and will shut down.

🏠 Paisley Park: Paisley Park, Prince’s Estate, is celebrating Prince’s life, which will include unreleased music from Prince’s music vault.

🌃 Five Albums, One Night: Taking a page out of Taylor Swift’s book, the Jonas Brothers will be playing five albums a night during their upcoming tour.

🐎 A Stagecoach Debut: Oklahoma country band, Turnpike Troubadours, debuted their first single in six years, “Mean Old Sun,” at Stagecoach

🏳️‍🌈 Night Out: Pitchfork and Them are teaming up to put on a pride celebration which will include Tinashe, Lido Pimienta, Pom Pom Squad, and Zebra Katz.

🫠 10 Years of Acid Rap: So far, Chance the Rapper has released 5 tour dates for the celebration of his breakout mixtape, Acid Rap.

💿 New Albums: Experimental duo Wolf Eyes is dropping their first non-compilation album in six years. Anna of the North is sharing a deluxe version of her album, Crazy Life, which includes her lead single, “Ridin”. Little Dragon is dropping Slugs of Love on July 7th.

🚶‍♂️ On Tour and On Hiatus: Sky Ferriera released five West Coast tour dates and Best Coast’s Beth Cosentino is going solo.

👟 Top Tours by Rappers: Touring Data reported the top-grossing hip-hop tours of all time, and Kendrick’s The Big Steppers tour recently became the new leader.

📈 Live Nation Q2 Earnings: Many look to Live Nation as an industry indicator of global music demand, particularly for the live music market. Based on Live Nation’s Q2 earnings, demand for music continues to hit new highs. Revenue YoY for the quarter is up 73% to $3.1 billion (that’s insane growth for a company that’s already valued at ~$18 billion). Fan count is up 79% to >19 million and ticketing is on track to set a new record of 600 million sold tickets.

🥧 The Global Music Pie Grows: Based on MIDiA Research, global recorded music revenue in 2022 grew by 6.7% to $31.2 billion. More notably, independent labels and artists as well as artists who release directly with a distributor (not signed to a label) are seeing the most growth. As the music industry and the overall economy in the United States continue to mature, we expect independent labels and artists to continue to take market share.

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Artist of the Week: Hot Mulligan 🎙️

Primer: This crew coins themselves as the inventors of post-emo and the #1 hot new band.

Who is Hot Mulligan? If you’re looking for lumberjacks turned emo punk stars, you’ve come to the right place. The early days of Hot Mulligan started in “the UP” (the upper peninsula of Michigan) where Chris Freeman and Tades Sanville met in high school and decided to start a band together in 2014. After moving to the lower peninsula to attend Michigan State University, Chris met Ryan Malicsi at orientation, shared videos of their band’s memorable Bloodfest performance, and eventually convinced him to join the band as the lead guitarist. Shortly after, the band “tricked” Brandon Blakeley into joining as their drummer to complete their band.

Where did the name Hot Mulligan come from? During high school, Chris describes having an art teacher named Mrs. Mulligan who had a daughter that substituted for her occasionally. As a joke, when Tades asked Chris for the daughter’s name, he called her “Hot,” to which Tades responded “Hot Mulligan?” The rest is history.

Current Label: No Sleep Records, an independent label based in Huntington Beach, CA.

Genre: Punk rock, emo, indie rock

Influences: The group is heavily influenced by the punk-emo-rockers of the early 2000s—Green Day, Rise Against, Blink-182, and Simple Plan. They describe themselves as “heavy, soft, pop-punk, and emo at the same time.”

Our Favorite Song Titles: This band is notorious for their unique song titles, like “All You Wanted By Michelle Branch,” “Shhhh! Golf is On,” “Pluto Was Never Really A Planet Either,” “There Was a Semi-Fight on I-69, and “Featuring Mark Hoppus.”

Outro: Hot Mulligan’s fourth studio album, Why Would I Watch, drops this Friday, May 12th. So far, they’ve spent the majority of this year touring the US and Europe. On top of five more summer headlining shows this year, they’re also playing festivals like Sad Summer throughout July and WWWY in October.

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week with lyrics that celebrate Ed Sheeran’s triumph in the courts.

Check out our other articles and give us a follow on Twitter!

See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya