#15 - Thanks for the memories 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! In case you’re tired of leftover turkey sandwiches, we’re here to deliver some punk-flavored music brain-food this week.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🎹 Song recs for your inner teenage angst.

2. 💿 Industry updates on merch and the case for indie labels.

3. 🎙️ Kenny Mason is our artist of the week.

4. 📈 Data on this year’s Grammy nominations.

5. 🎡 Audacy Beach Festival and plenty of pop-punk tours.

Chris: nothing,nowhere. teeters on the plane between the traditional pop-punk/emo genre and avant-garde emo rap in Trauma Factory, and he does so with great precision. The depressive lyrics are imaginative enough to hit the mental models of what you expect depression and anxiety to feel like, while the uptempo, industrial-sounding production counterintuitively adds pockets of recovery. Now include the depth and diversity; what you have is one of the best sleeper albums from 2021.

Donya: nothing,nowhere.’s Trauma Factory is jam-packed with authentic, honest lyrics from John Mulherin, who takes us on a roller coaster ride with this album. It’s filled with vulnerability through his rap verses and catchy stadium-ready choruses with an overall production that’s reminiscent of the emo-pop rock days of the early 2000s. Pierre Bouvier fans, get ready to swoon. My favorites are “fake friend” and “love or chemistry.”

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Songs you might've missed as a millennial middle-schooler 🎹

Industry Updates 💿

• We Can All Be Royals: The web3 music company announced its next growth phase: a music rights marketplace that enables fans to invest in artists and earn royalties alongside them. No crypto assets are required to join.

• Prime Boom: Earlier this month, Amazon Music opened up its 100 million song catalog to all Amazon Prime members. VP of Amazon Music, Steve Boom, provides more insight into that decision here.

• Stay Independent: According to the British Phonographic Industry, independent record labels in the UK continue to grow in total market share, up to 28.6% from 26.9% the previous year.

• #MyMerch: One of the major themes in the music industry this year is that touring is becoming increasingly challenging and almost economically unviable. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers are launching a campaign to fight back against venues and festivals from taking the typical ~15-35% cut in merch sales, which greatly impacts artist revenues.

• Ditch the Merch Line: Amazon Music is supporting artists by providing never-expiring digital merch tables. All goods are eligible for Prime shipping.

• OUT OF ORDER: Warner Music recently launched a new label called OUT OF ORDER in an effort to grow its presence in cultures and communities in emerging markets such as Africa, India, and the Middle East.

• 80 Million: Earlier this month, YouTube's Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, announced that YouTube Music had surpassed 80 million Music and Premium subscribers, a whopping 30 million increase since last year.

• Music as Medicine (this is cool): UK-based MediMusic has joined the Abbey Road Red music-tech incubator to further develop their technology that personalizes a playlist for patients as a way to treat anxiety and pain.

• Can’t You Taste this Gold?: Iggy Azalea has sold her master recording and publishing catalog to Domain Capital for a cool (and fancy) 8 figures.

• It Was Not All a Dream: On December 16th, Meta is hosting a VR experience in Meta Horizon Worlds to celebrate the life and legacy of The Notorious B.I.G.. You can also expect guest performances from Diddy, Latto, Nardo Wick and others. RSVP here.

• Anghami Cuts: On the heels of a strong quarter, Anghami, the first legal digital streaming platform in the Middle East, is cutting 22% of its workforce. This news comes after rumors it would be acquired by Spotify.

• Funding Music Funding: beatBread has raised an undisclosed seed round led by Deceins Capital to fund artists while allowing them to maintain control of their careers and music.

• AMA Winners: Here’s a complete list of the 2022 American Music Award winners. Taylor Swift leads the way with 6 awards.

• *BONUS Read: During his peak, hip-hop producer Timbaland was making $500,000 per beat (!!!) However, with the proliferation of newer technologies that have lowered the barrier to entry into music production (like A.I.), production is becoming a lost art.

Artist of the Week: Kenny Mason🎙️ 

Angelic Hoodrat

Have you ever moshed at a rock show? Have you ever moshed at a rap show? Luckily, if you get to see Kenny Mason live, you get to cross both off your list. Simply categorizing Kenny’s style of music as just a blend of rock and rap is an understatement, if not downright disrespectful. Kenny’s style of music is much more genre-diffusing, embracing keen experimentation and fervent individualism while drawing deep inspiration from the omnipresent concept of human duality – sometimes you’re an angel, sometimes you’re a hoodrat.

Unexpected Influences

As a West Atlanta native, Kenny grew up in a tightly-knit community but was ironically distant from his immediate family. Although he maintained a good relationship with his parents, his primary caregiver was his grandmother. But at the age of 10, his grandmother passed away, and Kenny found himself moving from home to home, ushering in a temperament of instability and detachment that would develop over the years. By the age of 12, Kenny discovered that he had a talent for rapping, providing him with a newfound channel to express the loneliness that consumed his upbringing. Simultaneously, Kenny also experienced a newfound love of rock music while playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Madden, leading to a pivotal transformation in his taste for music Deftones, My Chemical Romance, and Rage Against the Machine joined the ranks of Lil Wayne’s “Go DJ” and Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” to become his source of inspiration.

High School and Beyond

In high school, Kenny really began to flourish. After dodging the temptations of gang life (especially growing up admiring his older half-brother who was involved in that lifestyle), numerous forces (including his friends, one of his teachers, and most importantly a Kid Cudi video about commitment to the craft) pushed him further towards developing his rap repertoire. He also enrolled in a music technology class where he learned music recording, which ultimately led to him and his friends pooling their money together to build a studio. Not long after the studio was built, Kenny took the time to refine his rap and production chops before putting out (now deleted) mixtapes on SoundCloud, getting his first taste of Atlanta underground fame.

At Sunlighter, we don’t make this claim often, but we think Kenny Mason is destined for stardom. It’s not a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when.” We’re booking it into our records now, so let's check back in 12 months. But for now, here's a 12-minute single-take, uncut, and unedited sample of his Angelic Hoodrat album:

Data 📈

The 2023 Grammy nominations were recently announced on November 15th, and the awards ceremony will be returning home to Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 5th. Beyoncé leads with nine nominations, Kendrick Lamar secures eight nominations, and Adele ties Brandi Carlile with seven total nominations.

We’ve highlighted all nominees and given you a breakdown of the big four categories below:

• 🎧 Record of the Year is awarded to the artist, producers, and sound engineers for an individual song.

• 💿 Album of the Year honors artistic achievement, technical proficiency, and overall excellence for an individual album.

• ✏️ Song of the Year is dedicated to songwriters for the original composition of an individual song.

• ✨ Best New Artist highlights a breakthrough artist of the year.

Festivals & Tour Announcements 🎡

Audacy, your favorite free radio app, is hosting its second annual beach festival the first weekend of December in Fort Lauderdale. With every ticket sold, $1 goes to one of their non-profit partners—a true exemplification of feel-good music. Their lineup is pretty good too.

Tour Announcements 🤘

• Afrobeats continues its incline. Burna Boy makes history by becoming the first African artist to headline a stadium concert in the U.K.

• Elton John ended his final North American tour with, “I wish you health and love, prosperity. Be kind to each other, okay, and farewell.”

• Adele added two New Year’s Eve shows to her sold-out Las Vegas residency, which runs through March 2023.

• MOD SUN is saving the songs of Gen-Z teens across the country with his God Save the Teen Tour.

• Big Gigantic announced their Brighter Future Tour Vol II, which kicks off next February.

• New Found Glory is making the most of the pop-punk renaissance by hitting the road on a new acoustic tour in 2023.

• August Burns Red will be celebrating their 20 year anniversary by visiting 43 cities on tour next year.

• A Boogie wit da Hoodie is heading out to 12 cities next February as part of his Me vs. Myself tour.

• Grab a pint! Celtic punk bands Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys are both touring the United States next year.

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week with a line that’s surprisingly about FOMO and our updated A&R List.

Lyrical Genius ✍️

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya