#14 - Roosevelt, not the President 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! This week we learned Taylor Swift tickets have been the best-performing investment asset this year. Here’s your 5-minute read on updates in the music industry.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🎹 Song recs based on what we're listening to.

2. 💿 Industry updates on how ticketing companies are failing the music industry.

3. 🎙️ Roosevelt is our artist of the week.

4. 📈 Data highlighting the big picture behind the Ticketmaster fiasco.

5. 🎡 Some tour updates and a festival Down Under.

Donya: You know how you listen to new music and you know exactly who it is? That’s how I feel about The 1975. Matty Healy has a purely distinct voice, and while it’s tough to follow up the bops and ballads from A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, this highly anticipated album is The 1975 in their truest form—heavenly vocals, shameless trumpets, with a hint of jazz—all captured in the synth-pop production of your dreams.

Chris: In Being Funny in a Foreign Language, The 1975 takes a shot at interweaving more sonic and instrumental sophistication to their signature synth-pop sound, a sign of evolution. Depending on the style of Matty Healy you want (either upbeat or somber ballad), you’ll get both, but it’s hard to beat the candid and playful sounds from I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it. “Oh Caroline” and “I’m in Love With You” are the standouts in this album.

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Songs we’re currently listening to 🎹

Industry Updates 💿

• AMAs Tonight: While pre-show winners have already been announced, tune in tonight for the full ceremony on ABC, 8/7c. So far, Taylor Swift has won female artist of the year for both pop AND country music.

• Hulu x Vevo: Hulu and Vevo are teaming up to bring you six new Live-TV channels airing your favorite music videos across Pop, Hip-Hop, Country, ‘80s, ‘90s, and Holiday genres.

• Just a Matter of Slime: This week, the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeals reaffirmed that prosecutors could seek the death penalty against YNW Melly with the Florida Supreme Court if he’s found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder.

• Ticketing App Crashes: Last Wednesday night, thousands of fans were stranded outside of Dua Lipa’s show in Sydney as Australia-based, Ticketek, experienced an outage, crashing their ticket app.

• Hold My Beer, Ticketek: Ticketmaster, and their unpopular 2010 merger with Live Nation, is yet again under fire after fans experienced ticket app crashes that caused delays in purchasing presale tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour due to “unprecedented demand” (Taylor would've had to perform >900 stadium shows to meet demand). Prices, particularly the addition of arbitrary fees, have seen notable increases since the merger, leading many to scrutinize Ticketmaster for monopolistic practices.

• Qatar Human Rights Watch: A number of artists have spoken out against the human rights violations that have occurred as part of Qatar’s preparation for the World Cup. Here’s a list of artists who have refused to play.

• Blueface Bleedem: Blueface was arrested this past Tuesday for attempted murder in Las Vegas.

• MTV EMAs: Here’s a list of winners from last Sunday’s MTV EMAs, hosted by Rita Ora and Taika Waititi in Düsseldorf, Germany.

• 3LAU NFT Lawsuit: In 2021, DJ/producer 3LAU grossed $11 Million in NFT sales through his NFT music royalty platform Royal. He’s now being sued by a previous collaborator.

Artist of the Week: Roosevelt 🎙️ 

Here’s a hot take: we think the average electronic music “fan” at music festivals is usually there for the “vibes” and not necessarily the music. However, some artists like Diplo, DJ Snake, and David Guetta have risen above the average listener’s subconscious and found household appeal by using the perfect blend of mixing pop with EDM–for most electronic artists, this isn’t the case.

Rising artist Roosevelt is building his way up to that status (most recently on a remix of “Anti-Hero” for Taylor Swift), by bringing his worlds of traditional pop and electronic music together.

Jack-of-all-trades

Growing up in Viersen, a small city in western Germany, Marius Lauber was influenced early on by artists like The Strokes, The White Stripes, and Arctic Monkeys, shaping his musical palette throughout his childhood. In high school, he and a group of friends started a cover band where Marius became a jack-of-all-trades for musical instruments, including vocals, bass, guitar, and drums. After turning 18, he joined an indie band called Beats!Beats!Beats! as the lead drummer, and soon after, the band signed with a subsidiary of Universal Germany, giving them the opportunity to tour across the country. The band allowed Marius to start producing tracks and demos, ultimately leading him to the art of DJing.

After the band split up, Marius moved to Cologne, the epicenter of the electronic music scene, where he found a consistent gig experimenting with beats and performing for crowds. Through his connection with Tobias Thomas (a DJ and promoter with Kompact), he booked his first big show. At that moment, the pressure was on for him to select a stage name, so he went with “Roosevelt,” a nod to his days of publishing productions on MySpace. It was meant to be a placeholder, but he missed the deadline to change it, so Roosevelt stuck.

Discovery & Tours

Marius was discovered when UK record label Greco-Roman (Disclosure, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, etc.) found his song “Sea,” which at the time only had 50 views on his YouTube channel, featured on a music blog (proof that our mission is calling the stars over here at Sunlighter). Soon after, he performed at SXSW and toured with Glass Animals, Crystal Fighters, and Hot Chip to build momentum before preparing his debut album.

Marius wanted to move away from the classic electronic “sound aesthetic” — think house music or remixes of existing music playing on blast without intention. Roosevelt’s aim is to blend the worlds of guitar and instrumentals with electronic music for a cohesive production that colors his tracks like an artist colors a canvas — he’s a pop artist with EDM undertones. If you want a hint of what that sounds like, think LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver, Whitest Boy Alive’s Rules, and Caribou’s Swim.

Since his first two albums, Marius has focused on producing for other artists. He’s collaborated with Nile Rodgers, Purple Disco Machine, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and most recently, Taylor Swift.

Here’s Marius singing a hauntingly beautiful acoustic cover of “Sign”:

Data 📈

Ticketmaster has this thing where it gets older, but just never wiser: In 2010, Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster to create Live Nation Entertainment, which led to its combined control over a bulk of the world’s concert promotion and ticket sales. The concentrated power of Live Nation Entertainment was on full display this week as it had sole power of this past week’s most valuable asset: Taylor Swift tickets.

Festivals & Tour Announcements 🎡

Festival season moves Down Under as the Southern Hemisphere warms up for summer. If you’re familiar with Stereosonic’s meteoric rise and equally spectacular fall, you probably recognize EDM promoter ONELOVE as a mainstay name within the Australian electronic dance music scene. ONELOVE is back for their second year of Festival X, setting up a 5-stop EDM festival with both local music artists and their primary lineup below. Cheers, mate!

Tour Announcements 🤘

• Anita Baker is bringing back The Songstress, her first solo album, to 15 cities across the United States next year. It’s her first tour since 1995.

• P!NK will be trapezing at your nearest stadium as part of her Summer Carnival 2023 North America stadium tour. She’ll be supported by Brandi Carlile, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, and Grouplove.

• Lizzo announced her second leg of The Special 2our across 17 North American cities with Latto.

• WizKid is kicking off his More Love, Less Ego Tour next March, starting in Houston.

• Ari Lennox announced her age/sex/location Tour, which kicks off on January 26th in Las Vegas.

• Jukebox Heroes, Foreigner, are going on their farewell tour in 2023. At each stop, they’ll host a classic rock a capella choir competition as part of their initiative with the GRAMMY Museum Foundation. Each city’s winner will be the opener for Foreigner.

• Garth Brooks announced a 2023 residency in Las Vegas at The Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace

• Whiskey Meyers is hitting the road in early 2023 to support their sixth studio album, Tornillo.

• Swedish folk duo, First Aid Kit, will be kicking off a 16-stop North American tour starting next May.

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing this week’s newsletter with a classic country lyric that helps us remember to be thankful for the little things.

Lyrical Genius ✍️

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya