Some of the
other music that I discovered in 2025 (=released in 2025, at youtube).
None would be make them worthy for these nominations but they were noteworthy for me none-the-less.
- Balu Brigada - So Cold
- Bakar - Lonyo
- FountainesDC - It's Amazing to be Young
- Geese - Au Pays du Cocaine [AI'd?]
- Nation of Language - Inept Apollo
- Djo - Awake
All "white men"?
We did not much care what color music wore: Neither in 1973 or 2026!
I don't know who "we" is. I don't even know who you are. If you were colour blind, then good for you.
My personal experience was different. I was 11 when the Beatles exploded on the scene. Much of the music that came out when I began to listen to top 40 radio, although certainly not all of it, was black music performed by white musicians. Why was that? In the 1950s and early 1960s, black music was segregated from white music, with just a few crossovers, notably, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and Billie Holiday. Have you read much of the experience of these musicians? They had their difficulties, let's put it that way.
To their credit, bands like the Rolling Stones, Blues Breakers, Cream, Led Zepellin and early Fleetwood Mac, and so on, gave at least a nod, and sometimes but not always, a writer's credit to the American blues music they copied. John Lennon noted that it took the British to do that, because the Pat Boone's and Presley's of the world, did not.
The first black music I heard in Alberta, Canada, as a child, was Motown, which I liked, but no "soul music", no James Brown, Aretha Franklyn or Sam & Dave.
Our family moved to the Toronto in 1967 and the music mix on the radio was entirely different. Aretha Franklyn was all over the Toronto airwaves. I did not like the sound, to be honest. It was new, and sounded rough to me. And that's because black America and black Canada were like a foreign country to us, with a different culture and very different music. It took time to like black music. By 1973, many barriers to performance had vanished, but far too late for the Robert Johnson's and Leadbelly's to obtain the broader recognition they deserved. And there was still an imbalance. I remember how the Osmond family, who essentially performed shite, had a prime time variety show, while their much more accomplished "rivals" (of a sort), the Jackson Five, got a brief 2 month summer replacement show. At the time, I thought that was quite f-d up.
Okay, so to you there was no difference. I think there was though, in the music business.
