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Today’s Music News: Best albums of the 21st century, and more

by Staff

August 01, 2014

In a massively crowd-sourced list, Reddit users have decided that the best albums of the 21st century so far are Arcade Fire's Funeral (2004), Radiohead's Kid A (2000), the StrokesIs This It (2001), and Kanye West's The College Dropout (2004).

Lorde will "curate" the soundtrack to the new Hunger Games movie, as well as contribute a song herself. The music is expected to be released this fall, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is scheduled for U.S. release on November 21. (Pitchfork)

Following a New York screening of a new documentary about Pulp on August 7, frontman Jarvis Cocker himself will judge a Pulp karaoke contest. Contestants are now being solicited via Twitter. (The Guardian)

The Dead Weather reunited Wednesday night when the band's Dean Fertita and Alison Mosshart joined Jack White on stage in Detroit for a rendition of "I Cut Like a Buffalo." (Billboard)

Music fans said goodbye to Dick Wagner, who died Wednesday at age 71. The guitarist played with artists including Lou Reed, KISS, Aerosmith, and Alice Cooper. Gene Simmons remembers Wagner as "the consummate gentleman axeman." (Billboard)

After years of chart dominance by R&B and electro-pop, is rock making a comeback on the top 40? Billboard's Jason Lipshutz thinks so—and he argues that don't-call-them-boy-bands like One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer are leading the charge.

Under new CEO John Josephson, SESAC plans to expand beyond performance rights into sync licensing and more. The news comes in a time of potentially transformative change for performance rights organizations, with two major music publishers threatening to withdraw from ASCAP and BMI so as to cut deals independently with streaming music services and other music users. (Billboard) For help understanding what this all means, see the Current's Music Rights 101 primer.

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