5 Links to Consider | June 25, 2025
A round-up of this week's compelling and considered clicks, compiled from The Absolute Sound's veteran staff of experts and reviewers.
20 Under 40: Young Shapers of the Future (Music and Dance)
The future is unwritten. It is also right around the corner, and, if, as science fiction author William Gibson noted, it is not evenly distributed, more and more young people around the world are reaching toward it to shape it, improve it, and make it more equitable. These “shapers of the future” work in many fields and endeavors, embracing every corner and intersection of health and medicine, science and technology, and business and entrepreneurship. Here, in our Music and Dance category, we have profiled, in the past, such familiar young stars as Adele, Misty Copeland, and Lorde, but we highlight now some less familiar names nonetheless making headlines around the world... Read full article here.
While under the age of 40, the 20 shapers of the future that we highlight in this series have already left their mark on the present, and we expect to see much more invention, innovation, and creation from them in times to come. During the developer-focused sessions of WWDC that follow the livestream, Apple revealed Apple Spatial Audio Format (ASAF). Aside from the Apple Watch, this new spatial audio format can be accessed on every product in Apple's ecosystem, including iPhones, iPads, Apple TV 4K and Macs. It has been developed with the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset in mind, in an effort to bring the immersive audio in line with the immersive video experience. It will be delivered via a new audio codec called Apple Positional Audio Codec, or APAC for short. Read the full article here.
(Image credit: Apple) Carol Kaye Is "Declining" Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction
Legendary session bassist Carol Kaye has confirmed she won’t be attending the 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony later this year. In a Facebook statement, the 90-year-old musician explained that she is turning down the show because it doesn’t accurately capture the spirit of studio musicians during her heyday. “NO I won’t be there,” Kaye wrote. “I am declining the [Rock & Roll Hall of Fame] awards show… turning it down because it wasn’t something that reflects the work that Studio Musicians do and did in the golden era of the 1960s Recording Hits.” Kaye also took issue with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describing her as a member of the “Wrecking Crew,” a label used to describe the collective work of studio musicians in the 1960s and 1970s. Kaye has long maintained that the name is an inaccurate and insulting label for session players of her era. Read full article here.
(Carol Kaye, photo by Jasper Dailey/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
This songwriter shaped today’s country music. You’ve never heard of him.
After Ashley Gorley graduated from Belmont in 1999, a songwriting mentor told him it typically takes a writer seven years to have a hit. So Gorley took jobs with anyone who would give him a chance. At the time, he held the theory that the most successful country songs required a strong story arc. So once Lovelace came up with the title, the trio wrote a ballad about a young woman leaving home for the first time. The demo made its way to Carrie Underwood, fresh off her “American Idol” victory, who connected with the narrative. This was Gorley’s first No. 1 — seven years after he signed his publishing deal — and Underwood’s second in country music, proving she was no reality show one-hit wonder, and setting the stage for her conquest of the charts for the next decade...
(Ashley Gorley transformed country music by integrating rock and hip-hop influences, sometimes controversially)
細野晴臣 (Haruomi Hosono) - Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon
Haruomi Hosono, a Japanese music pioneer born in 1947, co-founded Happy End and Yellow Magic Orchestra, blending folk, electronic, and exotica to influence J-pop and global electronic music. His 2021 single, "Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon," a self-cover of a 1973 Happy End track, originally written as an epitaph for the band, which felt caught between Japanese and American cultural identities, serves as the theme for Hosono’s live documentary SAYONARA AMERICA, capturing his 2019 U.S. performances. Apple Music link Spotify Link Qobuz Link (Not currently available)
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