April 17, 2008

Music: LA Weekly Reveals Who Should Headline Coachella

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mojo-photo-yelle.jpgWow, somebody’s been brushing up their Excel skills: the LA Weekly has done some serious data entry work on the 128 acts playing next weekend’s Coachella festival, and they’ve come up with some pretty interesting charts ‘n’ graphs describing today’s musical trends. And I do love charts ‘n’ graphs.

Sure, the pie chart showing most bands are white and the bar graph proving most lead singers are male aren’t exactly surprises, and the fact that “most recent Pitchfork review” averages out to between 6.1 and 7.4 is probably due to the fact that every Pitchfork review is between 6.1 and 7.4. But ranking artists by their most-viewed YouTube clip isn’t such a far-fetched way to gauge popularity in this day and age, and the results are eyebrow-raising. Turns out, if internet video ruled the world, French techno would be, er, king: Justice and Yelle (pictured above) were #1 and #2, with over 7 million views for their most popular videos. Zut alors! They were followed by Kate Nash, Serj Tankian and Mark Ronson, none of whom are, in fact, headlining. Actual headliner Jack Johnson doesn’t show up on this list until #9, with about a third of Justice’s click-throughs. While I can understand Justice’s internet popularity, I’m most intrigued by Yelle’s sudden notoriety: the video getting all the love is the Tecktonik-style Tepr mix of “ACDG” that I posted as part of my France wrap-up back in December. You go, Yelle. After the jump, let’s watch that video again, pourquoi pas?

Yelle –”A Cause des Garçons” (Tepr remix)

Photo of Yelle used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user THEfunkyman.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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