Kanye, Goulding to use fan lyrics – Unique interactive album aimed at fighting poverty

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NEW YORK, March 15, (AFP): Top names in music including Kanye West and Ellie Goulding will record songs from lyrics submitted by fans in a unique interactive album aimed at fighting global poverty.

Global Citizen, best known for organizing giant annual concerts in New York to further the goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, on Tuesday announced the project titled “Metamorphoses.”

The 12-track album, to be released later this year, will also include British folk revivalists Mumford & Sons and New York-based indie rock giants The National.

Fans will have until March 31 to submit original lyrics, poems or stories. The artists will then select from the suggestions and collaboratively turn them into songs.

The album will be available for “purchase” by listeners who commit to take action against poverty, such as petitioning their governments to boost development assistance.

“’Metamorphoses’ has the potential to break down our preconceptions of the voices of creativity, what different people around the world are thinking and who has the right to be heard,” said Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, who dreamed up the project with Global Citizen chief executive Hugh Evans.

“In my own life, I’ve experienced people trying to define me and put me in boxes and categories,” he said in a statement. “Through collaboration we can show people how those lines can be blurred and are ultimately redundant.”

Mumford & Sons won the prestigious Album of the Year Grammy for 2012’s folksy “Babel” but went in a more electric direction on last year’s follow-up “Wilder Mind” on which the band worked with The National’s Aaron Dessner.

Successful

West, one of the most successful artists in rap history, has increasingly experimented with form. His latest album, “The Life of Pablo,” is available only through streaming, with West continually fine-tuning it.

Fans, who can make submissions to the new project at GlobalCitizen.org/Metamorphoses, are welcome to write about any topic.

Evans said the producers would take material from around the world with the aim of making the album “a truly global tribute to our collective responsibility” to fight extreme poverty.

Further artists and an exact release date will be announced later, Global Citizen said.

The group said its supporters took two million actions in 2015 to support Global Citizen’s goals.

Its latest festival, held in September in Central Park and televised internationally, featured Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Pearl Jam.

US First Lady Michelle Obama made a surprise appearance to push the goal of bringing education to the estimated 62 million girls around the world who are out of school — a key component of the UN’s strategy to end extreme poverty.

Radiohead announced Monday concerts in six cities around the world as speculation builds for the experimental rockers’ much-anticipated but unannounced ninth album.

The band said it would play from May 20 to Oct 4 at major arenas in Amsterdam, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City, with two shows in each city except London, where Radiohead will play three.

The British rockers were already announced as headliners for eight festivals including Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Summer Sonic in Japan and the European edition of Lollapalooza in Berlin.

“These are all the headline shows that the band will play in 2016,” the band said in a statement Monday.

Revealed

Radiohead, which has continually sought new ways to release music, has not revealed any details of the next album other than to confirm that the band has been in the studio.

Primavera Sound, when announcing its lineup in January, said in a press release that Radiohead would be presenting its new album at the festival but later revised the wording.

The new studio album would be Radiohead’s first since 2011’s “King of the Limbs” which played wildly with traditional song structure by using as a base a loop of music that the band had previously recorded.

Radiohead has sold more than 30 million albums since emerging in the heyday of alternative rock in the early 1990s.

But the band soon swapped guitar rock for more electronic and experimental sounds starting with 1997’s influential album “OK Computer.”

Radiohead has not performed live since 2012, although frontman Thom Yorke has played a series of solo shows including Saturday at Britain’s electronic Bloc festival which organizers are ending after a 10-year run.

Yorke in 2014 released a second solo album, “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes” which is dominated by electronic rifts and reflections on the role of the individual in industrial society.

Radiohead on Christmas Day released a song that the band recorded for the latest James Bond movie “Spectre” that the filmmakers ultimately did not use.

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