Jesús Mantas’ Post

I regularly find innovation lessons in peculiar areas. It's been known to show up in some gritty, roughhewn and magical places for me... Songwriting is one of those places. I've known many musicians and have witnessed songs come to life, but I simply can't explain the magic of how disparate sounds become a song. I saw Shane MacGowan, the original frontman and lyricist of The Pogues, died early this morning. Many of you will be playing his dark Christmas classic, "Fairytale of New York," this season without being fully aware of the mark The Pogues left on popular music. Innovation can happen by breaking convention. It can also happen by forcing together unlikely ingredients in uncommon ways. The Pogues managed to wedge elements of traditional Irish folk melodies and instrumentation with a filthy "kick-in-the-door" punk attitude. MacGowan fused those together with lyrical elegance that only Irish poets seem to have. Contrary to reason, even his songs about dying had the capacity to make fans feel alive. Irish-infused punk has become a pretty ubiquitous musical genre. We take it for granted that it's always been there. It's the familiar soundtrack for every Irish pub in every north American college town. Shane MacGown and The Pogues effectively created that entire genre. It might be argued they opened the door for musicians all over the world who sought to fuse their traditional folk sounds with a punk urgency. Shane's voice was not empirically pretty. It sounded like gravel and bootleg, bathtub whiskey. I definitely would not want to have been that dude's liver either, but he sure could put words together. There are plenty of great, singular musical talents out there. Singular, however, doesn't mean innovative. Taylor Swift, for example is singular and great at what she does, but (for now) isn't breaking new musical ground. That's okay, most do not. I'm not yet sure precisely what innovation lessons I take from Shane's story beyond: 1. Be Yourself 2. Speak What You Know 3. Use Your Voice Boldly 4. Don't Be Afraid To Break A Few Things (Or, fuse unexpected things together by sheer force of will) I'm sure there are some tears being shed into pint glasses all over the world today. Here's to dead Irish poets and inspiration that fuels the heart. https://lnkd.in/gWyMXgGk

The rapid adoption of the Suno AI song generator has triggered speculation that AI will supplant music created by humans.  Well, Taylor Swift didn’t get the memo. Her new album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is breaking the internet, achieving wide acclaim, and winning over her most determined critics for one reason: she shares her humanity through songs she writes or co-writes with other people. She’s not having Suno do the heavy lifting for her. No, she’s writing deeply personal songs – perhaps her most personal yet. Her album is a sprawling, messy, and glorious exploration of what it means to be a human being. To try to live up to expectations. To endure heartbreak. To process turmoil with humor and anger. Reviewers are responding to the humanity that shines through, describing the album as “daggers wrapped in a lullaby (CNN),” “written in blood (NPR),” “grief, self-loathing, and the tales and tolls of her relationships (Pitchfork).” I knew the album had really broken through overnight when the curmudgeonly Marc Campbell, founder of the punk rock band the Nails and never a Taylor booster, wrote on Facebook that the album is “shockingly good.” The album has already become Spotify’s most streamed album in a single day in 2024 just hours into its release. More records will fall. Why does all this matter? Because “The Tortured Poets Department,” based on human feelings and written by a human, is already doing more than connecting with Taylor Swift’s fan base. The distinctly personal songs are making an impact everywhere only hours after they’ve been released. I read here on LinkedIn recently that the rise of Suno means that live music will become more popular as people seek out art created by humans. Hey, I love live music and attend my share of concerts. But concert performers still need a base of recorded music to generate a real following. More importantly: please, let’s not write off recorded music so quickly. Recorded music – the type that makes an impact – is still written by humans for humans. #AI #TaylorSwift #TorturedPoetsDepartment #Music #Suno #LITrendingTopics #TheInsider  https://lnkd.in/gg8bZ5-h

𝕄𝕒𝕞𝕒 𝕒𝕝𝕨𝕒𝕪𝕤 𝕥𝕠𝕝𝕕 𝕞𝕖 𝕟𝕠𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕝𝕠𝕠𝕜 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕤 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕤𝕦𝕟 𝔹𝕦𝕥 𝕞𝕒𝕞𝕒, 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥'𝕤 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕗𝕦𝕟 𝕚𝕤 (c) 1973 by Bruce Springsteen The history of the song Blinded by The Light provides many lessons Blinded By The Light is a song written and performed by Bruce Springsteen on his debut album "Greetings from Asbury Park"... I LOVE Springsteen's version. Then Manfred Mann's Earth Band (MMEB) released the cover version on their Roaring Silence in 1976. I LOVE this version too. It is completely different and equally exciting. The first lesson of covers (or copying another's success): MAKE IT YOUR OWN! It bugs me when someone releases a cover that models the original nearly note by note. This should be left to tribute or cover bands. Of course, albums are all but extinct at this point. Sigh. Chris Thompson (lead vocals on Roaring Silence) mistook "revved up like a Deuce, another runner in the night" as douche. Lesson two of copying someone else's work to feed your own: UNDERSTAND the underlying lessons and meaning. As Chris learned "Deuce" is a nickname for hot rod in the 1930s... not a feminine product used to collect certain emissions... Get over it guys... it's anatomy... you're an adult (say it to yourself). The final lesson regarding leveraging someone else's experience to accelerate your own is... Although The Roaring Silence was one of MMEB's most successful albums (pretty good for a band which had Top 100 hits across two decades from Do Wah Diddy Diddy ('63) to Runner ('84)) it was very hard to find for a long time (except for live versions). Why? The music industry (especially in the United States) is and always has been like an Ouroboros... it makes immediate decisions which basically has it eating itself to survive. Often catering to egos and/or bad habits of musicians for immediate profit for the biz but to the overall detriment of the band or musician. MMEB made moves to help protect their work from the biz. As such, the biz made it difficult for people to find after they got their profit from it. Lesson? A threefold lesson: 1) Protect your own interest (no one else will and/or care) 2) Consider the benefits and consequences of your decisions and actions 3) Move forward with confidence and acceptance I have never had the honor of interviewing MMEB but based on their longevity I would guess they are satisfied with being able to do something they loved for decades. They are okay with the fact the album was difficult to find for quite some time. What have we learned? Accelerate your success by learning from those that have gone before. Remember to: Understand the underlying lessons fully Make it your own Move forward with confidence and acceptance There is no better way to facilitate more people's success than: Living your best life creates a better world for everyone. #success #livelife #learnthings #leverage #makeityourown

FOR THE GOOD TIMES A timeless classic penned by Singer/ Songwriter Kris Kristofferson in 1968. It is as vintage as me now. It is about the end of a love he experienced. This song has been covered by many many but definitely crooners like Perry Como, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Kenny Rogers, Engelbert Humperdinck, Frank Sinatra, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Randy Travis and one of favorites Anne Murray. What a minute.... Sharing a mushy love song on LinkedIn? Isn't that a sin? Doesn't it break some law? There are some infuriated steamed up people sitting on tall equines now getting ready to de-horse and shoot me down with their cold stares, spitting fire. Of course I understand.. LinkedIn is for professionals and professionals only work. They don't listen to songs, sing, dance, drink or get sad. They only talk off efficiency, management, agility, promotions, awards & happy thoughts. Really? I've work 30 plus years and haven't met me no such guy or gal ever. (Try saying that with a cowboy slang!!) Well, as a matter a fact. I love these old songs. They carry a soft tune that is able to turn back the clock to a gentler time. Even if you are not nursing a broken heart, it is still a darn good song. I especially enjoy this soulful version by Anne Murray. So stop being a LinkedIn snob. You can go looking for the 7 steps to Project Management Nirvana or mindset thoughts to hold tightly to for success in LinkedIn or the updated Accounting Practices for 3rd world countries or how to better flatter your boss later. Stop pretending to be a professional for a bit. Get into the spirit. Turn up the volume and sing along. You know the words.. or you can look at the screen for the Karaoke prompts. Just listen to it for a moment. Give it a chance. Let the tune, the words get inside you. It might just be the thing to get your Monday going. NEXT - https://lnkd.in/g3XWuyJT PREV - https://lnkd.in/gNURbUFK _____________________ What I do : https://lnkd.in/fnSmTWP What Others Say : https://lnkd.in/gnMX-sy7 Follow Me : https://lnkd.in/gVigztMt Ring My Bell : https://lnkd.in/d3uEPS5D I run the #LBFalumni & #SkyHighTower tribes 19/02/24 cc - KineMaster

Almost everyone knows what “deja vu” means, especially since it was the name of a popular album by Crosby Stills Nash & Young released in 1970 at the peak of the hippie era. Songs like “Woodstock,” “Our House” and “Teach Your Children” immortalized not just the album but the title. Deja vu is a French term meaning an intense feeling that an experience you are having right now was also experienced in the past. You could be on your first visit to Iceland and get a feeling a Deja vu that has no apparent connection to your past. But did you know there are other “vu’s” that describe other odd experiences? The “opposite” of Deja vu is called "jamais vu.” Jamais vu is the feeling that you are seeing something familiar for the first time, and it’s quite unnerving. The first time we see anything — our home, our spouse, our street, a word — is totally different from the way we see it after a thousand times. But sometimes you can get the odd sensation that something familiar seems new and strange. You can take almost any word and stare at it or repeat it over and over until it just looks weird. Or just stare at your hand for half an hour. It can begin to look alien. Musicians can be playing a song they’ve played a thousand times and suddenly forget the next note or word. You can be driving on a familiar highway and suddenly forget what the next exit is. Even people we know can sometimes seem new and strange if we stare at them when we’re in a certain frame of mind. Thats jamais vu. Jamais vu can be quite unsettling sometimes and may even provoke an anxiety attack. No, there is nothing wrong with you if you have these experiences, but scientists are just beginning to study them.

John Winston Lennon Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the date John Lennon was murdered outside of his home in New York City on December 8, 1980. Born on October 9th, 1940, John was a founding member of The Beatles and went on to have a successful solo career after their breakup. Whether John was writing pop, avant-garde, or rock music, his lyrics ranged anywhere from serious, introspective to the insane or calling for activism. To celebrate the artist and musician that was John Lennon, here is a playlist I put together. The playlist starts with three songs released posthumously as Beatles songs, taken from demos provided to the remaining Beatles by Yoko Ono. We then move into some John’s “serious” songs. From there we move into more experimental music after which we move into a group of introspective songs. After introspection we move into the insane, and from there into some of his more activist-charged songs. Like him or love him, you cannot argue that he helped changed what music could be. I’m sure for every song on this list there are two or three I “should” have included. I had to draw a line somewhere! I also intentionally steered clear of the early Beatles catalogue as that is when Paul and John worked closer together; those songs are truly more collaborative than these and many of the later Beatles repertoire. Your best bet is to familiarize yourself with the entire Beatles and Lennon catalogue, but for the uninitiated, consider this a primer. The links: Apple: https://lnkd.in/gnkQ5GMv Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gSq5jVNC YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gCuFHD_P

Good morning LinkedIn! I wanted to share my next case study, which is an album near and dear to my heart… Taylor Swift’s 1989 🩵 This year marks the 10 year anniversary of the original release (while coincidentally is also the one year anniversary of the re-recording) and its impact still resonates greatly in pop culture. It catapulted Taylor Swift’s career to new heights at the time (which of course in Swift fashion, she would surpass such milestones to unprecedented heights) Here are a few highlights on why 1989 is the definition of the perfect album era: The Importance of World Building 🗺️🏗️: “Worldbuilding” is a literary practice where writers would construct the story’s setting. Prime example would be George R.R. Martin’s massively successful A Song of Ice & Fire series. His style was the “Secondary Universe” practice, where one would draw inspirations from the real world to the story’s setting they are writing. 1989 is a chapter of Taylor Swift’s story of moving to New York where she goes through an artistic rebirth. She would start building her version of New York City in “Welcome To New York.” It would be further expanded in her later albums up until Midnights. As each album passed on since 1989, it intrigued fans on Taylor’s evolving story. The Taylor Effect 📷: Coined by a recent Forbes case study, “The Taylor Effect” is when the collective public follows a celebrity’s every move and was named after Taylor Swift’s historic impact in 2023. It deferred to the social contagion theory, which is the way influence spreads through conscious or unconscious imitation. This applies to the “Taylor Effect” because of how the pop star fostered a community whose culture thrives both in the digital space as well as in the live space. Her every action would create ripples of information from one person over to another. Having An Artistic Rebirth 🖼️: If it wasn’t for 1989 and the pop-leaning lead up since Fearless, Taylor Swift wouldn’t be the pop icon she is today. It goes to show that by having a pivot in your artistic direction gradually, you would be making ripple effects on culture. But most importantly, growing as a person and reaching your potential in whatever endeavor you pursue. It’s welcomed to embrace the unknown and create what’s never been done before. You never know, you might be onto something. Disclaimer: for any incorrect/or missing information, please let me know to correct. The 1989 era was massive and I had to divide this deck into two (the condensed version for LinkedIn viewing purposes) Case Study: https://lnkd.in/eVY6ym3N Timeline: https://lnkd.in/eRPTkXam #TaylorSwift #10YearAnniversary #Swifties #1989TaylorsVersion #UniversalMusicGroup #RepublicRecords #ThePopBible #MusicBusiness #NewYorkCity #CaseStudy #AlbumRollout #Worldbuilding #Literature #TheTaylorEffect #SocialContagion #GeorgeRRMartin

Here is one of my favorite observations from David Abram. In Spell of the Sensuous he writes, "In a culture as thoroughly and complexly oral as Greek culture in this period, the alphabet could take root only by allying itself, at first, with the oral tradition. Thus, the first large written texts to appear in Greece — namely, the Iliad and the Odyssey — are paradoxically, ‘oral texts.’ That is they are not written compositions, as had long been supposed, but rather alphabetic transcriptions of orally chanted poems. Homer, as an oral bard, or rhapsode (from the Greek rhapsoidein, which meant ‘to stitch song together’), improvised the precise form of the poems by ‘stitching together’ an oral tapestry from a vast fund of memorized epithets and formulaic phrases, embellishing and elaborating a cycle of stories that had already been variously improvised or ‘stitched together’ by earlier bards since the Trojan War itself. This is not at all to minimize Homer’s genius, but simply to indicate that his poetic brilliance was performative as much as creative — less the genius of an author writing a great novel than that of an inspired and eloquent rap artist.” You heard that right, everyone. Western civilization was founded by rap artists. Run and tell that, hehe. All of this affirms my deep desire to center more art, more music, more literature, and more embodied experiences in our Theory of Enchantment live events. So tell me what have been some of the best in-person experiences you've attended, musical or otherwise? What made them spectacular? Let me know in the comments below!

Read the third and final part of my in-depth review of The Harmony Codex, the new album by Steven Wilson - follow link below https://lnkd.in/ezn-4ch6

Pressure   Last Friday I had the pleasure to see Billy Joel in concert in Cardiff together with my oldest son Tim. We often record songs so Tim can share them on his YouTube channel, TDZ Live music (https://lnkd.in/eCPn-igy), for others to enjoy the music and performance as well. One of the songs I recorded was “Pressure”. This morning as I was studying I read about how questions provide pressure (or maybe they inspire and invite us) to formulate ideas, concepts, reason, to find our answers. Reading the word pressure reminded me of the recording. I was curious. Under what circumstances did Billy Joel write this song? What are the lyrics about? What I found is he wrote this song while he was experiencing a moment of writer’s block. On americansongwriter.com there was an article about the meaning behind the song which had this paragraph:  ----- Pressured to write more, the song came when he was only halfway through an album. “I said, ‘Well, what am I gonna do? I don’t have any ideas, it’s gone, it’s dead, I have nothing, nothing, nothing. There’s nothing,’” said Joel. “And then the woman who is my secretary came into the house at that point and said, ‘Wow, you look like you’re under a lot of pressure. I bet you that’d be a good idea for a song.’ And I went, ‘Thank you.’” ----- A feeling, a word. And inspiration was born. The writer’s block was gone. When you think about the word pressure, where in your life do you feel pressured? Where do you experience pressure? What answers are you trying to find? What questions are you asking yourself? How can you turn the pressure into inspiration? Just sit with the word, or watch the video, listen to the song, and if you feel like it … Make some notes … no pressure, see what gets un(b)locked for you. #inspiration #billyjoel #pressure