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When a couple decided to take their relationship further on the most recent season of Love Is Blind, the moment was soundtracked with a familiar song: Billie Eilishs Birds of a Feather. It wasnt a flash-in-the-pan musical surprise. The season was stacked with familiar needle drops Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball, Justin Biebers Holy, Ariana Grandes Into You, Selena Gomezs Lose You to Love Me a gesture away from the little-known, sometimes generic pop songs that used to meet the show’s most emotional moments. Show creator and Kinetic Content CEO Chris Coelen attributed the pivot to the show’s anniversary. We decided, in this Season 8, to coincide with our fifth anniversary, to really embrace popular music in a big way, he said. And so, we ended up using throughout the entire season and in every episode we used popular music cues. Love Is Blind isnt the only reality show that walks the line between what viewers have labeled real songs and unfamiliar music. Where does the unfamiliar music come from? Its not artificial intelligence, where nobody controls the copyright, says The Bachelor music supervisor Jody Friedman. Theres too much risk involved with using AI music in these projects. Excluding big-time pop records, the music used on television comes from a number of sources. It can be custom, original music by the shows composers. It can be licensed directly from artists, or from sync agents, production music libraries or a one stop, what supervisors call a company that has the rights to license both the master recording and the composition rights. Music supervisors might also turn to covers of well-known songs. On the most recent season of The Bachelor, Friedman used a cover of Phil Phillips Sea of Love, a classic 50s tune. Its more affordable to pay to license a cover than the original recording and creatively, its a modern take on an old song, he says. Love Island USA music supervisor Sara Torres also uses covers. That can bring in other listeners that may not necessarily be into pop, but if they hear the song in a different genre, it might pull them in, to go back and listen to the original version, she says. Music libraries companies that represent music catalogs for licensing purposes are key, too, because if a song is too expensive to license, a supervisor can instead find a song that evokes the feeling of BTS Butter without having to pay for it. The indie libraries, lets say, for TV, could be anywhere from $1,000-1,500 per needle drop use, says Friedman. Generally speaking, bigger commercial songs can range from $20,000 to upward of $100,000 depending on the use, he says. A history of using real songs on dating competition shows The use of instantly recognizable pop music differs from program to program. Love Is Blind has used popular music in the past, but sparingly. Coelen points out the use of Lee Ann Womacks I Hope You Dance in Bliss Poureetezadi and Zack Goytowskis story in Season 4. But the frequency of Top 40 hits in the most recent season is new. He says the benefit of using these songs, creatively, is that it elevates the experience, for the viewer: Emotions are so connected to certain pieces of music, and they can conjure up feelings that we relate to. Kinetic Content declined The Associated Press request to speak with the shows music supervisor, Jon Ernst. Love Island USA featured songs like Chappell Roans Kaleidoscope and Sabrina Carpenters Please Please Please in its most recent season. Executive producer James Barker points out that the original U.K. show has always used commercial music, and therefore the U.S. version has endeavored to do the same. The show is meant to feel like youre on vacation with your best friends. Of course, when youre on vacation, youre sharing music, he says. I think that translates into how we create the show. Torres agrees. She adds that the show typically uses more commercial music in the beginning of the season, and then again in the finale you want that big impact. Because the show has a quick turnaround time, with six episodes a week whatever happens in Fiji on Monday airs Tuesday in America, as Barker describes it the show team pre-clears over a thousand songs, just in case they work for a particular narrative moment. That means requests are sent out to publishers and labels ahead of time, but they’re not paid for until the tracks are selected. A show with more lead time, The Bachelor has long used commercial songs in its programming. This year’s season, the show’s 29th, had several memorable musical moments, including a Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin needle drop when I Like It played as the cast made their way to Madrid. This is my first season with The Bachelor, but historically theyve used Colbie Caillat, Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys, lists Friedman. They used Billie Eilish last season. This season we used a David Guetta track, Dropkick Murphys for the episode in Boston. Theres a Karol G track. He adds The Bachelor does use a lot of recognizable pop songs, typically one or two per episode. Each episode does have a budget. So, while they may splurge on a pop song, the rest of the budget is spent on other music that comes at a lower cost, he says. So, will there be more real song drops in the future? For Love Is Blind, Coelen says simply: The answer is yes. Barker from Love Island USA agrees. Not only are you engaged with the characters, but the songs and artists that you care about listening to at home are being represented on television, he adds. Its just a bridge between us all. Maria Sherman, AP music writer
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Scientists have developed a device that can translate thoughts about speech into spoken words in real time. Although its still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak. A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldnt speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial. It converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences, said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Other brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for speech typically have a slight delay between thoughts of sentences and computerized verbalization. Such delays can disrupt the natural flow of conversation, potentially leading to miscommunication and frustration, researchers said. This is “a pretty big advance in our field, said Jonathan Brumberg of the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, who was not part of the study. A team in California recorded the womans brain activity using electrodes while she spoke sentences silently in her brain. The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. They trained an AI model that translates neural activity into units of sound. It works similarly to existing systems used to transcribe meetings or phone calls in real time, said Anumanchipalli, of the University of California, Berkeley. The implant itself sits on the speech center of the brain so that its listening in, and those signals are translated to pieces of speech that make up sentences. Its a streaming approach, Anumanchipalli said, with each 80-millisecond chunk of speech about half a syllable sent into a recorder. Its not waiting for a sentence to finish, Anumanchipalli said. Its processing it on the fly. Decoding speech that quickly has the potential to keep up with the fast pace of natural speech, said Brumberg. The use of voice samples, he added, would be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech.” Though the work was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, Anumanchipalli said it wasn’t affected by recent NIH research cuts. More research is needed before the technology is ready for wide use, but with sustained investments,” it could be available to patients within a decade, he said. Laura Ungar, AP science writer The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Constitutionally, Donald Trump cannot be elected to a third term as president, but thats not stopping him from talking about itand that rhetoric is already on the rise, just 69 days into his second term. Trump, on Sunday, told Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that a lot of people wanted him to serve a third term, adding he was not joking about the idea. Saying there were methods to maneuver around the two-term limit spelled out in the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution set off a lot of alarms among Democrats and Republicans who oppose Trump. Trump, who had floated the idea of running a third time before, said he had not been presented with plans that could, conceptually, keep him in office, but acknowledged one possible way would be for JD Vance to be elected and pass the office on to Trump (who would run as vice president). The Constitutional problem Trump is legally prohibited from running for a third term. The 22nd Amendment sets a two-term limit for presidents, clearly stating no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. While the Constitution can be interpreted in many ways, thats an amendment that seems remarkably straightforwardand while it might appear to quickly clear things up, the last few months have deftly illustrated that rules are being changed in 2025. With a Republican-controlled Senate and House, there has been talk of amending the Constitution, but that would be a Herculean feat. The act of proposing an amendment alone would require two-thirds majorities in both Congressional bodies and the Republicans, simply put, dont have the votes. Ratifying it, meanwhile, would require the sign-off of three-quarters of all state legislatures. Thats not stopping some Trump loyalists from making the effort. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution to read: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms. The chances of passage for the bill (which appears to be carefully written to bar Democratic president Barack Obama from running again) are considered the longest of long shots. The Vance optionand more Running Vance (or any Republican) as a presidential candidate, who resigns upon taking office is something of a leap already. Would Vance (or any politician) be willing to put aside his (or her) own ambitions to hand a presidency to VP Trump after being elected president? Thats questionable. However, the 12th Amendment of the Constitution basically makes that sort of action illegal. It states that, no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States. Some allies, including Stephen Bannon, have suggested a Constitutional loophole exists, though havent offered details. One possible way to sidestep the Constitution would be for Trump to declare a state of emergency as the election nears. That could give him executive powers that are virtually unprecedented (should he have the backing of the Supreme Court) and could open the door to an extended term. Franklin Roosevelt, while Democratically elected, cited World War II as the reason he was breaking the traditional two-term cap. (The 22nd Amendment was passed after his presidency was over.) Trump has made several curious comments over the past year with regards to the 2028 election, perhaps the strangest of which was his remarks to a Christian group where he said, “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.” There is, of course, another possibility here. The chatter of a third term could be yet another distraction for Trumps political opponents, diverting their focus while he enacts changes that would normally garner their attention. Trump has pulled a similar play many times before. While Trump has said hes seriously considering attempting to find a way to control the Oval Office for a third time, he also says hes not making it his priority at the moment. Im not joking, Trump told Welker. But, Im not . . . it is far too early to think about it. Should he find a way to run again, Trump would be 82 years old. He is already the oldest person to be elected to the office.
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