Daily Archives: February 6, 2021

Published 02-01-21

Submitted by Bacardi Limited

HAMILTON, Bermuda, February 1, 2021 /CSRwire/Bacardi Limited, the world's largest privately-held spirits company, has its eye on the future. It just released theBacardi Cocktail Trends Report, the company's second annual edition, revealing how recent cultural shifts have re-shaped the beverage industry. Created in collaboration with The Future Laboratory (TFL), a London-based consultancy, the report predicts the changes that will happen in cocktail consumption in 2021. It also relates insights collected from the global network of Bacardi ambassadors, as well as bartenders and other industry experts.

"The pandemic has shifted mindsets and accelerated emerging trends, and the Bacardi Cocktail Trends Report is a window to these changes," says Brenda Fiala, Global Vice President, Strategic Insights and Analytics for Bacardi.

"These insights help us navigate the consumer landscape and set the course for future growth, as we enter a new year in which adults of legal drinking age are looking forward to reestablishing connection, creating new rituals, and toasting to simple moments of celebration with loved ones."

Prior to lockdowns, only 1% of spirits sales were online as people werent really aware of shopping of bottles or cocktails via their browsers. Within weeks of lockdowns, consumers discovered they can buy spirits online and have them delivered right to their door, leading to exponential growth of online spirits sales. A new culture of convenience, enabled by the meteoric rise of e-comm, is on the rise.

Drizly, an alcohol e-commerce platform, grew by 350% in 2020, according to IWSR. An appetite for convenience, and a new abundance of caution, have together sparked a 131% rise in ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktails in the U.S. (Nielsen CGA).

As this category flourishes further this year, expect to see some new players in the game.

The Italianaperitivois being embraced across the globe, spiking interest in bitters in particular. As consumers thirst for a familiar reprieve from lockdown life, classic cocktails are also growing in popularity, as are pursuits of fun twists on these time-honored staples.

More people are pushing the boundaries of experimentation with cocktails like the chili whisky sour and turmeric-infused gin and ginger cocktails, suggesting the emergence of gustatory thrill-seeking.

The classics are back but with a futuristic twist, says Martin Raymond, co-founder of The Future Laboratory. He further predicts that, At home, weve learned to make these drinks. But once bars are up and running again, well be expecting our favorite bartenders and places to match, confound and challenge us with the future faced fusions and variation builds and tastes theyve been perfecting during lockdown super-charged bitters, volatile sweets when we expect gentle sours, even hyper-local elixirs that distil the best weeds, mosses, and lichens with the exactness of a chemist. If yesterdays bartender was about skill and mixology, tomorrows one is a about alchemy and disruption.

According to Bacardi, 20% of customers are now keen to explore drinks that weren't on their radar pre-lockdown, including premium versions of their favorite spirits or of others they haven't sampled before. As a result, we'll see more elevated, to-go options, as well as premium batched cocktails.

In North America, the best premiumization opportunities are in tequila (60%), dark rum (32%), and mezcal (29%). In Europe, gin is booming, and it is the top trending spirit globally (51%), based on insights gleaned from the Bacardi Global Brand Ambassador Survey.

This desire for more environmentally conscious consumption has also entered into bars and restaurants. 58% of Bacardi brand ambassadors in North America say they have noticed an increase in bartenders interest in zero-waste ingredients.

Bars and restaurants are starting to take note of this shift. Many have adopted hybrid menus that offer drinks in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions, and many more likely will this year.

Download the completeBacardi Cocktail Trends Report 2021andInfographic.

About Bacardi Limited

Bacardi Limited, the largest privately held spirits company in the world, produces and markets internationally recognized spirits and wines. The Bacardi Limited brand portfolio comprises more than 200 brands and labels, including BACARD rum, GREY GOOSE vodka, PATRN tequila, DEWARS Blended Scotch whisky, BOMBAY SAPPHIRE gin, MARTINI vermouth and sparkling wines, CAZADORES 100% blue agave tequila, and other leading and emerging brands including WILLIAM LAWSONS Scotch whisky, ST-GERMAIN elderflower liqueur, and ERISTOFF vodka. Founded more than 158 years ago in Santiago de Cuba, family-owned Bacardi Limited currently employs more than 7,000, operates production facilities in 11 countries, and sells its brands in more than 170 countries. Bacardi Limited refers to the Bacardi group of companies, including Bacardi International Limited. Visithttp://www.bacardilimited.comor follow us onTwitter,LinkedInorInstagram.

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From Domestic Hedonism To Mindful Moderation, the Bacardi Survey Reveals Spirits Trends Sparked by Cultural Shifts Last Year - CSRwire.com

In a feat of rarely-realised and prescient self-awareness, the new-fangled MTV launched on 1 August 1981 with a premiere of The Buggles Video Killed The Radio Star. The one-hit wonder for the British band was - and remains to this day - a sharp and addictive hit: the new-wave nous, the cacophony of instruments, the swooning bridge all make for a truly timeless listen. Lest we forget the music video - filmed in one day - that the song hit with, a maximalist budget-breaker that became the first ever music video to air on MTV forty years ago this August.

It was, for all intents and purposes, the worlds first music video smash: a full-formed narrative visual that sat with the songs themes and put the artists on a new kind of pedestal. Here, we start our investigation into some of the music videos weve gotten ever since: the ones that have burned our retinas; the ones that have made sex symbols of unknowns; the ones that changed the way the medium works completely.

On Video Killed The Radio Star, we join Trevor Horn in a high contrast effect as he leans in to sing those opening lines: I heard you on the wireless back in 52. A young girl (who would now be about fifty years old) interacts with a comically-large radio while wearing a fetching pair of green socks paired with sandals. Soon, she evolves into a lurex-clad woman, who represents the scene-stealing television and its futuristic connotations.

Theres a hell of a lot going on in this shoot: surely part of the reason why the video was chosen as MTVs first. While most songs of the era and before featured unfussy lip syncing on stage, this Russell Mulcahy-directed film goes well-in with nauseous hand-held zooming, glitzy costumes, early SFX and ramshackle set design. Consider, if you will, the scene at 2 minutes nine seconds, in which televisions fell a bunch of radios, revealing a paper-thin flooring covered in a hasty icing of rubble, which takes us out of the narrative with its flagrant slap-dash finish. Still, on the whole its a high-budget affair for the time, and one that reflects the new-fangled hedonism of the tune nicely.

Horn called The Buggles "a robot Beatles" in an interview with The Guardian in 2018, and those influences can certainly be seen here in modish cyberman suits, alongside an apparently unconscious fetishism of everything Bowie. Some might dismiss the roughly tugged foil paper background, the less-than-smooth employent of fly harnessing and the goofy costumes worn by Horn and his bandmates. For all of these things and more, critciism would be fair. And yet very few moments of this landmark video can be said to be uncharming; only a true fun-sponge could level serious criticism with a straight face.

Maximalism and hedonism are the keys here: precedents that seem to have informed the following forty years, in which we have had progressively more batshit, expensive and inventive music videos.

Stick around for Video Stars: our new column reviewing some of the music videos that we have been gifted since MTV launched forty years ago.

Go here to see the original:

Video Stars: Video Killed The Radio Star - The Buggles (1981) | Gigwise - Gigwise

In the 1920s and 1930s of buttoned-up Britain, homosexuality was an illicit act, and would remain that way until 1967 when the law changed in England and Wales. Even though gay culture was vibrant, it existed mostly underground, its community forced to socialise with a certain degree of covertness in order to avoid exposure and the risk of prison.

Berlin, meanwhile, had emerged from the dark years following the first world war as a cultural hub of creativity and intellectualism, attracting pioneers in the fields of science, psychology, art and literature. The German capital was also a hotbed of hedonism where sexual freedoms and gay culture flourished, and where exciting new forms of music and dance contributed to the febrile atmosphere.

On visits to this liberal metropolis during that period, a small group of young British Conservative Party MPs which included figures such as Ronald Cartland, Anthony Muirhead and Robert Bernays began to witness the growing persecution of certain groups in Germany, including homosexuals and Jews.

This group of Conservative MPs was scathingly dubbed the Glamour Boys in 1938 by their own leader Neville Chamberlain, the then prime minister. Chamberlain, who would become the eventual architect of appeasement in the autumn of 1938, even threatened the group with deselection. The story of the Glamour Boys provides a striking example of how the political establishment was prepared to publicly disparage members of their own party.

Yet, despite the risk of exposing their own homosexuality at a time when it was illegal, the Glamour Boys brought their concerns to parliament throughout the 1930s. The rise of the Nazi party to power in 1933 marked the end of the Weimar Republic that had witnessed the cultural explosion of Berlin. A crackdown on gay culture in Germany saw the detainment of homosexuals, alongside police raids on popular bars and nightclubs.

But opposition to the rise of Hitler was certainly not the prevailing attitude in Britain at the time, either at Westminster or in public. There was plenty of enthusiasm for the Fhrer among certain sections of British society including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who met Hitler in Germany in 1937. Yet, even though the concerns of the Glamour Boys were vindicated as the 1930s and 1940s progressed, British history has failed to appreciate their prescience in the same manner as it has figures such as Winston Churchill.

The activity of the Glamour Boys peaked between 1938 and 1940, as Europe accelerated towards war. The Whitehall Newsletter provided a mouthpiece through which the group voiced their concerns at the growing threat of Nazism. The group was also prominent in parliamentary debates during the period, including those in 1938 surrounding the Munich Agreement which allowed German annexation of the Sudetenland, in western Czechoslovakia.

This group of young MPs provided essential critical mass to the dissenting anti-appeasement movements within the House of Commons, which came to be spearheaded by the likes of Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill. Without such backing, the two would have remained voices in the wind until the outbreak of war in 1939 became imminent.

The opposition to the rise of Nazism offered by Winston Churchill throughout his wilderness years of the 1930s has been well-documented. In a famous speech of November 1934, he expressed concern at rapid German rearmament. In British historical memory, Churchill has come to be viewed as a prophet of the horrors that were yet to unravel.

But the foresight and instincts of the Glamour Boys have faded from public memory. The story has only recently garnered attention, in large part thanks to the research of current Labour MP Chris Bryant whose book, The Glamour Boys:The Secret Story of the Rebels Who Fought for Britain to Defeat Hitler, sheds light on the story.

We should question why the Glamour Boys have not occupied a more prominent position in narratives of the second world war era. Churchills political renaissance and redemptive rise to prime minister naturally magnified his own actions in the 1930s. This has likely come at the historical expense of other groups such as the Glamour Boys, who had also been vocal in their opposition to Nazism at the time.

It seems plausible that the sexuality of the Glamour Boys has prevented them from receiving their historical place. LGBT+ histories have not been well-accommodated in British narratives of the past. Only legalised in England and Wales in 1967, homosexuality remained taboo in the decades that followed. The fact that that the contemptuous moniker Glamour Boys endures perhaps speaks for itself.

Similarly, gay wartime codebreaker Alan Turing was only granted a posthumous royal pardon in 2013 for his conviction for gross indecency in 1952, which resulted in his brutal chemical castration.

Every February, LGBT+ History Month offers a chance to reflect on society past and present, and consider how certain stories have been airbrushed from national history. The political views and sexual orientation of the Glamour Boys have been marginalised, both at the time and retrospectively, despite their important contribution to British society. We need to reflect on how enduring social prejudices have shaped the way in which the nation remembers its past.

The Glamour Boys offer just one opportunity among many to diversify entrenched national narratives. There is danger in ignoring the voices of marginalised groups, and continual effort is required to eradicate unconscious bias in whichever context it might appear. It also provides a reminder of why history must feature narratives that contain multiple voices and perspectives, besides those of the status quo.

Above all, the story of the Glamour Boys is one of bravery. The courage displayed by this group of MPs extended well into the second world war, when several were killed in military action. In a time when homosexuality was prohibited, this group of young gay MPs risked their liberty and later their lives in the pursuit of social and political justice.

Read more:

LGBT+ history month: remembering the Glamour Boys' the gay MPs who warned 1930s Britain about Nazism - The Conversation UK

Almost 10 years after the release of Friday, the auto-tune-heavy song that laboured over weekdays and memorably rhymed seat with seat, its time to set the record straight once and for all. Despite being treated like a punchline throughout her entire teens, Rebecca Black is cool. Case in point: her actually-pretty-good latest single Girlfriend. Its a pointed move from the queer artist, who seems less interested in pinning down her fluid sexuality to any one specific label and more interested in smashing out undeniable bops. And bloody good on her!

10 years ago, Rebecca Black, then a 13-year-old from Anaheim, California, had vague aspirations of going to study performing arts and when a classmate made a music video with LAs Ark Music Factory, Black decided to do the same. Founded in 2010 by Patrice Wilson (who raps on Friday and also appears in the video), the business put out tracks with aspiring artists in exchange for money: mostly they shot low-budget music videos for teenagers like Rebecca Black, who signed up wanting to boost her chances of getting into college. I really didnt think that much about it because nobodys going to see it, Black told Slate last year.

Despite being mercilessly ripped to shreds at the time, Friday is a high-camp masterpiece. From the very beginning, its completely nonsensical. When Rebeccas mates surely not old enough to hold driving licences, but besides the point pull up alongside her in a convertible, she spends an entire pre-chorus deliberating over whether to call shotgun on the front passenger seat. Despite the suggestion that theyre all setting off for school, the group of truants drive instead to what resembles an under-18s proto-frat party for a healthy dollop of partyin partyin, fun, fun fun sung by Black from beneath about 700 layers of auto-tune and robotic vocal treatment.

Though Black may not have set out intending to parody tropes of pop music, Friday certainly succeeds in this respect anyway. Years before ultra-cool production house PC Music were satirising the most auto-tuned elements of 00s pop, Friday was inadvertently skewering them, and like majority of genuinely camp moments, it got there by accident. Though Black copped a lot of backlash at the time, the track has become a mainstay of certain gay bars, a lip-synch favourite for drag queens everywhere and Tyler, The Creators dance break of choice while performing with Odd Future. Rebecca Black herself even ended up performing it at RuPauls Los Angeles DragCon while decked out in a leopard-print suit nicked straight out of Kat Slaters wardrobe. Next stop, guest judge on RuPauls Drag Race?

When the song went viral, Ark offered to take the video down, and she refused. God knows why, but I said no, she told Slate. I think something told me, Ugh, if you do that, then everybody else wins, and youve just immediately given up any sort of little bit of power you had. An amateur music video intended for YouTube obscurity, Friday spread like wildfire instead and was quickly hailed the worst music video ever made, according to one viral tweet. Though some of the mocking was in relatively good humour, Black also received abusive messages and even death threats.

Unlike most viral moments, Friday didnt just fizzle out a couple of days later she kept the flame alight by, essentially, being a massive laugh. A few months after her accidental breakthrough, Rebecca Black popped up in Katy Perrys video for Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.), corrupting Perrys nerdy lead character and leading her down a path of partying and hedonism. Two years later, Black released its sequel, Saturday and gently poked fun at Friday in the process munching Cheerios from a container labelled with the lyric gotta have my bowl and mimicking aspects of Fridays bizarre delivery. Whatever your feelings towards either song, theres no denying that she entered into the spirit of things.

A synth-poppy EP titled RE/BL followed in 2017; though broadly underwhelming, it marked a clear and deliberate step away from Friday with intriguing production choices and a few signs of early promise. Two years later, Anyway channelling vague hints of The 1975 and MUNA was far better. Last year Closer and Self Sabotage surpassed them. And in the ultimate cool move, Rebecca Black ended up teaming up with experimental pop figurehead Dorian Electra for Edgelord chucking in a couple more referential piss-takes aimed at Friday along the way.

Her latest, Girlfriend is a sapphic pop banger cast in a similar mould to Katy Perrys Teenage Dream, but made super-gay. To mark the 10th anniversary of Friday meanwhile, theres talk of a commemorative remix. And ultimately, this is why Rebecca Black is way, way cooler than most of your faves who made dubious decisions early in their careers. A decade later, shes still completely in on the joke and with 149 million views for Friday, its safe to say that she also had the last laugh.

The rest is here:

Why Rebecca Black has been cool all along (and 'Friday' is a masterpiece) - NME