#WhatsHappening for February 9, 2017

Hey kids- howaya?

Anyone else having trouble with the weather? I mean, is it still winter or not (yes, according to the calendar- no, according to the forecasted high of 70 tomorrow)? Still- glad I don't live in the northeast right now! I've had a sinus headache for three months now- I can't imagine how bad my head would hurt if I was stuck in a blizzard. Anyway...

Aretha Franklin says she will be cutting way back on the frequency of her live performances once she releases her new album this fall. 

"I am retiring this year," Franklin told Detroit's WDIV. "I will be recording, but this will be my last year in concert. This is it." 

The Queen of Soul says she feels comfortable with the decision. "I feel very, very enriched and satisfied with respect to where my career came from and where it is now," she noted. "I'll be pretty much satisfied, but I'm not going to go anywhere and just sit down and do nothing. That wouldn't be good either."
Work on the new album hasn't begun, but Franklin says the set will include a variety of genres. "We're not pigeonholed to any one thing," she said, and added that Stevie Wonder would be producer on a number of tracks.

A study at Canada’s McGill University shows that music affects the brain in a very similar way to sex and drugs, according to results published in the Scientific Reports Journal.

Participants were given naltrexone, a drug that prevents the brain’s pleasure-making opioid system from working properly and researchers said the subjects didn't experience the same sense of pleasure they would normally would when they hearing their favorite songs. 

When researchers played songs the subjects didn't like, there was no noticeable difference in their response to the music.

"This is the first demonstration that the brain’s own opioids are directly involved in musical pleasure," said the study’s senior author, cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin. "The findings... were what we hypothesised."

I dig music, but as Charles Jefferson's little brother said in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, "I like sex."

Justin Timberlake tells The Hollywood Reporter he left N*Sync because "I was growing out of it." 

Timberlake says that his time with the group "started as a fun snowball fight that was becoming an avalanche" and that he "just felt like the whole thing was too big."

Now if he'd just explain that weird perm thing he had going.

Birthdays today include:  Travis Tritt; Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood; Dennis Thomas of Kool & The Gang; Major Harris of the Delfonics; Carole King; and Barry Mann. #MusicalBirthdays