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Flavorwire

New York

Flavorwire’s Throwing a Party in New York With Blondes, Shams, and Teengirl Fantasy

By Tom Hawking on

We’re having a party! If you’re in NYC on Tuesday night, head along to The DL on Delancey St for #AFK, which is hosted by Silent Drape Runners and co-presented by Internet Week and our friends at Ad Hoc. The lineup is pretty ace — there’ll be DJ sets from… Read More

Music

The 10 Best Songs We Heard This Week: The National, Solange

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means we’re preparing for the inaugural Flavorwire staff trivia contest (really), and also that we are, as ever, rounding up the best songs we’ve heard this week. This week we adored new tracks from Liars, Julianna Barwick, and Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, marveled at the fact that Giorgio Moroder is soundtracking a Google Chrome racing game, enjoyed atmospheric goodness from oOoOO and When Saints Go Machine, got all morose with another new track from The National, and plenty more. All this goodness is streaming now, and it all awaits you after the jump. … Read More

Music

The 10 Most Gloriously Ridiculous Eurovision Entries of Our Time

By Tom Hawking on

Tomorrow is the final of the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, that quintessentially European event wherein a curious selection of pop stars, comedians, and oddballs from around the continent compete to submit the most absurd pop song of the year for the glory of King/Queen/Secular President and country. The contest is generally surreal, hilarious, and as camp as a tent city, and this year isn’t any different. In honor of the perennially amusing event — and because you could surely use some silliness to help you through Friday afternoon — here are some of the most gloriously ridiculous Eurovision entrants of our time. … Read More

Celebrity

In Defense of Justin Bieber: Why America Turns on Male Child Stars Who Try to Grow Up

By Tom Hawking on

You’ve no doubt read the hysterical, salacious coverage of the ongoing disaster that has been Justin Bieber’s European tour: the scuffles with god-awful photographers in England, the “drug bust” (i.e., getting busted for smoking weed — a nation gasps!), the bizarre heist that apparently involved someone absconding with all the money from the tour’s Johannesburg date. And the monkey. Oh, the monkey. The whole sorry business has certainly had its fair share of perverse car-crash comedy potential, but it’s also illustrative of the way in which society tends to turn on child stars — and especially male ones — once late adolescence starts intruding on their polished cuteness. … Read More

Television

Popular TV Shows Improved by Diddy

By Tom Hawking on

Just like pretty much everyone else on the Internet, the inhabitants of Flavorwire central giggled heartily at the news yesterday that Diddy was trying to inveigle his way onto Downton Abbey. The fact that the whole thing was a clever piece of promotion for a pretty amusing Funny or Die video didn’t dampen our enthusiasm any — by then, we’d moved onto envisaging other TV shows that we’d like to see Diddy on, and breaking out Photoshop to make our dreams a reality. See the results of our fantasies after the jump. … Read More

Music

How Does Google Play Music All Access Compare to Spotify and Rdio?

By Tom Hawking on

Another week, another new streaming music service. Yesterday Google launched the not-so-catchily-titled Google Play Music All Access, a subscription service that basically extends Google’s existing music service to create a Spotify/Rdio-style magic jukebox, and also includes a Pandora-style, algorithm-based radio station. Like Spotify and Rdio (but unlike most of Google’s other services), it costs money — it’s $9.99 a month, or $7.99 if you start a trial before the end of June, and there’s no free option. So, is it worth it? … Read More

Design

Comic Book Covers Featuring ’80s Post-Punk/New Wave Singers as Superheroes

By Tom Hawking on

If you’re a regular-ish reader, you might remember that Flavorwire has featured the work of a pop culture and Smiths-obsessed Brazilian artist by the name of Butcher Billy a couple of times over the last few years. Well, he’s back, and this time he’s designed a series of faux comic-book covers featuring ’80s post punk/new wave singers (including Morrissey, of course) as superheroes. They’re amazing. Obviously. … Read More

Music

65 Immortal Brian Eno Quotes for His 65th Birthday

By Tom Hawking on

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno turns 65 today. He’s been one of the most erudite, intelligent, fascinating (and quietly, delightfully batshit crazy) people in the music industry for the best part of 45 years, and so to celebrate his birthday, we thought we’d do what we’ve done for John Waters and Michael Caine, and round up the most illuminating, interesting and occasionally bewildering things he’s said over the years. Enjoy the collected wisdom of the great man after the jump! … Read More

Music

Meet Your New Favorite Band: Majical Cloudz on Radical Vulnerability and the Mythologizing of Montreal

By Tom Hawking on

Meet Your New Favorite Band is a new regular feature where Flavorwire interviews an emerging band whose work we love. This month: the marvelous Majical Cloudz, who are due to release their excellent new album Impersonator next Tuesday via Matador.

Devon Welsh is standing on a chair. He and Matthew Otto, make up the duo Majical Cloudz — a band whose intimately melancholy music rather belies its rave-tastic moniker — have been on stage at Brooklyn’s Bell House for about half an hour. While they’re ostensibly here to support Youth Lagoon, a significant proportion of the crowd has clearly either come to see them or has been won over by their songs. … Read More

Music

A Selection of Criminally Underrated Britpop Anthems

By Tom Hawking on

It’s the time of year for hilarious reader-voted music lists, it seems. First there was Rolling Stone‘s Worst Bands of the 1990s, which embarrassingly dubbed Nirvana the fifth-worst band of the decade, and now there’s the NME‘s Greatest Britpop Anthems, in which the first five spots are all filled by Oasis songs. If you go by the NME readership’s version of history, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Oasis and Blur were the only two bands writing decent songs during the 1990s, with the occasional token mention for Suede and Pulp. Clearly, this isn’t the case. So here’s a selection of underrated Britpop anthems by bands — some of which even include women! — that didn’t make NME‘s list. … Read More