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A Selection of Exercise-Themed Music Videos to Whip You Into Shape

By Tom Hawking on

The well of music video ideas is somewhat limited, and three decades after the advent of MTV, it’s interesting to see the themes that have recurred again and again over the years. One of the more enduring conceits, curiously enough, has been the workout video, either rendered in parodic style or played completely straight. We’re not entirely sure why this is — perhaps because, stereotypically, musicians aren’t generally the ones who enjoy gym class, or perhaps the curiously sexualized imagery of the fitness video provides rich material for satire and also for commentary on our society. In any case, the arrival of the latest addition to the genre — Dan Deacon’s “Crash Jam” — has gotten us thinking about gym-centric videos past and present. … Read More

Music

Ranking Rock Musicians’ Electronic Side Projects from Best to Worst

By Tom Hawking on

Things that we never expected to hear: Okkervil River’s Will Sheff has an electronic side project… and it’s actually quite good. Sheff released a song under the name Lovestreams earlier this week, and we’ve been rather enjoying it here at Flavorpill central, despite initial reservations about what in god’s name it might sound like. The track makes Sheff the latest in a long-ish line of guitar-wielding types who’ve decided that they’re rather like to twiddle knobs on the side, with wildly varying degrees of success. With that in mind, we thought we’d amuse ourselves looking at some such artists, ranking them from the very best to the very, very worst. … Read More

Music

Photos of Famous Musicians Playing in the Snow

By Tom Hawking on

If that was winter, we guess it’s pretty much over, which is depressing news for those of us who actually enjoy the snow (and for anyone worried about, y’know, global warming and the future of the planet.) We’re already looking wistfully back at the photos we published a couple of weeks back of famous authors playing in the snow, and we thought we’d follow up today with similar images of musicians. These were somewhat more difficult to track down — a legacy, perhaps, of the fact that musicians as a whole aren’t exactly noted for being outdoor types — but still, there’s plenty of snow-related musical imagery to be found if you look hard enough. So click through and try to ignore the fact that if these crazy warm summers are anything to go by, these sorts of pictures are probably gonna be the only way to see snow in a few years’ time. Huzzah. … Read More

Partner Buzz

Guessing Game: Can You Identify These Popular Indie Musicians by Their Guitars?

By Jennifer Lewis on

Everyone likes guessing games, right? Well, our pals at Bushmills and Bischoff Guitars recently teamed up with Bon Iver to design a guitar made of Bushmills Irish Whiskey barrels, which was auctioned off to benefit a community arts center in Justin Vernon’s beloved Wisconsin. How cool is that? Even better, they’re currently giving away an awesome custom designed Bushmills guitar strap to 10 lucky winners. Inspired by all this guitar business, we decided to make a fun little quiz to test your knowledge of well-known indie musicians and their guitars. Go ahead and see how you fare, then click here to learn more about the Bon Iver whiskey guitar and enter the contest. Good luck! … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we remembered several Nickelodeon toys most people probably forgot about. We found out what Lil Wayne vs. Rent sounds like. We enjoyed The Onion’s 1990s-riffic BuzzFeed ribbing. We practiced a series of bets that are proven winners. We loved seeing all the cute pups… Read More

Music

Hilariously Awful T-Shirts for Your Favorite Bands

By Judy Berman on

We’ve all been there. You go to see a band you love, the show exceeds your already astronomical expectations, and when it’s all over, you feel the need to take home a memento of the evening. But then you get to merch table and the T-shirts are inexplicably awful. Thankfully, as the excellent Low Times has proven, terrible band T-shirts can be a whole lot funnier than they are disappointing. The site asked its audience to use CustomInk to create the worst designs they could think of, and the results — which feature tributes to the likes of Animal Collective, Bon Iver, and even Kelly Clarkson — are hilarious. Click through for a few of our favorites, and visit Low Times to see all 31 of the finalists (including a design submitted by one Steve Albini). … Read More

Music

10 Auto-Tune Songs That Don’t Suck

By Tom Hawking on

Cat Power’s new album Sun dropped earlier this week, and the fact that she uses Auto-Tune on the track “3, 6, 9″ has generated almost as much interest as the album itself. For an ostensibly innocuous pitch-correction effect, Auto-Tune has generated a heap of controversy over the last decade, ever since Cher introduced it to the world during the chorus of “Believe.” Much of the opprobrium directed at the use of the software is entirely justified (Hi, Eiffel 65! Hi, Chris Cornell!), but that’s not to say that every Auto-Tuned track is a priori awful — so we’ve set ourselves the challenge of finding 10 tracks that use its sound in creative or interesting ways. And for clarity’s sake, we’re discussing Auto-Tune as an audible pseudo-vocoder effect here, not as a production tweak to correct an errant vocal — otherwise every chart song since the turn of the millennium would be eligible. Anyway, let us know if we’ve missed anything. First person to suggest “Believe” or anything by T-Pain gets a lump of coal for Christmas. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Ron Howard has confirmed that he and Brian Grazer will be filming Jay-Z’s Made in America music festival for a feature that will be released next year. “This will not be a concert film,” he explains. “It’s a reflection of the fabric of what it means to be Made in America – what the… Read More

Music

These Are the Bands That Make You Totally Undateable

By Tom Hawking on

A couple of weeks back, our esteemed literary editor Emily Temple surveyed the books that might make you beat a hasty retreat if you saw them on a potential date’s bookshelf, or in their handbag. The post got plenty of heated comments, and it also got us thinking about the other place you might look to snoop on a date’s cultural credentials: their record collection (or, failing that, their iPod.) And so, as we did for books, we asked around Flavorpill central to find out which artists might, if discovered on a potential date’s playlist, put an end to that date pretty damn quickly. We received plenty of responses, and the entirely personal, subjective, and often hotly debated results await after the jump. … Read More

Music

You Can Now Wear Shoes Designed by Bon Iver

By Emily Temple on

Following in the plush, rubber-soled footsteps of Animal Collective, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has collaborated with LA sneaker company Keep to design a custom, very woodsman-friendly shoe with a big fishbone across the front. The fishy illustration and the alluring salmon color would probably have been more than enough to explain the… Read More