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

By Lillian Ruiz on

Flavorwire’s end-of-day link roundup returns. Recognizing that there’s an overabundance of stuff on the Internet (and it’s not everyone’s job to keep up with it all), Flavorwire is curating the best of what we come across — and share with our coworkers — in our daily meanderings around the web. Below, check out both the big and the obscure stories you might have missed during your long day at the office. … Read More

Celebrity

Celebrities as Media Critics: How Grimes and Jay-Z Are Dictating Their Own Mythology

By Tom Hawking on

If you’re a Grimes fan, you’ve probably already read her fantastic Tumblr post about how she’s tired of the way she’s portrayed in the media. If not, it’s definitely worth a look, because it’s basically everything we love about Claire Boucher — it’s articulate, intelligent, and heartfelt. Given her ambivalence about her Tumblr posts being reported as news, it’s not clear how she’ll feel about the response to the post, which is being reported everywhere. Still, it’s a pretty fine example of how today’s celebrities — for want of a better word — are using their Internet presences to push back in a meaningful manner at how they’re portrayed in the media. … Read More

Music

Coachella 2013: The Good, The Bad, The Bros

By Leah Taylor on

Our intrepid, heat-resistant reporters spanned both weekends of this year’s Coachella to bring you a look at the (no exaggeration) epic music festival from the comfort of your own laptop. While the bros and the… let’s say “overmedicated” crowds can sometimes be deterrents to enjoying the weekend, ultimately, you’re there for the music. And there is something for everyone. Here are our highlights, with special thanks to Doug Levy, Liat Kriegel, and Dan Busta. … Read More

Music

A Selection of 4:20 Songs to Soundtrack 4/20

By Johnny Otis on

Last week, we amused ourselves with a thought experiment that was doing the rounds on Tumblr — marking 4/11 by picking out the best songs in our iTunes library that were precisely four minutes and 11 seconds long. It turned out that there were heaps, and the idea got us thinking: when better to do something similar than 4/20? So we thought we’d limit ourselves to making our annual stoner mixtape for today out of songs that are precisely four minutes and 20 seconds long. (Disclaimer: these songs are all 4:20 on our iTunes — your mileage may vary, and all that, but let’s not split hairs, eh?) … Read More

Music

The Fascinating Untold Stories Behind Some of Our Favorite Songs

By Tom Hawking on

Sure, everyone knows that Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” is about about his son falling from a window, Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” may or may not be about Warren Beatty, and “In the Air Tonight” is not about watching someone drown. But there are plenty of other less well-documented backstories behind popular songs — like the one that surfaced over the weekend about The Beatles’ “Get Back” starting its life as a dubious satire called “No Pakistanis.” Wisely, the band rewrote the lyrics before releasing the song, but it remains a pretty fascinating piece of history, and our cue to discuss the less-documented stories lurking behind some of the songs in our iTunes collection. … Read More

Music

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

The Best Albums Flavorpill Staffers Heard in 2012

By Tom Hawking on

A couple of weeks back, we took a look at the best books that various Flavorpill staffers had read over the course of the year, and today we’re repeating the exercise with albums — we’ve surveyed our highly trained staff and asked them what the best record they heard in 2012 was. The results, we hope you’ll agree, are rather interesting, encompassing everything from Ke$ha and Swans to a hitherto undiscovered fondness for obscure country reissues. Do feel free, of course, to add your voice to the discussion in the comments section! … Read More

Music

What Pitchfork's Top 10 Songs of 2012 Say About Us

By Tom Hawking on

Seventeen years after Ryan Schreiber first started banging out reviews in his Minneapolis bedroom, Pitchfork’s end-of-year lists are probably the most anticipated in the music industry — both because for all its failings the site remains the Internet’s most popular and thus most influential hive of music criticism, and because it holds its lists until pretty much everyone else has published theirs. Over the last couple of years, we’ve amused ourselves by pondering what the songs in the ’Fork’s Top 10 say about its readership (which, of course, includes us) — and so, with the publication yesterday of this year’s winners, we’re giving the exercise another go-around. … Read More

Music

The Year in Memorable Musical Controversies

By Tom Hawking on

2012 has been a crazy year in many ways, and the music industry hasn’t exactly been immune to its air of pervading insanity. (In fairness, the music industry is rarely immune to any sort of insanity, but still, humor us here.) This year has given us a particularly rich vein of memorable controversies, conflicts, and contretemps, and as part of our ongoing end-of-year wrap-up, we’re looking back at some of the most significant. Some of these are hilarious, some of them depressing, some of them hilariously depressing, and some just plain old bewildering — but from the resurrection of dead rappers through homeless people functioning as wifi hotspots to a record company suing an entire country, all of them have been worth remembering. … Read More