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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

The 10 Albums You Need to Hear in December

By Tom Hawking on

December is traditionally a pretty dire month for album releases, and this year is no exception — but still, having said that, there’s enough noteworthy records dropping over the next four weeks to at least make our regular monthly “Albums You Need to Hear” post worth writing. It’s not just box sets and fancy reissues, either! The headline attraction this month is clearly the new Scott Walker record, which stands as one of the most remarkable things anyone’s released in 2012 and also a testament to the danger of starting your end-of-year-lists in November, but we’ve also tracked down a bunch of other releases that will do a fine job of bulking out your Christmas stocking. As ever, do let us know in the comments section what’s on your shopping list this month. … Read More

Music

10 of the All-Time Greatest Pop/Rock Collaborations

By Tom Hawking on

As we reported last week, apparently Ke$ha is collaborating with her “idol” Iggy Pop for a song on her upcoming album. Our initial response to this was pretty much like everyone else’s, involving a combination of the letters “W,” “T,” and “F,” but the more we think about it, the more we’re coming around to the idea that the track could actually be pretty great. After all, it’s hardly the first pop/rock collaboration, and some of the results of pairing up pop singers and rock stars over the years have been thoroughly excellent. We’ve pulled together a few of our favorite such collaborations after the jump — as ever, let us know (nicely) what we’ve missed. … Read More

Music

Visualizing the Best-Selling iTunes Songs of All Time

By Aaron Gonsher on

Apple iTunes is closing in on the titanic milestone of 10 billion songs sold, and they’ve just announced their best-selling songs of all-time. Looking at the titles listed is hard enough (nothing about “TiK ToK” will ever seem okay), but our masochistic tendencies inspired us to create word clouds for every one of the top 12 songs. (Thank you, Wordle.)

These clouds weigh the appearance of certain lyrics within the songs and create charts assigning size status based on word frequency. If you’ve ever bemoaned the state of modern commercial music, the inanity of looking at these consolidated lyrics will do nothing to ease your pain. But it is kind of funny. Commiserate with us after the jump. … Read More