With only days left until the end of 2012, the Internet is full of best-of essays and lists and embeddable Spotify playlists that reaffirm critics’ and tastemakers’ street credit and perpetuate the myth that most people writing about music actually have any kind of significant impact on the way that pop music is created, packaged, and sold. I won’t bore you with such gas. Instead, here are some fun superlatives that summarize the world of pop this year, for those of you who may not have kept up with this realm. These are undeniable touchstones — meaning that should you, as esteemed people with ears, have scruples with this list, it would behoove you to make an appointment with a qualified audiologist post-haste. Otherwise, read! Click! Dance! … Read More
Kylie Minogue
10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Angel Haze, Kendrick Lamar
It’s Friday, which means another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. The track you absolutely 100% have to download this week is the new Angel Haze song, which we wrote about earlier this week and which is one of the best (and most harrowing) songs you’ll hear all year. Elsewhere, there’s a track off one of our favorite discoveries of the month — Heathered Pearls’ album Loyal — new stuff from Deerhoof and La Big Vic, an unreleased demo from Daniel Rossen, and… drum roll… the MORODERFEST! Since all this action costs precisely nothing, what are you waiting for? All the download links await after the jump. … Read More
A Brief History of Man-Hating Music Videos
With global warming, political unrest, and a cratered international economy serving as the shaky pillars of today’s world, we need pop music now more than ever. As hopeless headlines continue to paint dark horizons for us, pop is one of the few lights to shine through and inspire whimsy. Even the harshest skeptic has no choice but to relent and give into the genre. So we present Pop For Skeptics, a regular Flavorwire column committed to curating and commenting on the best ear candy from the US and around the world.
Misogyny in music, from rock to pop to hip hop, is a phenomenon so ancient and ubiquitous that it doesn’t even surprise us anymore. Neither, in this post-Madonna era, is it strange to see female pop stars treat men like sex objects. But what happens when these artists, besieged not only by their male counterparts but also a catty entertainment press and constant political threats to women’s rights, forgo the soft blows of easy objectification in favor of mounting a full-on attack on men? It’s not necessarily that some of pop’s brightest stars are giving off misandrist vibes; they’re simply mincing fewer words to put men in their place. Inspired by Christina Aguilera’s recent video for “Your Body,” which kicks off with a cheeky promise that “No men were harmed in the making of this video,” we’re taking a look at some of the most man-hating music videos in pop history. … Read More
Flavorwire's Flick of the Week: 'Holy Motors'
It’s been thirteen long years since Leos Carax made his last feature film, and as you watch Holy Motors, the film that ended that long drought, you get the feeling that the filmmaker wanted to use it to make all of the movies he should have made in the interim. It almost has the feel of a completed checklist, a film comprised of what appear, at first, to be incompatible parts: oddball romance, family drama, black crime comedy, musical, etc. Only as the loose ends and odd bits begin to stack up do we get a sense of what Carax is up to — and it’s something peculiar and rather marvelous. … Read More
10 Famous Musicians’ Geeky Hobbies
We tend to think of musicians as being cooler than us. And while that may be true, they’re also often bigger geeks than we would imagine. Did you know, for instance, that the man who was Ziggy Stardust is always down for a good chess match? Or that Lily Allen makes delightful cushions? Can you guess which hip-hop pioneer owns 5,000 souvenir mugs? Click through to read all about famous rock stars’ nerdy obsessions — and find out which international pop star plays Scrabble with Salman… Read More
12 New Summer Anthems More Epic Than Jennifer Lopez’s “Dance Again”
[Editor's note: Your devoted Flavorwire team is taking Memorial Day off, but we've left you with some of our favorite summer-related features that you may have missed the first time around. This post originally ran May 2, 2012. Enjoy!]
We can’t even begin to fathom how difficult life is for pop stars. When temperatures top 90°F, they can’t simply slip into a sundress and slurp down margaritas all the livelong day. Our beloved idols have a higher charge to answer to: creating the perfect summer dance-floor stormer. For them, dressing down and partying hard is all part and parcel to the performance art of pop. Take it from Jennifer Lopez, who, with the measured precision of a seasoned pop-ologist, has given us the summer anthem to beat with “Dance Again.”
The song contains exactly the correct amounts of dance-ability, flair, and derring-do. It isn’t aiming too high. Lyrically it doesn’t strain your brain (“I wanna dance / And love / And dance again”) and structurally, it explodes only during the bridge and into the chorus, and otherwise, it entertains a restrained synth beat. Still, you may be wary about surrendering to “Dance Again.” It isn’t the best pop song. But it is a tour de force befitting a sweltering Fourth of July rave. However, it’s not the only one. America’s entered a dance-pop renaissance, and that means we’re in for a slew of unlikely summer anthems that are at least as good as “Dance Again.” In fact, J.Lo has given us such a perfect benchmark for summer jams that we measure the following 12 potentially overlooked summer anthems on the semi-scientific scale of 1 to 5 “Dance Agains,” wherein 1 = “Sure, I’ll dance again, but I’ll need a few tequila shots first” and 5 = “What do you mean ‘again’ — I haven’t stopped dancing for the past five hours.” … Read More
10 of the All-Time Greatest Pop/Rock Collaborations
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
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. Donald Trump has revealed the lineup for the upcoming season of Celebrity Apprentice, and the rather depressing roster of “celebrities” includes Arsenio Hall, Clay Aiken, Dee Snider, Debbie Gibson, and Real Housewives star Teresa Giudice. [via Deadline]
2. Les Miserables director Tom Hooper has offered the choice roles of Eponine and Cosette… Read More
Naked-on-the-Street Meme Goes Mainstream in Kylie Minogue’s “All the Lovers” Video
It’s not news to anyone that nudity in music videos is a bona fide fad. But Kylie Minogue’s just-released video for her whispery, sensual dance-floor anthem “All the Lovers” has confirmed a trend within a trend: The naked-on-the-street video. After the jump, check out the orgiastic, potentially NSFW Kylie clip, as well as the recent videos that may have helped inspire it. … Read More
Hipster Headlines: Fauxhemian, Big Bangs, and Health Care
Are media outlets abusing the word “hipster” in headlines “2 get hits”? Yes. Because it’s hard out there for a blogger. Well that, and love ‘em or hate ‘em, stories about hipsters are usually a juicy read. After the jump, find our second installment of Hipster Headlines, a round up of the most interesting hipster-related stories of the week. Leave links to anything entertaining that we’ve missed in the comments. … Read More
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