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Leonard Cohen

Music

The 50 Albums Everyone Needs to Own, 1963-2013

By Tom Hawking on

No one buys albums anymore, goes the music industry truism. And yet, for all that the format’s commercial viability may or may not be on the wane, sitting and listening to a great album from start to finish is one of the greatest pleasures that music can bring. Flavorwire recently got to thinking about how one might build a record collection if you really only did buy one record a year. So here’s the result of our thought exercise: 50 albums you really should own, one a year from 1963 until the present… 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

10 Great Leonard Cohen Covers by Female Artists

By Tom Hawking on

We’ve had the weekend to mull over Lana Del Rey’s cover of “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” and our conclusion — like much of the internet — is that we can’t quite believe we’re saying this, but we really rather like it. It also got us thinking about how relatively few great covers of Cohen songs there have been by female artists. In a way, this makes sense — Cohen’s songs are quintessentially male in their own lugubrious way. But still, we’re always up for a challenge, so we’ve rounded up a selection of some of our other favorite female-fronted Cohen covers. Let us know if we missed any. … Read More

Celebrity

10 Profane Pearls of Wisdom from Nick Cave’s SXSW Panel

By Jason Bailey on

AUSTIN, TX: Just as his Tuesday morning “conversation” panel at SXSW was beginning, singer/songwriter/author/screenwriter Nick Cave looked down at the bank of snapping photographers in front of the stage and asked, not unreasonably, “Are you guys gonna be doing that the whole fucking time?” He then came up with a solution: “Shall we do that now, and then we’ll talk?” So he and his moderator, writer Larry Ratso Sloman, spent a minute or so animatedly posing for photographs (the images here were taken during that portion). And then they got down to business, discussing his influences, biography, and theories on writing. … Read More

Music

The Most Beautiful Song Lyric Tattoos We’ve Ever Seen

By Tom Hawking on

Song lyrics are clearly a popular choice for tattoos, but the vast majority of lyrical quotes are pretty much plain old script tattoos. We have nothing against this, but it’s interesting to see tattoos where lyrics are combined with an artistic flourish, so we’ve gathered some examples of truly beautiful work that we thought we’d share with… Read More

Music

The Enduring Mysteries Behind 10 Great Love Songs

By Tom Hawking on

A few weeks back, we looked at the true stories behind some of our favorite love songs. It’s always fascinating to hear a definitive account of what inspired one of your favorite tunes, but it can be equally enthralling to try to puzzle it out on your own. And, of course, in some cases that’s all you can do, because it may well be that the songwriter in question isn’t providing any answers. So it goes with these tunes, which are all the more fascinating because of the mystery surrounding exactly who they’re about. … Read More

Music

The Real-Life Stories Behind 10 Famous Love Songs

By Tom Hawking on

This week sees the release of the new solo album from Christopher Owens, formerly of Girls and now of lovelorn solo balladeering endeavors. The album’s called Lysandre and is particularly notable for being based around a narrative thread about Owens’ love affair with the girl of the same name. The story behind the record is an interesting one, and it got us thinking about the real-life stories behind some of our other favorite love songs, and we’ve related a selection of the best of them… Read More

New York

The Best Things Flavorwire Staffers Did in New York This Year

By Judy Berman on

As another year comes to a close, like everyone else on the Internet, we’ve compiled lists of our favorite films and books and albums. But in an office full of New Yorkers who spend so much time enjoying — and participating in — the cultural life of our city, we would be remiss not to look back on what we actually went out and did this year. Below you’ll find Flavorwire staffers’ favorite NY cultural experiences of 2012, from theater to art to live music to cinema; tell us about yours in the comments. … Read More

Music

Christmas Gifts for the Music Geek in Your Life

By Tom Hawking on

It’s not even December and we’re already tiring of the “It’s that wonderful time of the year” jokes. If you’re anything like us, the festive season is at best tiresome and at worst a regal pain in the ass — but shit, we’re here to help, so over the next few days we’ll be offering various gift guides. We’ve already discussed potential gifts for movie geeks and Instagram addicts, and now it’s time to address the needs of music geeks. Over the next few pages, we’ve gathered a selection of gifts for the music-obsessed — box sets, books, crazy instruments, and a gloriously ghastly Slayer Christmas sweater. Who could ask for more? … Read More