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Music

The 25 Best Songs of 2014 So Far

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Last week we brought you the top 25 albums of 2014 so far, but we couldn’t let the midyear pass without taking a look at the best songs up until this point. This being a singles list, it’s heavy on your Iggys and your Charlis and your Sias, but you’ll also find choice album cuts from some of the year’s best rock LPs, like EMA, The War on Drugs, Against Me!, and more. And finally, we tossed in a few you may not have heard yet, hopefully inspiring you to check out the underrated tunes that haven’t been critical faves or Hot 100… Read More

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Celebrity

Read Beyoncé’s Poignant Tribute to Michael Jackson

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Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of Michael Jackson’s passing. True to ever-respectful, always-killing-it form, Beyoncé took to her … Read More

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Architecture

Famous Songs Become Buildings in Federico Babina’s ‘Archimusic’

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Music often drives us to change the architecture of our bodies – if it wasn’t for Rod Stewart’s raw, animalistic beats or Barry Manilow’s thrashing guitar, I wonder if I’d ever move at all. But seriously, the idea of music itself being architectural isn’t too hard to fathom, whether in the way that it’s laid out in blueprint form before it’s actualized, in the way that a series of supporting sounds bolster one another and create a song, or in the 4’33″ sense that silences create their own music, just as there’s architecture in empty space. … Read More

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Pop Culture

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Cultural Things This Week

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Need a great book to read, album to listen to, or TV show to get hooked on? The Flavorwire team is here to help: in this weekly feature, our editorial staffers recommend the cultural object or experience they’ve enjoyed most in the past seven days. Click through for our picks, and tell us what you’ve been loving in the comments. … Read More

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Music

The Michael Jackson Hologram: Slave to the Spectacle

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Because we apparently can’t let things be, a Michael Jackson hologram performed at last night’s Billboard Music Awards. Slouched atop a gilded, leopard-print throne, the MJ hologram lip-synched and gesticulated along with “Slave to the Rhythm,” a club-ready track off the latest posthumous Jackson album, Xscape. Dancers — virtual and otherwise — contorted themselves more seamlessly than the hologram, whose choreography was, yes, MJ-esque but of course could never compete with the smoothness of the real thing. Not that anyone would expect it to. The appeal of the dead musician hologram is rooted in shock, not nuance. But after all the resurrections of Michael throughout the nearly five years since his death, at what point do we give it up? When do we call a truce and let his career in life define him in death? … Read More

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Music

Michael Jackson’s ‘Xscape’: Turn Down For What — Death?

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F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Never has this been more apparent to me than when I catch myself full-on strutting and shoulder-shimmying down the street to the Justin Timberlake-assisted “contemporization” of Michael Jackson’s “Love Never Felt So Good,” the disco-y single from the latest posthumous Michael Jackson album, Xscape. I hope others can join me in putting their biases aside for a moment and considering the overwhelming beauty of this: Michael Jackson might have the Song of the Summer, five summers after he died. … Read More

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Music

The 5 Best New Songs We Heard This Week: Banks, Braid, Michael Jackson

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My brain is starting to feel like mush over all the Weezer I listened to this week. These songs were my solace. Not that one needs solace from the Blue Album. Oh you know what I mean! … Read More

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Listen to Michael Jackson’s “Xscape”

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However you feel about posthumous albums — respectable or not? — the Michael Jackson remix album Xscape is proceeding as… Read More

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Listen to Michael Jackson’s Contemporized Single “Love Never Felt So Good”

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At the first iHeartRadio Music Awards last night, producer L.A. Reid premiered Michael Jackson’s new single “Love Never… Read More

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Music

Don’t Stop ‘Til You Earn Enough: The Bullshit of the Posthumous Michael Jackson Album

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A few days after Michael Jackson died in June 2009, I found myself up in Harlem at the Apollo Theater covering a wake of sorts, led by Reverend Al Sharpton and Spike Lee. I had never seen an entire neighborhood out in the streets, mourning their icon no less. By the time the memorial let out, it was raining. The crowd’s homemade posters were slowly deteriorating, sort of like Jackson himself as time ticked away, but there is one I will never forget: “MJ, you will live on forever” in red glitter paint. At the time I didn’t anticipate the lengths to which the music industry would go to make these words true. … Read More

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