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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 Song for Every New York Times Hipster Trend Piece

By Tom Hawking on

The ongoing New York Times obsession with “hipsters” continued this week with yet another lifestyle article about Williamsburg, a place that the NYT apparently thinks is still home to the Brooklyn cool set. The piece served as more confirmation that the Times is officially the only publication that still thinks the word “hipster” actually means something and/or is a cultural phenomenon worth analyzing in 2013. At this point, the paper’s ongoing obsession with Williamsburg is the journalistic equivalent of the repressed bro at school who’s secretly fascinated by the weird kids and deals with this by ridiculing them at every possible opportunity. Anyway, The Awl did a pretty spectacular job of highlighting the ongoing absurdity of the whole thing with this roundup of every characteristic that the paper has ever ascribed to hipsters (spoiler: everything, ever) — but what about the music? To help the paper out, here are some songs to soundtrack their most, um, memorable trend pieces. … 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

Pop Culture

The Pop Culture Love Tester: Radiohead + The Mountain Goats

By Judy Berman on

If you ever took a junior-high date to the arcade (or an older one to certain retro-minded drinking establishments), then you’ve probably experienced the Love Tester — a contraption that allows you and your beloved to test your attraction by simply gripping a handle and seeing how much heat you can generate. But why trust hand-clamminess as a measure of your compatibility when Flavorwire is here to forecast the future of your relationship using a far more reliable gauge: your cultural preferences? Send us your and your partner’s favorite band, song, movie, book, or TV show, and we’ll (anonymously) read the tea leaves to see whether you were meant to be. First up: a lady (E.) who loves The Mountain Goats and a gent (P.) who worships Radiohead. … Read More

Music

Great Bands That Made (Relatively) Forgettable Debut Records

By Tom Hawking on

In an interesting cosmic coincidence, this week marks notable anniversaries for two of the more significant debut albums in the world of rock ‘n’ roll: 25 years ago yesterday, the Pixies released Surfer Rosa, while 50 years ago today, the Beatles released Please Please Me. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is the contrast between the quality of the records — Surfer Rosa was a fully realized artistic vision, while Please Please Me only hinted at what the Beatles would go on to achieve. Still, the Fab Four are in pretty good company as far as bands who overcame relatively unimpressive debut albums go. As these ten records prove, there’s hope for everyone! … Read More

Music

The Musicians That Make the Best Music Videos

By Tom Hawking on

As we noted last week, we were both intrigued and disconcerted by the arrival of the new Beach House video for “Wishes,” which features the ever-terrifying Ray “Leland Palmer” Wise lip-synching to the song as he directs some sort of weird gymanstic-centric cult meeting in a sports stadium. It’s the latest in a series of pretty awesome videos from Beach House, and it got us thinking about other bands who’ve really embraced the medium as an art form, making consistently great videos over the years. Here are some of our favorites! … Read More

Music

Fascinating Photos of Famous Musicians in Their Studios

By Tom Hawking on

We’re constantly fascinated with the creative process here at Flavorwire, and one of the most important components of that process is the space in which it takes place. For musicians, at least as far as the recording process goes, this place is the studio, and as such we thought we’d take a look at the studios of some of our favorite musicians. The contrasts on display are intriguing, from the endearingly chaotic to the pristine and very expensive, from analog to digital, from minimalist to decked out in all sorts of crazy-looking… 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

10 Shamefully Underrated ’90s Radiohead Tracks

By Tom Hawking on

This week’s news that makes us feel old: today marks exactly 20 years since an upcoming Oxford quintet who went by the name of Radiohead released their debut album. Pablo Honey was a record that got little love at the time and has had relatively little since. Back in 1993 it was overshadowed by the globe-conquering success of its hit single, “Creep,” and these days it’s overshadowed by the albums that followed it — as, indeed, has much of the band’s early work. And that’s a shame, because some of it was great. To celebrate the anniversary of Pablo Honey, we thought we’d revisit some of Radiohead’s great under-appreciated 1990s songs, from b-sides and rarities to overlooked album tracks. Do let us know your suggestions if you have any! … Read More