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Music

A Selection of the Flat-Out Dirtiest Songs in the History of Music

By Tom Hawking on

The good folk at Dangerous Minds are great at unearthing amazing YouTube rarities, and they outdid themselves last week with a 1971 performance by Ike and Tina Turner, which goes down in history as one of the most subtly filthy live performances we’ve ever seen — it’s basically one long allusion to oral sex, with Tina spending most of her time doing very, very suggestive things to the microphone, and while Ike’s ophidian glare still gives us the creeps, he does make some glorious slurping noises into his own mic. The crowd clearly knows exactly what’s going on, sniggering throughout, and the whole thing’s a testament to just how filthy music could be, even in an era that was still comparatively conservative. Anyway, the spectacle got us thinking about our favorite dirty songs, the best of which we have shared after the jump. Don’t play these while your boss is around. Obviously. … Read More

Music

The Most Controversial Music Videos of All Time

By Alison Nastasi on

An exhibition opening April 3 at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image will celebrate music videos as an art form at the “forefront of creative technology, its role in pushing the boundaries of innovative production, its important role as an experimental sandbox for filmmakers, and its lasting effects on popular culture globally.” This news got us thinking about the boldest images from music videos — those works that helped break the barriers of censorship and became the most controversial of all time. Click through to see ten music videos (many of them NSFW) that pushed the envelope and made… Read More

Film

10 of the Most Romantic Movies You Haven’t Seen

By Alison Nastasi on

The world is getting another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel whether it wants it or not. Safe Haven, starring Julianne Hough as a mysterious woman with a dark secret who falls for a widower (Josh Duhamel), hits theaters on Valentine’s Day. The film joins paranormal teen tale Beautiful Creatures as one of several other romantic films celebrating the Hallmark holiday. Feeling like the occasion was a bit too obvious for our liking, we ventured off the beaten path to collect ten of our favorite romantic movies that don’t involve a sinking ocean liner, Meg Ryan, teen vamps, or the other usual saccharine suspects. See what strikes your fancy on our list, and feel free to leave us a love note about your favorite films. … Read More

Music

Excellent Photos of Awesome Musicians Hanging Out Together

By Tom Hawking on

One of our favorite features run by our friends at excellent UK website The Quietus is their regular excerpts from the Rock’s Back Pages archive. They recently exhumed an old article from the NME, wherein Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan, and Mark E. Smith held a “summit” at a south London pub. As it turns out, we happen to own this exact NME – we found it for $1 in a second-hand record shop years ago — and leafing through the article again got us thinking about similar great meetings of the minds that have been caught on film over the years. We’ve put together a gallery of some of our favorites, with grateful acknowledgment for the title and a few of the shots to the wonderful Tumblr Awesome People Hanging Out Together. … Read More

Music

10 of the Grossest Music Videos Ever Made [NSFW]

By Tom Hawking on

It’s been quite a year for the Flaming Lips — they’ve released something pretty much every month, including a 24-hour song and an EP in a gummy bear skull. And, of course, they’ve managed to thoroughly piss off Erykah Badu by releasing an unapproved cut of the video for “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.” The video understandably caused quite a stir, given that it involved Badu’s sister Nayrok sitting stark naked in bathtubs full of glitter, blood, and a substance that looked like it was supposed to be semen. After Badu went public with her concerns about the video, it was expunged from the Internet — so with the album from which the song is taken, namely The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, finally getting a proper release this week — we thought we’d round up some other, um, challenging videos for your viewing pleasure. Like most Flaming Lips videos, these are all pretty NSFW, but as far as we’re aware, they were made with the full consent of all involved. … Read More

Art

Unexpected Pixel Portraits of Pop Culture Figures

By Alison Nastasi on

An artist introduced to us by HouHouHaHa who goes by the moniker Carré Offensif — which amusingly translates to “offensive square” — enjoys blurring the boundaries between mythical pop figures, retro video games, and bold graphic design. Offensif’s pixel art takes aim at some of the usual suspects, but transforms a few unexpected figures — like Serge Gainsbourg and Kirsten Dunst’s Marie Antoinette — into total squares. Spotting Mike Tyson’s portrait makes us want to break out the NES and play some Punch-Out!!. See more colorful, boxy creations past the break. Warning: you won’t be able to unsee a nightmarish pixel version of Mick Jagger. We hope he doesn’t kiss his mother — or anyone else — with that mouth. … Read More

Pop Culture

10 Works of Art We Can’t Believe They Got Away With

By Tom Hawking on

In the context of our post last week on French yé-yé pop, we touched on France Gall’s “Les Sucettes,” an ostensibly innocent ditty written for her by Serge Gainsbourg, which came stuffed full of allusions to oral sex. The song’s questionable enough, but the video is all kinds of wrong — giant dancing phalluses, nubile teens sucking on very suggestive lollipops, and poor little France Gall, oblivious to it all. We still can’t quite believe Gainsbourg got away with it, but then, he made a career out of getting away with it. Anyway, the whole thing got us thinking about similar works of art with hidden meanings that somehow managed to slip under the radar — history is full of them, and we’ve put together a rather eclectic selection after the jump. We’re sure there must be heaps more, so let us have your suggestions in the comments section. … Read More

Music

A Field Guide to 1960s French Yé-Yé Pop

By Tom Hawking on

If you’re wondering just what on earth was with that “Zou bisou bisou” song from Mad Men on Sunday night, look no further — we’re here to help! The song was a prime example of yé-yé, the Francophone take on bubblegum teen pop that flourished in France during the early 1960s and briefly became a global phenomenon. The genre took its name from a bastardization of the English “yeah yeah,” gave the world some of the 1960s’ best pop songs, and even got a serious academic working-over from Susan Sontag, who wrote about yé-yé in her 1964 essay “Notes on Camp.” And judging by the slew of articles that have appeared on the subject since Sunday, it’s all anyone’s gonna be talking about until the next episode — so click through and take advantage of our handy yé-yé primer! … Read More

Music

Serge Gainsbourg's Most Memorable Music Collaborations

By Alison Nastasi on

Writer and artist Joann Sfar’s directorial debut, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life — about legendary French singer-songwriter, actor, and director Serge Gainsbourg — arrives on Blu-ray today. The film stars Eric Elmosnino as the chanteur and follows his beginnings in Nazi-occupied Paris, through his songwriting days in the 1960s, to his death in 1991. Gainsbourg’s prolific artistry helped propel the careers of vocalists like France Gall and Françoise Hardy — and he managed to make them stars while he was simultaneously recording his own brilliant albums. We’ve looked at several of the influential artist’s most memorable collaborations past the break. Tell us what pairings you’d include in the comments below. … Read More

Music

Listen to Scarlett Johansson Cover “Bonnie & Clyde” with Lulu Gainsbourg

By Caroline Stanley on

As we’ve previously stated, we feel like a lot of the negative reaction to Anywhere I Lay My Head, Scarlett Johansson’s debut album of Tom Waits covers, was more about who she was as opposed to what she sounded like. Today we bring you the latest cover by the singing actress, a duet with Serge Gainsbourg’s son, Lulu, that will appear on the forthcoming tribute album From Lulu To Gainsbourg. Does her version of “Bonnie & Clyde” live up to Brigitte Bardot’s original performance? Click through and let us know what you think in the comments. … Read More