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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

Photos of Famous Musicians Playing in the Snow

By Tom Hawking on

If that was winter, we guess it’s pretty much over, which is depressing news for those of us who actually enjoy the snow (and for anyone worried about, y’know, global warming and the future of the planet.) We’re already looking wistfully back at the photos we published a couple of weeks back of famous authors playing in the snow, and we thought we’d follow up today with similar images of musicians. These were somewhat more difficult to track down — a legacy, perhaps, of the fact that musicians as a whole aren’t exactly noted for being outdoor types — but still, there’s plenty of snow-related musical imagery to be found if you look hard enough. So click through and try to ignore the fact that if these crazy warm summers are anything to go by, these sorts of pictures are probably gonna be the only way to see snow in a few years’ time. Huzzah. … Read More

Music

10 Rock Albums That Were Impossible to Follow Up

By Matthew Bower on

It’s a familiar experience. There’s that one mind-blowingly great album you just can’t get enough of, an album of epic proportion. Then one day you learn that this beloved artist will be releasing a new album. A sense of dread-tinged anticipation overcomes you. Any potential trace of hopefulness that it just might live up to your expectations is overshadowed by the bleak probability of impending disappointment. It’s not that all follow ups to great albums are necessarily bad, it’s just that there’s a certain discomfort in knowing that we’re going to have to move on and adapt. That’s the way music works; sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. We’ve put together a list of ten earthshaking rock albums that were impossible to follow up, often resulting in a derailment, a reinvention, or a fade-away. … Read More

Music

50 of the Best Closing Lines in Music

By Tom Hawking on

It was about 18 months ago now that we collected an epic selection of our favorite opening lines in music, and we’ve been meaning to get around to closing lines ever since. There are plenty of candidates for such honors as far as films and books go, but surprisingly few for music — it’s a more difficult exercise than it looks, perhaps because heaps of songs end with multiple renditions of the chorus rather than a punchy parting shot. Still, we’ve put together a bumper selection: 50 of the best.… Read More

Music

10 Great State-of-the-Nation Albums

By Tom Hawking on

The new Dan Deacon album was released yesterday, and it’s perhaps the last thing we would have expected from a man once so interested in the idea of music as a purely sonic entity, devoid of any narrative or greater meaning: it’s a loose concept album about America. Deacon has written some interesting stuff about the ideas behind the album, which is entitled simply America, on his website, noting that “The inspiration for the music was my love of cross-country travel, seeing the landscapes of the United States, going from east to west and back again over the course of seasons,” while “The lyrics are inspired by my frustration, fear and anger towards the country and world I live in and am a part of.” The result is a fascinating state-of-the-nation album, a record that’s both personal and also vocal about the country of its creator. In celebration of its release, here are some of our favorite albums that address similar subject matter. … Read More

Music

'Mad Men' Mixtape: 10 Great Songs from 1966

By Tom Hawking on

As you might have noticed if you’ve been reading Flavorwire this week, Mad Men is back Sunday, and the new season takes us to 1966, a year when — as baby boomer mythology has been reminding us mercilessly ever since — the acid was good, the love was free, and the counter-cultural revolution was kicking into full swing. (Not that we can imagine Don Draper donning a kaftan and heading down to Haight-Ashbury to wander around in circles pointing at trees, mind you.) But having heard the news that the producers had to can a song from the soundtrack (Dusty Springfield’s “The Look of Love”) for being from 1967, we thought we’d take it upon ourselves to put together a mixtape of some contemporary tunes that might well appear on the show in Season 5. And yes, we’ve even included Bob Dylan! Rejoice, denizens of the comments section. … Read More

Music

Musical World Tour: London

By Tom Hawking on

We’ve rather enjoyed choosing our favorite songs about a different city every Friday. But thus far we’ve only looked at cities in the US — namely New York, Chicago, and Detroit — so this week we’re hopping on a plane and heading across the water to Europe. Our first stop on the other side of the Atlantic: London. Of course, England’s capital has had innumerable songs written about it, and as ever, this isn’t some futile attempt to define the “five best” — it’s just our five favorites. What are yours? … Read More

Music

10 of the Most Memorable Fictional Characters in Music

By Judy Berman on

We talk a lot, here at Flavorpill, about our favorite characters from books, film, and TV. And, although we’ve made a habit of compiling mixtapes for everyone from Nancy Drew to Josef K, it isn’t often that we consider the music world’s own fictional creations. After the jump, we attempt to right that oversight with an incredibly subjective roundup of music’s most memorable characters. Add your suggestions in the comments; if we get enough great ones, we might just publish a follow-up post of reader picks. … Read More

Film

Reader’s Choice: 10 More Definitive Cinematic Music Cues

By Jason Bailey on

Any time you have the gumption to pose a list of the ten definitive anything, you’re going to get some pushback. But because Flavorwire has the greatest readers in the world (/blatant sucking up), our post last week of The Most Definitive Music Cues in Film History prompted very little venom, and several excellent additions (including a few that had been on our first, wildly overambitious draft). The concept, once again, is that certain films use pop music cues so well that the movie and the song get inextricably bound together in your head; when you think of the movie, you hear the song, and when you hear the song, your see the film in your mind’s eye. We’ve picked our ten faves from the addendums offered by you, the reader, after the jump; feel free to add more of your favorites in the comments. … Read More

Books

Literary Mixtape: Patrick Bateman

By Emily Temple on

If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: American Psycho‘s über-fit antihero, Patrick Bateman. … Read More