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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

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

Television

The All-Time Weirdest Guest Appearances on ‘The Simpsons’

By Tom Hawking on

So if you haven’t heard, Tom Waits was on The Simpsons last night, voicing “a gravelly voiced paranoiac” prepper and joining the long list of illustrious and not-so-illustrious guest stars who’ve graced the show since it started screening way back in 1989. His appearance got us thinking about some of the more unlikely guest stars and/or performances the show has seen over the years — and so we’ve amused ourselves after the jump selecting some of our favorites, from Johnny Cash playing a psychedelic coyote to Thomas Pynchon breaking a 40-year TV silence. Did we miss any of your favorites? Go ahead and let us know. (And advance apologies for the quality of a couple of the clips — Simpsons videos are like hen’s teeth on YouTube.) … Read More

Music

It’s Time to Retire the Grammys’ “Best Alternative Album” Category

By Judy Berman on

The annals of music history are filled with once-specific genre names that are now functionally meaningless. “Indie rock” and “EDM” are some recent examples, but back in the ’90s, it was “alternative” that got so overused as to become meaningless. In fact, these days it’s a term whose non-nostalgic use is largely limited to various music awards shows — including the Grammys, whose 2013 nominations were announced last night. Perhaps more than ever before, this year’s crop of “Best Alternative Album” picks raises the question: What does “alternative” even mean in 2012? … Read More

Music

Johnny Depp’s New Compilation Album Is Packed With Dream Collaborations

By Judy Berman on

Patti Smith and Johnny Depp. Tom Waits and Keith Richards. Michael Stipe and Courtney Love. These are just a few of the mind-blowing collaborations that comprise Son of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys, a sequel to the original 2006 Rogue’s Gallery covers compilation that Depp, Gore Verbinski, and Hal Willner… Read More

Music

25 Photos of Glamorous Musicians Doing Regular Stuff

By Tom Hawking on

From a young Iggy Pop vacuuming his apartment to a costumed Lady Gaga making eggs, here’s a photo roundup of our most endearingly flamboyant musicians doing incongruously domestic… Read More

Music

A Selection of Cheery Tunes to Soundtrack the Apocalypse

By Tom Hawking on

So, yes, Flavorpill HQ is located in NYC, and yes, we weathered the stormpocalypse and came out the other side. Happy days. It looks like the world isn’t going to end — or not today, at least. But shit, even if it does, we’re gonna keep posting until the end times are upon us, and when they are, we’re gonna need something to listen to. So here’s a selection of the best apocalyptic songs that music has to offer, with plenty in the way of biblical storm imagery and general portentousness. Here’s to hoping everyone out there is OK. … 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

20 Brilliant Musicians on Why They Make Music

By Tom Hawking on

Here at Flavorwire, we’re constantly fascinated by the creative process and what drives people to be artists. In the past, we’ve looked into musicians discussing their songwriting process, and we’re similarly interested in what drives people to start creating in the first place. We’ve delved around and come up with a selection of quotes from our favorite musicians about how they got started on music, why it is they do what they do, and/or what they’re hoping to achieve with the creation of their art. The results are both revealing and fascinating.… Read More

Photography

20 Nostalgia-Inducing Photo Booth Snaps of Famous People

By Emily Temple on

[Editor's note: It's Labor Day, so your devoted Flavorwire team is taking a break. To keep you entertained, we're leaving you with our most popular features of the summer months. This post originally ran July 14th.] Here at Flavorpill, we love a photo booth. There’s something so satisfying (and pleasantly retro) about the art of the instant photograph, and we love the spontaneity that always seems to come from all those quick photos in succession, with only a small space to work with. But we’re not alone in our photo booth love. Actors, musicians, artists and celebrities of all kinds have also been known to step behind the cheap velvet curtain and indulge in the fun of automatic photography, and inspired by these shots of Elvis we recently spotted at Retronaut, we’ve pulled an Amélie and obsessively collected a few of the results here. … Read More