Archive for the ‘Music’ Category
12
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Culture, Film, Music, TV. Tagged: Gran Torino, Shakespeare, 24, Aught Lang Syne, Gwen Stefani, Hollaback Girl, Worst of the Decade, Clint Eastwood, Hollywood's liberal bias, Kiefer Sutherland, U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, nuclear meltdowns, decade from Hell, Oscar snubs. 4 Comments
Now, the raison d’etre for NPI’s look back at the last decade is to emphasize the cultural highs that the Aughts offered to those who lived through them. We are not here to condemn, and call the Aughts “the decade from Hell.” And so far we’ve stuck primarily to things from this decade that were [...]
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11
Dec
Posted by Tim in Aught Lang Syne, Music. Tagged: alien ant farm, arms, beautiful liar, Beyonce, canada", fell in love with a girl, Hey Ya, How I Met Your Mother, hurt, it's ALL backwards!!!, johnny cash, Michael Jackson, mute math, OutKast, Pitchfork, robin sparkles. let's go to the mall, seabear, shakira, smooth criminal, steriogram, the white stripes, typical, walkie talkie man, which two artists would you prefer to see collaborate in a visual medium? try me. 3 Comments
I want to make one thing clear from the start: This is my hitlist. John, Josh, and Pierre had nothing to do with it, and I don’t want to sully their reputations or that of the blog as a whole in presenting it. You know what I think about music.
But the following is a list [...]
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10
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Music, Rankings. Tagged: "See You Again", Animal Collective, arcade fire, Aught Lang Syne, best songs of the decade, Eminem, Franz Ferdinand, Hey Ya, Idioteque, Interpol, Intervention, Kanye West, Kelly Clarkson, LCD Soundsystem, Lose Yourself, M.I.A., Miley Cyrus, Obstacle 1, OutKast, Paper Planes, Peacebone, Radiohead, Rihanna, Since U Been Gone, Someone Great, Stronger, Take Me Out, the Aughts, TV on the Radio, Umbrella, Wolf Like Me. 1 Comment
So you thought we were done discussing the music of the decade? Well, think again. We didn’t get to what is arguably the most important list of all: The Best Songs of the Decade. When Tim introduced Aught Lang Syne last week, he discussed how certain cultural events will always be linked to events in [...]
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4
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Music, Rankings. Tagged: Animal Collective, arcade fire, Aught Lang Syne, Bloc Party, Carl Newman, Dan Bejar, Dear Science, Feels, funeral, Heavy Metal Drummer, Interpol, Jesus Etc., kid a, LCD Soundsystem, merriweather post pavilion, Neko Case, Radiohead, Silent Alarm, Sound of Silver, the Aughts, top ten albums of the decade, Turn on the Bright Lights, TV on the Radio, Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. 1 Comment
Albums may seem like a dying a breed as technological advances make it easier to skip and rearrange tracks, but they are still the primary creative force for most musical acts. And whether it’s a pointless convention or the natural artistic outlet for music, we still evaluate acts based on the strengths of the albums [...]
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3
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Music. Tagged: Radiohead, Coldplay, OutKast, B.O.B., Kanye West, Beyonce, the Aughts, Aught Lang Syne, arcade fire, Eminem, Animal Collective, TV on the Radio, band of the decade, artist of the decade, musical eras, Courtney Love, Hole, the new pornographers, Stankonia, Dear Science, Return to Cookie Mountain, Nirvana, grunge and the 90s, disco and the 70s, sophisticated and mysterious algorithms, Fabian. 5 Comments
Ten years can be an eternity in music. Ten years after The Beatles released Please Please Me, they had become the biggest band in the world, recorded 12 more albums, and been broken up for three years. Ten years after Elvis came onto the scene and practically invented rock and roll for most of the [...]
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2
Dec
Posted by John S in Aught Lang Syne, Music. Tagged: Radiohead, kid a, Coldplay, OutKast, B.O.B., Kings of Leon, Kanye West, pop music, the Aughts, Aught Lang Syne, Stronger, College Dropout, Daft Punk, Harder Better Faster Stronger, Gold Digger, lame 90s rock music, post-punk revival, Whatcha Say, Jason DeRulo, Imogen Heap, No Strings Attached, LCD Soundsystem, Franz Ferdinand, Crazy, Girl Talk, Franz Ferdinan, Eminem. 2 Comments
I’ve never been a big fan of Kanye West. I generally think he’s overrated,* and I find his antics off-putting. None of his big singles—“Jesus Walks,” “Through the Wire,” “Gold Digger”—ever really resonated with me; I didn’t really think they were bad, but I never went out of my way to listen to them (not [...]
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27
Nov
Posted by John S in Music, Ranking Bob Dylan Songs. Tagged: Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline, Nashville Skyline Rag, One More Night, smoking, quitting smoking, quit smoking and improve your voice drastically, Frank Sinatra, great singers, Bob Dylan interviews, Lay Lady Lay, country croon. 1 Comment
There is one very important question imposed by Nashville Skyline: Can giving up cigarettes really change someone’s voice that much? That was, of course, Dylan’s explanation for the almost unrecognizable voice that appears on this album, and on “One More Night.” I’ve never smoked (unfortunately), but I can’t imagine this explanation [...]
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23
Nov
Posted by John S in Music, Ranking Bob Dylan Songs. Tagged: paul shirley, Bob Dylan, Rankings, Blonde on Blonde, Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, Everybody must get stoned, drug references, camaraderie, Us vs. Them, music of the moment, background noise, I would not feel so all alone, great opening tracks. Leave a Comment
This song is a joke. Not in a bad way. The whole song hinges on one joke, and a pretty basic one at that, which is repeated again and again throughout each verse. The crux of the song, if you couldn’t figure out Dylan’s usual subtlety, is a pun on the [...]
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20
Nov
Posted by John S in Music, Ranking Bob Dylan Songs. Tagged: 20-year-old talent, Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's favorite highways, Curtis Jones, folk music, Highway 51 blues, personalizing standards, Rankings, Song to Woody, songwriters who don't write songs, Talkin' New York, tradition. Leave a Comment
There’s not a whole lot to say about this song: Highway 51 will never be the highway Dylan is best remembered for. As I mentioned last week, Bob Dylan only wrote two of the tracks on his debut album—“Song to Woody” and “Talkin’ New York.” On some of the folk standards [...]
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18
Nov
Posted by John S in Culture, Music. Tagged: Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift, dawson's creek, Jay-Z, Who is Miley's REAL best friend?, "See You Again", "Party in the USA", "You Belong with Me", "Love Story", "East Northumberland High", Fearless, Breakout, There Can Only Be One!, Highlander, rivalry, pop music, stretching the definitions of "pop music", stretching the definitions of "pole dancing", controversies, Hannah Montana, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Lindsay Lohan, Sneakernight. 6 Comments
As far as I know, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift do not hate each other. In fact, they appear to be on rather friendly terms in this YouTube video. At one point, Miley even referred to Taylor as her “best friend.”*
*Although, to be fair, she’s also applied that term to her dad, Nick Jonas, her [...]
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Tim
John S
Pierre Menard
Josh
NPI
