Blasphemy! But someone had to do it. Everyone calm down, I’m not saying that you can’t play Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” until your iPod breaks. All I’m saying is that there is so much more out there in terms of cheerful spirited holiday-themed music that is both modern and mostly listenable.
Let’s put aside our differences and agree that lists are fun. They are also only definite if you actually add them to your holiday playlist. SO: WILL YOU?
Another day, some more Best Of 2012‘s! The enthusiasts over at Popdust keep close tabs on all of pop music’s going-on’s and their list is accordingly thorough, including all the big names as well as a handful of gems we hadn’t expected but are happy to see make the cut. have done a heroes job and turned their list into a YouTube playlist as well as a Spotify playlist so you really have no excuse not to enjoy it. Their top 10 looks like this:
Another day closer to 2013, another load of Best Of lists to parse! And so we’re back, today with Rolling Stone, NPR, Time and Idolator and a whole bunch more tallies for Frank Ocean, Japandroids, Kendrick Lamar and Fiona Apple. A trend emerges…
The end of the year is upon us, which means: List Season! Many of our favorite publications and websites are rounding-up their favorite albums and songs and comebacks and etc. from throughout the year and putting them in one place for our revealing. These lists are always interesting because they make space to celebrate artists whose names maybe weren’t atop the Billboard/iTunes/YouTube charts all year, or whose music is less amendable to constant radio play than, say, Maroon 5‘s “Payphone,” and they are a fun way to look back at what you loved from the year past and to discover what you might of missed (that’s what 2013′s list is for). Of course we’ve got all sorts of lists of our own coming down the pipe, but before then we thought we would share what some of our fellow music loving sites are saying.
Today in year-end lists: Spin, NME, New York Magazine and Stereogum share their favorites; Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Jessie Ware, Miguel, Chairlift, Japandroids and Cloud Nothings get a lot of love.
Ah, a rare and special day that brings new Fiona Apple music! This year she has already treated us to a new record — which was followed by a somewhat tumultuous promotional run, replete with drug arrests and cross-legged ranting — and already she’s back again with another new song called “Dull Tool.” Written for Judd Apatow‘s Knocked Up spin-off This Is 40 — a film that will also feature songs from the likes of Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Ryan Adams, all produced by Apple’s When The Pawn… collaborator Jon Brion — it is dense and fevered, like the tortured antidote to Idler Wheel‘s yearning “Hot Knife.”
Clearly, something — ahem, children? — has gone awry in this relationship, and leave it to Fiona to go ahead and tell it exactly as it is: “You don’t kiss when you kiss, you don’t f*** when you f***, you don’t say what you mean, you don’t talk loud enough,” she sings, evil and angry and awesome over hissing strings and racing percussion. And then she continues to explain that, quitely but no less searingly that: “You forgot the difference between equanimity and passivity, you forgot that you have to try.” The dull tool does indeed still cut.
Poor Fiona Apple, her arrest seems to have become quite the distraction.
Apple’s storied career boasts many dramatic moments — breakdowns, breakups, breakthroughs — but she’s never been of much interest to gossip sites, who tend to trade in headlines juicier than ‘Reclusive Singer-Songwriter Splits From Brooklyn Writer Boyfriend,’ say. And so they’ve mostly stayed out of her way, letting her go about her business and share what she likes through song. But her arrest for drug possession seems to have located her on their radars, because gossip sites who otherwise would have paid her no notice have taken to speculating about her slight weight, as well. And you know what? She’s had enough of the negative attention.
Apple begged her plea on on Saturday in Florida, sitting cross-legged on stage with a friend there to keep her from rambling (“I know I do that”). Addressing Perez Hilton — “and I’m sorry man, but you’re the only one that has the guts to be a person rather than just a bunch of people like TMZ or whatever” — directly and the gossip industry generally, she asked that everyone simply “lay off with that stuff because it hurts my feelings”:
Oops! Last week, Fiona Apple was arrested last week for drug possession after being caught with hash at a border stop Sierra Blanca, Texas. The “Criminal” singer spent the night in Hudspeth County jail — joining the literally high company of those who have done so before her, Willie Nelson, Snoop Lion and Armie Hammer included — and was released the next morning on a $10,000 bond to a joyous choir of #FreeFiona singers. That wasn’t that, though, as Apple and her jail keepers seem to have taken up an epistolary relationship of sorts.
On stage in Houston over the weekend, she aimed a few choice words at her keepers in Hudspeth. Her rant begins almost sweetly, she suggesting that “most of the people were very nice to me” and apologizing for being “attitudey” with the guy who runs the place. Platitudes registered, she goes in on four others who weren’t so very nice to her, threatening to make public the “inappropriate and probably illegal” things they did while she was under their custody. “There are four of you out there, and I want you to know I heard everything you did,” she warns, as things take an extra Fiona-y turn: Read more…
Rick Ross has had a busy week – dropping an album and several videos, helping to bring Mariah back. Between all that, do you think he also found time to get his Fiona Apple ticket before the show sold out?
The new “911″ video finds Ross cruising the moonlit streets of Los Angeles in the 911 Porsche for which the menacing God Forgives, I Don’t song is named. Spliced in with quick cuts are shiny chains, XXL sports jerseys, multiple sunglass changes, and all the rest of the Rozayian embellishments that make for a Ross video. And then, atypically so, The Bawse pulls up to a venue with a marquee that says “SOLD OUT,” but above it reads Fiona Apple’s name instead of his own. Huh? Ruh. Read more…
If rocking out to everything from hip-hop to rock to dance to indie music is your forte, Governors Ball this weekend was the place to be. Slews of music lovers headed to Randall’s Island over the weekend for the annual two day music festival that showcased acts such as Passion Pit, Kid Cudi, Fiona Apple, Beck, Modest Mouse, along with several other acts. Live bands were plentiful, and multi-talented artists were in abundance. Good music and fun seemed to be the Saturday and Sunday theme. Crowd surfing wasn’t an unusual sighting for the amped up concert goers; and when artists jump into the crowd it’s usually a sure fire sign that a blast was had. Check out our gallery of artists performing at the Governors Ball. Read more…
After six years in record label limbo or hiding or love and hearbreak or anywhere but the spotlight, Fiona Apple has returned. Her much-anticipated fourth album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, is out today, and it has critics pretty universally in awe. Here are some of the nice things they’re saying:
“The stories do say something about obsession and control, and are indicative of how exacting an artist she is. After four albums in sixteen years, Apple has racked up maybe five bad songs, total. “Idler Wheel” is less crammed with detail than her last record, Extraordinary Machine, but it has the same effect: once heard, a song lodges in the mind, melodies take root, and words loop of their own accord. It is an astonishing album. ” – Sasha Frere- Jones’ review for The New Yorker
“This is the most distilled Fiona Apple album yet … It’s an old-school approach, though it rises well above mere sepia Instagrams. Instead of being far-off and dreamy, her throwback moves are the opposite– intrusive, corporeal. This is not background music. It demands attention. ‘Look at! Look at! Look at! Look at me!’” – Ryan Dombal’s 9.0 review for Pitchfork
Read more…
VH1 Presents Mixtape Festival: Train, NKOTB, TLC, The Script + more! Tickets on sale now at MixtapeFestival.com!
