Essentials

Released in August 1997, Be Here Now was Oasis very own Titanic—a too-big-to-fail colossus that ultimately turned Britpops leading light into a sinking ship (one that was no doubt weighed down by nine laborious minutes of "All Around the World"). Granted, eight million copies sold worldwide hardly constitutes a disaster, and the band would continue to fill arenas and headline festivals worldwide until their 2009 dissolution. But after the world-beating triumphalism of 1994s Definitely Maybe and 1995s Whats the Story Morning Glory?, the infamously coke-bloated Be Here Now marked the moment when Oasis ceased to be a dominant pop-cultural force, precipitating a decade-long slide through a series of increasingly formulaic, interchangeable albums. Seemingly bereft of any inspiration beyond Abbey Road, the band spent their last decade cloning their old warhorses into inbred offspring ("Stop Crying Your Heart Out" is essentially "Slide Away" given the "Wonderwall" treatment), and at a certain point, it seemed like they couldnt even be arsed to come up with fresh song titles (Ill see your "Roll With It" and raise you a "Roll It Over"). Unlike their one-time peers in Radiohead and Blur, there was never a concerted attempt at reinvention, never an embrace of outré influences that could steer them into a new creative phase. Oasis were arguably the first massive, generation-defining rock band to become an oldies act by their third record.But while songwriter Noel Gallagher effectively played all his chips on the bands first two albums (and their equally top-notch B-sides) like a Vegas gambler who thought his luck would never run out, the bands post-Morning Glory catalog still yielded a handful of keepers in between all the lugubrious power ballads, bloozy filler, and Beatles Rock Band karaoke tracks. And rarely were these songs the lead singles—for all its overwrought, helicopter-powered bombast, "DYou Know What I Mean?" coasts on a repetitious, undercooked chorus that wouldnt passed muster on their first two albums, while on perfunctory would-be anthems like "Go Let It Out," "The Hindu Times" and "Lyla," Oasis sound like theyre content to just hit the first 30 rows of Wembley rather than the bleachers. Instead, this playlist focusses on those rare tracks where Oasis still exuded the hunger and swagger of a band that anointed themselves rock n roll stars on the first song on their first record ("I Hope I Think I Know," "The Shock of the Lightning"); the simple acoustic sing-alongs that stripped away all the ego and excess ("Songbird," "She Is Love"); and the tentative toe-dips into experimental psychedelia ("The Turning," "To Be Where Theres Life") that they sadly didnt pursue any further.On one of Be Here Nows superior tracks, Liam Gallagher declares, "Its getting better, man!"—and, unfortunately, as their post-1997 discography proves, it really didnt. But even if Oasis last five albums didnt yield nearly as many classics as their first two, there are definitely, maybe enough quality choons here to inspire a spritzer supernova.

We weren’t prepared for the dissolution of Sonic Youth in 2011. An alternative-rock institution for three decades, the band’s last few records were of such high quality, fans were entitled to question whether they’d sold their souls to an ungodly demon to achieve the kind of perpetual, everlasting prime that was suggested by their band name. (The final record was, funny enough, called The Eternal.) No, nothing lasts forever, but with seemingly so much creative juice left in the tank, it’s no shock that each member has continued to thrive post-Youth.Lee Ranaldo’s songwriting contributions usually came out to just one or two tracks per album, so it always seemed likely that his creative dam would burst outside of the group. Tracks like “Xtina As I Knew Her” and “New Thing” are classic Ranaldo—melodic cuts with textural guitar licks and slightly sardonic vocals. The latter track closes his fine 2017 album Electric Trim, which sees the guitarist testing the borders of his sound, working with north African grooves and electro-tinted folk.Thurston Moore seems the most interested in continuity. With an emphasis on gentle melodies and lengthy, spacious guitar sections, tracks like “Speak to the Wild” and “Smoke of Dreams” sound like first cousins of latter-day Sonic Youth cuts. However, his collaboration with Yoko Ono and former bandmate Kim Gordon on the challenging avant-garde record YOKOKIMTHURSTON allowed Moore to indulge his experimental inclinations.Connecting the work of Ranaldo and Moore has been drummer Steve Shelley, who has continued to back his ex-Sonic Youth comrades, as well as Admiral Freebee and Sun Kil Moon, among others. Meanwhile, Jim O’Rourke, a member from 1999 to 2005, has built a fine solo catalogue (mostly unavailable on Spotify) without losing the producer/session-musician spirit that has seen him orbit the alt-rock scene for years. Recent team-ups has included work with Vova Zen.But among all of Sonic Youth’s alumni, Gordon has been the most free-ranging. She’s released just one track under her own name, but what a track! The bass-heavy, blood-thirsty “Murdered Out” is a thunderous rocker: “You get lost, murdered out of my heart,” she asserts with a fierce punch. Elsewhere, the Wild Style Lion team-up “Lovewasinme” runs as barbed as a subway train wrapped in razor wire, while the rumbling, tuneless “Last Mistress”—released with guitarist Bill Nace under the name Body/Head—offers a freaky bedrock for her breathy vocals, forever one of indie rock’s most cutting instruments.This playlist isn’t an attempt to piece together a kind of lost Sonic Youth album, as though pulling together tracks could forge a singular, cohesive record that never was. (Besides, latter-day bassist Mark Ibold, who has kept a low-profile of late, isn’t here at all). Instead, it acts as a sampler of the fine music the band’s former members continue to create—songs that honour their history without stifling the ambition that powered their peerless oeuvre.

The summer of 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of one of psychedelia’s definitive artifacts: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Pink Floyd’s first album, dominated by the mercurial Syd Barrett’s madcap weirdness, is a quintessential cult album, one that’s passed from veteran heads to young initiates as they prepare for their long voyage into rock’s deep end. Hordes of Floyd fans (you know the types I’m talking about) have never even heard the thing. For them, the album is forever consigned to the band’s impenetrably mysterious, pre-Dark Side of the Moon years.Yet here’s the thing about Floyd’s legacy: Had the British band crash-landed before the making of the stratospherically popular Dark Side, they still would’ve gone down as one of the most influential (and far-out) groups of their generation. Sure, there’d be zero platinum records, none of those classic-rockstandards, and no rivaling The Beatles and Stones for global domination. Yet those losses wouldn’t have any impact on their sweeping influence on alternative, underground, and avant-garde music (genres filled with countless musicians who prefer the earliest stuff). Exploration of their 1967 to 1972 output—from pre-Piper singles like “See Emily Play” through to the Dark Side dry-run Obscured by Clouds—reveals the building blocks for space rock, prog, kosmische musik, ambient, post-punk, shoegaze, post-rock, dream pop, experimental drone, avant-metal, and freely improvised noise, as well as too many micro-movements within electronic music to count.It’s an interesting time for Floyd, as they were a young outfit unexpectedly thrusted into an extended state of liminality. You could go so far as to say they didn’t know who they were as a band. They parted with Barrett, their de facto creative leader, just three years after their formation. Without him and his powerful, if utterly erratic lifeforce, the group were plunged back into the depths of the underground, where they were forced to reinvent themselves without compass, map, or even rudder. Yet it’s this very lack of any tools or guideposts that allowed them to drift untethered into the farthest reaches of their imaginations and pull out sounds of stunning originality (the apex of which very well could be sides three and four of 1969’s Ummagumma). And while the music contains touches of acid rock, blues, and folk-rock in spots, they’re clearly trying as hard as humanly possible not fall back on established musical languages. I know music geeks love to hail Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music as the most sonically extreme statement from a major rock artist, but hell, Floyd ventured into the atonal, freeform abyss on a nightly basis during their transitional years.To capture this aspect, I’ve done something that may rankle listeners. Instead of spotlighting studio recordings exclusively, my best-of playlist contains live versions of several pivotal songs. I know the studio takes of “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Echoes” (from Piper and Meddle respectively) are sublime. But I believe they achieve true lift-off in concert. The live “Interstellar Overdrive” found on The Early Years: 1965-1967 Cambridge St/ation explodes with third-eye aktion rock, scorching white noise, and overdriven bass swells that place Floyd closer to The Velvet Underground’s orbit than anything going on in England’s rock scene at the time. Then there’s the version of “Echoes” from Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, filmed not long before the band achieved rock stardom. Firing on all cylinders, Floyd aren’t just mapping a future for experimental music but several futures simultaneously. Pick out any three genres from those mentioned up above, and I guarantee you’ll hear them lurking inside the piece’s 25 majestically expansive minutes.But far more important, set aside your intellect and just allow yourself to bask in the seemingly three-dimensional space and textures from which “Echoes” is built. We’re talking architecture in motion, with atmosphere so sticky it clings to your skin, ethereal harmonies that slow time to a delicious crawl, and sharp electronic pings that pierce the listener’s consciousness and embed themselves in layers far below the waking. Call me crazy, but I don’t think the studio version does all this (even though it’s still one hell of a trip). I’m not going to lie: This is a long, immersive playlist. But that’s the only way to fully appreciate Floyd’s early years.

An embodiment of the ancient English law stipulating that camp is acceptable when accompanied by the poses of masculinity, Queen didn’t move me much even after the death of Freddie Mercury. I resented how high school classmates had no trouble with Mercury’s mincing but had no time for Bowie; if only the Dame had wiggled his skinny ass, strummed power chords, and shouted chants about wanting it all! Research later revealed the number of fun songs in their catalog, and I’m sure later albums conceal baubles that my tentative efforts haven’t uncovered.As readers might imagine, my list leaned toward the yearningly homoerotic and the silly. If I’m honest with myself, “Back Chat” would top this list.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Creating a playlist that attempts to rank the best Rihanna songs ever is a double-edged sword. On one hand, everyone loves Rihanna. She’s been one of pop’s most compelling singers and personalities for nearly a decade, and her ability to incorporate outre sounds with extremely addictive pop hooks is nearly unmatched. Her aggressive, sexually positive persona has both captured and anticipated a fundamental shift in how gender is performed and represented in pop culture. But you don’t need us to tell you this——thousands and thousands of words have been spilled about Barbados’ finest. And you certainly don’t need Complex to rank her greatest songs, because you (should) already know a good two-thirds of these by heart. Still, it’s a well curated list, and it’s always great to have the pretext for revisiting Rihanna.

So long as the world is home to easily offended Christians and alienated teens addicted to horror movies and loud guitar jams, that modern day manifestation of the Grand Guignol known as shock rock will continue to be a viable pastime. As a matter of fact, the past few years have been deliciously gory ones for those unleashing malevolent riffs while smothered in freaky makeup and latex (or, in the case of the Butcher Babies, very little at all). The reigning rulers of 21st-century shock rock, Maria Brink and In This Moment, have returned with in 2017 with both a new album (Ritual—more hard rock, less Warped-brand metal) and new look. (The video for “Oh Lord” lifts its cryptic religious vibes from possession flicks like The Last Exorcism and The Witch, with a dash of Gaga’sAmerican Horror Story thrown in for good measure.) There’s also Motionless in White, who are like the metalcore reincarnation of mid-’90s Marilyn Manson (a huge compliment, of course), and Ghost B.C., who admittedly may not be looking to shock anybody; it’s entirely possible they’re just earnest, card-carrying Satanists.Now speaking of alleged devil-worshipper Marilyn Manson, a good deal of the shock rock that has emerged since he had evangelicals protesting his performances steers towards the grave and graphic. After all, there simply isn’t a lot of (intended) chuckles to be found in something like the Butcher Babies’ “Mr. Slowdeath” video, which basically is the groove metal equivalent of torture porn. Older shock rockers, on the other hand, are way more campy. They embraced their roles as villains and outcasts holding a cracked mirror up to our diseased society, but they did it with a nod and wink (most of the time). Mercyful Fate’s King Diamond—who needs to be credited with kickstarting the corpse paint look eventually adopted by the black-metal tribe—wails about the occult and Satanism with a lavish, theatrical flair. And if you travel all the way back to the ’70s, you run into Kiss, who reveled in comic-book absurdism even when launching into dungeon-clanking nightmares like “God of Thunder,” and Alice Cooper, whose ambitious concerts were Broadway productions topped off with guillotines, boa constrictors, and even dance numbers. The Coop may be my favorite shock rocker of all time—and he’d be the first to admit shock rock is just good, old fashioned show biz with a bucket of blood on the side.

To imagine twenty years ago that I’d compile a twenty-song Smashing Pumpkins list in 2017 is like thinking I’d deliver Ronald Reagan’s eulogy. But the Pumpkins, whose innovation was to find hard rock wrinkles in Butch Vig and especially Alan Moulder’s shoegaze mixes, were intermittently formidable, despite Billy Corgan — in every sense. I recoil from his voice. I can’t deny how dense the Pumpkins sounded when Corgan wrote worthwhile material. “Crush” was my introduction in fall 1991, receiving airplay on my top 40 station’s Sunday evening “modern rock” Sunday shows. “I Am One” and “Rhinoceros” followed. Their breakthrough two years later came as no surprise — for all Corgan’s complaints about Stephen Malkmus and cred he kept a hawk’s eye on the marketplace. After 1998, sorry, I lost track of them. I thought twice before including “1979” because I can’t forget how he mangled a perfect hook and decent lyric with a mouth full of cotton candy.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more

For a decade, Terius Youngdell Nash was R&B’s best producer-writer, making everyone from Rick Ross and Mary J. Blige to a young pimply Justin Bieber sound good. He has faltered in the last six years, but after the surfeit of collaborations and works for hire, who could blame him and sometime partner Christopher “Tricky” Stewart if their powder ran dry?The Prince comparisons were too on-the-nose, not when Ready for the World was eager for a Wiki link. Nash’s high, effete voice and commitment to the love-you-down wasn’t as weird as Prince’s. Give him this: like the Purple One he understood that he wrote best for women. Electrik Red’s How to be a Lady Volume 1 remains one of the fleetest and sassiest of the millennium’s R&B albums, and chances are you haven’t heard it if you’re not on my social media lists. Rihanna’s performance on 2007’s “Livin’ a Life” also needs a shout-out; in the last two years she seems to have rediscovered its distinctive empathy.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.The world of metal can often be an intimidating one for those who have never found the courage to wade into its deafening, shriek-laden waters. But of all the genre’s various offshoots and sub-genres, stoner metal may be the most welcoming to the untrained ear. Though its nomenclature may imply a no-sober-listeners-allowed policy, the real heart of the genre comes more directly from a familiar source than any other branch of metal: good ol’-fashioned classic rock. The borders of what specifically encapsulates stoner metal are as up for interpretation as any other genre (the worlds of doom, sludge, drone, and psych-rock are often collected under the banner as well), but what really defines its sound is its commitment to atmosphere, tone, and thick, steamrolling riffs that work less through violent, rapid-fire assault than they do through gradual, suffocating immersion.Whether it’s in the satanic blues of stoner originators like Black Sabbath and Candlemass, the molasses-like trudge of torch-bearers like Sleep and Kyuss (pictured), or the voided-out psychedelia of boundary-pushers like Boris and Sunn O))), stoner metal’s influence is vast and unique, linking the worlds of ‘70s rock with that of ambient music, shoegaze, black metal, and more through its subsuming, hazy riffage. You don’t need to be under the influence to get sucked into the genre’s all-encompassing sound, so take a tour through our playlist and see if stoner metal is the strain for you.

All of us have our own personal soundtracks, the streams and playlists that run through our heads, especially in situations that demand a more deluxe treatment. For some, ideas about what that sound had to be was forged by obsessive viewings of the very coolest ‘80s cinema on worn and battered VHS tapes. Driven by sleek machine-made rhythms and slathered in washes of vintage synthesizers, it’s a sound that evokes the sight of neon lights reflected on rain-slicked city streets as you drive through the night in a black Maserati (though a Ford Focus will do if there’s nothing left at Hertz).That’s certainly the sound favored by Daniel Lopatin, the Brooklyn-based musician and producer better known as Oneohtrix Point Never. The sibling movie-director team of Josh and Benny Safdie tapped him to score their 2017 film Good Time, a grubby, thoroughly New York-y crime story that stars a plausibly messed-up Robert Pattinson as a small-time crook trying to take care of his mentally disabled brother during a long night of bad luck and worse decisions. While the film’s visual style evokes the grittiest ‘70s flicks of John Cassavetes, Lopatin’s music might’ve been perfect for a Michael Mann thriller. Indeed, the soundtrack demonstrates Lopatin’s love for Tangerine Dream, the German synth pioneers who famously scored Mann’s 1981 movie Thief and whose epic “Phaedra” was memorably repurposed for the Safdies’ 2014 drug-addict drama Heaven Knows What.Good Time is also part of a wider resurgence for the moody, menacing synth-rock sound that was de rigueur for movies of an earlier era. The electronic soundscapes of Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre have become touchstones for a new generation of scorers, along with Vangelis’ sumptuous music for Blade Runner and Giorgio Moroder’s more propulsive accompaniment for Midnight Express, American Gigolo, and Scarface. Of course, the god of the form—partially because he was the rare filmmaker who created his own soundtracks—remains John Carpenter. Such was the worship and influence of his minimalist synth scores in recent years, Carpenter felt compelled to begin a full-fledged music career in his seventh decade, recording two albums for Sacred Bones.Lopatin’s hardly the only contemporary musician to believe that nothing sets a movie’s mood better than a synthesizer arpeggiator. Other new masters of the aesthetic include Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (Stranger Things), Richard Vreeland a.k.a. Disasterpeace (It Follows), Cliff Martinez (Drive), and Jon Hopkins (Monsters). It’s been further explored by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, whose mesmerizing Drokk comprises their rejected score for the 2012 sci-fi thriller Dredd, and Zombie Zombie, a French electro-garage duo with a penchant for roughing up Carpenter themes in much the same way that Lopatin sandpapers the pristine surfaces of Tangerine Dream for Good Time.So even though it’ll never be 1985 again, there’s no better time for you to get behind the wheel of the hottest car you can find and drive into the night.