Genres

Whats This Playlist About?: By now we all know Ms. Swifts rather fickle taste in men, so its refreshing to see 43 other things that she loves——at least for now. This playlist will be updated monthly, after all.What You Get: The old Taylor may be dead, but between a few f-bombs (which youre hit with straight away via Bazzis woozy R&B hit "Mine") and some feel-good hip-hop, she still wants——and needs——to preserve that cuddly every-girl image. The vibe here is almost exclusively mellow and moody. This is intimate pop for candlelit moments, with lots of silky post-xx dream-pop (EXES, Haux) and sensitive post-Bon Iver dream-folk (Bootstraps, Trent Dabbs). Filling in the gaps are a couple of her very own songs, because, you know, self-love is whats most important.The Track That Defines It All: Sylvan Essos stripped-down lullaby "There Are Many Ways To Say I Love You," a short but sweet distillation of everything Taylor stands for.Greatest Discovery: Kiwi singer/songwriter Holly Arrowsmith, whose pure, pretty folk number, "Love Together," is the most pleasantly modest track of the bunch.Biggest Surprise: Yoke Lores precious cover of Savage Gardens of "Truly Madly Deeply." Hes kind of like the male Birdy.Will This Playlist Turn Taylor Haters Into Lovers?: Not likely, but it may quickly put them to sleep (and shut them up).

Regardless of what you think qualitatively about Drake’s music, or his progression as an artist, his impact on culture is undeniable. He’s a pop idol in a classical, pre-pomo sense; his fans not only devour his music, they model their ideas about fashion, art, and even sports around the Toronto emcee. In ranking the songs that defined the “Drake era,” the Fader staff make note that “this is not a “Best Of” or a ranking of any sort, but an acknowledgement of the songs that represent Drake’s expanding influence in music, culture, and our lives.” It’s a subtle but interesting distinction, but nonetheless interesting: they’re not pulling their favorite songs, or even his most popular songs, but tracks that capture the Drake zeitgeist.

With the release of I can feel you creep into my private life, Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus has come full-circle, her gift for game-changing vocal play reaching full-tilt automaton on an album that simultaneously nods to her analog beginnings and doffs its cap to an exciting electronic future.“I started sampling my vocals with an MPC,” she says of I can feel. “There was something that felt really right about my voice being trapped in a machine.” Long-time fans will know that Garbus recorded the majority of her debut LP, BiRd-BrAiNs, on a voice recorder, lending the record its distinctive—and now renowned—lo-fi sound. What it also did, however, was create a distance between Garbus’ towering vocal pipes and the listener, a trick she’s revisited on the latest album. “I wanted the vocals to sound robotic,” she says. “Maybe to counter the sincerity of the lyrics.”Garbus is no stranger to vocal manipulation on a grand scale, basing entire albums around a particular hook or device (see the Pee-wee Herman-inspired playground chants across the entirety of Nikki Nack, or the sultry doo-wop harmonies and Haitian-inspired vocal layering that populate Whokill), while also reserving her most crescendoing, gratifying hollers, whoops, and yells for when they’ll make the most impact. Hers is an inimitable voice, one built on a foundation of varying regional African folk musics, the ‘80s pop of Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper, and mid-century soul in the vein of James Brown and The Ronettes. And while Garbus’ influences ride valiantly along with her genre-hopping melodies, her gift for weaving together fragmented musical cues precludes any suggestion of imitation. You can hear her loop-pedal vocal layering techniques in the a-capella mastery of Manhattan Transfer and the meticulous gospel of the Soweto Gospel Choir, while her penchant for the peppy nasal belting of Afrobeat is rooted in the Congolese pop of Wenge Musica or Awilo Longomba.

In the many memorials and remembrances published after Gregg Allman’s death on May 27, 2017, the Allman Brothers Band and Hour Glass vocalist has been hailed as one of the great white blues and soul singers. It’s worthy praise for a mighty stylist, though it also has to be noted that Allman was just one of a slew of white Southern singers who, in the ’60s and early ’70s, reshaped the contours of American roots music by blending African-American soul, blues, and gospel with elements of country, pop, and, in select instances, the anti-establishment fervor and experimental flavors coursing through the hippies’ rebellious rock jams.Some of these musicians are well known. Dr. John, of course, is an American icon synonymous with New Orleans R&B, and Joe South achieved pop stardom at the turn of the ’70s thanks to a string of hits, including “Games People Play,” a socially conscious anthem laced with electric sitar and delivered with a preacher’s passion. Others, meanwhile, have never moved beyond cult status. Swamp rock pioneer Tony Joe White remains under the radar despite having his songs covered by Brook Benton, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley (whose comeback era, 1968 through 1973, makes him a key figure in this milieu). Even more obscure is the late Eddie Hinton. A songwriter and guitarist who contributed to many of the seminal soul albums recorded at Muscle Shoals, he also was a fabulous vocalist in his own right. Indeed, music critic Peter Guralnick describes the gravelly voiced howler as the ”last of the great white soul singers" in the indispensable book Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom.With all due respect to Van Morrison, Joe Cocker, and the seriously bad-ass Daryl Hall, nobody can touch these Southerners in terms of blue-eyed soulfulness. Of course, soulfulness is a tricky notion, as it veers into the immeasurably shadowy world of metaphysics. Thus, it helps to ground it in some geography and culture. After all, these singers—who so thoroughly soaked up the sublime cadences, emotiveness, and phrasing of their African-American heroes—were raised in a region of the United States where black music, art, and religion permeate—despite rampant racism and oppression—white culture to a degree that’s unique unto itself. (This is part of what Drive-By Trucker Patterson Hood has called the “duality of the Southern thing.”) This influence isn’t the result of merely buying records, attending concerts, or, in Jerry Lee Lewis’ case, growing up near a juke joint. It’s archaic, and it’s soaked into the very bedrock of the Southern collective subconscious.To see a mind-blowing microcosm of this point, check out the opening sequence of the 1983 documentary Chase the Devil: Religious Music of the Appalachians: Rev. Bobby Akers, based in Virginia, leads his all-white Pentecostal congregation in a style of revival—Holy Ghost–raising piano boogie, ecstatic singing, dancing in the aisles, speaking in tongues, hands raised to God, and what seem like trance states—that can be traced back to the African-American church and to the religious rites and rituals slaves brought over from West Africa. These very same roots are embedded in the jams comprising this playlist. They creep their way into both Gary Stewart’s honky-tonk bummer “Single Again” and Bobby Charles’ muddy “Save Me Jesus.” And they most certainly creep their way into The Allman Brothers Band’s “Dreams,” a sublime slice of Southern cosmic gospel music, if there ever was one.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Kristen Stewart owes a king-sized thank you to Olivier Assayas for aiding her startling transformation from Twilight moper to one of our age’s most reliably edgy and surprising screen actors. The French director first guided Stewart to greatness in his 2014 drama Clouds of Sils Maria and does it again in Personal Shopper, an eminently weird and stylish thriller that hit U.S. theaters on March 10, 2017. The high-profile collaboration has brought wide attention to the former film critic-turned-auteur who’s been a hero to cinephiles since establishing his voice in the 1990s with a string of extraordinary features.Assayas’ impeccable musical taste and ability to match sound and vision have been apparent ever since he combined the image of leading lady Maggie Cheung clad in black leather with the dissonant snarl of Sonic Youth’s “Tunic (Song For Karen)” in his 1996 breakout Irma Vep. He later collaborated with the band on the score for 2002’s Demonlover and featured Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore in his 2006 music doc Noise. Gordon also has a bit part opposite Asia Argento in his 2007 thriller Boarding Gate.Indeed, like Eurocinema peers Claire Denis (who’s enjoyed a long and fruitful alliance with Tindersticks) and Leos Carax (whose roster of musical collaborators ranges from Scott Walker to Kylie), Assayas has an approach to scores and soundtracks that’s far more adventurous and sophisticated than the predictable hit parades in most Hollywood fare and the played-out, random mixtape-sensibility of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and their legions of wannabes.This survey of music from such Assayas essentials as Clean, a drama featuring an exhilarating performance by a then-breaking Metric, and Carlos, a mini-series about Carlos the Jackal scored by Wire—originally with songs by the Feelies until they objected to being used alongside images of terrorism—includes songs that he used for highly dramatic and memorable purposes.

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.When it comes to subgenre tags, “space rock” is one of the most literal—its music intended to evoke an interstellar journey. But while theres plenty of trippy otherworldliness involved, the sound is anything but ethereal. The seeds of space rock were sown back in 1967 when Syd Barrett led Pink Floyds expeditions into the cosmos, but the real template was created in the early 70s by the likes of Gong, Hawkwind, and Nektar, who tapped into a post-psychedelic stoner vibe and combined explicitly cosmic lyrics with heavily effected guitar riffs and swooshing, burbling electronics to create the mind-expanding sound we know today as space rock.In the 90s, a new generation of aural astronauts inspired by those 70s sounds started an underground space-rock revival. The likes of Ozric Tentacles, Magnog, Farflung, Quarkspace, and Bardo Pond fused the influences of old-school space rock with a contemporary indie aesthetic to create a sound that helped to further codify the style and even edged things forward by introducing elements of ambient music and other varied flavorings. More than ever, Hawkwind is acknowledged as the center from which all things in the space-rock universe flow, and the raw, hard-rocking riffs and squiggly synth effects that defined the bands classic 70s albums became de rigueur for any new arrivals aspiring to take a tumble through the galaxy.In the new millennium, a third wave of space rockers has arrived. Wooden Shjips, Comets On Fire, White Hills, Moon Duo, and the rest have firmly dug into the fuzziest, shaggiest, beardiest riff-a-rama aspects of space rock, fetishizing its 70s roots even more so than any of their 90s predecessors. But for all their growl and grit, they never forget the stoner side of things—one of the crucial aspects on which the movement was based. After all, if youre not already high when youre listening to a space-rock record, the music should make you feel like you are.

Now approaching their 50th (!) year as a band, Sparks (a.k.a. Ron and Russell Mael) have been at the forefront of many crucial developments in pop music—glam rock, electronic disco, New Wave, neoclassical baroque n roll—and have put their own singular, absurdist stamp on them all. As their fabulous recent release, Hippopotamus, proves, Sparks’ flair for extravagant art-pop and whip-smart lyricism remains undiminished. And as their contribution to The Dowsers attests, nobody puts together a playlist quite like the Brothers Mael. Here are their liner notes:“Hasai Ojisan,” Shokichi Kina: The most infectious song of all time, from Okinawa, and a huge hit in Japan in the ‘70s“Maria Bartiromo,” Joey Ramone: The late great vocalist for the sublime Ramones solo ode to the TV financial babe.“London by Night,” The Singers Unlimited: Exquisite a cappella work that far outshines even The Beach Boys“Agharta Prelude (Part I),” Miles Davis: Daring to break from his modal work with two amazing quintets in order to explore new musical territory and risk alienating his followers and critics, Miles Davis is always an inspiration.“HeadBangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!,” BABYMETAL: Great fusion of heavy metal and cute Japanese girl pop. One of the best live acts in the world.“I Love to Rhyme,” George and Ira Gershwin: A hymn to the art of, well, rhyming. George Gershwin was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, both in popular song and in "serious" music.“Du hast,” Rammstein: As heavy as heavy gets.“Twisted,” Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross: A lovely ode to insanity.“Past, Present & Future”: The Shangri-Las: Hyper-emotional, classically tinged pop song by bouffanted beauties masterminded by Shadow Morton.“Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 65: III,” Dmitri Shostakovich: Rocks like a motherfucker!“911 Is a Joke,” Public Enemy: Dense and tense music from the magnificent duo. Great in concert.“Baltimore Oriole,” Bob Dorough: Idiosyncratic and thus cool vocals by a jazz great.“All Dressed Up for School,” The Beach Boys: Great pre-genius work by Brian Wilson and more interesting to us than the entire Pet Sounds and Smile albums combined.

Whats This Playlist All About? The grungy indie rockers compile a list of favorite tunes as they prepare for the April release of their third album, Twerp Verse.

What You Get: A playful, kitschy mix of oddball sounds that oddly kind of work together. Find yourself swaying to the doe-eyed Irish folk of The Roches before thrusting to the X-rated raps of Cupcakke. Elsewhere, charming lo-fi (Frankie Cosmos) sits alongside groovy, kaleidoscopic pop (Shintaro Sakamoto); streamlined dance bangers (Zedd); growling metalcore (Code Orange); and spooky, melancholic marvels (Sparklehorse).

Greatest Discovery: Young singer-songwriter Sidney Gishs "I Eat Salads Now," a witty and charmingly weird slice of DIY guitar-pop.

How Does This Reflect Speedy Ortiz in 2018? Twerp Verse singles like the dark, twisted "Villain" and the disorienting pop of "Lean In When I Suffer" blend together some of the more warped riffs and sardonic wit sprinkled throughout the playlist. Like the mix itself, Speedy Ortiz have become a little harder to pin down—in a good way.

Glasgow’s Spinning Coin are the latest in a long, storied lineage of winsome, delightfully discordant Scottish indie-pop bands. With their Edwyn Collins-produced debut, Permo, due to arrive on Domino Records on Nov. 10, the group collaborated to make us this playlist of current and eternal favourites.

SEAN ARMSTRONG (VOCALS, GUITAR)Diana Ross & the Supremes, “Someday Well Be Together”Listened pretty much exclusively to Diana Ross & the Supremes for a couple of years. Fell in love with the vocal style—soft and harsh at the same time. Amazing vibrato, and the songs were so intense and real.Sean Nicholas Savage, “Pupil of The Night”Otherworldly pop music. Listened to his album Flamingo over and over in the van on my first tour of Europe. It was the perfect soundtrack—full of wonder and strangeness, and an incredible voice.King Krule, “Czech One”Really love the way King Krule produces his music. A loose collage with jazz influences, and a lot of feeling. Warm, brilliant atmospheric sounds.Keel Her, “Dont Look At Me”Fantastic and prolific. Has thousands of songs, all brilliant, and quite varied. Very inspiring to anyone who wants to home-record.RACHEL TAYLOR (VOCALS, KEYBOARD)Éliane Radigue, “Kyema (Intermediate States)”A beautiful and restorative piece of drone music. For years I would listen to it while falling asleep. Its a nice listen on a long walk as well.Mary Margaret OHara, “Bodys in Trouble”This record is brilliant. Mary rarely performs these days, but every year she puts on a St. Patricks party in Toronto called The Martian Awareness Ball. When we met, she invited me to play one of them without having heard my music. It was my first gig! I felt so lucky.Tasseomancy, “29 Palms”Sari and Romys tunes are gorgeous and trippy. I remember when they released this record, it felt like Id received a gift.Elliott Smith, “Coming up Roses”Every autumn I seem to fall back into an Elliott Smith vortex. This is one of my favourites.JACK MELLIN (VOCALS, GUITAR)Brigid Mae Power, “I Left Myself For A While”A beautiful song from an amazing album I have been listening to obsessively for weeks.Anne Briggs, “Ride, Ride” *Anne Briggs makes sacred, elemental, earth music, best listened to in deep meditation.* This song isn’t available on Spotify, so listen to it on YouTube instead.Trash Kit, “Leaves”I really love Trash Kit. I listen to this album regularly first thing in the morning! There are two Rachels in this band, and they are/have been involved in lots of other great bands—Bamboo, Halo Halo, Sacred Paws, Shopping, and more!Sex Hands, “Pivot”Can you work out what this concept album is about? Sex Hands are also involved in other great things—check out The Birth Marks and Irma Vep.CHRIS WHITE (DRUMS)Joe Meek and the Blue Men, “The Bulblight”I love Joe Meek productions. I like to think of him up in his flat on Holloway Road coming up with these mad sounds.Funkadelic, “Back In Our Minds”This sounds so cool. Funkadelic make you feel good—they can transport you with their music.The Breeders, “Off You” Me, Sean, and Rachel went to see The Breeders the other week. They have so many great songs. I love the synth stab in this one.Golden Teacher, “Dante and Pilgrim”Friends from Glasgow making great tunes. Kicked off at Green Door Studios; amazing live.CAL DONNELLY (BASS) Delta 5, “Mind Your Own Business”One of the first covers I played that I liked.OutKast, “Aquemini”Production sounds like a swamp house, and I like swamp houses.Duds, “No Remark”Friends from Manchester playing great tunes.Dele Sosimi, “E Go Betta”A song I was shown fairly recently that blew my tiny mind.BONUS TRACKS FROM JACK!Alvvays, “In Undertow”We played with Alvvays recently. It was a great pleasure. They have lots of wonderful tunes! I am addicted to them these days.Girl Ray, “Trouble”Really looking forward to supporting Girl Ray. They have sooo many amazing songs!Angel Olsen, “Stars”This is definitely one of my favourite songs and albums from the past few years. Love it! “Sister” is also an incredible track worth checking out.

If this list proves anything, its that "alternative rock" has always been a nebulous concept—especially by 1996, when grunge was already long deemed dead. Then again, many of the tracks here remain some of the weirdest slices of rock to ever see regular airplay (Butthole Surfers! The Presidents of the United States of America!). But its still a little silly to hear Jewels half-yodeling coffee-shop acoustic pop sit alongside Porno for Pyros crunchy, psychedelic riffs, or 311s reggae-infused rap next to Sleater-Kinneys snotty feminist punk and Underworlds euphoric, bubbling trance. But thats exactly how alternative rock radio operated at the time—all of these sounds actually made sense together, because all of them have that Gen X angst baked right on in em. (I dare you to find one track that doesnt have at least a little cynicism or sarcasm raging through it.). Even the "Weird Al" polka parody that kicks this list off takes from some of the decades darkest alternative hits (and, seriously, whats more depressing than a polka?).