Genres

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!It’s endearing to hear expressions of ardent fandom from someone who inspires fervent adulation himself. Such is the case with Neil Gaiman: Though he is the creator of landmark comic The Sandman and a modern-day master of fantasy fiction and weird storytelling of all kinds, he gets unabashedly fanboyish when the subject turns to heroes like Lou Reed (“His songs were the soundtrack of my life,” he said when Reed died in 2013) and David Bowie. Indeed, Gaiman claims that one of his great sorrows in life was learning that his father had tickets for the final Ziggy Stardust show but didn’t take him because it was a school night. And don’t get him started on Tori Amos, whose devotion to The Sandman led to a close friendship, or The Magnetic Fields, a.k.a. “My favorite live band.” Gaiman even bought 69 Love Songs in bulk so he could give it away to friends.The latter was one of the albums he listened to a lot while writing American Gods, a mind-bending saga about an epic battle between gods old and new that is this season’s coolest TV event. As in so much of Gaiman’s work, music plays a major role throughout his storytelling, so you can expect the same on the small screen. In anticipation of its April 30 debut on Starz, we present a wide-ranging selection of music that Gaiman knows and loves, much of which has seeped into his writing in very direct ways. As you might expect from such a deft writer, he has a fondness for masters of wordplay like Stephin Merritt and Elvis Costello, though he has an equally strong allegiance to underappreciated songwriters like Greg Brown and Thea Gilmore.There’s also a wealth of songs that his stories have inspired, as heard on the enjoyably daffy tribute album Where’s Neil When You Need Him? and Jarvis Cocker’s contributions to Neil Gaiman’s Likely Stories, another recent TV adaptation. And though the man’s own musical endeavors are limited, he was an eager foil for his wife Amanda Palmer—better known as one-half of avant-cabaret act Dresden Dolls—during their touring show of songs and stories in the fall of 2011. Of course, the contents do get awfully strange at times, but that’s exactly how Gaiman’s devotees prefer them.

I don’t know very much about Britpop. I like Pulp somewhat, especially when this woman I am friends with (read: attracted to) comes over to my apartment and plays it for me. I don’t like Blur. I like Oasis all right, but I really don’t know their music well. I like Radiohead—is that Britpop? I love The Smiths. Are they Britpop? Determined to find answers and to investigate my own general distaste for the style, I decided to dig into Pitchfork’s recent 50 Best Britpop Albums list.The first thing I see on the page is a Sgt. Pepper-style mural, ostensibly with all of the important Britpop figures on it. I recognize Thom Yorke and the guys from Oasis. I see the guys from Trainspotting. Did they do Britpop? There’s a smiling milk carton, some dancers, and around 30 other people I don’t recognize. But by reading through the feature, I start to develop a better understanding of what Britpop is.It began in London in the ‘90s, which answers my question about The Smiths (but then... is Morrissey Britpop?), and I find that Britpop is characterized by “anthemic melodies, social observations of British culture and daily life, and their country’s musical heritage,” according to the article. I learn what Britpop isn’t: The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Coldplay, Kasabian. As I listen to some of the tracks on the playlist, I note that most of them are upbeat, many have light, airy atmospheres, and the guitar tones are largely bright and shiny with little distortion or overdrive. I actually recognize a number of these songs from the radio. I am having sort of a coherent moment.I see a supplementary interview with Danny Boyle and remember that Trainspotting 2 came out a few weeks ago. I put two and two together: This list is meant to coincide with Trainspotting 2. I am a big fan of some songs on the soundtrack of the original, namely those by Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, New Order, and Lou Reed… So, the tracks that aren’t Britpop. As I read through the Boyle interview, searching for information that might lead me to understand why Britpop is important to think about in 2017 or why I should really care about it as a musical style (other than it’s in the pantheon of rock styles), I strike out. And there isn’t much rhetoric in the copy of this playlist to convince me of the genre’s greatness. The interview ends with Boyle responding to a question of whether he prefers Oasis or Blur: He says that he comes from Manchester, so the answer should be obvious. It isn’t to me, so I have to do some research.Despite my skepticism, I actually enjoyed the article and the playlist. I learned what Britpop is for Pitchfork and why Danny Boyle popularized it in Trainspotting, and I acquired a comprehensive playlist of the best Britpop songs. I still don’t like Britpop, and I’m not convinced that it’s important for me to think about today, but at least I now know what it entails. And hey, that’s progress.

Home to international stars like Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and, um, Die Antwoord, South Africa has always been known for its music. Even during the days of apartheid, this country of 55 million people was a hotbed for pop, jazz, choral, and dance music. While Paul Simon worked with South African musicians back in the 1980s to make his career-defining album Graceland, these days it’s artists and label heads like Kode9 who are looking to the country amid the rising global popularity of gqom, the moody, broken-beat take on South African house that was first divined with the help of cracked Fruity Loops setups in the coastal city of Durban.Piotr Orlov, a writer for NPR, the New York Times, and The Guardian among others, has done an admirable job at offering an overview to a scene that is still largely unfamiliar to American audiences. A former editorial lead for now-defunct MTV streaming service Urge, Piotr intimately understands the playlist format, mixing a DJ’s ear for flow and sequencing with a musicologist’s vast knowledge and a critic’s natural discernment. Compiled after a recent trip to the country, the resulting playlist is illuminating, enjoyable, and erudite, and offers a glimpse at some of the best music coming out today.Highlights from the 24-track, 2.5 hour playlist (titled after the Xhosa word for South Africa) include Floyd Lavine’s smooth house jam “Saint Bondon” and Big Nuz’s kwaito party banger “Tsege Tsege”—the latter of which evokes pure sex with its shaking, moving, plucking, and pumping beat. There’s also more out-of-the-box fare, like Gumz’s unbelievably funky “Yoruba Brass” as well as “B U,” a cut from Okzharp & Manthe Ribana’s well-received Tell Your Vision EP, released last year on Hyperdub.Mzansi: Now! is bracketed by two tracks from the award-winning songwriter Thandiswa Mazwai, who began her career in the late ’90s as frontwoman of the kwaito pioneers Bongo Maffin. Just as nice is “Anonymous in New York,” a Mingus-y composition by the emerging jazz combo Skyjack. Alas, not every track on the collection is a winner—Thor Rixon and Alice Phoebe Lou’s twee electro-pop number “Death Pt II” lacks the charm of Rixon’s wonderfully weird “Fuk Bread” from 2015, for example.Still, there’s enough good stuff here to keep you engaged, and send you digging for more. And, ultimately, that’s the goal of a playlist that surveys scenes still largely foreign to its target audience. Mzansi: Now! makes a great case for both modern South African music and the professional curator class.

Nadia Sirota is a violist who has performed with Arcade Fire, Paul Simon, Dirty Projectors, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, and Grizzly Bear, among others. Her new solo album, Tessellatum, is out Aug. 11, 2017. She also hosts WQXRs Peabody Award-winning podcast Meet the Composer, which provided the inspiration for this playlist she created specially for The Dowsers:This is a bunch of my favorite works by composers featured on all three seasons of my podcast, Meet the Composer, which looks into the brains of creative musicians via interviews and sound design. There’s a healthy dose of microtonal stuff here, which almost always makes me really happy. But more importantly, all of these composers do The Thing I Like—which is to say, combining really interesting, unexpected textures with really satisfying material and structure. All of these pieces make me feel something, and that’s really what I’m after at the end of the day.Follow Nadia Sirota on Twitter and Facebook.

Click here to subscribe to this playlistsWhen Rolling Stone asked Nas to list his 10 favorite hip-hop tracks for a feature in their May 2014 issue, he limited his selections to songs released in the late ‘80s. His choices—which comprise the first 10 tracks on this playlist*—represent a transitional era in hip-hop: the mythical Golden Age when artists like Run-D.M.C., Big Daddy Kane, and Public Enemy were shaking off the genre’s cheesier disco roots in favor of a sharpened lyrical style.But beyond the Rolling Stone list, Nas has routinely paid homage to his predecessors elsewhere, mentioning the early innovators that influenced him on songs like Hip Hop Is Deads "Where Are They Now" and Life Is Goods "Back When." With this playlist, weve supplemented Nas original Top 10 with other personal favorites, based on references the rapper has made on record and in other interviews. On "Back When," which samples MC Shan and Marley Marls 1986 track "The Bridge," Nas talks about putting up a poster of the duo in his teenage bedroom. But even though, like them, Nas hails from Queensbridge, hes praised Shans Bronx-bred rival KRS-One as "someone that artists need to study"—"The Bridge Is Over," Boogie Down Productions response to "The Bridge," may have even paved the way for Nas eventual diss records against Jay-Z.Nas hasnt just studied Golden Age rap; he was raised by it. He grew up hearing fresh voices distilling real New York life onto record through blunt lyricism, a style he would adapt and evolve on his own a few years later. Hes mentioned that Kool G Raps "Streets of New York"** was a direct influence on "N.Y. State of Mind."Most of Nas favorite rappers hailed from one of the five boroughs. But hes also acknowledged the impact of artists from outside the East Coast, citing Ice Cubes Death Certificate and Scarfaces Mr. Scarface Is Back as formative releases. Those albums preceded Illmatic by only a few years, but given that Nas was only 21 when his classic debut came out, they were still crucial to his artistic development.Unlike Redhead Kingpin and the many other forgotten legends Nas cites on “Where Are They Now,” Nas has maintained both career longevity and musical relevancy. He’s been teasing his 11th studio LP since he claimed it was finished on DJ Khaled’s “Nas Album Done” last year, and he still claims that album is coming at some point in 2017. Until then, acquaint yourself with the songs that got Nas started in the first place.* “Plug Tunin,” Nas’ choice from De La Souls 3 Feet High and Rising, isn’t on Spotify. “Me Myself & I” has been substituted in its place.**"Streets of New York" isnt on Spotify; its been replaced by "#1 With A Bullet."

When bands adopt an air of world-weary resignation, it can feel like such a pose. Have they really lived enough to earn the ennui so soon after high school? Can these sensitive souls really be saddled with such a heavy burden? For anyone who feels dubious about the extent of their anguish, one of Morrissey’s greatest lyrical putdowns seems pertinent (as they so often do): “You just haven’t earned it yet, baby.”In light of that, it feels significant that the members of The National—like LCD Soundsystem and The War on Drugs, two other revered alt-rock acts with brilliant new albums in 2017—had some road on them by the time the fates smiled in their direction. Frontman Matt Berninger and the band’s two pairs of brothers—Aaron and Bryce Dessner and Scott and Bryan Devendorf—all had played in a series of little-known bands in Cincinnati through the ‘90s before eventually convening in Brooklyn in 1999. Success was anything but an overnight phenomenon for The National either, the players maintaining their various graphic-design and personal-assistant gigs for years until the 2005 release of their third album Alligator sent the band above the proverbial parapet.All of which is to say The National do sound like they’ve earned it. And just as Berninger’s lyrics reflect on the sacrifices, compromises, regrets, and triumphs that color the experience of anyone who’s been in the world long enough to know the score, their music—whether ambitious or intimate, stately or urgent —points to a wider range of influences and elements than you’re likely to hear in musicians who’ve only just earned the right to buy their own bourbon. For this Family Tree feature, we reveal the music that helped form The National’s sound (i.e. the roots), along with songs by peers (i.e, the branches) whose artistic sensibilities also seemed to arrive fully grown. We also highlight The National’s impact on younger bands (i.e., the leaves) who are well on their way to achieving the same degree of maturity—albeit without getting prematurely tired, cynical, and dull. There is such a thing as aging gracefully, after all—hear The National’s latest album, Sleep Well Beast, for further proof.

THE ROOTS

Given Berninger’s capacity for elegant brooding, it’s hardly a surprise that masters of misery like Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave have long been his inspirations. His devotion to Tom Waits is just as evident, especially in the late-night, booze-soaked songs like Alligator’s “All the Wine.”But there’s always been more strident elements in The National’s songs—indeed, Berninger considers The Strokes the most significant band of the oughts, and songs like the early standout “Murder Me Rachael” boast a similar live-wire energy that offsets the music’s more morose tendencies. Likewise, Bryce Dessner’s background in classical music adds further unexpected and unpredictable elements, as do the electronic textures that have become more prominent over the past decade of recordings. Like R.E.M., Radiohead, and the Arcade Fire—all of whom have been cited as inspirations, too—The National have somehow managed to push themselves in artistic terms while maintaining massive followings. That feat gets trickier all the time.

THE BRANCHES

When The National emerged as one of the key American rock acts of the 2000s, they were thankfully not an outlier. In fact, they shared many of their most compelling qualities with a host of peers, many of whom had also spent the previous decade or so toiling in obscurity and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with them. In regards to the lyrics’ more literary sensibility and the sheer scale of ambition, The National had a clear kinship with Sufjan Stevens, an artist who became a close friend and sometime collaborator. (He and Bryce Dessner are also part of the team behind the stunning Planetarium.) Okkervil River’s Will Sheff shared Berninger’s ability to thoroughly inhabit the characters in his songs. Of course, Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver emerged as a fellow inhabitant of countless long dark nights of the soul. And in the music of Grizzly Bear, Beirut, and Antlers (as well as less-celebrated faves like Crooked Fingers), there was the same fondness for the kind of creative curveballs that shatter expectations just when things threaten to become too familiar. That all makes for a new golden age of sensitive beard-wearers, this playlist’s inclusion of the mighty Sharon Van Etten notwithstanding.

THE LEAVES

The National’s ability to keep moving and tweak their own formulas makes them an exemplar as much as any single aspect of their sound does. Nevertheless, their flair for songs that balance the anthemic and the intimate is certainly a well-treasured trait for Future Islands. Moreover, the sumptuous songs of Natalie Prass evince the same eagerness to synthesize Americana, alt-rock, and orchestrally enhanced pop classicism and do it on a grand scale. Meanwhile, Berninger’s thornier side emerges in Strand of Oaks and Hiss Golden Messenger, two equally iconoclastic acts that followed in The National’s wake. Two of their strongest stylistic heirs hail from the U.K. Though Frightened Rabbit formed in Scotland in 2004, their strengths didn’t fully emerge until recent albums like 2016’s fine Painting of a Panic Attack, produced by Aaron Dessner. From Yorkshire, Grass House may herald a new wave of acts steeped in the aesthetic prerogatives and musical modes that The National has helped propagate over the past decade. They may still be young and relatively unscarred by life’s slings and arrows, but we won’t hold that against them.

In 1992, Ebony asked Tina Turner what type of singer she was. "A serious singer," she replied—then added, "and a lasting singer." She was, of course, correct on both counts. Tinas voice is one of American musics most singular instruments: Formidable and rugged, it wrings soul out of heartbroken ballads and defiant anthems alike. These five vocal performances show off her incredible emotional and vocal ranges, and prove that her place in music isnt defined by genre or style as much as it is by her incredible resilience and work ethic. "The Best" (1989)Songwriters Mike Chapman and Holly Knight had written Tinas demanding 1984 hit "Better Be Good to Me," and five years later she plucked another one of their songs—the praise-stuffed "The Best," originally written for Welsh belter Bonnie Tyler—for her own personal songbook. Tina turned the song into a triumph, her effusive praise for a lover professed with such urgency and joy that it wound up turning into advocacy for her own status as "the best." "Whats Love Got to Do With It" (1984)When Tina began putting together Private Dancer—the 1984 album that would double as her return to pops upper echelons—the first song she received was an odd track by British songwriter Terry Britten. "I felt, Gosh, what a strange little song. Its not rock and roll," Tina told John Pidgeon in the BBC Books release Classic Albums. But meeting Britten changed her mind; after hearing her out, he switched up some chord changes and altered its key, and Tina felt comfortable enough to lend it her impassioned, soaring vocal. "It was unusual and different, but it was so different," Tina recalled in Classic Albums. "Thats why it was a hit, because there hasnt been anything out there like it since, either. It was one of those songs that you get maybe once a decade." Britten would go on to write other tracks—including the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome rallying cry "We Dont Need Another Hero" and the longing "Typical Male"—that let Tina get vocally loose. "River Deep – Mountain High" (1966)Tinas collaboration with then-white-hot producer Phil Spector was a meeting of two powerhouses, and the title track from 1966s River Deep – Mountain High, which Spector wrote with pop hitmakers Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, shows how their seemingly clashing styles could come together in rousing fashion. “For the first time in my life, it wasn’t R&B," Tina told Kurt Loder in a 1984 Rolling Stone interview. "I finally had a chance to sing.” And sing she does: Her robust vocal slices through Spectors trademark Wall of Sound, making the lyrics proclamations of love sound like ironclad promises. "Nutbush City Limits" (1973)On November 26, 1939, Anna Mae Bullock was born in Nutbush, Tennessee. Three-plus decades later, Bullock, who had by then rechristened herself as Tina Turner, would commemorate the small cotton-producing hamlets "church house, gin house … school house, [and] outhouse" in this stomping slice of glam-funk, the last single she produced with her eventual ex Ike Turner. Tina throws herself into the description of the "quiet little old community, a one-horse town" fully, her stretched-out yowl contrasting with the insistent percussion and woozy analog synth in thrilling fashion. "Proud Mary" (1993)Ike and Tinas transformation of Creedence Clearwater Revivals 1969 riverboat chronicle turned it into one of Tinas signature songs, with its lazy-river rhythms eventually exploding into a horn-festooned rave-up and giving Tina a chance to reinvent rock in her own image. Versions of Tina doing "Proud Mary" abound, and theyre always worth listening to. The locomotive live version featured on the deluxe edition of The Rolling Stones 1970 live album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! is particularly taut. But the version that appeared on 1993s soundtrack to the Angela Bassett-starring biopic Whats Love Got to Do With It has a special resonance: Tina recorded a new version of that track and other songs from the period when she was second-billed to her abusive ex-husband, and the spitfire vocal she offers up on "Mary" doubles as a celebration of the rebirth she began almost a decade prior.

Back in the mid-‘80s, Geffen Records sued Neil Young for not sounding like himself, because they couldn’t handle the fact he was just being himself. Ever since he followed up his biggest album (1972’s Harvest) with his bleakest (1974’s On the Beach), Neil has endured as the world’s most reluctant rock star: unpredictable, contrarian, always zagging when everyone—his label, his fans, even his bandmates—would prefer to zig. And though he answered his infamously eclectic ‘80s discography by more eagerly embracing an elder-statesman role in the ‘90s—whether producing sequels to his ‘70s classics or coronating his godfather-of-grunge status—his post-2000s work has struck a wobbly balance between crowd-pleasing classicism and unfettered eccentricity.Sure, there’s nothing in Neil’s recent canon as stylistically outré as 1982’s synth-pop experiment Trans, or as self-consciously cheeky as 1983’s Everybody’s Rockin’. But he has reframed his traditional acoustic/electric modes with high-concept hijinks, be it the eco-themed concept album Greendale or the sepia-toned recording-booth crackle of A Letter Home. Even as his work has turned more impulsively political—see: 2006’s Dubya-dissing Living With War—the rage has been tempered with a healthy dose of whimsy (which, in that album’s case, took the form of amateur choirs and cavalry horns). And often, his post-2000 output has toed the line between audacious and ridiculous: The previous four decades of epic guitar jams feel like mere warm-ups for 2012’s “Driftin’ Back,” which churns and drones for over 27 minutes. Next to that, the 18-minute grunge-blues grind “Ordinary People” feels like a pop single.As that latter song exemplifies, a playlist of 21st-century Neil Young songs needs to come with some asterisks—“Ordinary People” was actually recorded with his brassy bar band The Bluenotes in 1988, but didn’t see the light of day until 2006’s Chrome Dreams II (with the carbon-dating Lee Iacocca reference intact). Neil has regularly dipped into his fabled stash of unreleased ‘70s and ‘80s-era songs on his post-millennial records, at times strategically deploying them like a game-saving immunity idol on Survivor. The otherwise slight 2000 album Silver and Gold climaxes with the stunning mid-‘70s holdover “Razor Love,” which mediates between his gentle Harvest hits and his hazy-headed Ditch Trilogy. And Neil’s best album of this century—the Daniel Lanois-produced solo-electric opus Le Noise—centers around the chilling travelogue “Hitchhiker,” another mid-‘70s obscurity that resurfaced in its original acoustic form when Neil released his “lost” 1976 album of the same name in the summer of 2017. In typically inscrutable Youngian psychology, navigating the 21st-century sometimes requires taking a journey through the past.

It is commonly stated among music lovers that Radiohead are the best band in the world. Since forming in 1985, they have won countless awards and released numerous songs and albums to universal acclaim, advancing new avenues in sound and musical technique with each passing year. With its immaculately complex song structures and lyrical focus on the increasing integration of technology into social life, their 1997 masterwork OK Computer revitalized rock n’ roll in the ‘90s. Its follow-up, the cold, prismatic Kid A, with its otherworldly tones and its portentous, opaque text, frequently tops lists of the best albums of recent memory. Their live performances have gained an almost mythological status, mystifying audiences with the gargantuan sounds these five mortal beings can produce, from Jonny Greenwood’s pristine guitar solos and imaginative use of synthesizers to Phil Selway’s machinelike focus and intensity at the drums.

The black metal mythology is well known at this point, pored over by metalheads like the Greeks studied Homer: the church-burning, the murder, the suicide, the darkness. In Hyperborean black metal, as Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix calls it, the nascent style focused on dark themes, Norse imagery, burst beats, and epic walls of sound built on distorted guitars. These albums often used lo-fi recording techniques as well; for Burzum’s seminal Filosofem, for example, Varg Vikernes selected the worst microphone possible, one from a headset. Newer black metal has maintained much of the core sound of Hyperborean black metal, yet newer bands like Ashbringer, Panopticon, Deafheaven, and False have begun to transform the game.Contemporary black metal often features more frequent tempo changes, lighter, thinner guitar tones, more uplifting climaxes, high-quality production, and brighter imagery. This isn’t necessarily to say it’s more optimistic—in a largely unchanged society, these musicians are as despairing as their predecessors. And yet the forms of expression they have come to use to channel that despair exists in a fundamentally different musical landscape, one that has seen the full unfolding of post-rock, grunge, and indie. Just as Gandalf returned to his followers in The Two Towers after what appeared to be certain death, black metal comes back to us now, appearing transformed and disfigured, beckoning with rippling beauty and crushing riffs. These are the complex and grand songs of the new wave.