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In May 2017, LCD Soundsystem released “Call the Police," their first new music in seven years. An indulgent self-lament that morphs into a middle-aged rallying call, the song is both brilliant and heartbreaking—that is, once you finish rolling your eyes at the fact that it exists in the first place. Since the first LCD Soundsystem reunion show was announced at the start of 2016, James Murphy spent the next year doing exactly what he told everyone he wouldn’t do: cashing in on the residual fervor generated by his past success, and on the reunion economy at large. Its in this transitional period of Murphy’s career that his playlist for the Ten Songs That Saved Your Life site (he actually chose 15*) take on a new context. His list includes the obvious forebearers of traditional rock, LES post-punk, and quintessential European electronica. They are highly indicative of his own music, which has often subtly reimagined sounds already thought to have hit their apex. But keep in mind that on this mix, Murphy is not flaunting his inspiration; he’s talking salvation. So much of his music has dressed itself in sardonic humour before it sucks all the air out of the room with its unabashed honesty. It’s a skill that the best of the best share. Whether it’s coming from Roberta Flack or David Bowie, there is something both comforting and emancipatory about someone else speaking your truth better than you ever could. Perhaps this is why Murphy’s own resurgence has been so unnervingly easy to swallow. When artists are this impressive, sometimes catalyzing entire subgenres through their work, it’s difficult to argue why you shouldn’t pedestalize them. On the other hand, it makes it similarly easy to give them a pass when they get under your skin.* Some of Murphys selections are not available on Spotify and thus not included on this playlist. You can listen to his original version here.

We may have reached a sort of peak America on August 20, 2016. After a fit of false starts and head fakes, Ocean revealed his masterpiece, Blonde, an album that, in many ways, embodied a greater idea of what America could be: inclusive and diverse, both culturally and aesthetically; adventurous and transparent, embracing experimentations in search of an emotional honesty; and, not least importantly, fun, and filled with an overarching optimism.Things may have gone downhill since then, but we still have Frank, and he’s been particularly productive in 2017, releasing a slew of more pop-oriented singles, and, maybe just as importantly, curating his own radio show, blonded, on Apple Music. Ocean has never been particularly forthcoming in interviews—on the few occasions he’s done them—but his taste in music offers a rare and deep glimpse into his creative processes and inspirations.For many, Ocean’s music is singular, and his talent and sound seem to have emerged from a vacuum, but there are specific antecedents to each component of his music. Like many music masterminds—from Prince to Radiohead—he’s interested in genre pastiche, extracting and recontextualizing broad and seemingly disparate forms of music. Listening to these broadcasts is like watching a master chef at work in their kitchen.We’ve combined and organized selections that Frank picked for blonded, as well as previous lists he’s provided over the years and the music that he’s sampled, dividing the playlists largely along genre lines in order to provide a key for how Frank thinks about music. The main playlist here represents a megamix of all the tracks featured in the segmented playlists below. (You can access the original blonded podcast by visiting Apple Music, or subscribing to our Spotify channel, where we’re collected them as Spotify playlists.)FRANK’S AMBIENT/ELECTRONIC/GLITCH ITCH

Frank Ocean’s video performance piece Endless was a teaser “album” of sorts, released just one day before Blonde. With the visuals’ stark, high-contrast lighting, and the tracks’ broken soundscapes and fractured melodies, it was an immersive and frequently confounding experience. There were certainly songs there—the Isley Brothers/Aaliyah cover “(At Your Best) You Are Love” remains one of the most haunting tracks Ocean has released—but for the most part, the piece was focused on generating a skeletal, unsettling, and haunting atmosphere. This vibe was carried over to the creeping sounds of Blonde tracks “Seigfried” and “Futura Free.”This focus on textures over tunes is the common denominator for most of the tracks on this playlist. A beautiful, gentle piano melody emerges from the skittering beats of Aphex Twin’s “Flim.” Todd Rundgren’s 1970 proto-ambient work “There Are No Words,” meanwhile, moves like fog—eerie, otherworldly, and all-encompassing. Rundgren’s other contribution to this playlist, his 1973 track “Flamingo”—sampled on Ocean’s track “Solo”—is comparatively less whispy, with chirping birth noises fluttering around a circular synth figure. It’s no surprise to see Arca here; the Venezuelan queer performance artist and Kanye/Björk producer has been mining the same space between operatic melodrama and jarring ambient noise as Ocean did on Endless and the last half of Blonde. The tracks here do occasionally gain momentum —with French maverick Sébastien Tellier’s reflective 3 a.m. anthem “La ritournelle” in particular—but, for the most part, the music here serves as a pensive, ambient mood board.Further Listening:Decoding Endless: Frank’s Wild YearsThe Best Ambient TechnoThe 50 Best Ambient Albums of All TimeAphex Twin’s Field DaySUNDAY-MORNING HEARTBREAK AND SOFT R&B JAMS

There’s a warmth and intimacy to many of Frank Ocean’s best tracks—think of the delicate dance of “Pink + White” from Blonde, or Channel Orange tracks like “Bad Religion,” the bouncy “Monks,” or the titantic “Thinkin’ About You.” The Rhodes-driven tracks reference, of course, the classic R&B of Stevie Wonder, but they also point towards another, more modern and gentle strand of R&B that descended from neo-soul forebearers such as Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. Esperanza Spalding (who Frank included on inaugural edition of blonded radio) is a great example of this, skirting the borders of jazz, funk, and soul and paying homage to each, but carving out a singular aesthetic that’s both modern and timeless.The best tracks here are those that negotiate traditional genre boundaries with a gentle grace. Yussef Kamaal’s “Yo Chavez” interweaves vibe-laced ‘70s jazz fusion with a shuffling broken beat over airy textures that points towards the looser, groovier parts of Channel Orange. The classic boom-bap funk fuzz of the OutKast/Erykah Badu collaboration “Humble Mumble,” or the loose, euphoric glow of Kehlani’s “Undercover,” also reflects the warmth of Ocean’s “Pink + White,” while Darando’s raggedy falsetto on the forgotten ‘70s classic “Didn’t I” (originally included on installment five of blonded radio) is endlessly fragile and haunting. These are deeply intimate love songs, but most of these capture a love interrupted, deferred, or forgotten—a confessional focus that Ocean has returned to time and time again throughout his career.This is perfect Sunday morning listening, but it’s pretty damn good for any day (or time) you want to push play.Further Listening:Raphael Saadiq Behind the ScenesWhy SZA’s CTRL Is the R&B Album of the SummerUnpacked: Solange’s A Seat at the TableFRANK’S RAP TRAX

In many ways, Frank Ocean is less invested in rap music than his R&B peers. When he listed out his favorite tracks for the Blonde magazine last year, hip-hop was absent save for an OutKast and, um, DRAM track. And while Ocean has provided guest turns on a number of tracks—and he actually raps on Earl Sweatshirt’s lazy, SoCal anthem “Sunday”—he’s not nearly as promiscuous as other singers, and, as frequently as not, he tilts the gravity of the track so that they become Frank Ocean songs. (Kanye, wisely realizing this, stripped his contribution from the end of The Life of Pablo’s “Wolves” and made it its own track, the appropriately entitled “Frank’s Track.”)Still, Frank is deeply invested in the genre, both through his Odd Future lineage and in rap’s culture, sound, and attitude. The hip-hop tracks that he’s included on blonded radio (episodes #4 and #6 focus on the genre) and beyond tend to be chart-driven singles, and remind us that Ocean is ultimately a pop artist. The hypnotic “Tunnel Vision” from Kodak Black has this year’s best use of the flute (and, really, that’s saying a lot) and matches the loopy, hall-of-mirrors vibe of many Ocean tracks. And while Frank famously called out the Grammys for giving Album of the Year to Taylor Swift over Kendrick—"hands down one of the most 'faulty’ TV moments I've seen"—that’s not the only thing linking Lamar and Ocean. Both endlessly distort and manipulate their voices: Kendrick changes registers, effects, and pitch with nearly every verse, while Ocean—on tracks like “Nikes”—uses vocal mutations to add both texture and narrative drama to his tracks. It wasn’t surprising that he included “LUST.” on installment #4 of blonded.But, more than any aesthetic linkage, these guys are his friends (A$AP Rocky), his collaborators (Future), and his idols (OutKast), and this playlist acknowledges those influences and associations.Further Listening:Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN., UnpackedFrank Ocean’s Best Guest SpotsSongs That Prove the Flute Was Always Hip-Hop’s Secret WeaponFRANK’S INDIE ROCK FIXATION

“Indie rock” is a bit of a misnomer. It always has been. It’s more of a philosophical approach or psychographic than it is an aesthetic designation, but, however you look at it, Frank Ocean has long been a rabid fan of this spectrum of music. The surf-rock guitar line that anchors “Ivy” wouldn’t have felt out of place on any number of ‘60s-revivalist rock records from the past decade, while the clamour and noise of “Pretty Sweet” sound a lot like the psych/lo-fi groups that populated the ’90s rock landscape (though, granted, the two-step/garage drum line at the end turns it into a Frank Ocean track), while the bouncy melodies and sullen vocal counterpoints owe more than a little to The Smiths.There’s been a long-standing tradition of indie-rock critics trying to project their own music onto R&B and hip-hop musicians, and that’s not what we’re trying to do here—but it’s also undeniable that Frank has focused a lot on this type of music (particularly on the fifth edition of blonded radio). Some of the selections here are exactly the songs you’d expect from someone who spends his summers headlining festivals—MGMT’s “Electric Feel,” The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”—but others convey a deeper investment. Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” reflects Ocean’s own penchant for creating long-form, mise-en-scene narratives over noisy, clattering backdrops, even if Alan Vega’s tale of a down-and-out factory worker killing his family is a little more macabre than anything on Frank’s albums. The shimmering, ephemeral “Wild Thing Runs Free” from Baltimore noise-punk group Teen Suicide resembles the rambling interludes that dot Frank’s own albums. And it’s not surprising to see (Sandy) Alex G show up on the second edition of blonded—after all, he did contribute guitar work to both Endless and Blonde—and his track “Mis” is imbued with a certain shambolic majesty.We don’t want Frank to abandon custom luxury cars and glitter for stick-and-poke tattoos and dive bars, but this is a great, revealing, and fairly unexpected playlist.Further Listening:Ambient Dream Folk & Beyond Dreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsFierce and Fuzzy: The Lo-Fi Revolution

Almost everything about Frank Ocean is shrouded in mystery and contradiction. He’s brash and outspoken, yet a virtual recluse; he’s a modern media star, yet he rarely engages with the modern media; he’s one of music’s most distinct voices, but he’s also a cypher. If you’re looking to his new album, Endless, for clues to who the man is, you’ll be disappointed. For one thing, this may not actually be his new album — maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. All we know is that the music here is baffling and beautiful. The spare, ominous acoustic balladry of “Rushes To” recalls the gothic folk of British experimentalists Current 93, while the album’s skittering narrative threads, dark gospel underpinnings, and political nods recall everything from Erykah Badu’s masterwork New Amerykah Part One to the latest Kanye West. There’s a refracted funk that channels ‘00s underground R&B group Sa-Ra Creative Partners, which makes sense considering that Om’mas Keith from Sa-Ra provides piano on the album. The moody electronic ambience of producer Arca, who has previously worked with everyone from Kanye to Bjork, is all over this album. This playlist looks at some of the albums collaborators and influences, as well as sample sources. It’s a companion piece — a helpful set of footnotes to this strange, gorgeous record.

Before we had RIYL algorithms and Spotify discovery playlists, we had Kurt Cobain. The Nirvana frontman wasn’t just one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed alt-rock artists of the early ‘90s, he was also its foremost tastemaker. Cobain’s conflicted relationship with fame has been well documented, but one benevolent side effect of his discomfort in the spotlight was that he used every opportunity to redirect it onto lesser-known artists, and not just ones from his immediate community. While the media was hyping the Seattle scene, Cobain was leading impressionable kids down underground pathways that extended from Scotland to Japan.This was a guy who could get an obscure, out-of-print punk record reissued through a major label by name-dropping it an interview, or who could effectively play armchair A&R rep and score a deal for an unsung artist just by wearing their t-shirt. Even if only a tiny fraction of the 10 million people who bought Nevermind were willing to check out a record based on his recommendation, it was enough to turn groups like Shonen Knife into international club headliners, and enough to transform The Wipers’ once-obscure early ‘80s releases into canonical punk classics for future generations to discover.Since his 1994 suicide, Cobain’s life and work have been put under the microscope many times over, through numerous biographies, documentaries, and barrel-scraping box sets. But one of the most illuminating pieces of detritus can be found in the 2002 scrapbook Journals: a handwritten list of his 50 favorite albums of all time. It’s a document that illustrates how, behind all the disaffected cool, Cobain was just a list-making music nerd like the rest of us. And based on the most recent entry—PJ Harvey’s 1992 debut Dry—it was a practice he indulged in even after his face was all over Rolling Stone and MTV. (He even divided his entries with lines as if he were designing the flippable label cards in his own imaginary jukebox.)

You can listen to selections from each of the records on the master playlist above. (Note: we included a song from each side of The Faith/Void split LP, bringing our track total up to 51. Also, the What Is It California-punk compilation he lists isnt on Spotify, though the Germs songs featured on it can be sourced from other releases.) But for a more in-depth look at how these records inspired Cobain—whether musically or philosophically—we’ve broken down his picks by category and created subsidiary playlists below that feature some of his picks alongside the Nirvana songs they inspired.

THE CLASSICS

Like many kids born in the late ‘60s, Kurt’s first musical obsession was The Beatles. Their melodic sensibility formed a crucial strain of his musical DNA that withstood his eventual conversion to punk, leading to breakthrough moments like “About a Girl.” (Tellingly, Kurt’s favorite Fab Four record isn’t a typical muso pick like Revolver or the White Album, but the band’s winsome U.S. debut, Meet the Beatles, whose brevity and simplicity are more compatible with his passion for DIY indie rock.) Meanwhile, his adolescent affinity for mid-‘70s Aerosmith was entrenched enough that he would (partially) name a song after them, and while David Bowie was a less obvious influence on Nirvana, the band’s reverential cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” forged their spiritual connection with rock’s original iconoclast. But Kurt was also willing to own up to inspiration from less-respected hit-makers—listen to the verses of The Knack’s “Good Girls Don’t,” and you’ll hear the sort of slack, sardonic delivery he brought to Nirvana songs like “On a Plain.” His list also betrays a growing fascination with ’40s folk pioneer Lead Belly that would ultimately yield one of Cobain’s most chilling performances.

THE PUNKS

Kurt’s list reveals a typical punk-rock initiation process: You’ve got the pioneers (The Stooges, the Sex Pistols), their more extreme hardcore spawn (Black Flag, Fear), the detouring post-punk experimentalists (Public Image Ltd., Gang of Four), and the mutant recombinant offspring who fuse and abuse all of the above (Flipper, Butthole Surfers). It’s the last iteration that had the most audible impact on Nirvana, particularly on bludgeoning Bleach-era tracks like “Paper Cuts” (which bears both the bone- and soul-crushing heft of ‘80s Swans), Incesticide oddities like “Hairspray Queen” (which finds Kurt squealing like a young Gibby Haynes), and In Utero crushers like “Milk It” and “Scentless Apprentice” (where Kurt chews on the tin foil spit out by Scratch Acid’s David Yow). And then there’s the only band to earn three slots on Kurt’s list: Portland underground demigods The Wipers, whose relentless momentum and hoarse-throat hooks set the fiery pace for Nirvana corkers like “Breed” and “Territorial Pissings.” (Funnily enough, after once admitting that The Clash’s Sandinista! disappointed him as a kid because it didn’t align with his perceptions of punk, Kurt includes the much more commercial follow-up, Combat Rock—perhaps as a commiserating reminder that he wasn’t the first punk who had to deal with becoming popular.)

THE ALT-ROCK PEERS

Nirvana’s explosive success couldn’t have happened without the fuse-igniting efforts of their immediate alt-rock antecedents—both close to home and beyond. “Negative Creep” is essentially Mudhoney’s “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” flipped from 33 rpm to 45. The crash/burn/rebuild structure of Sonic Youth’s “Silver Rocket” would reappear in smoothed-out form on the alternately rousing and brooding “Drain You.” The whisper-to-scream hysterics of the Pixies, can of course, be heard on any number of Nirvana songs, but bassist Kim Deal’s Breeders offshoot was an equally profound influence, with the nocturnal, string-scraped atmosphere of Pod filtering down to In Utero respites like “Dumb” and “Penny Royal Tea.” And though the radiant, paisley-patterned jangle of R.E.M.’s Green may not be as perceptible, the wry, self-reflexive quality of “Pop Song 89” feels like a spiritual successor to Nirvana’s own meta-rock commentaries, like “In Bloom.”

THE LO-FI LOVES

Embarrassed somewhat by Nevermind’s big-budget studio polish (which he infamously compared to a Mötley Crüe record), not to mention the increasingly slick nature of alternative rock, Kurt used his pop-star pulpit to champion the virtues of amateurism. In the collapsible sing-alongs of ‘60s outcasts The Shaggs, he heard something stranger and more radical than anything you could find on 120 Minutes. Through his beloved Vaselines, he learned how to balance playful melodies atop rickety punk-rock foundations. And in the solitary serenades of Daniel Johnston and the giddy garage-rock of Shonen Knife, he heard the purest manifestation of the childlike emotions he tried to access on songs like “Sliver.” But while his fondness for ramshackle post-punk and lo-fi indie pop brought out Nirvana’s more playful side (best heard on Incesticide’s odds ‘n’ sods and the more whimsical moments of the MTV Unplugged set), for Kurt, that music also represented an effective weapon for dismantling rock’s patriarchal power structure. Nirvana may not bear the direct musical influence of minimalist, female-fronted bands like The Raincoats, Young Marble Giants, and Kleenex, nor is there anything in their catalog resembling the homoerotic joke-folk hijinks of The Frogs, but they undoubtedly inspired him to become the preeminent male-feminist and pro-gay rock star of his generation, one who was willing to write indictments of rape (“Polly”) and machismo (“Mr. Moustache”), and who happily used his liner notes to tell the racist and homophobic jocks in his audience to fuck off. (Though one cant help but wonder if, he were around today to make a similar Top 50 list in this post-poptimist age, he might include more than one hip-hop record.)SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

On Questlove’s list of his favorite 50 hip-hop songs, he offers an important caveat. “I decided to concentrate on 1979-1995,” he writes, because the latter year marks the major label debut of his group the Roots and their second album, Do You Want More?!!!??! “I wanted to concentrate on the period that I was not professionally involved in the art form.” His canonical picks skew heavily toward the “golden age” of East Coast hip-hop, with a few cursory nods at the West Coast (one track apiece from NWA, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, but no Ice-T or 2Pac) and the South (Geto Boys, but no OutKast or bass music). Questlove may not be much of a hip-hop historian — inexplicably, he ranks Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two” over Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Pt. II,” and doesn’t find any space for Nas (or Jay-Z, whose debut single “In My Lifetime” dropped in 1994). But he’s an engaging writer, and his capsule explanations for his picks are frequently entertaining, whether it’s humble-bragging how Chuck D gave him an extra copy of Son of Bazerk’s Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk, effusing about Trouble Funk’s “Pump Me Up,” or using Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s “The Message” to talk about being unfairly pulled over by the cops in 2008. “It is like a jungle, still,” he writes about the latter.Want updates with awesome artist-curated, hip-hop, and handcrafted playlists? Subscribe to our e-mail here and follow Questlove’s playlist on Spotify here.

If theres anything more intimate than baring your soul with a lyric, its inviting the world into your record collection. Over the years, Thom Yorke has granted us both, giving us a peek into the psyche of one of modern rocks most celebrated and enigmatic figures. There may be entire websites dedicated to decoding his words, but when it comes to the music that makes Yorke tick, we can go directly to the source. The Radiohead frontman has never been shy about revealing his influences. Since OK Computer and especially Kid A, hes been turning alt-rock diehards into IDM geeks, jazz freaks, and underground hip-hop heads.But to truly comprehend how his musical mind is wired, theres nothing quite like seeing how he can put together a playlist or, better yet, DJ a party. Over the past decade, it seems Yorke has found just as much thrill in promoting other peoples music as his own, from assembling iTunes playlists to playing top-secret DJ shows to publishing Radioheads "Office Charts," an extensive collection of mixes featured on the bands deadairspace blog. Here, we dig up a few of his notable works as both music curator and DJ to tap into some of his creative—and physical—energy.THOM YORKE’S 2007 iTUNES PLAYLIST

Six months after the release of his stark electronic solo debut, The Eraser—and in the midst of recording Radioheads lightest, most romantic, work, In Rainbows—Yorke took to iTunes to present his favorite songs at the moment (i.e., January 2007). As a playlist maker, Yorke is admittedly a bit all over the place. But when you piece it all together now, his collection certainly works as a sort of deconstructed primer for his then-new solo effort and future works with Radiohead and Atoms For Peace. The addition of Bat For Lashes enchanted, ethereal pop points all the way to the sweeping ballads of A Moon Shaped Pool, while the ominous piano and rolling snare beats of The Dears "No Hope Before Destruction" portend In Rainbows funereal closer "Videotape" (even though, in the accompanying liner notes, Yorke admits he doesnt know much else by them).These grand, dramatic pieces get cut up by the sort of dark, glitchy grooves Yorke has increasingly embraced: Hes a sucker for Madvillains rhymes and Quasimotos loose, vintage production; he loves the "lizard bass sound" of Boxcutter; and is hypnotized by the maddening, menacing post-rave loops of UK producer Surgeon, an artist he discovered after OK Computer. And while the sleazy bass of Spank Rock is a bit of an outlier here, the inclusion of Liars—who Yorke would eventually remix—seems just right, especially when he accurately describes "Drum Gets a Glimpse" as "more terror from the subconscious."GLASTONBURY SECRET FUSELAGE DJ SET (2011)

Fast forward four years and Thom could be found hitting the decks alongside producer pal Nigel Godrich in a "crashed aeroplane fuselage" adjacent to the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. The story goes that the duo played a killer four-hour set, but Yorke would later only reveal 17 of the songs played on deadairspace. This was one of a handful of surprise DJ events that year, including a couple at Los Angeles Low End Theory with Brainfeeder boss Flying Lotus (a union that gave rise to perhaps the greatest GIF ever). This would all happen following the release of Radioheads somewhat divisive eighth album, The King of Limbs, which was dominated by loops, samples, and broken-up beats of Yorkes creation. It also came with the great unveiling of Thom the modern dancer. With those beats and dancing moves in place, his rising role as DJ seemed a natural move.These tracks make for a pretty pumping party, one seemingly co-signed by Diplo, who, along with his label Mad Decent, is represented here in various forms (with Blaqstarr, Major Lazer, and Boy 8-Bit). The set is also punctuated by moody British electro (Nathan Fake), a UK jungle classic ("Original Nuttah"), and Public Enemys hard-hitting politics ("Night of the Living Baseheads"). The mix pounds—aggressively and unrelentingly—more so than any Yorke creation ever has, and we certainly wouldve loved an invitation. (Note: Track 2 in Yorke’s 17-song sampler, Felix da Housecats "Madame Hollywood," is not available on Spotify.) LIVE FROM A MOON SHAPED POOL/RADIOHEAD OFFICE CHARTS (2016)

Five years on and with a brand-new album ready for show, Yorke would accompany the release of 2016s A Moon Shaped Pool with a six-hour compilation of tracks that had been featured on their blog under the innocuous title of Radiohead Office Charts. If you were looking to dissect Thom Yorkes brain, this is probably a good place to start your examination. Or if you simply want to discover some seriously awesome experimentalists—from Nigeria (BLO) to India (Charanjit Singh) to Syria (Omar Souleyman) to Germany (Christoph De Babalon)—to go alongside classical concertos (Bach), New Orleans jazz (Sidney Bechet), and Yorkes go-to faves (Modeselektor, Madvillain), this is your one-stop shop.Despite a jumble of sounds that span genres, nations, and generations, this collection feels expertly curated. The vibe is overall cerebral yet chill—exactly what youd expect from the guy who just helped spearhead one of the years most haunting records. In fact, any track from A Moon Shaped Pool would fit right in. Actually, any Radiohead or Yorke track period would make perfect sense here, as a fascinating distillation of his existence as both major music geek and major music innovator.Want more playlists and articles like this delivered directly to you? Sign up for our e-mail here, follow us on Facebook, or go directly to the source and subscribe to our Spotify account.

One of the ugliest figures in rap is obsessed with some of the prettiest music. But we should expect nothing less from Tyler, the Creator, a self-described “walking paradox” whose music has been obscured by his public persona ever since he disrupted rap with his Odd Future crew in 2008. You could be forgiven for writing him off entirely after reading his notoriously homophobic Tweets. He’s since walked back most of that language, and has perhaps even come out as gay—or at least inhabits a gay character on his 2017 album Scum Fuck Flower Boy.As a rapper and producer, he’s been open about his influences since day one, and theyre all over the place: Pharrell’s sweet falsettos and uneasy chord progressions; the alien pop and library music of Broadcast; late ‘80s R&B (not a lot of that on Spotify, sadly); the harsh provocation and technical wizardry of Eminem; the stagey, orchestral hip-hop of Jon Brion-era Kanye West. He’s particularly into deep album cuts and soulful music with cinematic aspects.There is still nobody quite like him, even outside music, with his brightly colored fashion line and Neverland-esque penchant for throwing carnivals. And while his music has developed a capacity for gentleness over the years, he’s still a man who will shout vulgarities, if only to drive people away so he can sit at the piano alone with his jazz chords.At any rate, the most interesting paradox of Tyler, the Creator is that while he always seemed bent on fame for himself and Odd Future, he never “dumbed down for dollars” a la JAY-Z—or seemed to ever consider watering down his art in any way.

Before we had RIYL algorithms and Spotify discovery playlists, we had Kurt Cobain. The Nirvana frontman wasn’t just one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed alt-rock artists of the early ‘90s, he was also its foremost tastemaker. Cobain’s conflicted relationship with fame has been well documented, but one benevolent side effect of his discomfort in the spotlight was that he used every opportunity to redirect it onto lesser-known artists, and not just ones from his immediate community. While the media was hyping the Seattle scene, Cobain was leading impressionable kids down underground pathways that extended from Scotland to Japan.

This was a guy who could get an obscure, out-of-print punk record reissued through a major label by name-dropping it an interview, or who could effectively play armchair A&R rep and score a deal for an unsung artist just by wearing their t-shirt. Even if only a tiny fraction of the 10 million people who bought Nevermind were willing to check out a record based on his recommendation, it was enough to turn groups like Shonen Knife into international club headliners, and enough to transform The Wipers’ once-obscure early ‘80s releases into canonical punk classics for future generations to discover.

Since his 1994 suicide, Cobain’s life and work have been put under the microscope many times over, through numerous biographies, documentaries, and barrel-scraping box sets. But one of the most illuminating pieces of detritus can be found in the 2002 scrapbook Journals: a handwritten list of his 50 favorite albums of all time. It’s a document that illustrates how, behind all the disaffected cool, Cobain was just a list-making music nerd like the rest of us. And based on the most recent entry—PJ Harvey’s 1992 debut Dry—it was a practice he indulged in even after his face was all over Rolling Stone and MTV. (He even divided his entries with lines as if he were designing the flippable label cards in his own imaginary jukebox.)

You can listen to selections from each of the records on the master playlist above. (Note: we included a song from each side of The Faith/Void split LP, bringing our track total up to 51. Also, the What Is It California-punk compilation he lists isnt on Spotify, though the Germs songs featured on it can be sourced from other releases.) But for a more in-depth look at how these records inspired Cobain—whether musically or philosophically—we’ve broken down his picks by category and created subsidiary playlists below that feature some of his picks alongside the Nirvana songs they inspired.

THE CLASSICS

Like many kids born in the late ‘60s, Kurt’s first musical obsession was The Beatles. Their melodic sensibility formed a crucial strain of his musical DNA that withstood his eventual conversion to punk, leading to breakthrough moments like “About a Girl.” (Tellingly, Kurt’s favorite Fab Four record isn’t a typical muso pick like Revolver or the White Album, but the band’s winsome U.S. debut, Meet the Beatles, whose brevity and simplicity are more compatible with his passion for DIY indie rock.) Meanwhile, his adolescent affinity for mid-‘70s Aerosmith was entrenched enough that he would (partially) name a song after them, and while David Bowie was a less obvious influence on Nirvana, the band’s reverential cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” forged their spiritual connection with rock’s original iconoclast. But Kurt was also willing to own up to inspiration from less-respected hit-makers—listen to the verses of The Knack’s “Good Girls Don’t,” and you’ll hear the sort of slack, sardonic delivery he brought to Nirvana songs like “On a Plain.” His list also betrays a growing fascination with ’40s folk pioneer Lead Belly that would ultimately yield one of Cobain’s most chilling performances.

THE PUNKS

Kurt’s list reveals a typical punk-rock initiation process: You’ve got the pioneers (The Stooges, the Sex Pistols), their more extreme hardcore spawn (Black Flag, Fear), the detouring post-punk experimentalists (Public Image Ltd., Gang of Four), and the mutant recombinant offspring who fuse and abuse all of the above (Flipper, Butthole Surfers). It’s the last iteration that had the most audible impact on Nirvana, particularly on bludgeoning Bleach-era tracks like “Paper Cuts” (which bears both the bone- and soul-crushing heft of ‘80s Swans), Incesticide oddities like “Hairspray Queen” (which finds Kurt squealing like a young Gibby Haynes), and In Utero crushers like “Milk It” and “Scentless Apprentice” (where Kurt chews on the tin foil spit out by Scratch Acid’s David Yow). And then there’s the only band to earn three slots on Kurt’s list: Portland underground demigods The Wipers, whose relentless momentum and hoarse-throat hooks set the fiery pace for Nirvana corkers like “Breed” and “Territorial Pissings.” (Funnily enough, after once admitting that The Clash’s Sandinista! disappointed him as a kid because it didn’t align with his perceptions of punk, Kurt includes the much more commercial follow-up, Combat Rock—perhaps as a commiserating reminder that he wasn’t the first punk who had to deal with becoming popular.)

THE ALT-ROCK PEERS

Nirvana’s explosive success couldn’t have happened without the fuse-igniting efforts of their immediate alt-rock antecedents—both close to home and beyond. “Negative Creep” is essentially Mudhoney’s “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” flipped from 33 rpm to 45. The crash/burn/rebuild structure of Sonic Youth’s “Silver Rocket” would reappear in smoothed-out form on the alternately rousing and brooding “Drain You.” The whisper-to-scream hysterics of the Pixies, can of course, be heard on any number of Nirvana songs, but bassist Kim Deal’s Breeders offshoot was an equally profound influence, with the nocturnal, string-scraped atmosphere of Pod filtering down to In Utero respites like “Dumb” and “Penny Royal Tea.” And though the radiant, paisley-patterned jangle of R.E.M.’s Green may not be as perceptible, the wry, self-reflexive quality of “Pop Song 89” feels like a spiritual successor to Nirvana’s own meta-rock commentaries, like “In Bloom.”

THE LO-FI LOVES

Embarrassed somewhat by Nevermind’s big-budget studio polish (which he infamously compared to a Mötley Crüe record), not to mention the increasingly slick nature of alternative rock, Kurt used his pop-star pulpit to champion the virtues of amateurism. In the collapsible sing-alongs of ‘60s outcasts The Shaggs, he heard something stranger and more radical than anything you could find on 120 Minutes. Through his beloved Vaselines, he learned how to balance playful melodies atop rickety punk-rock foundations. And in the solitary serenades of Daniel Johnston and the giddy garage-rock of Shonen Knife, he heard the purest manifestation of the childlike emotions he tried to access on songs like “Sliver.” But while his fondness for ramshackle post-punk and lo-fi indie pop brought out Nirvana’s more playful side (best heard on Incesticide’s odds ‘n’ sods and the more whimsical moments of the MTV Unplugged set), for Kurt, that music also represented an effective weapon for dismantling rock’s patriarchal power structure. Nirvana may not bear the direct musical influence of minimalist, female-fronted bands like The Raincoats, Young Marble Giants, and Kleenex, nor is there anything in their catalog resembling the homoerotic joke-folk hijinks of The Frogs, but they undoubtedly inspired him to become the preeminent male-feminist and pro-gay rock star of his generation, one who was willing to write indictments of rape (“Polly”) and machismo (“Mr. Moustache”), and who happily used his liner notes to tell the racist and homophobic jocks in his audience to fuck off. (Though one cant help but wonder if, he were around today to make a similar Top 50 list in this post-poptimist age, he might include more than one hip-hop record.)