Playlist Reviews

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.

What’s This Playlist All About? The folks at WXPN, the member-supported radio service of the University of Pennsylvania, set out to prove that 1993 was one of the most important years in music with a list of over 50 pieces of evidence.What You Get: Alt-rock’s biggest mainstream success stories (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Breeders) collide with groundbreaking hip-hop (Wu-Tang Clan, Souls of Mischief, A Tribe Called Quest) and R&B (Janet Jackson, Me’shell Ndegeocello). You also get a healthy taste of the bubbling indie-rock underground (Yo La Tengo, Archers of Loaf, Bettie Serveert), as well as landmark works from now-icons like Bjork and PJ Harvey.Best Surprise(s): Two one-hit wonders—US3’s “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” and Crash Test Dummies’ “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”—may be the best examples of how wonderfully weird and all-inclusive the year 1993 really was.So, Was 1993 the Greatest Year in Music? While there are arguably some definitive moments captured here, not too many of these songs stand out as the GOAT of anything. Still, we have to admit the playlist creators make a compelling case, proving that 1993 was quite a watershed year for a wide range of genres. It was a year you could find just about anyone moping to Mazzy Star, thrashing to Dinosaur Jr., swaying to Janet, and rapping with Snoop Doggy Dogg all in one setting—and that’s pretty incredible.

In January 2017, 2 Chainz launched “Pretty Girls Like Trap Music,” a weekly Spotify playlist that doubles as promotion for his similarly titled upcoming album. Each list nominates a different woman to select new and recent raps: The inaugural edition showcased Karrueche Tran, and subsequent collections featured Amber Rose, Lauren London, Erykah Badu, and Nicki Minaj. Even Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant curated a March 19 installment, but he’s the sole outlier of the playlist’s “thirst trap” theme.While “Pretty Girls” operates under the glare of the male gaze, the lists expand beyond trap. An April 20 installment by New York radio personality and Breakfast Club host Angela Yee includes Fabolous’ Summertime Shootout series, low-denominator wavy rapper NAV, and Tee Grizzley’s school of hard knocks gem “First Day Out,” as well as customary trap selections from Migos, Future, Jeezy, 2 Chainz (of course), and, uh, Drake. Sample from this wide-ranging buffet of mainstream rap’s super-lit highs and mediocre lows.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

No Wave always seemed like more of an idea or a scene than a particular music aesthetic -- theres a lot of space between Liquid Liquid, ESG and Sonic Youth, for example -- but there are general common denominators (detuned guitars and shouted vocals). The scene was entirely based in New York, began in the late-70s and fizzled out by the mid-80s. It got its name from the amazing Godard quote, "There are no new waves, there is only the ocean," and while it was never popular, per se, the bands associated with the scene were endlessly influential, inspiring everything from hardcore to DFA-era electro pop. Im sure a no wave purist would scoff at some of the inclusions on this list, but its still a good primer for the genre.

What’s This Playlist All About? Danish singer/songwriter Agnes Obel compiles a mix of songs she’s had on regular rotation, many of which likely inspired some of the gorgeous sounds from her 2020 album Myopia.

What You Get: A taste of Obel’s own moody, multilayered, piano-punctuated arrangements (such as the haunting, aptly titled “Island of Doom”), alongside notable tracks from icons as disparate as Nina Simone, David Bowie, Philip Glass, and Scott Walker. Several of her selections dive deep into dark, dreamy spaces, like Cocteau Twins’ angelic “Ivo,” Joanna Brouk’s glistening “The Space Between,” and Björk’s otherworldly “Black Lake.” Elsewhere, Obel, a classically trained pianist, invites us into the magical worlds of exotica pioneer Les Baxter and jazz legend Alice Coltrane.

Greatest Discovery: Lhasa De Sela’s smoky, rhythmic “My Name,” which builds tension— slowly and sensually—without ever letting go.

Biggest Surprise: Track No. 2 on the list, right after Obel’s “Broken Sleep”—a pensive, symphonic piece that seems to exist in some gravityless plane—is one of Rihanna’s many megahits, “Love On The Brain,” a saucy, swinging doo-wop ballad that hits right at the gut.

Arcade Fire’s two guiding principles of late can be boiled down to “we are cool and clever” and “the world is bad.” Their new Spotify mix, currently titled “Infinite Playlist — Start Making Money,” integrates these two ideas pretty thoroughly. With this new feature—surely to be received as a marketing ploy of some sort—the band wants us to know how cool they are by recommending some cool music that they like, but they also want to give us “everything now” in a form that we cannot possibly consume or comprehend: a playlist of (almost) “infinite content.”For one, Arcade Fire keep changing the title of this playlist. At one point it was called “Infinite Playlist — Greatest Hits of 2004” (even though its songs weren’t from that year). At another point it was “Songs For Reading The Morning Paper,” and then “Infinite Playlist — Disco Is Not A Bad Word.” Perhaps by the time you read this, a new tweet from the band will have signified yet another title—or maybe they will have deleted the playlist entirely. Either way, this 541-track-long (at the time of this article’s publication) playlist contains entire albums by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kate Bush, The Modern Lovers, Aphex Twin, Lou Reed, Charles Mingus, Wu-Tang Clan, Arthur Russell, and more (i.e., Very Cool musicians who make Very Cool music). Perhaps the keys to unraveling all the secrets of Arcade Fire’s latest album Everything Now—and also, maybe, our own society—can be found in this playlist, and I hope that whatever person has 36 hours to spare won’t hesitate to let us know what those secrets are. The problem is, much like their recent album, Arcade Fire buries any potentially nuanced point about our culture and its discontents under a suffocating blanket of irony and distance. Arcade Fire are indeed very cool and smart. Setting Metallica’s Master of Puppets between Neil Young’s Live Rust and The Louvin Brothers’ Satan Is Real is truly a masterful postmodern playlist move, and hopefully one that will allow us to simultaneously extrapolate important comments about our culture and critique ourselves as listeners in a meaningful way. Except that it probably won’t, because Arcade Fire get the wires crossed again, setting out to critique our culture’s “infinite content” by submitting an unlistenable playlist. In the end, Arcade Fire do the music a disservice by keeping the focus on Arcade Fire and overwhelming the good ideas that the playlist contains.

When it comes to excavating history in the traditionally under-reported world of avant-garde music, Andy Beta is one of America’s most probing critics. As part of the Pitchfork Essentials series, he put together “Astral Traveling,” a hybrid sociocultural survey and annotated playlist charting the evolution of spiritual jazz in the ’60s and ’70s. Beta—who also has logged considerable time as a deejay—pulls off what is a tricky balancing act. Through words, he successfully weaves selections from John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Sharrock, et al., into a cogent historical narrative. At the same time, he ensures that his playlist—as a listening experience in its own right—heaves, swells, and testifies with a sense ecstatic ritual that honors spiritual jazz’s sacred ethos. That’s elegant curation.

Whats This Playlist All About? For Interview Magazine, Australia-born, Iceland-based electronic producer Ben Frost (who composed the haunting score for the 2017 Netflix series Dark) compiled what he explains as "a selection of music made and/or performed by Icelandic women … some of whom I have had the privilege to collaborate with over the past 15 years, and they are all fucking brilliant." The name of the playlist, "dóttir," refers to an Icelandic patronymic added to female last names, meaning the "daughter of."What Do You Get?As expected from anything that comes out of such an otherworldly land, prepare for airy, ethereal sounds that seem to float outside any concrete sense of space or time. Elegiac operatics by Þuríður Pálsdóttir and Maria Markan serve as the bookends to a mix thats otherwise dominated by composers like Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir and Hildur Guðnadóttirrich, whose intricate layers of classical strings seem to hold every emotion at once. We get the feeling that all Icelanders are naturally gifted at creating spectacular film scores.Greatest Discovery: The angelic, minimalist electro-folk of JFDR, the project of Jófríður Ákadóttir, which ebbs and flows with delicate restraint.Will This Motivate You to Finally Book That Ticket to Iceland? Icelandic music—often slow, meticulous, icy, and enigmatic—feels as if its been channeled straight from Mother Nature herself. If you dig the vibe here, go there. Immediately.

Beyonce is a national treasure. She’s not someone who requires a critical or commercial reappraisal. She’s had her missteps here and there, but we’ve all known since near the beginning that she possesses a gift that’s nearly unparalleled in modern R&B. So it makes sense that her b-sides and deep album cuts are going to be great. Al Shipley, from the blog Narrowcast, provides a really great overview of the highpoints. It’s a fun playlist that takes a reveals special moments from a very known commodity.

What’s This Playlist All About? Fresh off his stint alongside Maroon 5 and Travis Scott at the 2019 Super Bowl Halftime Show, the ATL rapper cobbles together a nearly 350-track playlist that hops from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to “Straight Outta Compton” to “Smooth Operator” with unexpected ease.What You Get: Expect plenty of Big Boi’s own material, from his OutKast days to his solo excursions (including all of his last album Boomiverse) to collaborations with artists like Janelle Monae (the gloriously funky “Tightrope”) and Phantogram (as the bassy indie-electro/hip-hop project Big Grams). Unsurprisingly, rap’s great revolutionaries show up often (N.W.A., Ice Cube, Goodie Mob, A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde), but he also throws in a ton of ‘80s and ‘90s radio mainstays—some MJ, Billy Idol, New Edition, Sade, Guns N’ Roses, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Nirvana (who, interestingly, kick off the list with five songs)—as well as some undisputed classics by the likes of Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince.Biggest Surprises: Mumford & Sons are well represented here (even with a live version of “The Cave”), and so is Kate Bush. He also slips in a Greta Van Fleet song toward the end—perhaps his next collaboration?!Does This Make Up for That Halftime Show? Let’s just say, you’ll have wasted more time watching that 13-minute performance than listening to all 25 hours of this.