Playlist Reviews

Whats This Playlist All About? The Baltimore indie duo compiles a list of favorites in anticipation for their latest album for Merge Records, The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs. Planning to expand the list, they encourage you to follow along, "if youd like to know whos helping us make sense of our joy and sadness as we drag our sorry asses down lifes highway."What You Get: An indie-leaning mix thats delicate on the outside and weird and wily on the inside. Hear dusky classics from Yo La Tengo ("Saturday") alongside soft, sumptuous reflections and twitchy disco celebrations from experimental great Arthur Russell ("Thats Us/Wild Combination" and "Lets Go Swimming – Gulf Stream Dub," respectively). That latter song seamlessly segues into newer disco-and-R&B flavored grooves from Here We Go Magics Luke Temple ("Katie") and eventually Wye Oaks own sweeping synth soundscapes ("The Louder I Call the Faster It Runs").Greatest Discovery: Not only a fantastic title, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smiths 11-minute burner "Existence in the Unfurling" breathes and broods with beautiful diligence, unfurling from a dark, Fever Ray-ish meditation to serene ambient sounds that slowly build into a frisky synth-classical climax.How Does This Mix Reflect The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs? Its a wonderful companion to the album, which finds the band growing out of their indie-folk roots to incorporate more expansive and experimental sounds. Synth and ambient innovators like Laurie Spiegel and Laraaji have clearly influenced their still guitar-centered melodies. Its a similar evolution to that of fellow Baltimore band Beach House (who, naturally, is featured on this mix).

Listen, The xx are people, too. Yeah, they seem overly morose and make austere, sad tunes that got you through some rough times in college, but they have their own needs and desires. And it’s not easy to be on tour—and thats why their mix, “The xx: on the road,” is such a revelatory look into what the trio listens to throughout the good times and the bad, after the excellent shows and after the depressing gigs that bum everyone out. (If you’ve been in a band, you understand this despair.) Creating the perfect sonic zone is the key to surviving the drives between shows with your sanity intact, and this mix definitely conjures some vivid vibes.“The xx: on the road” opens with a song of their own: “I Dare You," a track that signifies confidence and, as a precursor to their favorite jams, serves as a testament to the band’s search for meaning in the musical world. It is pretty cool to see Iggy Pop’s (Bowie-produced) “Nightclubbing” and Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” on here, and it’s easy to hear how the slow-motion darkness of those songs has affected The xx over the course of their career. But while its not surprising to learn they enjoy grooving to Talking Heads and Dinosaur, it requires a little more imagination to visualize them getting jiggy to Missy Elliott and Usher.Overall, all of these tracks elicit a pretty relaxed vibe; there’s no noise music, no metal, no jazz, no classical, nothing too avant-garde. This isn’t music for pregaming a monumental event or for shotgunning beers. This is some serious, chill-the-fuck-out music. And it totally makes sense coming from The xx.

What’s This Playlist All About? Pop darling Carly Rae Jepsen was tasked by NPR’s editors with creating a summertime playlist that encapsulates the sound and feel of what they’ve dubbed roséwave. Jepsen, one of their “patron saints” of the genre, accepts the challenge with what she says is “an odd shuffle of songs… some sad, but mostly happy and all epic artists.”‍

What You Get: An airy mix of American road-trip classics and fresh, slightly left-of-center pop. Fleetwood Mac kick off the playlist in style with “Dreams,” before America, Lou Reed, and Marvin Gaye slide in with their own timeless melodies that go down as smoothly as a glass of bubbly on a hot day. From there, aside from Billie Holiday’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” in which the jazz queen urges us to “leave [y]our worry on the doorstep,” Jepsen reserves the rest of the playlist for more modern mellow tunes, including ROSALÍA’s breezy flamenco-pop, Robyn’s honeyed dance-pop, and Amason and Esther’s dreamy melancholic melodies.

‍Greatest Discovery: Poolside’s soft, shimmery “Harvest Moon,” a refined spin on yesteryear’s chillwave that evokes life in its finest form—perhaps floating in a pool with no care in the world.

‍What Carly Rae Jepsen Song Belongs on This List, Too? Most of CRJ’s feel-good grooves could easily slip in anywhere here, but we’d choose the soft synth gem “Too Much,” from her latest album, Dedicated, which captures the rush and thrill of a sweet, rosé-soaked summer romance—or at least an impromptu living room dance party.

What’s This Playlist All About? The team at Consequence of Sound compile a list of their must-hear moments of the decade, “the songs we leaned into during the heartbreak, political turmoil, celebration, and devastation that was the 2010s,” as music editor Erica Campbell puts it. These are the tracks that defined the times by diminishing boundaries, challenging social norms, and making us think about what really matters—or at least just allowing us to dance and forget about all of it.‍

What You Get: A rather polished mix of massive pop hits, defiant rap anthems, fizzy electro-pop grooves, sexy electro-soul slow-burners, angsty indie-rock fist-pumpers, and juicy psych-pop earworms. We say “polished” because nothing is too surprising—and certainly not very out-there—but the playlist captures some of the big music stories of the decade: Beyoncé’s badass transformation into a radical sociopolitical voice with “Formation”; her husband JAY Z’s dynamic yet way-too-fleeting dream-team moment with Kanye on “Ni**as In Paris”; and her sister Solange’s slick reshaping of indie R&B with “Cranes in the Sky.” Moving on from that royal family, the CoS team would have been remiss to not have included Adele’s skyrocketing “Rolling in the Deep,” Daft Punk’s undeniably catchy “Get Lucky” with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, James Blake’s dubstep-soul-pioneering “The Wilhelm Scream,” Lana Del Rey’s millennial-noir-defining “Video Games,” and Billie Eilish’s chart-topping flip-off “bad guy.” Meanwhile, their No. 1 pick, Robyn’s effervescent dance-cry inspiration “Dancing on My Own,” wraps up all the emotions of the decade, an impressive feat given that it was released way back in 2010.

‍Greatest Discovery: The dark, moody jazz of “Windswept” from Chromatics and Glass Candy main man Johnny Jewel (slotted at No. 84) offers a warming respite from some of the more in-your-face productions it’s surrounded by.

‍Should’ve Been Way Higher: One of the decade’s greatest moments in music can be found on pick No. 39, starting at around the two-minute mark, when late soul legend Bobby Womack bursts through Gorillaz’s hypnotic flow with the power of Poseidon erupting from the sea. Yes, “Stylo” deserves to be just a tad higher.

What’s This Playlist All About? The self-proclaimed “slop pop” duo out of New York offer up a soundtrack for solitude. These are the songs they’ve been listening to in the comforts of their home as they celebrate the release of their second album, Do You Wonder About Me?, a fidgety set of vulnerable indie-rock confessions.

‍What You Get: A breezy sampler of raw, emotionally resonant sounds—both young and old—reflecting the messy (and sometimes silly) reality Diet Cig so naturally capture themselves. This includes a mix of young DIY punks (Nouns), indie-pop underdogs (The Spook School), blissful bedroom-pop darlings (Addy), Icelandic disco groovers (Daði Freyr), and some of the 2010s’ most potent voices, like Perfume Genius and Billie Eilish. They slip in a few indie mainstays as well, including Bright Eyes and Broken Social Scene, alongside avant-garde heroine Nico.

‍Greatest Discovery: The woozy, wispy wanderings of Someone, the moniker of artist Tessa Rose Jackson, whose “Forget Forgive” is the ideal accompaniment to pensive moments of daydreaming out the window.

‍Best Pick for Anytime You’re Stuck Inside: Bring some sunshine into your home with The Friends Of Distinction’s shiny, happy, conga-banging psych-soul classic “Grazing In the Grass”—an activity that feels downright rapturous after too much time inside.

What’s This Playlist All About? The musical historians over at Pitchfork dive deep into the grimy, gritty, often grisly world of industrial music and all of its shades of gray since England’s Throbbing Gristle brought the idea of “Industrial Music for Industrial People” into the public consciousness back in 1976. As Pitchfork’s Sasha Geffen writes, “This was the sound of work, but it was also the sound of the refusal to work.” It was much more than that, too, as the genre grew from its queer and trans outsider roots to become an outlet for American artists like Trent Reznor, who turned it into a shockingly successful mainstream phenomenon. (Note: Unfortunately, a few of the albums featured are not available on Spotify, so the playlist does not fully reflect the complete list.)‍

What You Get: Industrial progenitors Throbbing Gristle, the original “wreckers of civilization” (according to a member of the British Parliament), understandably dominate the list, kicking it off with the punchy, disco-sleek groove “Hot on the Heels of Love” from 1979’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. They also appear later with the nightmarish yet eerily hypnotic “Hamburger Lady” from the year before. In between, the term “industrial” is flexed and stretched, from Coil’s dark and ambient landscapes (“Ravenous”) and Ministry’s testosterone-pumped metal meld (“The Land of Rape and Honey”) to Nine Inch Nails’ subversive synth-pop seductions (“Closer”) and clipping.’s Afrofuturist hip-hop explorations (“A Better Place”).

‍Greatest Discovery: Well before clipping. there was Tackhead, whose members played with hip-hop godfathers Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash before diving into more abrasive, metallic beats. “Mind at the End of the Tether” shows how innovative these guys were, threading samples and raps through a web of edgy electronic sounds.

‍Does the Playlist Really Represent the Best Industrial of All Time? It’s certainly a respectable starting kit, though the mix itself seems rather tame for industrial standards. The curators have, understandably, picked some of the poppiest, most digestible tracks from their album selections. That is, until you get to the very end and realize industrial’s most unsettling, blood-curdling possibilities with “Horsemeat Yak Trip” from Controlled Bleeding’s 1985 album Knees and Bones.

What’s This Playlist All About? The folks at Under the Radar Magazine highlight some of the biggest sleeper tracks in alt and indie rock. On their first go-around, they cover a wide field of songs that seemingly have nothing else in common other than being “precious stones buried in discographies” or ones that are simply “underappreciated for a variety of reasons” --leaving listeners to figure out what those reasons are for themselves.‍

What You Get: This is mostly an exercise in digging up deep cuts from big-name bands like Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and Coldplay. But before you get there, they throw in a few offbeat indie and electro artists worth a shout-out, like Brooklyn duo High Places and Spencer Krug’s highly underrated solo project Moonface. Things get a little wilder midway through with the woozy Clap Your Hands Say Yeah nugget “Mama, Won’t You Keep Them Castles in the Air Burning?” and PS I Love You’s propulsive noise-rocker “Get Over.” Then it all cools down a bit with the Cure-esque Pablo Honey ballad “Thinking About You” and the slow-burning tearjerker “Friends and Foe” from Irish greats The Frames.

‍Greatest Discovery: Lead track “Digging Holes” comes from a lesser-known band from Madison, WI, called Icarus Himself. The song has several twists and turns, with organ jabs, wieldy guitar licks, and magical quavers of an electronic instrument called the Omnichord. The group sound like The Walkmen one minute, then Beirut the next, as the song concludes in a celebratory squall of brass.

‍Most Questionable Pick: Lady Gaga’s gut-wrenching showstopper “Always Remember Us This Way” from her Oscar-nominated performance in A Star Is Born. It may be up there as one of her greatest performances, but is this Billboard Hot 100 hit really a song that’s been slept on?

What’s This Playlist All About? To celebrate Women’s History Month, Refinery29 put together a “power-up, pump-up, feel-good, and stand tall playlist for March, and beyond.” This is the type of stuff that gives you life no matter how down-and-out you feel.‍

What You Get: A whole heaping dose of self-love from modern pop queens like Beyoncé, Demi Lovato, and Lizzo, alongside tough feminine ’tude from heroines across the eras, including Nancy Sinatra, Janet Jackson, and Dua Lipa. Elsewhere, Lily Allen puts a boyfriend in his place with the twangy tell-all “Not Fair”; Tacocat expose the perils of mansplaining with the punky takedown “Men Explain Things to Me”; Margo Price gives us the straight dope with the mariachi-lined truth bomb “Pay Gap”; and Ariana Grande says what we’re all thinking with the sultry teaser “God is a woman.”

‍Best Pick: The freaky, fidgety, anxiety-ridden “Man-Size” from PJ Harvey, a genius at stripping down taboos and forcing us to see them for what they really are.

‍The Most Empowering of Them All: While it should never be a competition (we ladies need to stick together, after all), nothing has surpassed or ever will surpass Gloria Gaynor’s classic comeback anthem “I Will Survive” when it comes to making us feel like anything is possible.

What’s This Playlist All About? Forget “Thriller” and “Monster Mash”: This here is a mix made of true nightmares. Toss aside that old scary-sounds cassette tape, and choose this playlist as your ultimate Halloween soundtrack—especially if you’d prefer to scare off those trick-or-treaters for good.

What You Get: This is the gist, in Rolling Stone’s own words: “vintage murder ballads, dissonant classical spine-tinglers, psychedelic freak-outs, shock-rock creep-outs, Southern gothic alt-rock gloom, art-noise desolation and more.” Their list is presented in chronological order, starting with the 1930 folk standard “The Murder of the Lawson Family,” a real-life story of one Charlie Lawson, who murdered his wife and six of seven children. From there, we’re taken on a haunting journey through the years, with The Louvin Brothers’ heavenly Appalachian harmonies detailing a bloody murder (“Knoxville Girl”), Hungarian composer György Ligeti drawing out every possible anxiety with a single organ (“Volumina”), Leonard Cohen stoically claiming, “It is your flesh that I wear” (“Avalanche”), and plenty of other brooding bards like Nick Cave, Scott Walker, and Tom Waits laying out tales of horror and depravity.

Greatest Discovery: There’s something oddly satisfying about Tori Amos’ whispery, theatrical interpretation of Eminem’s murder fantasy “’97 Bonnie & Clyde,” in which he imagines killing his wife Kim and tossing her dead body into a lake, with his baby daughter along for the ride. Amos lures you right into the disgusting scene itself, exposing way more about the rapper than he ever could himself.

Most Terrifying of Them All: There’s nothing that will ever beat the relentless motor buzz that ripples underneath Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” as Genesis P-Orridge recites words from a letter written by a medic in Vietnam who cared for a woman who had horrific burns covering the top half of her body. Seriously, just try to listen to this one with the lights off.

What’s This Playlist All About? Stereogum’s senior news editor Chris DeVille rounds up the decade’s most memorable flashes in the pan. He doesn’t use the most scientific of formulas to determine what makes a one-hit wonder, especially since a few of the artists on the list technically landed on the charts with more than one song (such as Foster the People). Still, the playlist gives an interesting overview of some of the unexpected sounds and pop phenomena (hello, PSY) that helped define the 2010s.‍

What You Get: A scattered compilation of synth-pop pleasures, EDM-rock anthems, and bass-y rap bangers, along with a Canadian reggae groove (MAGIC!’s “Rude”), a soul-powered indie-rock jam (Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still”), and the unstoppable Puerto Rican triumph “Despacito.” Plus, a reminder of the decade’s many novelty dance tracks: We learned how to “Dougie,” filmed ourselves doing the “Harlem Shake,” and witnessed world leaders getting down to “Gangnam Style.”

‍Best Pick: Probably the most definitive one-hit wonder of the decade came from Australian outlier Gotye, whose indie breakup gem “Somebody That I Used to Know” embedded itself into the American consciousness with its punchy global-pop groove and sugary-sweet appearance by New Zealand singer/songwriter Kimbra. Gotye won three GRAMMY® Awards for the song and the album it appeared on (Making Mirrors), but he thereafter mostly retreated into obscurity, even turning down millions in royalties with YouTube, as DeVille points out. Still, we think he has way more in him, and we’re kind of hoping he makes a comeback in the 2020s.

‍Who Deserves Better Than the One-Hit Wonder Tag? English synth-pop darling La Roux kicks off the playlist with the bouncy “Bulletproof” for good reason: It’s one of the most infectious tracks of the decade. It actually came out in 2009, but it peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2010 and encapsulates the decade’s obsession with ’80s electro glossiness. La Roux ended up with a few other international hits from that album, including “In for the Kill,” but singer Elly Jackson’s time in the American spotlight was far too short. Here’s hoping she’ll pick up the pace in the 2020s, starting with the third La Roux album, Supervision, set for release in February.