Playlist Reviews

What’s This Playlist All About? “The most trusted voice in music” works its way through a decade we all can’t seem to get enough of with this disclaimer: “Longtime readers may remember that, in 2002, we made a list of The Top 100 Albums of the 1980s. That list was shorter, sure, but it also represented a limited editorial stance we have worked hard to move past; its lack of diversity, both in album selections and contributing critics, does not represent the voice Pitchfork has become. For this new list, we gathered votes from more than 50 full-time staffers and regularly contributing writers to open up our discussion.”What You Get: The usual suspects crowd the top of the list (Prince, MJ, Madonna, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, New Order), but dig into the heart of it and you may find some real hidden gems. You’ll find the throbbing, funky post-punk of Bronx band ESG; the brilliant sampling of hip-hop greats EPMD; the Satanic doggedness of death metal gods Morbid Angel; the infectious South African rhythms of The Indestructible Beat of Soweto compilation; and the intricate computer patchworks of electronic pioneer Laurie Spiegel. Let’s just say the whole 575-song mix certainly has the diversity promised.Greatest Discovery: At No. 130 is Scientist’s Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires, excellently described by reviewer Eddie “Stats” Houghton as “one of the greatest dub albums ever, transforming the swing of dancehall’s catchiest tunes into their spookiest, most expansive selves. Historically, this record is a precursor to trip-hop and dubstep, but even encountered as an isolated sonic experience, the tracks are revelatory, uniquely suffused with an eerie joy.”Do We Really Need Another ‘80s Playlist? This list is surprisingly fresh, and it may even be worth starting from the bottom, as you’ll likely discover some unexpected treasures you’ve never heard before. In other words, yes, another ‘80s playlist will do just fine. There’s still plenty to discover from the decade that just won’t die—thankfully.

What’s This Playlist All About? The tastemaking site compiles its annual collection of bests, prefaced with this rather orotund description: “More than ever, music felt like a playing field where new, exciting artists were sharing the discussion with the veterans, if not taking it over outright. A sea change was underway, the borders eroded—and music was better for it.”What You Get: As promised, there are indeed plenty of newcomers here—many of them women—from Snail Mail’s evocative, ‘90s-nostalgic indie rock to Tierra Whack’s one-minute hip-hop daydreams to cupcakKe and Cardi B’s brash and bold one-liners. In fact, women totally dominate this list, down to folk supertrio boygenius and alt-pop siren Mitski, who nabs the No. 1 spot. Heck, there’s even old standby Cat Power, whose “Woman,” featuring Lana Del Rey, may just sum up everything. But that’s not to say the men are ignored—no, not at all with electronic faves like DJ Koze and Jon Hopkins and hip-hop trendsetters like Earl Sweatshirt and Pusha T squeezed comfortably in between.Greatest Discoveries: Spanish powerhouse Rosalia and her smoking mix of flamenco and alt-pop; Brooklyn singer-songwriter Amen Dunes’ moody, psych-tinged indie folk; and Against All Logic (Nicolas Jaar)’s heady, soul-groovy dance music.How Well Does This Define the Year 2018? As mentioned above, the women rule the show here (appropriate for the year of #metoo), but Pitchfork clearly made a conscious decision to make this list plenty diverse to show—as they put it—an erosion of borders happening not just around the world but within our own musical tastes.

What’s This Playlist All About? The music-history scholars over at Pitchfork sift through Dua Lipa’s 2020 album, Future Nostalgia—a cathartic master thesis on liberation achieved through disco and dance—to dig up its key influences and source material.

What You Get: A formidable brigade of dance-pop deities, with no-brainer selections from Madonna (who makes this playlist twice), Grace Jones, Pet Shop Boys, and Kylie Minogue. In between such euphoric club standards as “Hung Up” and “Always on My Mind,” you get plenty of ’80s and ’90s pop gold, like Olivia Newton-John’s calorie-burning “Physical” (an inspiration for Lipa’s own “Physical”), INXS’s steamy groove “Need You Tonight” (which Lipa samples on “Break My Heart”), and Crystal Waters’ hippie house hit “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless).”

Greatest Pick: One of the few male artists represented here, White Town (a.k.a. Jyoti Mishra), with his gender- and genre-bending theme “Your Woman,” oddly fits in with Lipa’s own irresistible pop. In fact, she interpolates its sampled horn riff on “Love Again.”

Best Song to Dance Your Heart Out To: The final track here, Daft Punk’s “One More Time,” will win this competition—always—and actually goes quite well alongside Lipa’s own disco dance-floor burner “Don’t Start Now.”

What’s This Playlist All About? The mastermind behind the airy, intimate sounds of The xx offers up a head-nodding mix ideal for throwing your own little dance party in your living room. “As there will be no parties for a while, I thought I’d restart the playlist and share some of what I’ve been playing out and at home,” he says.

What You Get: The DJ and producer takes us through a spectacular crate-digging journey that kicks off with his own skittery, skeletal 2020 single “Idontknow,” which seems to masterfully condense the most mesmerizing qualities of the tracks that follow. There’s the soft, string-laden comfort of composer Nicholas Britell, the minimalist funk of Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, the heady electronic of God Within, the atmospheric rap of Dave, the heart-pumping trance of Rove Ranger, the loose dance grooves of Fatback Band, and plenty more experimental twists and turns in between.

Greatest Discovery: The squiggly sonic exploration of Minor Science’s “For Want of Gelt,” whose spacey synths are eventually blown to bits by a dizzying eruption of percussion.

Is “Idontknow” a Sign of Things to Come? Let’s hope so. The track, which starts out taut and rigid, gradually unspools into Jamie xx’s signature hypnotic textures. It speaks to life in 2020: the anxiety of social distancing and the hope and relief of eventually coming back together. “I made ‘Idontknow’ as an outlet for my frustration over not being able to finish any music for a while,” he wrote on Instagram. “I tried to be less precious with my ideas and just let go... Now, we can’t go out to dance and we need an outlet more than ever, I hope you dance to it at home and let go for a moment.”

Photo Credit: Julio Enriquez

Ratts 1984 snarler "Round and Round" was one of that years biggest rock songs—it peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it landed at No. 87 on the magazines year-end singles chart. Among bands who crawled out of the Sunset Strips gutters and onto the charts, though, they were something of an anomaly, hitting it big on radio with nasty guitars and Stephen Pearcys acid-tipped vocals, instead of lighter-worthy choruses and proclamations of love. But as this playlist of Hot 100-charting songs shows, hard rock made it to the all-genre chart with a considerable skew, thanks to Billboard leaving video airplay out of their equations. Ballads and covers were big; straight-ahead rockers, with a few exceptions, were not."Round and Round" remains one of the best rock songs of its era, a tight package of twisted romance and spiteful lyrics with a killer modulation that ratchets up its tension. Its ubiquity was massively assisted by MTV, which seemingly reveled in playing the song’s Milton Berle-starring video. (Berles nephew Marshall, Ratts then-manager, called in a familial favor.) MTV was playing a lot of music that fell under the "heavy metal" rubric at the time; this 1984 playlist, in addition to featuring "Round and Round," has videos by Jersey boys Bon Jovi and L.A. stalwarts Quiet Riot in heavy rotation (maximum four plays a day), while clips by Ronnie James Dio and Sammy Hagar are alongside Ratts similarly caustic "Back For More" in medium rotation (three plays max). "Were a part of MTV," guitarist Robbin Crosby told Billboard in 1985. "They were behind us from the start, and took pride in us."One of the biggest oddities of the post-MTV age was that despite the fact that the video-music channel was incredibly influential in popular culture, its data held zero sway over the Hot 100, which used only sales and radio airplay in its calculations. The pop-metal landscape presented by MTV, both in its daily programming and its Saturday-night metal-mania celebration Headbangers Ball, was harder and more acerbic than its full-chart counterpart; consider this 1990 playlist, which features Ratts bluesy Detonator single "Lovin You’s A Dirty Job" in active (not quite heavy) rotation alongside Love Hates manic sleeper hit "Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?" and Queensrÿches anti-globalist screed "Empire." Meanwhile, Mötley Crües bi-curious rave-up "Same Ol Situation," Jon Bon Jovis "Wanted Dead or Alive" rewrite of "Blaze of Glory," and Slaughters weepy "Fly to the Angels" are in heavy rotation, while Warrants excessively horny "Cherry Pie" and Wingers longingly goopy "Miles Away" are among the clips being touted as MTV exclusives, which meant prime (and frequent) airplay time.Most of the metal-tagged songs on that weeks corresponding Hot 100 chart fall on the more romantic side of things—the twin duo Nelson, who had the blonde tresses of any act worth their Aqua Net but whose sweeping rock songs were much more in the big-ticket vein of Boston, were at No. 1 with the harmony-rich "(Cant Live Without Your) Love and Affection," while Bon Jovis return to the Wild West was at No. 4. Ballads and rockers are surprisingly balanced on the rest of the chart: Faces revivalists The London Quireboys "I Dont Love You Anymore" dips down from No. 92 to No. 95; Styx-Nugent supergroup Damn Yankees string-laden "High Enough" is at No. 74 and eventually makes its way to No. 3; "Fly to the Angels," which would peak at No. 19, is at No. 28. Winger, Warrant, and Poison all have cheekier tracks—"Cant Get Enuff," "Cherry Pie," and "Unskinny Bop," respectively—bobbing around the 15-to-50 range, although those successes were more sales-based than radio-based. All three benefited from being the lead singles of not-yet-released albums by huge bands.Ratts last single to make the Hot 100, peaking at No. 75, was "Way Cool Jr.," a swaggering Reach for the Sky track about a slickster-cool drug dealer. Like "Round and Round"—and the four other Ratt songs that made pops biggest chart—it was a bit of a Hot 100 anomaly, trafficking in razor-wire guitars and led by Pearcys withering vocal (and it wasn’t a cover, à la Bulletboys rework of the OJays world-weary "For the Love of Money" or Great Whites version of Ian Hunters pervy "Once Bitten, Twice Shy"). But like so many other metal-edged singles of its era, it loomed larger on the rock landscape than the charts suggested, thanks to a consistent presence throughout late 1988 and early 1989 on MTV.

What’s This Playlist All About? The Prodigy’s formidable frontman picks his “choice cuts” from his band’s catalog in anticipation for the release of their seventh studio album, No Tourists, out November 2.What You Get: A whole lot of gritty, grimy stadium destroyers, starting with a big peek into their newest release with skittery singles “We Live Forever,” “Fight Fire with Fire,” “Need Some1” and “Light Up the Sky.” The crucial ‘90s cuts for us old folk come a little later with tracks like “Smack My Bitch Up,” “Poison,” “Firestarter,” and “Breathe.”Best Surprise: The buzzing belligerence of “The Day is My Enemy,” gloriously infused with siren Martina Topley-Bird’s smoky reciting of Cole Porter’s "All Through the Night."What Did He Miss? We have a soft spot for older tracks from albums like Music for the Jilted Generation, especially “Voodoo People” with its slippery beats and sly use of Nirvana’s “Very Ape” riff.

What’s This Playlist All About? A changing of the season comes with a changing of sounds. Say goodbye to the breezy pop of the summer and hello to the pensive songs of the fall. Courtney E. Smith of Refinery29 helps us navigate the latest in pop and indie to soundtrack longer, chillier nights as you indulge in the “best of the pumpkin-season foods.”

What You Get: A fierce feminine force of independent women calling out “false gods” (Taylor Swift) and “prophets” (King Princess) and allowing us to explore their “holy terrain” (FKA twigs). Elsewhere, Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard goes out on her own with the bluesy, funky “History Repeats,” and Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek does the same, lamenting on the dance floor with synth-pop sweetener “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings.” Meanwhile, Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris assert their own hotness with the sass-rich “Way Too Pretty for Prison,” and The Highwomen (Morris, Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, and Amanda Shires) tell “stories still untold” in the multi-part beauty “Highwomen.”

Greatest Discovery: Angel Olsen’s “Lark,” a bone-chilling anthem thick with strings and the singer’s cathartic howls. It holds more emotion in six minutes than any of this year’s full-length Hollywood dramas.

Best Pick: You’ll have to head all the way down to the bottom of the playlist to hear Smith’s most left-field pick, from none other than Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth fame—the oldest yet boldest of this group—offering up material from her first solo album, represented here with the industrial-tinged “Sketch Artist.”

What’s This Playlist All About? The dance-pop heroine returns with her first new album in eight years, Honey, and unveils the source material behind its transcendent throbs and euphoric post-disco grooves.What You Get: An eclectic cornucopia of old and new master works, starting with an understated piano sonata from Mozart, before kicking into silky smooth disco classics from underrated artists like George McCrae, Sylvester, and Kiki Gyan. In between is iconic cuts from Bowie, Prince, and MJ; mind-warping beats from DJ Koze, Aphex Twin, and DJ Q; and crate-digging treasures from Idris Muhammed, Mary Clark, and Bicep. There’s also ‘80s house track “French Kiss,” which Robyn samples on Honey song “Send to Robin Immediately.”Greatest Discovery: There are so many good nuggets in here, so we’re going to go with Robyn’s own signee Zhala (who also appears on Honey’s “Human Being”) and her cosmic dance-floor experiments like “Aerobic Lambada.”How Well Does This Playlist Reflect the Music of Honey? This here is required listening for Advanced Robyn Studies. You get pop’s most definitive eccentrics mixed with the underground’s most subversive innovators. Robyn distills these influences into refined electropop pumped with both existential despair and limitless hope on the wonderful new Honey.

What’s This Playlist All About? Iceland’s most mystical musical masterminds challenge our idea of infinity with what they’re calling their “endless ambient streaming mixtape.” Essentially, this is their home for compiling new and unreleased material, which they plan to continually update.What You Get: Curated by frontman Jonsi, alongside frequent collaborators Alex Somers and Paul Corley, the mix features the purest, most glistening ambient experiments this side of the universe. Some of the songs are previews from their augmented reality project with tech start-up Magic Leap, called Tonandi. Others inch their way through the brain, expanding your consciousness ever so seductively. Like all things Sigur Ros, the music here is best described as “otherworldly”—all other words fail to capture its awesomeness.Most Enchanting Track: Alex Somers’ remix of Julianna Barwick’s already devastatingly beautiful “The Harbinger.”Best Place to Start? We’d actually recommend reversing the order, starting with “Boy 1904 - Liminal Remix,” which could very well be the song that plays as you ascend into heaven.

Flutes are everywhere in hip-hop in 2017. They provided a wistful counterpoint to the grizzled trap of Future’s ubiquitous “Mask Off,” propped up Drake’s throttling “Portland” with a snaking melody, and popped up on tracks from D.R.A.M. (“Broccoli”), Gucci Mane (“Back on Road”), Kodak Black (“Tunnel Vision”), and Migos (too numerous to list off here). As trap continued to grow murkier and more psychedelic, the flute provided an otherworldly texture, a hypnotic counterpoint to hip-hop’s tougher, spare beats. This, of course, is nothing new, and this playlist from Okayplayer provides a quick history of the instrument’s use in hip-hop. The great Beatnuts used the instrument as a rhythmic counterpoint on "Watch Out Now," while the vaguely Eastern melody in 50 Cent’s “Just a Lil Bit” slithers through his teflon pimpin’ boasts. The instrument also provides a lightness to the shuffling, monochromatic beat for J Dila’s “Fuck the Police.”The playlist largely ignores the South, instead focusing on the headwrap rap heroes Okayplayer tends to champion (Mos Def, Common, A Tribe Called Quest), and, as a result, it feels quite incomplete. But it’s still an enjoyable listen, and the presence of a particular instrument provides a throughline between a lot of disparate selections. It forces the listener to lean in and pay attention to the track, and consider the ways that different artists, periods, or scenes have used the instrument. It doesn’t exactly make the case that the flute has been “hip-hop’s secret weapon,” but it does demonstrate that its been central to some amazing tracks.