In We’re No. 1, The A.V. Club examines a song that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be popular in pop music, and how that has changed over the years. In this installment, we cover Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop,” which spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart in…
In HateSong, we ask our favorite musicians, writers, comedians, actors, and so forth to expound on the one song they hate most in the world.
Photo: Brantley Gutierrez
Passion Pit main man Michael Angelakos has always been at his most efficient when heading up a one-man assembly line that cranks out tight four-minute singles predestined as soundtracks for New Year’s Eve balloon drops. Each cut features a tense but giddy buildup, a dizzying payoff loaded with more bells and whistles…
Because of its unmistakable Pavement influence, Speedy Ortiz will always have slacker terminology attached to it. Yet it’s that descriptor that discredits just how deliberate the band’s songs have been since its inception. It’s those references to slacker rock that make Foil Deer’s first single, “Raising The Skate,”…
It’s been 33 years since Johns Linnell and Flansburgh formed They Might Be Giants, and 21 since they converted their two-man accordion-guitar-MIDI operation into a multi-instrument group, meaning they’ve fronted a full-fledged rock band for the majority of their careers. The two decades since the excellent John Henry…
Like fellow post-punk innovators Gary Numan and Gang Of Four, Wire greatly dislikes mining the dusty corners of its back catalog for inspiration. However, for 2013’s Change Becomes Us, the legendary U.K. act unearthed and bulked up a series of musical ideas it performed live circa 1979-1980. The results of this rare…
After a handful of promising indie releases, Built To Spill signed to a major label and released its two best albums back-to-back: 1997’s progressive Perfect From Now On and 1999’s more pop-minded Keep It Like A Secret. Since then, Built To Spill’s singer-songwriter-guitarist Doug Martsch and an evolving lineup have…
It’s ironic that, when Hop Along’s sophomore album—and its first for Saddle Creek Records—was announced, the band was referred to as “a secret.” In a way, it makes sense that this is how the band is regarded. Gestating for nearly a decade, Hop Along could easily be seen as the kind of band that exists on the fringes.…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re talking about the songs we like most when the weather gets warm.
When punk and rockabilly had a baby, the little bugger wasn’t pretty. Called psychobilly, the greasy mutant lovechild and its birth were both figuratively incestuous and totally inevitable.
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, as part of our salute to artificial intelligence, we’re looking at songs about robots and/or computers.
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in celebration of artificial intelligence, we’re picking songs about either robots or computers.
Who is Tyler, The Creator? That was the burning question during the height of the media circus surrounding Odd Future four years ago. The music press wanted to know where this fatherless provocateur came from, what inspired his incendiary rhymes, and how he rationalized his most risible lyrics. And so Tyler answered…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, as part of our salute to artificial intelligence, we’re looking at songs about robots and/or computers.
Calexico has been putting out a full-length album every two years for nearly a decade. Although 2003’s Feast Of Wire is still the album to beat, the majority of those releases have been good to great—no small feat for a band of such abundance and longevity. At times, core members Joey Burns and John Convertino have…
In We’re No. 1, The A.V. Club examines a song that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be popular in pop music, and how that has changed over the years. In this installment, we cover Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone,” which became the first song to ever debut at No. 1 on…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, as part of our salute to artificial intelligence, we’re looking at songs about robots and/or computers.
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