In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: In honor of South By Southwest, we’re picking our favorite songs about the music industry.

In Under The Influence, The A.V. Club asks a musician to pair three of their songs with a non-musical influence.

In 11 Questions, The A.V. Club asks interesting people 11 interesting questions—and then asks them to suggest one for our next interviewee.

Now 12 full-length studio albums in, Damien Jurado has always seemed dutiful rather than prolific. The Seattle singer-songwriter, who began his career in the mid-’90s after being discovered by Sub Pop, has released records at basically a two-year clip. And while much of his early work with Secretly Canadian—the label…

Iggy Pop is a musical workhorse. He’s released 23 full-length studio albums from 1969 to 2016, and his performative exploits—like self-mutilation, caterwauling screams, and eschewing all manner of T-shirt in favor of bare-chested glory—make him a bonafide legend of punk. Iggy Pop has always pointed a towering…

Over the course of three decades and 11 albums, Scotland’s Primal Scream can do no wrong in the eyes of its audience. The band is raw rock ’n’ roll at its core, and how that manifests itself in each release is changeable, giving Primal Scream both reliability and unpredictability.

For a healthy portion of Gen-Y American music fans, the sound of electronic music’s potential for emotionally stirring resonance was heralded by a single track: “Born Slippy (NUXX),” the thunderously anthemic song from the 1996 Trainspotting soundtrack. The ’90s arrival of a new kind of European house music on U.S.…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: In honor of South By Southwest, we’re picking our favorite songs about the music industry.

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: In honor of SXSW, songs about the music industry.

Bagpipes often conjure images of kilted Scots in tam o’ shanters, but one shouldn’t overlook Ireland’s devotion to the age-old instrument. Irish taverns have basked in the sweet trill of bagpipes since the late 1500s, and even lay claim to one of the most popular types of bagpipes: the uilleann pipes, which ring with…

In March of 1996, the Afghan Whigs released its fifth album, Black Love, the much-anticipated follow up to the breakthrough record, Gentlemen. On Black Love, lead singer and lyricist Greg Dulli and the rest of the Whigs (John Curley on bass, Rick McCollum on guitar, and new drummer Paul Buchignani) successfully…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: In honor of South By Southwest, we’re picking our favorite songs about the music industry.

In February—one month after the death of his close friend and collaborator David Bowie—Iggy Pop covered Bowie’s “The Jean Genie” at Carnegie Hall. Two weeks earlier, he said in an interview that he’s probably “closing up” and retiring from the recording business after the release of his new album Post Pop Depression.…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week: In honor of South By Southwest, we’re picking our favorite songs about the music industry.

Naming his third record Turkey—which is a bowling reference to making three strikes in a row—Mike Krol showed he wasn’t averse to friendly competition. It’s why, when The A.V. Club approached him with an off-kilter concept, he never batted an eye. Here, Krol plays a round of “Name That Michael,” where we give him a…

According to legend, everyone who heard The Minutemen’s “History Lesson, Pt. 2” in 1984 reacted the same way people did after seeing The Sex Pistols play Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976. That is, they made like the 10,000 folks who’d purchased The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967 and formed bands of their…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about specific states.

In the last decade, Brian Fallon’s Springsteen-inspired band The Gaslight Anthem became one of punk’s most popular acts. At Gaslight’s peak, Fallon started a indie-rock band called The Horrible Crowes inspired by PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, playing only a few shows. Now with Gaslight currently on hiatus, he’s released…

It was sometime around 1997 or 1998 when author and rock journalist Michael Azerrad was sitting at home watching a generic multi-part history on rock ’n’ roll. It was late in the evening, and the episode he caught detailed the history of punk rock—or was supposed to. But something was wrong. “It went straight from…