Posts tagged music
CX Kid just dropped a track with Deee Lite’s Lady Miss Kier and Ladybug from Digable Planets. I can fully hang with this.
—Jessica H.
Nina Simone - Ain’t Got No…I’ve Got Life
Important to remember sometimes.
1,492 Plays
Paramore
Fast In My Car
Fast In My Car by Paramore
Soooo the new Paramore album is amazing. Can’t stop listening to it. Hayley Williams is so awesome.
- Hazel
On this day in music history: February 21, 1981 - “9 To 5” by Dolly Parton hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 2 weeks (non-consecutive, also topping the country singles chart for 1 week on January 24, and topping the Adult Contemporary chart for 2 weeks on February 28th. Written by Dolly Parton, it is the first number one pop and twelfth country chart topper for the singer, songwriter and actress from Sevierville, TN. Written as the title song for the comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, it will also feature Parton in her debut film role. Asked by the producers of the film if she’ll write a song, Parton will begin writing the song by clicking her acrylic fingernails together to sound a like the rhythm of a typewriter. Dolly will become only the second female artist (Jeannie C. Riley is the other) to top both the country and pop singles chart. Entering the Hot 100 at #73 on November 29, 1980, reaching the top of the pop chart twelve weeks later. “9 To 5” will spend one week at the top before being bumped back to #2 by Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love A Rainy Night” for two weeks, it will then regain the top spot for one more week on March 14th. Parton will win two Grammy Awards for “9 To 5” including Best Country Vocal Performance, Female, Best Country Song and receive an Academy Award nomination.
Dolly Parton FYI. So you can plan a proper belated celebration of the date this weekend.
—Jessica H
We can either sit there when a female punk band comes in and buy their tape, or you can talk to your guy friends and be like, “Stop saying that s—t about that woman in that band just because of how hot she is— just knock it off, man.” It can be awkward and uncomfortable, and no one ever wants to even approach these topics. But that would do way more for women to feel welcomed in playing rock music than just being at shows. Women are smart and they’re not all just drones with good taste because their boyfriend passed them a record. That’s such a s—-ty fallacy.
—Matt Korvette of the band Pissed Jeans explaining to Pitchfork why and how he’s trying to battle misogyny in his life.
—Jessica H.
Every time I hear a BSM song I wonder why I have not just gone DEEP on her fully in-yr-face discography. Also, for all the props David Crosby, Elliot Roberts and other dudes get for being the lynchpin in the launch of Joni Mitchell’s career, it was BSM who was her original champion, who predated them all, passed tapes of “Both Sides Now,” off to Judy Collins, which was a huge hit for her before Joni ever had a record deal.
—Jessica H.
"The lyrics really have the ability to pierce straight into anyone who at a point realized she had to change something about how she lived."
my sister is my favorite music writer
In case everyone isn’t already avidly following the bylines of Liz and Jenn Pelly, the young and influential twin sister feminist music critics, here is further proof they are doing some inspiring work and also will point you to good music most always.
—Jessica H.
“Hip Deep in Angola 2: Kuduro and Beyond” (Afropop Worldwide radio show 2012)
Ned Sublette is a musician, musicologist, historical writer, and a solid nominee for the Most Interesting Man in the World (NYC Arts category). This past summer, he took one of his core interests - the slave trade-enabled musical exchange between the west coast of Africa and the slave ports of the Americas, and the subsequent ocean of sounds this exchange has produced - to one of its natural sources, by travelling to Angola and the Congo for a few weeks to listen to music and talk to the people who make it. The initial result is “Hip Deep in Angola,” an incredible multi-part radio series for Afropop Worldwide that’s part investigation and part scene report. And this hour-long installment has #AfricanDrumMachines stamped all over it, focusing as it does on Kuduro and the electronic dance musics of Angola’s capital, Luanda. The episode is an excellent snapshot of urban club culture in Africa, how it functions and unfolds. One small taste of its contents is this creation myth of Kuduro’s name, which literally translates to “hard butt cheeks,” courtesy of Stefanie Alisch, the co-founder of Conferencia Kuduro.
Kuduro started to accumulate in Luanda in the early ‘90s when people went to discotheques…[and] listened to electronic music, which at the time was Chicago House but also Euro-dance. The DJs were playing vinyl records and the MCs were MCing in the sense of being a master of ceremony, holding the night together, hyping up the crowd and the dancers, and the dancers came on-stage to show their dance moves, and the dance moves had specific names….Then in 1996, the dancer and MC, Tony Amado released a song called a “Amba Kuduro Mama” which means “The Stiff Bottom, Mama” and that name stuck, and it turned into the name of the genre.
Full transcript of the interview with Alisch here. (Image: cover of the compilation “Com Fusoes 1” (Tratore Records, Brazil 2010)
So much amazing music and history here to get obsessed with. Ned Sublette is my hero.
—Jessica H.
Brand new First Aid Kit video. Woodsy panic! Joan of Arc pyre prancing! Cardboard wolf faces! THEY ARE THE BEST AT SINGING! LUV!
—jessica H.
Video for “Jack”, the single off the new U.S. Girls album, Gem, which is out next month. The band is just Meghan Remy, who spends much of this video looking creepy in a turban/hot in glitter. I like that her style is as scuzzy-glam as her albums.
—Jessica H.
