A few quick notes on pop music producers

Tonight I went through the new Britney Spears album. It’s streaming on the AOL Music site. This is not a review of that album, although I do intend to write one because I find it an incredibly interesting listen and lesson on pop development. I’ve become intrigued with the production of pop music as of late, and this album only pushed me further down that path.

I just want to point out a few things that I discovered while researching the production of her album.

  1. Bloodshy & Avant = 2/3 of Miike Snow. Now I understand why Miike Snow makes great pop music: the guys in the band wrote Toxic.
  2. Benny Blanco, the guy who did a filthy, “raunchy, megahorny hip-hop” album with Spank Rock that I listened to a few summers ago writes songs for Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Justin Bieber, and Ciara, to name a few.
  3. Darkchild kinda seems like a self-absorbed loudmouth.

OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) #coachella2011

The Odd Future collective just DGAF

Is it wrong that I think of Odd Future as 2011’s Die Antwoord with way more staying power? Regardless, that’s how I approach these guys.

Quick facts: OFWGKTA stands for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, which is shortened to Odd Future. Odd Future is a collective of about ten 17-23 year-old rappers and producers seemingly headed by Tyler, the Creator.

I first listened to Tyler, the Creator’s “Yonkers” after seeing Kanye West’s tweet declaring the video for the song “The video of 2011.” I have a thing for stark, simple, black-and-white videos (“Single Ladies“, “My Love“, “Drop It Like It’s Hot“, “On To The Next One“, I could go on…), and “Yonkers” keeps pace with the rest. It’s unique, and it keeps with Odd Future’s reputation as spouting shocking and ridiculous imagery through their lyrics.

The collective has been quite prolific since late 2008 (Pitchfork has a great review of their mixtapes), but hadn’t garnered a ton of attention until late last year. I’ve only just started going through the mixtapes and watching their performance at SXSW, but I’m hooked. I can’t pass up the allure of young energy breaking new ground without much regard for their elders. I’ll definitely be catching their set at Coachella this year.

Update: Pitchfork just posted an interview with Odd Future. It’s loaded with gems. My favorite is…

Pitchfork: Did you ever imagine you’d be playing at festivals like Coachella and SXSW a year ago?

Tyler, the Creator: I didn’t even know about Coachella a year ago. I knew about SXSW because N.E.R.D. played here. It was never my goal or intention to play one of those, and I never realized how important it was until recently. I’m a believer that if you keep saying shit’s gonna happen it will. Like, I always talked about how I wanted a trampoline, and now I have one.

Update 2: If this isn’t the best interview ever…

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – The Crutch

I’ve gone through this album a couple times now. I love it. There are left turns all over the place. And not that Jamie xx deserves all the credit for the sound that The xx has carved out  for themselves, but he is certainly something to be respected on his own.

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – The Crutch

jj releases Kills mixtape

jj kills

I’m no expert on jj. I’ve listened to jj nº1, nº2, and nº3, but I still don’t have a firm grasp on what it is that they’re doing. Maybe that’s the point. On one hand you have Ecstacy and on the other you have Let Go. Is it beautiful indie pop or is it beautiful indie pop covers of hip hop songs?

With the release of the Kills mixtape, the question changes again. Is it beautiful indie pop covers mashing up a bunch of hip hop songs? I don’t know, but it’s incredible. Genres, who needs ’em?

Tracklist

  1. STILL
  2. DIE TONIGHT
  3. KILL THEM
  4. KILL YOU
  5. NEW WORK
  6. BELIEVE
  7. PRESSURE IS A PREVILEGE
  8. ANGELS
  9. BOOM
  10. HIGH END

jj kills

MOG launches new app in Chrome Web Store

MOG Music's new web app brings its interface up to speed with competitors like Rdio

I consume a lot of music, and there’s no way that I could ever afford to purchase every album I listen to for $14.99. That’s where music subscription services come in. As a recent convert to MOG (from Rhapsody), I get excited every time I get even just a weekly update in my inbox letting me know what music has been added recently. But the announcement of an entirely revamped web app launched into Google’s brand new Chrome Web Store is something that anyone who loves music should pay attention to.

To get you acquainted with what it is exactly that MOG offers, here’s a quick summary of the $4.99 /month service (for $9.99, you get the mobile app too):

Unlimited Music: Access to over 10 million songs and close to one million albums, on-demand.
High Quality Audio: Music is streamed at 320 kbps; better than any other music service.
Best-in-Class, Personal Radio: The most powerful music discovery engine on the planet (powered by MOG Mobius).
One-click Access: With one click, get instant access to New Releases, Top Artists, Top Albums and Editor’s Picks.
Anytime, Anywhere: Unlimited access to the MOG app from any computer using Chrome or Safari browsers or on your TV (Roku and GoogleTV).

The Good (a.k.a. why it’s better than what it was)

So why is this new web app a good thing? Because the way that we interface with MOG’s library has been vastly improved. For starters, the browsing of MOG’s huge catalog and the managing of the ‘Play Queue’ all happens in the same browser window now. Where you used to click a button in one window to add a song to the queue in another pop-up, now an addition to the queue affects the window you’re looking at. This really unifies the user experience and brings MOG up to speed with the user experience that competitors like Rdio already offer.

Another improvement is the way in which you now browse and discover music on the site. When you click on an artist’s name after you either search for them or just happen upon them while browsing the site, a dropdown summarizing the content pertaining to that artist is shown. From here, you can view that artist’s discography, see their top tracks, play a radio station built around their sound, or dive deeper and see the individual songs that make up an album. Because the site is built as a web app meeting to the (relatively) new HTML5 standards, the absence of pageloads makes browsing the site super smooth. Jumping in and out of artist pages is quick and painless.

The Bad (or hopefully ‘The Temporarily Left Out’)

The site isn’t perfect though. As a beta release, this is understandable, but there are a few things that I hope are in the pipeline to be implemented soon. The first thing that stuck out to me was that playlists are nowhere to be found. When someone gives you unlimited access to a 10 million song catalog of music, you want playlists. In a larger context than just music discovery, the curators of today’s information landscape provide a great service to the communities that they belong to: they help content of value bubble to the top for everyone to enjoy. Leaving out playlists leaves out the ability for quality music to surface. Only a small fraction of the catalog is ever seen.

Another addition that I’d love to see is the ability to see more than just the music content offered by MOG when viewing an artist’s page. When I’m in a discovery mood, I want to know everything I can about an artist: their bio, maybe some photos, a few similar artists, etc. Last.fm does an incredible job of bringing this information forward on their artist pages.

Finally, I can’t scrobble any of the music I listen to with the new web app! I have no idea what percentage of MOG users are also Last.fm users, but this issue is bordering on being a deal-breaker for me. I’ve been OK with the inability to scrobble songs on my iPhone, but if I can’t scrobble on my desktop either, then I’m left in a pretty bad situation. This seems to be such a small feature to implement, I hope MOG throws this in very soon.

The All-In-All

So where does this leave the music subscription space? Rdio has a great interface and iPhone app but no catalog. Rhapsody has a gigantic catalog but the worst interface out there. MOG offers it all: the ideal UI, a large (and quickly growing) catalog, and mobile apps that are winning awards as fast as they can be awarded.

Best of 2010 Lists

Welcome to my aggregation of the 'Best of 2010' lists that are floating around.

Yet another archival post. I love pouring over ‘Best Of’ lists every December. Why? Because there’s so much great music that’s released every year that I’m bound to miss tons of it no matter how hard I try to keep up on the new release schedules every week. So much creativity, so little time.

I’ll keep this post updated as I come across new lists.

AllMusic Loves… (music, duh)

This post is meant more for its archival purposes than for any sort of reading material you might be interested in. AllMusic has gotten in the habit of posting these informal ‘Best Of’ lists for years past, but each list is just a blog post. It can be hard to track down each list, so here’s my attempt at keeping a current rundown of their posts:

AllMusic Loves 1956

AllMusic Loves 1965
AllMusic Loves 1968

AllMusic Loves 1974
AllMusic Loves 1977
AllMusic Loves 1979

AllMusic Loves 1980
AllMusic Loves 1984
AllMusic Loves 1985
AllMusic Loves 1987
AllMusic Loves 1988

AllMusic Loves 1990
AllMusic Loves 1993
AllMusic Loves 1997
AllMusic Loves 1999

AllMusic Loves 2000
AllMusic Loves 2001
AllMusic Loves 2002
AllMusic Loves 2003
AllMusic Loves 2004
AllMusic Loves 2005
AllMusic Loves 2006
AllMusic Loves 2007
AllMusic Loves 2008
AllMusic Loves 2009
AllMusic Loves 2010

Portishead at Coachella 2011?!

please let this possibility become a reality once again

According to the new @PortisheadClub Twitter account, there’s a possibility of Portishead playing at the 2011 edition of Coachella! This is too much for me to handle. The triple knockout of Kraftwerk, Portishead, and Prince in 2008 comprises what I consider to be the best night of music I’ve ever experienced.

Update: So whoever is running that account is claiming to have confirmed that No Doubt, The Strokes, and Soundgarden are also playing Coachella this year. This sounds like a long-shot in my opinion.

The B-52s – Dance This Mess Around

The cover of the self-titled debut album by The B-52s

This song comes from one of my ten “desert island” albums: the self-titled debut album from The B-52s. The album was one of my family’s road-trip tapes when I was younger, and I adore it for many reasons, most of which are alive in this song. It’s kitsch, it’s camp, it’s weird, it’s emotional, but most of all, it’s incredibly pop.

I mean, who else could pull off screaming, “WHY DON’T YOU DANCE WITH ME?! I’M NOT NO LIMBURGER!”

The B-52s – Dance This Mess Around