Jun Togawa is sort of like what you'd get if you crossed Kate Bush and Mike Patton. Togawa, who became known in Japanese culture
after appearing in a bidet commercial, was half of the electro-cabaret band
Guernica, which sometimes sounded
very classical and sometimes sounded
very new wave and sometimes
much stranger. Somewhat more straightforward is her rock outfit
Yapoos, which similarly varies
quite a bit in
sound and
style. Her solo work, unsurprisingly, is quite
melodramatic, with some very interesting
arrangements, both
parodically poppy and
funky. I particularly like her covers of
All Tomorrow's Parties by the Velvet Underground, Brigitte Fontaine's
Comme à la Radio, and – weirdly –
Pachelbel's Canon.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Apr 21, 2013 -
14 comments
In 1964, The Beatles put together a one-off variety show, with musical numbers specially pre-recorded for the show, presented in the style of theater-in-the-round.
Around the Beatles was aired in the UK and later that same year in the US, but never commercially released. The show includes The Beatles performing a scene from
A Midsummer's Night Dream, with Paul McCartney as Pyramus, John Lennon as his lover Thisbe, George Harrison as Moonshine, Starr as Lion, and
Trevor Peacock (the only actual actor in the lot) in the role of Quince. A
color clip of that was
posted previously, but you can watch the entire (almost) hour-long show with The Beatles' segments accompanied by seven other musical acts,
on Dailymotion or
YouTube, though it's in black and white.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 18, 2013 -
14 comments
Jon Brion gets around. As a composer, he scored some of the best movies of last decade and change –
Punch-Drunk Love,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Synecdoche, New York, and
I ♥ Huckabees. As a producer, he's worked with
Fiona Apple,
Kanye West,
Aimee Mann, and the excellent bluegrass outfit
Punch Brothers. He writes pop music like the best of them – witness
Meaningless,
Knock Yourself Out,
Here We Go, or
Didn't Think It Would Turn Out Bad for a nice sampler of his style and range. His live shows are notoriously whimsical and eccentric – he's apt to perform
Radiohead's "Creep" in the style of Tom Waits, or cover
Stairway to Heaven as a one-man band, recreating all the parts to its climax on the fly.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Mar 9, 2013 -
20 comments
For the 2012 iTunes Music Festival, 65 acts (including
P!nk,
One Direction,
David Guetta ,
Jessie J,
OneRepublic,
Ellie Goulding,
Andrea Bocelli,
Matchbox Twenty,
Muse and many others) performed at the Roundhouse in London throughout the month of September. 40 performances are available in full online.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 29, 2012 -
9 comments
DJ Earworm has released his annual "United State of Pop" mashup of the year's 25 most popular songs according to Billboard's charts:
Shine Brighter.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 20, 2012 -
39 comments
In March of 2009, an R.E.M.
tribute and benefit concert was held at Carnegie Hall. One of the most interesting covers of that evening was
Ingrid Michaelson's take on "Nightswimming."
Michaelson used a looping pedal to slowly build the harmonies, so that by the end of the song she was accompanied by a whole choir of her own voice. While the Carnegie performance isn't available online, you can see a pared-down but still extraordinary performance from her
appearance at the Sirius XM studios.
(YT)
posted by shiu mai baby
on Sep 11, 2012 -
25 comments
Legendary lyricist
Hal David, most famously partnered with composer Burt Bacharach, and countless pop performers ranging from Dionne Warwick to Tom Jones to The Carpenters and beyond, has
died at age 91.
posted by 2N2222
on Sep 1, 2012 -
36 comments
You might have heard
Mike Oldfield playing during the Olympic opening and wondered, "What! Why the heck would
Danny Boyle want the
Exorcist theme playing at the start of such a grand event!" Oldfield's kept a low profile for years, so you may not remember him as the man who
literally launched Virgin Records, one of only three artists to ever knock
his #1 record off the charts with
another #1 record (the other two being Bob Dylan and the Beatles). But those teenage successes were merely the start of an astonishing career, one full of
pop music and
prog rock,
sci-fi and
New Age,
film scores and
classical orchestrations — not to mention a spot at the start of
Kanye West's recent album. His magnum opus,
Amarok, is an hour of astonishing sounds and shifting genres which must be heard to be believed. Too overwhelming? Well, there're
[more inside]
posted by Rory Marinich
on Jul 27, 2012 -
62 comments
"
Euphoria", which won the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (
previously), is a #1 in several countries, including
Ireland,
Austria, and
Switzerland Of course, it's not the only song charting internationally that you might never hear on US radio. It should come as no surprise that one can readily find international hits online.
For instance -
Sweden, #4: Panetoz -
Dansa Pausa
Sweden, #9: Mange Makers -
Drick Den
This doesn't purport to be an exhaustive list, but rather a jumping-off point.
[more inside]
posted by LSK
on Jun 13, 2012 -
25 comments
The long and rather surprising history of
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, penned in 1957 by British singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl, has just taken another bold and dramatic turn with Erykah Badu and the Flaming Lips' starkly powerful cover of the song. Oh, and in the
accompanying video, they've most certainly upped the ante as far as edgy eroticism in pop music goes, with Badu's sister Nayrok pushing the envelope into the stratosphere. Nota bene: explicit nudity. [NSFW]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jun 4, 2012 -
82 comments
Hear how popular music has changed from 1940 to today with the
Radio Time Machine. Choose a year and hear samples of songs from the top of the Billboard 100 (or full songs if you're logged in to
Rdio).
posted by jocelmeow
on May 7, 2012 -
19 comments
Before
hip-hop beefs, there were response records, also known as
answer songs, usually replies to well-known songs. There are a few key eras: blues and R&B recorded music in the 1930s through 1950s, including a number of responses to "
Work With Me, Annie" (1954), recorded by
Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, with answers including "
Annie had a Baby," and "
The Wallflower" by Etta James; and Big Mama Thornton's "
Hound Dog" (1953), with a quick response by
Louis Innis and Charlie Gore, made a mere week after the original was released, and
Rufus Thomas' "
Bear Cat" (1953),
Sun Records' first hit. Country, rock & roll, doo-wop and pop music picked up where the blues left off, with most activity in the 1950s to 60s. Two examples from this era are
"Are You Lonesome To-night" and "Who Put The Bomp," and responses to both. The most well known from the next decade was Lynyrd Skynyrd's "
Sweet Home Alabama" (1974), a response to Neil Young's "
Southern Man" (1970) and "
Alabama" (1972). Until the 2000s, no answer songs had charted as high as the original hits. That changed with
Frankee's "
F.U.R.B. (Fuck You Right Back)" (2004), a response to
Eamon's "
Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" (2003), which was the first answer song to reach number 1 in the UK. Six years later and across the pond, Katy Perry's "
California Gurls" was a response to "
Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z. It was the first answer song to reach No. 1 in the Billboard Hot 100. More Responses inside.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 31, 2012 -
53 comments
...there’s some desperation to this junk version of “Dancing in the Street,” with both parties trying to affirm their A-1 celebrity status. One of the more pernicious effects of the whole Live Aid/Farm Aid/Band Aid spectacle was to cement the hierarchy of the “legend” rock acts and a smaller tier of anointed successors from the slightly-younger generation (Tom Petty, Sting, Dire Straits, U2). It was the height of the Boomer Counter-Reformation. The late Eighties would see the over-publicized returns of everyone from Steve Winwood to the Monkees to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, to a revamped George Harrison to a MOR version of Pink Floyd to Robbie Robertson pretending that he was Peter Gabriel (a version of Gabriel who couldn’t sing) to an all-star Yes and a Zeppelin-sampling Robert Plant, culminating in the return of the “revitalized” Stones in 1989, the touring company now reincorporated into a gleaming multinational. As Marcello Carlin said back when Popular covered this single: “Suddenly we were once again reminded who in pop and rock mattered and who didn’t…With their massacre of “Dancing In The Street,” Bowie and Jagger seemed to relish rubbing it in.“
-
The Annotated Jagger/Bowie "Dancing in the Street"
posted by anazgnos
on Jan 17, 2012 -
180 comments
Quincy Jones sat in the Tenafly, New Jersey den of 16-year-old vocal student Lesley Gore,
playing demo after demo, looking for the right song to cut for her first record. Out of over 200 tapes, Jones and Gore had moved only one to the "maybe" pile, and so that song,
It's My Party, was recorded on March 30, 1963 in a Manhattan studio. After the session Mercury president Irving Green warned Gore not to get her hopes up, but Gore gratefully told him that it had been a great experience anyway, and it was okay if he didn't want to release it. However, later that evening Jones learned that
Phil Spector had just recorded "It's My Party" for
The Crystals, so Jones rushed back to the studio to press 100 test copies of the single and immediately mailed them to key radio stations across the country.
[more inside]
posted by swift
on Sep 13, 2011 -
69 comments
