So we are finding it just impossible to believe that it's been 15 years since Exile in Guyville, but apparently it is so—as evidenced by the album's re-release yesterday. Above, 6'1". It seems like such a long time ago that we thought this was the best song we'd ever heard.
We got this email a while back from our friend O.:
Saw the post today about your reader suggestion for Top 25 playlists. Have you heard about Muxtape? A friend of mine just sent me a playlist yesterday—it’s REALLY cool.
Indeed! It is, in our opinion, just about as cool as New York magazine's summer-music prognostication series, which we love, because there are few things we love like summer music. In any case, we uploaded a whole bunch of their selections for a summer-music compendium—available at bunnnyshop.muxtape.com [sic. We forgot our original password.]
We hope people are still enjoying the Great iTunes Playlist Spectacular. We're still getting them, so we're still going to post them, because we are always on the lookout for new music (read: something other than Dashboard Confessional, Kanye West, and now Phantom Planet, which we have listened to 300,000,000 times. Highly recommended!) If you'd like to send us yours—and we hope you would!—email us here. Do us a solid, as they say, and put iTunes in the subject. That way we won't miss it amongst all our offers for Nigerian oil fortunes.
Above: Devendra Banhart! We feel like we have totally missed out on this, like the American Girl series. But we love that Rilo Kiley song, and Jenny Lewis as well. We don't mind revealing that this playlist is courtesy of one of BS's Internet BFFs, and we encourage you to check out their site.
And click here for the next playlist.
P.S.: Don't miss Part 1 or Part 2, from weeks prior!
We love this song so fucking much we swear to God it makes us stand up straighter and try harder and just swear that we are going to make cool things that will make at least one other person feel as super-alive as we feel when we hear this song. It just blows up our head, kaboom.
We really used to think of Phantom Planet as excessively whatever, but now our heart just explodes when we listen to this new album. We swear, we just swear we're going to spend the whole summer at music festivals listening to as much music as humanly possible.
We were torn between posting a full, acoustic version of this song and this ridiculous version. We went with the latter. But we do think the album version is even better than either.
Ok, we know we're not quite ground breaking when it comes to the music area, but our favorite band is also one that broke up before we were out of diapers. We are content listening to the same 7 gb of songs on our iPod, and we tend to download a new song here and there every week or two. Last week, we downloaded M.I.A's "Paper Planes", and holy hell, this song has been in constant rotation since.
We drove kind of an obscene amount this past weekend, through 3 states, 2 rain storms, in 2 different cars, and about 9 bottles of Diet Coke. The most challenging point was driving through lower Manhattan, down Canal Street on Saturday. The amount of people buying knock-off bags (perhaps Mother's Day presents, we think) was staggering. As was when we approached the Holland Tunnel and the police turned two cars around and they were not allowed to enter the tunnel. Did we mention we were driving a car that costs as much as 2.5 of our car? Totally stressful, but we listened to this song on repeat about a hundred times and we were remarkably chill when we got to our destination.
We even made it our ring tone, and we've listened to it on our way in and out of work to ease our troubled mind.
-LB
So it's the second round of the amazing iTunes spectacular! (See the first one here.) Picking up where we left off, here's our next playlist, from T.. This is as close as we'll see to our own, we think, owing to all that Ryan Adams and Wicked. We hope and pray Ryan Adams know he's constantly next to Wicked in playlists around the world.
For the next playlist, click here.
Someone we've long being trying to shape into a Sleater Kinney fan—because really, how could someone not be a fan of the best band of like the last million years—recently asked us to name their most accessible songs. This was a bit baffling, since of course we think they are all sort of equally completely accessible ... and completely not. This was our vote, as it was the first SK song we loved. We would love to know if there are other SK fans around, and if so, what they would vote for.
Our favorite SK story: After they were mistaken, backstage, for groupies, Corin was all, "We're not here to fuck the band. We are the band." Oh! Why are we not devoting all of our time and energy to becoming a rock star in the Corin Tucker mode?
This video, btw, breaks our heart into a thousand million pieces, as it's from their last show, and it's obviously a huge sing-a-long and we can't imagine what we could have been doing that was better than attending it. Oh, SK! Come back to us! Sigh.
We had finished this post and realized we needed to share more SK:
We love this song even if in general it's Corin rather than Carrie that makes us so deliriously in love. We were going to go back to art school next semester, but we think instead we'll just make SK videos and post them on YouTube. Please! Come back!
We have been listening to this song on repeat for about the last 100 hours. We are thinking it might have another 100 hours in it. It is the perfect mid-spring weekend song, we're thinking. We were a lot snobbier about our musical taste when we were 15, we're realizing, which is weird.
We basically moved to California because we loved that Phantom Planet song. We are not sure what sort of hypnosis-techniques they have included in this new album, but we are totally enjoying this song, "Do the Panic"—which was on Gossip Girl last week! (Or the week before. It's all fuzzy at the moment.)
Here they are! This wasn't so much a contest as a show-and-tell with prizes: Thanks to our amazing reader Melissa, who came up with the idea, we asked our readers to send in their top 25 iTunes playlist. We have totally loved getting them, and we hope you enjoy looking through them as much as we did. So many ideas!
To start things off, here's Melissa's, with her original note:
Your music picks today gave me an idea for a reader question. It would be kind of fun if everyone posted their "Top 25 Most Played Songs" list from iTunes. It would be fun to see what everyone is listening to most on their computers or iPods. Kind of voyeuristic. Get some cool new music ideas. Gauge the personality of your readership. Could be kind of embarrassing, too if you've listened to some Air Supply song like 67 times. I've attached my list below as an example.
Yay! Without a doubt, one of our favorite projects here ever.
Carly Smithson got us re-obsessed with Jesus Christ Superstar, so we thought we'd share this completely bonkers video of the Trial Before Pilate. Bonkers! Completely bonkers. She totally should have done some Joplin version of memory and spared Jason Castro the pain.
It's still Lil Bunny day here, as your regularly scheduled writer is wilting as she works on a redesign. We have a bit of an obsession with 'Fit But You Know It' by the Streets. We know it's like 8 years old, but this song is best played loud, in the car, on repeat. We've been doing that for days. We are also trying to make a ringtone out of the very end (we won't spoil it) but we can't quite figure it out.
Also, tell us! What're you listening to? We could definitely use some new music, since we clearly have a problem with listening to the same songs over and over again!
-LB
So this has been an unusual week at BS HQ, mostly because we are in the middle of an amazing redesign! So exciting! A prettier, easier to use site! Which we almost spelled "sight"!
It is one of those weeks where you're watching Gossip Girl, and you're like: epiphany! Everything is always okay! And then you hear this song, and you're like, OMG, summer! We're torn between the Black Kids original and the Kate Nash cover, but we say: both! It is the power of summer, in musical form!
Alanis Morissette! We had newfound respect for her when we interview her then-boyfriend, Ryan Reynolds, and realized he was the coolest, funniest guy we'd ever interviewed. (This was four years ago, but it may remain true, at least in the guy-we-interviewed category.) Could Alanis Morisette have the song of the summer? That is not by Rihanna? We sort of like this song, even if typing her name makes us feel like it's 1995(!).
We've been getting loads of these, but we admit, we want more: Send us a screenshot of your top 25 iTunes playlist (as suggested by the brilliant Melissa). We'll show all of them next week (include any disclaimers, as below) and pick at random someone to get copies of all our favorite albums at the moment—Lupe Fiasco, Miranda Lampert, Dashboard Confessional, and a bunch more. We're celebrating spring, music, and the fact that our CD burner is working again.
Above: our top 25. It is totally aggravating us that our iPod's play counts are making the cut here, because we stopped using iTunes about a year ago—ergo all that Modest Mouse. (So summer of 2005!)
Anyway—send us yours!
This next playlist is from N. We will say that when we saw the full playlist here, we said to ourselves, now this is a person we could really get along with. Despite the Linkin Park. Oh, who are we kidding, we love the Linkin Park. Though why they can't just have normal titles is beyond us.
That's it for now, but we encourage all and any to continue being so lovely and sending in your playlists. And if you missed them, check out Part 1 or Part 2.
The next playlist is from C. Can we say that it has one of our absolute favorite songs on it: "O Mary Don't You Weep" by Bruce Springsteen. Oh, Bruce! We grew up thinking he was such a chump but we were dreadfully mistaken.
The next playlist is from C.:
My favorite song by now is a French one I fell in love with during my vacays in Paris.
This playlist is from Germany! That is our favorite Amy Winehouse song. It's so bad when your leading singers are also giant crackheads. But we have less conflicted feelings about the Rick Ross. Hustling, hustling, as he says.
The next playlist is from G.:
Here's my top from a week or two ago. I wouldn't say that this is really representative of me, because there's no Belle and Sebastian or Saint Etienne or the Magnetic Fields. The So Percussion I put on a lot at work because it's easy to work to, the Kate Nash, well duh, but the other things are surprises. Who knew I listened to the same things over and over?
We love Iron & Wine! Well, we try to love Iron & Wine, like we try, in fact, to love wine. (The truth is that we prefer orange juice. But once again, we're trying.) Magnetic Fields! Every time we hear MF, we think: We could totally be a rock group if we tried. But then, in that instance, we don't try, and tragically we may never truly know.
Continue reading "The Great iTunes Playlist Spectacular, Continued" »
The next playlist is from C. This makes us totally want to go buy some Badly Drawn Boy. The Beach Boys seem like suitable summer music, we're thinking. And by the way, we're pretty sure we think about Jesus Christ Superstar the way C. thinks about Hair: with undying love and affection.
Continue reading "The Great iTunes Playlist Spectacular, Continued" »
Our next playlist is from T.:
I think I may be in a bit of a rut with all the Sufjan, Silversun Pickups and Citizen Cope!
Personally we have never been on the Sufjan train, but we love a bunch of songs on here, like that Anna Nalick and ... the Daughtry? Really he is our biggest American Idol of all time, no? We also love, just love, the Internet radio. We would be lost without Radio 1.
So as we mentioned we were in American Apparel this weekend—we don't know why it is, but every time we fly transoceanically we have this overpowering need to buy things from American Apparel. It's practically Pavlovian. Plane, hoodies and leggings. (We also got a scarf.) Easy peasy. So we spent like 45 minutes in our neighborhood AA on Friday, and the highlight—after nixing several items making entirely too much use of lame—was the soundtrack, especially this Gang Starr song YouTubed above. One of our very favorite hip hop songs is GS, and one of our favorite friend memories of all time was rapping ("rapping") GS over the Brooklyn Bridge with our friends B. and C. We do not love this song quite as much, but at least it is a contender.
Can we also say, on a music-related note, that this is going to be the highlight of our summer without a doubt: Radiohead + Sigur Ros + Gossip + Editors + Kate Nash. We mean, really.
Lupe Fiasco, we love you. And that is not Chris Martin in the beginning.
So we're not sure who else was like, Am I really watching the finale of Celebrity Apprentice? last night. But if we were the only ones (we're assuming we were, in fact, the only ones), then everyone missed Trace Adkins sing this song (which is YouTubed above, but please ignore the actual video part of the video, which obviously we do not endorse). We're not like the number one country music fans in the world, but we find it mind-boggling that there's so much interesting storytelling going on in hip hop and country (and has been, for years) and yet everything we hear on the radio is so absolutely, like, 'Ride up on my ass shake blah blah blah.'
We are not usually so wild for the Gwen Stefani fashion empire, but we think this is adorable. And half off! Which makes it definitely much more so. Suze Orman would not approve.
Harajuku Lovers bag, was $106, now $53
That said, about the not-being-wild, we don't know how any can object to Gwen Stefani, in general. She is such a superior alternative to the Paris\Lindsay\Britney\etc. There's something self-made about her we totally dig. And we definitely do not use that word lightly.
One of our editors emailed us this like five years ago and was all, this is so amazing, and we were all, meh. (Meh is the sound shoulders make when you're like too tired to commit to shrugging them.) But now we are in love.
Starting now. Like, right this minute, like we already have a little dance we do for this song, especially when we are driving.
We are not usually so, "Go alma mater!" but between Vampire Weekend and Barack Obama we are convinced our diploma is appreciating something wicked at the moment.
Can we just say we've spent the morning with CMT on in the background (baffling, we know) and we think we may love it: For one thing, and this sets it apart from its competition, it does not feature bisexual-tart reality show dating games. (To stress, our quarrel is with the "tart" part. Though we did quite like the firefighter girl. But honestly: Tila Tequila! The world does not need for her to have a television series! Fuck.)
Anyway: We once interviewed Willie Nelson, and he was the most potty-mouthed interviewee we ever had. (Our editor at Spin had to take out like five uses of the word "pussy," which obviously we have no trouble reproducing here.) We loved him, as we hoped we would, and we loved his love of biodiesel. And we are totally freaked out by \ obsessed with his version of Dave Matthews' Gravedigger. We sort of relinquished ourselves of Dave Matthews a few years ago but Willie doing it is something else entirely.
Our previous music selection:
This Song Is Driving Us Completely Insane (Yael Naim's New Soul)
But \ and we can't stop listening to it.
We should have said: It's Yael Naim, and you may be remembering it from the Mac Air commercials.
P.S: We would never have put this all together if we hadn't just gotten driven completely insane by Oprah (too! much! misery!) and put on Ellen, and everything was happy again. Paradigm shift, we're thinking.
This has been a difficult week for us music wise: We had to drive 150 miles with just the radio, and our hand actually cramped from pressing the scan button over and over again. It was a music nightmare. We have since been reunited with our iPod, and this is what we're listening to:
1. Lupe Fiasco's The Cool: Good God we love this album! Have been listening to it and nothing but for the past three days. Er, except for all the really terrible radio in the middle.
2. Dashboard Confessional's Shade of Poison Trees: We can't help it; we just love this album. Particularly "These Bones."
2. Feist's Let It Die: We have had this album for like 30 years and never really cracked, but now we are singing "Secret Heart" whenever we are not singing Lupe Fiasco.
3: Vampire Weekend: If they are good enough for the Spin cover, they're good enough for us.
Dancing at discos! Eating cheese on toast! We don't do either of those, but this song sure makes us want to.
This has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, which, as a holiday, we reject. Well, okay, it has a tiny bit to do with it, but only in the sense that we find the holiday depressing and demoralizing and this song makes us want to pick up and move to Buenos Aires and learn to dance.
They're not letting people embed it, but this video is pretty adorable footage of the band hearing the song on the radio for the first time. We are wondering if we are too old to have a band. We are thinking maybe not.
1. Miranda Lambert's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. These lyrics!
Well, it took me five bars, saw thirty license plates
I saw her Mustang
And my eyes filled up with rage
I brought my pistol but I ain't some kinda fool
So I walked right in barehanded
She was on his arm while he was playing pool
Just like I used to do
She kissed him while I got a beer
She didn't think I'd show up here
I'm a crazy ex girlfriend
That is just totally insane. We are so excited about this album right now.
2. Feist's Let It Die. We had this album for soooo long before we finally got into it, but now that we have, we can't stop listening to "Secret Heart."
3. Kate Nash's Made of Bricks. We think we have been going on and on about this too much already, but let us just say, we have listened to her song "Foundations" about 40 million times in the past eight days.
4. Sigur Ros's Hvarf - Heima.The whole album just breaks our heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
We know the qualit
