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The Great Unfollowing: The Year in Online Meltdowns
Mark Kozelek needed the listening world to understand that he was above its new digital fray, no matter how much he was being lambasted or lauded online for his onstage attitude."I don’t have Twitter...
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2014: The Year We Reached Peak Ass
A year after Miley Cyrus’s twerking at the VMAs incited a national debate about a dance culture borne from the Bounce scene in New Orleans, ass worship has become a form of cultural currency. This is...
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The Most Essential Nigerian Afropop Tracks of 2014
Here’s what has become readily apparent in 2014: Nigeria has one of the most exciting music scenes on the planet. Technically, that's not a new development, yet for most American music consumers,...
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ABC’s “Nashville”: 2014 Character Power Rankings and Predictions
As 2014 comes to a close, here is a definitive "Nashville" power ranking for our favorite country music-themed nighttime soap opera. [This contains hella spoilers, if you care.] 20 Pam - Back-up singer...
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The Best Video Game Music of 2014
"Actually, it's about ethics in games journalism" wasn't the only noteworthy noise issuing forth from the world of video games this year. Between Blizzard's strangely hummable Hearthstone theme to the...
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Op-Ed: Why Independent Music Fans Need Real Net Neutrality
From the beginning, the story of independent music in the U.S. has been about a struggle to level the playing field for creative expression and entrepreneurship—about finding ways for a more diverse...
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Jack White Publicity Stunts 2015-2025: A Speculative Digest
It’s the end of 2014, and Jack White is clearly bored--or assumes we are with him. How else to explain White’s creation of a virtual reality app, vying for the world record for pressing a vinyl,...
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D’Angelo’s Black Messiah Is #1 In Our Hearts, But Not On The Charts--What Gives?
Since it landed like a joy-bomb late Sunday night, D'Angelo’s long (long!) awaited Black Messiah has upended critics’ and music nerds’ end-of-year conversations, with some outlets slotting it as their...
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Millions Like Us is a Winning History of the Mod Revival, Sung by the Underdogs
If you can picture a definitive grunge box set without Nirvana, or a definitive Afrobeat box set without Fela Kuti, you can see the conundrum that faces Millions Like Us: The Story of the Mod Revival...
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The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament: Round One
The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament is a head-to-head competition of Nicki’s most prominent singles and features on other artists’ singles seeded by commercial success. The tournament has a field of 32...
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The Year in Young: Neil's Weird 2014
"People my age, they don’t do the things I do," Neil Young sang back in 1995. All these years later, he’s living by those words more than ever. While most of his classic rock peers are coasting...
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The Year in Black Erasure
Photo by Chris Tuite"I feel like, in this country, whenever it comes to our things, like black issues or black politics or black music or whatever, there's always this undercurrent of kinda like a...
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The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament: Round Two
The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament is a head-to-head competition of Nicki’s most prominent singles and features on other artists’ singles seeded by commercial success. The tournament has a field of 32...
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The Art of Excess in the Face of Death: Flying Lotus and PC Music
Earlier this year I sat in a quiet café with Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, to discuss his cosmic, mortality-facing fifth LP, You’re Dead!Throughout the chat he exuded serenity, unspooling sentences...
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Q&A: The Sound of Young Scotland Doc Director Grant McPhee
Scotland was late to receive the punk gospel, but once it got hold, England’s northern neighbor clung tightly to the do-it-yourself mindset. Independent labels such as Edinburgh’s Fast Product in the...
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Shake Appeal's Best of 2014
And now, it's time for Shake Appeal's best albums of 2014. Evan Minsker shares his favorite garage, punk, psychedelic, power pop, hardcore, screaming, fuzzy, uncouth, burnout, drop-out, balls-out,...
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The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament: Round Three
The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament is a head-to-head competition of Nicki’s most prominent singles and features on other artists’ singles seeded by commercial success. The tournament has a field of 32...
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Old, But Not in a New Way: Why Lucinda Williams Became One of the Year's Most...
It must be terrible to be an album as good as Lucinda Williams’ Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. The 20-song set, issued in late September through Williams’ own Highway 20 Records, is a career...
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The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament: Semifinal
The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament is a head-to-head competition of Nicki’s most prominent singles and features on other artists’ singles seeded by commercial success. The tournament has a field of 32...
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The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament: Final
The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament is a head-to-head competition of Nicki’s most prominent singles and features on other artists’ singles seeded by commercial success. The tournament has a field of 32...
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