Tennis “Ladies Don’t Play Guitar”

I’ve never had a grasp on Tennis’ identity as a band. I’m not totally sure if they do either. They definitely have an aesthetic – very clean and glossy, but also refined and not particularly flashy – but their personality is rather vague and seems to shift with whatever their inspiration happens to be in the moment. This is a good moment for them, though. “Ladies Don’t Play Guitar” has a sexy but understated late ‘80s/early ’90s groove – think “Justify My Love” by Madonna or “Back to Life” by Soul II Soul – and lyrics that are considerably more pointed and direct than you’d expect from a typically quite mellow and agreeable act. Alaina Moore’s vocal part isn’t particularly aggressive, but it’s clear that she’s pushing back against a lot of aggravating assumptions in her own way, and probably also challenging herself to say a bit more with her music. This is certainly the best song I’ve heard by them, so it’s a move in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.

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Britney Spears “Private Show”

Britney Spears has been mainly singing like a horny cyborg for nearly a decade, a move that originated in necessity circa her public breakdown album Blackout but has persisted as an aesthetic choice ever since. It suits the sort of electro pop that she’s focused on over the years, and can be read as a commentary on the public perception of her as a zonked-out yet hypersexualized person who has lived most of her life as a heavily mediated product. Less charitable people would say that it makes up for her limitations as a vocalist, but I think “Private Show” ruins that argument. Her voice is processed but she’s singing the hell out of the song, and veering into an adventurous R&B space that has more to do with Beyoncé/Destiny’s Child or TLC than anything Max Martin has ever done. The lyrics aren’t especially noteworthy – it’s basically her singing about doing stripper moves for her dude, which seems like exactly what you’d expect of her even if she’s never done it before. But the track, which is produced by T-Pain protégé Young Fyre, is exceedingly slinky and falls in the same odd zone between classic soul and clipped robotic pop as her vocal performance. It’s traditional but slightly off, and makes something that might otherwise seem a bit trashy sound genuinely sweet and wholesome.

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Wild Beasts “Alpha Female”

The major through line of the Wild Beasts discography has been Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming’s deeply conflicted relationship with masculinity – their own, mostly, but also in broader terms. Sometimes it’s a critique, and other times it’s a celebration. Thorpe’s early vocal performances would toggle dramatically between masculine and feminine extremes, as if different parts of himself were struggling for dominance, which would sit in contrast with performances by Fleming that exaggerated his handsome, deeper voice to the point of sounding like he was playing a knight in shining armor type.

Wild Beasts were becoming steadily more subtle, cerebral, and sedate over their past two albums, but have abruptly shifted gears with Boy King, their fifth record. They’ve eliminated all subtlety and delicacy in favor of thrusting, throbbing electronic grooves and lyrics that directly state much of what had been gently implied in their words on the past four records. I appreciate the blunt approach, though I don’t think a lot of this record stacks up with their best work. That said, they do sound liberated and reinvigorated, and that confident energy makes a song like “Alpha Female” much more powerful. I mean, would a song declaring admiration for and subservience to a powerful woman be as potent if the guys performing didn’t sound like strutting, virile rockers? The song is making an important point: Giving power to women does nothing to diminish the masculinity of men.

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This is the final installment in my series of 1980s survey mixes, which have been anthologizing each year of that decade in reverse order. These compilations are designed to give context to the music of this era, and give a sense of how various musical niches and trends overlapped or coexisted in their cultural moment.

Early on in the process of doing this project I made preliminary playlists of each year so I knew the general shape of things in advance. So I knew from more or less the start that 1980 was going to be one of the best years in the series, and maybe the best of any decade series I could make. The sheer number of enduring classics in 1980 is staggering – I think the only year in the ‘80s as ridiculously fertile as this is 1987. There’s a lot of different trends coming to a head at once – new wave/post-punk, metal, disco, prog, country pop, early hip-hop – and you can get a sense just by listening to this that almost everyone represented here was feeling inspired, enthusiastic, and ambitious. Everything just sounds so vital and electric, and in a lot of cases, the music doesn’t sound dated at all.

You can find all of the other 1980s surveys on this page. I have updated most of the surveys to include some key songs and artists that I accidentally missed the first time around. Thanks to Chris Conroy, Sean T. Collins, Chris Ott, Rob Sheffield, and especially Paul Cox for their help in compiling these mixes. I don’t think this project would’ve worked without Paul, so please send him a shout out if you can.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Talking Heads “Once In A Lifetime” / Blondie “Call Me” / Lipps Inc “Funkytown” / Kool and the Gang “Celebration” / Diana Ross “I’m Coming Out” / The Rolling Stones “Emotional Rescue” / Queen “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” / Dolly Parton “9 to 5” / The Pretenders “Brass In Pocket” / The Clash “Train In Vain” / Billy Joel “It’s Still Rock & Roll To Me” / Bruce Springsteen “Hungry Heart” / Daryl Hall & John Oates “You Make My Dreams” / Steely Dan “Time Out of Mind” / Pink Floyd “Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2” / Devo “Whip It” / Mission of Burma “Academy Fight Song” / Squeeze “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” / The Police “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” / Van Halen “Everybody Wants Some!!” / Kurtis Blow “The Breaks” / Loose Joints “Is It All Over My Face (Larry Levan Mix)” / Christopher Cross “Sailing”

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U2 “I Will Follow” / Joy Division “Love Will Tear Us Apart” / Colin Newman “& Jury” / Peter Gabriel “Games Without Frontiers” / David Bowie “Ashes to Ashes” / Prince “Head” / Change “The Glow of Love” / George Benson “Give Me the Night” / Cristina “Mamma Mia” / Kid Creole and the Coconuts “Mr. Softee” / Pointer Sisters “He’s So Shy” / The B-52’s “Give Me Back My Man” / Elvis Costello and the Attractions “New Amsterdam” / The Jam “That’s Entertainment” / X “The Unheard Music” / Wipers “Alien Boy” / Ozzy Osbourne “Crazy Train” / Magazine “Because You’re Frightened” / The Cure “A Forest” / Siouxsie and the Banshees “Happy House” / Sister Nancy “Papa Dean” / Jackie Mittoo “Lovers Rock” / Herbie Hancock “4 A.M.”

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The Slits “In the Beginning, There Was Rhythm” / Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force “Zulu Nation Throwdown” / Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five “Freedom” / Paul McCartney “Coming Up” / Chic “Rebels We Are” / James Brown “Rapp Payback (Where Iz Moses)” / Spoonie Gee & The Treacherous Three “New Rap Language” / Sugar Minott “Jah Got the Handle” / Delta 5 “Try” / Y Pants “Off the Hook” / The Pop Group “Justice” / Barbra Streisand “Woman In Love” / ABBA “The Winner Takes All” / Kate Bush “Babooshka” / The Roches “My Sick Mind” / Bob Marley & The Wailers “Redemption Song” / Willie Nelson “On the Road Again” / Van Morrison “Wild Honey” / Bob Dylan “Saved” / Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band “Against the Wind” / George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today” / Bette Midler “The Rose”

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AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long” / Pat Benatar “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” / Judas Priest “Breaking the Law” / Neil Young “Union Man” / Dead Kennedys “Holiday In Cambodia” / Mötörhead “Ace of Spades” / Bush Tetras “Too Many Creeps” / Young Marble Giants “Credit in the Straight World” / Grace Jones “Warm Leatherette” / Chaka Khan “Clouds” / Brother D & Collective Effort “How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise?” / Bad Manners “Here Comes the Major” / Stevie Wonder “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” / Jermaine Jackson “Let’s Get Serious” / Donna Summer “The Wanderer” / Daryl Hall “Something In 4/4 Time” / Olivia Newton-John “Magic” / Dexy’s Midnight Runners “Geno” / Madness “Baggy Trousers” / A Certain Ratio “Shack Up” / Glenn Branca “Lesson No. 1 for Electric Guitar” / Fred Anderson Quartet “Black Woman”

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Echo and the Bunnymen “Rescue” / Rush “The Spirit of Radio” / Joan Armatrading “Me, Myself, I” / Killing Joke “Requiem” / Paul Simon “Late in the Evening” / Martha and the Muffins “Echo Beach” / Arthur Blythe “Miss Nancy” / Dire Straits “Romeo and Juliet” / Carlene Carter “Baby Ride Easy” / Kenny Rogers “Lady” / Tom Waits “Jersey Girl” / Yes “Into the Lens” / The Blue Brothers “Gimme Some Lovin’” / The Blasters “Marie Marie” / Captain Beefheart “Ashtray Heart” / The Flesh Eaters “No Questions Asked” / Black Flag “Jealous Again” / The Cramps “TV Set” / Lydia Lunch “Mechanical Flattery” / Cher Never Should’ve Started” / The Vapors “Turning Japanese” / Split Enz “I Got You” / Pete Townshend “Let My Love Open the Door” / Steve Winwood “While You See A Chance” / Air Supply “All Out of Love”

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Ultravox “Vienna” / Roxy Music “Over You” / Oingo Boingo “Only A Lad” / The Birthday Party “Mr. Clarinet” / Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark “Enola Gay” / Pere Ubu “Rhapsody in Pink” / The Fall “Rowche Rumble” / The Residents “Perfect Love” / Public Image Ltd “Poptones” / The Feelies “Crazy Rhythms” / The Durutti Column “Sketch for Summer” / Joe Jackson “Beat Crazy” / Ramones “Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio?” / The Soft Boys “I Wanna Destroy You” / The Knack “Baby Talks Dirty” / XTC “Generals & Majors” / Adam and the Ants “Kings of the Wild Frontier” / The Human League “Being Boiled” / The Cars “Touch & Go” / Boz Scaggs “Breakdown Dead Ahead” / Village People “Can’t Stop the Music” / The Brothers Johnson “Stomp!” / Shalamar “Work It Out” / The Specials “Rat Race”

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Art Ensemble of Chicago “Old Time Southside Street Dance” / Burning Spear “This Population” / Tanya Winley “Vicious Rap” / Kano “I’m Ready” / Teddy Pendergrass “Can’t We Try” / Carly Simon “Jesse” / REO Speedwagon “Keep On Loving You” / Pylon “Cool” / The English Beat “Noise In This World” / Bauhaus “Terror Couple Kill Colonel” / Cabaret Voltaire “Partially Submerged” / Linton Kwesi Johnson “Bass Culture” / Sugarhill Gang “8th Wonder” / Aretha Franklin “United Together” / Crystal Gayle “It’s Like We Never Said Goodbye” / Genesis “Turn It On Again” / Iron Maiden “Running Free” / Conway Twitty “I’d Love to Lay You Down” / Ronny Milsap “Cowboys & Clowns” / Charley Pride “Honky Tonk Blues” / Marcia Griffiths “Feel Like Jumping” / Captain & Tenille “Do That To Me One More Time”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

John Lennon “(Just Like) Starting Over” / Michael Jackson “Rock with You” / Irene Cara “Fame” / Benny Mardones “Into the Night” / Robbie Dupree “Steal Away” / Dr. Hook “Sexy Eyes” / Smokey Robinson “Let Me Be the Clock” / Maze ft. Frankie Beverly “Joy and Pain” / Ray, Goodman, and Brown “Special Lady” / Ry Cooder “634-5789” / Charlie Daniels Band “In America” / Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers “Refugee” / Joe Walsh “All Night Long” / The dB’s “Black and White” / Hazel O’Connor “Glass Houses” / Barnes & Barnes “Fish Heads” / Weird Al Yankovic “Another Rides the Bus” / The Beach Boys “Goin’ On” / Kelly Marie “Feels Like I’m In Love” / Andy Gibb “Desire” / The Doobie Brothers “Real Love” / 7th Wonder “The Tilt” / Was (Not Was) “Wheel Me Out” / Henry Badowski “My Face” / Ethiopian “Hard Times”

Radiohead @ Madison Square Garden 7/27/2016
Burn the Witch / Daydreaming / Decks Dark / Desert Island Disk / Ful Stop / My Iron Lung / Climbing Up the Walls / Morning Mr. Magpie / Pyramid Song / Bloom / Identikit / The Numbers / The Gloaming / Weird Fishes/Arpeggi / Everything In Its Right Place / Idioteque / There There // Give Up the Ghost / Let Down / Present Tense / Planet Telex / Karma Police /// Reckoner / Creep

• This was my first Radiohead show in a solid decade. This wasn’t for a lack of interest in that time, only that circumstances didn’t work out and I’d seen them many times over between 1996 and 2006. The band remain as great as ever, though I have mixed feelings about the addition of Clive Deamer as a second drummer on about half of the set. Deamer mainly plays on material from The King of Limbs and A Moon Shaped Pool, and helps Phil Selway recreate the dense rhythmic patterns you hear on songs like “Bloom,” “Morning Mr. Magpie,” “Ful Stop,” and “Identikit.” It’s very impressive to witness, though it doesn’t work quite as well as it does on record where they can have more control over the edit and mix. A lot of the time this just sounds cluttered and distracting from the other elements in the arrangement. It’s also a questionable way of showcasing the new material, which aside from King of Limbs leftovers “Ful Stop” and “Identikit” are focused mainly on Jonny Greenwood’s string arrangements and piano parts, floaty guitar parts, and ample negative space. Songs with prominent string parts, like “The Numbers” or “Burn the Witch,” had those parts either transposed to another instrument or cut from the arrangement entirely, which I think cheated them somewhat. I wish they had sidelined Deamer for this tour and brought along a small string section instead.

• Radiohead have always been good about playing a mix of songs from throughout their catalog, and this show in particular included at least one song from all nine of their records. (This is fairly unusual, mainly because Pablo Honey material is only performed on special occasions.) The oldest songs felt like rewards and palette cleansers in this set, but they played them with so much energy that they never felt like pandering. The impression I’ve always had is that they are very proud of what they accomplished on The Bends and OK Computer and enjoy playing those songs, but have largely avoided working in that mode since because a) they have other things they’d like to accomplish b) they’ve already written so many perfect songs in that mode that it’s sort of unnecessary to go back. The difference between the latter day Radiohead songs and the old classics is not so much inherent quality as where they place the emphasis of their craft. The ‘90s material is very streamlined and melodic, and in the context of the King and Moon songs, they felt so much more dynamic. Given how much is going on in a lot of those newer songs, this is pretty ironic. But it is certainly possible to make a song so busy or fussy that it can become inert.

• This was the first time I’ve seen “Planet Telex” performed since 1997, and I was overjoyed to experience that as it may be my all-time favorite Radiohead song. “Telex” and “My Iron Lung” were played in part as a commentary on how bleak the world can seem in 2016. That chorus of “everyone is broken, everything is broken” was extremely cathartic, and Thom Yorke slightly changing the breakdown of “My Iron Lung” to “if you’re frightened, you should be frightened, you should be, it’s OK” felt very pointed and accurate in the wake of Donald Trump clinching the Republican presidential nomination. “Idioteque” also felt very of-the-moment in a rather unsettling way, but overall the darkest sentiments of the show were more like a shared sense of righteous anger and less about fear and hysteria. There’s a bit of hope in Radiohead now, and it’s clearly expressed in “The Numbers”: “The future is inside us, it’s not somewhere else…we’ll take back what is ours one day at a time.”

Radiohead “Decks Dark”

The first two weeks I had A Moon Shaped Pool were spent in Los Angeles, and the imagery of that city is now burned into my mind whenever I hear those songs. “Decks Dark” in particular reminds me of “June gloom,” and overcast skies over Hollywood in the morning. Pastel buildings, blue pools, and palm trees cast in grey light. Traffic and empty streets. I hear all of that clearly in this song’s eerie balance of stillness and restlessness.

“Decks Dark” is essentially the 2016 update of “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” but this time the aliens aren’t here to kidnap Thom Yorke and show him the beauty of the world from a distance, and their presence isn’t some secret he has to keep. In “Decks Dark,” their arrival is very much known as their vast spaceship has blocked out the sky, and everyone must go about their business trying to understand why and waiting around helplessly for something to happen – invasion, death, some transcendental experience, them just going away without explanation. This is a fantastic metaphor for undefined dread and depression, and feeling powerless in the face of everything you can’t possibly know or understand. But as dark as this gets, the most striking thing about it is how resigned it feels. What might have come across as terror in older Radiohead songs is rendered here as a cosmic joke with no particular punchline.

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79.5 “ooo”

I have spent a lot of time immersed in music from the early ‘80s and late ‘70s in the recent past, and I can say with reverence, enthusiasm, and some minor degree of authority that this song could pass as a vintage mellow R&B cut from that era. There are some tells – there’s no analog aura to it, and I’m reasonably sure it was recorded and mixed digitally. But the keyboard and guitar parts have the right tone and style, and capture a feeling distinct to that era that’s often lost when contemporary acts do pastiche. I realize this can sound like I’m damning this song with faint praise, or judging it entirely on period accuracy, but I should stress that this is a gorgeous and well-crafted piece of music. There’s an odd blend of emotions here too – swirls of lust and longing, but also a strange sense of inertia.

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Half Waif “Nest”

Nandi Rose Plunkett has a lovely voice, with a crisp vocal tone and refined inflection close to that of Annie Clark on the first two St. Vincent records. She could easily get by on the sheer prettiness of her voice, but she resists that all through her first record as Half Waif, twiddling the knobs to warp the texture and shape of it at sometimes unpredictable intervals. The distortion she puts on her voice doesn’t fall into typical categories of vocal manipulation – it’s not chopped and screwed, it’s not pitched up into chipmunk soul, it’s not off-the-rack vocoder or AutoTune stuff. It’s much more interesting and distinct, and a bit like when a good guitarist comes up with a particular distinguishing tone.

“Nest” shifts gracefully between delicate minimalism and carefully layered harmony in a way that evokes the contours and textures of a metallic sculpture. I can’t listen to it without imagining it as a shape, or in some moments, an absence of shape.

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Body Language “Just Let It”

“Just Let It” falls at just the right spot on the curve of a trend that it simultaneously sounds fresh and nostalgic at the same time. This sort of bright and perky laptop indie pop has been going strong for over a decade now, but it’s still a young and developing genre. (Maybe we should have an actual name for it?) It doesn’t sound dated just yet, but there’s something in that main synth riff that takes me right back to…hmmmm…let’s say 2007? Maybe 2011? But regardless of chronology, the sound feels so joyful and young. I bet in the future, you’ll be hearing a lot of music that sounds a bit like this in tv and films to signify fun times in the late 2000s to mid 2010s. Maybe they’ll use Chvrches or Ellie Goulding or Purity Ring, maybe they’ll use this exact song. But it’s all that one specific and kinda ineffable ~feeling~, like the world is only lit with neon fluorescent lights.

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Schoolboy Q featuring Lance Skiiiwalker “Kno Ya Wrong”

“Kno Ya Wrong” has a diptych structure with a shift in tone so strong that it’s easy to forget the first half was in the same song once you’re deep into the second half. I favor the first part, actually – I’m a sucker for piano loops in hip-hop songs, and I like the feel of Schoolboy Q’s raspy semi-sung verse. But that shift is well-executed and the second half has a strange resonance that lifts the entire composition out of fairly conventional rap into a zone that feels less explored. There’s a really bleak sort of funk in that phase, like George Clinton music that’s a bit dilapidated and knocked slightly out of synch. I like the way it feels like entering a place that’s unfamiliar and alien, but totally familiar to the vocalists on the track.

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Anderson Paak “The Bird”

“The Bird” has a relaxed feel, but it’s not exactly chill. At ease, maybe, but not chill. This is way too focused to be chill, and a bit too earnest in its desire to introduce the singer and an album full of songs. Anderson Paak is laying out the details of his past like an origin story – interesting stuff, for sure, but not the meat of the plot. Outside of the album context, “The Bird” is a confident expression of “this is who I am.” The music sounds as lived-in as the details of Paak’s lyrics – the melodies are outstanding, but played with the laid back grace of a band that’s smart enough to give the song some space to move, but bold enough that the piano, guitar, and trumpet players all get their moments in the spotlight. I love the piano solo in particular: It’s an ideal complement to the low key charms of Paak’s voice.

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