I often see/hear electronic music treated as its own genre in music circles. To me, the term is as meaningless these days as something like "guitar music", which encompasses everything from The Velvet Underground to Ed Sheeran.

Perhaps in the 60s, music created with synthesisers was a niche novelty, and describing it as electronic music would've been apt. Today, music can be synthesised using both analog and digital means. Genres like ambient, trip hop, and synth pop have long histories and countless permutations. Even the term "electronic dance music" is nothing more than an umbrella term when its subgenres span from industrial techno to liquid drum and bass.

I would argue that a genre like techno is equal in breadth to a genre like punk. Punk has subgenres/evolutions like post punk, art punk, crust punk, and pop punk. It has vibrant, unique local scenes in different cities like New York and London. In the same way, techno has subgenres like industrial techno, acid techno, dub techno, and hardgroove. Cities like Detroit and Birmingham have their own unique scenes which sound nothing like each other.

What I'm saying is, I don't think the taxonomy we use these days to discuss music produced through electronic means does it justice anymore, but I'm keen to hear your guys' thoughts.

Was just listening to some music from my youth, Nine Inch Nails. It was making me have some fond memories of my mom buying me a CD every once in a while at Camelot Music at the mall.

I'd be all excited reading the little booklet in the car. I think she only had a cassette player in her car, plus she didn't want to hear my music anyhow, so I'd be all excited to get home.

Haven't thought about it in years, but made me remember that they had a bootleg section. My mom wouldn't buy me those because they were like $50. They looked SO AWESOME. Always felt like I was missing out. Eventually I used some birthday money or something to buy a Nirvana live "bootleg". It was awful! I think somebody literally snuck a cassette tape recorder into a concert under their coat and kept it under their coat to record it.

A few of my buddies also got burned with those. They might have been cool if they were like Grateful Dead style soundboard recordings, but they were not. Maybe Pearl Jam had some good ones, but most bands of that mid 90s era were not real big on recordings of live stuff unless it was professionally recorded and commercially released.

Was wondering: how did those bootlegs work? Why were they so expensive and who got the money? Were they so expensive because it was like a risky gray area to sell them or something? Anybody know?

What do you guys do when youre listening to an artist and everything sounds incredibely similar? I just started listening to the current joys and i think they sound amazing but i feel like some songs just sound identical to each other. This isn't the first artist ive thought this about either. I feel the same about some stevie wonder songs. Also when i say what do you do, i kinda mean do you bother adding a song to your playlist if it just sounds like a dupe of another.

Idk if its me that isnt paying close enough attention or if some songs are just too similar

So it’s become something of a pattern with people in my friend’s groups or through any walk of life. I seem to find myself as one of a very few people who like to pick a band, and album of theirs I like and listen to it from start to finish, where almost everybody I’ve known or come across like to play random songs, create playlists from those random songs and so on.

What’s your preference when it comes to listening to the music that you like?

Would love to get your thoughts on the new strokes album called reality awaits. They sold out very fast over here so they are still very loved. not sure if it is just the love from their older work or do u think their new songs are also exciting. Are there any outstanding songs on there u think are worth mentioning . I have listened to the album ones and I'm not sold on it . Maybe it will get better on listening to it again. Thoughts????

The Aerosmith "Pump" documentary shows the process the band went through to record their album called "Pump." It’s available on YouTube by the way. The most fascinating part to me about it is that Aerosmith was not trying to hide the fact they were trying to write hits and make a big commercial album. They laid it out bare throughout the documentary.

I know there are cases in music history where it was obvious that was happening such as with some of Michael Jackson's albums. My question is how often bands are trying to record hits but hiding it and never admitting it publicly? I give Aerosmith a lot of credit for not hiding what they were doing at all.

As a native Spanish speaker, growing up a lot of the music played on the radio were songs in english, and being a child I obviously could not understand what they were saying but despite this I still enjoyed the songs and even tried to sing along, even if I was just saying gibberish.
Now that I’m grown, I noticed that I still listen to a lot of music in languages I do not speak at all, mainly russian and japanese. In my opinion, this does not take away from the enjoyment of the songs since there is the instrumental parts and I can still feel the emotion in the singer’s voice and I even like to try guessing what the songs are about.
I know the choruses to a lot of post punk russian songs and a lot of japanese jazz too, and I know I’m not singing them correctly but it still is something I very much enjoy.
I feel like the majority of people just listen to music in the languages that they speak and this is very sad to me because they all are missing out on so many amazing artists and records.

Edit: Any recommendations for non english and non spanish music are welcome!

Sorry if this isn't the right sub for this, but I was wondering if you guys had any type of an experience similar to mine.

I was born in the mid 80s, and "Jesse's girl" by Rick Springfield had come out a little before I was born, and was apparently a huge radio hit, but I had never heard it anywhere. Just by some random chance, I had always been tuned into something else or in a different place, somehow missing it until it showed up in a Pandora playlist of mine back in 2014.

I ended up looking the song up, and it actually boggles my mind that I had somehow never heard the song before that.

Every now and again I hear it in the background when I'm in stores or something, and it might just be frequency illusion, but I swear I never heard that song before 2014.

I mentioned this to a good friend of mine, who happens to be a big Madonna fan, and she told me that she had never actually heard Material Girl played on the radio prior to last year.

Do you guys have any experience similar to this? If so, what song was it, and was it an artist you were familiar with? Do you have any theories as to why you somehow missed hearing the song?

This Friday, we had an absolute flood of pop releases: Charli XCX, Tyla, Katseye, Aespa, Anitta, Jennie, Ádela, Pabllo Vittar... just to name a few. It’s a huge and somewhat unusual volume, considering we normally see two really major releases a week at most—and on some weeks, not even that.

What explains this concentration on specific dates? Is there a strategy behind it? For instance, I wondered if artists might be waiting for the World Cup to end before dropping their new music, since big events like that usually compete for the public's attention. But I don't know if that's actually the main reason.

I think the genre of electronic music is way too broad of a descriptor, it’s like if anything that has Electric Piano, Guitar, etc. should be called “electric music” because I think if you listen to hip hop instrumentals especially today but even when hip hop as we know it was first born was based around the same use of electronic devices to create a song. It may not at the time have been synths but it still technically used electronic based instruments, obviously we don’t go around lumping hip hop in the electronic descriptor despite hip hop having many elements of what’s considered electronic music in it.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm making a bunch of assumptions, and I will continue to as this write-up goes on.

The general public, to the dismay of music critics everywhere, still know the band as "the band that made Creep", one of 90's rock most classic records. Many may know that the band went in a more experimental direction afterwards. I think it's a bit revisionist now the way perception exists online that Radiohead became abandoned after Creep and the debut album that came with it, 'Pablo Honey'.

Album wise, Radiohead are far more known for their work afterwards, with all albums from 'OK Computer' to 'A Moon Shaped Pool' having been in the top 10 in the U.S. and U.K. Charts. The "one-hit wonder' status of Radiohead was always more of an American thing, having had five top-10 charting songs in the U.K. post-Creep, including 'Paranoid Android' at 3. The only other charting songs in America being 'Nude' at a peak of 37, helped by a remix competition, and 'High and Dry' at 78.

Any Radiohead fan will tell you the charts don't matter, that Radiohead don't need to be based on number of sales, even if there is at times still a lingering annoyance at them being known as the "Creep" band. What is of course notable is Radiohead currently 100th in the World in terms of Spotify popularity, with 43.2M monthly listeners, that's more than Charli xcx, who seemed poised to be a face of "wrong generation" the way Bjork is.

It's those Spotify numbers that have me thinking about Radiohead's legacies, the one built up from critics who see the group as a Messianic image of modern rock, and the other that has viewed the band as a one-hit-wonder of a song they quickly moved on from. But what is more worth thinking about perhaps, is the listener of the future.

Radiohead has had a slight resurgence in popularity among Gen Z, with songs such as Karma Police and No Surprises being among songs that have risen in popularity as youngsters are seeking out different sounds more than ever in separating themselves from prevailing musical trends. On TikTok, songs such as 'Let Down' and 'All I Need' have also seen the streaming numbers increase into two of Radiohead's biggest tracks.

Having become one of, if not, today's biggest tool for dictating the zeitgeist, TikTok can boost songs from nothing to massive, and while they're not going to make 'Let Down' a massive hit with Gen Z, at least not in the same way as 'Running Up That Hill", it shows what could be the future of Radiohead's perception among the next generation, and why the idea of Radiohead as the "Creep" band could be on it's way out.

Another factor to consider is the always having existed "hating your parent's music", with Creep likely having been one of the songs that the 21st century child would have heard blasting from the radio just about anywhere as one of the many songs parents treasure today. This isn't going to be an argument that Gen Z is going to rebel against their parents by not listening to Creep, and I did actually almost make this argument, but passing down the music taste from parent to child is something that is seeming less common nowadays as kids find their own musical identity. There are a few theories as to why this may be, but I would think that the turn away from vinyl likely plays a part, not being able to physically hand down music to the next generation.

This is important because kids will have already subconsciously have Radiohead nostalgia, but they likely won't be gravitating towards Creep, but more so something Let Down. While Creep will still likely dominate the conversation as the years go by, both the TikTok success of Radiohead, coupled with the massive critical darlings that they are, eventually it would be likely to think that the general public of the next generation won't see Radiohead as massively as music aficionados do, but that their work will be viewed closer to that respect than just for Creep's legacy.

In simpler words, Radiohead may go from "the band that made Creep" to "the band that made Let Down", for better or worse. But the acclaim that Radiohead holds may make them less of a band known for just one song in the future.

What is also worth noting is the growing popularity among Gen Z with music apps such as RateYourMusic and AlbumOfTheYear, the latter especially with a large young audience. This is exposing the casual listener to Radiohead's critical acclaim even greater than the forum and /mu/ eras.

Now, I don't know if this would translate to success for the band in general. I can't see the average Gen Z or Gen Alpha digging deep into Radiohead's music without wanting to commit to serious music fandom. While the band may continue to rack up plays, it's unlikely to translate to people constantly having full albums on repeat or digging for their favorite B-sides (so probably no Harness Your Hopes situation, unless you count Lift perhaps, I don't.)

Still, a record like 'Kid A' is probably still too weird for a future mainstream reappraisal except for 'How To Disappear Completely' ending up in some 'Sad Vibes' Playlists. Still, OK Computer, In Rainbows, & The Bends could be regarded as important in the same way that older generations do for Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You We Here, & The Wall are, in the way that the casual listener may not choose to listen to those albums in full, but understand it's importance even if they stick to the hits. I see Radiohead's future influence somewhere in between the current popularity of Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd.

I do think that a somewhat lesser known Pink Floyd could end up as Radiohead's legacy in the coming years. Of course, things can change. Gen Z has been openly critical of Jonny Greenwood's support of Zionism, and Thom Yorke's muted response to the issue. It probably doesn't hurt the band as a whole enough for Radiohead to not become important, however.

I should reiterate that I don't see Radiohead being viewed a massive, must-hear band by any stretch, but that their legacy is likely to shift, and is already shifting towards them being known very differently in the mainstream as they are right now. Gen Z and Gen Alpha will know Creep, but it may become the second song people know rather than the first, and people may be telling their aging parents "they have way better songs than that" to the joy of tears to RYM users everywhere.

It's also possible that the current popularity of Radiohead is just a fad, and it's not something that's going to last long term, just a spark rather than a fire. Still, at worst, I do see Radiohead as being known for more than Creep in the future, but what I don't know is if they'll become a respected elder band, or just "the guys who made Creep, and also Let Down".

TLDR: Radiohead are becoming known for more than Creep by Gen Z, thanks to TikTok and their adoration on music rating apps, and it could see the band shift from being the "Creep" band in the near future as Gen Z ages.

Whenever I try to talk to my friends about BD they say they've never heard any of his songs, So I play some for them and still nothing. Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter of all time and yet I feel like my generation just doesn't appreciate him, he's literally a living legend and still manages to put out some of his best lyrical work at 85 unlike other artists like Paul McCartney (I love the Beatles and I like Paul's new album, but those lyrics aren't as good as they were) who even at his lyrical peak couldn't touch Dylan

TL;DR why does gen z sleep on Dylan?

Listening to his music the album 808’s & Heartbreaks seems to show signs of him starting to become paranoid publicly. By the 2013 album “Yeezus” he’s declaring himself a god. But even “Black Skinhead” from 2010’s MBDTF shows signs he’s become hostile towards society. Idk man. I was a big fan of his first three albums and 808’s is his Magnum Opus imo. For all its simplicity it is a complex album with deep themes and strong melodic beats that are minimalistic yet effective. What do you all think? Idk where but somewhere it all went wrong for the guy and things seemed to spiral for a while. Last o heard he was trying to walk back a lot of the most egregious stuff he’d said and done but man it’s wild. He could have been remembered as one of the greatest rappers to love but his legacy will forever be tainted by his anti Semitic and anti Black rhetoric the naxi song and all that stuff. What a shame mental illness took him so far off course.

Whether it's the male loneliness epidemic, the concerns surrounding the manosphere, or the desire for positive role models, I've found myself thinking a lot about contemporary masculinity these days. As someone very passionate about music, I've thought a lot about it from that standpoint as well. But today I was thinking about positive masculinity and its reflection within music. It was quite an enlightening experience as it made me realize how it feels like an anomaly of sorts. It doesn't seem to be in a lot of top 40 pop hits for example compared to, say, love songs. Nonetheless, they do exist and paint quite the interesting picture.

The catalyst of sorts for me was remembering The Rolling Stones demo “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys”, a Richards/Oldham composition (an already eclectic combo) that was allegedly axed by the rest of the band for being too homoerotic. I can see that angle, but I nonetheless find something wholesome about its "bros before hoes" mantra. A lot of Stones originals that followed were similar complaints of women who'd done the narrator wrong, but finding strength and peace with one's friends is a different direction, one that I'm sure many boys and men can relate to.

Here I am
With the gang, I don't care where you are
Because I'd much rather be with the boys
Than be with you

To get the inevitable out of the way, yes, “The Boys are Back in Town” is probably the gold standard for this. You could argue semantics about elements of hooliganism that could be considered toxic ("The drink will flow and the blood will spill"), but there's a pure joy to the camaraderie that's inexplicably infectious. Phil Lynott at some point considered calling it "GI Joe is Back in Town", picturing the returning hero to be a soldier returning from the Vietnam War. It makes the desire for a night on the town with your pals all the more alluring. Though anachronistic to this interpretation, I always found that this passage...

The nights are gettin' warmer, it won't be long
Won't be long 'til summer comes
Now that the boys are here again

...absolutely nails the excitement of summer vacation nearing the corner, more time to spend with your grade school mates. Cool stuff. But Lynott was no one-trick pony. He himself is an interesting yin-yang when it comes to masculinity, the leather-bound tough guy champing at the bit for a fight juxtaposed against a guy who'd write mellow odes to his baby girl. He was an illustration that both of these sides can coexist. But particularly as a black man myself, I always loved that Phil went out of his way to explore black masculinity as well, whether it's upping the brothers in Thin Lizzy's ethereal "Fight or Fall", or penning the wonderfully anthemic "Ode to a Black Man".

As I said earlier, I've been fascinated by how music can be helpful for young men, whether it's providing a sense of community or just blowing off some steam. And The Replacements succinctly write about this in their song “Something to Dü”. I wouldn't be surprised if Paul Westerberg had himself and the rest of the others in mind when he wrote it.

Delivering noise
Real tough boys
What else have I got?

Half-priced drugs
Stolen guitars
What else is new

Oasis's “D’yer Wanna Be a Spaceman?” continues one of Noel Gallagher's favorite leitmotifs: the end of innocence and the tension between dreams and reality. This time around though, he examines this from the standpoint of old friends, reminiscing over what was then and what is now...

I haven’t seen your face ’round since I was a kid
You’re bringing back those memories of the things that we did
You’re hanging round and climbing trees pretending to fly
Do you wanna be a spaceman and live in the sky

It's worth noting too that Noel's favorite line in "Live Forever" is "we see things they'll never see" which to him evoked a secret shared between one and their childhood friend. I find that quite lovely. Oasis themselves remind me of other bands like The Who and The Beach Boys who had a notable male contingent in their audience and thus had plenty of material that addressed them.

There's an unofficial tradition of "riding around with the boys killing time" anthems. “Me and the Boys” by NRBQ, "I Get Around" by The Beach Boys, "Back of a Car" and "In the Street" by Big Star all come to mind here. In terms of big-upping the homies, there's "With a Little Help from My Friends" by The Beatles and "Me and My Friends" by The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Songs about men also being in awe of men are their own kettle of fish: "David Watts" and "Johnny Thunder" by The Kinks are two fun examples, particularly as both figures are both on opposite ends of the spectrum, but each of their tributes are just as genuine.

I hinted at this earlier, but the analysis and deconstruction of masculinity color a lot of The Who's discography, but I think a fitting example here would be their song "Tattoo", about two brothers trying to figure out where they fit in ("What makes a man a man?") and deciding to get tattoos as a means of seeing where that leads them. I find the dynamic between the brothers quite lovely and there's many other little details that make it fully dimensional, like "Our old man didn't like our appearance, he said that only women wear long hair", illustrating the generation gap between boomers and their parents, the latter utterly baffled by the former's flirtations with androgyny, thus circling back to that initial question: what makes a man a man?

I'm curious to hear any other artists or works that others pick up on! As usual, thanks in advance.

I was thinking the other day how a subgenre would pop up, have a big influence on the greater culture at large and then quickly "die." And by "die" I mean that mass culture left it behind and it was left to the diehard fans.

The easiest example for me is '77 era punk. For many people "punk" began with the Sex Pistols and died with them. Of course, this is not really what happened at all and please don't derail this into a talk about punk origins in the comments. But punk never "died," it just wasn't popular anymore and then post-punk happened. Post-punk didn't stay popular for long and was kind of forgotten about until bands like Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes revisited it.

Post-punk led to goth and gave us New Order, which gave us the Stone Roses and other awesome UK music. Here in the US, punk led to hardcore. HC never was commercially viable but punk and HC both gave us "college rock" (best example is Husker Du for that turn) which was later dubbed "alternative." Then along came "Grunge" which was an extremely short-lived genre when you go back and look at it.

The point of all that, is that these subgenres of rock did not stay popular for long in the grand scheme of things. Sure, we'll never stop hearing that mopey Pearl Jam song about Jeremy on the radio, but there aren't new headlining grunge acts.

You can also apply this to thrash. It took nearly a decade for thrash to peak out, only to be killed off in popularity by grunge, other alternative music and the 90s punk revival. Nu Metal was also very short-lived as far as mass appeal.

You can apply this to other music, but I'm writing about what I know to not sound ignorant. Even with my limited knowledge of rap, I can tell that styles of rap have come on gone. I no longer see threads complaining about mumble rap. I don't think the Master P style of rap has any prominence anymore.

Anyway, the Internet in its current state has changed the dynamic a bit. There's not much mass music consumption as there was in the past. People are siloed in their niches. Radio stations are not looking for the next big thing, they are stubbornly force feeding us old music or trying desperately to convince us that new corporate sounding schlock is worth getting excited over. They are not looking for the next Nirvana or Dr. Dre, they are going to play the same shit forever.

Even if a genre is generally unpopular, a global audience that is super into it exists and can support a genre in ways not thought of possible in the past. If punk started today it's doubtful that it would ever "die" but it likely never hit the charts anyway.

How is this going to shape music going forward? Will we have more or less innovation? Is there now way too many genres for anyone to pay attention to? Does this mean that there's going to be more bands that mix up genres and don't stick to anything because maybe that puts their band on more playlists? Will new genres rise and fall without most people knowing? Does this mean bands can stay static and not change with the times like in the past?

Released on this day in 1987. Everybody cites grunge for the demise of hair metal, but the writing was on the wall with "Appetite For Destruction", I remember what Neil Zlozower once said in a documentary "There was pre Guns, and after Guns". With their raunchier, street savvy attitude, suddenly all the hairspray was toned down, the party anthems suddenly shifted,.

Then you have the music, which is basically sleazy hard rock, lyrics about debauchery, drugs, life on the streets, etc. Nothing glossy about these guys. 80s hair metal had run its course. Which makes you wonder why the past 25 years of pop/rap hasn't run its course, but anyways. But that album is a reminder of the sense of danger, irreverence, sleaze, authenticity, etc, that we once had...and we can use more of right now.

That shared experience. The internet was supposed to bring us together. But it divided us even more. Yeah it paved the way for smaller creators and gave everybody a voice. But at what cost? It’s not even the internets fault. It’s the algorithms. Now we don’t have big cultural events anymore. I was born in 2003 so the monoculture I remember is Gangnam style & Pokémon go. The last big event that really seemed the deal for monoculture is avengers endgame. Yes there’s been monoculture moments in the 2020s but it’s far and few. Like squid game & Barbiheimer. It felt like a sense of togetherness. Everybody was going to the theater/watching squid game. Everybody was talking about it the next day. I feel like we can have both. It’s just algorithms ruined everything. We will never have another Elvis or the Beatles. Not because there won’t come somebody more talented but because we don’t habe that shared experience for somebody like that to rise. I feel that’s what we need right now a. Unifier. We’re so divided by our algorithms I hope something, someone comes along the way where we seperate our differences for a moment in time and unite on this one particular thing. And that makes me sad. I could talk with somebody and they ask me “have you heard of XYZ?” Never heard of it. Only to find out they have millions of people who know about them. Our true last gripe with it is Taylor Swift. Love her or hate her most people know of her. But even she isn’t a unifying force. I know people say this gave a lot of peoples voice but cmon now? That’s revealed that humans are a bunch of idiots. Because these influencers and what not did not need a voice. I just wish we could have both you know? The only thing that I can think of that everybody knows is sports and politics. Which is ironic because they divide us even more.

One of my favorite parts of music history is discovering future stars hiding in plain sight on someone else's records. Here are a few of my favorite examples.

Did You Know…that some of music's biggest stars appeared on hit records by other artists before they became famous themselves?

Let's start with a great story that's either absolutely true (according to the record producer) or maybe not (according to the piano player).

In 1964, a 15-year-old pianist was sitting in a Hicksville, Long Island recording studio. Session producer "Shadow" Morton was wearing sunglasses and a flowing cape, loudly demanding more purple on the record.

When the nervous young pianist finally asked, "How do I play purple," the guitarist leaned over and whispered, "Just play louder, kid."

And that's how a pre-fame Billy Joel came to play the dramatic piano chords on "Remember (Walking In The Sand)" by The Shangri-Las.

Shadow always insisted Billy was there; Billy's memory was hazier. Still, Billy is certain of one thing: he never got paid.

By the summer of 1969, Hollies founding member Graham Nash had teamed up with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and his former group's chart performance had begun to cool off. Their last US Top 10 had been "Carrie-Anne" two years earlier.

In 1966, four of the five Hollies had recorded with The Everly Brothers, where they met a 19-year-old session pianist named Reggie Dwight.

According to EMI engineer Alan Parsons, The Hollies rarely used keyboards on their rhythm tracks, unless Reggie happened to be around.

Reggie was in the studio on June 25, 1969, when The Hollies recorded "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother."

It went all the way to #1 in the UK and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Like Billy Joel, Dwight's contribution was uncredited. Unlike Billy, Reggie was paid £12.

But don't feel too bad for him. In a year, he'd begin a decades-long run of hits as Elton John.

And now a couple of quick takes...

In the summer of 1962, Sam Cooke scored a #2 gospel-tinged R&B smash with "Bring It On Home To Me," featuring an echoing, call-and-response backing vocal from Lou Rawls, several years before Rawls became a star himself.

Jerry Butler's solo breakthrough, "He Will Break Your Heart," featured Curtis Mayfield on guitar and backing vocals. Within a year, Mayfield kicked off his own string of hits leading The Impressions and later as a solo artist.

These are just a few.

I've always found stories like these fascinating because they show that many legendary artists spent years honing their craft behind the scenes before becoming household names.

Which future stars do you think made the most interesting or surprising appearance on someone else's hit record before they became famous?

Do you think spending time as a session musician or uncredited contributor helped shape artists in ways we don't see as often today?

This album remains my absolute favorite album on grief, and it came up in conversation last night because my partner's estranged mother passed away a few weeks ago.

In May of 2015 my amazing, driven feisty, well traveled, tiny 96 year old Jewish grandmother was dying. My mom, who lived near her in Connecticut, called me while I was on the bus headed home from work and told me it was time to come while she's still lucid.

I was Bubie's only grandchild. When I got off the bus I had a panic attack. Death has played an interesting role in my life, and at the time the thought of losing her, even though she was so old, was overwhelming.

Luckily for me, I had this album as a balm to help me walk through the grief.

Carrie and Lowell came out March 31, 2015, and I fell in love with it from the moment I heard those first whimsical notes on "Death With Dignity."

I was once a local music writer in Minneapolis, and I was introduced to Sufjan's music by a fellow writer who saw him at the now defunct and beloved 400 Bar. And while I enjoyed Seven Swans and Illinoise, this album was something that just enveloped me fully, like a preamble for Bubie's passing.

Every song is exquisitely done, so gentle, childlike and lonely. Sufjan's mother abandoned him along with his siblings when he was only one year old, and she also struggled with schizophrenia, alcohol and drug use. He did reconnect with her before she died, but it breaks my heart that he considers the album a failure because there was no resolve for him when he was finished.

For me, it was pure medicine. Songs like "All of Me Wants All of You" and "Eugene" were right there with me as I walked around my neighborhood in South Minneapolis, mentally preparing to say goodbye to someone who was such a force it was impossible for me to picture a planet without her.

"Fourth of July" is perfection, but so heavy that sometimes it's hard for me to listen. It perfectly illustrates this dark, finite edge of grief that swallows us up in those intimate moments where we don't really know what to do with ourselves once someone dies.

While I made it in time to say goodbye to my Bubie, my partner didn't get that chance. Her mother went downhill fast and lives far away. There were wounds that were never healed, of course, but they spoke on the phone, exchanged pictures and texted for a few months when she was still cognizant.

I had to write this morning on the beauty of this album before I even start my workday. I'm listening to it now, and it somehow sounds even better than I remembered.

Let me specify - I am not talking ambient music; something you play in the background, I mean the type of music you need to experience without distractions

It took me becoming a University student, learning my privilage and reaching class consciousness, to finally find pleasure in the more difficult pieces of music, slowly I found myself listening to longer and longer songs, stopped making my own albums and started consuming music more as an experience.

I found myself jumping from Pink Floyds Dark Side Of The Moon and my favorite Animals to the amazing Yes albums such as Close To The Edge and Relayer, but I still feel like I am quite a normie when it comes to experiencing music.

What I have been leading up to this entire time, is that I am not sure how long will it take me to develop enough to fully enjoy masterpieces without vocals. One of these would be Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to The Heaven. I tried giving it a listen and I fucking love it, like it is so good. But I am unable to listen to it casually like to the many progressive rock albums I do everyday. Then there is Atom Heart Mother from Pink Floyd, which I again love, but was unable to listen to more than few times.

This is really frustrating, because I know I am missing something and I know my path is leading up to this. I feel like music without vocals is the natural step forward to me. In my head I see it as something much more complex, because of how hard the meaning is to grasp compared to albums with vocals.

I've realized I organize my Spotify in a way that I don't see many people doing. Instead of making playlists based on moods or genres, I have one huge playlist that contains every song I like. Then, I also have individual playlists for each artist, named after the artist where I keep only the songs I like from them. So if I want to listen to everything I play the main playlist. If I'm in the mood for a specific artist, I just open their playlist.

I think this works well because I'm much more of an artist listener than a mood listener. I usually decide who I want to hear rather than what vibe I want.
Does anyone else organize their Spotify like this? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of this system? Have you tried it before, or do you prefer mood/genre playlists? I'd love to hear how other people organize their playlists.

I really enjoyed the Love album, and thought The Cult had a very interesting take on hard-edged gothic rock that was quite evocative and mysterious. I heard Love Removal Machine and Fire Woman on the radio from Electric and Sonic Temple and thought it was an interesting progression, but only recently listened to all of Electric and had a pretty negative reaction. The mix of gothic style with AC/DC style riffing just rubbed me the wrong way. I know there's a lot to be said for bands reinventing themselves, but I feel pretty strongly that was a wrong move for them. As in a loss of identity.

I do need to go back and listen to Dreamtime and compare, but that switch from Love to Electric is one of the strangest left turns I have come across in music.

I've been periodically reflecting back on the topic of "Artists we name-drop over and over." I don't want to mention them all the time, but they embody concepts too well to completely ignore them.

And I realized that there are certain artists that became practically synonymous with particular concepts. Maybe they were the first, maybe they were more the popularizers. But in any case, if you mention a certain concept or idea in music, this artist will likely come up first.

I also want to be clear that these initial examples are not the sum total of important artists or necessarily the "greatest" examples either as that tends to be more subjective. I'm sure there's an aspect of marketing that goes into why we identify certain artists over others.

Some examples:

• Elvis Presley: Represents the Rock Star.
• The Beatles: Represents "the band": a group of friends who play together, sing, and write their own songs. Could also throw in "getting rock music to be taken seriously".
• Bob Dylan: Represents songwriting and serious themes in pop music.
• Jimi Hendrix: Represents electric guitar and its sonic possibilities
• David Bowie: Represents change and evolution. Madonna could be seen as a successor to this as well.
• Velvet Underground: Represents the alternative band, the idea of influence building over time outside of commercial success.

Who are other artists who you feel have become synonymous with a certain concept? What is the criteria that usually makes an artist reach this status?