The run down: music, musings, and hype curated by the A Song A Day crew — Nov. 2015
Since A Song A Day finally has its own publication, we figured it was time we shared some of the massive amounts of content we create for our community, and curate among ourselves.
Every Sunday night, we’ll be sharing our top five most popular songs of the week along with some music-related news we’ve stumbled upon. We’ll mostly focus on covering topics you would’ve otherwise missed, given the nature of our service. We’ll also highlight insights and opinions around well-known or popular events that may have gone unheard.
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Since we’re wrapping up the month of November, we‘re kicking the series off with monthly roundup. And boy, was it an eventful month for music.
Music
Our top five most popular songs shared in November, measured by click rate and number of positive email replies were:
- Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band — “Sut Sanaen #2” curated by Laura Gluhanich for our World group with the note: “Absolutely lovely Southeast Asian psychedelic meanderings.”
2. Júníus Meyvant — “Signals” curated by Maria Bhim for our Eclectic Indie group with the note: “Sweet indie-centric pop, but a good tune from a talented Icelandic artist nonetheless.”
3. Boogarins — “Sei Lá” curated by little old me for our Lo-Fi / Garage Punk group, with the long-winded note: “Boogarins are one of my fav discoveries of 2015. Their second album, “Manual” is really freaking good. I chose this track because I fall in love with it at 2:24 every time (you’ll see what I mean), but highly suggest listening to the full song and entire album!”
4. Songhoy Blues — “Irganda” curated by Laura Gluhanich for World, but sent to our random group with the note: “This had 1 listen when I found it — let’s raise that up to the double digits!”
5. The Palms — “Push Off (Rad Cat Remix)” curated by Alex Manthei for our Electro Instrumental group.
Musings + News
- The tragedy that struck Paris earlier this month resulted in more than 127 people killed. 87 of those deaths occurred a the Bataclan music venue for the Eagles of Death Metal show, one of them being their merchandise manager, Nick Alexander. The band spoke out for the first time with Vice. It’s an emotional interview.
You can donate to the memorial fund for Nick here, which has already raised $97k of its $25k goal. The band said that Nick bled our instead of calling for help in order to save others.
Duran Duran donated the royalties of Eagles of Death Metal’s cover of their “Save A Prayer” the the victims’ families. The band is following in their footsteps to donate the royalties of their own “I Love You All The Time.”
2. Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinny (and Portlandia) released her first memoir, Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl that everyone is raving about how sincere, honest and fantastic it is. Her interview on All Songs Considered is a must-listen for anyone trying to do or build anything, as is her reading with Quest Love that took place in Brooklyn on TheTalkHouse.
3. Bob Boilen also wrote a book titled Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It.
4. Jimmy Iovine apparently thinks that women don’t know how to discover music and that they complain about boys when they get together. Although the misogyny was likely unintentional, a lot of people were pretty upset about it. I was pissed. Here’s what Jane Davidson and Lauren Leverne said about it. He did release an apology, saying “of course the same applies equally for men. I could have chosen my words better.” Okay, Jimmy.
5. Ty Segall released a new album called “Emotional Mugger,” but it’s only available on VHS. He also launched a site with an infomercial explaining what emotional mugging is. This is why I love him.
That’s not all, he also put out an album of T.Rex covers appropriately titled “Ty Rex,” and it’s really good. Like, really.
6. Mike Leach, head coach of the Washington State Cougars football team proclaimed that Neil Young was almost the anti-disco in a presser. Although I love (dancing to) disco, I don’t disagree.
7. Brooklyn’s sweethearts, The National are leading the production of a Grateful Dead tribute album featuring Daniel Rossen, Tunde Adebimpe, Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, War on Drugs, UMO, Perfume Genius, Fucked Up, Stephen Malkmus, and more. Also, Stereogum wrote a great feature on the band about the tribute and their upcoming album.
8. Speaking of The National, the freshman album from Matt Berninger’s new band with Brent Knopf, formerly of Menomena and currently of Ramona Falls, El Vy has totally grown on me, especially this video:
9. Rdio is shutting down and that makes me sad, but hopefully Pandora does something smart with the assets they snapped up. Meanwhile, YouTube launched a new music app that I’m still testing out.
10. In case you missed it, one of my favorite authors (I’m a late adopter, admittedly), Chuck Klosterman interrogated Taylor Swift, the most popular person on earth, for GQ.
Hype
Thanks to our community, we successfully raised $7.1k with our Indiegogo campaign to help keep us going!! THANK YOU so much to everyone who showed their support and helped make it happen. We love you! Updates and next steps to come soon!
Brit+Co wrote about us, which was pretty cool and very kind of them.
In the spirit of giving thanks and Record Store Day, we put together a list of 27 albums that we’re grateful for. Check them (and the playlist) out.
That’s it for November. Well, we had a lot more to share, but resisted. We promise future editions will be shorter, but equally as juicy. See you then!
