The run down: music, musings + hype curated by the A Song A Day crew — Dec. 6, 2015
We’re excited to be sharing our first weekly edition of the run down! If you missed last week’s, we covered the entire month of November.
Putting this together made us realize the sheer volume of coolness happening in the music industry. There’s so much content being produced, music being made, stories being told. We’re stoked to be sharing just a sliver of what’s out there and hope you’re enjoying it as well!
Music
Our top five most popular songs shared last week, measured by click rate and number of positive email replies were:
- The Old Haunts — “Hurricane Eyes” curated by ColbyAngusBlack for the Soul & Blues Rock listeners with the note: “I was sitting at my home bar, working on wasting time, with Pandora on, and this song fell from the heavens. I love it when that happens.”
2. Bloc Party — “Compliments” (Shibuyaka Remix By Nick Zinner) curated by Jessie Wood for Electronic Pop listeners with the note: “An old favorite off of one of Bloc Party’s remix albums. I used to listen to this many moons ago, in winter 2008. One of the ultimate it’s cold/i’m sad / cuddling / rainy day /etc songs. And so different than any Bloc Party remix I’ve ever heard. (Oh and yes, this is the Nick Zinner, guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.)”
3. Tennyson — “Like What?” curated by Caroline Fay for our Indie Pop listeners with the note: “The most boundary-pushing indie-pop creations I have heard in quite some time. I challenge you to listen and spot the Kid Pix sound effect. Full EP from them just dropped last week (including the touching track “Beautiful World” which I almost sent y’all instead!).”
4. The Punch Brothers — “Reptilia (The Strokes cover)” curated by Jessica Shamma for our Singer-Songwriter Rock listeners.
5. Sample Answer — “Good Boy” curated by Maria Bhim for our Eclectic Indie listeners.
Musings + News
We were going to try to keep this to 5 items, but there was so much goodness (and sadness) this week.
RIP Scott Weiland, Stone Temple Pilots frontman who passed away at age 48 last week while touring.
Last Friday was Record Store Day. What did you grab? I didn’t participate because I’m trying to be well behaved, but definitely wish I got my hands on The Kinks, Run DMC, and Spoon releases. Alas.
Hear Trevor Powers aka Youth Lagoon walk us through the making of “The Knower” on Song Exploder.
A 5-year old girl named Eduarda Henklei covered System Of A Down’s Chop Suey and fucking nailed it. Thanks Julia Maehner for sharing!
And yes, of course she has her own YouTube channel.
Marc Marin talked to legendary sound engineer Steve Albini and talked about punk, recording with the Pixies, Nirvana and some even cooler people you’ve never heard of before. We really like Steve’s outlook on music.
Impressed with the soundtrack of Aziz Ansari’s show Master Of None? As were we. Here’s the story behind it in The FADER.
The Moog Synthesizer is one of the most important instrument in rock history. Here’s the history of the Moog and some opinion’s on Kurt Cobain’s Montage Of Heck: The Home Recordings on Sound Opinions.
Mackenzie Scott (Torres) Talks Pope Francis’ Wake Up! on TheTalkhouse. Laura Gluhanich’s favorite quote was: “Therein lies my hesitation: I’m actually really excited about this record, but how reverent am I expected to be? Can I call the Pope’s new album BUMPIN’ while maintaining the very real sense of respect I have for the man’s character?”
All Songs Considered shared their tops albums of 2015.
The Pirelli calendar shot by Annie Leibovit zis going a little bit more real this year with Amy Schumer, Patti Smith, Yoko Ono and more.
Pando shares what Sonos’ John MacFarlane know about entrepreneurship that the rest of the Valley doesn’t. Thank you for sharing Laura Gluhanich!
ICYMI: a new Kiasmos (Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen) song and video was released. Another hat tip to Laura!
Songza officially announced that they’ll be shutting down and operating as Google Play. Seems like every day a music service gets snapped up.
Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio (who might be one of the seemingly nicest people on earth and Ruben Neilson of Unmortal Orchestra had a little chatty poo on TheTalkhouse about recording, touring, and life.
Hype
Not much to share in the terms of hype this week. We’ll be operating in business as usual mode for one more week, then taking a break while sharing some cool wrap ups, best ofs, and all that fun stuff.
Holler at your girl if you have any questions or submissions!
