Lists
15 Rising Artists to Watch in 2023
There are rising artists, and then there are rising artists that we can’t get enough of, to the point that we wonder, “Where have you been all our lives?” Each year, a handful of musicians become deserving household names — last year, we placed bets on artists who continue to swirl around 2023 festival lineups, like Wet Leg, Yard Act, and PinkPantheress. The road to becoming a top-tier artist is more complicated than ever, but here are 15 artists, listed in alphabetical order, that we feel are poised to make that jump. Remember these names — they’ll likely be headlining festivals and tours left and right someday soon. Babygirl Canadian indie pop duo Babygirl are in search of classics. Their stellar 2021 EP Losers Weepers featured some undeniable sad bangers, especially focus track “Nevermi...
Kings of Leon’s 10 Best Songs
This article was originally published in 2013 and has been updated. You can draw a line in the sand of many musicians’ careers, a turning point where their sound changed completely. It’s a shift that usually gains a stadium of new fans while losing a club of old ones. Enter Kings of Leon and 2008’s Only by the Night. The album’s FM-friendly singles, “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody,” catapulted the Nashville family into sports arenas and festivals everywhere — yet the divide between fans grew far and wide. They returned in late 2010 with the polarizing Come Around Sundown, and while many longtime fans were slightly underwhelmed, it saw the band reach a new pinnacle of success, headlining Coachella and making their second appearance on Saturday Night Live. This proved to be a ...
Taeyang’s Best Collaborations
As a soloist and part of the superstar boy band BIGBANG, Taeyang has been a pioneer in K-pop’s international expansion. His collection of collaborations has been a critical part of his barrier-breaking longevity, as well as his ongoing artistic development for around two decades in the industry. Even before Taeyang made his official debut on the K-pop scene with his boy band in 2006, the young star sang and rapped on records with his labelmates under YG Entertainment, which helped him find his voice as an artist. Once BIGBANG secured their place as certified chart-toppers, all the members began experimenting with solo albums. Since his first EP in 2008, Taeyang honored his love of soulful music that spotlighted vocals and showmanship akin to his idol Michael Jackson, even leading to his 20...
12 Plane Movies That Prove It’s Better to Wing It
How does one define a plane movie? A plane must be involved, of course, but it goes beyond that: Could this story be set anywhere except the familiar rows of a 747? Does it echo with the lived experiences of millions of passengers worldwide? Does the film capture what it means to fly through the sky in machines that once filled us with wonder, but now have become grimy with the mundanity of modern travel? Would this movie be a movie you’d enjoy watching on an airplane? In honor of the upcoming release of the Gerard Butler-starring Plane, we pay tribute to this hard-to-define subgenre by offering up the movies we deemed most iconic in terms of planes. Some may not feature a ton of on-plane action. Some might not be what you immediately think of as a plane movie. But they all seek to bring a...
Jeff Beck’s 10 Best Songs: With Yardbirds, Solo & Beyond
You’re likely to find Jeff Beck‘s face on any Mount Rushmore of guitarists — and maybe of musicians, period. His musical praises are being sung worldwide since his shocking death Wednesday (Jan. 11) from bacterial meningitis at age 78. And rest assured that everything being said about the seven-time Grammy winner and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is true. And maybe even understated. While his skills are unquestionably worth celebrating, those discussions sometimes obscure the fact that Beck’s greatest gift was in service to the songs he played. Whether with the Yardbirds or the various incarnations of his own band, or with a wide variety of collaborators, Beck elevated his songs with purposeful and deliberate choices — of notes, riffs, phrasings — that raised them to the pro...
David Bowie in 10 Songs
This article was originally published in 2016, days prior to David Bowie’s death. It has since been updated in celebration of what would have been his 76th birthday on January 8th, 2023. Ever felt overwhelmed by an artist’s extensive back catalog? Been meaning to check out a band, but you just don’t know where to begin? In 10 Songs is here to help, offering a crash course and entry point into the daunting discographies of iconic artists of all genres. This is your first step toward fandom. Take it. David Bowie is transformation incarnate. He’s been a starman, an alligator, thin white duke, goblin king, a lad insane, a piece of teenage wildlife, a broken man, and most recently a Blackstar. He can’t be held down, held back, and seldom pigeonholed. If he’s never struck a chord with you, then ...
Every Yo La Tengo Album Ranked From Worst to Best
This article was originally published in 2013 and has been updated. Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we sort through the best and worst of Hoboken, New Jersey’s trio of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew. On April 30, 1982, Lester Bangs overdosed and died, and took the ‘70s with him. The next day, in Hoboken, New Jersey, an obscure music writer named Ira Kaplan and a former child voiceover actress named Georgia Hubley performed together before an audience for the first time. Eventually, the pair became a band. They adopted a name after the Spanish phrase for “I have it.” Mets fans might recognize as the phrase o...
Every Arctic Monkeys Album Ranked From Worst to Best
This article originally ran in 2018 and has been updated. Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we sort through the best and worst of Sheffield’s finest. Arctic Monkeys have enjoyed a two-decade reign as tastemakers and frontrunners of modern rock and roll. Their energetic guitars, indefatigable drums, and moody bass lines are what first caught our attention, but it was frontman Alex Turner’s writing that made us fall in love with them. Turner’s balance of poetic and picturesque meets blunt and brusque lyrics was a highlight from the first time we heard them as rowdy, North England teenagers. Thanks to the then-burgeoning world...
10 Bluey Episodes That Explain Why I’d Die for Those Dogs
Children, while cute, have questionable taste in television. And although first-time parents might be willing to put up with anything for a few minutes of precious silence, by the time of your thousandth re-watch you might find yourself flipping off Blippi or going loco at Cocomelon. When that happens, we inevitably cast about for kids’ programming fit for an adult intelligence. Thankfully, in our time of need, there’s Bluey. Created and written by Joe Brumm, this Australian series is centered not just on young sisters Bluey and Bingo, but also on their hilarious parents, Bandit and Chilli. Despite being full of magic and mystery, it’s more realistic than your usual pre-school entertainment: The kids’ toys are rarely picked up, the back seat of their car makes me feel a lot ...
R.E.M.’s 20 Best Songs
This article was originally published in 2017, but we’re dusting it off for Michael Stipe’s birthday on January 4th. If you’re at all like me, you probably associate certain bands with specific moods. In other words, you turn to these bands when they fit your state of mind, match how your day went, or just seem to sound how you feel. R.E.M. has never been one of those bands for me, though. No matter my mood, mindset, or emotion, there’s an R.E.M. album or sound that suits me. “I have lived a full life,” Michael Stipe once sang, and I think that’s how we felt about the band when they parted ways in 2011. To look back at their catalog then or now is to see a band that have lived a full life — and life to the fullest — leaving few stones of the band experience unflipped or unskipped. Advertis...
Every R.E.M. Album Ranked From Worst to Best
This definitive ranking of R.E.M.’s discography first appeared in 2017, several years after the band called it quits. It will remain not only to commemorate all the great music R.E.M. has given us over the years but also to burn like a candle — and keep vigil — just in case we one day get to add to it. Either way, we’ll keep going back to Rockville until it truly is the end of the world. It’s been over 40 years since R.E.M. played their first show, a friend’s birthday party in an abandoned church in Athens, Georgia, on April 5th, 1980. It’s hard to believe that a band with a catalog we kept holstered, cocked, and ready throughout our adolescences have turned such an advanced age. (We also must acknowledge that we’ve been drifting through a slightly emptier world for some time now without A...
10 Rock Albums IDLES Thinks Every Fan Should Own
Crate Digging is a recurring feature in which we take a deep dive into a genre and turn up several albums all music fans should know about. In this edition, IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen shares his exclusive picks. 2022 was as good of a year for IDLES as it could have been. After their stunning 2021 album Crawler found them touring the world with a loaded schedule, they played Coachella, Glastonbury, toured the US twice, and, most recently, nabbed a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album. Since their breakthrough in 2018 with Joy as an Act of Resistance, IDLES have been a leader among their post-punk contemporaries, and their dominance both in their native England and beyond is a testament to their position as one of the biggest rock bands of the last decade. Guitarist Mark Bowen is ...
