The Mix

Listen along to this post with our Christian/Gospel Roundup - Winter 2012 playlist.

The new year is barely underway, but we already have some great Christian and gospel releases to show for it, from modern rock and worship to sophomore projects and promising newcomer debuts; solo ladies take up four of the 10 slots here. Read on to find out more about our favorite Christian and gospel releases of 2012 so far.

1. Audrey Assad
Heart
Her 2010 debut landed on many year-end "best of" lists (including ours), and this February release is a quirky Valentine that continues to showcase Audrey Assad's heady songwriting and spiritual depth. Heart finds her returning to some familiar collaborators like producer Marshall Altman, as well as songwriters Brooke Fraser, Natasha Bedingfield, Matt Maher, Derek Webb and Marc Broussard. "Sparrow" is a beautiful reworking of the old hymn "His Eye Is on the Sparrow," featuring a fresh, new melody. Overall, this is a courageously raw record that lets listeners inside. [Wendy Lee Nentwig]

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Listen along to this post with our Tribute to Whitney Houston playlist.

Needless to say, Whitney Houston has been on our collective minds lately. And while there's been much to say about the tragic, sudden way she left the world -- and the struggles she weathered during her last few years in it -- there's also been much cause to celebrate the considerable musical legacy she left behind.

As Whitney racked up hit after hit, she became known as a singles artist, capable of turning even the National Anthem into not only a spine-tingling experience, but pure pop gold. She also had a gift with movie soundtracks: such iconic songs as "I Will Always Love You" and "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" overlapped with her acting forays to create a multifaceted performance experience. But while those singles are memorable, Houston's albums also made some pretty significant dents in the pop canon, from her debut, which showcased a voice far beyond her oh-so-slight years, to her last effort, a weathered-but-not-beaten collection that still glowed with diva fire.

Whatever the format, what this spotlight really illuminates is a formidable presence and a ferocious voice that will live on in our hearts and minds long after the media circus has died down.

Whitney Houston (1985)
This self-titled release launched Whitney Houston into the mainstream with a phenomenal number of hits. Everything that established this vocalist as the belter she was appears here: "You Give Good Love," "How Will I Know," "Saving All My Love for You" and "Greatest Love of All." Plus, it's insanely catchy, and it made Houston a star. [Rachel Devitt]

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Nas captures post-crack N.Y.C. in all its ruinous glory on his landmark 1994 debut. Realizing that drugs were both empowering and destructive, his lyrics alternately embrace and reject the idea of ghetto glamour. "Life's a Bitch" is possibly the saddest hip-hop song ever recorded, while "The World Is Yours" finds optimism in the darkest urban crevices. [Sam Chennault] Hear It Now!

Johnny Cash would've turned 80 years old on February 26, 2012, but we lost him almost a decade ago. It goes without saying that he's never been, and never will be, replaced. He became a country music megastar largely by refusing to limit himself to country music -- his decades-long, zillion-record career embraced everything from raucous rockabilly to stately gospel, and everyone from Sam Phillips to Willie Nelson to Rick Rubin. We've tried to get at his startling range here with an album guide (from At Folsom Prison to his twilight American series), along with playlists celebrating his hellraising rock 'n' roll side, his duets with beloved wife June Carter Cash, and of course the full range of his greatest hits. Enjoy.

	Artist Spotlight: A full album guide, from At Folsom Prison to the American series			Rockabilly Hellraiser: Celebrating his wild and wooly Sun Records years
	Decades of Hits: A monster playlist, from "I Walk the Line" to "Hurt"			Johnny and June: Their loveliest, surliest, most memorable duets

Listen along with our Johnny Cash: Rockabilly Hellraiser playlist.

Like his fellow Sun icons Elvis and Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash's oeuvre is expansive to the point of self-contradiction: amphetamine-powered rockabilly, family gospel, populist folk anthems, commercial jingles, outlaw honky-tonk, polite countrypolitan, modern Americana for the alternative scene, prime-time pop, etc. etc. etc. Another attribute he shared with The King and The Killer was a complete inability to grasp his own strengths and weaknesses as an artist. His highs are wildly visionary, some of the best American music of the 20th century. His lows, meanwhile, are absolutely painful to witness.

My personal relationship with Cash's music revolves around the amphetamine-powered rockabilly. That's what I love most. Most of this stuff -- "Folsom Prison Blues," "Big River," "I Walk the Line," "Hey Porter!", "Get Rhythm" -- was recorded in 1955 and '56 for Sam Phillips' Sun Records. Now in all honesty, these sides aren't textbook rockabilly, not like "Mystery Train," "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." Cash's roots in the walking twang and rural fatalism of older country-music forms (honky-tonk, hillbilly boogie, country gospel) were firmer than those of his Sun labelmates.

But this doesn't mean he didn't rock. He and his Tennessee Two (later Three) most certainly did. Whereas Elvis and Jerry Lee used their restlessness and angst to break free from the rural community that birthed them, Cash holed up in a sleazeball motel right downtown (the "Home of the Blues") and unleashed a reign of terror on that same citizenry. An apocalyptic menace that's unique to him pulsates through this music. You can hear it when his loping baritone wails, "Soon your sugar daddies will all be gone/ You'll wake up some cold day and find you're alone/ You'll call to me but I'm gonna tell you, 'Bye, bye, bye'/ When I turn around and walk away, you'll cry, cry, cry." Or see "Big River," wherein he sins hard and grants himself God-like powers: "I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky."

Even though Cash's outsider persona, the whole Man in Black shtick, would only grow over time, the actual rock in his music slowly fell silent, only to erupt violently every now and then, as on "Ring of Fire" or the prison albums At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin. It's strange, really. Cash is something of a contradiction. His legacy is that of a country giant, yet his most powerful moments as an artist were dependent on the proximity of his orbit to that devil rock 'n' roll. Here's a sampling of his best, most devilish moments.

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch 3BALLMTY give it up for Toy Selectah.

3BALLMTY Inténtalo

Toy Selectah Mex Machine

Listen along with our Johnny Cash: Decades of Hits playlist.

Johnny Cash was one of country music's most influential and indelible icons. His trademark baritone growl and disdainful sneer framed reams of songs that he recorded over decades. These songs -- "I Walk the Line," "Ring of Fire" and "A Boy Named Sue" among them -- are cemented in the lexicon of not only country music, but popular culture as well.

Cash's unique sound wasn't complex by any means. No doubt inspired by his upbringing on his family's cotton farm in Arkansas, his Southern gothic-tinged narratives and lighthearted country tunes were simple, straightforward slices of life, warts and all. Most would touch on the universal themes of love, God and murder -- in fact, Love, God, Murder was the title of his 2000 retrospective offering.

When Johnny Cash left the U.S. Air Force in 1954, he headed to Memphis. He auditioned for legendary Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, with the hopes of becoming a gospel singer. Phillips had other ideas, and when Cash presented the mogul with "Cry, Cry, Cry" and "Hey Porter," Phillips knew he was onto something. Ironically, it was partly his new boss' refusal to let Cash record a gospel album that led to the singer signing with Columbia in 1958.

With his career in overdrive, the singer became addicted to the amphetamines that helped him keep up his furious pace. By 1968 -- and with the help of June Carter, whom he would marry later that year -- Cash kicked his addiction (though he would struggle again with addiction in later years). The rest of the decade was his most fruitful period: At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin earned Gold status; Cash was named Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year by the Country Music Association; and The Johnny Cash Show premiered on NBC.

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On the middle-aged rodents' first album in 11 years, the first four cuts ogle bad ladies' backsides hookily enough. But in "Last Call," tempos speed up, and then for five tracks straight, the band wallops you with indelible riffs. Stephen Pearcy snarls snottily through the studio echo like he was still 25, not 50: wailing like a fire siren, grinning like a Cheshire Cat in the Garden of Eden, slavering over your silver spoon and alligator boots, remembering when Loverboy rhymed "weekend" with "deep end." Last time Ratt made a record this fun, hair metal wasn't even called hair metal yet. [Chuck Eddy] Hear It Now!

Listen along with our Source Material: Ministry 'Psalm 69' playlist.

What Figures on a Beach were to Detroit, what Book of Love were to Philly, what Information Society were (a few years later) to Minneapolis, Ministry were to Chicago -- at first, anyway. (Say, starting around 1983 or so.) That is to say, a rather fey and effete American Anglophile answer to synthesized early-MTV-era British haircut pop.

But then, everything changed. In 1986, Ministry hooked up with British dub genius Adrian Sherwood for an album called Twitch -- sort of a missing link to where they wound up, but also a sonic outlier in their catalog and maybe the most rhythmic thing they ever did. Then, two years later, with barbarian-come-lately mastermind Al Jourgensen seemingly inspired by certain big and black swine-fornicating post-hardcore outfits from the onetime Hog Butcher of the World, Ministry found both their metal and mettle.

The Land of Rape and Honey, from 1988, and 1989's more or less interchangeable The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste charted higher in the U.S. than Twitch (Nos. 164 and 163 compared to 194, respectively), if not as high as 1983's wimpy With Sympathy (No. 96), but unlike that debut, those records both eventually went gold. The real breakthrough, though -- for Ministry and for "industrial metal" in general -- was 1992's Psalm 69, aka KEΦAΛΞΘ (boy, that was fun to type!), which peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard 200. It sold a million copies (a first and last for the band) on the shoulders of two Top 20 alt-rock radio hits, the novelty-ish "Jesus Built My Hotrod" (featuring Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes) and the protest-ish "N.W.O." (ostensibly a blast at Bush the Elder). Ministry never really had another hit after that, unless 1995's middling dance-charter "The Fall" counts.

They also never made another particularly memorable album. In fact, there's a sense in which Psalm 69 itself reduced their mechanistic shock tactics and noise terrorism and pissed-off perversion, devoid of meaning in the first place, to over-considered self-parody. But this record did manage to open a door that kinder and gentler disciples like Nine Inch Nails (starting with Broken, two months later) and Marilyn Manson -- not to mention, uh, Stabbing Westward and Gravity Kills and Static X -- could sashay right through. So, while Psalm 69 didn't come close to inventing industrial metal (even for Ministry themselves), it was instrumental in popularizing the form. As for where this record got its own ideas, read on.

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Yes, "alternative" is a relative term. Simply by definition, Christian contemporary music has to fit some fairly restrictive standards. But not all CCM is created equal. If you enjoy songs written from a Christian perspective but also enjoy artists who push at the genre's often confining boundaries, this station is for you.

Now, if you've ever taken a date to a 4Him concert -- or if you consider Casting Crowns the epitome of cool -- you've come to the wrong place. You won't hear any Natalie Grant or Michael W. Smith here, either. There's nothing wrong with any of those acts: my mom loves them! That's just not how we roll here. What you WILL find on this station is any style of Christian music -- from rock to singer-songwriter to punk pop -- that leans a little left of center. We welcome the genre-straddlers, the question-askers, the bewildered seekers. Button-pushers like Derek Webb and Jars of Clay are regulars here, and such mainstream-friendly bands as Needtobreathe and The Fray stop by often as well. Burlap to Cashmere, RED and Skillet all coexist peacefully in Christian alternative as well. It's a great place to visit, so come on in, prop up your feet and stay awhile. We hope you'll feel at home.

Listen Now: Christian Alternative

The Doors would carry on without Jim Morrison but come on, this is really the group's swansong. You could argue that this is not truly a great album, but it contains enough stellar cuts to make that immaterial: "Love Her Madly" (which missed the top 10!), "The W.A.S.P.," and the hippy lounge classic "Riders On the Storm" (a wake-up call to off-duty nurses: decline the offer of a free Cutty Sark refill and head home alone). [Nick Dedina] Hear It Now!

David Byrne might have jumpstarted the Afro-Peruvian comeback, but we vote Novalima most likely to push this music out of stereos and into the clubs. To be fair, this isn't the village music of black Peruvians -- it's an urban hybrid, well steeped in dub, rap and electronica but fed a constant drip of its infectious, rhythmic inspiration. And for the most part it's almost effortlessly enjoyable. If there's a weakness, it's later in the album when the downtown Lima chic begins to feel a little distant and the musicians hamstrung in their electronic confines. Next time, give 'em some rope, guys. [Sarah Bardeen] Hear It Now!

On her debut Bad Boy EP, Janelle Monáe plays Cindi Mayweather, an alien android from the future who's on the run because she's in love with a human, which is illegal. Along the way, she fills us in on her feelings: She just wants to be free to love who she wants, she says on the Outkast-stanky "Many Moons" (Big Boi produced). She implores the president to get his head out of his hiney on the Lauryn-Hill-meets-Cee-Lo-Green old-soul groove "Dear Mr. President." And she calls out her apathetic fellow citizens on the delicious "Sincerely, Jane." Ladies and gents, meet the new queen of the ATLiens. [Rachel Devitt] Hear It Now!

Listen along with our Friday Mixtape: Songs for Hangovers playlist.

We've barely stuck our big toe in the chilly waters of 2012, and already we've had to face the head-pounding peril of two major alcoholidays: New Year's Day and Super Bowl Monday. Most of us write off New Year's Day automatically, but there is nothing super about the morning after the Super Bowl. Chances are you've succumbed to one of these nasty reminders that what goes in sober comes out drunk, and hurts like hell the next day!

What about the "hair of the dog"? It apparently works: a friend of mine once boasted he never experienced a hangover. When asked what the secret was, he proudly replied, "Keep drinking." Go chase that bone if you like, but those left painfully wagging their tails might want to try something else.

With that in mind, here's a playlist to help ease the pain of the morning after. Some songs, such as Kris Kristofferson's epic "Sunday Morning Comin' Down," speak directly to the experience. Others, such as Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence," Minibar's "Lost in the Details" or Coldplay's "Trouble," are less explicit but lend themselves nicely to the theme. Rest assured, all these songs are mellow slices of repose -- and make for one hell of an aural analgesic. Next time you overindulge, keep this playlist in mind. Save it someplace handy, because St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner.

Robinson's best solo platter. This classic's dreamy Sunday morning vibe was so influential that "quiet storm" became the term for all slinky bedroom soul. While Robinson's voice has always been exquisitely unique, the sound of the album is matched by a left-of-center songwriting approach that illustrates that Robinson was a freethinker like Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes. [Nick Dedina] Hear It Now!

Listen along with our Van Halen: Their Greatest Hits with Diamond Dave playlist.

Forget Van Hagar.

And let's not even mention that poor schnook from Extreme, Gary Somebody.

This playlist revels in classic Van Halen. The only Van Halen, really. With American hero Diamond Dave and his arsenal of scissor kicks out front, the group dropped six killer albums between 1978 and '84, one of the more astonishing runs in rock history. Not only that, they've returned with A Different Kind of Truth, a record that's better than anyone could've imagined.

The patent Van Halen sound embodies what legendary critic and Aesthetics of Rock author Richard Meltzer called the "internal chaos" at the heart of all great rock 'n' roll. The band utterly dissolved the divisions between raging 1970s hard rock and lightweight A.M. pop. Picking up where Jimi Hendrix left off, Eddie Van Halen has taken guitar overdrive into another dimension while helping pen timeless throwaways about partying and good times that were as teenage-suburban as anything by pre-Pet Sounds Beach Boys and Jan & Dean. Likewise, D.L.R. has never decided whether he wants to be Jim Dandy, Jim Morrison, Louis Prima or Diana Ross, with a cheeseball sense of showmanship that's decidedly pre-rock.

As for the actual tunes, well, they can be kind of strange, sweaty gutter boogie executed with a classically honed sensibility. Some of them -- "Hot for Teacher," "Everybody Wants Some!!", the new "Honeybabysweetiedoll" -- defy verse/chorus/verse in ways that mix frat-rock inanity (The Wailers, The Kingsmen) with avant-garde genius. Plus, they're just fun as all hell!

Seductive indie-pop lightning rod Lana Del Rey performed a free in-store show at Amoeba Music on San Francisco's Haight Street last Thursday night. The first thing she did was huskily intone, "I'm obsessed with you" into the microphone, which totally took me by surprise. I mean, how could she even know I was there? I couldn't even see her from my vantage point to the far left of the stage.

Then I realized she was addressing the whole crowd: roughly 300 people crammed into every corner of the store, largely female and mainly in their early 20s and younger. They weren't hipsters, and they weren't teenyboppers, but they all seemed to be texting "OMG" or something. Del Rey had a much-publicized disastrous appearance on Saturday Night Live recently, but these people were not there to heckle her or bear witness to some kind of train wreck. They were fans.

When I was asked to cover this show, my only exposure to Del Rey had been reading her name in an email and seeing the Born to Die album art on Amazon.com. I intentionally didn't listen to her music before the performance, so as to go in fresh. For whatever reason (probably the album cover), I expected her music to be a sort of post-punk-leaning indie pop: sunny and danceable. I had forgotten the name of the album.

So when she started singing the disembodied "Born to Die," drenched in echo and in a decidedly interesting voice -- deep and complicated -- I had to completely recalibrate my notions. Through a short set of five songs, she gave off a definite Mazzy Star vibe, minus the narcotic affect and shambling guitars. The lyrical subtext of the songs detailed a proclivity for falling for the wrong person, along with the sort of unnameable sadness that results from undiagnosed depression.

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E-40 greatly improved on his early Sick Wid It releases with In a Major Way. The beats from Studio Ton and Mike Mosley sound louder and bang harder, and 40 wrote some of his best songs, including the poignant "1-Luv," where he raps from the perspective of a convict who sends him a letter; and "Sprinkle Me," a hit collaboration with his sister Suga-T. He busts shots on "Dusted 'N' Disgusted" with Mac Mall, 2Pac and Spice 1, but as usual the emphasis is on his dizzyingly imaginative slang and satirical hood stories, not violent gangster rap. [Mosi Reeves] Hear It Now!

Listen along with our Classical Roundup, Early 2012 playlist.

Maybe it's all about starting at the beginning. The new year offers several exciting views of the Baroque period, during which the foundations of Western orchestral music were first built. For this edition of the Classical Roundup, there are dedicated Baroque collections from some of music's brightest young female stars -- Met soprano Danielle de Niese and violinist Nicola Benedetti, along with Lara St. John and Xuefei Yang -- and from Italian violin master Giuliano Carmignola, whose Haydn violin concertos are exhilarating and absolutely definitive (if you have time for only one, start there). The set is rounded out by a New Year's Day concert and a few excellent selections of contemporary chamber music.

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The "Rachel" cut. Flannel. Wonderbras. Roller blades. Seinfeld. Beverly Hills 90210. The birth of grunge, the aging of New Jack Swing, the rise to power of both gangsta rap and backpacker-hop, the (hostile?) takeover of the charts by boy bands and Brit-Brit. And the divas: Alanis! Lauryn! Mariah! Celine! Oh, the '90s. So ... cute, weren't they? Relive all your guilty pleasures -- and hey, stop feeling guilty about them, why don't you? We've got plenty of good reasons for a trip down memory lane on our '90s Hits radio station. Dig into the wide, eclectic range of pop music at the end of the 20th century.

Listen Now: '90s Hits

Listen along with my Spirit of '08: The Blog-Rap Explosion playlist.

Five years ago, hip-hop finally discovered the Internet. Yes, it's true that rappers have long used the World Wide Web as a promotional tool, and some will have memories of how the Wu-Tang Clan generated hundreds of fan sites in the late '90s; online magazines like 360HipHop.com and Platform.net were briefly in vogue. But 2007 was the year that rappers began making music specifically for viral distribution. They promoted songs on MySpace pages; indulged in meta-trends like rapping over "indie" hits by Radiohead, Animal Collective and Portishead; and issued dozens of digital mixtapes of original material. Most importantly, hundreds of blogs emerged during this period to document the scene, turning these artists into underground media darlings. It was a period when the Internet audience became an influential arbiter of popularity, a shift that was reflected in XXL magazine's famous "Top 10 Freshmen" issue.

This playlist is dedicated to 2008 because while the blog rap era arguably began in 2007, it reached critical mass the following year. D.C. rapper Wale signed with Mark Ronson's production company and released his mixtape 100 Miles & Running in 2007, but his career took off when in 2008 when he released both a freestyle over Justice's "D.A.N.C.E." and his full-length Seinfeld homage The Mixtape About Nothing. That same year, Drake's second mixtape, Comeback Season, turned him into a blog rap darling; the rest of the country took notice in 2009 when he dropped So Far Gone and "Best I Ever Had." And B.o.B recorded the Cloud 9 mixtape in 2007; its title track and "Haterz" became regional hits, and led to a major-label contract with Atlantic.

However, this tribute includes not only the ones who became legitimate stars, but also the dozens of others who caught the Internet's fancy, like the Cool Kids (who ruled hip-hop on MySpace in 2007), Charles Hamilton (who released a staggering eight mixtapes in two months) and Sha Stimuli (whose buzz predated this era, yet stayed relevant by issuing 12 mixtapes in a year). Many of the songs used are representational. Theophilus London's This Charming Mixtape isn't available, so there's "Late Nite Operation" from Machinedrum's Want to 1 2?. Drake's guest spot on Slakah the Beatchild's Soul Movement Vol. 1 was also included on the former's Comeback Season. And instead of Asher Roth's killer freestyle over Lil Wayne's "A Milli" instrumental, there's "Lark on My Go Kart" from his major-label debut, Asleep in the Bread Aisle. Meanwhile, Odd Future and Nicki Minaj deserve inclusion here because while they didn't blow up until later -- Nicki Minaj in 2009 with Beam Me Up Scotty and Odd Future in 2010 with Tyler, the Creator's Bastard -- they released their first material during this period.

Welcome to From the Rhapsody Vault, a look back at splendid Rhapsody TV videos of yore. Today we've got then-up-and-coming rapper J. Cole, going On the Record, telling us about his favorite album (congrats, 2pac!) in exactly 45 seconds. Of course, this year Cole went on to have a no. 1 Billboard album of his own, so congrats to him, too. Enjoy.

J. Cole Cole World: The Sideline Story

2pac Makaveli

Listen along with our Metal Roundup, February 2012 playlist.

Given pseudoscientific doomsday theories of galactic alignment and geomagnetic reversal and Nibiru collision and all, metal can certainly look forward to an eventful 2012. What's more metal than the End of the World, right? Unless it's the Return to Darkness, as typified by the recent phenomenon of cities like Highland Park, Mich., and Rockford, Ill., extinguishing thousands of streetlights to save money at a time of fiscal crisis, and scores of other municipalities now considering the same option.

Here's Virginia Tech history professor A. Roger Ekirch -- who in 2005 published a book called At Day's Close: Night in Times Past -- in a recent New York Times streetlight switch-off essay: "Before the Industrial Revolution, darkness conjured the worst properties in man, nature and the cosmos -- brigands, witches, and rapacious beasts were thought to lurk everywhere." How metal is that??

That said, here's to 2012! Here are 15 albums with which metal has kicked open its year's door so far. (Well OK, we cheated: two, including the class valedictorian in our No. 1 spot, technically came out in the waning weeks of 2011, but who's counting?) And OK, one of the best albums comes from some old-fart Californians reunited in proper form for the first time in nearly three decades, and one of the others is from some even older-fart Germans who've been around in some form or other since the mid-'60s -- and who spend their 2012 platter re-recording their oldies and covering other people's. Nevertheless, rest assured that there is sufficient rapacious darkness from vastly younger and more frightening creatures further down below. Dig in, and let the countdown to Armageddon begin.

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Listen along with our Source Material: Van Halen, 1984 playlist. And don't forget to also check out this one: Van Halen: Their Greatest Hits With Diamond Dave.

If asked to list the ultimate '80s albums -- those that I most closely associate with the decade (even if I didn't necessarily listen to all of them) -- 1984 would sit at the top of the list next to Thriller, She's So Unusual, Purple Rain, Born in the U.S.A., the Top Gun soundtrack, Like a Virgin and The Wrestling Album.

Yet I must confess: I wasn't a big fan.

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Free Again is a crucial document, shedding as it does light on that shadowy phase in young Alex Chilton's career during which his time with The Box Tops was drawing to a close but before he had teamed up with Chris Bell. These passionately loose, some would say almost tossed off, recordings are closest in spirit to the post-Big Star Like Flies On Sherbert. This is Chilton filtering roots music (soul, blues, country) through his eccentric rock 'n' roll fantasy. The Stones might've written "Jumpin' Jack Flash," but with the menacing version herein, Chilton makes it his own -- pure dark energy. [Justin Farrar] Hear It Now!

Valentine's Day is almost upon us. It's true. If you are just now learning this news, your first stop should be Yelp (for restaurant recommendations) or 1-800-FLOWERS or some such; your next stop should be right here, whereupon we've provided a series of splendid romantic-like playlists to ease you through the most romantical of holidays. Whether you're a country bumpkin or a city hipster, a tango expert or a reggae fiend, we will help you either stage your own romantic comedy or kick off your own Anti-V-Day protest. All you need is love, it's true, but music sure helps, too. Enjoy.

	Stage Your Own Rom-Com: Only the sappiest, hugest love songs need apply			A Reggae Valentine's Day: Is this love that you're feeling? Yeah, probably.
	Hipster Love: They gotta procreate somehow. The Postal Service, Beck and others can help.			Rollin' in the Hay: Country love songs and assorted barn-burners.
	The Dance of Desire: A scorching-hot tango collection.			Love Bites: The ultimate Anti-Valentine's Day anti-celebration.

Listen along to this post with our Sub Pop Records, The '00s & Beyond playlist.

We've already highlighted Sub Pop's formative years, when the label helped launch a musical revolution, kick-starting the careers of grunge kings and indie-rock innovators. But that was only the beginning of the story. From longhaired grunge to squeaky-clean indie folk to a world-music imprint and now hip-hop, the Seattle label has proven time and again to be one of the most reliable tastemakers in the biz. For over two decades, they've helped define whatever "indie music" is, or soon will be.

By the 2000s, the Seattle-based label was giving us such indie darlings as The Shins, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, Beach House, Wolf Parade and Washed Out; they signed their first hip-hop act, Shabazz Palaces, in 2011; and they've even proven to have a hell of a sense of humor, releasing records from comedy iconoclasts like Flight of the Conchords, David Cross and Patton Oswalt.

Below, we spotlight key albums from Sub Pop's ever-expanding catalog.

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Listen along with our Source Material: Skrillex, 'Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites' playlist.

Skrillex, it seems, was made for memes. From Hipster Runoff to the self-explanatory Tumblr blog Girls That Look Like Skrillex, the electro-dubstep upstart -- or at least the version imagined by snarks and Cheeto-munching forum monkeys -- leads a vibrant second life in avatar-land.

The latest viral emanation from planet Skrillex happened in December, when the man born Sonny Moore posted a YouTube clip of Aphex Twin's "Flim" to his Facebook page, accompanied by the note, "my favorite song of all time fyi." (Gotta love that "fyi," especially coming from a guy who's never worked an office job in his life.) His evangelism clearly had an effect: since then, the post has accrued 8,325 comments (and counting). A few listeners, though, felt like there was something missing from Aphex Twin's chiming electronic balladry, as indicated in comments like these:

"i was hoping for a drop."
"Still waiting for the drop.......no?"
"I was waiting for a drop that never happnd lol"
"i didnt even here a nice drop-___-....i thought it was suppose to have atleast a good drop?????"

The drop, as any fan of today's super-sized stadium rave could tell you, is the moment in a dance track, right after the breakdown (a tension-building passage, often beatless, characterized by whooshing white noise), when the bass and drums return with supersonic impact, a brick wall of sound that contorts faces and jumbles guts. That roller-coaster path from extreme to extreme defines much mainstream club music right now, and many listeners, it would seem, don't ever want to get off the ride.

Some wag cut and pasted all the drop-related comments into a single thread, making it look like Skrillex fans are nothing more than thrill-seekers with tin ears. Some of them surely are; you find them everywhere. But that's not (entirely) Skrillex's fault.

Whatever your feelings about the result, the guy seems genuinely dedicated to introducing his fans to the music that inspired his own. In interviews, he's bigged up not just obvious touchstones like The Prodigy and Nine Inch Nails, but also Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and even Autechre. Using his 2011 EP, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, as a launching pad, we've fleshed out his list of influences and listed a few more records without which Skrillex might never have gotten his bumper car out of the gate.

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Listen along to this post with our Premios Lo Nuestro Nominees 2012 playlist.

With overarching category groups including Pop, Rock, Tropical, Regional and Urbano, Premios Lo Nuestro clearly aims to cover the widest possible spectrum of Latin popular music. What's more, Univision's annual awards show does a mighty fine job of it. You'll find some of the biggest names from the last year or so among the nominees: prolific stars like Gloria Trevi and Maná, wildly successful newcomers like Gerardo Ortiz and Prince Royce, hip up-and-comers like Rita Indiana and much, much more! Listen up and get primed for the big ceremony, which will be broadcast live on Thursday, February 16 on Univision.

Welcome to Who?, a possibly reoccurring new Rhapsody feature addressing artists, songs and general cultural phenomena that seem to come out of nowhere. Our first subject is Belgian-Australian (yes!) quirk-rock sensation Gotye, whose lithe, catchy, xylophone-driven single "Somebody That I Used to Know" is rocketing up any chart you'd care to name. Let's try this.

Who? Gotye, aka Wouter "Wally" De Backer, making him quite possibly the first "Wally" in popular music, which it's about time.

What? One of those one-man-band types who plays, like, dozens of instruments, he's broken through big-time with his third solo effort, Making Mirrors, which transports Beck's sample-heavy junkyard-pop cheeriness both forward into the 21st century and back to the '80s. "Somebody That I Used to Know" sounds like Sting fronting Men at Work; with a vocal assist from New Zealand chanteuse Kimbra, the song now joins the hallowed "post-mortem he said/she said breakup songs" canon alongside "Don't You Want Me" and The Postal Service's "Nothing Better."

Where? Born in Belgium, he moved to Australia as a toddler and is now a big whoop there.

When? Making Mirrors came out in Australia in August 2011. Like most overnight sensations, he's actually been at this forever -- he's a veteran of several bands and released his first solo album in 2003.

How? Since being uploaded to YouTube in July 2011, the "Somebody That I Used to Know" clip (leg-hair alert) has racked up nearly 66 million views at press time; just for reference, Lana Del Rey's "Video Games," which so far has inspired more heated Internet verbiage than the 2012 presidential election, has garnered about half that.

Why? "Somebody" is indeed the jam, with an infectious air of melancholy and a breezy Tropicália air. Pastiche is sort of his thing: Mirrors has plenty of similar joys, from the Motown ode "I Feel Better" to the George Michael/Michael Bolton walking-on-sunshine jam "In Your Light" to the more current (ha) chillwave-ian overtones of the lovely "Giving Me a Chance." Plenty of future YouTube sensations lurking here.

Live from Rhapsody's San Francisco office, here's our exclusive interview with Ethan Miller, magnificently bearded frontman for classic-rock revivalists Howlin' Rain. He talks about working with (the also magnificently bearded) Rick Rubin, how crazy a three-year layoff between albums can make you, the perils of writing personal lyrics and more. Enjoy.

Among the many early 1970s classic from Al Green. With this album, he cemented his status as Solomon Burke's replacement, crooning tender lyrics in obscenely addictive ways. While only a small handful of the tracks became hits, this album's full of winners. Even the cover of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" isn't too terrible. [Jon Pruett] Hear It Now!

Listen along to this post with our Grammys 2012: Victors and Highlights playlist.

Adele didn't win everything at this year's blowout Grammy fete - it just felt like it. But Skrillex, Foo Fighters and Bon Iver didn't do too badly either, and as always the night was punctuated by huge performances, this year ranging from Chris Brown to The Beach Boys to a splendid Glen Campbell tribute to, of course, the showstopping Whitney Houston homage delivered by one Jennifer Hudson. Quite a night, all told, leaving us with a lot to chew over. Here's some highlights to get you started.

The Dutch techno artist Conforce isn't trying to reinvent the wheel on his debut album; he's just trying to make it roll more smoothly. And he succeeds: His tracks glide as though slicked with grease and graphite, with just enough grit to kick up a delectable sense of friction. What seems grayscale at first opens up with rich, dusky colors, like roadside blackberries rinsed to a dull gleam. Escapism's muscle is informed by basement clubs, but its fluid dynamics and tempos are well suited to home listening. [Philip Sherburne] Hear It Now!

Kiss' fifth LP was unleashed during the bicentennial anniversary, and for many rockers it invoked a new spirit of '76. From Peter Criss' smash-hit ballad "Beth" to the dark rumbling "God of Thunder" and the ultimate party anthem "Shout It Out Loud," Kiss delivered a near-perfect (and highly influential) studio album. [Nick Dedina] Hear It Now!

Listen along to this post with our Tribute to Whitney Houston playlist.

Whitney Houston, who passed away Saturday, February 11 at the age of 48 from unknown causes, was America's black Barbie. She was svelte and thin, with a fixed, incandescent smile and a soaring yet smooth voice. She should have been celebrated, but instead, she often felt like a weighty burden, causing us to look in the mirror in disappointment because we weren't perfect like her. So we privately struggled against her 1980s reign as if she was the high school prom queen. It was futile to truly protest her near-constant ubiquity on music-video shows and radio stations, and so we resorted to nasty rumor-mongering about her sexuality, her eating habits and, worst of all, her music.

Whitney Houston seemed born into stardom. Her mother was Cissy Houston, a pop/soul veteran that sang background vocals for Paul Simon, Donny Hathaway, Van Morrison and many others. Her cousins were Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and her godmother was Aretha Franklin. She was still a teenager when she became Seventeen magazine's first black cover model; she landed her first hit, 1984's "You Give Good Love," at age 20.

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These perpetually soused, constantly mutating indie-rock gods here reconvene their beloved mid-'90s lineup, with oracle/genius frontman Bob Pollard backed by fellow singer-songwriter Tobin Sprout, bassist Greg Demos, guitarist Mitch Mitchell and drummer Kevin Fennell. Bizarre, scattershot, occasionally transcendent Beatles worship ensues, as always. It's ramshackle and spotty by design, but "The Unsinkable Fats Domino" is magnificent, and Sprout's songs, from the blissful "Waves" to the tender "Old Bones," are a revelation. Bee Thousand fans, look out. [Rob Harvilla] Hear It Now!

Listen along to this post with our The Grammy Awards: Song of the Year Victories Through the Decades playlist.

Since 1958, the National Academy of Recording Arts has bestowed the Grammy statue upon numerous talented singers, songwriters and musicians; in 1959, they presented the first Song of the Year award. Unlike its oft-confused cousin Record of the Year (which honors the full recording), Song of the Year is presented to the songwriters, whose work "must contain melody and lyrics, and must be either a new song or a song first achieving prominence during the eligibility year. Songs containing prominent samples or interpolations are not eligible." Hmmm.

Song of the Year is one of the four most prestigious Grammy Awards. Interestingly, the very first winner -- "Volare" by Domenico Modugno -- is the only foreign-language song to ever win, and Henry Mancini, James Horner and U2 are the only multiple winners in this category This playlist arguably represents the best of the best in popular music since 1958. Hit play and psych yourself up for this year's Grammy Awards, where Adele, Bon Iver, Bruno Mars, Kanye West, or Mumford and Sons will join the club.

Get the full experience by tuning in to my Friday Mixtape: Young Jazz Piano Trios playlist now.

This playlist may compile compositions from the sophisticated edge of pop culture -- Radiohead, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith -- but the performances are by some of the most exciting young jazz piano trios. Jazz musicians have a long and celebrated tradition of stealing tunes from the pop charts, but pianists like Brad Mehldau, Taylor Eigsti and Robert Glasper mine the territory of indie and avant-garde rock for surprising selections that have the potential to capture audiences outside the genre's borders. They are joined by a handful of visionary young European trios, led by the likes of Esbjörn Svensson and Colin Vallon, who offer their own visionary retooling of the piano trio format. This Friday Mixtape brings some of our favorite young artists together for a set of stylish, urbane classics.

Both excitingly fresh and satisfyingly classic, Ritmo Machine are a new collaborative project between Eric Bobo (Cypress Hill and Beastie Boys percussionist, son of Willie Bobo) and Chilean DJ Latin Bitman that cuts indie-hop through with thick Latin dance and pop grooves. These two clearly enjoy working together: Welcome crackles and pops with an easy vibrancy as Bobo and Bitman sketch a continuum between sizzling Latin jazz, beachy alt-electronico and sunny, scratched-up backpacker hip-hop (a Chali 2na collection helps solidify that reference). It's a warm, fuzzy thrill of an album. [Rachel Devitt] Hear It Now!

On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Jesse & Joy give it up for Adele.

Jesse & Joy ¿Con Quién Se Queda El Perro?

Adele 21

50 Cent's debut smash lives up to the hype and then some. Powered by impossibly great singles "In Da Club" and "P.I.M.P.," Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is the next step for crossover rap -- hard in the right spots, smooth where it counts and, with Dr. Dre producing four of the cuts, sufficiently connected to the old school to absolve you for knowing every song by heart. [Mike McGuirk] Hear It Now!

Listen along with our Senior Year, 1999: Country's Year of the Woman playlist.

The year 1999 was a stellar one for country music -- and for the women of the genre in particular. Not only did Faith Hill find phenomenal, multigenre crossover success with "Breathe," she also was seen on the small screen in millions of households as the new Cover Girl spokesperson. Meanwhile, the as-yet drama-free Dixie Chicks were still culling singles from their debut album when they released the follow-up, Fly, which garnered them even more hits. But that's nothing compared to Shania Twain, whose 1997 album, Come on Over, was still mining hit singles two years later, including its title track.

If you were a senior in high school in 1999 (and were also a girl), you probably wanted to be like Faith Hill, but soon realized her leggy physique and natural beauty was an "either you have it, or you don't" proposition. Not surprisingly, you opted for a midriff-revealing little number and/or a leopard-print ensemble like Shania Twain rocked in the "That Don't Impress Me Much" video instead. Back then, you actually might've had the abs to pull it off, too!

Welcome to From the Rhapsody Vault, a look back at splendid Rhapsody TV videos of yore. Today we've got superstar DJ/producer David Guetta giving it up for fellow French dance-music gods Daft Punk, in exactly 45 seconds. (He's oddly happy to be buzzed at the end, actually.) Enjoy.

David Guetta Nothing But The Beat

Daft Punk Homework

Listen along with our Top 15 Rock Albums, February 2012 playlist.

Full disclosure: This latest Rock Roundup creeps oh so slightly into the waning weeks of 2011. It's a minor indiscretion when weighed against the number of killer albums dropped over the last month and a half. Now, I know what you're saying: "Good new music this time of year?" Valid skepticism for sure. The December-to-February stretch is traditionally a kind of Phantom Zone, during which most labels and artists fall particularly silent in terms of new product, as well as live performances and touring.

But 2012 has proven to be different. We've already received excellent albums from a pair of icons: Leonard Cohen and Van Halen. Though Cohen titled his record Old Ideas, his finely honed skills as a songwriter and singer feel fresh and vital. Van Halen sound equally potent. A Different Kind of Truth, the group's first album with Diamond Dave on vocals since 1984, contains some seriously hard boogie.

Another key release comes in the form of the Mark Lanegan Band's Blues Funeral. Funny thing, the grunge icon and his raspy croak sound older than Cohen and Van Halen combined, but that's always been his m.o.: moody hard rock and rickety folk from a guy who sounds like one of them ancient souls passing from body to body through the millennia. Blues Funeral is cool because it finds him incorporating touches of electronica, an aesthetic he previously explored on the Soulsavers' 2007 collaborative effort It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land.

The last month or so has also seen the release of several notable reissues and archival collections. Alex Chilton's Free Again is a gem of a document, containing as it does a slew of recordings the young artist made in and around 1970, when The Box Tops were just about kaput but before he had met Chris Bell and subsequently formed the immortal Big Star. Another couple of treats are the expanded editions of The Doors' L.A. Woman (totally rocking) and Elvis Country (arguably the last truly great record of Presley's career). A loose concept album from 1971, the latter is a stunning panorama of the Southern music experience: country, gospel, soul, rockabilly, bluegrass, blues and so on.

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Listen along with our World's Top Ten, Winter 2012 playlist.

You know that holiday season/beginning-of-the-year lull in new music everyone always talks about? Well, forget about it. The world of world music has been busy the last couple months, churning out a ton of new releases that are both high profile and highly interesting. We've got some stragglers who snuck out in late 2011 and ended up being some of the year's best releases, like Sia Tolno's vibrant Afropop effort and the Hawaiian folk-drenched soundtrack to George Clooney's Oscar-nominated film The Descendants. We also stretched back a bit further into 2011 to pinpoint some things you might have missed, like Buraka Som Sistema's über-hip global club cuts and Sevara Nazarkhan's intimate neo-traditionalism.

But we didn't even need to look backward: 2012 has already been offering up a wealth of riches, from flamenco punks Rodrigo y Gabriela's excursion into Cuban big band to Novalima's sleekly innovative reworkings of Afro-Peruvian traditional music. If you've got the winter blues, we've got the cure for what ails you right here. Dig in!

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Thin Lizzy's bones are bare: Guitarist Brian Robertson's broken hand nixed the band's twin-lead approach for much of Bad Reputation. Nevertheless, Phil Lynott's muse is at peak performance. This is better than their previous LP, Johnny the Fox, and nearly as good as their masterpiece, Jailbreak. It rocks and rolls with heavy numbers like "Opium Trail," but also has some classic pub fare, namely "Dancing in the Moonlight." Dig that sexy sax making its way through the middle-of-a-big-city night. [Justin Farrar] Hear It Now!

Listen along with our Stage Your Own Rom-Com playlist.

In case you hadn't heard, a certain love-obsessed holiday is nearly upon us. Have you made a dinner reservation yet? Ordered flowers? You HAVEN'T?!
Just kidding -- we haven't either -- but we got you covered. This year, instead of renting or going out to see a romantic movie, we had a brilliant idea: Let's all stage our own romantic comedy -- or rom-dram, or tearjerker, or whatever your pleasure (or level of relationship seriousness, or dysfunction). In that interest, we've created the perfect soundtrack for it: a collection of the sweetest, most sensitive, most sweepingly dramatic, sexiest, sappiest love songs EVER. (That's right: EVER.) Throw it on and get to work planting engagement rings in soufflés or reconnecting with your childhood sweetheart or accidentally dating your best friend's sister without realizing it or whatever your rom-com cliché of choice. Or, you know, just play this while you make dinner for your sweetie (bo-ring). Happy Valentine's Day!

Listen along with our Source Material: Beck, 'Odelay' playlist.

Perhaps the finest and weirdest sonic collage of the '90s, Beck's Odelay pierced its way into the hearts of alternative, hip-hop and pop kids alike when it came out in 1996. By then, he'd convinced the world he was a loveable "Loser" -- which also meant many had him pegged as an inevitable one-hit wonder. But with what was actually his fifth album, he proved himself a master of smart, genre-smashing songwriting, thanks in part to The Dust Brothers, the production team behind The Beastie Boys' iconic Paul's Boutique.

How to explain this album? It ain't easy. It's got funk, punk, folk, jazz, country, bossa nova, hip-hop, pop and rock; it's got a mix of Beck's irony-tinged monotone and all-out guttural yells, plus his metaphorical musings, witty commentary and occasional nonsense talk -- and we're just talking about the first few songs here. But most noteworthy is the sampling: Beck and The Dust Brothers did some serious crate digging, excavating beats from Pretty Purdie; riffs from Them; funk grooves from Sly & the Family Stone, Mandrill, Rare Earth and Freedom; sound clips from Mantronix ("I got two turntables and a microphone") and The Frogs ("That was a good drum break"); even a symphonic snippet from Franz Schubert in "High 5 (Rock the Catskills)." Beck also nods to experimental troubadour Gary Wilson ("Let the man Gary Wilson rock the most") and Musical Youth's "Pass the Dutchie," for starters, in "Where It's At," whose video included a quick shot of him impersonating Captain Beefheart.

These, of course, are just a few of the influences behind the weird, wild and wonderful Odelay. Below, dig into the artists and albums Beck sampled, referenced or likely just adored during the making of this classic.

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Listen along with our Bay Area Mobb Music Sampler playlist.

Ever since Oakland rapper Too Short started slanging cassette albums like Players out of his car trunk in the early 1980s, the San Francisco Bay Area rap scene has been a source of curiosity and fascination. Centered in the city of San Francisco; East Bay cities like Oakland, Berkeley and Vallejo; and Peninsula cities like East Palo Alto, it's a region truly unlike any other.

While other underground scenes in the South and on the East Coast focus on mixtapes, the "Yay Area" (somewhat fancifully nicknamed for the hustlers who slang coke or "yay yo") produces hundreds of full-length albums a year from both well-known and obscure artists that employ cryptic yet imaginative local slang. Vallejo artist E-40, perhaps the best known Bay Area rapper next to Too Short and 2Pac (who moved to Los Angeles before his 1996 death), even put out a dictionary of "slanguage"; terms like like "D-boy" and "captain save a ho" have been adopted into the hip-hop lexicon.

Bay Area rap dates back to the 1980s, but its most crucial development took place during the '90s. This was the golden age of West Coast hip-hop, when G-funk pioneers like L.A.'s Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Coolio enjoyed a near-monopoly on the rap music charts. In the Bay Area, producers like Ant Banks, Studio Ton, Mike Mosley, E-A-Ski and Tone Capone developed what became known as mobb music. It was a derivation of G-funk's emphasis on "funky worm" keyboard melodies and Zapp-like trunk-rattling bass, yet the bass seemed deeper and the funk arrangements were less dependent on P-funk samples and interpolations. Since most Bay Area artists, like JT the Bigga Figga ("Game Recognize Game") and R.B.L. Posse ("Don't Give Me No Bammer"), recorded for independent labels like In-A-Minute, Sick Wid It and C-Note, they created a hardcore sound rawer than L.A.'s slick, major-label-funded gangsta rap.

The mobb music era roughly breaks down into three overlapping periods that are most easily defined by the style of certain landmark tracks: the N.W.A.-like sampling of the early 1990s and hits like Too Short's "Money in the Ghetto," an Ant Banks production that culled from Kool & the Gang's "Hollywood Swinging"; the sluggishly monolithic trunk bass of Luniz and Tone Capone's "I Got Five on It"; and the bouncy, wholly original funk of 3 X Krazy's "Keep It on the Real." The latter period, which picked up in the late '90s, came from a wave of area artists briefly signing to major labels, and was a response to "jiggy era" hits like Diddy's No Way Out and the resulting influx of mainstream-rap fans. This set the stage for the Bay Area hyphy movement of the 2000s.

Much like the Los Angeles scene that was permanently damaged by the East Coast-West Coast rivalry between Dr. Dre's Death Row label and Diddy's Bad Boy Records, Bay Area rap isn't as popular as it once was. But the players who emerged during the mobb music era continue to thrive as regional stars. In the Bay, independent hustle is a must, and the region will continue to pump out dope music for the streets, whether the pop market pays attention or not.

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