It's December 1st, so therefore officially OK to listen to Christmas music! Below is my Advent playlist for this year's season. You can listen to the whole thing on Spotify here. Enjoy!
The Coldplay Effect
Why is Coldplay hipster kryptonite? Why have most self-respect indie kids long abandoned Coldplay to the realm of painfully saccharine, popular radio-ready mainstream bilge? I think the key words are “popular” and “mainstream.” The gist of it is simple: Coldplay is too popular. Too many normal people know about Coldplay and like them.
My Fall Playlist
In the spirit of change, of Autumn, and of good music, I put together a fall playlist of new music. Listen to it on Spotify here (if you're on Spotify), or take a look at the tracklist below. It's all music that has come out in 2011, and most of it in the last 3 months.
Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
Lady Gaga's Alien Logic
Best Albums of 2010
It's that time of year again. Best of the year time. I'm starting with albums, because I doubt any new release between now and 2011 will disrupt the top ten I've been compiling in my mind the last few weeks (I'll be exclusively listening to Christmas music for the next few weeks in any case). So here are my picks, in reverse order.
Advent Playlist
It's the second week of Advent, 2010, and I've put together a playlist of songs that feel appropriate to this moment. They are songs that represent both the darkness of the world and the power of the penetrating light. They are songs about waiting, hoping, and dwelling in the now-and-not-yet. I'll be listening to them with plenty of hot cider and a hopefully quieted soul, beckoning Emmanuel to come and ransom this captive creation.
As the World Tunes
But auto-tune is just one of many digital enhancement tools in the air-brush arsenal of the Photoshop world. The irony of auto-tune's disposition as the joke of Y2K remix culture is that it's really no worse than any of the other digital tools we have at our disposal to, for example, take clips from TV and turn them into re-edited assemblages ripe for viral video glory.
Autumn Playlist
10 Albums That Shaped My Youth
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Christian Hipster Music: A YouTube History
Last week on the Hipster Christianity Facebook page, I posted YouTube videos from the last 4 decades of "Christian hipster" music, or music that was at least pivotal in the ultimate development of today's culture of hipster Christianity. Here they are, in chronological order... Enjoy!
CCM Albums of the 90s That Make Christian Hipsters Nostalgic
A lot of Christian hipsters today were raised in the evangelical Christian subculture in the 90s. Thus, while most of them have completely abandoned CCM by now, they still look fondly and nostalgically (with a smidge of irony) upon the Christian music they were reared on. Here are 20 albums that Christian hipsters today love to listen to for a trip down memory lane. What would you add to this list?
Holy Week Playlist
I don't really listen to contemporary Christian music, but I LOVE hymns and older Christian spirituals. And during Lent and especially during Holy Week, I've been retuning to these sacred songs--some old, some new--that speak of Christ's passion and our hope. I've compiled a playlist of some of my favorites this year, most of which can be purchased on iTunes.
Fun, Esoteric Indie Music Trends
I recently wrote about hipster music trends for Relevant Magazine's "New Music Guide," which you can read in full (three pages worth!) here.
Best Albums of 2009
It's been a good year for music, and a good decade. 2009 ended with some truly forward-thinking genre development (glo-fi/chillwave) and genre resurgence (shoegazer), and an overall spirit of musical innovation that makes me excited to see what the next decade has in store. It was hard to pick my top ten this year (and any of my honorable mentions could easily have made the top ten), though the #1 was never in doubt. Anyway, here are my picks.
50 Best Songs of 2009
It's time to commence the end-of-year list-making here on The Search... and we'll start with my picks for the best songs of the year. I've opted not to put them in any sort of order (except alphabetical), because it takes too much time to arbitrarily decide whether Neko Case (pictured above) should be #11 or #18. So here they are... 50 songs that you should definitely think about downloading!
Songs for Fall 2009
Because “Autumn” in L.A. is negligible at best, I have to live my seasons vicariously through media. I tend to make music playlists, for example, to play in my car or iPod whenever I want to feel like I’m living in some crisp, fall-like place. I do this for other seasons as well. It works fairly well, I think. Anyway, the following is my “Autumn 2009″ playlist.
Best Albums of the 2000s: My Picks
I think it’s a bit silly to be making end-of-decade lists this early (there is still 2.5% of the decade yet to be lived), but Pitchfork has gone ahead with their “Top 200 Albums of the 2000s” list, so I figure I might as well put mine out there now too.
West and Wilson Deserve Each Other
I’m pretty sure that Kanye West and Joe Wilson have nothing in common. Kanye is a swaggerific hip-hop fashionista who wears Alexander McQueen suits and Yohji Yamamoto gloves, and whose vanity is only eclipsed by his ego. Joe Wilson is an extremely white, Southern Republican congressman who has never heard a Wu-Tang Clan song and who once voted against the removal of the confederate flag at South Carolina’s capital. But West and Wilson do have one thing in common: Both men are tactless, disrespectful opportunists.