Essentials

New Order may have recorded indifferent songs, but I could only think of a handful of terrors before scouring their solo careers.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Im not sure if Duran Duran were a minor band disguised as a major one, or vice versa, but they did have a handful of really catchy songs, and playing a saxophone on a raft is a boss move. One thing is certain though: Metro UK is a pretty minor publication, and ranking "Ordinary World" over "Rio" is complete bullshit. Still, here are a few great tracks from this these 80s kings.

Most people don’t really know what a conductor does, and that’s understandable—much of a conductor’s work takes place out of the spotlight. Contrary to the belief held by some that the conductor is a largely dispensable figure who shows up, waves his or her arms for a few hours, and then takes home a big paycheck, the conductor is often the hardest-working member of the orchestra. A great conductor trains for decades to become great, usually mastering at least one instrument at the highest level. Along the way, he or she achieves a thorough knowledge of music history, a mastery of music theory, and an encyclopedic knowledge of how instruments work.Indeed, the conductor has to know each instrument’s part better than its own player does, and must understand how each of those parts can be best actualized. The conductor spends months learning 100-plus page scores, sometimes even memorizing them, in advance of orchestra rehearsals, which occur in the weeks before a performance. While studying the score, the conductor uses their years of experience and knowledge to interpret its contents, drawing from academic literature as well as recorded music to make executive decisions about phrasing, tempo, dynamics, rhythm, temporality, balance, and countless other aspects. In this sense, every performance of a work is a unique interpretation, even if, on the surface, many sound the same. Once the conductor shows up on stage on the night of the concert, he or she has spent many hours rehearsing that night’s piece with the orchestra, who will be playing, for better or worse, the way the conductor has instructed them to.Conductors are also responsible for selecting the music their orchestra plays, and the ones on this list—compiled by the BBC’s classical-music.com site—have surely been indispensable to the unfolding of music history over the past century. Mahler, for example, may never have become popular in the United States if Leonard Bernstein hadn’t obsessed over his music in the 1960s, producing the first complete recorded cycle of the composer’s symphonies. Nikolaus Harnoncourt and John Eliot Gardiner are both well-known for their important contributions not only to recorded music, but to the scholarship, advancing philosophies of historical performance practice and often insisting that their ensembles use historically accurate instruments. These two conductors seek to deliver interpretations that come from tireless academic study of both the source material and the conventions of its time period. Pierre Boulez was an austere conductor whose interpretations of modern and postmodern music cut to the chase, favoring transparency and clarity over large romantic gestures; some called him cold, while others said he was second-to-none in putting the emphasis on the musical material instead of catering to the emotions of the audience. Point being: Conductors are often (but not always!) rich thinkers who make important decisions about how, when, where, and why we hear music.We should take this list as authoritative, since the BBC polled 100 of the most important living conductors to create it, from Vladimir Ashkenazy to Michael Tilson Thomas. Fans of classical music have argued for years over the qualities and failures of this or that performance or recording, often descending into semantic insanity; however, few would argue that anyone on this list isn’t great. Use this playlist as a jumping-off point to venture forth and decide for yourself: Do you prefer Kleiber’s Brahms 4, or Harnoncourt’s? Furtwängler’s Bruckner 8, or Boulez’s? For Mahler: Bernstein or Abbado? Ultimately everyone has their own opinion of which conductor is the greatest, but the experts have spoken, and these are their selections.

Full disclosure: I contributed to this list, and while I have my quibbles with it -- "NBA Rap"? Nah -- I think its a fairly good primer on early West Coast rap. That scene is all the rage thanks to the overhyped Straight Outta Compton movie, and viewers who enjoyed that biopic will find more avenues to explore here. At the very least, its a good excuse to revisit Rodney O & DJ Joe Cooleys "Everlasting Bass." -- Mosi Reeves

XX only have two albums, so picking out a best-of is a little bit ancillary at this point, but its still great to hear all of the hits. This is particularly revealing when listened to side to side with Jamie XXs latest album, In Colour . His latest marks a dramatic aesthetic leap forward, and it will be interesting to hear what happens when the group reconvenes for their third album.

Rock ’n’ roll is all about relentless forward propulsion, and its success hinges on how well a musician can balance his or her violent adrenaline rushes and animalistic urges with the self-discipline and focus that comes with heady groove research. This is something at which AC/DC’s Malcolm Young—who recently left us after succumbing to the dementia that had plagued him for nearly a decade—excelled. If his brother, Angus, is Chuck Berry (all about dazzling flashes of lightning and speeding, razor-wire licks) then Malcolm was Bo Diddley, a brilliant groove engineer (as well as songwriter—let’s not forget that) who could ceaselessly combine and recombine the essential, fundamental components of boogie (rock, as well as the blues). He was not unlike a minimalist architect, only Malcolm’s geometry unfolds across time, which certainly adds a whole new level of intelligence to it. In fact, a friend of mine recently said something quite relevant to this point: There should be a chapter on AC/DC in any quality book chronicling the rise of minimalism in 20th-century music and art. Amen. Such a proclamation is a testament to Malcolm’s belief in the effectiveness of simplicity and archetypal forms and how this belief shaped AC/DC’s mission statement. To really bask in his understated genius, check out berga570’s fantastic YouTube clip, which isolates and loops his riff for “Thunderstruck.” It’s insane—a sublime blending of off-kilter, intuitive swing with a kind of mechanized symmetry. It’s maniacally stuttering and repetitive, falling somewhere between John Lee Hooker and avant-garde oddity Henry Flynt.But Malcolm took things another couple steps further; blast the extended live version of “Bad Boy Boogie” or the locked-tight “Overdose” (both representative of the deeper-style cuts you’ll hear on our playlist) and what you have is the grease of vintage rock and blues fed through the grinding gears of the modern industrial world. We’re talking savage robotics here. Hell, you could even argue that AC/DC were proto-techno rockers before such a concept even existed! So yeah, thanks to Malcolm, these dudes weren’t just debauched rock ’n’ rollers; they were (along with ZZ Top and Motörhead) real-deal innovators of what I like to call rough-neck, working-class minimalism. R.I.P. to the greatest rhythm guitarist in the history of hard rock.

Alive with pulsing disco and house beats, Shamirs debut album Ratchet caused a sensation when XL Recordings released it in 2015. Many casual fans know him by the sparky electro-rap of the albums single “On the Regular.” Scintillating as the lights of his native Las Vegas and, at times, as brooding as the gloom on the edges of town, Ratchet deserved all the accolades it garnered. Still, as the pop phenom prepares to release his very different third album, Revelations, its worth noting that theres always been more to Shamir Bailey.He started his career in music singing country, while his first band Anorexia was a DIY punk affair, and his debut EP Northtown took a raw, minimal approach to dance-pop. Given all that, Shamir would seem impossible to pigeonhole, even before factoring in his genderless countertenor. Nevertheless, after the success of Ratchet, XL set him on a track to make something similar. Uninterested in repeating himself musically, the young singer-songwriter parted with his label and self-released a second album, Hope, a bundle of defiant, aching indie-pop that set the stage for his latest release.The real revelations on Revelations are more of the musical than personal variety. Its avant lo-fi pop betrays the influence of his confessed favorite artists such as Vivian Girls and Tegan and Sara, and even of Nina Simone (whom he has called his “beacon”). Seeing this stripped-down side of Shamir will be an adjustment for some, but Revelations songcraft and intense honesty is bound to win the 22-year-old some converts. Whether you are a new fan or old, let this playlist be your guide to the many dimensions of the Shamiriverse: the underground electro heroes, rockers, gender outlaws, and heartbroken divas who run through all of his music. Get up to speed now, because even though he claims “I reached my final form” on the haunting anthem “Float,” he almost certainly hasnt.

Sia’s songs have a certain archetypal character: spurned lovers feeling out the space between their needs and desire; distressed romantics seeking the salvation of sunrises and barstools; frail, self-possessed heroines steeped in their own idiosyncrasies. The former Zero 7 frontwoman is primarily known for her own hits at this point, but she’s written for some of the biggest pop stars of the past two decades, and this collection highlights, what Time feels, are the greatest performances of her songbook. It’s ranked (from top to bottom), which means that this is intended as more of a subjective conversation piece, but it still feels cohesive.

Over the past two years, there’s been such a remarkable abundance of great music by female artists in the overlapping territories of alt-country, roots, and Americana that it could fill this playlist many times over. From the folky, sepulchral sounds of Pieta Brown, to the Kitty Wells-style honky-tonk throwbacks of Rachel Brooke, to the raw and tender country blues of Adia Victoria (pictured), it’s a boom time all round.That said, trying to fit a disparate group of artists into a tidy category that’s based in part on their gender can’t help but feel unfairly reductive. Hell, it may even perpetuate the kind of backward sexual politics that persist in the worst of American country music and that many artists understandably buck against. Back in 2014, the duo Maddie & Tae scored a surprise smash with “Girl In A Country Song,” a bouncy piece of C&W pop that doubled as an unusually acerbic satire of the ways women are typically represented by Nashville. “We used to get a little respect,” goes the chorus. “Now we’re lucky if we even get to climb up in your truck/ Keep our mouths shut and ride along/ And be the girl in a country song.” Three years later, with “bro-country” acts like Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, and Chase Rice doubling down on innuendo-laden tailgate-party anthems and yet more videos with models in bikinis, mainstream country needs that kind of skewering even more.Lest all this just serve as another reason for alt-country hipsters to feel smug about their superior tastes, even they ought to admit that there ain’t much gender parity when it comes to the artists who generally cross over from the No Depression crowd and gain wider renown and success. After all, there are many more female acts who’ve been just as willing as Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson to pursue a richer, more adventurous kind of artistry than Nashville generally tolerates. They too deserve to garner audiences beyond the flannel-clad roots-music devotees who already recognize the virtues of Rhiannon Giddens’ revamps of old-time spirituals, savor the gilded harmonies of The Trishas, or tremble at the sound of Tift Merritt’s warble.This bounty of talent ranges from newbies like Kacy & Clayton (a Canadian duo who’ve become protégés of Jeff Tweedy) and Molly Burch (an Austinite blessed with a voice whose chilly beauty evokes Patsy Cline and Karen Dalton at their most desolate) to Shelby Lynne and Alison Moorer, sisters and alt-country vets who demonstrate their own dexterity by combining covers of Townes Van Zandt and Nirvana on their new album Not Dark Yet. These are the alt-country women you need to hear if you haven’t been so lucky already. Big-hatted bros best take heed.

Few artists have embodied the sound and ethos of their entire genre the way Miles Davis did with jazz. When Davis’ career began, even the shift from the uppity early 20th-century sounds of bebop to the laid-back tones of cool jazz was considered a highly controversial move, yet by the end of his life, he was leading his band into 30-plus-minute psychedelic freefalls, pushing the genre ever onwards into the future while taking inspiration from whatever styles suited his fancy. Even his most relaxed-sounding work bears all the creative energy of a true maverick, and his powerful visions of what jazz could be endure in their vividness even today.As an emerging voice on Manhattan’s mid-’40s bebop scene, Davis originally distinguished himself with his smooth, minimal style of trumpet playing—ironic, given how bold his ventures into jazz would become. His first major stylistic shift came with his development of cool jazz, embodied most famously on the 1957 album Birth Of The Cool, a compilation of sessions dating back to 1949-50. But even this sound wouldn’t contain Davis for long—by the end of the ‘50s, he had become a firm collaborator with big-band arranger Gil Evans, recording a number of orchestral jazz masterpieces such as Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, as well as the defining document of modal jazz (and possibly jazz in general), Kind of Blue.From here, Davis would only push the limits of his craft even further, and the loose, hard-to-define post-bop sounds of albums like Miles Smiles and Nefertiti would eventually bloom into the electric, rock-fueled incantations of In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, two albums that ushered Davis into the ‘70s completely unbeholden to any notions of traditionalism or boundaries. As Davis’ arrangements and performances became increasingly frenzied (see the amorphous funk of On The Corner or the free-flowing fusion of Agharta), his health started to decline as well, which resulted in a hiatus that lasted until the ‘80s, upon which Davis returned for a final string of records powered by synths and drum machines (including the rap-crossover Doo-Bop) before passing in 1991.The mark that Davis has left on music is staggering. His reflections of jazz are both tender and enigmatic in equal measure, and tackling his entire career is no small feat. But to explore the music of Miles Davis is to understand the shifting state of culture in America, to see the ways in which our borders have materialized and dissolved as time has marched on, and to understand how the unleashed insanity of a later album like 1977’s Dark Magus can secretly be brewing under the stately calm of early work like Milestones all along. Davis’ career may be daunting, but the beauty of it is that there is no wrong place to start—no matter where one decides to pick up the thread, there are countless revelations to be found.