Krautrock wasn’t all about fuzzed-out guitars and primal drumbeats; much of the innovation that came out of the German underground in the late ‘60s and ‘70s (spilling over slightly into the early ‘80s) came from mighty Moog-wielding electronic sorcerers eager to rewrite musical history in their own image. From the hypnotic, highly textured synthscapes of rock’s first real synth band, Tangerine Dream, to the proto-techno man-machine music of Kraftwerk, the electronic side of the krautrock revolution could be soft or stormy, melodic or assaultive, accessible or out on the edge. But those trailblazing German synth meisters laid down sounds that influenced the whole world for generations to come, from the synth-poppers who followed in the footsteps of Kraftwerk to the trance nation that claims Tangerine Dream among its key influences.

Back in the stormy ‘70s, when Brian Eno was inventing ambient music in England and Tangerine Dream was mixing Moogs with Krautrock, a crew of electronic individualists in France was busy crafting some singular synthesizer tapestries of their own. Sometimes they were influenced by the aforementioned trailblazers and their ilk, but often they were finding their own idiosyncratic way into previously unexplored electronic thickets, without stopping to worry about what the end result might be or what anybody would think about it. With the notable exceptions of Jean-Michel Jarre, who found fame with his 1976 classic Oxygène, and Moog pop pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey, these artists were working well under the radar, largely unnoticed in their own country and all but invisible on an international level. (And that remains the case today—a lot of this music isn’t available on Spotify, so I’ve created a YouTube playlist instead.) But the frequently quirky electronic vistas they created deserve their own chapter in the saga of synth music.

Paul Putti’s short-lived Pôle label achieved underground renown releasing albums by his project of the same name as well as fellow travelers like Philippe Besombes, freely utilizing minimalism and avant-garde techniques. Composers like Jean-Pierre Decerf and Teddy Lasry crossed over from the world of “library” recordings for film and TV but ultimately made intoxicating, atmospheric music that stood on its own. On tracks like “Speedway,” the duo Space Art came off like a Gallic version of Autobahn-era Kraftwerk. If there’s ever a synth-assisted apocalypse, Fredric Mercier’s doomy, titanic “Storm” would certainly make a suitable soundtrack. And Philippe Féret has all but vanished into the deep pockets of time, but his 1978 debut album nevertheless found him at the front lines of the ambient movement. Take a deep dive into a French river filled almost to overflowing with visceral analog electronic tones and maverick notions about what music could be.

The world has gotten smaller. If you compare the U.S. and U.K. Top 40 pop charts these days, you’ll mostly see the same batch of songs on both. It’s probably a function of the Information Age turning cultural variations into one big, transatlantic pile of homogeneity.But it wasn’t always that way. In decades past, the British and American pop charts were almost entirely different creatures. Americans trawling through the U.K. Top 40 would encounter a slew of songs and artists that were foreign to them in every sense of the word, as well as some they might know but would never have expected to have mainstream appeal.The U.S. Top 40 has always been known for playing it safe. Rarely does anything too far outside the margins pop up. But in England of old, you could find edgy, underground artists rising to the top as well as utterly eccentric bits of weirdness with no readily discernible explanation, the results of the kind of old-fashioned regionalism that’s been increasingly phased out.This collection of U.K. Top 40 hits from the ’60s through the ’90s is designed to astonish Americans who’ve grown used to thinking of the pop charts as the home of the lowest common denominator. On one end of the spectrum are the artists too cool, too quirky, or too in-your-face to ever score U.S. pop hits. That encompasses everything from the doomy post-punk of Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. to the goth glory of Bauhaus, the seminal electro-pop of Kraftwerk, the punk roar of The Damned, and the thrash-metal madness of Megadeth.But before you decide the U.K. musical mainstream is just exponentially cooler than that of the U.S., take a look at the other end of the spectrum. There’s goofy pre-WWII pastiche, Peter Sellers’ mock-dramatic recitative of “A Hard Day’s Night,” a loopy-sounding brass-band instrumental, a ska remake of a tune whose only lyrics are “Ne Ne Na Na Na Na Nu Nu,” and plenty of other bizarre entries unknown to most Americans.It all adds up to one of the most schizophrenic playlists you’re ever likely to experience, swooping back and forth from the sublime to the ridiculous with giddy glee. And the breathless momentum incurred will echo the mercurial feeling of following the U.K. Top 40 in the pre-internet era.

You know the segment of the horror and sci-fi movie spectrum we’re talking about here. The worse they are, the better they are; the lower the budget, the higher the entertainment value. And the more goofy and outlandish the plot, the more there is to love about it. They operate in an entirely different universe than venerated, “legit” horror films like, say, The Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby. They’re the kind of movies that turn up in the wee hours on TV, or maybe in a cult film festival if you’re lucky.Some of the songs assembled here pay direct homage to some of those films. For instance, Roky Erickson’s “I Walked With a Zombie,” John Cooper Clarke’s “(I Married a) Monster from Outer Space,” and Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages’ “Dracula’s Daughter” are all inspired by the films that bear those titles. And after recording “House of 1000 Corpses,” Rob Zombie took matters into his own hands and directed his own movie of the same name.Then there are the tunes that suggest an alternative history of cheesy horror movies, ones that never actually existed but sound like they should have. Blondie’s “The Attack of the Giant Ants,” The Hollywood Brats’ “Vampire Nazi,” and The Cramps’ “Burn She-Devil, Burn” are creations that originated entirely in the minds of the musicians, but after you hear them it’s hard to resist imagining them coming to life at three in the morning on your TV screen.It’s the perfect playlist to fire up when All Hallows’ Eve rolls around, but if you’re a lover of B movies and vintage cinematic kitsch, these tunes will do the trick whenever you’ve got the urge to get gloriously tacky on the scary side.

Let’s make one thing glaringly plain right at the start: This is not a Halloween playlist. So if you’re expecting “Monster Mash” or “Ghostbusters” or any of that sort of business, you’re trick-or-treating at the wrong door. The songs assembled here are meant instead for ushering in Samhain, a holiday that occurs at the same time as—and is a predecessor to—Halloween, but has different, decidedly older origins. But make no mistake, things surrounding Samhain can still get plenty creepy.

It’s essentially an end-of-harvest commemoration that is Gaelic in origin and goes back at least to the 10th century if not farther. It’s generally reckoned to be connected to paganism, and some of the spooky rites and rituals connected to it (which have also been an inspiration on Halloween) bear that out. But there’s also an organic and naturalistic, almost folksy side to it. Check out the classic ’70s movie thriller The Wicker Man (represented here) some time and you’ll get an idea of that intersection, albeit slanted distinctly toward the dark side.

Then again, positioned as it is to herald the oncoming winter, Samhain is known as the harbinger of the “dark half” of the calendar year. So that darkness manifests itself in more ways than one. And the Samhain-friendly songs here fall all across the spectrum. On one end, you’ve got the gentle folky stuff, be it Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore,” Jethro Tull’s “Songs from the Wood,” or Loreena McKennitt’s “All Souls Night.” Then there’s the moodier, more intense, dancing-naked-in-the-moonlight vibe represented by the likes of Dead Can Dance, Kate Bush, and Faith and The Muse. And on the most unsettling side, you’ve got Black Sabbath, Bruce Dickinson, and Electric Wizard conjuring classic metallic, black-magic imagery.

Some of these tunes have an explicitly subject-specific spin, and some may simply fit the feel, but brought together they provide a soundtrack for the full range of Samhain moods.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Second-guessing Ken Burns documentaries has become a national pastime, especially when they focus on something close to viewers’ hearts, like music. When he tackled jazz years ago, naysayers ran rampant, and his 2019 PBS doc Country Music is similarly fodder for Monday-morning quarterbacks.Even when you’re making an eight-part miniseries in which each episode runs about two hours, if you’re tackling a topic as monumental as country music, some things are bound to end up on the cutting-room floor. Burns did a bang-up job overall, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some inevitable omissions.You don’t have to go digging back through all eleventy-jillion hours of Country Music to figure out which important country artists didn’t make the final cut. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you with this playlist of the people who were left out. While some of the artists Country Music forgot might be familiar only to hardcore country fans, others are bound to induce a major amount of bemused head-scratching.Let’s look at some of the legendary, enormously influential artists who fall into that latter camp, for starters. We’ve got the likes of Billy Joe Shaver, who’s as responsible for the outbreak of outlaw country in the ’70s as anybody. Then there’s rock ’n’ roll giant Jerry Lee Lewis, who managed a remarkable comeback as a country hitmaker in the ’60s and ’70s. And speaking of hitmakers, how about Don Williams, whose sonorous baritone brought him dozens of Top 10 country singles in the ’70s and ’80s? That’s saying nothing of country/pop crossover queen Linda Ronstadt, one of the biggest superstars of the ’70s.Lesser known but equally important names like country-soul pioneer Tony Joe White, trucker-country hero Del Reeves, and bluegrass star Jimmy Martin are conspicuous in their absence from the series too, but you’ll find them right here. You’re bound to come away with a wider view of country than what Burns’ narrative encompasses.

Prince was nothing if not prolific, but turning out material at a breakneck pace didn’t necessarily gel with the marketing agenda of a major label. Prioritizing creativity over commerciality, he began warring with said label over its refusal to release as much material as he wanted. That’s when he began rebelling by adopting his famously unpronounceable symbol, with the world consequently calling him The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. But beginning with 1996’s aptly titled Emancipation, Prince (who eventually reverted to his given name) was freed from his contract. Releasing records through his own NPG imprint—sometimes distributed through other labels—he opened the floodgates and a startling torrent of music flowed through.Even in his earlier days, Prince had always put out records at a pretty constant pace, but it was only after he entered his indie phase that it really became apparent just how much material he was producing. It wasn’t merely the amount of music that was overwhelming; it was the broad range of styles. He worked in a multiplicity of formats, sometimes on his own and sometimes backed by groups ranging from the rocking 3RDEYEGIRL to the funkier New Power Generation, and occasionally joined by guests including Sheryl Crow, Kate Bush, and Maceo Parker. In these settings, Prince slipped into R&B, rock, hip-hop, funk, jazz, electronics, and more.The trouble is—and this is where Prince’s former label’s concerns were not entirely unfounded—wading through that much music can be a daunting, even confusing process. A lot of people had trouble keeping up with the emancipated Prince’s output. To this day, it can be a challenge, so here’s a handy guide hitting plenty of the highlights, from the steamy funk of “Black Sweat” to the smooth soul of the Stylistics cover “Betcha By Golly Wow,” the blistering rock of "PLECTRUMELECTRUM," the supple jazz of "Xemplify" and beyond.

In music, there’s a lot that can be said without ever uttering a single word, and 2019 turned out to be an excellent example of the many ways in which that idea can be borne out. Of course, there are genres where a lyrical no-fly zone is the norm, like jazz, classical, and electronic, so it’s no surprise to find some of the year’s most ear-catching instrumental tunes coming from those quarters (and you will indeed encounter a couple herein). But even in the realms of rock, funk, and folk, where most of the time, vocals are a given, 2019 produced a number of tracks where either the singer stuffs a sock in it or there isn’t one to begin with.You might think that corralling cuts from all across the stylistic spectrum like this would result in a playlist with only slightly less schizophrenia than a double feature of Shine and A Beautiful Mind and that the disparate genres would wind up sounding incongruent. But that’s not the case at all. Maybe there’s something about the absence of the human voice that normalizes these tunes’ unexpected tumbles into each other.When the neo-psychedelic guitar frenzy of Chris Forsyth segues into the minimalist avant-jazz of trumpeter Steph Richards, or the elegant, solo acoustic-guitar tapestries of Michael Chapman bump up against the tinkling electronic manipulations of Sarah Louise, and then that segues into the beyond-category madness of TOOL, it ought to feel as if you’re following a circuitous path, but it doesn’t. By the time the syncopated funk grooves of Lettuce give way to the flesh-tearing punk-jazz melee of Blacks’ Myths with a surprising degree of ease, you’ll have long since stopped worrying about genre distinctions and settled into some of the most intoxicating wordless wonders of 2019.

Welcome to a history of the Grammys’ greatest misses. The first Grammy Awards were given out in 1959, and obviously the organization has doled out well-deserved honors to countless awesome artists since then. But let’s face it: It’s a lot more fun to home in on the mistakes that this august assemblage of music-industry pros has made in terms of legendary artists they’ve snubbed for decades. So here’s a handy tally featuring some of the most glaringly obvious omissions from the Grammy rolls. Note that if we’d made this list in 2019, it would have also included Tanya Tucker, who won her first Grammy in 2020 at the age of 61, no less than 47 years after her first nomination (yes, she started young). And note further that we aren’t counting Lifetime Achievement awards, which are bestowed as opposed to being won in a competitive context.Looking all the way back, the Grammys actually missed a big one straight out of the gate. The first awards ceremony occurred in May of ’59, three months after Buddy Holly was killed in the infamous “The Day the Music Died” plane crash, and both of his solo (i.e., non-Crickets) albums had been released in ’58. You can probably tell where this is going. Many of the artists who shaped the ’60s didn’t fare much better—Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and The Grateful Dead, for instance, remain in the non-Grammy pile to this day. The awards missed their share of ’70s heroes as well, from ABBA to Bob Marley and beyond. (For the latter, it didn’t help that the industry did not have a reggae category until 1985.) So how did the Grammys do when hip-hop and New Wave were in the ascendant? Well, ask Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Depeche Mode, or The Cure, whose (surviving) members have presumably given up on waiting for the call. The Notorious B.I.G. and Nas can tell you there was some catching up to do on the hip-hop side in the ’90s. And country superstars like Dierks Bentley and Martina McBride have their issues with the institution too. In fact, when you step back and see how much titanic talent has been given the cold shoulder by the GRAMMYⓇs, it sort of starts to seem like a badge of honor.

When “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X became a phenomenon in 2019, with its genre-twisting collision of country, pop, and hip-hop landing it on the charts for all three genres (not to mention the GRAMMY® awards it nabbed in 2020), many casual observers were surprised by the idea of African-American artists making waves in the country world. But the fact is, there have been black country artists in every era, going all the way back to the music’s beginnings.As those who watched Ken Burns’ much-buzzed PBS documentary Country Music already know, DeFord Bailey was a member of the Grand Ole Opry back in the 1920s, paving the way for generations to come. With the 1939 Western film The Bronze Buckaroo, Herb Jeffries—who proved equally comfortable with jazz and country—became the first African-American singing cowboy star of the movies. The 1960s saw the start of one of the biggest careers in country music: that of Country Hall of Famer Charley Pride. And Stoney Edwards was a reliable presence on country radio throughout the ’70s.The world first came to know Darius Rucker as the big-voiced frontman for roots-rock superstars Hootie & The Blowfish in the ’90s, but when he reinvented himself as a solo star in the 2000s, he was strictly in a Nashville state of mind. The 2000s also birthed a precedent for Lil Nas X’s country/rap crossover in the “hick-hop” sound of Cowboy Troy from Big & Richs crew. So even before “Old Town Road” came along, country in the 2010s was wide open for African-American artists, from the siren sound of Mickey Guyton to the R&B-inflected twang of Kane Brown and the romantic croon of Jimmie Allen.Nobody with half a head on their shoulders would ever suggest that African-American country artists weren’t relatively few and far between, but it’s important to remember that there’s scarcely been a time when they werent a part of the scene.