Artists

This post is part of our Disco 101 program, an in-depth series that looks at the far-reaching, decades-long impact of disco. Curious about disco and want to learn more? Go here to sign up. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. They’ll thank you. We thank you.When disco emerged as a dominant cultural force in the mid-to-late ’70s, regressive cultural forces converged under the banner of rockism to decry its ascendance. Racists, homophobes, and garden-variety closed-minded reactionaries started stirring up impressionable music fans with apocalyptic visions of disco taking over the world and crushing good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll into the dirt beneath its platform heels. Mass record burnings, graffiti, and sloganeering were all part of the benighted Disco Sucks movement. But if anyone ever bothered to ask actual rockers about the issue at the time, they would have gotten a very different perspective.Between the late ‘70s (when disco was at its zenith) and the early ‘80s (when it began to peter out), a remarkable number of high-profile rockers decided to take the plunge and adapt their sound to a disco groove, even if only for a song or two. Granted, it may not have been too huge a shock when try-anything types like The Rolling Stones and David Bowie turned out discofied tracks like “Miss You” and “Fashion,” respectively, especially since the no-disco movement was less prevalent in their native U.K. than in the U.S. But even some American bands you’d never expect to hit the dance floor were having a go at it.Hippie heroes The Grateful Dead got down with the four-on-the-floor feel for “Shakedown Street.” America’s Band themselves, The Beach Boys, put on their polyester (at least figuratively) for “Here Comes the Night.” And hard-rock demons Kiss stepped up to the plate with the ooga-ooga bass lines of “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” ending up with one of the biggest hits of their career in the process.

Whats This Playlist All About? The U.K. house producer (not the 90s sitcom character) and Brianfeeder artist puts together an eclectic list of influential and favorite sounds.

What Do You Get? First, a glimpse into hisAphelion EP, with chilled-out groove "John Cage,” followed by a riveting live version of Lindsey Buckinghams emotionally charged "Go Insane." He then digs into eccentric Japanese avant-pop (Tujiko Noriko), glistening ambient-pop (Ametsub), brassy African soul (Yta Jourias), and a few of his biggest hip-hop inspirations—Madlib and Madvillain. Together, it serves as a good introduction to Ross From Friends own sonic palette.

Greatest Discovery: The dark, menacing fusion of post-punk, ambient, and noise from London-based artist Midas the Cloud.

Would This Mix Impress Rachel From Friends? Actually, it just might. We do recall one episode in which she shuts down a U2 song, so theres hope.

Launched in September 2015 by Snoop Dogg and marketing entrepreneur Ted Chung, Merry Jane is a site that focuses on cannabis culture. One of its regular features is a Spotify playlist called “Takeover.” Earlier this May, Run the Jewels curated a collection of tracks for it that includes their own songs, other New York rappers like Your Old Droog, late-’60s garage rock savants The Shaggs, current garage punk faves White Reaper, and mysterious R&B singer H.E.R.It’s mostly rap, and lots of it—124 tracks to be exact—and its theme is hard to discern; it comes off as a data dump of whatever’s been percolating on El-P and Killer Mike’s hard drives (or, perhaps more accurately, streaming service accounts). Unfortunately, Patrick Lyons’ accompanying Q&A doesn’t go into how El and Mike selected the tracks for their list.With such a large and unwieldy buffet to explore, it may be best to head toward the more exotic fare. St. Louis rapper Tef Poe, buzzy Canadians like Ebhoni and VNCHY, and Chicago rapper Lud Foe are just a few to start with. But if you’re just looking for a good banger like Danny Brown’s “Really Doe,” well, there’s that too.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Toronto indie-rock trio The Rural Alberta Advantage release their fourth album, The Wild, on October 13, 2017 via Paperbag Records. (Listen to its lead single, "Brother," here.) With this playlist created specially for The Dowsers, singer/guitarist Nils Edenloff reveals some of the music that inspired the band during the recording process. "As a band, I think weve always been fairly divergent in terms of our musical tastes but, at the same time, thats something that weve tried to draw on. Whenever were writing, were always aiming to find the intersection between these differing tastes while still trying to find a way push each other out a little outside of their comfort zone. This is by no means a list of everything that we were listening to while we were working on The Wild, but I think the DNA of a lot of these songs definitely left a mark on the record."—Nils Edenloff, The Rural Alberta Advantage

Ryan Adams’ latest record, Prisoner, contains a profoundly affecting and relatable story of personal overcoming that is beautifully filtered through a hard-hitting kaleidoscope of ‘70s and ‘80s sounds and techniques. Yet despite the ever-present ghosts of his influences, the album is an original, organic fulfillment of what he’s been aiming at for most of his career.The sonic ascent to Prisoner began with his 2014 self-titled album, a misty, midnight ride through his neon mind where echoing drums, glowing guitar riffs, and shadowy organs refract The Replacements and Tunnel of Love-era Springsteen. The following year’s 1989, a song-for-song cover of the Taylor Swift album, went even darker, gesturing toward The Smiths and Springsteen’s moodier moments—try to tell me Adams’ version of “Shake It Off” isn’t a luminous, slow-burn cousin to “I’m on Fire.”Prisoner completes the trajectory of these records. Many have called it a breakup album, which in many ways it is, but it’s also full of hope and power thanks to the strength it draws from Adams’ spiritual predecessors. The lightning-quick guitar outbursts of “Do You Still Love Me?” gesture back to Black Sabbath (Vol. 4 is an Adams favorite), Kiss, and AC/DC. The title track evokes the shiny jangle of Johnny Marr, while “Doomsday” imagines what would happen if The Cure had a harmonica player. “To Be Without You” harkens to the joyous, swaggering folk of The Grateful Dead, and “Outbound Train” is vintage Springsteen, complete with suspended chords and lyrics about cars, loneliness, and boredom.The album’s masterful closer resides at the top of the class of Adams’ grand finales, repeating its mantra of “we disappear” with production so crisp and transparent it sounds like Adams is actually disappearing. And yet, throughout the images of fading taillights and haunted houses, beyond The Smiths and Springsteen, Ryan Adams is doing his own thing. And he nails it.Click here to add to Spotify playlist!

Vermont-based singer-songwriter Ryan Montbleau has written his share of tear-jerking songs over the years of heavy touring and steady gigging, so its only fitting that this playlist accompanying live album Woodstock Sessions and a Winter 2019 tour be full of tunes that bring on the waterworks.Montbleau says: "So many of these have to do with time and place, but they all brought the tears at some point. You don’t know when a song is going to hit you or why, of course, although some of these are more reliable in that way. Some are from my childhood (Annie, Howard Jones, Elton John?). Some have to do with a particular relationship. The Tedeschi Trucks Band song I heard them play at a soundcheck when I opened for them and it just went right through me. Assembly of Dust played that dang Oasis song at midnight on a New Year’s show, a song that I had heard on the radio a hundred times and dismissed. Time and place, you never know though... waterworks..."

Fortunately my generation has never had trouble accepting Sade as the origins of a well-wrought tuneful melancholy that for American fans translated as posh but fooled no one who listened to R&B radio before they joined the adult R&B lineup. Besides, it’s Sade whom we have to thank for Maxwell.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

Gangsta rap is supposed to be all about bravado and bluster -- a fantastical playground of platinum-plated pistols, barely dressed women and John Woo worthy shootouts. Houston emcee Scarface provides a dose of realism to the genre with his finely detailed narratives of guilt-ridden murderers, sorrowful drug dealers and disposed "civilians." First as a member of the Geto Boys and then throughout a lengthy solo career, Scarface is one of the Souths most respected and enduring lyricist. For a 2013 Complex feature, he picked his favorite tracks from his extensive. Its a comprehensive playlist that covers hits such as "My Block" or "Mind Playin Tricks," but also dips into deep catalog picks such as the excellent "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die," a stand-out song from his debut that hinted at the narrative nimbleness and moral complexity that would become his calling card.

Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian is not just responsible for his own sonic output, but has positioned himself as a bit of a music authority. As the guitarist and lyricist of his main, iconic band Anthrax, the guitarist of the heavily influential Stormtroopers of Death, a member of supergroup The Damned Things, as well as guitarist in Pearl alongside his wife, singer Pearl Aday, Ian was also a talking head on all things rock/metal history for VH1 in various series (including one he personally hosted called "Rock Show" in the early 2000s). For someone so immersed as both a musician and historian, not to mention an overall ambassador of thrash as one of the Big Four, we of course wanted to know what hes personally hanging out listening to. When Scott sent us his playlist, sure theres a lot of metal classics, but theres also some choices you might not expect, like Otis Redding. Says Ian of his Dowsers mix, "No specific order. Hit shuffle." Listen above or go right here.

Whether on his own, or one half of the legendary 90s NYC rap crew Heltah Skeltah, recently deceased rapper Sean Price was always one of the grimiest, obscene and aggressive rappers in the game. But there was also a sense of humility and depreciation, especially durig the second half of his career. On "Hearing Aid" from his standout solo album Jesus Price Superstar , he quipped that hes a "broke rapper thatll spit for a G," and provides a quick auto-biography: "I started, out broke but then I made a little change/ And blew it all my money on a damn dice game." And, in terms of old-school rappers who were long written off before making an unexpected comeback, he resembles MF DOOM. But as where DOOM trades off an esoteric persona and dense, nearly inscrutable lyrics, Price is the approachable, nice-unless-your-not perennial underdog. I met him a couple of times during various Duck Down events. He was always very nice and quite twisted. Once at SXSW, when I was working for Rhapsody, we shooting an "On the Record" video series where we asked various musicians to discuss their favorite albums in 45 seconds, with a timer displaying on the side of the screen. Most musicians wanted to go over, and we had a buzzer that we would press, which would frequently startle them (I once almost got shot backstage at a Wu Tang concert when said buzzer accidentally went off during a tense moment at 3am). But Price picked Redmans Muddy Waters as his album, and he only talked about it for 25 seconds. I told him that he had about twenty more seconds to go. He added a couple of things and then just out on his mean mug and silently stared at the camera. You can watch it here.