Genres

Amid the anxieties of recent times as well as potential concerns about the well-being of musical heroes of a certain vintage, it’s been reassuring to the international community of Sparks fanatics to know that Ron and Russell Mael are weathering things in their customary manner. Along with rave reviews for the Los Angeles-based duo’s new album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, the web has been filling up with the brothers’ stream of quarantine-inspired home videos, including one of Ron showing off his collection of international hand sanitizers.

Clearly, this is not how Sparks should have been celebrating their 50th anniversary of crafting irrepressibly witty and wondrous music, but it will have to do. Current circumstances also demonstrate a quality that has long been one of the band’s greatest virtues: an ability to engage with the now—or perhaps 15 minutes beyond it—without ever sacrificing their idiosyncrasies. That’s as true now as it was when the Maels left L.A. to become glam-pop heroes in early-’70s Britain, where their impact was clear on the likes of Queen, who dropped their Zeppelin shtick for a more flamboyant mode not long after they opened for Sparks. It was equally clear when they transformed again, with Giorgio Moroder’s help, to create some of the most effervescent electronic dance pop ever recorded, devising a template for New Order, Duran Duran, The Human League, and many more acolytes.

Not that the Maels are much for resting on laurels. Instead, they’ve continually engaged with younger admirers (as they did in FFS, their 2015 team-up with Franz Ferdinand) while releasing new albums that maintain their standards of excellence, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip being another case in point. Their cult may soon see an expansion of their ranks with the pending release of two new movies: Annette, an L.A.-set musical by French director Leos Carax featuring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard singing original Sparks songs, and a documentary about the band by super-fan Edgar Wright.

To celebrate the past 50 years of Sparks, we present this set of essential songs by the Maels themselves and many others whose music bears their influence, all to be savored along with the sanitizer of your choice.

At a minute and 53 seconds, “Old Town Road” made headlines for being the shortest song to hit No. 1 since 1965. Still, that’s a spiraling prog symphony compared to these songs: 50 of them, all 7 seconds or less.

The idea of tiny microsongs gestated for about 25 years before reaching full flower. The “event scores” of the ’60s Fluxus movement turned quixotic, whimsical actions into bursts of music and art. From the ’70s into the ’80s, punk rock got speedier and speedier. In 1981, D.C. hardcore band Youth Brigade released “No Song II,” a second-or-so-long blurt whose sole lyric was “No.” Humorous, punk-adjacent thrash-metal bands like Stormtroopers of Death (S.O.D.) and Wehrmacht jumped into the fray in 1985.

The big bang, as it were, for tiny songs was Napalm Death’s notorious “You Suffer,” the U.K. grindcore band closing the arms race of speedy songs in 1987 with a 1.316-second micro-rant (full lyrics: “You suffer, but why?”) that made the Guinness Book of World Records. Teeny songs quickly became a staple of grindcore bands and their scruffier counterparts in American “powerviolence” bands. Powerviolence label Slap-a-Ham even crammed 84 songs onto a 7-inch in 1998. Here are 50 tunes in less than five minutes, spanning hardcore, grindcore, powerviolence, cybergrind, experimental electronic music, alternative pop and more.

There’s a kid inside of us, no matter how decrepit we get, and the kid inside Tom Waits probably sounds a lot like the one in “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” a highlight of Waits’ gloriously ragged 1992 masterpiece Bone Machine. Given that there’s “nothing out there but sad and gloom” based on what he’s seen in the lives of the adults around him, the world of grown-ups rightly seems unappealing and bewildering. “How do you move in a world of fog that’s always changing things?” he wonders, articulating a dilemma that stymied so many of the hard-luck characters who tell their stories in the hundreds of songs authored by one of American music’s most cherished mavericks.

That question is probably still on the man’s mind as he turns 70. We like to imagine him as the coot prospector he played in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, scratching his head and grumbling, “How the hell did that happen?” in that iconic voice, which never seemed as if it could get any raspier but somehow always did.

Then again, turning 70 maybe isn’t such a big deal to a guy who tried hard to seem old before his time. When Waits first emerged in the Los Angeles club scene of the early ’70s, his clear devotion to heroes like Jack Kerouac and Thelonious Monk made him seem like a scruffy relic to listeners more hip to Jackson Browne. He styled himself as a piano-playing Charles Bukowski, tickling the ivories as he spun hard-luck tales equal parts miserable and hilarious. (Check out his 1975 live album Nighthawks at the Diner for vivid early evidence of both his storytelling chops and his ability to delight a crowd.)But anyone who figured they had him pegged would be surprised again and again by what followed in the ’80s and beyond. Once Waits found a long-sought sense of personal stability with wife and creative partner Kathleen Brennan, his creative moves grew bolder, starting with 1983’s stunning Swordfishtrombones and continuing with later triumphs like 2004’s Real Gone. The music they contained could be tender and heartbreaking or crazy and chaotic. Whatever the case, it all remained true to his reliably skewed vision of that confusing grown-up world.

In the process, he’d honor his own inspirations—Bob Dylan, Harry Partch, Mose Allison, Captain Beefheart—while inspiring countless younger artists who absorbed his profound influence on how great songs get made and sung. To celebrate the occasion of his 70th, here’s a set of 70 Waits essentials and many more songs that show his grubby fingerprints.

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.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that “rock is dead.” But if we are to believe its original edict of living fast, dying young, and leaving a good-looking corpse, then rock is still very much sitting pretty, mainlining a bottomless supply of embalming fluid. For all the perpetual hand-wringing over rock’s health status—Is it still relevant to anyone under the age of 35? Will we ever see another Nirvana? Do The 1975 and Twenty One Pilots count?—each year yields bountiful evidence that there’s really nothing to worry about. If dominant pop-cultural trends are waves crashing onto a beach, then rock ’n’ roll is the sand—a vast mosaic comprising infinite grains of different shades and shapes. Though it may not be able to compete with the wave for sheer attention-seizing impact, it ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.

But whereas many of the 2019 BestRockAlbums lists embrace a more liberal definition of the genre that encompasses the brittle serenades of Big Thief, the avant-yacht rock of Bon Iver, and the ambient symphonies of Nick Cave on his latest, our survey takes a more brutally reductionist tack—here, we celebrate all things noisy and/or nasty. The songs on this year-end survey span garage rock (The Schizophonics), post-punk (FONTAINES D.C.), arena-ready alt-rock (Chastity), psych (Mdou Moctar), power pop (Young Guv), post-hardcore (Fury), unruly emo (PUP), cacophonous protest music (Brittany Howard), scrappy jangle (Kiwi jr.), avant-garde dissonance (Kim Gordon), drum-machined minimalism (Sleaford Mods), and whatever the fuck you want to call black midi, but they all reinforce the idea of rock as not so much a guitar/bass/drums-driven sound as an anxious, agitated attitude and bone-shaking physical sensation.‍

Photo Credit: Daniel Topete

If you’re mixing up a cool Brazilian cocktail to keep you from overheating this summer, here are a few essentials you’ll need to have on hand. Start with a little cachaça, some lime, and a pinch of sugar, then add a dash of samba, some bossa nova, and a touch of Tropicália if you really want to keep things on the cool side.

Brazilians have never been strangers to sweltering, sun-baked days, and they’ve always known exactly how to counter all that heat—by crafting music that sounds and feels as if it’s lifting a breeze off of the ocean and sending it right in your direction. Sure, Brazilian musicians know how to work up a feverish intensity when the spirit moves them, but they’ve always been masters at maintaining a sub-zero level of chill. You can hear it in the supple, sensuous sounds of bossa nova originators Luiz Bonfá and João Gilberto. Then you can follow it through to the pioneers who gained stardom in the ’60s by putting their own slant on the style as part of the MPB (música popular brasileira) movement, like Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, and Edu Lobo.

Even when forward-looking artists like Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, and Caetano Veloso started making headway in the Tropicália scene by blending Brazilian rhythms with elements of psychedelia, they still found plenty of ways to keep things breezy. In later years, the likes of Bebel Gilberto and Céu brought modern electronic touches into the mix, and singers like Luciana Souza swept in with a jazz influence, but they still served up the sort of sounds that would work just right in combination with a cool caipirinha lifted to your lips on a sultry summer afternoon.

What’s This Playlist All About? The team at Consequence of Sound compile a list of their must-hear moments of the decade, “the songs we leaned into during the heartbreak, political turmoil, celebration, and devastation that was the 2010s,” as music editor Erica Campbell puts it. These are the tracks that defined the times by diminishing boundaries, challenging social norms, and making us think about what really matters—or at least just allowing us to dance and forget about all of it.‍

What You Get: A rather polished mix of massive pop hits, defiant rap anthems, fizzy electro-pop grooves, sexy electro-soul slow-burners, angsty indie-rock fist-pumpers, and juicy psych-pop earworms. We say “polished” because nothing is too surprising—and certainly not very out-there—but the playlist captures some of the big music stories of the decade: Beyoncé’s badass transformation into a radical sociopolitical voice with “Formation”; her husband JAY Z’s dynamic yet way-too-fleeting dream-team moment with Kanye on “Ni**as In Paris”; and her sister Solange’s slick reshaping of indie R&B with “Cranes in the Sky.” Moving on from that royal family, the CoS team would have been remiss to not have included Adele’s skyrocketing “Rolling in the Deep,” Daft Punk’s undeniably catchy “Get Lucky” with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, James Blake’s dubstep-soul-pioneering “The Wilhelm Scream,” Lana Del Rey’s millennial-noir-defining “Video Games,” and Billie Eilish’s chart-topping flip-off “bad guy.” Meanwhile, their No. 1 pick, Robyn’s effervescent dance-cry inspiration “Dancing on My Own,” wraps up all the emotions of the decade, an impressive feat given that it was released way back in 2010.

‍Greatest Discovery: The dark, moody jazz of “Windswept” from Chromatics and Glass Candy main man Johnny Jewel (slotted at No. 84) offers a warming respite from some of the more in-your-face productions it’s surrounded by.

‍Should’ve Been Way Higher: One of the decade’s greatest moments in music can be found on pick No. 39, starting at around the two-minute mark, when late soul legend Bobby Womack bursts through Gorillaz’s hypnotic flow with the power of Poseidon erupting from the sea. Yes, “Stylo” deserves to be just a tad higher.

What’s This Playlist All About? The self-proclaimed “slop pop” duo out of New York offer up a soundtrack for solitude. These are the songs they’ve been listening to in the comforts of their home as they celebrate the release of their second album, Do You Wonder About Me?, a fidgety set of vulnerable indie-rock confessions.

‍What You Get: A breezy sampler of raw, emotionally resonant sounds—both young and old—reflecting the messy (and sometimes silly) reality Diet Cig so naturally capture themselves. This includes a mix of young DIY punks (Nouns), indie-pop underdogs (The Spook School), blissful bedroom-pop darlings (Addy), Icelandic disco groovers (Daði Freyr), and some of the 2010s’ most potent voices, like Perfume Genius and Billie Eilish. They slip in a few indie mainstays as well, including Bright Eyes and Broken Social Scene, alongside avant-garde heroine Nico.

‍Greatest Discovery: The woozy, wispy wanderings of Someone, the moniker of artist Tessa Rose Jackson, whose “Forget Forgive” is the ideal accompaniment to pensive moments of daydreaming out the window.

‍Best Pick for Anytime You’re Stuck Inside: Bring some sunshine into your home with The Friends Of Distinction’s shiny, happy, conga-banging psych-soul classic “Grazing In the Grass”—an activity that feels downright rapturous after too much time inside.

It’s easy to assume that power pop is one of the most male-centric styles this side of heavy metal. At first glance, it seems like the genre has always been based on “boys” singing to/about “girls,” and there’s no denying that the most celebrated practitioners are overwhelmingly male. But once you scratch the surface, the distaff side of power pop becomes quite apparent.

Female-fronted power-pop acts have been part of the scene from the start. In the ’70s, they included high-profile bands like Blondie, who brought some CBGB attitude and a gender switch (“Denis”) to Randy & The Rainbows 1963 hit “Denise,” and The Heaters, an L.A. band led by two sisters, whose “Put On the Heat” is one of the great lost power-pop gems of the era.

Women made their way to the forefront of the power-pop realm more in the ’80s, with tracks like The Go-Go’s’ “We Got the Beat” and The Bangles’ “Hero Takes a Fall” becoming ubiquitous on the radio. Of course, for every Bangles or Go-Go’s, there were a dozen equally ingratiating but lesser-known bands, like Bonnie Hayes With The Wild Combo (“Girls Like Me”) and The Shivvers (“Teenline”).

These days, power poppers tend to be farther from the mainstream, but there seem to be more women in the mix than ever. Whether we’re talking about the garage-rock giddiness of Shannon & The Clams’ “The Cult Song,” the four-on-the-floor momentum of The Sugar Stems’ “We Only Come Out at Night,” or the reverb-soaked stomp of The Pink Tiles’ “Time for Love,” there’s no getting around the fact that the 2010s became the best decade yet for gender parity on the power-pop front.

From the stalwarts of the 70s to the bands of the moment, heres a handy guide to power pops feminine side.

On October 11, Lightning Bolt return with their seventh album, Sonic Citadel, reminding us of the aural brutality—and, you know, creative vibrancy—that a couple of weirdos from Rhode Island can wreak with just a drum kit, a bass guitar, a mic, and a mask. Like a lot of power duos, the band found fame amid the 2000s indie-rock boom. Also like a lot of them, Lightning Bolt are still going—stomping and screeching like a two-headed dinosaur ripping its way through a modern era in which even bedroom records can feel overproduced. This set pulls together 25 songs from as many duos. Most pairs hail from the 2000s, bookended (chronologically) by the grinding ’90s grunge of Local H and the 2019 post-everything electro-whatever of Twenty One Pilots.

It’s an eclectic lineup. There are bluesy bands like The White Stripes and The Black Keys, party destroyers like Death From Above 1979 and Japanther, folk-inspired acts like Wye Oak and Two Gallants, metalheads Early Man and Jucifer, psych-poppers The Holydrug Couple, dream-poppers Giant Drag, and even capital-P pop-poppers like Matt and Kim. What’s consistent among them, though, is that each outfit sounds greater than the sum of its parts (typically drums and either guitar or bass), and most play loud and hard. Maybe their leanness makes them extra mean. Maybe they’ve just got something to prove. Either way, the virtues of the power duo aren’t celebrated enough. Hit play here to make amends.

‍Photo Credit: Scott Alario