Music Features

So, You Want to Get into Radiohead?

The alt-rock legends' fifth album Amnesiac turns 20 years old today.

By: Chris Lever/Shutterstock

When it comes to a band as versed as Radiohead — whose fifth album Amnesiac turns 20 years old today — it's nearly impossible to imagine the sheer quantity of all their recorded material.

Much to the appeal of diehards, the British alt-rock legends have made their intimidatingly expansive history a little easier to parse. In January 2020, they launched the Radiohead Public Library, an infinite-scroll database filled with virtually every TV performance, newly-reissued merchandise, iconic live shows, B-sides, music videos, and plenty more. It's all neatly sorted by studio album, making it easy for fans to fully dive into their favorite era. But, for those not in the loop, the Radiohead Public Library might make getting into the band even more daunting.

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Alien

Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash

Space and music work quite well together (indeed, the space opera is a genre in and of itself).

Our desire to connect and commune with extraterrestrials—despite the many, many risks this entails—has frequently melted into our music, intertwining with our longing to connect with others and to find meaning in and beyond the limits of our world.

Now that we have proof of aliens via the Pentagon, and because signs of life were just detected on Venus, and particularly because we're all longing for escape during this terrifying time on Earth, could there be a better time to sing out in an attempt to reach the extraterrestrial realm?


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Music Lists

Our 8 Favorite Covers from Musicians in Quarantine

Are you bored in your house? So are these artists.

Stars, they're just like us—stuck in their homes and probably pretty bored.

Here in the states, we're going on a month and a half of practicing social distancing. We could very well go the rest of 2020 without being able to safely attend large gatherings like concerts, which is a huge bummer for both musicians and their fans. Thankfully, plenty of singers have turned to the magic of the Internet to help us get our live music fix, and there's nothing that spices things up quite like a good cover of somebody else's song.

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MUSIC

11 Musicians Who Predicted the Future

These songs predicted the future.

The future, they say, is dark—not dark as in bad, just dark as in uncertain. But sometimes, people find ways to see in the darkness. Music seems to be one of those ways, and popular music in particular tends to be a harbinger of times to come.

Music's foremost clairvoyants include Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, and Kanye West, all of whom predicted the apocalyptic ennui and digitized realities that would define the future (or, our present). But other artists have had uncanny bursts of foresight inside their songs, envisioning distant political events and even predicting their own deaths. Here are some of music's strangest accurate predictions.

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When Thom Yorke's MiniDisc archive was hacked by an unnamed assailant last week, the Radiohead lead-singer was asked to pay $150,000 to retrieve the 18 hours of stolen live recordings.

The sessions were all unnamed tracks made during the band's OK Computer days back in 1997, and Yorke reacted how anyone would react to the theft of demo art made in their late 20's: "It's not v interesting," he wrote. "There's a lot of it… as it's out there it may as well be out there until we all get bored and move on." The band let the 1.8-gigabyte collection fly free, charging £18 ($23) for the whole package. "It's only tangentially interesting," wrote guitarist Johnny Greenwood of the release, "and very, very long."

Similarly, last Monday, it was announced that more than 100 songs by Indiana-based rapper Ugly God were also being held for ransom. The rapper shrugged it off. "I accidentally emailed [the songs] to some fan and [he] wants me to pay him or he says he'll leak them," Ugly God wrote on Twitter. "I refuse to buy my own shit from some fan. So if 100+ songs leak, fuck it."

Leaks and piracy in the music industry aren't uncommon, as artists themselves occasionally threaten to leak their own music, yet a common misconception has always been that an artist is emotionally or monetarily affected by leaked music. The same narrative tried to be spun about music piracy a few years ago. "When you download or stream from a pirate site, pirates profit from online ads or subscriptions," wrote Forbes. "So while you are saving a few dollars, you are also effectively taking away an artist's well-deserved gains and re-directing them…[to] criminals." But in 2018, Spotify was sued for 1.6 billion dollars in a lawsuit that claimed the streaming giant "took a shortcut" to avoid paying royalties to artists and record labels. The suit came after Spotify was forced to pay an additional $20 million in outstanding royalties in 2016.

Even Tidal, the Beyonce and Jay-Z-owned streaming service that claims to be the first ever musician-owned service of its kind, has been accused of faking streams and ripping off independent artists. While it remains difficult to determine what's "fair" to the artist in the age of streaming, hackers and pirates should realize that artists will never succumb to their demands, because artists only make around $7,000 per million streams, anyway. "When cassettes became popular. [People were like,] 'Wait a minute, the listener is in control? No!' And to me, I was like, 'F— yeah, man!'" Foo Fighters David Grohl said about song leaks. He went on, "The first thing we should do is get all the fucking millionaires to shut their mouths, stop bitching about the 25 cents they're losing." It's been clear for years that artists don't benefit from music sales nearly as much as labels and streaming services, hence why they've been the only ones who aggressively fight to quell piracy. "I do not care," Liam Gallagher said in a now-archived interview with Shortlist magazine. "I hate seeing all these rock stars complaining. At least they are downloading your music [you] fucking idiot, and they are paying attention to you."

Additionally, trying to prevent a leak is so taxing that it's become a form of counter-espionage. For Jay-Z and Kanye West's highly anticipated Watch The Throne, the production team maintained "John le Carré-style CIA operative tactics" to keep from springing a leak. "All recording sessions took place in private hotel rooms and all outside producers had to submit beats in person–no e-mail, in other words," wrote Pitchforkof the process. "So, there's your solution to the leak problem, musicians: biometric fingerprint-readers on hard drives and flying producers to meet with you in person." These exhaustive prevention efforts simply aren't worth the trouble. "Despite the mp3 waning as a music commodity, it still retains incredible value as a tool for circulating music." wrote Pitchfork. "For the rest of the world, album leaks are simply an established part of the game." Yet as minimal as a pirate's damage may be to an artist's career, having art stolen can still be upsetting. "As things unfolded I went through a number of phases, but the immediate, overriding feeling was one of complete shock." wrote Jai Paul of the 2013 leak of his debut album Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones). "I felt numb...I felt pretty alone with everything, like no one else seemed to view the situation in the same way I did: as a catastrophe." Even so, the leaks catapulted Jai Paul into underground pop stardom. So the question still remains for those holding tunes hostage: Was this ever destined to work in your favor?

MUSIC

Lil Dicky and Grimes are Kickstarting a New Wave of Climate Change Protest Music

After a long period of silence, popular musicians like Grimes and Lil Dicky are taking notes from Joni Mitchell and have started to release climate protest songs—but will their efforts be enough to launch a movement?

Photo by Jayy Torres on Unsplash

For his new video "Earth," Lil Dicky managed to rally some of pop music's titans to form a truly unique visual and auditory experience.

Featured artists include Ariana Grande (as a zebra asking if she's black or white) and Snoop Dogg (as a marijuana plant); as well as Halsey, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, and even an all-knowing Leonardo DiCaprio. It's a deeply disorienting animated journey across time and space, led by a caveman-esque Dicky.

But if you can get past all of the dirty jokes and layers of fluff, at its heart, "Earth" is a climate change protest song—and for that, it's revolutionary.

Lil Dicky - Earth (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com

Music, art, and activism have long gone hand in hand. In the 1960s, musicians sang tirelessly about bringing the boys back from Vietnam and taking down "the big man," and artists like Bob Dylan and Billie Holiday have long inspired activist movements. Today, artists like Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino are steadily releasing protest anthems that are sure to go down in history.


Childish Gambino - This Is America (Official Video)www.youtube.com

Still, though it is one of the most fundamentally pressing issues of our time, climate change has been largely ignored in modern protest music. Just Google "climate change protest music" and you'll find articles with headlines like "Where are all the climate change songs?"

In a way, this lacuna makes sense. Climate change can feel like an abstract and unimportant issue, especially for people who fear for their lives when simply walking down the street, or who are too concerned with finding their families' next meal to worry about impending ecological decline. However, climate change will disproportionately affect people of color and lower socioeconomic classes, making it an issue with profoundly intersectional consequences.

And it is no longer an abstract threat—a dire 2018 UN report proclaimed that we have twelve years to reverse the worst effects of climate change, which will effectively decimate the human race if it progresses at its current rate. The existential size of this crisis is unprecedented, and so it calls for unprecedented levels of unity and action—both of which have historically been facilitated by music and art.

Though environmental activism has yet to break through to mainstream popular music, climate change protest music does exist, and it seems to be gaining traction. In March, the singer-producer Grimes announced that her next project will be called Miss_Anthropocene, after an alter ego who personifies climate change. "It's a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world," she wrote, adding, "She's composed of Ivory and Oil."

Regarding her inspiration behind the character, Grimes (who now goes by c) explained, "Climate change is something I'm only ever confronted with in a sad/ guilty way…. Reading news and what not. So my goal is to make climate change fun...(I mean, everybody loves a good villain… re: the joker, Queen Beryl)...so maybe it'll be a bit easier to look at if it can exist as a character and not just abstract doom."

Other musicians have tried different approaches to create popular music that raises awareness about climate change. Recently, the artist Maureen Lupo Lilanda collaborated with other Zambian musicians on a song called "Samalilani." The track was released alongside a video comprised of dire scenes of ecological catastrophe—charcoal burning, charred tree stumps, flames devouring a rainforest. Together, the song and film make a powerful, chilling statement.

Theresa N'gambi, James Sakala, Maureen Lilanda, Pompi & Shaps Mutambo - Samalilani (Official Video)www.youtube.com

"It occurred to me that things were changing," Lilanda said of her inspiration behind the song, noting the severe changes she noticed in the Zambian countryside, which a lack of rainfall had turned from a lush, verdant landscape to a barren desert over the course of her lifetime. "Once I understood it, it felt imperative that I change the mindset," she added.

"Samililani" was a collaboration with National Geographic-led initiative Conservation Music, a project led by geographer and musician Alex Paullin. His nonprofit, which has traveled all over Africa in an effort to work with musicians and artists on raising awareness about climate change, has also collaborated with a Zambian reggae group and collective called Yes Rasta! to craft a climate change protest song called "Sons of October."

Sons of October - Yes Rasta! | Zambian musicians teach climate change solutions!www.youtube.com

With its unique ability to access the deepest and most terrifying of human emotions, music is an important and largely untapped resource that might be instrumental in the fight against climate change. "There isn't any other tool [besides music] that you can use that is as effective," Paullin said of his mission. Indeed, music could be vital in helping us collectively move past a state of paralysis or chosen ignorance, into a more unified mindset that will allow us to band together to enact real change.

Before any of this happens, the music needs to be written. Luckily, from an aesthetic perspective, climate change is rich territory. Since time immemorial, artists have waxed rhapsodic about the beauty and power of the natural world, and the threat of its decline creates the kind of existential tension that has long inspired truly masterful works of art.

All this isn't to say that climate change protest music doesn't exist. If you do some digging, you'll find that there actually is a fair amount of music about climate change and environmentalism, stretching back nearly a century. A lot of the greatest music about climate change comes from the 1960s—before anyone knew the true extent of the damage we inflicting on our world in by ceaselessly pumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere. One prescient track is Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," which still frequently plays on radio stations, having long ago solidified its place as an environmentalist's anthem.

Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchellwww.youtube.com

The early 2000s saw another wave of climate-change-inspired music. Increasingly alarming scientific reports had metalheads taking note: Metallica's song "Blackened" and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" both explore environmental decline. A few of pop's brightest stars had something to say, too—in 2009, Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and the Jonas Brothers collaborated on a song called "Send It On" which donated its proceeds to environmental organizations. More recently, artists including Radiohead and Jack Johnson have been actively writing and speaking out about climate change, as have plenty of indie or lesser-known musicians.


Metallica - Blackenedwww.youtube.com


But the majority of new climate change-inspired music has received little significant commercial attention. Among the outliers are ANOHNI's "4 Degrees" and AURORA's "The Seed," both of which are promising hints at more to come. Weyes Blood's critically acclaimed new album is rife with meditations on climate anxiety, and activists Jimmy and Sid have also been steadily creating innovative protest songs, like many diverse musicians from around the world. Still, much of the most widely publicized recent climate change protest art has, ironically, been created by scientists. For example, in 2015, a young scientist composed a piece for a string quartet based on 133 years of climate change data. While projects like this one are impressive, they are also complex and somewhat inaccessible for those of us who are not scientifically inclined—and certainly, they are not as likely to gain media traction as, say, a song that features Lady Gaga or Beyoncé.

AURORA - The Seedwww.youtube.com

Scientific proof of climate change has been public knowledge for a long time, but clearly facts and figures have not been enough to spark widespread cultural and political action. What we need now is a never-before-seen level of collective support and unity, and this can only happen if climate change becomes an intersectional cultural movement.

Most likely, the next decade will be defined by intense protests across the globe. As activists flood the streets of London, as movements like Sunrise pack Washington, D.C. offices and chant their slogans to the sky during nationwide strikes, and as young kids stand before behemoth politicians and fossil fuel executives and ask them to stop destroying their futures, at the very least, they ought to have inspiring music to accompany them.

So for all its absurdity, Lil Dicky's "Earth" is, at least, a promising indication that climate change is being recognized by some of pop culture's most influential figures. In light of the literally apocalyptic threat that we collectively face—and considering the massive organizational efforts it will take to even start to heal some of the wounds we have inflicted on the earth—it has to be just the beginning.



Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York City. Follow her on Twitter @edenarielmusic.


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