Middle 8, ten points per video

The Last Time TV Made a Band

On 3 March 2014 Future Islands played Seasons on Letterman, and Samuel T. Herring turned four minutes of network TV into a prowling, chest-pounding, growling performance that became the most watched clip on the show's YouTube channel.

When you have three #1 albums with zero hits

Vampire Weekend have landed three number one albums on the Billboard 200 without ever once appearing on the Hot 100, which is close to a unique record.

Does The Dare sound too much like LCD Soundsystem?

The Dare, Harrison Patrick Smith, draws LCD Soundsystem comparisons on four specific counts: squelchy synths, claps on the backbeat, a half-drunk James Murphy vocal impression, and album art that echoes LCD's.

I'm so over brat

Brat was named album of the year by at least 27 major publications and outranked Beyonce, The Cure and Nick Cave as the best reviewed album of 2024 on Metacritic, then swept three Brit Awards and won three Grammys from seven nominations.

How David Bowie’s Blackstar Turned Death into Art

Blackstar was released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday, and he died two days later. It is the first Bowie album with no image of him on the cover.

How Justice turned rock fans into rave kids

Justice were two graphic designers before they were a band. Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay met at a Paris party in 2002, one a Metallica fan out of an experimental post-rock band, the other rooted in hip hop and pop.

Something weird is happening in post-punk

The organising observation: dance punk comes back roughly every 20 years, and this time is different because three generations of it are alive at once, the 1980s originals, the 2000s revival and the current post-Brexit UK wave.

25 Albums in One Decade: The King Gizzard Phenomenon

The headline arithmetic: 25 albums in just over a decade, an average of 2.27 a year, which puts their hundredth record somewhere around 2056.

When you can't keep the band together

The structural problem was there before the first record. Atlantic signed Hayley Williams alone, envisioning a solo pop artist, and she resisted because she wanted to be in a band rather than the next Avril Lavigne.

Why The Flaming Lips Still Matter

The reach argument comes first: MGMT's Oracular Spectacular and Tame Impala's Innerspeaker share a producer with the Flaming Lips, which is how a band most people know for two albums ended up shaping a generation of psych rock.

Something weird is happening in hip-hop

The numbers behind the premise: R&B and hip hop still hold the largest US market share at 25.9 percent in Luminate's 2023 mid-year report, down from 26.8 and 27.7 in the two years before, and that slide is happening during record streaming volumes.

John Williams is a genius for this one

The whole analysis turns on the leitmotif, German for leading motive, a short musical tag attached to a character or idea, and Williams uses them across the Indiana Jones films more densely than almost anyone.

When your band finally goes mainstream

The band are three Followill brothers and a cousin, raised as preachers' kids moving between churches in the southern US, who regrouped in Nashville after their parents divorced.

When Nirvana rips you off

The technique that carried Smells Like Teen Spirit onto radio was extreme dynamics, quiet verses against noisy explosive choruses, and Nirvana took it from Pixies.

The best electronic albums that aren't by Daft Punk

Jamie xx's In Colour is the 2015 case for the list, a blend of house and UK garage that works as a thesis statement for the decade, and the video notes that The xx's most popular song is an instrumental.

The Magic of Frank Ocean and Tyler’s Collaborations

The two former Odd Future members have worked together on more than a dozen tracks, which is the scale that makes the pairing a body of work rather than a few guest spots.

The Music that Defined THE NEW ROCK REVOLUTION

The revival starts in Detroit with The White Stripes' debut, a two-piece built on Son House country blues and the local garage scene, and the template was in place from the first record even though nobody outside Michigan noticed.

When you’re basically not a real band

Gorillaz began as a joke at the expense of the thing it became. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett were watching MTV in 1998, decided mainstream pop had gone hollow, and reasoned that a cartoon band would be no more artificial than the real ones.

When you self-sabotage your own success

The founding joke is the whole story. Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser wrote Kids and Time to Pretend as parodies of pop and called themselves The Management to mock the industry's business side.

When making your debut album almost kills you

The collapse that precedes the record is specific: pneumonia and mono leading to a liver infection, no job, being pushed out of a band he had been in for ten years, a breakup, and an online gambling habit.

When you hate your most popular song

The framing scene is a 2016 Paris show where a fan spent the gig shouting for Creep, Thom Yorke acknowledged him, and the band teased only the chords of a song they had not played in nearly seven years.

Why BROCKHAMPTON Broke Up

The usual boy band is assembled by a powerful producer. BROCKHAMPTON was assembled by a teenager posting on a Kanye West forum looking for people to make music with.

Every time the Arctic Monkeys changed their sound

Three albums are named as the actual hinges across seven records: Humbug, AM, and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Everything else is adjustment between them.

When you make a psychedelic record for loners

Lonerism is positioned as the hinge of the catalogue, the record that carries Tame Impala from the guitar psych of Innerspeaker to the synth pop of Currents, and nothing after it would exist without it.

How Green Day's most personal track became a meme

Billie Joe Armstrong's answer to the annual wake-up-Green-Day meme is short: have fun, and get a life.

The Darker Meaning Behind CHANDELIER

The reading that drives the video: Chandelier sounds like a party anthem and is actually about being trapped in substance abuse, told from inside the cycle.

Daft Punk's Love Letter to Music

The guest list is the argument. Disco supplied Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder, hip hop and R&B supplied Pharrell, seventies soft rock supplied Paul Williams, alternative rock Julian Casablancas, experimental pop Panda Bear, and each brings a decade with them.

How MUSE wrote a space rock opera

Muse describe Knights of Cydonia themselves as 40 years of rock history inside six minutes, built from spaghetti westerns, surf rock and British experimental music.

Top 8 Albums of 2022 (so far)

The Smile's A Light for Attracting Attention is described as a Radiohead record with a jazz drummer, Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet alongside Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, pulling the material toward krautrock and loose free jazz.

When you start beef with your music label

The whole saga fits in one calendar year: sign to a major, release a landmark record, cancel the tour, burn the advance in a luxury hotel, and leak the second album without permission.

Is A Moon Shaped Pool Radiohead's last album?

The framing fact: six years after A Moon Shaped Pool is already the longest gap between Radiohead albums, beating the five years after The King of Limbs.

Who are BLACK COUNTRY, NEW ROAD?

The scene gets two competing names, the Windmill scene after the London venue and the Speedy Wunderground scene after the indie label, covering black midi, Shame and Squid alongside Black Country, New Road.

The Curious Case of ALT-J

The channel itself traces back to this record. Hearing Breezeblocks in 2012 sent the host from straightforward indie pop into the kind of listening that became Middle 8.

Is JACK WHITE the current king of rock?

The structural choice behind the 2022 records: instead of balancing heavy riffs against acoustic songs on one album as he usually does, White split the two moods into two separate releases.

The band that wasn’t THE STROKES

The setup is a band stuck. After three albums The Strokes could not agree on a direction, Angles came out disjointed from the infighting, and Comedown Machine arrived with the band refusing to tour or promote it.

The Mystery Music Collective SAULT

The premise is the output rate plus the secrecy: five albums in four years from a collective that stays out of public view, with one of them available for only 99 days.

You’ve gotta listen to EVERYTHING EVERYTHING

The pitch is consistency. Five albums with no real misses, and a sixth on the way already shaping up as their strongest since Get to Heaven.

The Hidden Meaning Behind Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

The BBC banned the song from radio over the drug references it assumed were there, and the band maintained the acronym was coincidence.

Glass Animals only make concept albums

Dave Bayley recorded the vocal for Gooey while holding a pineapple he had named Sasha Fierce, a performance trick meant to push the track toward a tropical feel.

Breaking Down DAWN FM

The premise is continuity: After Hours ended with the character stuck in his own cycle of love and loss, and Dawn FM picks up the next morning.

This is Arcade Fire’s most ambitious album yet

The record starts with a trip to Haiti, where Regine Chassagne's family home is, and the band joining Rara, the week-long festival before Easter with its paper-mache masks, drums, tin trumpets and bamboo horns.

The True Meaning Behind SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

The title came off a wall. Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill wrote that Kurt smelled like Teen Spirit in marker after a night of drinking at his apartment, and he saw it when he woke up.

The trap album that changed hip hop forever

The genre is named after Atlanta slang for a drug house, and T.I. coined the term in 2003 with a record called Trap Muzik.

What Happened to LINKIN PARK

The scale is easy to forget: the band's catalogue has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and they spent most of a decade as one of the biggest acts in the world.

The album that revived MGMT

The three songs everyone knows were written as an attempt at the poppiest possible music, meant to mock pop, and the joke then overshadowed everything the band did afterwards.

Why PHOEBE BRIDGERS Became An Indie Darling

The argument for her ubiquity is the guest list: two solo records, an all-female supergroup, production for other artists, and features alongside Lorde, Hiro, Fiona Apple, The National, Kid Cudi, Bright Eyes, The 1975 and Hayley Williams.

The Tragedy Behind ...LIKE CLOCKWORK

Six years passed between albums, filled by producing the Arctic Monkeys' third record, playing in Eagles of Death Metal and Them Crooked Vultures, and a second child.

The Album That Changed TYLER THE CREATOR

Cherry Bomb is treated as the problem the next record solves, experimentation that split listeners, with abrasive horrorcore sitting awkwardly against the neo-soul material.

CALIFORNICATION and The Myth of California

California's status as the place to make it was set in 1849 by the largest gold rush on record, which pulled hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars into the state.

Why KENDRICK LAMAR Raps About Being A Gemini

The frame is astrological but used structurally: Lamar's birthday falls under Gemini, symbolised by twins, and duality runs through the catalogue as a working method rather than a belief.

THE NEW ABNORMAL or: How The Strokes Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Band

The original mistake was speed. After the debut the band believed they had to put out another record immediately or lose their career, which turned making music into an obligation.

How BEACH HOUSE Changed Dream Pop

The influence is measurable in search data: Google Trends shows the phrase dream pop spiking every time Beach House release an album.

The ARCTIC MONKEYS' Misunderstood Masterpiece

After AM, Alex Turner had writer's block and had also lost interest in writing love songs following the second Last Shadow Puppets record.

The album that changed Cage The Elephant

The band were called Perfect Confusion until a man charged at Matt Shultz after a Knoxville show and, instead of attacking him, hugged him while repeating the phrase that became their name.

DISCOVERY: Why it's Daft Punk's Masterpiece

The name came from an insult. Their failed punk band was dismissed by a critic as daft punky thrash, and they took the phrase as a brief and set out to prove the reviewer wrong.

Why CURRENTS is the Perfect Break Up Record

The title works two ways at once, movement and going with the flow on one side, and water imagery for a flood of feeling on the other.

Why WONDERWALL Is So Popular

It is officially the first song of the 1990s to pass a billion Spotify streams, and it topped charts in over a dozen countries.

The Hidden Love Triangle in FOLKLORE

The method behind the album is the point: written in isolation, with Swift writing from the perspective of people she had never met as well as people she had known.

If we had to pick the worst Radiohead album

Pablo Honey gets a pass in the argument. It is generic rather than bad, and a debut that everything after improves on is not the worst thing a band can have.

Breaking Down AFTER HOURS

The album is read as the next step in a single ongoing character, built across the mixtape trilogy, Kiss Land, Beauty Behind the Madness and Starboy, each repeating the same cycle with different production.

What Happened to COLDPLAY

The scale first: eight albums and over 100 million records sold worldwide, which is the context for treating any decline as a decline rather than a failure.

The True Meaning Behind PAPER PLANES

The commercial facts: number four on the Hot 100, her first top ten, a Grammy nomination and an Oscar nod, platinum in Canada, the US and the UK.

Why Have THE WHITE STRIPES Never Talked About This?

The pattern nobody mentions: every one of the six White Stripes albums contains exactly one song with Little in the title, from the debut through to the last record.

When you discover the dark side of The Killers' debut album

Hot Fuss contains a three-part murder story presented out of order, with one part missing from the album entirely for years.

SONGS FOR THE DEAF Is A Road Trip Concept Album

The lineup was a one-off dream team. Dave Grohl put Foo Fighters on hold to be the band's full-time drummer, alongside Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri and Mark Lanegan.

The Heartbreaking Story Behind Sufjan Stevens' Fourth of July

Carrie & Lowell follows the death of Stevens's mother shortly after The Age of Adz, and the relationship behind it was already difficult, with his earlier music describing her as an unfit parent.

How GOTYE Created A Song We Used To Know

The numbers behind the one-hit-wonder claim: eight weeks at number one on the Hot 100, number one in 18 countries, and the first song to sell over five million copies in the first half of a year.

How Beyoncé Made LEMONADE

Lemonade is an hour-long visual album divided into named chapters, moving from learning of a betrayal toward forgiveness, and dedicated to generations of black women.

How MIDNIGHT CITY Was Made

The opening synth riff is not a synth. It is Anthony Gonzalez's own voice, pitch-shifted and buried in effects.

The Healing Powers of KIDS SEE GHOSTS

The record is framed as a 23-minute therapy session between two artists who have each lived with mental illness, built to leave the listener with something usable rather than only a document of struggle.

The True Meaning Behind PUMPED UP KICKS

The gap between the sound and the subject is the whole story: a relaxed tropical arrangement carrying a song about a teenager planning to shoot his classmates.

THE SLOW RUSH Is A Concept Album About Time

The catalogue is read as one continuous autobiography, self-reflection on the first album, isolation on the second, heartbreak on the third, and time on this one.

How FKA Twigs Uses MAGDALENE As A Metaphor

The album's title figure is Mary Magdalene, who in the gospels followed Jesus, was present at the crucifixion and was the first to witness the resurrection, yet history remembers her as a repentant prostitute.

When a teenager redefines pop music

She had passed a billion streams before releasing a debut album, largely on the strength of Ocean Eyes, recorded when she was 13.

That Time RADIOHEAD Gave Away An Album For Free

Hail to the Thief completed a six-album contract with EMI, so after that tour the band had no obligation to make anything ever again.

The Mythology Behind YEEZUS | Part Two

The structural claim: the first four tracks are the ascent and everything after is the collapse, with the character wading through what is left of his own humanity.

The Mythology Behind YEEZUS | Part One

The framing device is Greek myth, where the stories that matter are not the gods' roles but the heroes who overcome or are destroyed by the conditions of mortal life.

The Genius of IGOR

The alter egos are the through-line of the catalogue, each one a window into a stage of growth, from the characters of the early trilogy through Flower Boy.

How LIL NAS X Created The Most Popular Song Ever

He spent his teenage years making memes and built an audience on Twitter before music, which is the skill the whole story rests on.

When a debut album redefines indie rock

The album was made during a run of deaths in the band's families, with Richard Reed Parry's aunt, Regine Chassagne's grandmother and the Butler brothers' grandfather all dying within a year.

When your debut album gets stolen and leaked

The story starts with a demo put on MySpace around 2010, a London singer, writer and producer folding dubstep, indie rock and R&B into one song that still worked as pop.

The Darker Meaning Behind HEY YA!

The chart record is the setup for the joke: nine weeks at number one, the first song ever to reach a million paid downloads on iTunes, and a Grammy for best urban performance.

How LED ZEPPELIN Made Their Fourth Album

After the lukewarm reception to the third album, with their success being written off as hype and marketing, they left the fourth record untitled with no band name on the sleeve.

KID A, The Greatest Left Turn In Music History

The OK Computer tour ran another year and a half past a disastrous Glastonbury set, and the cycle of making and touring records left Thom Yorke catatonic with depression.

Is OK COMPUTER The Best Album Ever?

The context is a band worn down by four years on the road, with their first hit having thrown them into the spotlight and the follow-up pushing them further in.

Let’s talk about Vampire Weekend’s Original Trilogy

The trilogy is read as two parallel developments, Rostam Batmanglij growing as a producer and Ezra Koenig maturing as a writer, which is what makes the arc feel inevitable in order.

The Authenticity of LANA DEL REY

Born to Die has spent over 300 weeks on the Billboard 200, which only three women have managed, on more than seven million copies sold.

Animal Collective really had 4 perfect albums in a row

The scale of the catalogue is the reason chronological listening fails as an entry point: eleven studio albums, nine EPs, three live records, a visual album and several solo releases.

What Ever Happened To THE STROKES?

The band assembled across three places, with Casablancas meeting one member at school in New York, another at a boarding school in Switzerland, and two more back in New York.

The Future of Rock Is Looking More Female

Fender's 2015 survey of North American players found half of new guitar buyers were women, and a 2018 revision confirmed it was still half and happening worldwide.

What Happened To Mainstream Rock Music?!

The chart case is overwhelming: the only act with four separate singles spending at least a year on the Hot 100, the record for most total weeks on that chart, and more Billboard rock number ones than anyone before them.

How LORDE Changed Pop Music

Universal noticed her from footage of a school talent show and offered a development deal when she was twelve, with a vocal coach twice a week for a year.

Why Is MR. BRIGHTSIDE Still On The Charts?

The song only ever peaked at number ten in the UK, and since its 2004 reissue it has appeared in the top 100 singles every year, passing 200 weeks on that chart.

NONAGON INFINITY: The Never-Ending Album

The concept-per-album habit is the context: a spaghetti western audiobook, an album of four ten-minute-ten-second tracks, and a record made on altered instruments to play the notes between notes.

What Happened to THE BLACK KEYS?

The two grew up in the same Akron neighbourhood in different cliques, one a soccer captain into hip hop and old blues, the other a class clown into Led Zeppelin.

How SEVEN NATION ARMY Became A Stadium Chant

The famous bass line is not a bass. It is Jack White's semi-acoustic guitar dropped an octave by a pedal, and the band used no bass guitar until the following album.

How FEEL IT STILL Became A Hit

The song topped six Billboard charts, and since 2003 only twelve songs have managed six or more.

BON IVER + KANYE WEST, Finding Your Voice

The claim is causal rather than stylistic: the third Bon Iver album would not exist without Kanye West.

Did The Verve Steal BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY?

Richard Ashcroft was close to scrapping the song until producer Martin Glover put strings over it, which is the moment it became what people know.

Are ARCTIC MONKEYS Big In America?

AM debuted at number six in America and sold more than their previous three albums combined, while at home every album had already gone to number one.

When you're willing to suffer for your art

The method is to deliberately walk into difficult experiences and record what comes out, with Ruban Nielson saying he is willing to suffer for the work even if it damages his life.

Does GRETA VAN FLEET Sound Too Much like LED ZEPPELIN?

The resemblance is not only vocal. The video points to near-identical singing, the same model of drum kit John Bonham used, and comparable riffs.

What Happened to MGMT?

Three singles define them completely, the only songs from the debut with their own Wikipedia pages, and nothing since has come near them.

How LCD SOUNDSYSTEM Started Making Music

The founding observation is a complaint: New York's early 2000s revival bands were nostalgic for the city's own past, and Murphy wanted a New York where new styles started instead.

How TAME IMPALA Makes Music

The central fact most listeners miss: nearly every layer on a Tame Impala record is written, played, recorded and produced by Kevin Parker alone, with the live band a separate touring act.

This Is Your Mind On Music

Canadian researchers found in 2011 that listening to music releases dopamine, the same reward chemical involved in eating, sleeping and sex, despite music not being needed for survival.

Introduction to KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD

The pace is the premise: eight albums in about five years from the 2012 debut, then a public promise of five more inside 2017.