Spotify Playlist Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's Something Borrowed

We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters's “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine seventies pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham!, followed by Barry Manilow's “Can't Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud, kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain”—Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter—“was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?”—here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That's Boston's ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.” ’ But it was different—it was urgent and brilliant and new."

 - From Malcolm Gladwell's Something Borrowed, originally a New Yorker article, also can be found in his book What the Dog Saw.

Thanks to Spotify, you don't have to wade through a mountain of plastics to hear all the songs. Jimmy Page doesn't get streaming yet, and I put in Beth Hart's furious live performance for "Whole Lotta Love". I also included some other songs that borrowed from other songs: Billy Bragg's "A New England" took the first two lines from Paul Simon's "Leaves That Are Green"; PJ Harvey's "The Words That Maketh Murder" lifted the refrain "What if I take my problem to the United Nation?" from Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues"; Neil Young's "Borrowed Tune" and the original Stones classic "Lady Jane". The most notorious case might be Coldplay's "Viva la Vida", which stole the soaring melody from Joe Satriani's tune "If I Could Fly". The influence of Hendrix's "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)" on Radiohead's "Lucky" is so obvious that I'm surprised that it's not mentioned very often.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Inspried by Malcolm Gladwell - Something Borrowed (36 tracks, total time: 2 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. Every original track is placed right after the newer song that borrowed from it. Suggestions are much welcome; you may leave a comment or send to my Spotify Inbox. For Pop Songs based on classical works, see my previous playlist (one of my personal favorites).

John Cage Centennial: Spotify Playlist Updated

For John Cage's 100th birthday, I updated this playlist from last year.

Photo from The Rest Is Noise

Get the "complete" chronological Cage catalogue in one Spotify playlist: John Cage - A Chronological Collection (544 tracks, total time: 69 hours). Ctrl (CMD)+G to browse in album view.

More Cage links: For John Cage by Radio Rambler; Searching For Silence, and The John Cage Century by Alex Ross; Silence And Sound: Five Ways Of Understanding John Cage on NPR Music; Quiet Riot, Seth Colter Walls's review of the latest Cage biography, plus his "20-track Spotify playlist of John Cage's beauty + noise".

Clint Eastwood's Musical Works on Spotify

"'Mystic River' was a difficult one, because I couldn't find a theme to that, so I finally looked at - I started thinking about the three main actors - the three boys, played by Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon. They all formed this triangle, so I started writing a triad, playing with that on a piano. And all of a sudden I developed this theme based on this triad, which is nothing terribly complicated, but to me—in a movie, the music shouldn't be terribly complicated. It should be supporting, not overriding." - Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is one of my favorite directors and actors; his sentimental, sparse and atmospheric music convincingly sets the mood for many of his films, which achieved profundity in such efficient, earnest and restraint manner. This playlist is a reverse collection of Eastwood's musical works: films he scored, songs he co-wrote, musicals that he took part in, and a country album he recorded in 1959 (Cowboy Favorites). I selected one track from each album; at the end of the playlist I included an interview, in which Eastwood talks about his score for Flags of Our Fathers, and two non-original tracks from the music-related films he directed: Bird and Piano Blues.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Clint Eastwood's Musical Works: Reverse Chronological Collection (20 tracks from 20 albums). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. For more info see the music section of Eastwood's Wikipedia page.

Oh by the way Eastwood contributed voice and whistle in the first track Eastwood, taken from Brad Paisley's 2011 album This Is Country Music.

Luciano Berio: Complete Chronological Catalogue

"Luciano Berio was regarded by many connoisseurs of contemporary music as the most naturally musical and least doctrinaire of the post-1945 avant-garde composers.

For all that he was a pioneer in the development of electronic music and of new methods of combining speech with music, he belonged spiritually to the mainstream of Italian music in his relish of sensuousness and lyricism." - The Telegraph

This playlist is compiled after the list of compositions on Wikipedia, from 4 Popular Songs (1946) to the "posthumous" Sequenza XIVb, arranged for double bass (2004). Unlisted transcriptions and arrangements (Brahms, Falla, Mahler, Weill) are attached at the end, including a completion to Puccini's Turandot. The fourteen Sequenzas are taken from over a dozen different recordings.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Luciano Berio - Complete Chronological Catalogue (194 tracks, total time: 17 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view.

Edgard Varèse: Complete Chronological Collection

Edgard Varèse (1883 - 1965) was a French composer, often credited as the "Father of Electronic Music", while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound". He was Zappa's main musical influence and the artist who inspired him to become a composer.

Works in this playlist:

• Un grand sommeil noir, song to a text by Paul Verlaine for voice and piano (1906)
• Amériques for large orchestra (1918–1921; revised 1927) 
• Offrandes for soprano and chamber orchestra (poems by Vicente Huidobro and José Juan Tablada)(1921) 
• Hyperprism for wind and percussion (1922–1923) 
• Octandre for seven wind instruments and double bass (1923) 
• Intégrales for wind and percussion (1924–1925) Arcana for large orchestra (1925–1927) 
• Ionisation for 13 percussion players (1929–1931) 
• Ecuatorial for bass voice (or unison male chorus), brass, organ, percussion and theremins (revised for ondes-martenots in 1961) (text by Francisco Ximénez) (1932–1934) 
• Density 21.5 for solo flute (1936) 
• Tuning Up for orchestra (sketched 1946; completed by Chou Wen-chung, 1998) 
• Dance for Burgess for chamber ensemble (1949) Déserts for wind, percussion and electronic tape (1950–1954)
• Déserts for wind, percussion and electronic tape (1950–1954)
• Poème électronique for electronic tape (1957–1958) 
• Nocturnal for soprano, male chorus and orchestra, text adapted from The House of Incest by Anaïs Nin (1961), revised and completed posthumously by Chou Wen-chung (1968)

Because Varèse only completed slightly more than a dozen compositions, I included all available recordings in this playlist.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Edgard Varèse: Complete Chronological Collection (141 tracks, total time: 18 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. Recommended reading: Zappa's article Edgard Varèse: The Idol of My Youth and Zappa on Varèse.

According to Gail Zappa, FZ's final project, Varèse: The Rage And The Fury, might be released "at the end of the Mayan Calendar". Looks like we can finally hear it in a few months...

Frank Zappa: Chronological Discography (available soon on Spotify)

Zappa's catalog has been added to Spotify recently, though most albums are currently unstreamable (Waka/Jawaka is available on Spotify UK), various sources (including Digital Music News) suggest that a change is indeed gonna come. Personally I think it will be the greatest addition to the streaming catalog in a long time. For other missing links like Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Metallica, their music is familiar to grillions, and their influence is all over the place. But to average music fans, Zappa's catalog is still largely unknown or misunderstood, and the path he paved is not for anyone to follow. In fact, he went to so many places in the music map as if only to prove that "The Road Is Blocked". His output is so vast and kaleidoscopic that it's almost impossible for even a curious fan to explore, without the help of a subscription service (the man himself proposed this idea in 1983). That's why I am so excited about this news and want to share with you immediately.

I put all Zappa albums into one playlist, sorted by release date. From Freak Out!, debut of the Mothers of Invention, to the posthumous release Mystery Disc. You can subscribe to it now and (hopefully) the tracks will be available as soon as the last license issues are sorted out. If you are a premium user, you can set the playlist, or some tracks, as available offline, so you will know when the playlist/tracks become available (to download) without checking everyday.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Frank Zappa: Chronological Discography (available soon) (917 tracks, 56 albums). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. To see the full list you need to uncheck "Hide unplayable tracks" in Spotify preferences first.

I discovered Zappa through Wong Kar-wai's 1997 film Happy Together (the scene accompanied by Chunga's Revenge is one of the highlights), and adored the few albums I bought afterwards. Thanks to the Zappa Family Trust, and content team at Spotify, now I look forward to discover more from this monumental catalog on the best streaming service in the world.

P.S. For interpretations of Zappa's works by modern ensembles and orchestras, check out my previous playlist: Zappa as Composer. For 18th century Italian composer Francesco Zappa (apparently not related to Frank, though the latter claimed so), here's a new release of his six symphonies.

Update: All albums are now available on Spotify UK and some other European countries.

John Luther Adams: Complete Recordings on Spotify

"Called 'one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century' (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), John Luther Adams is a composer whose life and work are deeply rooted in the natural world.

Adams composes for orchestra, chamber ensembles, percussion and electronic media, and his music is recorded on Cold Blue, New World, Mode, Cantaloupe, and New Albion.

A recipient of the Heinz Award for his contributions to raising environmental awareness, Adams has also been honored with the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University 'for melding the physical and musical worlds into a unique artistic vision that transcends stylistic boundaries.'" - Official site
 

Get all available recordings of this composer in one Spotify playlist: John Luther Adams: Complete Recordings (104 tracks from 14 albums, total time: 12 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. Also check out the composer's site for his writings, including the fascinating In Search of An Ecology of Music.

Further listening:  Adams began his studies of music as a member of a rock band, and his admiration for the music of Frank Zappa led him to explore the works of Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and Morton Feldman. Check out these links for playlists.

Guest Post: EMI & Virgin Classics Germany

The staff at EMI & Virgin Classics Germany compiled a Spotify playlist that features highlights from their recent releases, music for special occasions, and seasonal choices. The current version include Four Last Songs and some Best of Massenet, for the recent anniversaries of Hermann Hesse and Massenet. Subscribe and get the latest updates from the home of Maria Callas, Philippe Jaroussky and Sir Simon Rattle. Here's a note from the label.

Spotify has become more and more important recently. It is great for fans of any kind of music to be able to listen to full tracks of any artist of your choice this easily, but one of the most interesting things about Spotify might be the playlists. They are a great way to discover music, to learn about releases you wouldn't have noticed if they weren't featured on a playlist.. or to simply enjoy music without having to chose the tracks yourself.

We decided to create a playlist that gets updated frequently - we want our subscribers to become experts of classical music without much effort. Brand new albums by the EMI & Virgin Classics artists will be on our playlist as well as matching music to important anniversaries and events. To keep the updates coming even when there are no special events, we will also have seasonal changes - from classical music for your summer holiday to tracks that are best on cold winter nights.

Here's the Spotify playlist: EMI & Virgin Classics Germany (27 tracks, total time: 2 hours) Also check out my previous EMI/Virgin playlists, including the Greatest Recordings/Artists of the 20th Century, Icon, British/American Composer series and more.

Iannis Xenakis: Reverse Chronological Catalogue

"Iannis Xenakis (1922 –2001) was a Greek composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. After 1947, he fled Greece, becoming a naturalized citizen of France. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances." - Wikipedia

This reverse chronological playlist was compiled after the catalog on the composer's official site; from O-Mega (1997) to Six Chansons (1951).

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Iannis Xenakis: Reverse Chronological Catalogue (130 tracks, total time: 21 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. If you are not familiar with this composer, try Psappha, Persephassa and Tetras first.

Bohuslav Martinů: Complete Chronological Catalogue on Spotify

"The artist is always searching for the meaning of life, his own and that of mankind, searching for truth. A system of uncertainty has entered our daily life. The pressures of mechanisation and uniformity to which it is subject call for protest and the artist has only one means of expressing this, by music." - Bohuslav Martinu

"Along with Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinu was one of the twin giants of Czech music in the twentieth century, a composer with a distinctly individual voice and a versatility that led him to excel in every medium from stage works to symphonies to string quartets."  - AllMusic

This playlist is compiled after the comprehensive catalog of Martinů's works prepared by the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich. Martinů wrote a bewilderingly large amount of music in various forms; in chamber music alone there's duos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, septets, octets and nonets, in all kinds of instrument combinations - like the Fantasia for theremin, oboe, string quartet and piano. You can use various keywords like "piano" or "concerto" to filter the playlist and create different radio channels.

Get this collection in one Spotify playlist: Bohuslav Martinů: Complete Chronological Catalogue (944 tracks, total time: 68 hours). Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in album view. Notes to the compositions can be found on this catalog page.