Tag: Spotify
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A Spotify Playlist That Isn’t Trying To Sell You Something: Guaranteed!
In a world where Spotify algorithms are finding ever more devious ways to enter our consciousness it seems almost old-fashioned having an actual human recommend you some music. U2’s ill-fated attempt to load their new album automatically on the world’s iPods now seems almost quaint. Spotify added Drake tracks to hundreds of their playlists upon…
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The Best Music of 2018 So Far…
Ah, it’s mid summer. A time of hazy, sunny evenings. As the organisers of Wimbledon erect their “Sale! Punnet of Strawberry’s: only £50” signs (complete with grocer’s comma) it’s the time of year that allows me to drag out the only Wimbledon-related joke I know: Q. What time does Sean Connery arrive at Wimbledon? A.…
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How To Buy Elton John On Vinyl (and an Alternative Best-of Spotify Playlist)
Although we might all have a stab at naming Elton John’s best albums, in these times of Spotify, there sometimes needs to be a reason why a particular record should be bought on vinyl. Happily in Elton’s case there are several reasons. Firstly, his records are often beautifully packaged, with posters and lyrics sheets. Second,…
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Belle & Sebastian And The Horror Of Spotify Playlists.
In a world where people consume music through pre-determined streaming service playlists with grim titles such as “Cinematic Chillout”, “Music for Concentration” and “Songs for Sleeping”, how does a band that is already nine albums into a career spanning over twenty years grab the attention of the zombified masses? Masses moreover, who willingly listen to…
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The Ultimate Beatles Playlist (For People Who Don’t Like The Beatles)
In the last blog post, I introduced you to a friend from Sweden named Agaton who told me he had always found The Beatles’ music irritating. He asked me to come up with a playlist of Beatles tunes he would like – or at least that wouldn’t set his teeth on edge – in return…
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Please Please Help! Build A Beatles Playlist For Someone Who “Doesn’t Like The Beatles”
I was catching up with a friend recently when he delivered something of a bolt from the blue. With a voice that appeared as nonchalant as that of a serial killer’s he confessed, without apparent shame, that he didn’t like The Beatles. You can imagine my consternation. My friend grew up in Sweden, not that…
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Aretha Franklin’s Emotional First Performance
…and Why It Took Nine Albums To Score Aretha’s First Hit Aretha Franklin sat at a piano in her father’s church, just days after her mother’s death. She was just ten years old and about to make her first ever public performance. There were two thousand people in the congregation waiting to hear this recently…
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An Alternative Best of…Journey
Take A Midnight Train Going Anywhere With This Alternative Best of Playlist For AOR Kings: Journey… The idea that Journey might be pretty cool is clearly a difficult one to get your head around, but back in the eighties, Journey were the thinking AOR fan’s go-to band. REO Speedwagon and Kansas were too wimpy, Boston…
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Mix-tapes and Indie Points – A Users Guide
Good news. The mixtape is not dead….it’s just called a “playlist”… Where sensitive Belle and Sebastian-loving-indie-types once crafted cassette tapes filled with songs that told the prettiest girls in their class just how deep their feelings of love were through the medium of Morrissey, Aztec Camera or Napalm Death, now we have playlists compiled on…
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Yeah Yeah Yeah by Bob Stanley: The Chapter-by-Chapter Spotify Playlists Page
I had a terrific reaction from Twitter to my article about Bob Stanley’s history of popular music, “Yeah Yeah Yeah” back in May 2014… Like a nervous boy asking out the prettiest girl in school to the disco, I enquired as to whether anyone would like to help set up a page of playlists to accompany each…
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Are You A Music Obsessive? Check This Scientific Test: Plus A 2013 Mixtape
How much of a music fan are you? You may be pretty keen, but just how keen? I remember many years ago someone called Danny Baker’s radio show to say he had regularly sorted through Paul McCartney’s bins and pulled out a Christmas card from one of the other Beatles. What was interesting about that, aside from…
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Can You Use Spotify And Still Be An Ethical Music Buyer?
Calls to control a growing internet menace has reached fever pitch this week. “Protect the vulnerable!” goes the cry. It’s a dirty, filthy business everyone is agreed. No, not the government’s crackdown on online pornography, but the far murkier issue of the music industry, and the question as to whether Spotify is its saviour, or…
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Punk Floyd: Lydon “Likes Pink Floyd” – And When Floyd Worked With The Damned
Plus – Pink Floyd Back Catalogue To Appear On Spotify… Whilst doing what passes for research at Every Record Tells A Story (which basically amounts to reading the sort of books I would be reading if I wasn’t doing any research) I discovered that Pink Floyd had a forgotten role in the punk movement. You…
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A Quentin Tarantino Spotify Playlist
Just a quick post today to try something new: A Spotify Playlist. The more observant readers amongst you will have noticed that I put a Spotify link at the bottom of each post I write, to allow those who have a Spotify account to easily play the record I am writing about. I have no…
Every record tells a story 