Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series. The duality of pleasure and pain, of comedy and tragedy, or of life’s highs and lows is fertile territory for songwriters. And John Mellencamp has created some great songs out of those […]
Name Steve Jones Best known for Swearing on the Bill Grundy Show [on December 1, 1976]. Current city London. Excited about I’m going to be touring until middle of October—all around Europe and England, then going to South America for a few dates. We end up in the States, in Dallas, and work our way all around the States. My current music collection […]
B-Real drops a bombshell mere minutes into our interview. Cypress Hill’s 1993 juggernaut, “Insane in the Brain,” was initially written as a diss track aimed at “Treat ‘Em Right” rapper Chubb Rock. Suddenly, after more than 30 years of hearing the Grammy-nominated song in heavy rotation, it was no longer perceived as just a weed […]
I was 21 when Brokeback Mountain was released. I have such fond memories of going to the gay bar in my hometown of Minneapolis and dancing to bass-driven remixes of Gustavo Santaolalla’s gentle, emotive original score. Even in its house-music version, there’s an inherent sadness in these songs, and sometimes that’s the best to dance […]
When John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved from London to New York in the wake of the Beatles‘ 1970 demise, they secured an unassuming one-bedroom apartment on Bank Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, immersed themselves in the thriving counterculture and lent their voices to the raging anti-war movement in opposition to the American government’s evermore deadly presence in Vietnam. […]
Radiohead is turning back the clock for a look at material from its 2003 album Hail to the Thief, in-concert versions of which have been assembled for the just-released digital collection Hail to the Thief Live Recordings 2003-2009. Mixed by Ben Baptie and mastered by Matt Colton, the project will also be available in a […]
Chrissie Hynde has rounded up a host of rock’n’roll heavy hitters for the new album Duets Special, which will be released Oct. 17 by Rhino. The project features a different special guest on each of its 13 songs, including the late Mark Lanegan, the Killers’ Brandon Flowers, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, Garbage’s Shirley Manson, Cat […]
The irony isn’t lost on Guy Garvey that he had to get good and drunk to write a song called “Sober.” “Isn’t it perverse?” he says with a chuckle. The Manchester band first came up with the track’s taut, bass-driven groove shortly after Alex Reeves (The Ting Tings, Bat For Lashes) started playing drums for […]
In a big empty house high in the hills near Glendale, California, Daron Malakian is singing along to an old outlaw country tune. It’s called “Waymore’s Blues,” a classic Waylon Jennings ballad from 1975. It’s a gently loping track set to acoustic guitar, organ, and a playful bass groove. The lyrics are a little bit […]
Over the week my mother was dying, I listened to Boy George’s second solo album, Tense Nervous Headache, every night after coming home from the hospital. Locked in my bathroom, sitting on the floor, my 21-year-old self needed at least one full playthrough to help process what was happening. Less than a year later, still […]