A New Years Eve Playlist by Dylan

by Dylan Joffe

 My favorite holiday is New Year’s Eve.

Now, I’ll give you a minute to let this sink in.

I love New Year’s Eve. I love it when I have plans and I love it when I don’t. I love it when it’s cold, snowing or raining. I love New Year’s Eve when I am in warm weather.

Most of my friends think this is odd.

“Wait, you’re telling me that you’ve actually had a good NYE?” is usually the first question. People are surprised because the holiday has a reputation of never living up to expectations. People plan these extravagant nights that seem to always end in tears or too much alcohol (or not enough [GASP!]).

My playful response is that I always wear nice dresses and drink champagne, New Year’s Eve is just the one night a year that everyone else joins me. But in reality, I love what it represents.

I’ve never been one for resolutions, but I have to admire a night that truly changes people for the next year to come. New Years Eve encourages people to actually reflect on their life – to reflect on past decisions and to make sweeping declarations about the next 12 months. Even if we don’t always stick to our plans for the New Year, you’ve got to respect any day that actively makes us introspective.

In honor of my favorite holiday, here is my go-to NYE playlist for this year. I think that any NYE playlist should be a little funky, a little nostalgic and – above all – make you want to dance.

1)     Changes by LOL Boys.

This is the perfect song to begin the night with. The drums and horn in the beginning make me think of some underground speakeasy, which would be the ideal NYE location. The entire sound is a little old until this child-like voice comes in. It’s like this tiny prophet letting us know, “Things wont change until we do.” Damn, if this song isn’t perfect for the New Year, I don’t know what is.

2)     Latch by Disclosure and Sam Smith.

I found this song a month ago and have not stopped listening to it. “If there are boundaries, I will try to knock them down.” That is a sexy line. Fair warning before you listen: you will never get this song out of your head. And that’s ok.

3)     How Do You Do? By Hot Chip.

Hot Chip makes me want to dance.  Something about the beat and the monotone singing – I love it. This song, at the core, is also about starting over. Finding someone who makes you want to live again. What could be more romantic for NYE?

4)     Karate by Kennedy.

Remember how I said I like a little nostalgia at New Years? This is it. This song brings me back to my college dorm with my best friend. She introduced me to Kennedy, specifically this song. Also, these lyrics. No matter how bad your year has been, it cannot be more tragic than “I sip hypnotic from a coffee mug.”

5)     Get On It by Ruby Goe.

Ok, this is a bit of a guilty pleasure song. But imagine this, you’ve have a wonderful night and had enough bubbly to think you have a little more street cred than you really do – this is the song you want to be listening to. Though, I can’t say I’ve ever worn heels and hoodie dress out for a night on the town.

6)     Every Night I Say A Prayer by Little Boots.

One name for you: Madonna. This song is so Madonna. And this video? Well, it’s kind of a 2012 version of “Total Eclipse Of The Heart.”

7)     Stop Me feat. Daniel Merriweather by Mark Ronson.

Can we all agree that Mark Ronson is kind of the complete package? I mean, he hates animal cruelty, he is fashionable and he was once engaged to Rashida Jones, the most beautiful nurse in Pawnee, Indiana. Based on that fact alone, I will forever listen to all of his music.

8)     If I Ever Feel Better by Phoenix.

Here’s some more nostalgia – a 2001 hit from one of my favorite French alt bands. I mean, we’ve all danced around to this song at some point in our lives, but have you ever listened to the words? “They say an end can be a start.” That is how the song opens. New Year’s Eve to a T.

9)     Clap Your Hands by Sia.

I’ve had a soft spot for Sia since I first heard ‘The Girl You Lost To Cocaine” at a college a cappella show. While so many people complain about their favorite artists getting mainstream, I have nothing but happy thoughts for Sia and her more recent pop success. I mean, “Titanium” is actually a great song and she sounds phenomenal. She’s written songs for everyone, including Madonna, Rihanna, Ne-Yo and Ke$ha. This song is simply about dancing, romancing and taking chances. What’s not to love? Have you ever watched some of her videos. God, Sia is a weird, weird woman.

10)Feed Me Diamonds by MNDR.

MNDR, pronounced mander, has slowly become one of my favorite findings this year. This song is the perfect end to a successful New Year’s Eve. It is slow and edgy. Her singing makes you want to sing – if not scream- along. Also, this video is awesome. Who doesn’t love watching a drag queen get ready? I’m not kidding, watching a queen at work always impresses me. It is a level of dedication and skill that most cannot even fathom

Well, I hope this playlist gets you in the mood for the best night of the year – I promise, just give New Year’s Eve a chance. For many more great hours of New Year’s Ever music, check out my 2012 NYE playlist on Spotify here: NYE 2012.

hMsM contributor Dylan Joffe is passionate about making the world a better place, which most recently has lead her to non-profit work in Boston, MA. When not working or writing, Dylan can usually be found telling stories and/or drinking bourbon. Follow her at @dylanjoffe (www.twitter.com/dylanjoffe) for bad puns about fruit and good Spotify suggestions. You can find all of the things she has written for the internet here. (http://dylanisagirlsname.tumblr.com/)

The Year in Catchy, Good or Both?: The Best and Worst of 2012, Volume 2, THE BEST!

Making a good pop song is not easy these days. Well, I mean, it’s very easy for certain people…. So much of popular music flirts with the saccharine, what’s important is the delicate balance of the personal and the universal, the catchy and the complex; you’ve got to make everybody feel you.

It’s also important, when making a great hit, that people genuinely love the song. There’s a difference between an artist like, say, Neon Trees, and an artist like Adele. The former makes music that is self-consciously trying to speak to everyone, the latter speaks to everyone because of the personal nature of her music.

This year was fairly short on great chart hits, but there were certainly a few, let’s run down the top 5 and an honorable mention:

Honorable Mention: Taylor Swift – “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble”

If you’re looking for proof positive that the critical spheres of “pop” and “indie” are melting down into the same pot, look no further than Taylor Swift. The “indie Taylor Swift circle jerk”, as I heard it eloquently described this year, was puzzling, refreshing, and polarizing. Pitchfork and Stereogum were on board, many others were not. When Stereogum head Tom Breihan was asked what separated Swift from any other pop Diva in the current spotlight, he answered simply; “craft”. Taylor Swift has all the right people around her to help churn out hits, but at the end of the day it’s Swift herself who writes and arranges these songs.  When asked in a recent Spin interview about whether she took inspiration for the drop in “I Knew You Were Trouble” from listening to other dubstep, her response was telling: “Not really…. What ended up happening was, I wrote this melody for this chorus on the piano, and I brought it to Max Martin and Shellback, and I said, ‘At the end of the chorus I just want this to go crazy. I want it to be really chaotic; I want the bass line to do this, like [makes loud GUH GUH GUH sound].'”

Whichever camp you’re in when it comes to Swift, a vast majority of  music-buying Americans think she’s pretty great. Through four albums she’s been slowly shedding the country trappings she wore at the start. On Red you really couldn’t even call her a country artist anymore. The peppy bump of “We Are Never…” was a missile aimed straight at the hot 100, and though the drop in “I Knew You Were Trouble” has been a talking point, all of these songs more than anything else sound like, well, Taylor Swift.

5. Gotye ft. Kimbra – “Somebody that I Used to Know”

Try to imagine an alternate universe where you have never heard this song, try. OK now imagine you hear this song for the first time, what do you think of it? Do you think it’s nuanced in its simplicity; the sparse knock of the xylophones and the almost mumbled verses; the sudden inclusion of a female voice you didn’t really see coming; the desperation in the aching harmonies, what do you think? Pretty good song? In this alternate universe the only difference is that this wasn’t a hit, that you didn’t hear it 45 times in a three week span. But its status as a hit also speaks to the power of virality. The Walk off the Earth cover is pretty brilliant, but now even that is overplayed. Why? Because we’re so damn hungry for a genuinely great crossover record we gorged ourselves when we got the smell of one. The term “crossover hit” has become anachronistic: back in the 90s it seemed nearly every couple months a random great song would come along that sounded very different from everything else on the radio. “Pumped up Kicks” was that song in 2011. “Somebody that I Used to Know” is that song in 2012. I wonder what 2013 will bring… I’m guessing it’ll involve harps and possibly a theramin.

4. TIE Karmin – “Brokenhearted” and Jessie J “Domino”

I figured I’d feature both these songs in this spot since they’re essentially the exact same song. I can’t really decide which one I like more, but I lean towards “Domino” if only for the fact that there is an ABOMINABLE “rap verse” at the end of “Brokenhearted” (it’s extremely puzzling that they even included the verse, it could have so easily been omitted, sorry I’m dwelling on this so much I just hate it). Then again, “Domino” opens with the line “I’m feelin’ sexy and freeeeeee”… I dunno, it’s a wash.

3. Ke$ha – “Die Young”

Before you even say anything: yes, I know that this song sounds exactly like every other Ke$ha song. Yes, I know that it’s about drinking too much and taking your youth by the balls and forcing yourself to get cray and all that jazz, but it’s also the moment Ke$ha becomes immortal. The Ke$ha aesthetic is all over the place these days (particularly in Europe) but nobody can outshine the original. The beat that drops at the end of the hook rides in like a force of nature. There’s something about Ke$ha and I can’t put my finger on it; I think it’s that, under all the shine and flash (she covers her naked body in baby oil and rolls around in a kiddie pool full of glitter before every show), there’s actually a person, and that fascinates me. I want desperately to know what she’s really like; something tells me she stops gyrating when she’s alone…

2. Usher – “Climax”

Usher and Diplo wrote “Climax” in about an hour and worked on it for about two months. That meticulous production and execution is evident; “Climax” is the sleekest and sexiest song of the year. The song isn’t about sex though, per se. Diplo had the idea for a song: “about a moment I had with a girl where I felt like I could die with her and be content, but I didn’t and life moved on, and that point in my life was over. It was a sad feeling but it was beautiful.” The song’s quiet storm rides along an intermittent beat that is constantly shifting but never feels disjointed. Not surprisingly though, it’s Usher’s inimitable falsetto that carries “Climax” into the pantheon of classic slow jams.

1. Ellie Goulding – “Lights”

“Lights” or, “The Little Song That Could”. This track was original featured as a bonus track on Goulding’s 2010 debut album. It was finally released as a digital single in January of 2012 and it took several months for it to catch on, but when it did it was suddenly everywhere, peaking at #2 on the hot 100 and spending a remarkable fifty three weeks and counting on the chart, where it still sits at #45. The song is a blinking dangerous world where something as trivial as a fear of the dark is blown in to a statement about love and control “You show the lights that stop me turn to stone, you shine it when I’m alone”. This year Goulding and boyfriend Skrillex broke it off. Skrillex seems like a decent guy, but the only things most people know about Ellie Goulding is that she was dating Skrillex and that she wrote this song. Hopefully she can follow up in 2013 with something as immersive, haunting and catchy as “Lights”. The future looks bright (sorry…).

Remember to check out the WORST chart songs of the 2012, along with the best albums and best tracks of the year!

Coming up, stick around for a NYE playlist by hMsM contributor Dylan Joffe!

The Year in Catchy, Good Or Both?: The Best and Worst of 2012, volume 1, THE WORST!

Train, Worst band in America

2012 saw many new trends work into contemporary chart-pop. Jangly, drum-kit averse folk took fully to the top 40 this year. Whether you like Mumford and Sons or not (I plead the fifth), they cast a huge shadow and in 2012 Phillip Phillips (his dad is Phillip Phillips Sr., weird), the Lumineers, and of Monsters and Men were loving the shade.

This was also the year when (gulp) Americanized whomp-dubstep made its way into the mainstream. From dubstep breakdowns on the top 40 to Taylor Swift’s polarizing use of the drop on her new hit “I Knew You Were Trouble”, “brostep”, for better or worse, seems to have metastasized in 2012.

This year in Catchy, Good or Both? we started with a look at Gotye’s “I-swear-to-god-if-I-have-to-hear-that-song-one-more-time…” smash “Somebody that I Used to Know”.  We had a hard time knowing how to feel about Carly Rae Jepsen’s possibly-Arrested Development-referencing “Call me Maybe”. Featured contributor Max Horwich used the formula on David Lowery’s infamous letter to Emily White. We also broke down the merits of shouting “HEY!” (seems to be working out pretty well for most artists concerned). We even looked at new songs by The Police Bruno Mars, and The Strokes Ke$ha!

If you’ve been reading this site for any period of time you know I hold great pop songs in high regard. Of those there were a few this year. There were also some real stinkers that inexplicably dominated the airwaves. And so, without further ado, I give you the top five best and worst chart songs of 2012. I’m a “bad news first” kind of guy, so let’s start of with the worst of the year:

The Worst:

5. Calvin Harris ft. Neyo – “Let’s Go”

I want desperately to know what we’re going to do at the end of this song. Neyo definitely wants us to do something (pop some bottles? holler maybe? get on the floor perhaps?) but it’s never made clear what it is (seriously, read the lyrics). This makes this a catchy psych-up song for any occasion. It also makes it an amalgam of every club track of the last five years, and a piece of irredeemable garbage.

4. TIE The Wanted – “Glad You Came” and One Direction – “What Makes You Beautiful”

2012 was also the year of the Boy Band resurgence, one led primarily by The Wanted and One Direction. This song is about trying to get a girl drunk enough so she’ll agree to sleep with you, but not so drunk that it’s, you know, déclassé… or illegal…

Just remember girl, the only thing that makes you beautiful is the fact that you don’t know you’re beautiful. Nothing else about you is beautiful.

3. Neon Trees – “Everybody Talks”

 

My distaste for Neon Trees comes mostly from the fact they are awful; just right on the surface. I don’t feel the need to explain or defend my position further than that. They’re just like the Captain & Tennille, except  way more terrible. This song is about people talking about other people behind their backs, or maybe it’s about being addicted to somebody’s love, or maybe it’s about goddamn badminton who cares, get it the hell out of here.

2. Rihanna – “Where Have You Been”

The success of this song is baffling to me primarily because it has no hook. The entire song is like one big prechorus; you think each successive section is leading into a knock-down, drag-out chorus, but the hook never comes. Fortunately this song sounds enough like about five other Rihanna songs that everybody probably just assumed it DID have a hook, and it inexplicably went to #5 on the hot 100.

1. Train – “Drive By”

Train can be credited with the unprecedented accomplishment of having the same song chart twice in the same year. Yeah, well, the two chart entries have different titles and lyrics, but that’s about as far as the differences go. “Drive By” was interesting for it’s ability to tell the story of love lost and found while referencing a horrific crime that rips families apart and has taken dozens of lives. To know that you don’t plan on rolling past your girlfriend’s house in tha hoopty and shooting her to death is a comfort. But it’s still a dumb metaphor, and this is still the worst song of the year.

The Best of 2012, Part 3, The Playlist

Ho-ly smokes, what a year for music. This will forever be the year that the definition of “indie” finally melted, R&B shook back to a life of artistic relevance, issues of sexuality became a part of the discussion in a new way, and several young artists made brilliant, statement-of-purpose records. I’ve compiled my 64 favorite tracks (up a bit from last year’s 36, but hey, there were a LOT of good songs this year). Check it out below.

And don’t forget to check out hMsM’s best albums and best tracks of 2012.

For a more easily scrollable/readable version of the list, click here.

The Best of 2012, Part 2, Songs

2012 has been a great year for music. In fact there has been so much parity between a number of excellent releases it’s been very hard to choose favorites this year. I toyed with the idea of expanding the best songs to the top 20 this year, but in the interest of staying focused on the cream of the crop I stuck with 10. An extended playlist will be coming up with a LOT of songs, so stick around for that. In the mean time, I give you hMsM’s 10 favorite songs of 2012 (Note: you can click on each of the album titles in the headlines to get a stream of the full album):

Honorable Mention:

Beck: “I Only Have Eyes For You” and “Corrina, Corrina”

Beck hasn’t released an album since 2008’s Modren Guilt, but the judiciousness of his musical output in the last few years is impeccable. This year he released a reworking of the music of Philip Glass, a goofy rap track with Childish Gambino, and two covers. The first, “Corrine, Corrina” (this version is named “Corrina, Corrina”) is a classic blues song first recorded in the late twenties. It’s since become a standard in various versions in many musical styles. Beck’s take is quite bare-boned. But in this, and in “I Only Have Eyes for You”, it’s the emotive power of his voice that carries the song away. Sometime around the release of Sea Change an ironic distance Beck had with his listeners began to shrink, and on “Corrina, Corrina” it sounds like he’s right here in the room with you.

“I Only Have Eyes for You”, written by Harry Warren all the way back in the the thirties and made famous by The Flamingos in 1959, was always a very spacey tune. Beck adds even more reverb and his voice sounds like it’s wafting across a giant wind tunnel filled with flowers. Truly beautiful and unconventional the melodic turns taken by this song, and Beck is extremely faithful to the original in that respect.

10.

Sun Kil Moon: “I Know It’s Pathetic But That Was the Greatest Night of my Life” from Among the Leaves

Sun Kil Moon, a.k.a. Mark Kozelek, is a picture of consistency. Over five albums the former Red House Painters front man has made music at the intersection of folk and alternative rock, honoring the former while mining only the worthwhile of the latter. “I Know It’s Pathetic…” is the touching story of a woman Kozelek met backstage after a show. He liked her, and she liked him, but “she said she had friends she had to go see.” Later that summer he picks up the mail and finds a letter. “‘I used up my minutes calling hotels / to find you that night, but to no avail. / I know it’s pathetic,’ she continued to write , / ‘but that was the greatest night of my life.'” This song accomplishes more in 1:48 than many albums over their duration.

9.

Japandroids: “The Nights of Wine and Roses” from Celebration Rock

Japandroids sophomore LP Celebration Rock was received with even more critical acclaim than their debut Post Nothing a few years ago. Post Nothing is, to my ears, still a significantly better album, but Celebration Rock did offer some great tracks including this, the opener. “We don’t cry for those nights to arrive, we yell like hell to the heavens,” sings duo Brian King and David Prowse over simple sus-chords, grinning and covered in mud. Japandroids make confusion music, the stuff you hear in your head when you’re stumbling through a packed and sweat-scented bar 10 minutes before last call. The band is still undecided on whether it will make more records, and you can only get so much mileage out of a guitar-drums-“WHOOOOOAH, WHAAAAOOOOOAH”-lineup, but I hope this isn’t the last we hear of Japandroids.

8.

Icona Pop: “I Love it” from Nights Like This

“I threw your shit into a bag and kicked it down the stairs!” Awww, c’mon Icona Pop, that stuff was fragile! Besides, I’m only like four years older than you “I don’t care!” But you’re ruining my life and I’m worried you may have a coke problem, “I love it!” I know you do, Icona. Hey speaking of which, where have you been all night? “I crashed my car into the bridge!” Yiiikes, you’re in trouble huh? “I watched, I let it burn”. That seems reasonable. Why have you been so unkind to me lately? “You’re from the seventies, but I’m a nineties bitch!” Icona, we’ve been over this, I was born in 1984. “I don’t care!” I know you don’t, Icona. I know you don’t care.

7.

Lord Huron: “The Ghost on the Shore” from Lonesome Dreams

I have a hard time rationalizing leaving Maine again. I moved away for a few years and moved back “just to be back in Portland for a while”. Now I drive in to work next to the still steam rising off the ocean into the sun. I walk among the trees and take deep breaths of clean air. I eat and drink and I listen and laugh. I love this place and I don’t want to leave it. I think that’s why I connected so personally with this song, a random cut from Lord Huron’s outstanding debut LP Lonesome Dreams. This song is about being so connected to a place you see its past and future all around you. “Lie where I land, let my bones turn to sand / I was born on the lake and I don’t want to leave it,” Ben Schneider sings over a delicate backdrop as ghosts waltz on the ice in the moonlight.

6.

Purity Ring: “Fineshrine” from Shrines

Picture a washing machine on full blast with waaaaay to much detergent, and you get a pretty good idea of what Purity Ring’s music sounds like. All bubbles and shadows and spinning, it’s a vibe that informed their entire debut album – to its benefit for a unified sound, and to its detriment for a lack of sonic variety. “Fineshrine” is a perfect encapsulation of its prevailing themes of corporeal disconnection and the ways our bodies are (and are not) a part of who we are. “You make a fine shrine of me,” sings Megan James. Her voice makes you want to live inside this music with her, even if you have to push some ribs and internal organs around to get comfortable…

5.

Dirty Projectors: “Gun has No Trigger” from Swing Lo, Magellan

The cover of Swing Lo, Magellan the sixth studio album from Dirty Projectors, features front people David Longstreath and Amber Coffman talking something over with a dude who looks like literally every adult male in Northern Maine. With Swing Lo, Longstreath decided to take a shot at making a “woodsy” album that was more stylistically anarchic yet more listenable and less challenging. He did. “Gun Has no Trigger”, the lead single, is one of those songs (along with #4) that feels like it has more instruments than it does. Behind Coffman’s  backing vocals which swirl and leapfrog into a chord progression, Longstreath sings packed lines like: “You’d see the oceans swell and the mountains shook / you’d see a million colors if you really looked.” And my personal favorite: “If you had looked, you might reconsider / Or, just maybe, you already have…”

4.

How to Dress Well: “& it was u” from Total Loss

As I was walking back to the car with some friends after a show in Boston recently, I began performing this song. I do not use perform loosely. I started snapping my fingers in half-notes and after a moment led in with “You don’t have to caaaaaall meeeee…” At this point one of my friends joined in, and she and I sang most of the song, then we sang most of the song two or three more times in the ensuing hour. I only mention it because it was then that I realized the perfect simplicity of this song’s construction. The instruments are as follows: finger snaps, voice, drums. Not a lot to get excited about on paper, but Tom Krell creates something dangerously sexy and cool, taking lemons and making ambrosia.

3.

Kendrick Lamar: “m.A.A.d. City” from good kid, m.A.A.d. city

I had a hard time selecting a song from Kendrick’s debut good kid, m.A.A.d. city, for inclusion on this list. It was a good problem to have though; there are about 5 songs on this album that are each this good (“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”, “The Art of Peer Pressure”, “Good Kid”, “Sing about Me”, “Swimming Pools”). I chose this song for a few reasons. First off, it’s essentially two songs in one; the first section describes the paranoid realization that your city is out to kill you. And then the song shifts gears, it’s like waking up from a nightmare into another nightmare. “Wake yo punk ass up,” beckons Compton legend MC Eiht at the beginning of the second section. Before later adding a smooth verse (“shots in the crowd theeeen er’ybody raaaaan”).

But the real reason I chose this track is Kendrick’s final verse, which begins: “If I told you killed a nigga at 16 would you believe me?” Then his flow gets chopped and screwed, pitched down demonically as the verse turns from: “…and it’s safe to say that our next generation maybe can sleep/ with dreams of being a lawyer or doctor / ‘stead of a boy with a chopper / who hold the cul-de-sac hostage / kill ’em all if they gossip.” Then he “hits the powder” and his voice’s pitch begins to ratchet up again before the verse in punctuated by one of the most filthy and gorgeous West Coast Dre-style outros you can possible imagine. Brilliant.

2.

Frank Ocean: “Pyramids” from Channel Orange

On June 8th, there appeared something new from Frank Ocean called “Pyramids” that was the first track released from something called Channel Orange. I was sold on Frank from my first listen to nostalgia, ULTRA last year, so when I heard this song my reaction was something along the lines of freaking the hell out.

Because “Pyramids” wasn’t only a 10-minute epic that spans centuries to paint a fresco of feeling — excavating dusty desire and updating it against a backdrop of green lasers and smoke — it was a statement, a claim. Frank Ocean has not been particularly humble when talking about Channel Orange, because he knows as well as everyone else that it’s an incredible work. Folks will be listening to “Pyramids” long after the Luxor has closed and been replaced with something even more ugly and anachronistic.

1.

Tame Impala: “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” from Lonerism

There’s a spot in the woods on my favorite disc golf course. Each time I play the course we always take a break at that spot and listen to some music. It’s serene, surrounded by old growth. It feels like a forest with a soul, one very old, and one with very good taste in music. Listening to “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” at that spot this summer was, as goofy and random as it sounds, something I actively looked forward to when I knew I was going up there to play. As the song seeped out of the tiny speaker on my smartphone it seemed to fill the woods, the air seemed to dance, everything locked in rhythm.

That spot is magical, but it will forever be more magical because of this song. Kevin Parker knows how heavy is the foot that steps in the right direction. Life may be hard for him, but he sure has an easy time singing about it.

hMsM on One Week One Band!

This week (M-F) I’ll be featured on one of my favorite music sites! One Week One Band is a blog where each week a different music writer spends a large number of words extolling the virtues of a chosen band. I chose the Smashing Pumpkins because they were the first group (not named the Beets) to ever become my “favorite band”, and I feel like a lot of people don’t have a clear picture of what their music was really all about.

Everybody has heard “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” and “Today”, but there are dozens of songs from their albums that are better than either of those. The perception of bratty and disaffected angst shaped their identity, but there’s so much more to the band.

The first post goes up around noon time (EST) on December 3rd, and there will be three posts per day Monday through Friday, I’d love it if you’d check it out (the link below will update chronologically any time a new post goes up, so it should be clickable all week)…

One Week One Band: Smashing Pumpkins

In other hMsM news, the top ten best songs, an extensive playlists and a few surprises will be coming along in the coming weeks for our best of 2012 coverage (if you haven’t, you can check out the top ten best albums list here). Stay tuned!