But an incredible amount of artists did have something new to say. Some of them challenged us. Some of them broke our hearts. Some of them made us feel good. The best of them are gathered here for your perusal. Cheers to 2015, and here’s to the year to come.

Leon Bridges

Coming Home

Coming Home is a record that should have existed in the 1960s. Leon Bridges is performing music that intersects perfectly with soul and R&B and gospel music. Who knew that this nostalgic sound could be so formidable in 2015?

What Bridges lacks in originality — even Bridges would say he owes Sam Cooke a beer — it makes up for with songwriting and smooth style. Leon Bridges’ debut is a comeback record for 1960s R&B/soul, but it’s also a hugely compelling charmer that makes Bridges feel like one of the most exciting soul performers of his generation — despite his retro leanings.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Girlpool

Before the World Was Big

Girlpool’s charming folk-influenced pop music feels startlingly original while remaining clearly influenced by greats like Velvet Underground. At just twenty-five minutes, Before the World Was Big feels like a giant tease, as if the band is still warming up to something bigger.

But they never break free of their simple guitar riffs and dual harmonies. In spite of that, the record holds some sort of mysterious raw power and energy to it: when Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad sing together, it doesn’t matter whether they’re intentionally ironically stripping away both folk and punk at the same time. The two of them have the emotional weight of an eighteen-wheeler. The rest of it is just candy.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

HOLYCHILD

The Shape of Brat Pop to Come

HOLYCHILD came out of nowhere and claimed to invent a new genre of pop music. While that’s not necessarily the case, the band sounds amazing and has a ton of momentum going for them. This duo is politically aware and socially conscious, with lyrics that read more like scathing indictments of the genre than they do pop songs.

Almost every track on Brat Pop is insanely catchy, and the biting tone — one that is both sarcastic and glaringly truthful — doesn’t spare anybody in its path. HOLYCHILD’s debut was glossed over by mainstream publications last year, but it’s a record you shouldn’t miss.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Petite Noir

La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful

South African Yannick Ilunga doesn’t care about your conception of pop music. His experimental electronic pop dares to be completely different and sounds entirely new. While he’s not necessarily have writing tracks you can dance to, his 80s-influenced, genre-mashing take on the genre feels like something straight out of the future and completely ahead of its time.

La Vie Est Belle (Life Is Beautiful) feels like a near-perfect record that dares to dream. It’s music that doesn’t believe in the boundaries of genre, and in the process of defying convention while remaining deeply rooted in what’s come before, Petite Noir’s debut earns respect and commands attention.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Kamasi Washington

The Epic

The Epic is authentic jazz. For a brief moment in time, Kamasi Washington was “that guy who played on Kendrick’s new record”. Immediately after The Epic dropped, he became the jazz aficionado who appeared out of nowhere, dropping what may be one of the genre’s masterpieces as a debut.

The Epic is remarkably unhinged. Just shy of three hours long, Washington somehow keeps his jazz music accessible despite his monolithic-sized ideas. It’s the product of a virtuoso clearly obsessed with defying expectations of critics and the culture surrounding jazz, and it’s hard to say that any other record in the genre has commanded as much attention in the past year.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Raury

All We Need

All We Need establishes nineteen-year-old Raury Tullis as a voice to be reckoned with in modern hip hop music. With influences that range from Kid Cudi and Kanye West to Marvin Gaye, Father John Misty, and Bon Iver, he’s also got an incredibly compelling and eclectic sound that separates him from many of his peers.

This sound feels nearly perfectly-honed on All We Need, an immense debut that surprises — particularly because of his age. The genre-jumping album is comfortable with melancholy, comfortable with doling out wisdom, and dealing with doling out the unexpected. He’s the opposite of cynical, and that makes his record one of hip hop’s best in a very strong year.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Alabama Shakes

Sound & Color

Sound & Color feels more varied than its predecessor, with Alabama Shakes spreading their wings on their sophomore effort and beginning to welcome their inner weird. While their first album was incredibly strong, Sound & Color reveals that the band has much more to say. Sound & Color is, as the title alludes, as much about texture as it is about the album’s pure unhinged sonic qualities.

Most importantly, though, Alabama Shakes avoids the sophomore slump with their expanded palette and collection of new sounds. With some of the most beautiful songs put on record in 2015, and a smattering of fantastic singles, Sound & Color makes a strong statement that Alabama Shakes is at the top of their game.

Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Sleater-Kinney

No Cities to Love

Sleater-Kinney’s first record in ten years is one of 2015’s best. The rock band’s comeback is more a statement that urges and commands our attention, nearly staccato with intensely brief three-minute tracks that sound more punk than they do rock ’n roll.

It’s easy to forget that the women in Sleater-Kinney are some of rock’s elder states-women when it sounds like the band still has so much to say. As political as ever, No Cities to Love carries a sense of urgency in its riffs that would make Dave Grohl jealous. While the trio was nothing to scoff at before, their new album is undoubtedly their best work: an absolute celebration of a band aging well and perhaps finally at their best.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Grimes

Art Angels

Claire Boucher said she wrote hundreds of songs for Art Angels, but ended up scrapping most of them. What’s left behind are fourteen perfectly-polished alt-pop tracks that are somehow radio-friendly without ever pandering to her audience. As Grimes, Boucher grabs the pop wheel and — instead of re-inventing things that are never broken — just takes the whole convertible off-roading.

Art Angels is fearless and incredibly ambitious as a result, broad and friendly while remaining singularly weird and individual. Refusing to be white-washed into everybody else’s definition of pop songwriting, Claire Boucher instead made a visionary and uncompromising pop record that the genres’ fans and detractors can listen to with pride.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Sufjan Stevens

Carrie & Lowell

Sufjan Stevens isn’t know for his predictability. He’s leaped from one genre to the next, even making multiple Christmas albums, but Carrie & Lowell feels like a return to his original form as a lo-fi singer/songwriter. As Sufjan charts the life and death of his mother, as well as reflect on his own complicated feelings about her, it strikes not with grand musical statements, but with a series of small, gut-wrenching emotional moments.

Carrie & Lowell is perhaps the epitome of Sufjan Stevens’ sound, stripped back to its most basic and essential. As a result, in a career with seemingly one golden album after another, it could be the best record he’s ever made.

Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Father John Misty

I Love You, Honeybear

Josh Tillman’s sophomore effort as Father John Misty, he continues to demonstrate his outstanding songwriting ability. Better than his solo debut by any reviewer’s metric, I Love You, Honeybear feels challenging and rewarding without losing any of its approachability. Lush and complex soundscapes are perfectly produced, revealing the mastery Tillman has over his genre at this point in his career.

There’s a lot to take apart with the album, but it’s Tillman’s lyrical approach that truly sets it apart. Most of the album explores the relationship he has with his wife, and he’s at turns loving and cynical about their time together and their future. The fascination of I Love You, Honeybear is trying to decode the way Tillman sings about his wife and their life together into something understandable and comfortable — because the staggering openness that Tillman presents as Father John Misty feels nearly voyeuristic.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Kendrick Lamar

To Pimp a Butterfly

It wasn’t surprising that Kendrick’s latest record was good; it was largely expected to be an excellent record from one of hip hop’s brightest stars. But the level of intelligence and thought surrounding the album, the provocative way that Lamar literally takes it to the White House, took us all by surprise.

To Pimp a Butterfly is an album that shines because of Lamar’s singular skill as a lyricist and a storyteller. Music aside — and the backing music on TPAB is worth deeper discussion in and of itself — the record shines because Kendrick shines behind the mic. More than the best record of the year, it feels like an important moment in pop culture.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

The post The Best Albums of 2015 appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

This Unruly Mess I’ve Made lives up to its name. It’s a total mess of an album, completely inconsistent from beginning to end, uneven from one track to the next, and with Macklemore completely unsure of what he has to say. Its most standout tracks are flawed, with choruses and verses that feel forced together. Macklemore himself struggles for half the album to stay on beat. If great art feels effortless, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made feels like hard work.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it.

On This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, Macklemore is working through heady stuff. He’s a famous white man performing in a genre marginalized by white media because its most acclaimed performers are black. He’s struggling as a man who didn’t want the fame if it meant he couldn’t be true to himself. And (as usual) he’s working through what it means to be a voice for people with addiction issues when he’s still tempted himself.

Thanks to a seemingly constant barrage of accolades for being a “conscious” rapper and a self-aware recovering addict, Macklemore has bravely taken on the chance to be a voice for everybody who doesn’t have one, whether that means he’s talking about drugs or the Black Lives Matter movement. He’s working through all this in real time, on a record for all of us to hear and dissect. It’s a good time to discuss his position, wrap our minds around his message.

And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with what he’s trying to say. We need to talk about marginalization. But more importantly, we need to listen to the marginalized. And this is what Macklemore robs us of.

There’s a scene in the film Dope where the main character, a black male in his senior year of high school, is asked if he listens to Macklemore. His reaction comes quickly and doesn’t mince words: “I would never listen to Macklemore.”

The movie plays it for jokes, which means that there is a truth we all find funny in that moment. Of course a young black male wouldn’t listen to Macklemore, because he doesn’t really speak for them, as much as he’d like to.

Macklemore is in an awkward position: until his Grammy win against Kendrick Lamar for Best Rap Album, he seemed like an obvious game-changer in modern hip hop. His album, Heist, was largely fantastic — thanks to Macklemore’s fiery performance and tackling of any issue. It all worked.

Until it didn’t.

After his Grammy win, there was a palpable sense that the scene was turning against him. Macklemore seemed to realize it too, sending Kendrick Lamar an apology text saying he “robbed” Lamar of his Grammy. His newly elevated position instantly incriminated his record, which worked as a proud work from an independent and little-known artist. Tracks like Jimmy Iovine or Make the Money don’t work as well when you’re suddenly a rich white man asking questions about your own validity in your genre.

What’s left for Macklemore to say? Who’s left for him to represent? More importantly, what is his responsibility as a popular artist?

Nobody seems to be able to explain why the tide turned against Macklemore, though, apart from saying it had to do with the way we often reject popular culture in an attempt to find and identify something new. I think it goes much deeper than that.

Macklemore is trapped in a semiotic cycle that it’s doubtful he can escape from: as a signifier, he represents white culture attempting to understand “blackness” from a distance. He’s a mirror of the common white person, which makes us uncomfortable: he doesn’t know what to do about his neighbours, and instead of listening to them, he talks about being involved with them on a protest level in tracks like the muddled White Privilege II. As a white man in hip hop, he’s confused being in it with being of it.

I can’t explain with any degree of accuracy why my black friends aren’t interested in Macklemore. Arguably, it’s because he’s not representing them. He doesn’t represent that culture, or their values, or their struggles, even though he openly wonders if he should. That he even asks the question is disconcerting.

As a conscious rapper, he doesn’t represent the poor anymore either. With his money and resources, he’s not fighting against anything other than his own privilege. He doesn’t have to struggle. Tracks like Thrift Shop are absurd when the verses are rapped by a millionaire.

In an intro to This Unruly Mess on Medium, Macklemore says: “I was too comfortable. Being comfortable is what kills artists… I didn’t know what I wanted to say. Didn’t know how the ink would stick to the page.” Macklemore is wrestling with the same questions we are: what’s left for him to say? Who’s left for him to represent? More importantly, what is his responsibility as a popular artist? He has a huge platform, and it makes sense that he uses it to try to get people to talk and think.

The best tracks on Macklemore’s records aren’t the major singles like Downtown (which makes the rapper sound like an uncool poseur), or White Privilege II, which simply sounds like a misguided attempt to understand what his peers are going through. Contrarily, the best tracks are his personal odes like Kevin, St. Ides, or Need to Know. With nothing left in society that he can be authentic about, his most earnest tracks are the ones where Macklemore struggles with his own issues.

That still leaves us with the rest of the record, though. Perhaps it’s telling that many of these tracks don’t have us discussing the social issues at hand. Last year. To Pimp a Butterfly had us all thinking about Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement. This year, Macklemore has us all talking about himself and his place in all of it.

It’s the ultimate misuse of his own platform. It’s hard to blame Macklemore for it, but the laws of semiotics dictate that when he has nothing left to represent, the only thing he can point to is himself. It makes him feel hypocritical at worst and confused at best, despite his sincerity as a lyricist and his authenticity as a rapper. But the real problem here isn’t Macklemore: it’s that we’re all too busy talking about him and missing the real discussions he’s trying — but failing — to have with us.

This Unruly Mess I’ve Made is out now, and you can purchase it from iTunes or Amazon and stream it on Apple Music or Spotify.

The post The Mess Macklemore’s Made appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

Partially, that was to avoid being reactive: while it’s easy to hop on the same bandwagon as everybody else and claim a record to be the best of the year, it’s also very easy to make a mistake with claims like that and look foolish later. Hindsight is 20/20, but I needed time to step back before saying anything that would look ridiculous later.

At this point, it seems conclusive — and even President Obama agrees — that Lamar owned 2015.

What’s not as conclusive is how important To Pimp A Butterfly will be five years from now. I’d go so far as to say that the album is the most important of the decade thus far. It’s not just its jazz experiments — although that’s definitely a part of it — but it’s also the album’s cultural significance.

As Lamar explores his status as a rich black man exploring Africa for the first time and going back home to Compton, he incidentally sheds light on his generation’s biggest plight in cities like Ferguson. As black people (and other non-white nationalities) are mistreated and abused by police, To Pimp A Butterfly feels like a call to act — and a call to recognize each other as people. It’s an incredibly important record that shines a light on the way music can speak for our culture, and how it draws attention to the real issues we otherwise might not have even noticed.

The standout from the record is, no doubt, How Much A Dollar Cost. Against a laid-back jazzy beat, Kendrick discusses an encounter with a homeless man who asks him for money and reveals himself later to be God. Kendrick’s lyrical and rhythmic abilities as a rapper here are unparalleled, as he explains and justifies his behaviour despite knowing he’s sometimes no better than the white racist.

It’s not just that song, of course. Alright has become the theme song for the Black Lives Matter movement. The Blacker The Berry is powerful, and Kendrick’s live performances of the song seem to generate a simultaneously rabid and uncomfortably tense response from its audiences. And at the end of i, Kendrick breaks out a spoken word performance that’s hard to top.

But top it he does, with a so-well-done-it-feels-real interview with Tupac that Lamar scraped together with a bunch of unreleased tapes. It caps off an unbelievable album on a somber note: some things never change.

It’s more than the lyrics that make the album stand out, though: the music itself is incredible. To Pimp A Butterfly is one of the jazziest hip hop records ever made. It’s not a jazz record, but it has so many of the greats on it (like Terrace Martin and Thundercat) — as well as some new faces (like the immensely-talented Kamasi Washington). And it oozes the same sort of sexual, raw, and kinetic energy that the best jazz records eked.

Not to mention the way Kendrick Lamar uses jazz’s best inclinations to continually surprise the audiences with unpredictable beats, rhythms, and song structures. It makes To Pimp A Butterfly immensely rewarding with deeper listening.

There’s a point in the album, around the For Sale? Interlude, when you realize you genuinely have no idea what Kendrick is up to or where he’s going with the whole record. It’s full of surprises. And by the time it’s done, you let out a giant exhale, no matter how times you’ve heard it before. While Alright and King Kunta are great singles, it’s clear that the album is best when you listen to it from beginning to end without skipping a track.

Every ten or fifteen years, an artefact comes out of our pop culture that seems to be the perfect depiction of something happening in our society. It happened fifteen years ago with The Lord Of The Rings, a film trilogy that seemed perfectly time to capture our fears and hopes concerning the War on Terrorism. With To Pimp A Butterfly, we have something similar: a time capsule that is perhaps the closest thing to a perfect record that we’ve ever had, but it also means so much more. It’s our time, no matter how bad it is, recorded onto vinyl. It’s a thing of beauty.

The post Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

Bowie was one of rock’s good guys. Despite some of the grandeur of his performances and his wild sides, he never felt like a shock rocker — not to the extent that Black Sabbath or Marilyn Manson would be described as — but he continued to have the ability to surprise.

Perhaps most surprising was his ending: knowing that he was going to pass away any day, he finally releases Blackstar (our review) and passes only days later. His final music is about dealing with his own mortality, and in his final music video, he portrays himself as the living dead.

Bowie’s final persona was that of Lazarus, a dead man with something more to say to the world.

Bowie spoke for fans all over the world, and paved the way for many of the gay performers we have today thanks to his claims to be gay, straight, bi, and an alien. It’s hard to image we’d have artists like Perfume Genius without him.

But more so, it’s hard to imagine we’d have any modern rock and roll without him. Bowie influenced everybody — including movers and shakers that were much bigger than him. These are musicians who changed the game on global scales, people who inspired generations to pick up a guitar or a bass and learn to play. Nirvana was inspired by him, for crying out loud.

His theatrics inspired Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne (particularly after Osbourne left the afore-mentioned Black Sabbath to start his solo career). He influenced heavy metal and glam rock acutely, perhaps obviously, through presentation alone.

But while Bowie wrote glam rock records, albums like The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust sound much more like singer-songwriter. And they have their origins in the folk nature of it all — so it’s not just his experiments on The Man Who Sold The World that solidified his influence on the folk genre.

Perhaps obviously, the Berlin Trilogy led the way for electronic crossover music. Let’s Dance helped kick-off the alternative dance music scene. And Bowie’s work with funk transcends many genres, ultimately influencing even hip hop. Progressive rock may not even exist without him.

It’s rare to find a genre — or a single musician, even — who isn’t inspired and can’t trace some of their roots back to Bowie. Bowie isn’t the man who sold the world so much as he is the one who made it his own. He kick-started genres and catapulted many into stardom.

He did all of this while being himself.

Ultimately, Bowie’s legacy might not be his influence in music itself. It will come down to his voice. For millions, Bowie was the way they learned that it was okay to be themselves. Music didn’t have to be as sociologically regressive as country or homophobic (and sadistically vengeful) as heavy metal, and it didn’t have to be as blatantly rebellious and angry as punk. In fact, if you were a teenager and didn’t find yourself fitting into any of these genres, Bowie was the perfect respite for you.

He made it okay to be weird.

And in that sense, he leaves behind an even greater legacy: the musicians who are comfortable being weird. These are the people like Arca, who are reinventing the language of electronic music with solo releases or production work on Kanye tracks. These are the Petite Noirs of the world. The Fiery Furnaces. The Chet Fakers. Their ability to be themselves is largely a credit to Bowie, the man who pioneered it so many years ago.

Bowie’s life is like poetry: every few stanzas, there’s a shift in theme and rhythm. But ultimately, it comes full circle. So it’s fitting that, in many ways, Bowie’s career ended the way it started: with jazz experimentation, a defiance of pop and rock expectations, and a revival of popular interest in jazz fusion thanks to trend-setters like Kendrick Lamar.

And reportedly, Bowie was listening to a lot of Kendrick while he made Blackstar — which is, no doubt, going to go down as a landmark record in the rock genre. So it’s fitting that today’s new musical leaders are able to inspire Bowie in the same way that he’s able to inspire us. And thanks to Blackstar, I think we clearly have a love letter from Bowie with his notes (no pun intended) on where he thinks rock music is going. The saddest thing about it is that he won’t be along to experience the new journey he’s started us on.

The post Remembering David Bowie appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

2016 is going to be a great year filled with new talent. We can’t wait to see what surprises these artists will bring our way.

Cloves

Cloves is still a teenager, but she sounded so much older than that on her debut EP, released late in 2015. She has a beautiful voice, soaked in reverb and drenched in atmosphere on the EP, but she also has a keen sense of songwriting.

As a singer-songwriter, she’s nothing like Adelle or Taylor Swift (although she’s often compared to them), but fans of Lana Del Ray are going to find a lot to like. We’re hoping we get the chance to hear a debut feature-length from her sometime in 2016.

Francesco Yates

Justin Timberlake has anointed Francesco Yates the heir apparent to Timberlake’s particular brand of R&B-influenced pop music. We’d believe it. His first EP, dropped in 2015, was filled with soaring vocal work overtop of fantastic pop.

Yates is only twenty years old, so he has a lot of time to get some mentorship and hone his craft. We know he’s already signed, and the label will be hoping to cash in on that sometime soon, that might mean a feature-length sometime in 2016. We’d be first in line.

Lawrence Taylor

On the topic of heirs apparent, Lawrence Taylor feels like the first real genuine heir to old-school John Mayer we’ve had in a long time. His debut EP, Bang Bang, was a tremendous success in our books: catchy and approachable as pop, but his acoustic guitar strumming has a blues-y feel to it too.

Lawrence Taylor has everything John Mayer had going for him in his Heavier Things era: a killer falsetto, a great sense of writing, and the air of ego — even on tape, for some reason. But that confidence works.

Eryn Allen Kane

Eryn Allen Kane is a prodigy. Her powerhouse voice, lauded by genre leaders like Prince, felt unstoppable on Aviary: Act I, her biggest EP yet. She’s got a crazy amount of soul and, along with Fantastic Negrito, brings a tremendous amount of the genre’s original vibes back to the mic.

Eryn Allen Kane has all the passion and energy of her youth ahead of her, and a lot to say: her voice sounds unhinged and desperate to be free against every track she releases, making us eager to hear at least Act II of Aviary — and hopefully a full-fledged album soon.

Daniel Caesar

Daniel Caesar’s short EP, Pilgrim’s Paradise, really grabbed our attention in 2015. His record feels like a summation of everything happening in both the retro soul movement and the current R&B revival scene headlined by artists like FKA Twigs and BJ the Chicago Kid.

Pilgrim’s Paradise was a small platter that felt like a full serving. The question we have for Daniel Caesar is whether or not he can keep it up for a full album — which is what we’re hoping he’ll deliver this year.

Highs

Toronto natives Highs put out their last major EP in 2013 and have since been touring like crazy — recently with We The City. This April, their debut full-length, Dazzle Camouflage, is expected to drop on Indica Records, and we couldn’t be more excited.

Highs’ self-titled EP had a keen sense of indie rock and an aversion to cookie-cutter sounds, and we’re hoping that audacity continues with Dazzle Camouflage.

Fantastic Negrito

Fantastic Negrito sounds like he stepped out of a time capsule and joined us in 2015 to say hello. Armed with dark blues rock that sounds influenced by the greats, but with a cynicism that belies his 21st-century roots, Negrito has charmed us with two EPs so far and we can’t wait to hear a full-length record. We’re keeping an eye on him this year.

What separates Fantastic Negrito from a lot of the revival scenes happening is an awareness of his black roots. Out of all the new blues and soul players right now, and even the up-and-comers, Fantastic Negrito sounds the blackest, with an obvious respect for the greats that came before him and a desire to be the genre’s new every man. We think he can pull it off.

BJ the Chicago Kid

It’s been a long time coming for the Chicago native to release his first album on Motown, but we can’t wait to hear the results. BJ the Chicago Kid feels, much like Anderson .Paak, like one of the music industry’s worst-kept secrets: an upcoming talent just waiting to explode. In times like this, it never feels like we’re waiting for an album to come out — it always feel as if the album is ready for us, like we’re not prepared.

In short, we’re expecting BJ the Chicago Kid to surprise us.

Made of Oak

Nick Sanborn, one of half of Slyvan Esso, completely blew us away with his first EP release as Made of Oak. Penumbra was a beautiful electronic album. It wasn’t incredibly dissimilar from his work in Esso, but that’s a good thing: Sanborn is one of the few producers in electronic music who can make a synthesizer feel as organic as an acoustic instrument. It looks like Nick plans to spend the year working on a new Sylvan Esso record and touring his butt off, but we can dream about a feature-length, right?

Coleman Hell

The last we heard from Coleman Hell was when he released an EP last year that was, more or less, a collection of the singles we already knew really well. But all of it feels as if it’s gearing up to something.

Rest assured that when his debut feature-length record drops, you’ll know: Coleman’s singles last year were all high-energy dance tracks that could get stuck in your head for days. We’re excited to hear more from him.

Barcelona

The last time we heard from Barcelona, the indie rock band was experimenting with their three-part EP record called Melodrama in 2014. It feels high time for another release from them. Their experimentation with the EPs — called Love Me, Love You, and Know Love, respectively — was interesting and completely different from what came before. We want to know what direction the band will go in next.

The trio has been completely quiet since the Melodrama series dropped — we had to double-check to make sure they were still around, to be honest. None of this indicates a new record this year, but we’re keeping a close eye on them because we want it to happen.

The post Artists We’re Excited About in 2016 appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

Rdio was the first online streaming service in the mobile era, arriving in 2010 and well before Spotify did. It sported what was a modern design (at the time), and was continually updated to look as good as possible.

Strictly from a design standpoint, it can’t be understated that Rdio was one of the most gorgeous pieces of music software ever made. In fact, much of its design inspired the trends we have today in Windows 8 and 10 and iOS 7 and up. That flat look was very much an Rdio trademark.

More importantly, though, was Rdio’s attention to the people who used the service.

Rdio was competing — in its earliest days — with Deezer, MOG, Napster, and Rhapsody. About a year later, they started competing with Spotify as well. But Rdio was the only music app that understood how we talk about music.

A Place to Share Music with Friends

How many times have we chatted with friends and had them tell us about a great new record we should check out, only to forget about it later and never listen to it? That was the problem Rdio solved.

Many of Rdio’s contemporaries, like Spotify and Apple Music, use a mixture of human curation and machine algorithms to decide what to share with us. But Rdio allowed you to follow your friends and see what they were frequently playing, alongside the music that was topping the charts.

This mixture allowed for easy discovery: it became trivial to find new music your friends liked as well as listen to the day’s greatest hits. It nearly made Unsung Sundays unnecessary, actually. By very virtue of being perfectly-curated, it took social music to its most natural evolution.

To this day, I’ve never had better music recommendations than the ones I’ve received from Rdio. That’s largely because my friends, people who I trust to have great musical taste, were always listening to rad new music. But it’s also because I was in total control of it.

Didn’t like something, or found somebody’s tastes weren’t as aligned with mine as I thought? No problem; I could simply unfollow them and the problem was solved. As a point of comparison, Apple Music takes forever to notice what I like unless I specifically tell it so. But if I tell Apple Music that I like Kanye West, the app suddenly decides to constantly recommend Kanye West playlists and albums to me, despite the fact that I’m well aware of him and am more interested in finding something new.

On the other hand, Spotify nails it with their Discover Weekly service: 30 songs that feel hand-picked by a loving friend despite being served by a machine algorithm. People rightly (and justifiably) love it. But it feels cold and impersonal, much in the same way that those cutesy “Good afternoon!” messages Facebook occasionally shares with me in my timeline feel cold and impersonal. The machine is not my friend.

The best thing about these social recommendations, though, is that they avoided the echo chamber. They forced tastes to expand. They enabled people, through the comfort of their friends’ recommendations, to discover something new to them on a nearly-daily basis.

One of Rdio’s other joys was that they put the album first. Many purists will tell you that the best way to enjoy music is to put on a record and listen to it from first track to last, in the dark, with headphones on. This very website was founded on that belief. And Rdio’s design and system put records front and centre.

This was — and very much is — a unique combination that made Rdio the service to beat. It was highly-recommended and very well-reviewed, often considered the best streaming service by a mile. Beyond that, it had the potential to be culturally significant: music hadn’t felt that naturally social since the pre-iTunes days, when you had to physically go to a record store to buy the latest and greatest. Pair that with an obsession with the record instead of the single, and you had a service that seemed destined to change the way young people — tomorrow’s recording artists and trend-setters — look at music in its most popular forms.

All this was taken away from us when Rdio shut down.

I was part of the problem: like many other people, I switched to Apple Music in the summer when the service promised tighter integration with my iPhone. I started missing Rdio immediately, but the service was frequently becoming buggy and showed no sign of changing any time soon. Around the same time, my friends and I all stopped using the service.

Perhaps the biggest problem with software is its impermanence. Now, as I look at the landscape of music streaming services and think about what the offerings are today, I’m left with only one thought:

I miss Rdio.

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