33 1 3 B Sides

If given another chance to write for the series, which albums would 33 1/3 authors focus on the second time around? This anthology features compact essays from past 33 1/3 authors on albums that consume them, but about which they did not write. It explores often overlooked and underrated albums that may not have inspired their 33 1/3 books, but have played a large part in their own musical cultivation. Questions central to the essays include: How has this album influenced your worldview? How does this album intersect with your other creative and critical pursuits? How does this album index a particular moment in cultural history? In your own personal history? Why is the album perhaps under-the-radar, or a buried treasure? Why can't you stop listening to it? Bringing together 33 1/3's rich array of writers, critics, and scholars, this collection probes our taste in albums, our longing for certain tunes, and our desire to hit repeat--all while creating an expansive "must-listen" list for readers in search of unexplored musical territories.

If given another chance to write for the series, which albums would 33 1/3 authors focus on the second time around? This anthology features compact essays from past 33 1/3 authors on albums that consume them, but about which they did not write. It explores often overlooked and underrated albums that may not have inspired their 33 1/3 books, but have played a large part in their own musical cultivation. Questions central to the essays include: How has this album influenced your worldview? How does this album intersect with your other creative and critical pursuits? How does this album index a particular moment in cultural history? In your own personal history? Why is the album perhaps under-the-radar, or a buried treasure? Why can't you stop listening to it? Bringing together 33 1/3's rich array of writers, critics, and scholars, this collection probes our taste in albums, our longing for certain tunes, and our desire to hit repeat--all while creating an expansive "must-listen" list for readers in search of unexplored musical territories.

"This anthology features compact essays from past 33 1/3 authors on albums that consume them, but about which they did not write. It explores often overlooked and underrated albums that may not have inspired their 33 1/3 books, but have played a large part in their own musical cultivation".

It's hard to think of a solo female recording artist who has been as revered or as reviled over the course of her career as Tori Amos. Amy Gentry argues that these violent aesthetic responses to Amos's performance, both positive and negative, are organized around disgust-the disgust that women are taught to feel, not only for their own bodies, but for their taste in music. Released in 1996, Amos's third album, Boys for Pele, represents the height of Amos's willingness to explore the ugly qualities that make all of her music, even her more conventionally beautiful albums, so uncomfortably, and so wonderfully, strange. Using a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory, Gentry argues that the aesthetics of disgust are useful for thinking in a broader way about women's experience of all art forms.

Oasis's incendiary 1994 debut album Definitely Maybe managed to summarize almost the entire history of post-fifties guitar music from Chuck Berry to My Bloody Valentine in a way that seemed effortless. But this remarkable album was also a social document that came closer to narrating the collective hopes and dreams of a people than any other record of the last quarter century. In a Britain that had just undergone the most damaging period of social upheaval in a century under the Thatcher government, Noel Gallagher ventriloquized slogans of burning communitarian optimism through the mouth of his brother Liam and the playing of the other Oasis 'everymen': Paul McGuigan, Paul Arthurs and Tony McCarroll. On Definitely Maybe, Oasis communicated a timeworn message of idealism and hope against the odds, but one that had special resonance in a society where the widening gap between high and low demanded a newly superhuman kind of leaping. Alex Niven charts the astonishing rise of Oasis in the mid 1990s and celebrates the life-affirming, communal force of songs such as “Live Forever,” “Supersonic,” and “Cigarettes & Alcohol.” In doing so, he seeks to reposition Oasis in relation to their Britpop peers and explore one of the most controversial pop-cultural narratives of the last thirty years.

A collection of reviews of individual albums, c2003-2006.

Released in 2008, J-pop trio Perfume's GAME shot to the top of Japanese music charts and turned the Hiroshima trio into a household name across the country. It was also a high point for techno-pop, the genre's biggest album since the heyday of Yellow Magic Orchestra. This collection of maximalist but emotional electronic pop stands as one of the style's finest moments, with its influence still echoing from artists both in Japan and from beyond. This book examines Perfume's underdog story as a group long struggling for success, the making of GAME, and the history of techno-pop that shaped it. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.

Derided as one-hit wonders, estranged from their original producer and record label, and in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, the Beastie Boys were written off by most observers before even beginning to record their second album-an embarrassing commercial flop that should have ruined the group's career. But not only did Paul's Boutique eventually transform the Beasties from a frat-boy novelty to hiphop giants, its sample-happy, retro aesthetic changed popular culture forever.