Arctic Monkeys | Do I Wanna Know? The Weight of a Riff Arctic Monkeys wrote the most-streamed rock song in history on a guitar Alex Turner bought as a joke, and when he first played the riff for the band, he was worried they’d gone too far. Here’s what gets me about the making of […]
The Joke Guitar That Launched 2.7 Billion Streams Read More »
Daft Punk | Get Lucky The Paradox A 15-second TV teaser became a 10-hour YouTube loop, and a song built to reject the internet broke Spotify’s all-time streaming record, the contradiction at the heart of “Get Lucky” never really resolved itself. Somewhere in early 2013, somebody took a 15-second television clip and looped it into
Daft Punk Built an Analog Temple. The Internet Worshipped It. Read More »
Tame Impala | The Less I Know The Better The Almost-Gift Kevin Parker tried to give his best song to Mark Ronson. Ronson sent it back, and it went on to outstream everything else Parker ever made. Kevin Parker spent days pacing a hallway somewhere in America, rehearsing a conversation he kept trying to talk
The Hit Kevin Parker Tried to Give Away Read More »
Foster the People | Pumped Up Kicks The Slap in the Face “Pumped Up Kicks” is a first-person monologue from a kid plotting murder. It went Diamond, hit a billion streams, and most people were dancing to it before they caught a single word. “It took people a while to let the lyrics get into
The Song That Made You Dance Before You Listened Read More »
Adele | Rolling in the Deep The Take You Can’t Redo The biggest song of 2011 uses a vocal from a three-hour demo session, one that Rick Rubin and a stacked band at Shangri-La Studios couldn’t beat, no matter how hard they tried. The biggest song of 2011, Grammy Record of the Year, Song of
The Demo That Beat Rick Rubin Read More »
