Take the shame out of my playlist

It's occurred to me lately that while I'm very familiar with what seems to be cool with the hip kids when it comes to movies thanks to the handy people at TGWTG, my musical knowledge leaves me looking like quite the chump, to the point where the only real discussion I can have about music is "I like this a lot" or "Dubstep sounds like ear poison to my autistic brain, I thought regular club music was hard on me but DAMN".

I'm looking for recommendations in the indie, hip hop, hair metal, retro disco era, recent music, and country/western genres, in short, I'm going all out with repopulating my poor abused iPod which has been subjected to the likes of Green Day International Superhits! and Craig David's Slicker Than Your Average for far too long, sure I have some classic, acceptable albums in there like Nevermind and Never Mind The Bollocks, but delve deep enough into my music collection and half my damn C Ds are film soundtracks like Conan The Barbarian, Dune, Blade Runner, my point is I'm a dorky hermit who spent the opening of his twenties wallowing in film soundtracks because he watched more films than he did listen to the music other kids were listening to because he had few tastemaker friends.

I'll let you know which albums I've already heard from your suggestions, but having my brother's USA based college friend stay over for a week really alarmed me about how I didn't even know who Mumford and Sons were before she visited, and would have had no way of discovering them otherwise because I'm a hermit who tinkers with materials to make art stuff in his attic, not a lot of contact with hipsters during semester break who can remind me I should probably check out these Gotye and Fun. guys as soon as possible.

Recommend me stuff so I'm up to date with the last decade and a 1/3 of music I may have missed out on because of my isolation from society at large, GO!

hip hop Recs:

Aesop Rock

(Early} Esham

Tech N9ne

Hopsin

BeastieBoys

AZ

(Early) Eminem

IceT

(Early) Insane Clown Posse

3rdBase

Necro

Will Smith

The Jokerr (Not to be confused with Tha Joker who sucks)

edited 6th Jul '12 9:55:35 AM by KingNerd

Beastie Boys I have a wide selection of from my brother's C Ds, early Eminem I have almost none of though.

Will check out those other rappers though.

Rap Critic rarely lets me down.

Kinda worried that it's taken me ten years to finally get around to listening to Earth, Wind And Fire, let alone The Arcade Fire.

Please do so.

The first three LPs by the English post-punk group Wire (Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, 154) are each personal favourites of mine and might just be up your alley considering some of the things that you have mentioned. For some reason I also feel like demanding that you listen to The Decemberists' Castaways and Cutouts, but personal preference aside, I can't be certain why. Maybe you just give me that vibe.

How high is your weirdness tolerance?

edited 5th Jul '12 5:07:26 AM by JHM

I devoted three years of my life writing an internet horror trilogy that has a musical number in book 2, and cameos from well known game critics a la House Of Leaves with Stephen King and Hunter S Thompson cameos.

My weirdness tolerance is pretty high is what I mean. As long as the music isn't sonically painful to my ears like dubstep is for some reason, I'm good.

How's this for you?

As far as indie music goes, The Indie Rock Playlist has a metric shit-ton of them. Most of them suck, obviously, but there's a few really good ones here and there.

Speaking of metric, Metric. Great band. They just put out a new album that's really good. They also contributed to the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack. They're like Canada's answer to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but better. Not saying the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren't good, because they're another good band. Just saying that Metric is better.

Feist is famous for that iPod commercial and for doing Colbert's Christmas Special. But she's really good in general. I find she can sometimes get way too pitchy, but other times, she's awesome.

Florence + the Machine is popular right now. So listening to her will make you look better.

I may as well mention my favourite band, the Heartless Bastards. They've done Letterman twice and Conan once, but I doubt they'll ever achieve any real popularity. So mentioning them is never going to make you look hip. But they're an awesome band so you should listen to them anyway.

Who else? Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes are apparently pretty hip, but I can't say I've been impressed with them. Regina Spektor was recently on Colbert, and she's really good, though because of her desire to make all her songs different, she's possibly the most hit-or-miss artist you'll ever find. One track will be your favourite song ever, and then the next you'll find completely unlistenable.

I started looking up music videos for One Direction.

I'm terrified that I like them more than a man of my advanced age of 22 should. Also my family hasn't judged me this harshly over my music taste since I got really into Andrew Lloyd Webber. God Help Me, I can't get angry at 1D for being everything I've been missing about cheerful pop music on the radio from back when I was a kid like when Backstreet Boys were popular, but 1D are even more squeaky clean than Backstreet was.

I'm so sorry... I'm a grown man and I somehow kinda like a band that admittedly butchered the theme from Fresh Prince Of Bel Air...

That reminds me to add Will Smith to my Hip-Hop recs.

Linking to samples where ever possible here.

Sleigh Bells
Passion Pit (this song's from a new album that's not officially out yet)
The Black Keys (they've been around about 10 years now, but only started getting really popular last year)

I at least found an Elton John's Greatest Hits album in my brother's Nerd Cave where he keeps his Legend of Zelda statues like Link on Epona and King Darunia or whatever.

It's a start, I'll raid the rest of it while he's asleep. The fool...

I'll point out that it feels odd to be concerned about what my family thinks of my "horrible" taste in music when the second album I ever bought was the Schumacher version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom Of The Opera. They could have intervened and forced me to buy the Original Cast version at least, but they were lazy parents who were just happy I wasn't listening to Eminem at an impressionable age.

"impressionable age"

Please don't imply that children are impressionable around me again.

5 hip-hop albums I recommend:

Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Outkast: Aquamini

Public Enemy: Fear of A Black Planet

GZA: Liquid Swords

The Roots: Game Theory (though you can't go wrong with these guys)

The lack of classical and rock and roll disappoints me.

I'm not saying your children are impressionable.

I was saying I am. This is the guy who could never take the nanny state seriously again after seeing The Cinema Snob's Caligula review. Poor choice of words?

You also have to take into account that impressionable is a very vague concept. I was impressionable in the sense that hearing rap music for the first time made me want to sit on stoops being rebellious rather than actually committing drive by shootings. That's really where media effects falls apart.

Listening to The Bee Gees made me want to boogie on the dance floor.

I agree with Exelixi. You need some of the classics in there. Some Led Zeppelin or The Who or something. Even if it isn't your thing, it still is a fairly good starting point, just so that you can see where everything else is coming from.

Also, I'm going to pimp Social Distortion right now just because I've been listening to them a lot lately. They've got a real rootsy punk sound that is a bit tricky to describe. Their self titled album is supposedly their best, but I personally like "White Light White Heat White Trash," and "Sex, Love and Rock 'n' Roll" better.

You asked for Hair Metal, so the obvious recommendation is Van Halen. I can't really recommend you an album (I know of them from listening to what my dad was playing and I think he had a Greatest Hits Album) but if you really haven't listened to them I'd check 'em out. They're pretty fun.

edited 7th Jul '12 9:22:01 AM by DrStarky

Listen to everything by The Beatles. End of thread.

But for more classic rock, my tops there would also include The Who, Simon And Garfunkel, Electric Light Orchestra, Chuck Berry, and Bon Jovi.

(I'll link some songs when I'm out of work later.)

edited 7th Jul '12 10:42:07 AM by 0dd1

For Van Halen I recommend either the self-titled album or 1984.