Rhapsody: The Mix

One of the greatest albums of the 1960s (or any decade), Odyssey & Oracle was the Zombies' last hurrah. The band crafted a warm, vividly psychedelic yet achingly melancholy work that can stand proudly next to Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper's and Village Green. The album was initially ignored in Britain, but after the deflated group disbanded, the fantastic "Time of the Season" took off in the U.S. Top tracks include "A Rose for Emily," "Care of Cell 44," "Beechwood Park" ... actually, all of them. No music collection is complete without it. [Nick Dedina] Hear It Now!

Weird enough to actually like Christmas music? Well, Darlene Love's "White Christmas" and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" are the two best Christmas songs ever. The Crystals' "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" is third, and The Ronettes are always wonderful. Anyone who disagrees is getting coal in their stocking. [Mike McGuirk] Hear It Now!

Steve Hauschildt is the quiet member of the trio Emeralds; his solo output is slim compared to the volumes amassed by bandmates John Elliott and Mark McGuire. His first widely available (non-CD-R) album is accordingly economical, making the most of its materials. It's not minimal, but it's rapturously focused. No gesture is wasted, and his pinging synthesizer fugues roll like perpetual motion machines. Klaus Schulze, Durutti Column and Detroit techno's John Beltran inform the dewy arpeggios, but the music is a universe of its own making. [Philip Sherburne] Hear It Now!

Welcome to Producers Corner, our new video series in which we grill our favorite producers about their mysterious craft while following them around their natural habitat: the studio, of course. So far we've talked to folks like Pacific Northwest icon Phil Ek, fearless M.I.A. cohort Zakee and SF rock guru John Vanderslice. Today we make a home visit to Jimmy Tamborello, the electro-pop innovator who records as Dntel, has worked with the likes of Rilo Kiley and Bright Eyes, and is also one-half of celebrated indie-pop duo The Postal Service. He tells us why he prefers working from home (who doesn’t?), how to deal with writer’s block (buy something!), and why it’s better to work alone (you feel free to do dumb stuff). It’s all brought to you by ASUS and Intel. Enjoy.

The appeal of country music, for a sissified city slicker such as myself, largely lies in glimpsing a universe in which everyone is tougher, stronger, surlier, drunker and more adept with power tools than I am, which is not a terribly high bar, no, but it's nonetheless simultaneously dismaying and thrilling how many women can clear it. Here then we have Miranda, Taylor, Neko, Ashton, Carrie, Those Darlins and many others boozing, seething and raging, to my delight/terror. Yes, even the one named "Sunny."

Listen now: Friday Mixtape: Country Chicks Who Could Beat Me Up

"How can I love somebody else/If I can't love myself?" sings Mary J. Blige on "Be Happy," the penultimate track on My Life. The legend is that she recorded this seminal album while struggling with substance abuse and a tumultuous romance with Jodeci's K-Ci Hailey. She sang of pain as well as pleasure, and the incredible six-minute slow jam "I Never Wanna Live Without You" inspired plenty of baby-making. Executive produced by Sean "Puffy" Combs, this is a portrait of a young woman trying to find faith in God and the promise of eternal love, and it is one of the best albums of the '90s. [Mosi Reeves] Hear It Now!

These days, urban music can encompass dance pop, quiet-storm soul, and hardcore hip-hop, from Rihanna to Charlie Wilson, from Jill Scott to Lil Wayne in "How to Love" mode. This would all be confusing, except for one thing: You know an R&B track when you hear it. That's why our Urban Hits station mixes tracks from genre queens Beyoncé and Mary J Blige with adult-contemporary goddess Adele and rap heroine Nicki Minaj. All of them contribute to our current understanding of R&B as less of a fixed genre (or a fixed race) than an aesthetic. It's a style of music with deep roots in soul and an appreciation of pop music's boundless creativity. Most importantly, it retains the ability to speak to a wide international audience. So don't be surprised if you hear Rick Ross' "Aston Martin Music" after Trey Songz "Bottoms Up." This is the sound of R&B in 2011.

Listen Now: Urban Hits

Live from New York City's CMJ Music Festival, here's our exclusive chat with Pat Grossi of the symphonic dream-pop crew Active Child, wherein he discusses how he got into the harp, the ways his time at Catholic high school inspired him and why he wants to be James Brown (!). Enjoy.

Creating a sequel to a classic album is always a tricky proposition. There's going to be anticipation, but there are also expectations. While Raekwon fails to match the intensity of his 1995 solo debut, this is a valiant effort. Rae's flow has weathered a bit over the years—he has the gristle of a middle-aged man—but his knack for wordplay and imagery remains. Lyrically, this is his best work in a decade. And though nothing here matches "Criminology" or "Incarcerated Scarfaces" from the original, "House of the Flying Daggers" is a great late-period Wu classic. [Sam Chennault] Hear It Now!

These days, rock fans around the world expect a certain level of discographic homogeneity from their stars. U2 might release different EPs, singles and even greatest-hits packages in various countries around the globe, but in when it comes to indentifying their primary releases (The Joshua Tree, War, All That You Can't Leave Behind, et al.) just about everybody in the world is in agreement.

This wasn't always the case. Before the 1970s, it was quite common for the discographies of rock stars to differ from nation to nation, market to market. Hardcore record collectors specializing in Beatles and Rolling Stones memorabilia know this all too well. Many of the groups' most iconic albums underwent radical alterations when making the trip from the United Kingdom to the States. This was due to crass commercialism, quite honestly. London Records, The Stones' American label, wanted to saturate the American market with as much product as possible. Thus, they made a habit of removing songs from albums (released in England on the Decca label originally) and coupling them with single-only tracks in order to produce even more albums to hawk. (Interesting aside: back in the day the British record-buying public thought it bad form to include singles on albums, as well as to pull singles from albums. They were seen as independent media.)

Between 1964 and '69, The Stones released eight albums, two greatest-hits collections and a pair of EPs in the U.K. Here in the United States, the numbers were 10 albums, two greatest-hits collections, a live record and a full-length, 1967's Flowers, that fell somewhere between album and compilation. As a result, old-school American fans have fond memories of titles the Brits didn't even know existed: England's Newest Hit Makers, The Rolling Stones, Now!, December's Children (And Everybody's) and, of course, the aforementioned Flowers.

I'm of the belief the original British versions are the better records. First off, London Records forced us Yanks to purchase a lot of music twice. The American Out of Our Heads consists of 12 tracks, four of which were also released via the 45 format: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man," "Play with Fire" and "The Last Time." That means we paid full album price for just eight new songs. Then there's the issue of artistic quality. This becomes quite evident when comparing the U.S. versions of Aftermath and Between the Buttons to their U.K. counterparts. The latter are so much more cohesive and fully realized that they're practically different records. Between the Buttons in particular is an interesting case; because London Records gutted the thing, American rock critics failed to embrace it quite like the British pop press did; different versions spawned different legacies.

Louisiana Hayride was a "barn dance"-style radio program on KWKH out of Shreveport, La., that was loosely modeled on its more famous cousin, Nashville's The Grand Ole Opry, along with Chicago's lesser-known WLS Barn Dance. The program, originally called Cradle of the Stars, launched on April 3, 1948, and went on to feature some of the most revered names in country music.

In fact, from the onset, Louisiana Hayride proved to be an invaluable tool for breaking new artists and new singles, as Hank Williams — who first appeared on the show in August 1948 — would attest. (Williams, who eventually had his own sponsored radio program on WSM/Nashville, would often record Hayride shows ahead of time so he could tour.) Performing a new song on a show like Louisiana Hayride was very often just the leg up an artist needed to propel a regional hit. With a firm commitment to exposing new and regional talent to a wider audience, the show became a beloved stop on artists' Southern tours.

Within a year of its debut, the program was so popular that a regional 25-station network was pieced together to broadcast portions of it. The music was certainly a large part of that popularity, but the rotating emcees who kept the show moving with interviews and artist cues provided another kind of magic. Here, the artists were given a chance to connect with the listeners and let their personalities shine.

By 1954, a special 30-minute version of Louisiana Hayride was broadcast overseas on Armed Forces Radio. Another watershed moment came in August 1954, when a teenaged Elvis Presley made his debut, singing "That's Alright Mama." (Incidentally, it was Hayride emcee Horace Logan who coined the iconic phrase, "Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.") By the late '50s, however, the growing popularity of rock 'n' roll, in addition to the rise of televisions, cut into the show's popularity. On August 27, 1960, Louisiana Hayride ended its regular run.

In the years since, there have been many attempts to revive the name and what it stood for. Probably the best testament to the program is the volume of quality live music recorded during its tenure. Rhapsody has many of these releases available, so let's take a listen to some of them.

Click here to listen to a playlist: Highlights from the Hayride

The past year has seen a crop of excellent releases from the most talked-about rising stars in classical music, a varied set of neo-traditionalists who breathe life into the genre though fiery performances, scandalous outfits and bold programming choices. Astonishingly, none of them are older than 30.

The pianist who might get the most headlines is Lang Lang, whose well-styled programmatic flair has made him classical music's poster child. Using the same bold media-embracing panache of Lang Lang, plenty of other oversized talents have made waves through style and scandal: take the skirt length of Yuja Wang, who gets mentioned as classical music's Lady Gaga, or the Vogue spread by hunky violinist Charlie Siem. Perhaps less hyped but no less revered are gimmick-free recordings from violinists Alina Ibragimova, Arabella Steinbacher, Julia Fischer and Ray Chen.

This Cheat Sheet looks at some of the brightest young names in the classical world, many of whom have the talent and marketing smarts to expand the genre's audiences.

Alice Sara Ott
Beethoven
After critically successful recordings of Chopin and Liszt, 23-year-old German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott releases her first Beethoven set with a bold agenda: demonstrating the two distinct personalities of the composer using a pair of C-major sonatas, the Op. 2 No. 3 and the Op. 53 "Waldstein." The prior of these — light, mercurial and joyous — was dedicated to Haydn, and the latter — brooding and pensive — was written near the end of his life, when his hearing was failing. Ott capably bridges this divide with clean, confident playing, restraint in her pedaling and plenty of power.

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Live from New York City's CMJ Music Festival, here's our exclusive chat with Janet Weiss and Rebecca Cole from fantastic art-punk band Wild Flag, wherein they discuss inspiring scores of young female rockers, "building a sense of mystery," and their unquenchable love for Bill Withers. Enjoy.

If Christmas in the States is traditionally about pine trees and snowy days, Christmas in the hinterlands of Mexico takes on a very different shape. Just listen to the plaintive strains of Intocable's "Una Navidad Sin Ti" and you'll see what we mean: exchange sleigh bells for dusty cantinas and wailing accordions, and you're halfway there. Christmas in Mexico is a different beast, and that's what makes this music such a joy to hear. [Sarah Bardeen] Hear It Now!

We don't know about you, but this time of year makes us want to strap on a pair of sparkly gold stilettos, squeeze into something that's possibly too tight given how much we ate over Thanksgiving, and get our ho-ho-holiday on — on the dancefloor, of course. Thankfully, many of our favorite pop stars seem to feel the same way, obliging us with festive dance pop originals and clubby remakes of the classics, all decked out with killer beats and groovable hooks. To get you in the holiday spirit, we've assembled this little guide to the brightest lights on the holiday pop tree, from the Biebster's naughty, brand-spanking-new Under the Mistletoe to Destiny's Child's ode to Rudolph. It's Christmas — with a beat you can dance to. 'Tis the season to get your booty wiggling!

Click here for a playlist: Christmas on the Dance Floor


Justin Bieber
Under the Mistletoe
The Biebster + the holidays? Why didn't someone think of this sooner?! The boy wonder knows how to get you in the festive mood. And we do mean mood: things get downright naughty on "Christmas Eve." The classics are craftily reworked (Santa comes to town with hip-hop swagger; the drummer boy goes clubbing), and the originals are finely tuned to show off Bieber's surprising range, from dubby coffee-shop pop to soulful country. Plus, a bunch of fabulous guests stop by, including Usher, Boyz II Men and, yes, Mariah Carey. Mistletoe is no Mimi holiday album. But it's one heck of a holiday party. [Rachel Devitt]

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