Gil Scott-Heron never had a Top 40 hit, and certainly never had a platinum album. Yet when his death at age 62 was announced on the late afternoon of Friday, May 27, it immediately became a trending topic (and a "trending topic") across the Internet. His impact resonated beyond sales metrics and radio spins. Ultimately, he'll be remembered as a pioneer of hip-hop music and the coiner of the phrase "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The latter, which he first recorded as a spoken-word piece for his 1971 debut Small Talk at 125th and Lenox and then as a jazz-funk piece on 1972's Pieces of a Man, weaves around early-'70s iconography like old-school Civil Rights activist Roy Wilkins wearing red-black-and-green jumpsuits and the TV soap Search for Tomorrow. While the pop banalities he rails against have faded from memory, the poem endures as a timeless parable, and a reminder that the real world moves faster than any communication medium, corporation or government can anticipate.
You had a job waitin' after your graduation — 50 thou a year would buy a lot of beer. You were doin' all right, gettin' good grades; future was so bright, you had to wear shades! A growing economy, inflation down, employment up, Reagan midway through his second term, Top Gun in theaters — triumphalism all around! The music biz's future looked slightly less certain, but there was hope in new technology: "Annual record sales continue to fall," noted a 1986 Detroit Free Press piece, "while CD sales climb faster than the industry expected." The future wasn't punk kids buying Metallica/
For weeks now, hip-hop has been dominated by 
With all these 
As you are probably aware, Saturday, May 21, 2011 was pinpointed by some as the date of The Rapture, a prediction that resulted in a great deal of media coverage and Twitter jokes, but, as the day came and went, very little in the way of actual Rapture-like activities. There was, however, in our corner of the world at least, one very tangible effect: Rhapsody subscribers had the sudden urge to listen to 
Truth be told, heavy metal and prog rock have been intertwined since both genres were born. My friend Frank, who is a few years older than me, remembers confusing 
The phrase "DEAD FREAKS UNITE" appeared in the liner notes to the 1971 live album 
Perhaps the best thing about 
While there probably weren't too many high school seniors that made it past the velvet ropes, in 1978, Studio 54 shone like a beacon to kids dreaming of bright lights in the big city. Just a few years before, disco had been a resolutely underground thing, but by 1978 and 
Odd Future leader 
When rockabilly stole away much of country music’s younger audience in the mid-1950s, Nashville producers aimed for a more adult market. Producers 
It's finally here. After months of careful leaks, garish videos and audacious stunts (the Grammy egg!), 
The dust has yet to settle on the indie-rap renaissance of the late '90s, with critics and fans fiercely divided on which albums constitute classics. One title they agree on is 
Age is a funny thing. What's old to one person is relatively current to another. When it comes to tracing Christian music's roots, some fans look back only as far as 
In the early 1980s, some of the best New Wave bands were actually progressive rock groups. This is a bit of an exaggeration, of course. But not totally untrue, when you think about the super-creative ways in which Yes, Rush, Phil Collins and Queen fused the two genres. Ignoring the fact that punk had declared war on the classic rock fossils of the previous decade, these musicians boldly explored synthesizers, funk-inspired dance grooves, drum machines, sound collage, wiry arrangements and icy production techniques. Some truly great music was produced in the process. The Trevor Horn-produced 90125, the wildly experimental The Game and the titanic Moving Pictures are all bona fide classics. Then there's Collins' Miami Vice masterpiece "In the Air Tonight," one of the most striking (and moodiest) pop songs of the 20th century.
You think "alternative" is a confusing, ambiguous, meaningless term? Try "Latin alternative." Does it mean a Latin band that plays, um, mainstream alt-rock? Or an artist that offers an alternative to Latin pop? And isn't every Latin band an alternative to the American rock mainstream? Yes? No? Maybe? Forget the semantics and just take a listen to the crème de la crème of albums that have come out under that heading in the last couple months. We've rounded up a Top 10 that includes American electro-poppers who sing in Spanish, Mexican garage rockers who sing in English, Argentinean psychedelica, Venezuelan dance punks and post-grunge rockers who pack soccer stadiums across the Latin American world. There's an alternative for everyone.
Last month, we highlighted tracks in our roundup of the top 10 electronic releases of the month (or thereabouts); this time, we're mixing it up between LPs, EPs and double-A-side singles. Why not?
As a rule, our regular single-phile column is devoted to — OK, obsessed with — dissecting the latest and greatest in pop singles. And while our definition of pop is as varied as, well, the genre itself is, we do typically focus on English-language pop. But so many great Latin singles have dropped in the past few weeks that we had to remedy that language bias and give them some love. 
Why is the 
London truly was swinging back in 1991. With a little help (read: hype) from music weeklies such as NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, new stars were being made at clubs such as Syndrome and Blow Up, while Camden-area pubs such as The Good Mixer overflowed with young Brit-pop stars nightly. It didn't take long before the music — and the legendary, drunken stories of those of those who made it — made its way to America. And although the release of 
Here we count down the top indie albums from the past month; it's a smorgasbord, to say the least. Dig into folk rock, experimental rock, chamber rock, dance rock, post-rock and even New Zealand rock. Yum.
For a couple years now, there has been a major resurgence in stand-up comedy — not just in the amount of comedians out there, but in the wide range of styles and overall quality of their material. At some point, stand-up became "cool," and such comics as 
Consider "
The difficult thing about trying to parse humor in metal is that, intentionally or not, lots of metal is really funny, and really often that's what makes it good. Well actually, that happened more back before the extreme/thrash/death/black/grind revolution, when you could actually laugh out loud at the lyrics, which were more discernible in days of yore. But even now, bands can look hilarious — think, for instance, of evil Norwegian black metal bunch 
Humor in soul music hasn't been the same since everyone went hardcore in the late '80s. These days, if you want to cut a joke, you can't just make a corny novelty song like Bobby Jimmy & the Critters' "Roaches." You've got to do it cool and use plenty of ironic asides, sly put-downs and slang-filled allusions. 
Sprockets aside, comedy and electronic music don't initially seem like they have much in common. But there's actually a whole spectrum of the electronic genre that's shot through with humor, whether it's the goofball antics of 
Before we begin, please note that this isn't a collection of comedic rap songs, so you won't find any material from some of the genre's greatest humorists, such as 
When Rhapsody last sat down with 
We must admit that Tuesday is our favorite day of the week here at Rhapsody: that's when new releases come out. Thankfully, the next three months of Tuesdays look absolutely glorious, full of fresh music from ukulele-brandishing rockers, electronic pioneers, strident country hit makers, unabashed pop divas, unrepentant metalheads, CCM luminaries, contenders for Best Rapper Alive honors, soul superstars and, of course, Lady Gaga. Here's the best of what's to come.
Chicago house never really goes out of fashion. Invented in the mid-'80s, it was a catalyst for both British rave culture and 
Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell smoke in the auditorium. You know the culprit: Put a tack on teacher's chair, tied a knot in Susie's hair. Always writing on the wall, always goofing in the halls, always throwing spitballs. Walks into the classroom cool and slow, calls the English teacher Daddy-O. And being such a funny fellow (destined to be inducted into the Animal House upon soon entering college no doubt), we can assume that our jokemeister loved plenty of funny songs, right? (National Lampoon High School Yearbook parody writeup on Herbert Leonard "Wing-Ding" Weisenheimer: "knows the real lyrics to '
Over the last few years, modern folk men have swept the indie landscape with as much reckless abandon as the pelts covering their faces. The bold and oftentimes bearded troubadours have once again made mandolins hip and banjos a trendy accessory. But it's not all about the hair or the gear. There's often something mystical in the folk artist, like he knows something we all don't and this lingering awareness drives a passion that is translated into electrifying music, even if there's little more than the strum of an acoustic guitar to carry it through. Today's folkies all share this trait, and while they are students of the rustic and raw revival scenes of '50s, '60s and '70s America and Britain, they are also revelers in the uninhibited world of indie rock. 
The world of soul music may not generate as much product as rock or hip-hop, but it tends to have an outsized impact. Two of this year's best-selling records thus far came from Adele and Marsha Ambrosius, while Chris Brown's comeback album may be the most controversial. Beyond the headliners, there were troubadours like Noel Gourdin, Anthony David and Ginuwine, men who exemplified vintage R&B, and a lineage that stretches back to the late Teddy Pendergrass. Whether it's the Afropean neo-soul of Les Nubians or the dance pop gospel of Jennifer Hudson, when you hear soul music, you know it.
A blog post about the lyrical evolution of the 
Rock is such an expansive and nebulous genre that it's rather difficult to rank its albums in terms of quality. But hey, I'm game to try anything. Below you'll find what I think are the top 15 rock albums dropped over the last month (give or take a few weeks, of course).
That title might sound like a crack about 
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