Forever Rockin That Concubine

Drake "Forever" + The Dream "Rockin' That Shit" + Beirut "Concubine"

Soul Tippin ft. Andrew Bird

Beach House "Silver Soul" + Mike Jones "Still Tippin" + Andrew Bird "Eugene"

Island IS Hot

Volcano Choir: Island IS + Snoop Dogg: Drop It Like It's Hot

Soul Meets A Milli (Death Cab for Weezie)

Benny and the Game

The first in what will hopefully be a series of mash-ups. I have too much time on my hands.

Benny and the Game - Milwaukee Cool Kids

Indie Rock: the New Black

The soundtrack for the new Twilight movie reads like a veritable pitchfork dream team, featuring Lykke Li, Bon Iver and St. Vincent, Grizzly Bear, and hipster messiah Thom Yorke. This may seem like a shocking twist for a series that exudes as much Transylvania-is-for-lovers-style teen angst as does Twilight (Cut my wrists and suck my blood?), but the Twilight 2 soundtrack is only highlighting a trend that has been going on for some time now, a trend I would like to refer to as the "emo-fication of Indie Rock".

It seems the moment things went wrong for Indie Rock is when "hot" bands discovered the Beach Boys, overshadowing the trend of Bruce Springsteen-posturing that had resulted in a Steinbeck-ian/Salinger-ian brand of Americana (see Boys and Girls in America, "(Antichrist Television Blues)") that felt rootsy enough to combat the spoiled, pretentious hipster reputation. That is until vocal harmonies somehow became cool, suddenly becoming featured in absurd genres like "bedroom-pop" (also known as filling-the-social-void-in-my-life-by-twisting-synthesizer-knobs-pop). Say what you will about the Beach Boys, but there is no denying that their lyrics are entirely recluse-emo (see Pet Sounds), which has undoubtedly seeped into the music of their indie branchildren. This has resulted in an entirely uninteresting crop of indie bands (bedroom-pop doesn't exactly produce the same compelling sex-drug-rock 'n'roll myths characteristic of arena rock bands) making music achingly perfect for primetime CW.

At the same time, Emo bands seem to be pushing away from the moody behavior that made them such a maligned subculture in the first place. Successful emo songs on pop radio seem to exhibit qualities antithetical to the emo persona. Cobra Starship is making "Good Girls Go Bad" rather than having bad girls make them feel not very good. 3OH3! are posturing as chauvinistic assholes (and even fitting in Helen Keller jokes).

And if you need more proof that Indie Rock is the perfect soundtrack to lofe affairs of the undead, there is always Vampire Weekend.

In Defense of Kanye West

It is hard to take this Kanye West episode seriously as it involves

A) The VMA’s
B) Taylor Swift

Stuff like this happens every year at the VMA’s just to grab headlines. Past VMA's featuring a slovenly Britney Spears performance, a Tommy Lee and Kid Rock fist fight, and Li'l Kim fresh out of prison still clad in her orange jumpsuit hardly make the VMA's seem like a forum for civility.

Also, Kanye West is prone to say things he should not. This is well documented. The man calls the former leader of the free world a racist and hardly gets half the facebook status attention he gets now after saying Swift's video was not quite as good as Beyonce's. This is who Kanye West is and this why we love him. If Kanye West didn't have such an overinflated ego and weren't perpetually making bad life decisions then what would his songs be about? Shopping at K-Mart instead of Louis Vuitton? Meeting a nice woman and building a swingset so that all the Li'l Weezys he plans to raise have a place to run around? Nobody wants "Jesus Walks" to be an actual Christian rap song. Kanye West is so appealing because he is such a caricature of the rapper persona. He is the embodiment of all of our selfish instincts and reminds us that maybe we are fairly responsible people after all.

No matter how you feel about the song, I think most people would agree that "Put A Ring On It" was a better video. If you saw the thing happen Beyonce looked downright pleased to have Kanye call her out until she realized that everyone was booing and THEN she started acting like it was some sort of travesty. And after seeing Taylor Swift’s live performance, cooing intimately in a subway as if her song about an unrequited crush was actually a truly emotionally jarring tale of heartache, it seemed like she needed to be taken down a peg anyways.

Let’s get over Kanye West interrupting award ceremonies and get back to what’s really important: interrupting health care reform town hall meetings.