RIP Bill Withers + Adam Schlesinger
+ new Frank Ocean // a must-watch Tiny Desk // top 10 playlists
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The music world lost two major talents last week. On Wednesday, Adam Schlesinger, power-pop mastermind and songwriter behind Fountains of Wayne, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and “That Thing You Do” died at age 52 from Covid-19 complications. Then on Friday morning, the legendary Bill Withers died at 81 of heart problems. My feed was a constant stream of favorite songs, albums, and videos from both artists, so I’ve compiled them here for you to dive into their catalogs.
Bill Withers: Albums, Songs and Videos
Many shared Withers’ Live At Carnegie Hall album as a go-to listen, and it’s indeed a stunner. The immediate transition from “Friend Of Mine” to “Ain’t No Sunshine” made the crowd gasp, and gave me the chills. (In a New Yorker postscript for Withers, Hua Hsu calls the album “one of the greatest concert recordings ever made.”)
Beyond Withers’ biggest hits, Stereogum and the New York Times put together their own lists of his lesser-known gems.
“Hip Hop has love for Bill Withers,” tweeted Exavier Pope, who put together a playlist of songs that have sampled Withers over the years — including Kanye’s “Roses” and Kendrick’s “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst.”
Finally, music writers Hanif Abdurraqib and Craig Jenkins shared their favorite live performances from Withers. (Hanif wrote about rewatching the BBC set “in this moment of isolation” for the NYT.)
Adam Schlesinger: Albums, Songs and Videos
“Stacy’s Mom” is Schlesinger’s signature hook, but his catalog goes so much deeper, as FoW put out six beloved albums of warm, catchy songs. He even wrote power-pop masterpiece “Just The Girl” for The Click Five.
Rolling Stone writers put together odes to his 20 essential songs. I turned their piece into a playlist so you can listen along while you read. (And added a few more based on Twitter tributes and my own favorites.)
Vox’s Emily VanDerWerff also wrote a nice piece about my favorite FoW album, Welcome Interstate Managers. There were more great tributes to Schlesinger’s songwriting skills in the New Yorker (from Jody Rosen) and the New York Times (from Rob Tannenbaum).
On his Live From Home series, Ben Gibbard covered Fountains of Wayne’s “Barbara H.” And Conan shared a video of the band covering The Kinks in one of the first Late Night shows after 9/11.
A must-watch Tiny Desk from Chika
This Tiny Desk Concert from 23-year-old Chika opened me up to her fantastic debut EP, Industry Games: Seven tracks of bouncy, melodic hip-hop in the vein of Smino, Noname and Chance. The frenetic, joyous “Crown” is the standout — it’s in the Hear Hear playlist.
New Frank!
Nothing spectacular, but it’s nice to hear Frank’s voice again. Then again, his songs tend to be growers, right? Let’s see how they feel in a few weeks. As Pitchfork writer Marc Hogan put it: “It’s not the Ocean you would’ve wanted to see at the now-postponed Coachella, but it’s the Ocean we needed to hear holed up alone together in our bedrooms.”
Top 10 playlists for Billy Joel, Waxahatchee, and way more…
Culture writer Sam Donsky (@danceremix) constantly tweets out his "top ten" song rankings for a wide range of artists and they're always interesting, with a perfect mix of classics and deep cuts. He's turned these tweets into playlists for Billy Joel, Fiona Apple, Okkervil River, Pearl Jam, Waxahatchee, Backstreet Boys, and just last week, for Fountains of Wayne. Each one is a great "gateway" playlist for getting into each artist — or, if you're already a fan, a great source of inspiration for you to make your own personal top ten.
The Strokes’ legendary performance
If you’re a Strokes fan and missed this moment from February, it’s really worth a watch. Cops try to control on-stage moshing as Casablancas sings “New York City cops, they ain’t too smart.” At 3:10 he bumps into a cop and chuckles, realizing just how ridiculously on-the-nose the moment is.
A pandemic playlist for every mood
The Atlantic's music critics made a pandemic playlist, with clever blurbs describing how each song fits a specific mood. It features a couple of great tracks from Moses Sumney and Andy Shauf, who both released beautiful new albums in 2020.