Welcome back to Parsons Playlists! Today we’re featuring a collection of popular music from the first decade of the 21st century, curated by Music Library student manager Abby (class of 2021).
Per Abby, here’s some “Popular music from 2000-2009 for all your guilty pleasure jam session needs”:
Welcome back to Parsons Playlists! Today we’re featuring a collection of feel good indie/alternative music curated by Music Library student manager Abby (class of 2021).
So here are “some showtunes to belt in the shower, or to serenade your roommates with until they either join in or kick you out” per Abby:
Welcome back to Parsons Playlists! Today we’re featuring a collection of feel good indie/alternative music curated by Music Library student manager Abby (class of 2021).
So here are “some relaxing jazz instrumentals for your late night study sessions” curated by Abby for you:
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Here’s what student manager Abby (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“QwestTV is the first ever streaming service dedicated to Jazz, Soul, Funk & World Music. Created by Quincy Jones and curatedbyothermusiclegends, this service contains hundreds of concerts, documentaries, archives, and exclusive content. And with the “My List” feature, you can keep track of all your favorites. On top of premium streaming video, QwestTV also offers articles, interviews, and album reviews written by professional journalists and renowned jazz experts. With content spanning decades, this service is a powerful research tool and just an all-around awesome resource for any music lover.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Music ID offers over 60 years (1950 – present) of international chart data for popular music recordings.
Here’s what student manager Abby (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“One of our research tools that I find particularly interesting is Music ID. This resource compiles over 100 years of global music industry data in an incredibly easy-to-use platform. The site itself is divided into three analytical topics — most popular, most profitable, and most impactful. It’s fascinating to see the difference between the three, especially with the site’s ability to separate song, album, and artist. And with data going back as far as 1900, not only can you discover some great old songs you may have never heard of but also a comprehensive meta-narrative of popular music itself, and by extension its cultural impact.”
And here’s what student manager Colin (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“A resource I like and that I have used for a paper before is Music ID. Specifically, Music ID Data‘s database has information on over 5,000 different charts, tracking music popularity in countries all over the world based on the popularity of artists and their songs on these different charts, as well as on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Shazam. This resource is best utilized by examining overlapping chart data to analyze the popularity and trends that follow an artist, whether it be through a new album release or from a popular single track. To use this platform you type a keyword into a search bar, such as the latest Super Bowl Halftime Show artist “The Weeknd,” and select the different measures you wish to analyze. From there, the website will bring you to a graph that details the artist’s popularity based on the measures you selected. For example, you can simply click “The Weeknd” as an artist and you can see his trend in the U.S. Billboard Top 100 artists over the years in which Music ID has effective data. To utilize this resource further, you can start applying additional filters, specifically on singles he has released like “The Hills” and “Can’t Feel My Face,” to effectively observe how the popularity trends of his songs affect the popularity of himself as an artist. Music ID Data has a lot of information that can be applied to many different artists across the world and is an amazing research tool when needing to find graphical trends as evidence for reference support.”
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
The Black Keys have always been one of those bands where I couldn’t name a single one of their songs off the top of my head, yet I know all the words to nearly every one I hear. Looking back, they very well could’ve been considered my favorite band for how often I listened to their music and how much I liked it.
I can’t say exactly why I never committed titles to memory; it certainly wasn’t because they were forgettable songs. Rather, I think it was the sheer fact that, at the height of their popularity, their music was so genre-defining and omnipresent that I only needed to hum the melody or say a few lines from the chorus, and anyone would know what song I was referring to. Take the song “Tighten Up” for instance. If you don’t recognize it from the title, listen to the first few bars of the track and wait for the instant hit of nostalgia.
The group consists of two friends from Akron, Ohio: Dan Auerbach on guitar and vocals and Patrick Carney on drums. They started the band in 2001, and like all good grassroots garage bands, dropped out of college to pursue their bluesy-rock sound and slowly built an underground fan base through extensive touring, frequent album releases, and music festival appearances until their commercial breakthrough in 2010. This album, Brothers, catapulted them from garage indie band to one of the most popular and famous bands in their genre and winning them three Grammy Awards in the process.
For me, they defined a pivotal era in my music history. Being a child who grew up on her dad’s CD collection of alternative rock albums from the 70s and 80s, The Black Keys were one of the first bands that I discovered all on my own and shaped what I would listen to from then on. They drove me to find other music like theirs: the type of music that couldn’t have been written at any other time, yet still feels timeless.
Are you a fan of Batman? Do you love learning about how movie soundtracks impact movies, even having the power to completely change emotion and perception? Or maybe you’re taking a music theory class and want to read something that won’t put you to sleep on the first page? Then this, my friend, is the book for you: Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s The Dark Knight: A Film Score Guide by Vasco Hexel. It’s a long title but hear me out. This book tracks Zimmer’s process in the making of The Dark Night film score, as the name suggests. But not only that, it provides in depth analysis of the characters Batman and the Joker, describing how the music was designed to reflect the psychology of each character.
For mega-fans and theorists, it’s a musical, analytical wonderland. And for those who need help in figuring out how to make a Grammy award-winning soundtrack, or who just need a break from Beethoven, this is the place to start!
