My guesses are as follows: Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Queen Bey, Kanye, Pink, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish, Lorde, Grimes, XXXTENTACION, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo.

Analysis

Hi lemmy.studio! I hope this post doesn't break self-promotion rules.

I just released my latest album this week. It's my take on the lo-fi, dark citypop genre. If citypop isn't your thing, you can check out the rest of my music on http://linktr.ee/secondstagenavigator. I literally do a different genre on every release. :)

i.e. early Poppy (pop) and modern Poppy (metal)

In case you guys missed it, somebody fixed the original version found here

https://www.reddit.com/r/Draingang/comments/ich0o2/weezer_in_drain_gang/?rdt=48315

Out of all the legendary albums on this list, I doubt many of them had their origins as an abandoned rock opera. Many arrangements and scraps of Pete Townshend’s abandoned Lifehouse project became the basis for Who’s Next, an album that has no underlying theme or storyline. This sense of freedom allowed The Who to focus on making great individual songs rather than an overarching story.

The result is The Who growing up in public. The songs combine the hard-hitting energy of the band in their youth with the more experimental elements explored on Tommy. The most noticeable improvement is Roger Daltrey’s voice, reaching heights that were only hinted at in the past. Keith Moon’s drum solo followed by Daltrey’s scream at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” remains as one of rock’s greatest moments.

While everyone knows about the singles, from the opening keyboard of “Baba O’Riley” to the building acoustics of “Behind Blue Eyes,” every song on this record is a potential hit. Listen to the explosive chorus of “Bargain.” Check out a rare lead vocal from bassist John Entwistle on “My Wife.” With tracks like these, it’s easy to see why Who’s Next moved The Who from a great band of the ’60s to a rock superpower in the ’70s. — Joe Marvilli (2010)

Listen to it here.

I'm looking for unique songs in pop, alternative rock, hip-hop, funk, et cetera that are melodic but easy on beginners.

Who would have thought four twenty-somethings from Minneapolis could produce something so timeless, so vital, and so vivid? Back in 1984, when The Replacements dished out their magnum opus, Let It Be, nobody did. While all eyes were on Prince at the time, Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars, and Bob Stinson were creating pure, unadulterated rock and roll. With his heart on his sleeve, Westerberg poured his love, his loss, and his inhibitions into each and every lyric, note, chord, and yelp.

On “Androgynous,” the first hit of the piano strikes your nerves, tugging at your eyes, and by the time Westerberg sings, “Future outcasts, they don’t last,” you’re right there beside him — in the dusty bar, within the late hours of a week night, and with nobody to hold onto but the music. That’s everything The Replacements were meant to be; here they do that in every note, over 11 tracks, and for 33 minutes and 31 seconds. It’s not an album, it’s a life preserver. — Michael Roffman (2010)

Listen here.

By "widely mixed," I mean like if you're wearing headphones, the music attacks you from all sides.

How would you differentiate among "bops," "bangers," and "jams?"

With new jack swing falling out of favor by the mid-’90s and Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopez dealing with personal struggles that kept her away from the group for extended periods, TLC found ways to mature their sound on their sophomore album. Reuniting with Babyface, Jermain Dupri, and Dallas Austin while adding contributions from Sean “Puffy” Combs, Organized Noize, and Chucky Thompson, they bumped up the hip-hop and soul vibes to utter R&B perfection on CrazySexyCool.

At the same time, they helped spur a sex positivity movement that still evolves today by tackling romance from numerous angles: the tryst of “Creep,” the sweetness of “Diggin’ on You,” the XXX of “Red Light Special.” In between, they delivered one of the most enduring cautionary tales of all time in “Waterfalls.” CrazySexyCool was the R&B album of the decade. Today, it stands as a testament to confident womanhood, a statement sealed in the record books as the best-selling album by an American girl group ever and the first to reach Diamond status. — B. Kaye

Listen here.

Would psychedelic metal from the late 1960s possibly count as proto shoegaze? I was thinking some of the noisier Velvet Underground tracks. I also had in mind a couple of Beatles tracks (It's All Too Much has the spacey vibe but it's not all electric.)

It is always amazing to unexpectedly stumble across two of your favorite artists performing together. In hindsight, this encounter is obvious.

Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen is everything I could want in a “pop” album (as nebulous a term as that’s become): its production is super-pretty, its lyrics are literate and humorous without being condescending in the slightest, it’s fun to listen to, and there’s just something in the way lead singer and songwriter Paddy McAloon puts chords and melodies together that’s instantly gripping and gratifying.

I sort of wish I could leave it at that and let all you lucky readers decide for yourself exactly what kind of amazing album Steve McQueen is (or, if you’re going to be that way, whether or not it’s amazing, or even good, at all), but professionalism beckons: this album’s excellence is immediate in the beginning of opening track “Faron Young,” which, incidentally, doesn’t really sound like anything else off the album. The track starts with twanging country guitars and rollicking drums, which the band cleverly invert to service their gorgeous adaptation of ‘80s pop. This is an album that feels slightly antiquated (on that note: you know those breathy vocal pads that are always in ‘80s pop songs? Those need to be brought back, stat.) but in the best way possible; it’s an album that takes the best aspects of the musical landscape that surrounds it and uses it to create something distinctly of its era and yet somehow timeless.

This timelessness is a result of that inexplicable songwriterly skill I half-described in the first paragraph. Here, I must take the ultimate cop-out and simply urge you, the listener, to get the album and hear for yourself. Hear how the pummel of “Faron Young”’s chorus magically dissolves into the gorgeously lightweight chorus. Hear how “Hallelujah” flows through a hundred or so of the weirdest chord changes possible, yet somehow comes out hummable. Or how “Moving the River” deftly switches moods multiple times before finally ending on the triumphantly angelic title chorus.

Steve McQueen is a subtle masterpiece; a nearly flawless convergence of gorgeous, smart pop songwriting and immediately pleasurable production that divides itself into eleven songs that are both distinct and also separated by a common thread of excellence.

-Sputnik Music

There is an alternate universe that exists where Wilco never releases Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, an album that would not only secure the band’s place in rock history, but would fundamentally alter the landscape of the music industry at the turn of the new millennium. Yes, this record is awash in mythology and backstory, best encapsulated in Sam Jones’ I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which just so happens to be one of the best music documentaries of all-time.

But YHF endures as a classic over 20 years later less because of that lore and more because it’s a collection of songs that’s so damn strong. Jeff Tweedy channels all his anxiety and self-consciousness into songs like “Ashes of American Flags” and “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” complementing those heavier tracks with the warm nostalgia of “Heavy Metal Drummer” and heart-on-your-sleeve romance of “Reservations,” which features a lyric that’s devastatingly direct: “I’ve got reservations about so many things, but not about you.”

The genius of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the decision to add layers of feedback and field recordings and noise and distortion on top of Tweedy’s folk and country and indie rock songs, leaning into the experimental to such an extent that the record dispatched the “alt-country” label that had dogged the band since its founding. From start to finish, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot mesmerizes and beguiles, and somehow manages to sound like both falling in love and the end of the world. It’s untouchable. — S.D.

Listen here.

After making a name for themselves with their self-titled debut, System of a Down reached new heights with their sophomore album, 2001’s Toxicity. Melodic, chaotic, and downright hypnotic, the album expanded the boundaries of heavy music. The frenetic “Chop Suey!” became one of the most bizarre hits of all-time on rock radio (even with Clear Channel temporarily removing it from airwaves after the September 11 attacks), while songs like the crushing title track and the haunting “Aerials” also served to propel the album to multi-platinum status.

Sounding like no other band before them, Serj Tankian’s operatic vocals soar over Daron Malakian’s complex musical compositions, with Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan forming a relentless rhythm section. All told, Toxicity stands as one of the finest works of heavy music in the 21st century, if not all time. — S.K.

Listen here.

How is everyone listening to music these days?

I use YouTube Music almost exclusively, since I like having YouTube Premium and Music comes for free. But it's not the best experience.

For indie artists I buy their music on Bandcamp and listen there, but I was thinking if I should download all the files from Bandcamp and upload to YouTube Music, so I can listen to everything in a single place.

The Mellotron’s debut took place just at the time that the mystical and the mind-bending was trending in rock music, materializing in records like Cream’s Disraeli Gears, Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Once a bug, the variations in sound afforded by finicky analog technology were now a positive attribute of the Mellotron: The ghostly, uncanny quality caused by natural wear on the tape or external irritants created a perfectly trippy ambience on songs like “Nights in White Satin,” from the Moody Blues, the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow,” and Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”