Donate | NPR Shop | NPR Community | Login | Register
It's hard to believe that we've reached the end. For the past two weeks, all of us -- the NPR Music Team, a handful of outside contributors and myself -- have explored the last 10 years in music. Did we cover everything? No. Did we try? Gleefully.
Back in 2001, I sat in a San Francisco federal courtroom and watched a judge order Napster to shut down. The record companies won their battle against the world's first peer-to-peer file sharing service. But, as everyone now knows, it was a Pyrrhic victory; to reference another Greek myth, Napster turned out to be a Hydra.
()This is our gift to you: All of them. Alphabetically. By first name. Band names beginning in 'The' may be found with the T's. If a link isn't working or something holler and we'll fix it. Now go out and celebrate! You deserve it!
()
By Jess Gitner Past covers of Vibe. Chris Brown will be the cover boy for the relanuched Vibe's first issue. (courtesy of Vibe) Len Burnett helped launch Vibe, a hip-hop music magazine, back in 1993, and he's just launch...
()
I asked my friend Julie Cafritz (of Pussy Galore, STP and Free Kitten) if she wanted to write something for our End of the Decade coverage. Her "assignment" was due over the weekend, and when I didn't hear back from her, I figured her work as a teacher, or her kids, or life in general had gotten in the way. She answered in song.
()
By Michael Katzif It's never easy to map out an entire decade in music. So, in constructing the "Decade in Music" interactive timeline, we sought to shape it with some of the bigger tent-pole trends, news (Elton John p...
()
Retro-soul's popularity raises any number of intriguing thoughts and questions about nostalgia, race and American pop cycles.
()Beth Ditto, lead singer from queer indie-disco group The Gossip, read Britney Spears' head-shaving in 2007 as an act of defiance. Spears wanted control over was her own body; her image.
()
Schadenfreude never seems so sweet as when it's directed at the music industry. Here are a few of the top music business failures of the '00s.
()
Indie isn't a genre any more than alternative was, but it denotes something important about the music in its tent — where it came from, where it might go.
()
As soon as you name a musical movement, it's dead. Sometimes you wonder about the people who coin the terms, if they regret the mass categorization of a tight-knit group's creative output. Here is a dictionary-style introduction to the ten genres that were either born or blossomed this decade.
()
In "Teardrops on My Guitar," Swift tells a common story. She likes this guy named Drew; he likes another girl; she fakes "a smile so he won't see" how much she hurts. Simple enough, but what differentiates Swift from other teen pop stars is that her songs impart viscerally what it feels like to be a teenager, when hyper-real emotions can still be conveyed with timidity.
()
What's your favorite new genre of the decade? Of all the brand-new styles, be they occasionally awkward combinations of influences or wholly-formed means of expression, or genres that hit the mainstream in the past ten years, which produced the best music? Tell us in the comments below.
()This is our gift to you: All of them. Alphabetically. By first name. Band names beginning in 'The' may be found with the T's. If a link isn't working or something holler and we'll fix it. Now go out and celebrate! You deserve it!
()
By Frannie Kelley The writing's on the wall . . . (c r i s/flickr) OK! Here you will find more songs recorded last weekend, in accordance with a very strict set of rules, namely, that each song must include one of these ...
()
And the hits keep coming . . . 32 more songs recorded last weekend! If you're not seeing yours, fear not. I've got a few stragglers beginning with A and E coming through tomorrow and all the bands with names beginning with "The" are in parts 4 and 5.
()
All alien-science synthesizers, crispy hi-hats and galvanizing delivery, "Umbrella" is what happens when an unclassifiable singer meets an ineffable song. It turned out to be the summer jam of 2007, echoing across the world to an indelible refrain: "ella, ella / ay, ay, ay."
()
We asked, you answered. We'll reveal the songs people recorded every day for the rest of the week.
()
By Lars Gotrich It's been a good 10 years, Music Internet. At first, our love was forbidden — all your MP3 blogs were illegal. The RIAA would shut 'em down, and we'd keep making out in the backseat of our Napster sedan like hormonally addled teena...
()
Anne Midgette, classical music critic from the Washington Post, and NPR's Tom Huizenga look back over a decade of changes in the world of classical music.
()
