Episode 3: Loud, Fast, Slow, Sad: Key Qualities in Music

In this episode we discuss the key qualities that music can have: volume, speed and emotive content.

Take The Eternal Playlist on the road with you: a direct download and a torrent download of this episode is only a click away.

Bonus All-Time Great Album word cloud: Illmatic by Nas


Categories covered:

• 38 "Loudest" song
• Jon: Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell - Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power (Iggy Pop Mix)
• Turner: 0078h - M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts
• 39 "Fastest" song (not to be confused with shortest)
• Turner: Playing with Pink Noise - Kaki King - Legs to Make Us Longer
• Jon: N.Y. State of Mind - Nas - Illmatic
• 40  "Slowest" song
• Turner: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
• Jon: Words - Low - I Could Live in Hope
• 41 Saddest, most depressing, soul-crushing song
• Turner: John Wayne Gacey Jr. - Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
• Jon: The Eternal - Joy Division - Closer
• 42 A song of fragile beauty that makes you feel contemplative
• Turner: A Stone - Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
• Jon: Nightswimming - R.E.M. - Automatic for the People

Cultural reference links:

• Just so you can keep all the various mixes of Raw Power straight in your mind
• The just-noticeable difference explains why your music is always too loud when you turn the car on.
• Because it deserves a complete guide, here's Rapgenius's guide to Illmatic by Nas
• Someone even wrote an academic examination of Illmatic!
• The Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop is a book about how rap lyrics are structured, as we mentioned when talking about Nas and Rakim
• What is slowcore?
• What are some slowcore artists?
• James K. Polk.  When the Democrats ran Franklin Pierce a few years later they used the slogan "We Polked you in '44, We shall Pierce you in '52"
• John Wayne Gacy Jr.
• The book Turner read about serial killers