While you were listening to Pearl Jam’s Ten, I was listening to De La Soul’s De La Soul is Dead. While you were listening to Nirvana’s Nervermind, I was listening to Cypress Hill’s self-titled album. For reasons I can’t identify, I have always been drawn to hip hop and have been completely nonplussed by “white people” music.*
Yes, there are exceptions. A browse through my Rdio collections and you will find some fine examples of white people music: Willie Nelson, Madonna, Rush (Natch, I am Canadian). I have even been to a Rusted Root concert. Doesn’t get much whiter than that.
Thanks to a combination of television and technology I have been uncovering plenty of white people music that I absolutely adore. I watch a show, I hear a song I like, I Shazam it and add it to my TV Shows & Commercials playlist on Rdio. Some of the best songs I’ve discovered this way have come from How to Make it in America, Girls and Breaking Bad.
Last weekend, Breaking Bad introduced me to Stay on the Outside by Whitey (how appropriate…)
For my full TV & Commercial playlist, enjoy it on Rdio HERE.
*Listen, I get it. Calling it white people music isn’t exactly fair. But it DID make for a snappy headline.
I was seated next to a coplue, who wasn’t familiar with eighth blackbird, at the premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s concerto On a Wire’ with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The stagehands had just exited the stage after having set the piano. The ensemble, led by Matthew Duvall, who is consistently the most casually dressed, then walked out to take their places. As Matthew came on stage, one half of the coplue wondered aloud to the other, Why are the stagehands coming back out again? One of my favorite moments.