On Warmer Music's Favorite Songs Of 2011 [30-21]

End of the year lists are stupid. They're arbitrary (really, this is your 27th favorite song, without a doubt?). They're needlessly competitive. They're certainly subject to change (I doubt there's ever been a year whose list I wouldn't have done a major revision of twelve months later). As definitive statements about the year in music go, they're an inexact and certainly somewhat juvenile attempt where even a good list is bound to fail as much as it succeeds.


But oh, how I love them so. Like so many geeky males, I love lists and arbitrary rankings. I love reading other peoples and thinking how wrong they are while simultaneously compiling my own in my head. I love the months of debate such lists can engender. I love stopping to take stock of the somewhat capricious mixture of new music I've listened to in the past twelve months. I love the time-capsule nature of these lists and how they allow us to occasionally step back and see what we've actually done (err, heard) in the past year while we've been busy living life. 

Covering Our Bases - The Velvet Underground

You shoulda seen 'em then...

Certain bands are so influential that they become touchstones in the history of popular music. There are few better ways of measuring a band's influence than the amount of nods it gets via covers. Since nothing gets On Warmer Music going like a good cover, we'll take some time to look at those bands.


The Velvet Underground are perhaps the classic cult band. Formed by Andy Warhol in 1966 around Lou Reed, they released four classic albums that combined lyrics about deviant sex, hard drug use and arty pretensions with a mixture of vicious noise freakouts and poppy gems. It's been hoarily said that "they didn't sell many albums, but everyone who bought one went on to form a band" but by the last decade they were such a hip influence that Eddie Argos from Art Brut complained that he didn't "want to hear the sound of the Velvet Underground a second time around". That notwithstanding, the Velvets are founding fathers (/mothers) of the very idea of "indie rock" and today we've got some proof.