The Kinks
SPIN’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide
COVID-19 brought the concert industry to a screeching halt in 2020. But all that disposable income music fans generally spend on concert tickets and tour merch has been redirected to the retail front: supporting artists and labels by shopping online during quarantine. And this holiday season brings an overwhelming amount of worthy box sets, books, vinyl and cultural ephemera. After many hours rummaging, scrolling, clicking and sampling, we’ve rounded up this holiday gift guide — consider it the sonic equivalent to a PS5 or Great Green Egg grill for the rabid music fan in your life. The Secret DJ – Book Two (Velocity Press) One-time pop star and acclaimed Mixmag columnist the Secret DJ continues to chronicle the last 30-plus years of dance music’s evolution as a superst...
The 25 Best Soundtrack Albums of the 1990s
In the 1980s, music and film collided for cross-promotional blockbusters both transcendent (Purple Rain) and transcendently cheesy (Footloose). In the ‘90s, soundtracks continued to sell in the millions, capturing cultural moments like the Seattle grunge of Singles or the Britpop and electronica of Trainspotting. Auteurs like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson reached deep into their record collections to set the mood while movies like Above the Rim and Menace II Society pioneered the concept of soundtracks as hip-hop mixtapes. A great soundtrack can propel an unsuccessful single, like Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose,” to the top of the charts, or revive a decades-old hit, like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It can also push a cult singer-songwriter like Elliott Smith or Aimee Mann to an Oscar perf...
