In off the post! It’s Match Day! The World Cup is here, there and everywhere and especially in South Africa. We have, of course, jumped on the bandwagon and compiled a station to get you through the moments when nobody is kicking the ball. Our Match Day AUPEO! Stationis guaranteed to make you feel like a winner, even when your team has just lost the semifinal on penalties to an underdog. So tune in and let your mind wander, get hyped up and imagine yourself scoring that decisive goal, saving a penalty, splitting the defense with a fifty yard throughball, or getting your piece of the 420 million dollars of prize money that FIFA has been able to fork out for the teams!
You will find our Match Day AUPEO! Station under the Pop genre heading and you can expect to hear plenty of afrobeat, all things latin, hip-hop, pop, reggae and well, anything that is uplifting, intensive, summer party music with a sporty feel to them. We’ve selected all the usual suspects from Mas Que Nada by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 to Queen’s We Are the Champions and complimented them with the likes of Wavin’ Flag by K’naan, Jump by Van Halen or Follow the Leader by Eric B. & Rakim. In other words, our Match Day AUPEO! Station is a mix of all genres and styles but selected with that magic touch. Go check it out and let us surprise you!
Fancy some dampened guitars? Feel like jumping at some irresistible Jamaican-like riddims? Our Funky Kingston AUPEO! Station provides you with the whole range of beautiful reggae music, from ska to rocksteady, roots, dub and dancehall. The selection is an equal mixture of songs about inequality and hardship, but also of peace, love and having fun. On our Funky Kingston AUPEO! Station you will find plenty of drum and bass to shake your booty to, lovers’ rock to grab your partner by the hand to, or warrior styles to piece together a plan to resist the evils of Babylon!
Jamaican Folk music grew from American jazz, R&B and Soul, which were mixed with Caribbean mento and Calypso. Reggae developed from a clash of society, politics, economics and culture, and really is an organic extension to Jamaican society. It foreshadowed, if not outright influenced modern popular music in many ways: the producer and engineer as artist, remixing, the MC as musician and the importance of riddim (or simply the overriding importance of drum and bass). It is remarkable that these innovations were developed with very limited technical and economic resources and cultural aspirations. Maybe it’s the DIY approach of the pioneers of reggae that continues to influence so many artists around the globe, thus enabling local music of a small nation to have such an influence on popular Western music.
Make sure to check out the Studio One Story, a near definitive guide to one of Jamaica’s greatest record labels and its founder Clement “Coxsone” Dodd:
The last few years of 80s retro nostalgia were great and brought with it a welcome dose of fun. Fickle as we are, the time has come again to look into that vast back catalog of “the past” and find something new-old to reminisce about. And here it is: our brand new 90s Best AUPEO! Station!
Cue the 90s, and the signs are imminent: a slew of noteworthy reunions from Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, and yes, Salt-N-Pepa; a new and improved (debatable for true fans of Brenda, Kelly, et al) Beverly Hills 90210; the return of plaid and floral patterns. The 90s are knocking and it seems that it’ll hit harder than the first time around.
We at AUPEO! have a soft spot for the 90s. It was the golden age of the Rock Star, and a chosen few even attained god-like status. Back then, you could genuinely idolize someone like Kurt Cobain as you watched Smells Like Teen Spirit for the umpteenth time.
The music video evidently became an important vehicle that elevated some bands to such great heights. To re-live a few key moments: Damon Albarn pogo-ing and breaking many young girls’ hearts in Blur’s Girls and Boys, Beck in the slacker anthem Loser, Björk fighting a giant teddy bear in Human Behaviour. Our new 90s Best AUPEO! Station has all this plus a massive selection of Alternative, Pop, Hip-Hop, and R&B tracks. So deck ye in a flannel shirt and headbang away, because we’re offering this station free for the whole month of May (find it in our Pop category).
Let’s bring it home with Soundgarden’s classic, Outshined:
Remember how the 1980s seemed like the naffest, gaudiest trainwreck of a decade? How we rushed bags full of acid-washed denim to the nearest charity shop and vowed never to pop our collars again? We all know what happened next: the Noughties dug up those drainpipe jeans and proclaimed them to be the best thing since mullets. Wait, what? We can like Tears for Fears again without being given the side-eye? Awesome! If we’re really honest, nothing beats belting along to Shout:
Yes, it’s the best worst decade ever that produced some of pop culture’s most memorable fads, movies, and fashion faux pas. And without a doubt, some of the best music too. It gave us Madonna, U2, and Hip-Hop as well as those infectious synth pop sounds (a-ha’s Taaaaake Ooooon Meeee). At the other end of the musical spectrum, bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure were carving a darker niche that eventually gave rise to the burgeoning New Wave and Goth scenes. Whether you’re dayglo happy or darkly brooding, you can find it all on our new 80s Best AUPEO! Station, available toPremium users in our Pop category. Word of caution: may cause compulsive moonwalking.
Time to turn the stereo up to 11 and explore the history of Rock & Roll! Time for our Hall of Fame AUPEO! Station!
Home to some of the artists and producers that have made the most commercial and artistic impact on the realm of Rock & Roll, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was created in 1983 to honor these artists and producers, the past musicians that influenced them and the eventual spreading of their influence to other realms of popular music. To date, there have been over 150 artists inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We know it can be intimidating to trace the history of this music to try to listen to it all, but now, there is a way to get it all in one place – our Hall of Fame AUPEO! Station (available under the Rock category)!
Our music experts have compiled their favorite tracks by Hall of Fame inductees and put them all in one place for you to enjoy. Here you’ll find the heavy hitters of rock such such as Led Zeppelin and Metallica, artists that introduced popular music to a wider audience such as Bill Haley and Chuck Berry, and even R&B legends such as Otis Redding and Clyde McPhatter. Consider it your one-stop station to get everything you need from the documented history of Rock & Roll.
The spring has finally arrived here in Berlin and there is nothing better than some banging hip-hop on a sunny day. Having said that, it’s rather shameful to admit to being a hip-hop fan, as to a casual listener it doesn’t exactly represent keeping things real. Start talking about your love for hip-hop and quite soon you find yourself defending it. So how do you go about it, if getting dragged into a deep socio-political discussion about the evils of global hyper-capitalism isn’t the thing you want to do every time you talk about the music you love. You may say that hip-hop is dope, the shiznit and if you don’t like it, hate the game and not the player, but we at AUPEO! are far too much in love with the music to do that.
So what if, on the surface, it looks like hip-hop has developed from being the music of the culturally marginalized to being an industry that exploits everyone involved in it? Old gems still sound as fresh as they did when they were first released, and amongst all the less imaginative releases labeled “hip-hop” that some might call garbage, there is no shortage of beautiful, fun and thought-provoking music waiting for you to nod your head to. Here’s some further proof for those of you not easily convinced:
So, all you really need to do is to listen to the music, and we’ve made that easy for you. Just go to AUPEO! and check out our Hip-Hop Essentials AUPEO! Station under R&B/Hip-Hop and you will know what we mean. This hand-picked collection of timeless tracks from the beginning to the present is guaranteed to please the fans of real hip-hop, but it also works as an introduction to the genre. Our Hip-Hop Essentials AUPEO! Stationis available for free until the end of the month but it’s so good that you’ll want to keep it there by signing up for AUPEO! Premium!
Recommended if you like: Children’s Story by Slick Rick, It’s Like That by Jay Dee, Ain’t No Half Steppin’ by Big Daddy Kane and I Seen a Man Die by Scarface.
With International Women’s Day on March 8th, there is no better time to honor the greatest and finest females in music. Tune in to our spanking new Viva La Woman! AUPEO! Station in our Pop section which, you guessed it, is free for the whole month of March.
That today’s women can work side by side with their male cohorts, and of course rival them in singing, rapping and awesome guitar solos, is pretty much a given. The likes of Janet Jackson and Lady Gaga are proving to the music industry that women have more than what it takes to be global superstars.
Our Viva La Woman! AUPEO! Station is a multi-genre adventure that focuses on women’s contribution to popular and groundbreaking music in the last five decades. Amongst those at the party are Paula Abdul, Nelly Furtado and Mary J. Blige. Naturally, there are massive hits (Heart of Glass, anyone?) and singalong faves (“It’s like raaaain on your wedding day!”). But we’ll also be tipping our hat – or giving shout-outs, whichever appropriate – to many fantastic female MCs, bands, vocalists and DJs who have made an impact on the way we listen to music. They’ve definitely set the bar that much higher for future musicians, female or otherwise.
On that note, let us end with a lovely sugar-studded gem from the past:
Recommended If You Like: Bangles walk like Egyptians, Madonna thinks you’re her lucky star, Deee-Lite’s got groove in the heart and Rihanna assures that you can stand under her umbrella, ella, ella.
Once upon a time, way back when there were a few degrees of innocence still involved in urban living, popular music was beautiful. It had lush orchestrations, big beautiful arrangements and tense vocal harmonies, all screamed and cried onto wax. This music turned out to be so timeless that most of us, old or young, still recognize the biggest stars of this period by their first names; Otis, Tina, Diana, Stevie… the list really could be endless.
Our brand-new Soulful AUPEO! Station (in the R&B/ Hip-Hop section) offers a collection of all things soulful to both seasoned veterans and newcomers to the genre. It’s all there, from the gospel influenced early recordings of Garnet Mimms to the criminally under appreciated mixture of deep, funky yet mellow soul of Gloria Scott to the disco-funk of The Mary Jane Girls. Now this might sound scary to some, but what makes these songs timeless is that they are about feelings. To avoid further name dropping and other music-nerdy ways of simplifying things, have a look at one of the original Kings of Comedy, Steve Harvey getting the point across (things get interesting at around 1min. 10 secs.):
Recommended If You Like: some other-worldly vocals of Minnie Riperton on Adventures in Paradise, the sexual predator Betty Davis on her first self-titled album, the blues-soul and beautiful guitar playing of Little Beaver on Joey, the Roy Ayers influenced RAMP on Come into Knowledge or the blaxploitation sound of Willie Hutch on The Mack. It’s sometimes sweet, other times sweaty and often both at the same time. It’s oh so soulful. Now go on and get your superfreak on!
