John Richards

#215 The Atlantic called this 2001 release the "album that captured modern dread" and said it might be the band's best album.: bit.ly -- www.kexp.org

#214 In 2010 Spin magazine placed XO at number 90 on its list of the 125 best albums in the magazine's lifetime. Pitchfork Media placed the album at number 68 in their list of the greatest albums of the 1990s. Here at KEXP it is #214 on the listeners' favourite albums of the past 50 years!

#213 Echo & the Bunnymen were booked to headline a two-week youth festival at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on the evening of 23 October 1983. Due to a high demand for tickets a matinee performance was added. That matinee concert at Stratford-upon-Avon saw the live debut of "Seven Seas".

#212 “The melancholy hill – it’s that feeling, that place, that you get in your soul sometimes, like someone’s let your tyres down. It’s nice to break up the album with something a little lighter. It’s good to have something that’s a genuine pop moment on every album. And this is one of those.” – band member Murdoc Niccals

#211 Rid of Me is the second studio album by PJ Harvey and was released in May 1993, approximately one year after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album Dry. It marked a departure from Harvey's previous songwriting, being more raw and aggressive than its predecessor. The songs on Rid of Me were performed by Harvey's eponymous trio, consisting of Harvey on guitar and vocals, Rob Ellis on drums and background vocals, and Steve Vaughan on bass. Most of the songs on the album were recorded by Steve Albini, and it was the last album they recorded as a trio before disbanding in late 1993.

#210 The Cure are reissuing Wish with 24 unreleased tracks next month! pitchfork.com

#209 This track features a sample of Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky” and is inspired — like the album itself — by the story of astronomer Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan capturing their romance on tape and sending it into space as part of the Voyager’s Golden Record. - bit.ly

#208 In April 2019, Superunknown was ranked No. 9 on Rolling Stone's "50 Greatest Grunge Albums" list.

#207 It has been speculated that this song is about US president George W. Bush because of the lyrics "Just like his dad, the same mistakes" and "Are you hoping for a miracle?" but these claims have been denied by the band on multiple occasions. Kele Okereke stated that he’d actually written the lyrics of “Helicopter” about himself.

#206 Playing Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday, November 9th. Perhaps the most played song at KEXP in 2019, Lizzo's "Juice" is "about looking in the mirror, loving what you see, and letting everyone know." Watch Lizzo perform LIVE on KEXP in July of 2017: youtu.be. www.lizzomusic.com

#205 Three versions of "Close to Me" were released in 1985, including the original album version, the 7" single mix version and the 12" extended mix version. The album version does not feature the brass section part present on all of the other versions, which was adapted from a traditional New Orleans funeral march melody and played by horn section Rent Party for the single mix. Thanks for listening and helping power KEXP!

#204 Released as the second single of the Avalanches' debut album, 2000's Since I Left You - a significant statement in sample-based music and an excellent reflection on the 90s music scene. -- The samples in this song include the John Waters movie Polyester, a recording by the Enoch Light Singers and an album from the comedy duo Wayne & Schuster.

#203 The success of the 1997 release 'Buena Vista Social Club' - and the Wim Wenders-directed documentary film of the same name (released in 1999) sparked a revival of interest in traditional Cuban music and Latin American music in general. Buena Vista Social Club is an ensemble of Cuban musicians established in 1996. The project was organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González. They named the group after the members' club in the Buenavista quarter of Havana, a popular music venue in the 1940s. To showcase the popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero and danzón, they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom had been retired for many years.

#202 In an April 1988 interview with The Tech, O'Connor said: "Mandinkas are an African tribe. They're mentioned in a book called Roots by Alex Haley, which is what the song is about. In order to understand it, you must read the book." bit.ly

#201 A seminal period for Nirvana was their 1989 tour of Europe with their Sub Pop labelmates TAD. "School" was the first song in their set, and as Sup Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt recalls, by the end of the tour Kurt Cobain would "look out in the audience and all he could see were the kind of people who used to beat him up at school." Watch Nirvana's live performance of "School" in Seattle in 1993: bit.ly.

#200 The song was built around a bass riff Tina Weymouth came up with when they spent an otherwise unproductive day in New Orleans recording at Allen Toussaint's Sea-Saint Studios. -- The group's third album, "Fear of Music," was recorded in the New York City loft where Talking Heads bass player Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz lived, using a mobile unit owned by The Record Plant studio. They recorded the basic tracks on Sundays when there wasn't as much traffic that could bleed through. Like their previous album, "More Songs About Buildings And Food," it was produced by Brian Eno. -- Watch Talking Heads perform it live at their induction into the Rock Hall of Fame: www.youtube.com

#199 This is the title song from Manchester-band James's fifth studio album, released in 1993. Originally viewed by the band as a throwaway song and a possible B-side, Brian Eno soon convinced them of the potential of this track. Whilst only reaching a disappointing 22 in the UK charts, it made serious inroads for the band in the US where it lead to performances on prime-time TV shows such as Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno.

#198 Meat Is Murder is The Smiths' second studio album. It became the band's only album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart, and stayed there for 13 weeks.

#197 This was the seventh track and the lead single from her third studio album, To Bring You My Love, released in 1995. -- PJ Harvey's mainstream breakthrough in the US was this menacing tune about a woman who drowns her daughter and returns to the scene of the crime, whispering, "little fish, big fish swimming in the water, come back here, man, gimme my daughter." The first part of the haunting refrain was taken from Lead Belly's blues rendition of the folk standard "Salty Dog Blues."

#196 This song, released on August 24, 1987, was R.E.M.'s first big hit. -- Often misinterpreted as a love song, R.E.M.'s first hit single is just the opposite. Michael Stipe describes this song as about using people over and over. It's deceptive because it could be a love song until the line, "A simple prop to occupy my time." Speaking to Mojo in 2016, Stipe said that he wasn't at all dismayed that so many people misinterpreted the sarcastic and spiteful lyrics as a straightforward love song. "I didn't like the song to begin with," he explained. "I felt it was too brutal. I thought the sentiment was too difficult to put out into the world. But people misunderstood it, so it was fine. Now it's a love song, so that's fine."

#195 The song was inspired by the short-lived nature of (then-lead vocalist) Ian MacKaye's previous band Embrace. Wanting to ensure the longevity of his new project, he was "absolutely determined that he was not going to make the same mistakes this time around... It's his song about waiting for the right people and the right moment." bit.ly fugazi.bandcamp.com www.dischord.com

#194 The video for "In the Morning" was featured on Beavis and Butt-head. Heh. Cool.

#193 M83 got their name from "Messier 83," a spiral galaxy. These types of galaxies contain discs of stars, gas, and dust spinning in a flat, circular motion. Spiral galaxies were first discussed by famous astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1936. -- This is the final song on M83's sixth album. "Facing tempests of dust, I'll fight until the end / Creatures of my dreams, raise up and dance with me..." ilovem83.com

#192 Black Celebration is Depeche Mode's fifth studio album. It reached number four on the UK Albums Chart, and has been cited as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. Three years after its release, Spin ranked it at number 15 on its "25 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.

#191 Speaking to Filter magazine in 2004, Harvey said of her debut album: "'Dry' is the first chance I ever had to make a record and I thought it would be my last. So, I put everything I had into it. It was a very extreme record. It was a great joy for me to be able to make it. I never thought I'd have that opportunity, so I felt like I had to get everything on it as well as I possibly could, because it was probably my only chance. It felt very extreme for that reason."

#190 From the second studio album by the English new wave band. The album art was created by Patrick Nagel.

#189 The eighth studio album from the Canadian rock band. It is known as the band’s best-selling album in the US. Read more about the album from the band's site here: www.rush.com