Topic

Failure

The outcome most is learned from and least is written about honestly.

2: in music
10:44: average
21 min: in total
33: across the network

Failure across the network →

All briefs2

video still

11:05

Deserter’s Songs

Mercury Rev · 1998

Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs (1998) is a chamber-pop reinvention built in the Catskills, where distorted guitars gave way to strings, horns and woodwinds. It is rooted in departure — of place, personnel and aesthetic — and anchored by collaborations with Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. Its sound is warm, acoustic, orchestrated and psychedelically tinged. Its themes are walking away, farewell and return. It is Mercury Rev’s most widely recognised work — not a rejection of their past, but its distillation.

video still

10:22

SMiLE

Brian Wilson · 2004

SMiLE is not an album you listen to—it’s a forensic archive of ambition collapsing under its own weight.

More from music

All briefs →

video still

8:42

12 Songs

Randy Newman · 1970

12 Songs is Randy Newman’s second studio album, released in April 1970 by Reprise Records. It features a swampy style of roots music with introspective, satirical songwriting; demonstrates Newman's eccentric mix of traditional pop song structures and sardonic, satirical humor; contains his most mordant character studies, which boast a recognizable humanity; counterposes his indolent drawl against instrumental settings ranging from rock to bottleneck to various shades of jazz; includes several songs previously recorded by other artists; features a stellar trio of guitarists — Ry Cooder, Clarence White, and Ron Elliott; and replaces the orchestra with an Americana rock rhythm section.

video still

8:43

400 Degreez

Juvenile · 1998

400 Degreez is a foundational New Orleans hip-hop record defined by its production method — lyrics first, live keyboards only, no sampling — and its regional coherence. It is not a crossover bid. It is a local document made with daily discipline and total instrumental control.

video still

8:06

A Date With The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers · 1960

A Date With The Everly Brothers is a 2013 tribute album by the Chapin Sisters. It is not the 1960 Everly Brothers record. No sonic, technical, or interpretive detail is provided in the source material.

video still

10:02

A Meeting by the River

Ry Cooder · 1993

A Meeting by the River is a 1993 Grammy-winning world music crossover album recorded in September 1992 by Ry Cooder on slide guitar and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on the Mohan veena—an instrument Bhatt created—with Joachim Cooder on dumbek and Sukhvinder Singh Namdhari on tabla. The session was unplanned and unrehearsed: Cooder and Bhatt met less than an hour before recording began. Produced and engineered by Kavichandran Alexander, it features voice-like phrasing, alternating and unison melodic lines, and improvisation rooted in Hindustani classical tradition and blues sensibility. Its four tracks—'A Meeting by the River', 'Longing', 'Ganges Delta Blues', and 'Isa Lei'—are noted for clarity, distinctness, and three-dimensional sound quality.