Idolator

September will, in the UK at least, see the issue of Songs Without Words, a collection of pop-rock hits that have been "classicalized." David Bowie, Sting, Coldplay—all your middlebrow favorites, given the ultimate middlebrow treatment. This is nothing new, of course; Christopher O'Riley has tenderly massaged the Radiohead catalog two times, and done the same for other artists' work as well. Still, a few big British names have been tragically overlooked in this "let's show everyone that this stuff is legitimate" sweepstakes, so we'd like to see which ones we should lobby Classic FM and UCJ Music for on the next edition of this comp. More »

Depending on which side of the alt-rock generation gap you fall on, Shaun Ryder might be best known to you as the frontman of the Happy Mondays or as a disembodied head in a Gorillaz video. But as an American teen in the '90s who cared not about "baggy" this or "Madchester" that, all I knew was that Ryder's short-lived post-Mondays combo, Black Grape, had by far some of the most entertaining videos to creep into 120 Minutes rotation from the pop charts across the pond. The video for my personal favorite, "Reverend Black Grape," is appallingly nowhere to be found on YouTube. But almost as good is "Kelly's Heroes," which features Ryder and a rapper named Kermit (!) robbing a bank while exchanging non-sequiturs like "Jesus was a black man," "no, Jesus was Batman!" No word yet on whether Ryder and Bez, his bandmate in both Black Grape and the Happy Mondays, will cause more domestic disturbances with a reunion of their less famous group anytime soon. [YouTube]