By ajostu
There’s a theory that successful bands have a popularity profile that follows a particular shape: they start small, get big and then fade away – partly because the zeitgeist goes elsewhere, but also because their fans grow up, get jobs and responsibilities, and so fall out of touch with the music scene – even their favourite bands. As they grow older and living pressures ease, fans start looking for music in their lives again, and bands re-emerge to become… legacy acts.
I spent most of this century working – which I suspect nowadays would be viewed by many as a luxury. However, I was aware of just how out of touch I felt over that time, and it’s only in the last few years that I’ve really been able to make a conscious effort to broaden my horizons.
Along the way I’ve discovered some great music – but this topic gave me the chance to either discover or rediscover music from this century that I may have heard but probably didn’t really pay attention to.
And what a great selection of tracks it was that I had to survey. There was a long-list of about thirty songs, so if you’re peeved your favourite track didn’t make it, don’t worry, so am I.
Thanks as ever to the Landlord for a note-perfect introduction, which included a very effective definition of what a riff actually is – I had my own picture but I found that a useful guide. Why riffs as a topic? Well, that one’s simple: I love a good riff, and I’ve heard a lot of good riffs in the music I’ve been listening to. So I wanted to know what else was out there that I either have never heard or had forgotten.
The A-List:
This week, Wynton Marsalis stepped down from his role as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. While undeniably a great musician, it will be interesting to see how history judges his attempts to define the legacy and boundaries of the form. In the meantime, people out there in the wild playing jazz and jazz-adjacent music continue to push the music in all sorts of directions. Is GoGo Penguin really jazz? Does it really matter? As Nilpferd points out: “Two-note riffs are a speciality of GGP, whose music takes a lot of inspiration from techno and electronic. In Protest, from 2016, it's the bass which carries the riff.”
One of the consequences of a good riff is that its earworminess (yes I did just say that) may lead to ubiquity. Queens of the Stone Age hit the riffing motherlode with No One Knows, a track that, as happyclapper points out, was played “36 hours a day” on radio and MTV.
The Black Keys are another band with a knack for a riff; 10 A.M Automatic is built on some really simple but effective guitar motifs, backed up by some subtle but effective drum beat switcheroos.
One of the musical aspects that marked punk and the various other subcultures that emerged in the 70s was the idea of anti-technique – the energy was the thing. But the merits of a catchy hook never disappeared, and French band Claimed Choice are happy to load nifty guitar lines into their 2025 song Knock You Out. When it comes to riffs, they put the “u” in Oi!
There’s a great blues-rock riff that underpins Fake Tales of San Francisco by Arctic Monkeys. Two things that strike me: the way the drums subtly underpin the riff, and the way the song slightly speeds up towards the end, which gives it a dash of extra energy. Click tracks be damned!
I don’t know if I’m contractually obligated to include a White Stripes track – there were plenty to choose from – but Blue Orchid grabbed me the most: concise, crunchy and a great guitar sound (octave pedal I guess?)
One of my absolute favourite riffs from the last few years (scratch that, I just checked, it came out a decade ago, where does the time go etc) is Them Changes by Thundercat. There’s a subtle complexity to the whole thing: a simple main bass part supplemented by two accompanying figures. It obliquely reminds me of the way Stevie Wonder builds riffs (Superstition or I Wish, for example).
There’s a repeated riff in Ashanti’s Foolish that alternates between accoustic and electric piano; by the early 2000s the practice of chopping and disrupting beats was already well in play, and it’s a technique that’s subtly put into use here.
I also don’t know if I’m contractually obliged to throw in at least one crowd-pleaser, but when it’s a track that also pleases me, why not? Sophie Ellis-Bextor is the one who “feats”, but it’s Italian DJ Spinner who samples Carol William’s Love Is You (thanks Wikipedia) to make the backbone loop for Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love). While the use of loops as the backbone of a track started in hip hop, it’s easy to see in retrospect just how much sampling had crossed over to pop by the 2000s.
It's a technique used here by sampling masters Daft Punk in Crescendolls, originating from The Imperials’ Can You Imagine? The loop is the riff, the riff is the track and that’s all you need.
I remember back in 2008 when Kids came out, and MGMT were seen as the next big thing (not to be, allegedly bad follow-up album, I’ve never heard it). Back when the JJJ Hottest 100 had more cultural clout than it does now (non Australians- never mind), this came in at number 5. The big fat keyboard riff is the bit that everyone remembers. There was a lot of commentary around at the time that bands like MGMT marked a shift away from rock and guitars and towards pop and synths. And so it came to be.
As a (rubbish) piano player, I’m a big fan of piano and keyboard riffs, so I was drawn to the thumping great piano riff that underpins Bloom Baby Bloom by Wolf Alice. One of the musical things I’m interested in tracks like this is how the locomotion of the riff interacts with the architecture of the song: what happens when you want to change chords – do you drop the riff, modify it or transpose it? Here they go for the transpose and it makes for a really effective transition into the chorus.
I would argue that Ellie Goulding’s track Burn is the Archetypal Modern Pop Riff Song. The song starts with The Riff, which sonically shifts but largely persists throughout. The chorus is an echo of the riff but sufficiently different so as to have its own identity.
I was intrigued by pejepeine’s comment: “There are claims that rock riffs have their roots in Cuban music, going back to Don Azpiazu's Peanut Vendor (which riffs hard) and mambos by Perez Prado.” If I think of the core features of a riff- repetition, implied or overt countermelody and rhythmic propulsion – I can see that. There are riffs galore in Baile Inolvidable but one of the many great things about this track is the mastery of Bad Bunny in shifting and morphing those riffs as the track goes on.
The A-list ends with a track built around the intricate interplay of multiple riffs: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba with Jamana Be Diya.
An Insistently Infecious A-List Playlist:
GoGo Penguin - Protest (Nilpferd)
Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows (happyclapper)
The Black Keys - 10 A.M. Automatic (Shoegazer)
Claimed Choice - Knock You Out (Carpgate)
Arctic Monkeys - Fake Tales of San Francisco (amylee)
White Stripes - Blue Orchid (VikingChild)
Thundercat - Them Changes (magicman)
Ashanti - Foolish (pejepeine)
Spiller feat. Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Groovejet (Uncleben)
Daft Punk – Crescendolls (SongBarLandlord)
MGMT – Kids (barbryn)
Wolf Alice - Bloom Baby Bloom (happyclapper)
Ellie Goulding – Burn (Marconius7)
Bad Bunny - Baile Inolvidable (pejepeine)
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba (feat. Kasse Mady Diabate, Toumani Diabate) - Jamana Be Diya (Nilpferd)
Building Up A Riff B-List Playlist:
One of my guruing mottos is “A-list for the mind, B-list for the car.” I’ve taken a slightly different approach this week. There were several longer tracks nominated where I really liked how they used that extra time to build and evolve.
Jake Long - Ideological Rubble (Nilpferd)
LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends (SongBarLandlord)
Renegade Soundwave featuring Redman – Robbery (4-4 Mix) (Shoegazer)
DJ Kent ft Mo-T, Mörda, Brenden Praise - Horns In The Sun (Thakzin Remix) (magicman)
Yasmin Williams - Swift Breeze (Nilpferd)
The Dandy Warhols - Sleep (amylee)
Bardo Pond – Aldrin (Uncleben)
Guru’s Wildcard Picks:
I drew up a long list of over a dozen tracks, and through gritted teeth I’ve managed to restrain myself to four recent great tracks that feature piano riffs.
Between The Lines features guest vocalist Kaho Nakamura singing over a piano riff played by Sara Wakui. The riff features strongly at the beginning and returns at the end. The song is a beautiful meditation on the power of music and memory. It’s one of my favourite songs from all of the centuries.
Riffs are a great way of “selling” odd time signatures. The verses of Aporia are in 15/8, and a clever piano riff pushes the song along and makes it feel natural. The chorus shifts to standard time and a lovely mandolin riff takes over. Yorushika are a duo (producer N-buna and singer Suis) and are one of a new wave of Japanese artists, sick of the whole price-of-fame thing, who maintain public anonymity.
Another (less shy) duo is Bialystocks (singer Sora Hokimoto and keyboardist Go Kikuchi). Their breakthrough song I Don’t Have A Pen is built around a keyboard ostinato that persists throughout the song in one way or another.
Hikaru Utada is a Japanese music legend with three albums in the top 10 of most successful Japanese albums (including #1). Kenshi Yonezu is probably the most successful current Japanese male solo artist. They joined up for a duet that’s the closing theme for last year’s Chainsaw Man movie. The opening of Jane Doe is built around a mournful minor key piano riff that morphs into an old fashioned waltz- but comes back at the end.
Sara Wakui & Kaho Nakamura - Between The Lines
Yorushika - Aporia
Bialystocks – I Don’t Have A Pen
Kenshi Yonezu & Hikaru Utada – Jane Doe
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic: Hook into: great riffs of the 21st century. The next topic will launch on Thursday after 1pm UK time.
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