On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan dropped an absolute nuclear bomb on the Newport Folk Festival by actually being cool as hell. Instead of ripping another acoustic snooze-fest like known dorks Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash, Dylan electrified the crowd with his sunburst Stratocaster playing straight bangers like “Maggie’s Farm” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” Men wept. Babies exploded. This is all true. Kylie Jenner’s boyfriend made a documentary about it.
I digress. For all the mythos that clouds Dylan’s infamous “going electric” moment, it’s a great story and litmus test to reflect on those radical changes in sonic direction you may find in a musical act’s discography. That defining zag an artist takes sacrificing a piece of their audience to avoid creative stagnation.
Not everyone has the luxury of forging new musical horizons with “Bringing It All Back Home” and “Highway 61 Revisited.” Sometimes white rappers make country music. But sometimes, somewhere, someone makes their greatest work yet.
Death of a Ladies Man - Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen spent a decade writing songs from the heavens only to be dragged down by Phil Spector to unearth his greatest album. Cohen’s “going electric” moment was born of an uncomfortable and violent pairing. I didn’t even need to fact-check stories of Spector putting Cohen at gunpoint during their studio sessions, you can hear that shit.
Where the poet’s first handful of records were a timeless, biblical brush with the divine, this one feels like a toil of the ground, a reluctant yet powerful embrace of humanity in all its beauty and filth. The maximalist wall-of-sound production very obviously clashes on a sonic and personal level with Cohen’s preferred style of songwriting. Spector corners him into creating music about people and places he doesn’t belong. The magic lies within this constant tug-of-war; the music reeks of acceptance.
The sex is human, the love is human.
You can hear the saloon doors swinging open on “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On,” that song is grimy as hell. The brass instrumentation of “Iodine” pulls you into some creepy New York lounge on a drunken late night with Cohen, there’s plenty of girls to spare but not the one stuck in your mind… damnn. Is “Paper Thin Hotel” a tale of cuckoldry and failure? Or the human spirit prevailing in the face of unrequited love, an achievement of relinquishing control and desire.
Songs like “Memories” and even “True Love Leaves No Traces” drown out Cohen with elaborate instrumentals and backup vocalists. I hear him wailing and shouting to be heard, a man jumping and waving his hands at the skies in pursuit of escape. You can almost feel him playing himself into shape, riding the wave and finding peace within the music (ultimately doing so on the record’s titular 9-minute epic).
Cohen explored sensuality and matters of the heart before, sure, but he never stood face-to-face with these concepts on such a corporeal level. Death of a Ladies Man is just that, a casanova stripped of divinity, spirit, and charm. The resulting music finds new meaning, embraces discomfort, and sounds really awesome. Good job going electric.
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino - Arctic Monkeys
The music Alex Turner was born to make. For all the indie rocking the Arctic Monkeys did on Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not and Humbug and more, it took a trip to space to ultimately find their stride.
It’s the kind of album you can sort of tell they all wore suits to record. The band trades their early youthful jangle and mid-career mainstream pop tendencies for a more sophisticated sonic decadence. Turner’s vocals were always a bit too posh to be “one of The Strokes,” and here he finally does not have to be. This elevated maturity in sound and style lends itself to earnest introspection and experimentation, an incredibly commendable commercial and artistic risk.
Sometimes it takes putting a mask on to really expose your true self. The Arctic Monkeys find themselves somewhere between Sgt. Pepper and Ziggy Stardust on this one, navigating this concept of playing music for the wealthy elite on the moon. The band does a brilliant job exploring this lounge rock sound and the retro-futuristic aesthetics as a backdrop for their commentary on their current state of fame and isolation. The music, the atmosphere is constantly portraying luxury and despair as two sides of the same coin. There’s a looming distance in every song.
Ironically, the record’s greatest track “Anyways” is technically a non-album single but we’ll let it slide. Its beautiful piano instrumentation and emotionally charged vocal performance are only matched by a close second in “The Ultracheese,” the album’s grand finale. Both songs elegantly capture the thematic core of this project, the former lamenting the incessant loneliness and monotonous nature of his current state of being, the latter finding solace in killing off his old sound, style, and persona. It’s a nostalgic and intentionally saccharine conclusion to the tranquility hotel experiment, and a wonderfully poignant one at that.
Arctic Monkeys went electric with complete conviction, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino may very well be the creative peak for the generation-defining group.
Whole Lotta Red - Playboi Carti
Very fun pick. Whole Lotta Red indirectly tanked the rap genre; this record’s fallout and reception have been nothing short of a cultural disaster, its disciples spearheading hip-hop’s mainstream decline. Outside of some interesting and forward-thinking flirtation with certain EDM scenes and the UK underground, this new generation of rappers has entirely underperformed commercially and frankly made some dogshit music. Playboi Carti’s most recent “effort” has not helped either, 2025’s Music might just be the most creatively void album in the history of recorded music.
But that Christmas Eve in 2020, gosh did Playboi Carti go electric.
Carti’s self-titled mixtape and debut studio album Die Lit rocketed him into rap stardom, influenced and incubated by the A$AP Mob’s dreamy cloud rap musical stylings and elevated by a historic pairing with trap producer Pierre Bourne. Leaked versions of Whole Lotta Red ultimately seemed to be following suit sonically, setting this stage for a wildly polarizing reception for its highly anticipated release. The album sounded nothing like his previous work.
Industrial, minimalistic, futuristic. Playboi Carti yelled, whined, and generally did not put together full sentences. It felt like he was speaking his own language, and in many ways he was. Rap Twitter be damned that day, this record was incredible. Carti took a bold swing and let the music speak for itself, then retired back to his shadow.
Songs like “Stop Breathing” and “JumpOutTheHouse” featured a focused aggression and continuous repetition of words and phrases, much akin to that of the Ramones. Carti’s overwhelming aesthetic embrace of Punk Rock cannot be understated; the album cover art drew inspiration from the late-1970s punk rock fanzine Slash, and the live performances directly emulated a punk ethos and atmosphere.
I had the pleasure of attending the Gainesville, FL, stop on the King Vamp tour back in 2021. I made it to the barricade and saw Mr. Carter parade around in all his vampiric glory, obfuscated in his opulent cloak and flashing red lights and excessive haze. The concert seemed to decenter Playboi Carti himself and his music; rather, focusing the attention on the energy within the room. This same energy is what made the album so unique and special - in ways that lyrics and soundscapes used to provide substance to his music, these facets were intentionally muted in favor of the energy cultivated within the songs.
I moshed, I laughed, I loved. It was electric.
Well that’s all I have for now so here’s another awesome picture of Bob Dylan. Such a nonchalant beast. So unbothered you know damn well he sees those fans under his stupid little sunglasses
