So many variables determine what makes an artist or band “essential” — longevity, impact, influence, history. On-air and online, we celebrate the musicians who have shaped our cultural soundtrack for the past fifty years. Let’s love these FUV Essential artists while they’re here, and honor those who have departed too soon.
"Discovering the music of Björk when I was a teenager changed the course of my life," writes Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak in her "Five Essential Björk Songs" for FUV Essentials — just in time for the Icelandic musician's 53rd birthday on November 21.
Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack (photo by Shervin Lainez, PR)
[Update: FUV remembers John Prine on what would have been his 75th birthday on October 10, 2021. We lost our friend on April
Shannon Shaw (photo by Alysse Gafkjen, PR)
Ask Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers about the songwriters who m
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of Indigo Girls (photo courtesy of Propeller Publicity, PR)
Joni Mitchell turns 75 on November 7, 2018, and there will be events to celebrate this astonishing singer and songwriter whose influence has transcended generations.
![Joni Mitchell (Original photo: Asylum Records [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)](https://wfuv.org/sites/default/files/ESS-JoniMitchell.png "Joni Mitchell (Original photo: Asylum Records [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)")
Joni Mitchell (Original photo: Asylum Records [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Paul Weller's choppy fringe might be on the snowier side of silver these days, but the British rocker, who turned 60 on May 25, ha
Paul Weller (photo courtesy of the artist)
A first-time immersion into the ecstatic sound orgy that is the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland is an excursion to rock 'n' roll nirvana. As the 50th anniversary of the album approaches, Hendrix is this week's FUV Essentials artist.
Jimi Hendrix (image from promotional photo of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, via Wikimedia Commons)
There's as much myth as veracity that guides the legacy of Cat Power, the feral and fierce moniker of singer and songwriter Chan Marshall. As she releases her tenth album, Wanderer, we're honoring this late night consoler of the lonely and sculptor of intimate masterpieces as an FUV Essentials artist.
Cat Power (photo by Stefano Giovannini, courtesy of the artist)
[Ed.
Marlon Williams (photo by Steve Gullick, PR)
In April 2018, John Prine released his first album of new, original compositions in 13 years, The Tree of Forgiveness. It is an elegant, insightful album that revels in the bountiful simplicity of daily life, the grandeur of the ordinary, and gratitude for surviving some pretty dark times.
John Prine (photo by Danny Clinch from johnprine.com)
For the last four Thursdays of the summer of 2018, it's #FUVTBT Throwback Thursdays. WFUV is rewinding decades, back to 1998, 1988, 1978, and 1968 — dipping back for day-long flashbacks with songs of that particular year and personal perspectives from FUV's DJs. For 1968, FUV's afternoon host Dennis Elsas turns the clock back 50 years to a watershed time in American history when politics, passions, and pop culture collided in a revolutionary way.
1968 (Collage compiled by Laura Fedele, WFUV)
