NPR: All Songs Considered

The soul musician behind one of the year's best albums, the heartwrenching Jimmy Lee , spoke with NPR music critic Rodney Carmichael as part of NPR's Tiny Desk Fest, a special four-night series of Tiny Desk concerts at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Saadiq shared stories about his brothers' battle with addiction, the origins of D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," and what it's like to play two Tiny Desk concerts 10 years apart.

Sheryl Crow had a lot to say in this Tiny Desk Fest interview with NPR pop critic Ann Powers. Every day, Sheryl Crow said at NPR's Tiny Desk Fest, she thinks about compassion. "In 2005, I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak — I was his opening act — and it was cool. It was the year he was talking about compassion, and he said if every person in every business in every walk of life made every decision based on compassion, the world would look like a completely different place." Crow and her band then led a rousing singalong of her 2008 song "Out of Our Heads," whose chorus sends an urgent plea to the online news junkies and social media warriors of today: "If we could only get out of our heads, out of our heads, and into our hearts...."

The longtime leader of ELO talks with All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen about his creative process, working with his heroes, like Roy Orbison, and his latest album, From Out of Nowhere . , a Beatle-esque British band in the late '60s. That creative outfit morphed into Electric Light Orchestra, taking their guitar, piano, and drum-based pop music and adding strings and synthesizers. ELO became a big band with a giant sound. The first ELO record was released precisely 48 years ago, on December 3, 1971. Nowadays, Jeff Lynne is ELO. Except for a few helping hands, Jeff Lynne writes, records, sings, plays and arranges everything on his new album, From Out of Nowhere, on his own. And he loves doing it.

All Songs Considered hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton countdown NPR listeners' favorite songs of the 2010s. The Top 25 Listener Picks: 1. Bon Iver: "Holocene" from Bon Iver 2. Robyn: "Dancing On My Own" from Body Talk Pt. 1 3. Sufjan Stevens: "Fourth of July" from Carrie & Lowell 4. Lorde: "Royals" from Pure Heroine 5. Kanye West: "Runaway" from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 6. Beyoncé: "Formation" from Lemonade 7. M83: "Midnight City" from Hurry Up, We're Dreaming 8. LCD Soundsystem: "Dance Yrself Clean" from This is Happening 9. Kendrick Lamar: "Alright" from To Pimp a Butterfly 10. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars: "Uptown Funk" from Uptown Special 11. Childish Gambino: "This is America" (Single) 12. Adele: "Rolling in the Deep" from 21 13. Taylor Swift: "All Too Well" from Red 14. Lucy Dacus: "Night Shift" from Historian 15. Carly Rae Jepsen: "Run Away with Me" from E.MO.TION 16. Mitski: "Your Best American Girl" from Puberty 2 17. Frank Ocean: "Self Control" from Blonde 18. Hozier: "Take Me to Church" from Hozier 19. Alabama Shakes: "Hold On" from Boys & Girls 20. Janelle Monáe: "Make Me Feel" from Dirty Computer 21. Lana Del Rey: "Video Games" from Born to Die 22. Brandi Carlile: "The Joke" from By the Way, I Forgive You 23. Radiohead: "Daydreaming" from A Moon Shaped Pool 24. Courtney Barnett: "Depreston" from Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit 25. Fleet Foxes: "Helplessness Blues" from Helplessness Blues

Our review of the past decade in music continues with a look at the ways music production has changed and how technology has revolutionized sound both onstage and in the studio. We begin with the role of computers in live performance. Laptops are often used to playback sounds that can't easily be created in a live setting. So, host Bob Boilen went to the 9:30 club before soundcheck to meet the artist known as King Princess. She grew up around recording gear. Her father, Oliver Strauss is a recording engineer at Mission Sound in Brooklyn, so technology and music-making are second nature to the 21-year old. King Princess sheds light on how musicians take complex sounds from the studio and make them possible in a live setting. Later, we look at the role of computers in the creative process, both as an effects processor and a compositional tool. One artist who is already making music and stretching the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence is Holly Herndon, who has an AI voice assistant she calls Spawn.