Critic's Notebook

Various Artists

We'll take the esteemed word of Vogue — along with reports of Karl Lagerfeld's collection of 60,000 CDs — as evidence that this two-disc comp of the iconic fashion designer's "favorite songs" isn't the product of a focus group. But there's something tragic about a man born in 1933 (according...
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We’ll take the esteemed word of Vogue — along with reports of Karl Lagerfeld’s collection of 60,000 CDs — as evidence that this two-disc comp of the iconic fashion designer’s “favorite songs” isn’t the product of a focus group. But there’s something tragic about a man born in 1933 (according to birth records — he’s claimed ’38) whose musical taste mainly post-dates 2003. Aside from Xavier Cugat’s biggest hit, and a no-brainer from Siouxsie and the Banshees, these 23 tracks play like the iPod favorites of someone whose universe is circumscribed by Pitchfork Media: Devendra Banhart at his hammiest, English girl-group hype-magnets The Pipettes, the cinematic electro-fizz of Minotaur Shock, the recent Fall song that appears in a Mitsubishi commercial. C’mon, Karl, isn’t there an oddity from the postwar European airwaves you still love, or some disco trash burned into your synapses by the chemicals you ingested at Studio 54? Then again, songs like those would make you look . . . (cue blood-curdling screams) old.

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