Do you continuously find yourself trying to find the right playlist for your weekend? Look no further, Music Times is teaming up with different musicians each week and having them curate a Spotify playlist especially for you. Each week, we will be bringing in a new artist and have them put together something special that you can listen to from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. This week, Filter's Richard Patrick shared with us his inspiration playlist, filled with some of his all-time favorite songs.
Richard Patrick of Filter is not one to hold back. From the booming "new industrial" sounds of the band's forthcoming record Crazy Eyes to his strongly held political beliefs, Patrick is a sharer with an old school punk rock attitude.
Describing himself as someone who has a "bucking the system approach," the new music is in direct contrast to the "sugary, sweet teenage love music" of Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber that dominates the Top 40 charts.
A heavily opinionated man, Patrick was not afraid to get bold and political on Crazy Eyes. The lyrics tackle everything from police brutality ("Nothing in My Hands") to the psyche of a mass shooter ("Mother E"), resulting in a new album that is just as angry and honest as Filter's early work.
"As kind of a punk rock move, I decided to get back into my industrial roots. When I was younger in my high school years, I would listen to a lot of Skinny Puppy and Ministry along with The Cure, The Clash and bands like that. I just thought those formative years were really cool," he said.
Meanwhile, the Filter song Patrick chose was one born of a crisis of faith. "Take Me to Heaven" was inspired by the death of Patrick's father. Even as he sat by his father's deathbed, Patrick couldn't quite bring himself to believe in the "magic" of Christianity or Jesus, thus bringing about a new song.
"['Take Me to Heaven' is] just a really good, honest piece of music about me reconciling with the fact that we live in an age where everything is explainable, including theories about living and life from the Bronze Age. There's this pretty big book that's been selling throughout the years called 'The Bible' and it's has some pretty crazy ideas in it about how to live, and I just disagree with it; I don't think that it really makes any sense to me," Patrick said. "That's me finding out my want to believe but not really even at my father's deathbed even being able to see it. In a nutshell, I was telling him to take me with him, take me to heaven. But I don't know."
But as for what inspires him? In the studio, Patrick listens mostly to ambient music, but the 10 curated songs for Weekend Wunderlist are just personal favorites.
"These are songs that I would say are some of the best songs in the world. Each band has a specific thing to me that I love. I love Joe Strummer's being outspoken. I love the Deftones' blend of melody and heaviness. I love Skinny Puppy's avant-garde approach to synthesizers. Ministry - the combination of synthesizers and the added guitar," he said.
So get inspired, get political and blow out your speakers with Richard Patrick's weekend playlist.
Filter’s new album Crazy Eyes will be released on April 8.
