Sub Pop Records is extremely proud to announce the return (for our 20th year!) of the Sub Pop Loser Scholarship. Further details on the scholarship are below, and even further below is some clarification on what we mean with all this “Loser” business.

Sub Pop Records is offering a grand total of $18,000 in college scholarship money to three eligible high school seniors. There are three scholarships—each for $6,000! As longtime, proud losers ourselves, we’re exceedingly happy to be able, in some small way, to help further the education of art-enthused misfits from the NW. Individuals from all cultures and communities are encouraged to apply. Applicants must be residents of Washington, Idaho or Oregon, and graduating seniors on the way to full-time enrollment at an accredited university or college. We are looking for applicants who are involved and/or interested in music and/or creative media and arts in some way. However, you do not need to be pursuing an education in the arts.

To apply: you must submit an essay, one page or less, using any combination of the following questions as a guide (or write something completely your own, be inspired and creative!). Please list the school you are graduating from and the school you plan to attend in the fall at the top of your essay along with your contact information.

- What are you doing in the arts/music field in your community?

- What does being a Sub Pop ‘Loser’ mean to you?

- What are your influences and/or who inspired you to become involved in the arts?

- Describe your biggest failure and explain how it has brought you closer to your goal(s).

- Discuss a special attribute or accomplishment that sets you apart.

- How has your family or community background affected the way you see the world?

- Why should you be the Loser winner?

Applicants are strongly (!) encouraged to send digital links and/or provide hard copies of their artwork, photos of community involvement, radio show links, videos, etc. along with their essay (we have never had a winner who submitted only an essay w/no extras). However, please be aware that Sub Pop will not return any of this material, so please don’t send originals. Sub Pop will give equal opportunity to all applicants who fit the criteria outlined above.

The deadline for applications is Monday, March 16th, 2026.

Please send all submissions and attachments to scholarship@subpop.com by Monday, March 16th. We will announce the scholarship winners during the first week of April.

What we talk about when we talk about “Loser.”

Here at Sub Pop Records, we use the word “loser” a lot. You may have noticed. We’ve printed it on things we sell (hats, shirts, stickers, mugs, and more!), we call the first, colored-vinyl, limited-edition pressings of the records we release the “Loser Edition,” and every year since 2007 ish we’ve awarded tuition money to college-bound NW high school students through the “Sub Pop Loser Scholarship.” And, it’s possible we take for granted that you guys catch our drift and understand what we mean when we’re all “loser this,” and “loser that.” So! The following…

 Sub Pop’s use of the word “loser” goes back to the foundation of the label and is meant as a celebration of unabashedly being ourselves without conforming to any preconceived ideas of “normal.” To be a loser is central to the very idea of underground art and culture - all of it happening and thriving outside of the mainstream, and not necessarily looking for a way in. Bruce Pavitt’s “New Pop Manifesto” in the 1st issue of Subterranean Pop included, “The important thing to remember is this: the most intense music, the most original ideas… are coming out of scenes you don’t even know exist… Only by supporting new ideas by local artists, bands, and record labels can the U.S. expect any kind of dynamic social/cultural change…” And, since 2007 or so, with the Loser Scholarship, we’ve been adding students to that list, and putting our (or, our co-founder, big boss and biggest loser ever, Jonathan Poneman’s…) money where our mouth is. Sub Pop Records strives to bring attention to music and art from the fringes that might otherwise remain marginalized. And, in that same spirit, through our annual Loser Scholarship, we’re looking for art-enthused misfits in NW high schools, losers like us, to help them pay for college. We stand proudly with and support the misfits, weirdos and losers, because we believe that when we’re able to proudly be nothing other than our true selves, we have the ability to make the world stronger, smarter and better.

So, good luck, Losers! And, again, please send all submissions and attachments to scholarship@subpop.com by Monday, March 16th.

With a handful of dark and rainy months still ahead of us, now’s the time to curl up in front of the fire with a good book. Thanks to its fruitful history and multi-talented roster, there is an abundance of books closely tied to the Sub Pop family that rocks just as hard as your favorite TAD album.

Here are just a few of our preferred picks from here at the Sub Pop Airport Store!

Bruce Pavitt’s Sub Pop USA: The Subterranean Pop Music Anthology, 1980-1988 is a one-stop shop for everything you’d ever want to know about the formation of Sub Pop, Carrie Brownstein’s Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is a thoughtful and inspiring memoir highlighting her experiences in Sleater-Kinney, while the graphic novel Black Hole by Charles Burns heavily influenced La Luz’s most recent album Weirdo Shine. (Additionally, Charles Burns contributed illustrations for Sub Pop in our early days and is most visible on our Sub Pop 200 compilation!)

To make your book reading experience even richer, we’ve compiled the accompanying list of some of our favorite book and record pairings that will surely satisfy even the most ferocious appetite…

Here at the tail-end of 2016, it’s a little tough to deny that this has been an inordinately trying year. A brief and sadly incomplete list of the events that brought us together to cry, reflect, regain composure, and then cry again would include the death of Bowie, the Orlando nightclub shooting, the death of Leonard Cohen, the Ghost Ship fire, and… Well, the list goes on. Enough so that the world actually does kind of seem like it’s a crumbling gingerbread cookie right on the fragile edge of oblivion. We should (and, we very much hope, will!) all do what we can to respond to these challenges, and those that are sure to come. 

There are also, it’s worth remembering, some things to celebrate from 2016. And, some of those very things are compiled in Sub Pop’s Best of 2016 collection, which many of us here at the Airport Store contributed to, and which can be found here: http://bestof2016.subpop.com/.

Here, also, is a summary of all the neat holiday items we started carrying at the Airport Store that just may provide a welcome distraction from the horrifying chaos that is modern times:

Music

The Ventures’ Christmas Album (CD)

The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album (CD)

Low’s Christmas Album (CD and vinyl)

Songs For Christmas- Sufjan Stevens (CD)

It’s a Holiday Soul Party- Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (CD)

Dark Sacred Night- David Bazan (CD, we also have the bonus album on vinyl)

Joseph Washington Jr.- Merry Christmas to You (vinyl…R&B/Soul personal holiday fave reissued by Numero Group)

Other Stuff

Theo Chocolate Nutcracker Brittle

Lighthouse Holiday Blend coffee 

A smattering of special Sub Pop holiday postcards and greeting cards

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff guitar and bass distortion pedals signed by Mudhoney  

A handsome knit Sub Pop sweater

Sub Pop mittens

Three varieties of Sub Pop knit hats (logo, loser, black/white)

And last, but certainly never least… the Loser Stocking.

As 2016 finally limps to a close, we’re happy to provide you the pleasant distraction of this the November edition of thee No Fly List! This month’s dispatch is stuffed with plenty of product placement and peppered with the sort of almost-humor you might expect from a tippling uncle at Thanksgiving. In what follows we’re going to explore what is perhaps Sub Pop’s most well-known, provocative, overused, and frequently misunderstood expression: “LOSER.”

If you have been keeping up with No Fly List posts from Sub Pop’s airport store since the beginning, you’ve probably wondered what our fourth most asked question is! (See top three FAQ’s) 

Wonder no more! It’s “What is loser, and why loser?” (Which, yes, is kind of actually two questions, but they’re related and we’re calling the shots here, so deal with it.) Let’s dig in…

According to LOSER; the recently expanded book by Clark Humphrey that chronicles the diverse Seattle sound and punk scene, it’s, “a statement of defiance against the yuppies’ obsession with ‘winners.’” The term “LOSER” or “losers of the music industry” was a reaction to corporate industry driven trends and views.

First developed/stumbled upon in the summer of 1988, “LOSER” made its way onto a Sub Pop t-shirt that very year. Consistent with the label’s aesthetic embrace of apathy (and characteristic of the time), images were sporadically misprinted, contained gaps, and sometimes were even screened in reverse. You can scope photos of the original “LOSER” shirt in such books as Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge by Mark Yarm, and Experiencing Nirvana: Grunge in Europe by Bruce Pavitt.

In grunge speak, courtesy of Sub Pop’s current CEO Megan Jasper back when she was still the label’s receptionist, a loser is a “cob nobbler.” And, the greeting “Dear Loser” was used endearingly in the infamous Sub Pop rejection letters of the early nineties. The term was later used to market a Sorachi Ace-forward American pale ale developed in Seattle by local brewery Elysian. It’s also a term used in the card game contract bridge.

So that’s why Loser Editions! And, why don’t you have Bloom, Fear Fun, or King Tuff on colored wax? It might be because you didn’t pop in to the Sub Pop store at SeaTac. The Sub Pop airport shop is often the last place you might be able find one of these limited slick discs before they hit the wicked online aftermarket. When the pre-sale is sold out and the stash at your favorite shop has dwindled to nothing, your Loser Edition might just be one plane ticket away.

More “LOSER” related fact and fiction…

One of the earliest singles I’ve scored since becoming a Sub Pop employee is TAD’s long-out-of-print 7” single for “Loser” b/w “Cooking With Gas” (SP55).  While this release was limited to 3,000 copies on a green transparent vinyl 7”, both tracks are now available on the deluxe edition reissue of 1990’s Salt Lick. The 45 has a killer back cover by celebrated local cartoonist Peter Bagge, which exists now on a fine black t-shirt.

Are we forever going on about “LOSER” this and “LOSER” that because of the Beck song? Fuck no! Beck was/is not on Sub Pop. He did, however, put out the 1994 release One Foot in the Grave on Olympia-based label K Records (the latter day reissue of which is occasionally stocked on vinyl in the ‘non-Sub Pop’ section of the airport store with the rest of the PNW titles and related artists). 

Life as a “LOSER” is not for everyone. Tourists regularly walk by the store and stare. Some stop and think out-loud how unsuitable something like this would be for their youngster. Others imagine their choice of relative sporting a big, bold “LOSER” (as punishment or gift, who can say?). For those daring and/or proudly unambitious enough to let their “LOSER” flag fly, however… As the holiday season approaches, this charming stocking awaits, (available online only!), as does a great heap of other shit that says LOSER on it. 

Now if you don’t have any other questions; beat it LOSER!