Movie Diary
Thursday, October 30, 2025 
a) Weapons
I realize at this point I am just adding to the chorus of praise for one of the most popular movies of 2025, but man I fucking loved Weapons, totally knocked Zach Cregger's previous movie Barbarian down a peg as one of my favorite horror movies of the last few years. And as a fan of "The Whitest Kids U'Know" from way back, it means a lot to me that Cregger put a nod to Trevor Moore in there (the seven hot dogs) and apparently wrote the screenplay as a way to process his grief. But really I just loved everything about it, the George Harrison song in the opening, the cast, and especially the storytelling. It also felt a little darker than I expected simply because so many sympathetic characters wound up being killed, killing someone else, or not really getting a reassuring or happy ending. I am not the biggest fan of movies that break the story into chapters from different characters' perspectives, but the way it was done here was a best case scenario, really a smart and purposeful way of unveiling a story that would've been a lot less compelling if it hadn't been laid out so cleverly and carefully.
b) Friendship
Friendship seems to be pretty highly regarded by fans of "I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson," but I had more mixed feelings. A lot of Robinson's sketches feel a little slice of normal daily life has been exaggerated or shown through the eyes of a protagonist who's extremely immature or impulsive, and Friendship functions in the same way, but really stretching that approach over a longer canvas and spending time with that character for 100 minutes and seeing their family and friends deal with them inevitably becomes darker and even a little exhausting. Ultimately it kind of felt like a lesser variation on a movie like Cable Guy, and it was a little weird that Paul Rudd's character was so much like his character from Anchorman. Friendship has maybe the funniest, most unexpected "character trips on psychedelics" scene I've ever seen, and a few other moments I loved, but I almost wish those bits had been sketches that could be separated from this imperfect whole.
c) All of You
Brett Goldstein (best known as Roy Kent from "Ted Lasso") made a short film 10 years ago that took place in a near future where people could take a computerized test that matched them with their soulmates. In 2020, Goldstein made an anthology series for AMC, "Soulmates," with that premise, and I feel like I was one of the only people that watched it, it was decent, kind of a more squishy, romantic genre of "Black Mirror" episodes. And then this year Goldstein wrote and starred in All of You, which I guess is a feature-length adaptation of that original short, but when I put it on and realized he was doing the soulmates test again, it just felt like he'd managed to sell an unused "Soulmates" episode script to Apple TV. And honestly the test feels pretty incidental to the plot, the movie didn't really do anything with it at all, it was just a minor blip in this long, brooding story of a man and a woman who were college friends and then became on-again-off-again lovers. By the end of it I was just rolling my eyes at all the dramatic crying and yelling and sex scenes with Goldstein's thrusting buttocks, just a really painfully earnest, self-serious movie.
Sacha Jenkins was a great of the music writing world who co-founded Ego Trip and wrote for Vibe and Spin, and he very sadly died at only 53 earlier this year. So it was a wonderful surprise when a documentary directed by Jenkins came out on Netflix a few months after his passing, a wonderful look back at the Black performers on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and how passionate Sullivan was about the civil rights movement and about featuring racially diverse entertainment on his show. There's a great interview with Harry Belafonte, so I guess a lot of this was filmed at least two years ago, so I guess the Smokey Robinson interview was done before his horrible allegations came out. Really fantastic footage and an interesting angle I'd never really considered, most people just focus on the Beatles and Elvis when they talk about music on Sullivan's show. The filmmakers did use AI to simulate Sullivan's voice, speaking words he'd written, which is relatively responsible as uses of this technology go, but I'm still not crazy about it.
I'd always hear about Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara's old work as a comedy duo back in the '90s when their son Ben became a star and when Jerry had his classic run on "Seinfeld," but I never actually saw any of what they did back in the day. Now that both of his parents are gone, Ben Stiller made this beautiful documentary about how they basically saved everything, including rehearsal tapes of their routines, and every review of Ben's movies (including the negative ones). It ended up being a pretty thoughtful look at the ups and downs of being a famous showbiz family, it's funny and nostalgic at times but also grapples with with the complexities of them as individuals. Stiller and Meara really became stars on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and the movie had a lot of hilarious clips from their appearances, so it was fun to watch the same day I watched Sunday Best and just kind of live in that world for a few hours.
This documentary covers the last few years of Ozzy Osbourne's life, including the recording of Patient Number 9, his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Black Sabbath farewell concert. And it's a little intense to watch something mere weeks after his death that goes into great detail about his health issues and how hard it was for him to make his final public appearances. It's moving at times and has some great little moments I'm glad I saw, but it also made me feel like the Osbourne family got way too into living their lives on camera after the MTV show and probably didn't need to do this, I started to imagine that every member of the Kardashian family will someday have a miniseries about being in hospice care. And the ending felt a little abrupt, it felt like they had a complete cut of the film that ended with the Birmingham concert, and just tacked on 30 seconds of footage from a memorial after he died.
g) Stans
A documentary about "Stan" as well as Eminem fandom isn't the worst idea but it didn't really feel like they had enough there for an interesting feature-length film.
h) Elio
A nice little movie, feels like it was destined to be seen as 'lesser Pixar' from the jump but it was enjoyable.
i) Fixed
"Dexter's Laboratory" and "Samurai Jack" creator Genndy Tartakovsky wrote and directed Fixed, an extremely childish 'adult' animated film about horny dogs trying not to get neutered. I didn't find it offensive or anything, but at a certain point you just feel like you're watching hundreds of drawings of animals' buttholes and objects strategically blocking you from seeing their genitals, like the movie is so exhaustingly satisfied with itself for being moderately naughty.
An action movie where John Cena plays a movie star-turned-POTUS and Idris Elba is the also ripped Prime Minister of the UK is my kind of bullshit. At one point John Cena urgently presses the button to roll up the bulletproof car door window as a rocket launcher aims at his vehicle, just great physical comedy. And there's kind of an unexpectedly great little scene where Air Force One is being shot down and the pilot gives a little speech about how he's happy to sacrifice himself so that the President and PM can parachute to safety.
k) The Pickup
Like Heads of State, The Pickup is one of those Amazon Prime movies that feels so much like something that would've been moderately successful in theaters 10-15 years ago but is now just streaming service filler that doesn't penetrate pop culture in the slightest. Eddie Murphy is old and rich, why does he feel like he needs to do a mediocre heist movie with Pete Davidson?
One of the better discoveries I made while checking out movies for my 2018 list, I have no memory of this coming out but a western starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix is a good time.
m) Mandy
As far as late period Nic Cage vehicles go, I didn't like this as much as Pig or Longlegs, but it was alright.
n) Private Life
I feel like this really surpassed my expectations as a dramedy about a middle-aged couple with fertility issues, like there are a million movies like this but Tamara Jenkins put together a compelling story that didn't go quite as I expected and Kayli Carter was really impressive, held her own alongside vets like Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn.
o) Blackbird
Another dramedy with a good cast that I found a bit more overstuffed with characters and subplots and less memorable.
p) Fast Color
I really enjoyed this, felt kind of like Unbreakable in that it was basically a superhero's origin story that wasn't a comic book movie and didn't feel like one.
q) Freaks
A decent Canadian thriller, another kind of original movie that dealt with superpowers without feeling like a comic book adaptation.
The best 2018 movie that I just recently caught up on, I never got around to watching Barry Jenkins's follow-up to Moonlight at the time, although I'd become a big fan of Stephan James from the things he'd done since then, so it was nice to finally see his most acclaimed role. I'm also kind of more familiar with James Baldwin as an essayist and public intellectual so it was cool to see an adaptation of one of his novels and get more acqauinted with that side of his work.
s) His House
A strong debut from British director Remi Weekes, hope he has a second film sooner than later, and recommended as Wunmi Mosaku's breakout role before Sinners.
A really creepy horror movie, I don't think it lived up to the reviews it got but it was a reasonably fresh take on the exorcism movie genre.
A decent action movie, great cast led by Jeffrey Wright and Alexander Skarsgard, but not especially memorable.
I really liked this, I think the first thing involving Miranda July that I've enjoyed at all, very impressive debut performance from Helena Howard.
Very odd plot to this movie, didn't go at all where I expected it to, but one of the best Maggie Gyllenhaal performances I've seen.
I really have a lifelong loyalty to Michelle Monaghan off the strength of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that I watched this Mark Wahlberg action comedy, might even watch the sequel.
One of Mads Mikkelsen's best performances and one of the movies he's made in his native Denmark that's made an impact over here, really shows what America's missing out on by keeping him in a villain/supporting role niche.
A decent horror movie, should make a note to check out more of Jim Cummings's stuff.
Monthly Report: October 2025 Singles
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
1. Olivia Dean - "Man I Need"
I was just completely stunned the first time I heard Olivia Dean's "Man I Need" and instantly fell in love with her voice and her sound, and judging from the way that song has exploded around the world, I'm not alone in that experience. British soul tends to be a little more stylized and retro than what I really like, but Dean's songs are just very poised and polished in a way that that frames her voice beautifully. The whole The Art of Loving album is pretty good, I particularly like "Baby Steps," but "Man I Need" is definitely the standout. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update very month.
2. Metro Boomin f/ Quavo, YK Niece, and Breskii - "Take Me Thru Dere"
One of my favorite things about Metro Boomin's great A Futuristic Summa tape is that he didn't just get a bunch of Atlanta rappers from the late 2000s/early 2010s era together, he made tracks that sound like they could've been hits back then and restored the swag rap feeling. And the project's breakout single "Take Me Thru Dere" has one of those steel drum loops that brings to mind "Crank Dat Soulja Boy" and D.G. Yola's "Ain't Gon Let Up." YK Niece is a newer artist, but she broke through on an old-fashioned Zaytoven beat this year as Pluto's sidekick on "Whim Whamiee" and is perfect for the track, and Quavo sounds like he's really having fun on a record again for the first time since Takeoff died.
3. Parker McCollum - "What Kinda Man"
I keep a playlist of recent singles I like that I listen to regularly while working on these posts, and "What Kinda Man" was on my playlist when it came out back in 2024, but I never quite liked it enough to write about it last year. Then it finally became a top 10 radio hit recently and I decided to reconsider it, and it's really grown on me. It's a little more of a '70s country throwback than Parker McCollum has done in the past, nice to hear a little harmonica on country radio again.
4. Riley Green f/ Ella Langley - "Don't Mind If I Do"
By the time Ella Langley and Riley Green's "You Look Like You Love Me" hit #1 on country radio last year, they'd already released another duet as the title track to Green's latest album, and I'm glad that that one is finally a hit single as well. I love the way Green sings the first half of the song by himself, then Langley starts to harmonize a little, and when she finally sings lead on a few lines it just hits perfectly and changes the whole emotional dynamic of the song. I hope they do a whole album together, male and female country singers don't make collaborative albums as much as they used to back the day.
5. Justin Bieber - "Yukon"
Like "Daisies," the second-biggest song from Bieber's latest album was penned by Dijon and has an appealingly minimal arrangement. There are 2 Chainz ad libs on "Yukon" but he never actually raps, kind of a throwback to what Kanye did with Jeezy's voice on "You Can't Tell Me Nothing." Annoyingly, the R&B stations I listen to have taken to playing an unofficial remix of "Yukon" that uses the beat from Loverance's "Up!" and I don't like it nearly as much as the original.
6. Sabrina Carpenter - "Tears"
Sabrina Carpenter is on an insane run of six singles that have hit #1 on pop radio in the same of 18 months. "Tears" has reached #8 and could still get to #1 but I have a feeling it's gonna break the streak and the fan favorite album cut "When Did You Get Hot?" may eventually do better as a single. "Tears" has grown on me a lot, and the end of the video is one of the funniest things she's ever done, but it feels like they wrote this song thinking they could get away with the word "wet" in the chorus on the radio but it gets censored every time and it really hurts the effectiveness of the hook.
7. Limp Bizkit - "Making Love To Morgan Wallen"
Limp Bizkit's Sam Rivers died last week at only 48 years old, just heartbreaking news, he was a great bassist, they may be a divisive band but I think people can generally agree that their rhythm section is tight as hell. It's especially sad because it happened just a few weeks after Limp Bizkit released a new single that's become their biggest radio hit in 21 years and probably their best song in even longer. I know the meaning of the title lyric is "making love to Morgan Wallen['s music] in an elevator" but it's more fun to imagine that Fred Durst is singing about banging Wallen.
8. Wunderhorse - "The Rope"
I don't like this British band's name because it reminds me too much of Sparklehorse, who I revere, but I really like this song, looking forward to their next album.
9. Doja Cat - "Jealous Type"
Doja Cat had too much momentum in 2023 for Scarlet's pivot to fail but it feels like the more deliberately accessible Vie is bearing the brunt of her spending a year basically shitting on her fans and the music that made her a mainstream star. Kind of a shame because I like Vie, Doja and Jack Antonoff both have a capacity to make pretty annoying music but they make a really good combination. "Stranger" might be my favorite Doja Cat song of all time and the lead single "Jealous Type" is pretty good too.
10. Jackson Dean - "Be Your Man"
"Heavens To Betsy" recently became Odenton native Jackson Dean's second top 10 hit on country radio, and it's been nice to finally hear the Maryland stations I listen to actually support him heavily, I don't think they really got behind "Don't Come Lookin'" to the same extent. He's already started to release new songs from this third album, so I hope that momentum carries over, "Be Your Man" is really good.
The Worst Single of the Month: A Day To Remember - "All My Friends"
I interviewed Yellowcard recently during their current co-headlining tour with A Day To Remember, which surprised me only because I know Yellowcard's music pretty well but I'd never even heard a band by A Day To Remember before. But I guess they're pretty popular these days, and I just heard them on the radio for the first time the other day and good lord, this song is so terrible. The "aww shit" refrain, the "I got a text from the crew" verse, the nod to "The Boys Are Back in Town," it feels like a Lonely Island song where the comedic twist never arrives.
Friday, October 24, 2025
My Deep Cut Friday column for Spin this week is about Bruce Springsteen's "State Trooper," and I also wrote a piece with Live's Ed Kowalczyk look backing on the band's summer tour.
TV Diary
Wednesday, October 22, 2025 
a) "The Guest"
Two different shows called "The Guest" have debuted in the last few weeks. One is a Netflix series from Spain, but this is the other one, a Welsh series about a wealthy middle-aged woman (Eve Myles) who hires a struggling young woman as her house cleaner (Gabrielle Creevy). Even with a very ominous score and moody lighting from the very beginning, it's easy to get caught up in the friendship between the two characters and a woman who's living in poverty suddenly having a lot of money thrown at her, but things start to escalate pretty quickly to a dark place in the first episode and I'm curious to see where it goes from there.
b) "Boots"
This Netflix series is based on the memoir of a guy who enlisted in the marines as a closeted gay teenager in the '90s, it manages a pretty good balance of being sitcommy but still feeling like there's a firm foot in reality and someone's actual experiences. Obviously Vera Farmiga's always been beautiful but she's really still just so striking in her fifties, was surprised to see her in a show like this but I'm not complaining.
I am generally pro-Glen Powell and a big reason for that is Hit Man, a very entertaining movie he co-wrote that allowed him to wear lots of wigs and makeup and take on different voices and identities. So "Chad Powers," a series where he plays a disgraced football player who assumes a new identity with a wig and prosthetics to be able to play on a college team. Unfortunately, the whole Chad Powers persona and voice is just a little over-the-top and broad, I feel like it'd be such a stronger show if it wasn't such an irritating performance. It's not bad otherwise, though, a strong supporting cast including Perry Mattfeld from the great "In the Dark" and Steve Zahn.
Michael Chernus is kind of a journeyman character actor who went to Julliard and has done a lot of stage work, and is probably best known for a very funny supporting role on "Severance." And it's really something to see him play John Wayne Gacy, he's physically perfect for the part and brings this innate goofy folksy quality from his more comedic roles that makes who he's playing even more unsettling and menacing. In 2021, Peacock made a docuseries called "John Wayne Gacy: Devil In Disguise," and then they basically flipped the title and subtitle around for this, which seems kind of annoying and lazy to me.
This is the third season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series about infamous killers, and the more true crime Murphy does, the less he seems equipped to tell true stories about serious life-and-death situations. He's just very unserious, and seems too interested in tying in the movies that were inspired by Ed Gein's murders, Pyscho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, including Tom Hollander's laughably bad depiction of Alfred Hitchcock. I generally like Charlie Hunnam, I thought he was stoic in the right way on "Sons of Anarchy," and I don't know how close his portrayal of Ed Gein is to reality, but it just feels like he's too over-the-top, like he's playing Lennie from Of Mice and Men.
I tapped out from the original "9-1-1" a few seasons ago, but I see that it's now sillier than ever and sent Angela Bassett into outer space. So I had to check out the latest spinoff just to see a tornado at a Kane Brown concert. See, this is the kind of silly bullshit I'm fine with Ryan Murphy making.
The CW seems to be barely a functional network these days and most of its scripted programming is imported shows produced by Canadian networks. The latest example is a Canadian "Law & Order" spinoff that I guess NBC didn't want, although honestly I think it's pretty much up to the same standard of acting and production values of the other "Law & Order" shows.
A little surprised that FX renewed this show after Brian Jordan Alvarez's allegations. I have mixed feelings about continuing to watch and enjoy it, but the rest of the cast is so good, Sean Patton and Savanna Gann in particular are so funny. And it's the only show on TV right now that actually talks about things happening in America under the second Trump administration (the end of affirmative action in college admissions, the trans ban in the military, etc.). I was slightly offended by the episode that makes fun of a character who, like me, considers Looper to be a really important movie.
"The Diplomat" was created by a "West Wing" producer and on paper the third season sounds like it could be even more of an idealized liberal fantasy, with Allison Janney as POTUS and Bradley Whitford as First Gentlemen. But "The Diplomat" is a pretty dark and smart show about international intrigue and Janney is anything but an idealized president, and I really enjoy seeing how this story keeps getting more tense and complex with moments of disarming wit and character moments.
j) "Gen V"
One of the stars of the first season of "Gen V," Chance Perdomo, died in a motorcycle crash between seasons, and the show made I think the right decision to have his character also die and put the cast and crew's real grief into the fictional story. And Hamish Linklater is a really worthwhile addition to the cast, I'm glad to see his career really soaring.
Apple TV (ahhh it feels so good to type that without the stupid plus sign!) canceled this series after one season last year, but somehow they had one additional episode leftover that they just put out as a one-off. And I'm glad they got to finish and release it, one of their funnier episodes, which features an AA-style support group for werewolves (and werebears and werehorses).
"Only Murders" has always toed the line between a sendup of serialized mysteries and a functional serialized mystery, and as the show keeps rolling on into a fifth season with more bodies piling up, they've remained pretty creative with the storylines. Christoph Waltz is a great new addition and I'm glad Richard Kind has remained in the cast from last season. Selena Gomez's line reading might actually getting worse instead of better, though.
Disney+'s animated MCU shows have never been particularly good but they also seem to be detoriating instead of improving.
An Apple TV animated series, I put it on for my son but neither of us took much interested in it.
Another show that neither I nor my son enjoyed, in fact I thought the animation was absolutely hideous, very "Polar Express.
Horton is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss characters, he's always just so noble and put upon. The new Netflix series about him is very cutesy and preschool-y, though, doesn't really have the tone of the Seuss books.
This show is probably as good with Dan Stevens as it was with Justin Roiland, but it'd kind of become background noise for me, I'm glad they're wrapping it up with the sixth season, I started it but I doubt I'll finish it, it's just barely amusing to me anymore.
This Netflix series from Japan is about a woman who decides to bring an ex-boyfriend into her marriage, less of an erotic fantasy than a realistic look at the social and emotional minefield a situation like that could be.
This Danish series on Netflix is a good old fashioned "someone disappears and a community's dark secrets are unraveled" type thing, I feel like I've seen this kind of thing so many times that I don't know if I'm intrigued enough to finish it.
A French rock singer who killed an actress in 2003, pretty grisly story, it's interesting to hear about something that was huge headline news in another country that never really made waves over here that would've been an OJ Simpson-level spectacle if it happened in America.
This is the third docuseries about New Orleans that I've watched in the past few months. They're all pegged to the the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but this one on CNN is not centered on the 2005 tragedy like the others, it's more of a celebration of New Orleans culture and music and food, which makes it kind of a nice palate cleanser.
Rebecca Miller's documentary about Martin Scorsese is really great and thorough, I'm glad somebody got to do something like this while he's still alive, and as a 5-hour series so they can really get into just about every movie in some detail. It all actually cuts pretty naturally into one episode about the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, and then one about his career since 2000. It's a bit more revealing about Scorsese's personal life than I expected, with lots of interviews with family and friends (and I'm now smitten with Domenica Cameron-Scorsese), but mostly to the extent of giving a context to his work. My favorite part is when the filmmakers find out that the guy De Niro's Mean Streets character was based on is still alive, and they get him on camera ("Did you really blow up a mailbox?" "Yeah." "Do you remember why?" "No."). This is the third documentary I've seen released in the past year (after Rise of the King and Norman's Rare Guitars Documentary) that has, I believe, new interviews with Robbie Robertson from before he passed away in 2023, nice to see a little more of him.
David Beckham had a Netflix docuseries a few years ago that I mostly remember for a viral scene ("be honest") that made his wife look kind of silly trying to pretend like she didn't have a posh upbringing. I mean, hell, she's Posh Spice! So it feels like her new Netflix docuseries primarily exists as a corrective to give her a more sympathetic portrait, and I think it works to some degree, the first episode is the first time I ever really saw her as a three-dimensional and likeable person.
The title of this nature docuseries makes it sound like it's gonna be more gorey and violent than it really is, but I suppose it's good that the name prepares you for the occasional graphic moment. Maya Hawke does the narration and I enjoy the sound of her voice, she was a good choice.
Lots of reality dating shows take place in beautiful island locations, but this Peacock series is actually about people who live in Hawaii, which is kind of nice and refreshing.
I see Jimmy Fallon (and current "SNL" cast members) in so many commercials these days that I've started to wonder if Lorne Michaels is covertly running an ad agency, and that's basically what this show is, with contestants pitching campaigns to big brands. A somewhat interesting concept but it really just makes Fallon seem like even more of a sellout company man at a moment when the Trump administration is trying to kick his peers off the air and he's just cowering and avoiding political jokes.
Monthly Report: September 2025 Albums
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
1. Zara Larsson - Midnight Sun
Swedish singer Zara Larsson and British singer/producer MNEK had their only Top 40 hit in the U.S. together with 2015's "Never Forget You," and they've both independently made music I've really enjoyed over the last decade. So it was just really cool to see that they've remained friends in that time and Larsson asked MNEK to be serve as the executive producer of her new album, which has really been kind of a big comeback for her in America after she'd only really been a major star in Sweden for years -- I feel about this album the way I think a lot of people felt about Brat last year. Midnight Sun is just a deliriously fun and sparkly dance pop album, with occasionally detours into something noisier or weirder ("Pretty Ugly" and the Tiffany "New York" Pollard-sampling "Hot & Sexy) or something more earnest but still danceable ("The Ambition" and "Saturn's Return").
2. Mick Jenkins & Emil - A Murder of Crows
Mick Jenkins has been so consistent over the years but is more slept on than ever, I wish he got mentioned more as part of the progressive wing of Chicago rap with Chance and Noname and Saba and so on. His latest project has a jazzy, cinematic sound courtesy of the British producer Emil that lets Jenkins get into his more conversational flows, but he still occasionally ramps up the intensity in his delivery to great effect, especially on "Pundits (Yappers)." The only thing I don't like is that on the first track he does this botched punchline that implies Chris Farley was in Dumb & Dumber (maybe he thought the Jeff Daniels character was Farley? Or he's got it confused with Tommy Boy?).
3. Bones Owens - Best Western
I interviewed Bones Owens a few weeks ago and really got into this record while working on the article, sometimes the guitar tone on an album is just so rich and enjoyable that it becomes my way into the songs, and "Into The Wind" is definitely the one I love the most, love how the harmonies hit on the chorus. I first Bones Owens when he was working with Yelawolf a decade ago, and Yelawolf guests on one track, but that's kind of an outlier, this is just a nice straight-ahead rootsy rock record.
4. Lola Young - I'm Only Fucking Myself
I really like "Messy," the song from British singer Lola Young's 2024 album that became a big sleeper his this year, and the other stuff I'd heard before sounded pretty good, but it also kinda felt like a 'zoomer Lily Allen' thing that I didn't feel like I necessarily needed more than one or two songs from. So I was pleasantly surprised that her follow-up album I'm Only Fucking Myself, which hasn't had any hits remotely as big as "Messy," is really excellent, she's just a great songwriter and distinctive vocalist with good taste in production beyond the big personality and the funny one-liners, I particularly like "Dealer" and "Can We Ignore It?" (there are emojis in some of the song titles that I'm not typing those, that's just a bridge too far). I'm not surprised that "Post Sex Clarity" is by far the biggest of the non-singles so far, I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes a hit.
5. Sloan - Based On The Best Seller
Last month I wrote about Superchunk's 13th album and marveled at their longevity and continued excellence. Sloan is on their 14th album and have been together for almost as long, and in some ways their run is even more impressive because they've had the same lineup the whole time and no long breaks between albums (only four and a half years at most, usually less). Having four singer/songwriters in the band probably helps Sloan a lot -- each guy only has to come up with 3 good songs every few years, a pace I imagine they could keep up as long as they live. For the second or third album in a row, Jay Ferguson has the by far the best trio of songs with "Capitol Cooler," "Collect Yourself," and "Congratulations," which features a fun moment where the phrase "call the authorities" transitions to guitars mimicking a police siren.
6. Cardi B - Am I The Drama?
I've seen some people say Am I The Drama? is better than Invasion of Privacy and I really just can't co-sign that, it takes a while to get going and most of my favorite songs are in the second half ("Pretty & Petty," "Better Than You," "Trophies," "Principal"). But a newly divorced Cardi B is going to make a different album from a newly married Cardi B, and the angrier stuff on this record actually reminds me a little more of her earlier mixtape stuff, which is fine with me as someone who saw her potential back on GBMV2, I'm glad she kept her edge instead of fully going into the pop star stratosphere.
7. The Runarounds - The Runarounds (Prime Video Original Series Soundtrack)
I really like the recent Amazon Prime series "The Runarounds" about a band of recent high school grads trying to make it to the big time, partly because the music in the show is genuinely good and the performances scenes are really energetic and fun to watch. I wasn't sure if I would like the songs as much removed from the context of the show but I might actually like them even more. "The Runarounds" is a fully fictional story but the producers went out of their way to make the band as real as possible, casting actor/musicians who performed the music in the show live instead of in a studio and wrote the songs and have gone on tour as the Runarounds. And they make the kind of tuneful, energetic pop/rock that I just love when it's done well, "Funny How the Universe Works" and "It's A Wash" are really catchy songs, Zende Murdock is such an awesome drummer that his talent is a significant plot point in the show. The band plays a good number of covers in the show, but I'm glad that just a couple of those are tacked onto the end of the album after 15 originals that the cast wrote with Matthew Koma (a hitmaker type who's married to Hilary Duff and wrote the Zedd classic "Clarity").
8. Nine Inch Nails - Tron: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
There's not much musical difference between a Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross film score and a Nine Inch Nails instrumental album from the Ghosts series, but they've maintained a sort of informal separation of church and state in how they're branded until now. But the Tron: Ares soundtrack is a Nine Inch Nails record with four full-scale songs with vocals, and they've been on a full-scale tour this year (it's called the Peel It Back Tour so I kind of assumed we're getting an album called Peel It Back soon, but I really have no idea). In any case, awesome record, feels like they wanted to live up to the high bar set by Daft Punk on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, shame it's attached to a flop starring Jared Leto.
9. Chase Rice - Eldora
Chase Rice played an event that Travis Kelce put on in Nashville in June, and Taylor Swift's only live performance of 2025 so far was an impromptu run though "Shake It Off" on Rice's guitar. I wish the headlines about that brought a little more attention to Rice's brilliant midcareer reinvention, this is the third year in a row that he'd released a great album in a more intimate, rootsy style than his earlier hits.
10. Young Thug - UY Scuti (Supernova Edition)
I don't have much of an opinion about Young Thug's RICO trial and the various allegations that he and/or Gunna is a snitch, but the whole last three for years have been weird and surreal and confusing and depressing. Young Thug announced UY Scuti with a May release date months ago, then kept delaying the album after the total lack of buzz around the single "Money on Money." And then when a bunch of leaked jail phone calls had a disastrous effect on Thug's public image and a number of his relationships with other big name rappers in August and September, that's when he decided to release the album, I guess to capitalize on all the negative attention. UY Scuti is definitely one of those weird records where a living legend is struggling to recapture what made him so popular and influential to begin with, and the deluxe edition that opens with 7 old leaked tracks from his peak era makes his decline even harder to ignore. It's not a bad album, though, London On Da Track always produced a lot of my favorite Thug stuff and he's got six tracks on here, including my favorites "On the News" and "RIP Big & Mack."
The Worst Album of the Month: Tom Odell - A Wonderful Life
I used to keep my television on MTV Hits in between putting on streaming services because I like catching music videos here and there. Then for some reason MTV Hits disappeared from my premium cable package but I still have MTV Live, which is mostly the same as MTV Hits with a few hours of concert specials every day. On paper that's a nice idea given MTV's massive archive, but they just play the same dozen or so things every couple days, mostly from 2009-2013, including some "Unplugged" episodes from that era when it looked like taping it inside a broom closet, and random concerts by Flo Rida and Tom Odell. Odell is apparently a moderately big deal in the UK, but I never heard of him until I kept seeing his 2013 concert special from a short-lived European subchannel called MTV Brand New. As far as I can tell this never aired in America when it was new, but now it's on American television like once a week, and nobody in America ever cared about Tom Odell. Anyway I've been hate-watching this Tom Odell concert where he cry-sings like Dave Pirner for probably a couple years now, a couple minutes at a time, and so I decided to actually check out his new album and give it a chance. In the studio he's just another middlebrow Thom Yorke wannabe, but not the kind that makes moderately fun stuff like Chris Martin or Matt Bellamy.
Friday, October 17, 2025
This week I profiled Yellowcard and Buddy Red for Spin. I also wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Split Enz, ranked Van Halen's albums, and updated my ranking of Elton John's albums.
Thursday, October 16, 2025
I did an interview with John's Music Blog about Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music. The book is out now, I generally don't tell people who to buy, but I'll ask you to buy this, I'm proud of what I made and I'm proud of the city and the culture that it represents.
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
I wrote a Baltimore Banner piece about the life of Darsombra's Ann Everton and spoke to several of her friends and collaborators, including her husband and bandmate Brian Daniloski. There's a GoFundMe for Brian here.
Movie Diary
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
It's always great to get Spike Lee and Denzel Washington together again, I really enjoyed it even as I rolled my eyes a little at certain plot points, depictions of the music industry, and A$AP Rocky's performance. Not Washington's best late period performance, but the one where his goofy big ass veneers feel the most suited to the character, and I loved all his scenes with Jeffrey Wright and Wendell Pierce.
b) The Lost Bus
I guess it's inevitable that there'd be a California wildfire movie from the director of United 93 and Captain Phillips, not bad for a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller but I kinda treated it as background noise.
c) Damsel
I checked out a lot of 2018 movies my recent list, and this was probably the biggest surprise in terms of movies I just watched on a whim. Directors David and Nathan Zellner both act in the movie, and David Zellner's role turns out to be much bigger than I expected after one of the (spoiler alert) putative main characters dies pretty early in the movie, which I think is a pretty risky thing for a not very famous actor-director to do but it really worked in terms of Damsel's dark comedy and subverted expectations.
A far more famous Robert Pattinson movie from 2018 that I was a little less impressed by, I thought by far the weakest of Robert Eggers's four features so far. I respect what he was trying to do with a minimal black and white movie with an atmosphere of growing dread, I mean Eraserhead is one of my favorite movies, but I don't think he entirely pulled it off.
e) Broke
I like Wyatt Russell a lot as a comedic actor but he was good in this more somber western drama, I feel like reviewers may have overrated it a little but it was fine.
This was pretty good, although I don't know if it lived up to how hyped as I was the first time I saw a trailer. Like it would've been really impressive as an episode of a horror anthology series, but as an 87-minute feature it was just okay, good atmosphere and a moderately well constructed story but not especially scary or memorable.
g) Pavements
One of my friends lives in Greenbelt and I'll hang out with him down there sometimes and do the trivia night at the New Deal Cafe. One night he invited me to go with him to see Pavements at Greenbelt Cinema and it was a pretty cool little spot, I didn't realize there was a theater down there that got some arthouse limited release movies that I'd usually expect to only see in a major city. So often rock documentaries and biopics are well made but don't feel true to the spirit of the band they're about, and Alex Ross Perry succeeded in making a movie about Pavement that really suits them with its sense of humor and ridicule of genre conventions. I particularly liked the way the 'five movies in one' format allowed them to just cram the movie with so many different versions of so many different Pavement songs, sometimes covered by other indie bands or done in a musical theater style. It makes sense that the band sees Lollapalooza '95 as a low point, but as someone whose favorite Pavement album is Wowee Zowee, I'm a little annoyed by how both the movie and their latest best-of compilation treat it.
h) Her Smell
After watching Pavements, I decided to check out Alex Ross Perry's previous movie about a fictional alternative rock band, and I had kind of mixed feelings about it. The way the story was told in five vignettes in different time periods was well done, but at some points the story felt a little drawn out and threadbare, I personally thought Elisabeth Moss was a little miscast as a Courtney Love-ish self-destructive rock star, I just didn't buy her in the role and thought the movie could've been great with the right lead actor. I also found Keegan DeWitt's score really irritating and unwelcome, it just felt it was trying to add unsettling tension to scenes and wound up feeling kind of distracting and taking away from the atmosphere.
I'm generally a big fan of Nicole Holofcener, she makes these deceptively 'small' films about difficult episodes in regular people's lives that have a lot more to say about modern relationships and material realities than most other movies. The characters in The Land of Steady Habits all felt like real people I could have met in my life, but I thought Ben Mendelsohn was another really miscast lead, his character was written so well as a kind of person I've known and somehow he wasn't believable in the role at all, just totally wrong for the part.
Two or three members of my family will sometimes go to the movies together, but it's fairly rare that all four of us will go to a movie, I think we've only done it three times: Moana 2, The Bad Guys, and The Bad Guys 2. My kids and I have read all of Aaron Blabey's Bad Guys books, and I have to say, I like the movies a lot more than the books, which are kind of forcefully wacky and rambling but seldom pay off with real laughs. Pierre Perifel's movies take lots of liberties with the plots, tighten them up and make them snappy little kid-friendly versions of heist movies, and the voice cast is great.
k) Wicked
I imagine this was probably pretty amazing on Broadway back in the day with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, and while Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are great vocalists, it kind of feels like they forcefully removed the stage musical energy from Wicked for this cathedral of pastel CGI puke and didn't replace it with much movie musical magic. It's not bad as spectacles go, but I'm sure a much better movie could have been made of Wicked.
l) Snow White
Rachel Zegler is so talented and makes such a perfect Snow White, I feel bad that her performance got wasted on this movie, the color scheme wasn't as annoying as Wicked but the overall look of the CGI was even worse.
An upcoming sequel reminded me that I never got around to seeing this one. It kinda felt like an uninspired offbrand Stephen King story with its supernatural twist on a serial killer story, wasn't impressed at all.
n) Devo
Devo are one of those bands I've always enjoyed but I think I love them more and more as time goes by and I learn more about them, and this documentary was really engrossing and well done. I knew a lot of the story but there was some amazing footage, and really interesting anecdotes I'd never heard (for instance, David Bowie and Brian Eno recording lots of overdubs for Devo's first album and the band just turning them down in the final mix). And it was interesting to see the members of the band explain how subversively infiltrating pop culture both did and didn't work out the way they planned, and wound them up in these unexpected places like "The Merv Griffin Show."
This documentary was really pretty moving, I was 15 when the first Lilith Fair happened and was still so totally entrenched in the male-dominated alternative rock mindset (although I had an enormous crush on Sarah McLachlan and loved all her singles), but now it's so clear that it was a really remarkable moment in time with so many artists who I appreciate more decades later. I loved just hearing how much the odds were stacked against them and how much they had to push against the music industry's conventional wisdom, and how even skeptics like Chrissie Hynde eventually joined the tour and had a great time. A huge bummer to be reminded, though, that they tried to revive the tour in 2010 and it kind of fell apart, the doc really made me wish it was something that just continued for decades.
p) Dig!
I had seen bits of this movie before but didn't sit down to watch the entire thing until I was preparing for my recent interview with Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. And it was interesting to take in that movie's famous, unflattering depiction of Newcombe and then get to talk to the actual guy and see how he feels about it and what context the last two decades of his life put that movie in now. A pretty entertaining movie, though, I enjoy any rock doc that feels a little like a real life Spinal Tap.
q) Shirkers
Shirkers really something special, Sandi Tan tried to make a film with her friends in the early '90s, and it took years and years for her to figure out why it never got finished, and that story became this documentary. It's bittersweet and frustrating to watch and you're left with a lot of unanswered questions, but I really enjoyed the journey of these passionate kids falling in love with film and music and art and trying to make something, even if it turned out in any way they could've expected.
I started reading Jeff Chang's great new book without really having seen any of Bruce Lee's movies so I've started to rectify that, and Fists of Fury was the only one of his major works that I was able to easily stream for free, which ended up feeling like a pretty great introduction. I really liked how the rest of the cast, especially Paul Wei, played off of Bruce Lee and made his charisma and physicality that much more powerful.
s) Suspiria
I wanted to watch the 2018 remake of Suspiria so I started with the 1977 original. And man, it's one thing to hear about how influential Dario Argento is but a whole other experience to see his work and see how much his use of color and camera movement and music has been interpreted or attempted in a million other things.
t) Suspiria
Watching Luca Guadagnino's remake right after the original really highlighted how a really professionally made modern film by an acclaimed director really has almost none of the juice or visual flair of a good '70s movie. Not a bad movie but it feels kind of pointless to use the original's story without any of its artful verve.
A really impressive debut by Kitty Green. I feel like a lot of post-'me too' fiction is kind of heavy handed, but this is a finley detailed fly-on-the-wall account of office life with these subtly ominous moments that drive home the point without overstating it.
I love Regina Hall and I wanted to check out this movie that I guess was a turning point in her career where she started to get a wider variety of roles that weren't full-on comedy. Great performance, Haley Lu Richardson is really funny in it too, and I guess Hall and Junglepussy hit it off on this movie and that's how they ended up working together again in One Battle After Another.
w) How It Ends
Most of the stuff I've seen Theo James in has been pretty good, but this apocalyptic action movie felt pretty generic.
I have slightly more mixed feelings about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy since she passed up the opportunity to step down from the Supreme Court while she was still alive. And this movie just feels like a poorly aged remnant of a widespread cultural effort to make people horny for RBG, which totally worked because I was absolutely feral watching Felicity Jones in this movie, good lord she's gorgeous.
y) Cam
I expected this horror movie about a camgirl to be one of those 'screenlife' movies where the entire thing takes place in various laptop windows, but it wasn't really that, and was pretty successfully eerie and original.
z) Extinction
I like Michael Pena and Lizzy Caplan a lot, but it feels like they got stuck in kind of a middling sci-fi spectacle movie that had been intended to have a much bigger budget and bigger stars before it was downsized.
Friday, October 10, 2025
I wrote about "Daffodil Lament" by the Cranberries for this week's Deep Cut Friday column on Spin. I also updated my Taylor Swift album ranking to include The Life of a Showgirl.
TV Diary
Monday, October 06, 2025 
"Reservation Dogs" is a modern classic and I wish it lasted more than 3 seasons, but I'm cool with FX picking up Sterlin Harjo's new series that takes place in the same fictional universe's Oklahoma (as confirmed by a Willie Jack cameo in the first episode). Ethan Hawke's Lee Raybon is a bit of a self-destructive fool and a little of a noble resourceful hero, getting beat up and nearly killed in every episode so far, a really entertaining protagonist to throw into a neo-noir story full of colorful characters, including great turns from Keith David and Abbie Cobb, and lots of needledrops from Tulsa's musical legends (The Gap Band, Leon Russell, J.J. Cale). I'm loving every minute of it.
The latest series from "Peaky Blinders" creator Steven Knight is a big lavish period piece about the family that founded the Guinness brewing company. I didn't realize that Jack Gleeson had mostly done theater in the decade since his great performance on "Game of Thrones" and I guess this is his most prominent screen role since then. Niamh McCormack is mostly who I remember from the first episode, though, wow.
c) "Wayward"
The first Netflix series Mae Martin created and starred in, "Feel Good," was kind of a typical standup comic's autobiographical sitcom, albeit a good one. "Wayward," however, is a much more original and intriguing drama, with Martin as a trans man who becomes a police officer in a small Vermont town where some odd stuff is going on an Toni Collette plays the sinister headmaster at a mysterious academy.
A pretty entertaining drama with Jason Bateman playing against type, as he seems to more and more these days, as a troubled fuckup whose debts endanger is brother (Jude Law)'s successful nightclub. Sometimes it feels like Netflix has completely abandoned any pretense of making scripted English-language shows that can compete with what HBO and Apple TV+ and Hulu are putting out, so to get a few shows like "Black Rabbit," "Wayward," and "House of Guinness" in the space of about a week gives me some hope that Netflix isn't fully resigned to cranking out slop.
Jesse Williams learned to speak Italian and attempts a breezy Will Smith-style leading man turn in this Amazon series that takes place in Italy, both with mixed results. Not bad, though, kinda fun.
The USA Network stopped making original series years ago, but given the streaming resurgence of "Suits" I guess they've decided to give the old fashioned legal drama game another go, starting with a John Grisham adaptation. I never saw the movie Coppola made of The Rainmaker, so I don't know the story or have a frame of reference to compare to, which is probably good, I can go into this cold. Lana Parrilla was always the best thing about "Once Upon A Time" in my opinion, happy to see her in something new.
g) "Invasion"
If the second and third seasons of "Invasion" have had budgets in the same ballpark as the first season, Apple TV+ has spent half a billion dollars on this show that I've virtually never seen anybody else ever acknowledge the existence of that has no real recognizable stars (outside of Sam Neill, who was only in the first episode). I love money pits like this, though, it's not a great show but it's visually very impressive and there's a good ensemble cast that gives me enough gripping scenes now and then to keep me invested in the story.
A pretty good new animated sitcom on Netflix created by a "Rick and Morty" writer that as a great voice cast (Will Fote, Eliza Coupe, Skyle Gisondo, etc.) and feels more like its own thing than yet another offbrand "Rick and Morty" like "Solar Opposites" or "Krapopolis."
My ten-year-old loves "The Owl House" and has watched every episode multiple times. So I was happy to hear that creator Dana Teace has a new show, although there's just the pilot on YouTube so far and I don't think I'll show it to my son anytime soon. It's not really more 'adult' than "The Owl House" in any meaningful way except language, but the characters say "shit" a lot (no other curses I can remember, just a lot of shit, to the point that it feels forced and unnecessary).
A Korean show on Netflix about first year residents in a hospital's OB-GYN department, feels surprisingly interchangeable with American medical dramas, which kinda just makes me less interested in watching it.
This Spanish series is pretty creepy and compelling, about a guy whose own mother trains him to become a hitman.
l) "The Royals"
I like this Indian series about power struggles in a luxury hotel, it's very soapy and everybody is really gorgeous.
m) "1 In 7641"
Netflix debuted two different docuseries celebrating the culture and history of the Philippines in the space of three months, which is just fine with me, it's a fascinating count, I checked out both. If you see only one, though, I might recommend "I Love Filipino," which has more of a native perspective than the tourist perspective of "1 In 7641."
The same Vice TV people who made "Dark Side of the Ring" produced this Hulu docuseries about some of the more tragic or violent stories from metal istory. I find that overarching theme a little lurid, but the stories are generally told sensitively with an appropriate amount of attention paid to the actual music.
o) "Taurasi"
I knew of Diana Taurasi as one of the WNBA's big names who retired earlier this year but I didn't really realize how long or impressive her career was until I watched this docuseries, which also gives an interesting perspective on the changes and growth of the league over the past 20 years.
I didn't know Ted Bundy gave extensive interviews in prison to an investigator who was trying to catch the Green River Killer, it's pretty chilling to hear audio of his voice in this docuseries, definitely reccomended to "Mindhunter" fans.
I hadn't heard of model Books Nader but this reality show is about her and her three sisters living together in New York City. A very transparently Kadashians-ish show but with a slightly more likeable family of beautiful people who are from Louisiana.
I will say that the title "Back To Reality" is clever: Todd and Julie Chrisley are returning to reality television, and 'normal' life, they're out of prison following President Trump pardoning their 2022 tax evasion and fraud conviction.I hate watched them a little back in the day before they were felons, so I felt like hate watching them a little again for old time's sake.
I feel like there's probably no American sports team that has fallen further in my lifetime than the Dallas Cowboys, even just making a docuseries that focuses on that '90s streak when they were Supe Bowl champs three out of four years just feels like a latent admission that the last thirty years are a story that they don't want to tell.
The Kansas City Chiefs are kind of the Cowboys of the modern NFL era, so it feels almost like an incomplete story arc to see a doc about their dominant years while they're still happening but it also allows you to get a more candid real time look behind the curtain.
"Lego Masters" is a fun show partly for the novelty of seeing adults get passionate about Legos, but it's just as much fun to watch the spinoff about kids. And they brought back my favorite person from the other show, the cute Scottish woman Brickmaster Amy.
Godon Ramsay's daughter Tilly hosts this Amazon show where chefs have to make dishes from a 'mystery box' of ingredients, a moderately fun little cooking show.
This is a more is pressure "Top Chef"-style show, but I like that it's explicitly about younger chefs who ae early in their careers. But I did cringe that the teams were named after famous deceased chefs like Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain, just a bit tacky.
w) "99 To Beat"
Ken Jeong hosts this American adaptation of a Belgium game show that stats with 100 contestants and keeps eliminating people though different challenges until the last person remaining wins it all. I love the concept although I doubt I'll watch it enough to get invested in who makes it to the end.
I recently watched the docuseies "Virgins" and found its depictions of people in their twenties, thirties and forties who'd never had sex to be touching and empathetic. This "Love Island"-style dating show about a resort full of virgins, not quite so sensitive, but it's still full of nice people that you can't help but root for and care about.
I never really watched this show when it was a ratings phenomenon but I suppose I'm not too surprised to learn that it's problematic.
Saturday, October 04, 2025
Nathan Evans invited me onto his Rinse FM show this week to talk about the 130bpm rhythmic common ground between Baltimore club music and UK Garage, and he wove our discussion into a really cool DJ set of tracks from or influenced by both genres. You can stream the whole program here.
I also had my event for Tough Breaks at Greedy Reads in Remington on Tuesday, and I had a really great discussion with moderator Catalina Byrd and Unruly's Shawn Caesar for about an hour. 8 minutes of footage were uploaded to YouTube, including Shawn telling stories about how K-Swift's mix CDs were at one point outselling Jay-Z and every other major label rapper in Baltimore stores. The book is out now! Buy it at Greedy Reads or online or wherever you can! I've literally never really asked people to buy anything and may never again! This is the one, spend those 15 dollars, baby!
Friday, October 03, 2025
This week on Spin, I interviewed Anna Canoni of Woody Guthrie Productions, Inc. and producer Steve Rosenthal about how some remarkable 73-year-old recordings became ready for release on the new album Woody at Home Vol. 1 + 2. I also wrote about "Cash Car Star" by Smashing Pumpkins for the Deep Cut Friday column.
Monthly Report: September 2025 Singles
Tuesday, September 30, 2025 
1. Megan Moroney - "6 Months Later"
I had a polite disagreement recently with Milwaukee music writer Evan Rytlewski, who thinks that "nobody dunks on godawful country music anymore" and that mainstream country has become a sacred cow among critics in the age of Cowboy Carter. Personally, I don't see it. Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll are reviled about as much as Nickelback ever was, and most of the country stars who aren't at that level of crossover success are relatively invisible. There's a whole new generation of hot girls singing sad songs on country radio (Ella Langley, Megan Moroney, Lainey Wilson, Kassi Ashton), but they don't have a fraction of the same awareness among critics as Kacey Musgraves. who broke through well over a decade ago. Moroney got to sing her excellent current single for about 90 seconds at the MTV VMAs a few weeks ago, but I saw zero reaction to it on my social media feed that's full of critics and music lovers. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month.
2. Justin Bieber - "Daisies"
The day Justin Bieber released Swag, I heard "Daisies" on the radio before the album, because I wasn't in a rush to hear a Justin Bieber album named Swag. And was blown away by it, having no idea that Dijon and Mk.gee worked on it and that was why it had kind of a quirky lo-fi sound completely different from anything Bieber had released before. And after the element of surprise wore off, I just kept liking "Daisies" more and more, I crank it up every time it comes on in the car.
3. Clipse - "So Be It"
I think Let God Sort Em Out is a great album but I find all the talk of Clipse having 'the greatest album rollout ever' kind of silly, especially given what happened with "So Be It." Apparently Clipse and Pharrell made the song, with the Talal Maddah sample, then shot and released a video for arguably the best and most radio-friendly song from the album without clearing the sample, and were fully prepared to release the album with an inferior version of "So Be It" with a different beat until Swizz Beatz intervened at the last minute and helped get the sample cleared. Sounds kind of sloppy to me, but all's well that ends well, I love the song.
4. Turnstile - "Never Enough"
At this point Turnstile have had so many career milestones that few or zero other Baltimore bands can lay claim to that I wouldn't be able to list them all, but a #1 alternative radio hit is pretty cool. The radio stations cut the ending short but I like having the album version on my playlist with the long cool-down coda.
5. 414BigFrank f/ Sunny Lou and Run Along Forever - "There It Is"
My brother Zac has lived in Milwaukee for a long time, before people really started to care about the rap scene there, and he put me onto this song before I started to hear about it from other regional rap enthusiasts (or the other person I know in Milwaukee, Evan Rytlewski). 414BigFrank's previous song "Eat It Up" inspired Milwaukee's big breakout hit of 2024, J.P.'s "Bad Bitty," and it's fun to spot J.P. in the background in the really fun "There It Is" performance on YouTube.
6. Coco Jones - "On Sight"
I was irritated that "Taste" came and went without really being embraced by R&B radio because I really love that track, but I'm happy with "On Sight" becoming Coco Jones's current hit.
7. Haute & Freddy - "Shy Girl"
I enjoyed interviewing Haute & Freddy for Spin recently, they had 5 songs out at the time and now they have 6, and all are good, but I understand why "Shy Girl" is the biggest so far. If they're huge a few months from now, I imagine it will be because of this track, that's a real dynamite pop song.
8. KenTheMan - "First"
KenTheMan's been on the margins of the girl rap scene for the last few years, I already wrote about the version of "First" with Monaleo in the Remix Report Card but I like the solo version to, definitely feels like it could be a tipping point song for her career.
9. Flowerovlove - "I'm Your First"
This more recent song is a pop twist on the same premise as the KenTheMan song ("I'm his/your first bad bitch"), I imagine they're probably both quoting the same social media posts rather than one artist biting the other, but I like both songs and they otherwise sound completely different.
10. Lainey Wilson - "Somewhere Over Laredo"
Lainey Wilson recently released a deluxe version of Whirlwind, one of my favorite albums of 2024, and I wish the CD in my car would instantly update with the 5 new songs, they're all worthy additions. I kind of rolled my eyes the first time I listened to "Somewhere Over Laredo" and heard the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" interpolation in the chorus, but the way they wove it into a lovely new melody really works well, it grew on me.
The Worst Single of the Month: Hardy f/ Ernest - "Bro Country"
It kind of feels like Nashville has collectively decided that 'bro country' is an era that has come to an end, which I think is kind of bullshit. Country radio is even more heavily male than it was a decade ago, and even though bro country poster boys Florida Georgia Line broke up, FGL's Tyler Hubbard recently got his third solo #1 single, and the current biggest star, Morgan Wallen, got his first hit with an FGL collaboration. So this song playfully eulogizing bro country, from two people at the forefront of 2020s bro country, just feels like a self-serving narrative to me.