Monthly Report: August 2025 Singles

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

 




1. Summer Walker - "Spend It"
A while back I wrote about the kind of wacky remix single for Summer Walker's "Heart of a Woman" that featured one version of the song with fireplace sound effects and another with rain sounds. The follow-up "Spend It" is also a little creative with the alternate mixes -- "Spend It - Rent Is Due Version" is slightly sped up and "Spend It - Diamonds & Pearls Version" is just like the original but with the drums removed. The last time I heard the song on WPGC, they actually played the "Rent Is Due Version," which I found a little concerning. It sounds good with the tempo picked up a little but I don't like the higher-pitched vocals, it's not quite nightcore but it feels weird for R&B radio to follow sped up TikTok trends. In any case, "Spend It" is probably my favorite song of Summer Walker's career (barring maybe "Girls Need Love" before it was remixed with Drake). I made a record once called Materialistic that was partly about how people are dismissive of the way hip-hop and R&B songwriters describe a world that is driven by money, and "Spend It" is a great example of a kind of darkly funny, poignant song about how someone can just feel defeated by prioritizing love when they decide to pursue purely transational relationships. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update throughout the year. 

2. Chappell Roan - "The Subway"
Chappell Roan released her first music video in almost two years for "The Subway," essentially the first one she's made as an established star. And it's good, but I'm a little bitter that "Good Luck, Babe!" didn't have a video and that "The Giver" didn't get promoted more in general. I think it's cool that she's leading the next album with a ballad where she can really belt, though, I feel like "The Subway" retains the personality of her other songs a little more than the slower songs on Midwest Princess. And I'm really enjoying the "she's got a wig" memes. 

3. Badflower - "Paws"
Writing a power ballad about a dying pet could really go either way as moving or cheesy, but "Paws" is fantastic, great follow-up to "Detroit," one of my favorite rock radio hits of the last few years. I wish Badflower's latest album wasn't so Hot Topic, though, they're one of those weird bands that makes great singles but indulges in their worst instincts on their album tracks. 

4. Steve Lacy - "Nice Shoes" 
Steve Lacy released a single with a sample of "Think (About It)" by Lyn Collins a few days before the publication of my book, which has a lengthy passage about the importance of the "Think" breakbeat to Baltimore club music. I love to see it! It doesn't seem like Lacy is really very concerned with capitalizing on "Bad Habit" becoming a #1 hit, coming back nearly three years later with something that doesn't sound too similar, but I dig it. 

5. Kehlani - "Folded" 
Another Baltimore link: "Folded" was co-produced by D.K. the Punisher, who I interviewed 10 years ago when he was first starting to get major label credits with Jill Scott and Justin Bieber. One of the other producers on "Folded" is his mentor, Andre Harris of Dre & Vidal fame. Kehlani released two projects last year and it feels like she's really building on that momentum, "Folded" is already on its way to being probably the biggest solo track of her career. 

6. Zara Larsson - "Midnight Sun" 
Zara Larsson's biggest hit in America, "Never Forget You" with MNEK, is now a decade old, but she's continued to make some pretty awesome music. In fact, so has MNEK, who co-produced the title track from her forthcoming fifth album Midnight Sun, which is kind of incredible, it's like what I always wished the Madonna song "Ray Of Light" sounded like. 

7. Tate McRae - "Revolving Door"
After my favorite promo single from Tate McRae's latest album, "2 Hands," got ignored by pop radio in favor of an annoying "I'm A Slave 4 U" knockoff, I'm pleasantly surprised that another great song from the album, "Revolving Door," has grown into a hit. I found it kind of surprising when McRae pivoted from slow sad songs to uptempo dance pop a couple years ago, but "Revolving Door" kind of combines those two sides of her sound in an interesting way. 

8. Role Model - "Sally, When The Wine Runs Out"
The first time I heard this song I just assumed Role Model was a band. But Role Model is a solo artist, a guy from Maine named Tucker Pillsbury who started out as a rapper whose early stuff sounded like Mac Miller (the first big star he collaborated with), before he focused more on singing and got his pop breakthrough with this catchy little country song. So I guess he's in the "white rapper to country singer" pipeline with Kid Rock and Post Malone that I wrote about a couple months back, I'll call him Jelly Roll Model. 

9. Charli XCX - "Party 4 U"
When an old album track becomes a surprise hit years later, I'm always interested to see whether it's something I put on one of my Deep Album Cuts playlists. I don't know whether to be embarrassed if it's something that I passed over, or whether I should remove it now that it's no longer a deep cut. "Something In The Way" isn't in my Nirvana playlist, for instance, and "Sparks" wasn't on my Coldplay playlist. "Party 4 U," however, was track 3 on my Charli XCX playlist, although I really never would've pegged that as the old song that would blow up post-Brat. 

10. Katseye - "Gnarly" 
Katseye debuted last year as an 'international' girl group with members from three different continents that was assembled by a K-Pop company and made its public debut with a Netflix reality show, "Popstar Academy: Katseye." I think most of their music so far is pretty good, above average pop, but "Gnarly" is the goofy noisy curveball they threw to stand out a little more, and it worked in the sense that it became their first Hot 100 entry. It seemed to serve to clear the way for a more conventional follow-up, "Gabriela," to do better, but I'm still stuck on "Gnarly," it's really grown on me. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Blackpink - "Jump" 
I like what Blackpink has done over the past year -- each member of the group released solo projects (three albums and one EPs) that have been all over the place musically and have spun off some pretty big singles, and then the group reconvened for a forthcoming world tour and third album. Unfortunately, the first Blackpink single in three years just kinda sucks and doesn't really feel like it's built to capitalize on the momentum from the solo hits. "Jump," co-produced by Diplo, references the Spice Girls' hit "Spice Up Your Life" but the vibe of the song is more Vengaboys, it's loud and obnoxious but not in any fun weird ways like "Gnarly." Meanwhile, Huntr/x from the animated film Kpop Demon Hunters is eating Blackpink's lunch -- the first K-Pop girl group to hit #1 on the Hot 100 is a fictional group of cartoon characters. 

5:15 AM

Friday, August 22, 2025

 




This week on Spin, I wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Oasis's "Cast No Shadow" and ranked Garbage's albums. 

7:27 PM

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

 





Today is the big day, Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music is out. You can buy it directly from Repeater Books or anywhere books are sold, but I'm going to boost independent book stores that stock it whenever possible. I will be at Ducky Dynamo's Baltimore Club Music Town Hall this Saturday at Motor House with copies of the book, and there will be more events in the weeks ahead! 

I've been writing things and making things and putting them out into the world for 20 years without much concern about who clicks, subscribes, or purchases anything, but just this once, I'll tell you: please buy the book! It's $15 and represents the biggest single project I've ever undertaken, with over 50 interviews to bring Baltimore music and culture to life in the pages of the book, I'm enormously proud of it and grateful to everyone who had a hand in it (there's a great big shout out post on Facebook). 

12:33 PM

Monthly Report: July 2025 Albums

Monday, August 18, 2025























1. Madeline Kenney - Kiss From The Balcony
I started listening to Oakland-based singer-songwriter Madeline Kenney when she released her second album and first for Carpark Records, 2018's Perfect Shapes, and she hasn't let me down since, she's four for four. 2023's A New Reality Mind might still be her masterpiece, but Kiss From The Balcony is close, it feels like she's continually expanding her songwriting and aesthetic in interesting, unpredictable ways. Kiss From The Balcony is a trio record with the rhythm section she toured for her last album with, Ben Sloan and Stephen Patota, but it doesn't necessarily sound like it, "I Never" and "Slap" are such lush, textured studio creations. Here's the 2025 albums Spotify playlist I'm constantly updating with new releases. 

2. Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out
It's always controversial when I say that I was never that impressed with Hell Hath No Fury, I really don't think Pharrell's production was on point for that album, it just sounded flimsy and at odds with the bars. So I've just never been into post-Lord Willin' Clipse as much as most rap fans, and I ranked Clipse as the 9th best rap duo of all time for Complex a while back (Pusha and Malice gave the ranking their stamp of approval, which was pretty cool). This album hits hard, though. Pharrell made sure he had a darker palette of sounds, Malice is back with a vengeance, and I was never super into G.O.O.D.-era solo Pusha but I feel like he's a little more grounded and focused with his brother there, "So Be It" and "All Things Considered" are great. 

3. Tyler, The Creator - Don't Tap The Glass
The music industry's obsession with extending the lifespan of albums with deluxe editions has turned into artists like SZA releasing entire new albums as bonus discs for their last album. But Tyler, The Creator put forward a more exciting alternative: releasing a new album in the middle of the tour for last fall's Chromakopia that has its own title and its own distinct aesthetic, notching another #1 album with 28 minutes of some of his most physical beats and some of his most brazen verses with relatively little conceptual window dressing. 

4. Cam - All Things Light
Almost exactly a decade ago, Camaron Ochs released "Burning House," an incredible song that reached #2 on country radio, was nominated for a Grammy and a mess of CMA and ACM awards, and was my 21st favorite country single of the 2010s, as well as a gold-selling album. Nothing Cam has released since "Burning House" has made remotely as much of an impact, and she's kind of a one hit wonder, but last year I was very happy to see that she had writing credits on five songs (as well as some production and vocal credits) on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, including "Tyrant" with Dolly Parton. On her new album, Cam is still working with her "Burning House" collaborators Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus) and Jeff Bhasker (Fun., Bruno Mars), and "Alchemy" and "Everblue" have really interesting artsy production, some of it's country and some of it's almost jazzy and Joni Mitchell-ish. 

5. Rip Van Winkle - Blasphemy
The dozen albums Guided By Voices has released in the 2020s have their moments, but I have to say Robert Pollard's newer band with members of Joseph Airport that released an EP last year and now a full-length is really a breath of fresh air. Pollard never really abandoned lo-fi recording, but there's a really fuzzed-out basement jam quality, songs that take this sudden left turns or loud bombastic drum solos, really enjoyable stuff. Favorite song: "Shit-heel Man." Favorite song title: "This Is My Thriller." 

6. Justin Bieber - Swag
I've always found Justin Bieber to be pretty hit-and-miss for a ubiquitous pop star, and it felt almost more like damage control than an album rollout when he very quickly announced and released an album in the midst of a lot of chatter about his public behavior and his marriage. But then I heard "Daisies" on the radio and it was so clearly the best thing he's done since what I consider to be his one unqualified classic, 2015's "Sorry." And then I found out that Dijon (who started out with the Baltimore duo Abhi//Dijon) did some writing and producing on that and several other great tracks on Swag, including "Devotion" and "Yukon," and the whole thing has this really appealing mix of '80s gloss and muddy indie pop textures. The "Soulful" interlude, which features popular internet comedy personality Druski telling Bieber that he "you sound Black" and "your soul is Black," is one of the most pathetic things a major recording artist has ever put on an album, it's frustrating that he still does thirsty shit like that, and ending the album with a clip of Marvin Winans singing a gospel song, instead of just having confidence in the album he made. 

7. Splitsville - Mobtown
I didn't realize until a few years ago that there was a Baltimore band in the Power Pop Hall of Fame (which is just a website, but still, a pretty selective canon of about 30 bands). And Splitsville's old records have some great stuff on them, but they hadn't released an album since 2004 until their recent return. Mobtown is basically a love letter to Baltimore, full of references to local geography, history, and culture, my favorites so far are "On Federal Hill" and "Fallsway."

8. Lafayette Gilchrist & The New Volcanoes - Move With Love
I recently interviewed Baltimore jazz pianist Lafayette Gilchrist about his new album, watch this space for that piece when it's published. The New Volcanoes was a quartet when Gilchrist started it the band in the '90s, but on this album there are 8 and sometimes 10 musicians and he really uses the whole ensemble really well. Guitarist Carl Filipiak has been a staple of the New Volcanoes in recent years, and he was kind of the first Baltimore jazz musician I was aware of, because my dad used to go see him play in a bar in Fells Point all the time and had some of his CDs. And I really like what Filipiak brings to the New Volcanoes, his solos on Move With Love's title track and "Basta" are great. Gilchrist also recently joined the Sun Ra Arkestra, basically sitting in Sun Ra's spot playing the keyboards, which is totally badass. 

9. Half Japanese - Adventure
Jad and David Fair formed Half Japanese in Carroll County, Maryland about a half century ago, and the band hasn't been based there in a while. The annual Shakemore Festival has been held on a Carroll County farm for almost 20 years now, it used to be kind of a 'Half Japanese and friends' affair but it's kind of grown into its own little community full of a lot of Baltimore indie weirdos I know and love. I went to Shakemore a few weeks ago and Half Japanese was not part of the bill, I believe Jad Fair, who moved from Texas to Michigan this year, was not even there. But it still very much felt like Half Japanese's spirit looms large over the festival, and the band had actually released a pretty excellent album a week beforehand. I didn't really understand the Jad Fair thing at all the first time I heard him on the Mosquito album in the '90s, but he's grown on me, and I like the backing band he has now, some pretty cool arrangements on "That's Fate" and "Lemonade Sunset." 

10. Ben Folds - Ben Folds Live With the National Symphony Orchestra
For the last decade or so, I've been working a lot of events at the Kennedy Center, and it's really been one of my favorite places to work in D.C., I've seen so many cool shows and met some amazing performers, and worked with some really wonderful people on the stage crews. So while there are much bigger, scarier things happening with the Trump administration right, what's happening at the Kennedy Center really stings for me in an acute, personal way. For most of that decade, Ben Folds was appointed an artistic advisor to the Nasional Symphony Orchestra, until his recent resignation, and he was part of many events I worked. I scroll teleprompter, mostly lyrics for special shows or tributes where people are singing songs they don't usually sing, and Folds was usually performing one or two of his own songs (a lot of "Not The Same," a lot of "The Luckiest"), so I never really had any reason to interact with him directly, although when he'd walk by me backstage I'd sometimes consider gushing about how some of the best concerts I've ever seen were Ben Folds Five from 1996 to 1999. I wasn't there the night Folds recorded this album, but I almost feel like I was because I saw him do some of these songs with the NSO on multiple occasions, and it feels like a nice little keepsake of better times at the Kennedy Center. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Gelo - League of My Own
Gelo's "Tweaker" was a fun little unexpected viral hit when it came out back in January, and I don't begrudge the guy for capitalizing on it by signing to Def Jam. But hearing about the millions the label spent to sign Gelo is just kind of funny considering that nothing he's released since then has made remotely the same impact, and his album didn't even break into the Billboard 200. The most annoying thing about the album is how he leans into the 'Y2K Louisiana rap tribute act' vibe with diminishing returns, "Watcha Gon Do" is basically a fake Mystikal song and he does not have the talent to pull that off.  

12:03 AM

Friday, August 15, 2025

 





I had a lovely conversation with Elbow frontman Guy Garvey for a Spin profile of the band this week. I also wrote about a John Mellencamp/Rickie Lee Jones collaboration for the Deep Cut Friday column. 

7:45 PM

TV Diary

Thursday, August 14, 2025

 






a) "Demascus"
AMC developed and produced "Demascus" with one of the producers from "Breaking Bad" and then decided to cancel it two and a half years ago before it even aired to make it a tax writeoff. Tubi recently picked up the six episodes that were made, and it's a pretty creative and offbeat sci-fi comedy created by playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm. I'm glad it finally got out there, even if it doesn't feel like it would've reached a huge audience even if it had come out as originally intended. The title character, played by Okieriete Onaodowan, is in a form of immersion therapy where he gets to briefly live in alternate timelines, it's kind of all over the place in terms of tone but in an interesting, deliberate way. Martin Lawrence, the only really big name involved, has a pretty funny recurring role in some episodes but I don't really mind that the episodes without him tend to be a little more emotional or cerebral. Also nice to see Tyrel Jackson Williams from "Brockmire" in this. The episode titles are all playfully meta and the last episode is called "Second Season Prequel," but who knows if they'll get to do more. 

b) "Butterfly"
This Amazon Prime thriller series gets off to a great start with the first episode, where a young spy (Reina Hardesty) is chasing down a mysterious figure who turns out to be her father, a spy who faked his own death 9 years earlier when she was a teenager. I'd seen Hardesty in a couple things before (including "Brockmire"!) but this is the first time I'm seeing her in a lead role and suddenly going wow, she's got a real star quality , equally great in the action scenes and the more dramatic moments, and extremely beautiful. 

c) "Alien: Earth"
I've been kind of a vocal Noah Hawley skeptic over the years, but if he's going to play around in an existing fictional universe, I feel like Alien is a good choice. My wife recently proposed that we go through all the Alien movies in the order of the story chronology, but so far we've only gotten through Prometheus and Alien: Covenant because those are a couple of deeply flawed and frustrating movies that can really sap your interest in the entire franchise. So Hawley almost can't make a prequel worse than Ridley Scott himself already did, so fuck it, man, go nuts. The first two episodes are moderately promising, although I thought it was kind of rude to me personally that they killed off Richa Moorjani after a few scenes. I liked that the episodes ended with Dio-era Ozzy and Tool, respectively. Metal in action/sci-fi can be kind of corny when there's a lot of it, but it can hit pretty hard when used judiciously. 

Jason Momoa's passion project about 18th century Hawaii is alright. I saw some sad idiot ranting and raving that they made the show less accessible by having most of the dialogue in Hawaiian, but I really like hearing their language, it makes the whole thing feel more immersed in its own world, and it feels kinda necessary for the contrast when British people do show up and speak in English. 

e) "Twisted Metal"
It's funny to watch a TV show based on a video game that's a transparent Mad Max knockoff, it's a smart move that they lean into the comedy so it doesn't feel like just an imitation. I think the show's better when Anthony Mackie has Stephanie Beatriz as a scene partner so hopefully there's more of them together on the way after they've been separated for a bit. 

f) "Platonic" 
Seth Rogen currently stars in two Apple TV+ series. The first season of "The Studio" recently received 23 Emmy nominations, while "Platonic," which just returned for a second seasons, has received zero nominations for any awards whatsoever. But I think these shows are in the same ballpark of enjoyability, even if "Platonic" is a bit less ambitious or distinctive. It feels almost regressive to premise an entire show on it being weird or inherently troublesome for a straight man and woman in relationships to have a close platonic friendship, and Rogen/Stoller productions have a history of plots where  
I really like Rachel Rosenbloom in this show, it's a shame they have her in this very one-note role and made it very obvious that she's not going to last very long as Rogen's character's fiancee. 

g) "Wednesday"
I like "The Addams Family" and Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton (or at least Burton back in the day), and putting those things all together in a series looks great on paper and I understand why it's a big hit, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Giving Wednesday psychic powers and putting her in a school with other ghouls and monsters is so corny. At least a little fun seeing Steve Buscemi in these episodes though. 

h) "Eyes of Wakanda"
The animated MCU shows all feel like ephemeral little optional side quests, but this one was decent.  

i) "Wylde Pak"
A recent Nickelodeon cartoon that my youngest has gotten into, similar to some other contemporary cartoon sitcoms (with the divisive "bean mouth" visual style) but pretty cute and charming. 

j) "King of the Hill"
This may be a somewhat controversial statement, but I've never really loved "King of the Hill." Like I'm generally pro-Mike Judge, and Office Space and "Beavis and Butt-Head" make me laugh (the latter more when I was 12 than now, but still), but "King of the Hill" is the show that I always kind of quietly sat and tolerated while other people watched it or I was waiting for "The Simpsons" or something to start. There are a few characters that I often found pretty funny, but many of them or absent or changed in the new Hulu revival of the show. Brittany Murphy is gone, so Luanne isn't around. Johnny Hardwick is gone, so Dale is now voiced by Toby Huss, who does a decent job but there's kind of an 'uncanny valley' quality to the slightly detectable difference in voices. Huss also no longer plays Khan, who's now voiced by an actual Asian actor, Ronny Chieng, which is a bit more understandable. And Bobby is now 21 years old, but basically looks the same with stubble and Pamela Adlon's same weird little child voice, which just feels bizarre. There's even a Chuck Mangione gag in the episode that feels a little bittersweet since he also just died. And on top of that, a lot of the humor in these episodes is derived from putting terms like 'nepo baby' or 'canceled' or 'female-presenting' in Hank or Peggy's mouth, it all just has a dreadful vibe to me. 

k) "The Summer Hikaru Died"
This Netflix anime series is a very intriguingly creepy story about someone realizing that their best friend has been replaced with some kind of bizarre inhuman imposter. 

l) "Glass Heart"
This Japanese series on Netflix is about a young woman who's kicked out of her band in the middle of a music festival, so she sets up her drums backstage and starts jamming, and a mysterious pianist starts playing along with her, and then she gets invited to join his band. It feels like a weird fable with a tenuous relationship to how the music industry works anywhere, including Japan, but some of the music is pretty cool and I like the whole sweeping emotion of the thing, the direction is very stylish and the actors are compelling. 

This Netflix show is about a disgraced Korean rugby player making a comeback, and I didn't even know they had rugby over there, charming little show. 

Those letters students are asked to write to themselves or people in the future? This Turkish show on Netflix is about a teacher's daughter finding those letters 20 years later and uncovering a dark secret in them, which feels like just too contrived and goofy a premise for me to really get into the story. 

Another sort of 'a dark secret unravels everything' sort of story, this one a very slow moving Japanese show about a lawyer and an art teacher's marriage, couldn't get into it. 

I enjoy a good love story centered around cooking, and this Korean romcom about a chef and a food executive is charming. 

This show has such a cool concept, guests make kind of an open-ended order at this restaurant and the chef sort of interprets it to create a custom dish on the spot while they have a conversation. 

I'm forever complaining about the trend of actors hosting reality shows, and this is another one, although I don't care as much if Simu Liu is taking time away from doing movies. And this is another derivative show where a bunch of annoying people from other reality shows try to outsmart each other in a generic mansion. 

The whole 'theme' of this show is that 10 Japanese singles are secluded together without any access to phones or internet devices, which seems kind of a dumb 'hook' because I think there are already a good number of dating shows like "Love Island" where the participants are offline while they're taping. 

I interviewed some New Orleans musicians the other day who had been displaced by Katrina, it's still such a shameful chapter in American history and it feels like we're doomed to repeat it in some fashion with the current administration's FEMA cuts. This recent Nat Geo docuseries, directed by Traci A. Curry ane exec produced by Ryan Coogler, 

It feels like very week there's a new true crime doc about some infamous murder I'd never heard of, which really just goes to show how much violence is constantly happening in this country. Apparently four teen girls were killed in a yogurt shop in Austin in 1991 and it's never been solved, pretty grisly stuff. 

Another doc about a mystery I hadn't heard of, a woman who disappeared on a cruise ship in 1998 and her family still doesn't know if she fell overboard or was sex trafficked. 

I do think I might have heard about this when it was in the news, a dentist murdered his wife on safari in Zambia and tried to make it look like an accident. Man, people are stupid and evil. 

These things are so often American stories that it's kind of novel to hear about a pair of British serial killers, again a pretty crazy story I can't believe I'd never heard about. 

This show has a good concept, each episode looks at one murder or missing person story that drew a ton of media interest, like Laci Peterson or Chandra Levy, and examines a similar story that got less attention for whatever reason, so it's delving into these stories with a side of media criticism. 

This is an inconsequential little reality show where a few minor celebrities vacation together in Vietnam. I barely know who any of them are besides Tammy Rivera, Waka Flocka Flame's ex-wife from Baltimore who used to be on "Love & Hip Hop" with him, I like her. 

2:45 PM

Friday, August 08, 2025


 










For Spin's Deep Cut Friday column, I wrote about a Lalo Schifrin track famously sampled by Portishead. I also ranked and wrote about every Public Enemy album this week. 

2:45 PM

My Top 50 Movies of 2020

Thursday, August 07, 2025

 





1. Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman)
2. The Invisible Man (Leigh Wannell)
3. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)
4. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)
5. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman)
6. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)
7. The Hunt (Craig Zobel)
8. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)
9. I’m Your Woman (Julia Hart)
10. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
11. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)
12. The Empty Man (David Prior)
13. Mank (David Fincher)
14. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)
15. The Night House (David Bruckner)
16. Anything For Jackson (Justin G. Dyck)
17. Spontaneous (Brian Duffield)
18. Horse Girl (Jeff Baena)
19. She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz)
20. The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings)
21. Soul (Pete Docter and Kemp Powers)
22. His House (Remi Weekes)
23. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)
24. I Care A Lot (J Blakeson)
25. A Quiet Place Part II (John Krasinski)
26. Love and Monsters (Michael Matthews)
27. Emma (Autumn de Wilde)
28. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)
29. Freaky (Christopher Landon)
30. Hamilton (Thomas Kail)
31. Come Play (Jacob Chase)
32. The High Note (Nisha Ganatra)
33. Books of Blood (Brannon Braga)
34. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)
35. Bill & Ted Face the Music (Dean Parisot)
36. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)
37. Birds of Prey (Cathy Yan)
38. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)
39. Onward (Dan Scanlon)
40. I Used To Go Here (Kris Rey)
41. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)
42. Charm City Kings (Angel Manuel Soto)
43. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)
44. American Utopia (Spike Lee)
45. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart (Frank Marshall)
46. Work It (Laura Terruso)
47. Pixie (Barnaby Thompson)
48. Happiest Season (Clea DuVall)
49. Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (Julien Temple)
50. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)

Looking at the lists I've made so far in this series and the ones I've started drafting, I think I probably saw fewer features released in 2020 than any other year in at least the last decade or so, even after catching up on a few recently that I hadn't seen. So this list was harder to make, for that reason, and also because 2020 was of course the year that COVID-19 hit and disrupted and delayed the production and/or release of a ton of movies. My family recently had a dinner conversation about our favorite Pixar movies (highly recommended conversation starter for just about any group of people!) and my 15-year-old son had Soul in his top 5, which surprised me, but I respect that, it's a good one that I forget about sometimes. 

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2021
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024

2:44 PM

Monthly Report: July 2025 Singles

Wednesday, August 06, 2025

























1. Wolf Alice - "Bloom Baby Bloom" 
My ears perked up the first time I heard it on the radio, even having seen some reference to Wolf Alice's new single being a different sound for them, I didn't expect that it was them. Turns out this piano-driven track was produced by Greg Kurstin, who's an absolute genius in my book, so I'm excited to hear what the rest of the album sounds like. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

2. GloRilla - "Typa"
Keyshia Cole's debut album turned 20 this summer, "Love" was always the classic single from that album but it's been fun to see it experience this renewed surge of popularity in the last few years and get sampled by a few artists, including GloRilla. 

3. Ty Myers - "Thought It Was Love"
Ty Myers is 17 years old singing about how his mortgage is due on his biggest single, which is kind of funny. But it's a lovely sad song with a great piano and strings-driven arrangement, he's definitely one of the most promising new country stars right now. 

4. Shaboozey - "Good News" 
"A Bar Song (Tipsy)" has been in the top 10 of the Hot 100 for almost 60 weeks now, and it seems unlikely that Shaboozey, or perhaps anybody else, will ever make another song that big. "Good News" hasn't gotten into the top 10, but it's now in heavy rotation on both country and pop radio, so he's at least escaping one hit wonder status, and honestly I like it more than "A Bar Song." I particularly like how "Good News" does that old-fashioned country ballad structure with verses in 7/8 and choruses in 4/4. And while I don't think Shaboozey had any political motivation for releasing this song right after the election, it does hit a little harder as the constant daily onslaught of bad news continues. 

5. Cardi B - "Outside" 
It's not "Not Like Us" or anything, but I like that Cardi managed to make a club banger out of how Offset sucks, it bodes well for the second album she's finally releasing in September. 

6. Maggie Lindemann - "One of the Ones"
Maggie Lindemann debuted 9 years ago with a straight-up pop single, "Pretty Girl," that was a top 10 hit all over Europe, and then most of her output since then has been mostly guitar-driven Hot Topic alt-pop of varying quality. "One of the Ones" was produced by Captain Cuts, the L.A. duo best known for Walk The Moon's "Shut Up And Dance," and it's a fast short techno pop song that feels like the career relaunch she's been looking for. 

7. Eric Church - "Hands of Time"
"Springsteen" is still the gold standard for Eric Church singles, but I don't mind him doing another nostalgic midtempo song full of references to classic rock songs. 

8. Kane Brown - "Backseat Driver"
I have to say, as a boring middle-aged father and husband, I do appreciate country's niche as the only corner of popular music where I can hear cute little relatable songs about how much the singer loves his kids. 

9. Maroon 5 - "All Night"
Everyone is collectively tired of Maroon 5 and their next album will probably be a real deal flop, none of its three singles are even in the group's Spotify top 10 right now. But I really like this saxophone-heavy trifle that was quietly released as the second single, my favorite thing they've done in quite a while. 

10. Morgan Wallen f/ Tate McRae - "What I Want" 
"Just In Case" is the best of the many hits from Morgan Wallen's latest album, but I also kind of like the awkward pop crossover duet with Tate McRae, mostly because the chorus sounds like it could have been roughly based on the "you don't want no part of this" scene from Walk Hard. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Benson Boone - "Mystical Magical" 
I actually like just about every other song on American Heart and find the whole Benson Boone backlash to be a little tiresome now, but releasing this song at all, much less as a single, was a choice. It's like the white male version of Rihanna's "Sex With Me," what the hell is bro doing.  

2:43 PM

Friday, August 01, 2025

 





This week I interviewed Eyedress for Spin and also wrote about the Pogues for the Deep Cut Friday column. 

7:43 PM

TV Diary

Thursday, July 31, 2025


 
























I feel like Netflix has pinned their hopes on The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith being their Taylor Sheridan who will bring them some big popular red state dramas. I like "Untamed," a murder mystery set in Yosemite National Park, a bit more than Smith's other Netflix series from a few months ago, "American Primeval," Eric Bana and Sam Neill are good leads and the story has some decent twists and big emotional moments. I'm glad it got renewed because it feels like a potentially good longterm vehicle for Bana and Lily Santiago than a one-off or miniseries. 

b) "Washington Black"
Sterling K. Brown is one of the best actors in television right now so this show really comes alive when he's onscreen, but it's really just a small supporting role. Pretty good show, though, based on an award-winning novel about a guy who flees a Barbados sugar plantation in the early 1800s, and Iola Evans is really beautiful. 

c) "The Hunting Wives"
This Netflix show reminds me of a lot of other shows where a young housewife moves to a new town and gets mixed up with an affluent community full of dark secrets, this one takes place in Texas and is specifically about gun-toting Christian conservatives but otherwise fits right into a familiar formula. It's reasonably entertaining, though. 

d) "Leanne"
Apparently Leanne Morgan had a Netflix standup special that was pretty popular (though I don't think I'd seen her before other than a small roll in the recent Will Ferrell movie You're Cordially Invited), so they gave her a sitcom created by Chuck Lorre. As a longtime Lorre apologist, I found it moderately enjoyable but it's the same old same old, basically "Two And A Half Men" with female leads. 

e) "The Institute" 
This show is based on a Stephen King novel, it's about teenagers with telekinesis and other powers who get taken to some mysterious school, kind of a more sinister X-Men premise I guess. The theme song is a slow, ominous cover of a Tears For Fears hit besides "Mad World," I rolled my eyes pretty hard at that, but otherwise it seems like it might get good. Jason Diaz really has a powerful screen presence in this, I was surprised to look him up and see that he's mostly known for CW shows. 

f) "Electric Bloom"
A Disney Channel sitcom about three high school girls who start a garage band and then become hugely successful. Some of the jokes are pretty cheesy but it's reasonably charming, some of the songs are catchy, and judging from Disney Channel history, at least one of these girls is going to be a huge A-list celebrity in ten years. 

g) "The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball" 
"The Amazing World of Gumball" is a classic in my household, my third favorite animated series of the 2010s, and Cartoon Network stopped making new episodes in 2019. Hulu's 'new' "The Wonderfully Weird World of Gumball" is fully just the exact same show with a slightly different title. And that's not a complaint at all, it's still delightfully absurd with a great distinctive visual style. 

h) "Karma" 
This Korean series is one of those crime thrillers where a bunch of strangers become connected through a series of coincidences, secrets, and tragedies, this kind of thing has been done better before but it's pretty good. 

This Spanish series on Netflix takes place in the 1880s and is kind of a more playful irreverent kind of romantic period drama that breaks the fourth wall, I like it. 

j) "Welcome To The Family"
A Mexican show about a family who forges a will when the husband and father dies, kind of a soapy dark comedy, not really to my taste. 

Netflix already did a documentary about the famous 2003 Beligum diamond heist that I didn't watch, but I enjoyed 

It's well known that labels will often put together 'songwriting camps' where writers and producers try to put together material for a big star's next album, sometimes collaborating but also competing with each other to come up with the songs that the artist will actually end up releasing. That's a fascinating part of the music industry and I love that Netflix made a reality show about it. "Hitmakers" is made by the same people that created the Netflix real estate reality show "Selling Sunset" and it has that annoyingly glossy, overly glamorous sheen, but it's still pretty interesting to me. Almost all the people on here have written huge hits although they're mostly not too well known in their own right (aside from Sevyn Streeter, who had some success as a solo artist), so it's interesting to see them onscreen, teaming up in different combinations to pitch songs to John Legend or Usher or Lainey Wilson. I was disappointed that NBC's "Songland" only lasted two seasons but this show feels slightly more true to how the music industry works. 

This, like HBO's other recent doc miniseries about Paul Reubens, is annoyingly split into two movie-length installments instead of being broken into normal TV episode lengths, which is a trend I do not care for. But this is great stuff, I'm a Billy Joel fan but his story turned out to be more compelling than I expected, I love that they were able to take the space to dig into his craft and his writing inspirations, even for some songs that weren't hits, and were able to pull in guys like Springsteen and McCartney in there to show their respect for Joel as a songwriter. One thing I really appreciated was that Joel's first wife and former manager Elizabeth sat for substantial interviews, she's such a big part of the story and I'm glad she was game to talk about it all and give her perspective. 

There have been so many retrospectives about Live Aid and the big charity singles of the '80s in the last few years that it feels like this 3-part CNN doc doesn't really have much new in there, but it's pretty engrossing and gives a good nuanced perspective and has some really interesting little anecdotes about how the day came together. 

This Netflix docuseries about London trauma centres is really intense and graphic, but it's also filmed in a really slick way to make it look almost like a scripted series, which I find a little jarring sometimes. 

Each episode of this Apple TV+ docuseries is focused on a different endangered species, some wonderful footage and stories but man I've spent my whole life being angry about how the dwindling numbers of endangered species, it's such a stain on humanity. 

One of the 'Magnolia Network' shows on HBO Max, where modern families cosplay as 1880s homesteaders, kinda tedious. 

I don't have any memory of hearing about these murders when they happened in 2022 but caught up on what happened when the killer was sentenced recently. Horrifying story, this Freeform docuseries interviews some people who knew the victims but it kinda seems like they're just filling out as much screentime as possible with what little information they have. 

I'm surprised I haven't already seen a bunch of true crime stuff before about this TV anchor who disappeared in 1995, crazy story. 

This recent docuseries on Hulu kinda feels like it's playing both sides, they interview families who put their kids on social media and show the criticism they get, but they also put them on TV and make them even more famous. 

This is another docuseries on the same topic (with the same 'kidfluencer' portmanteau that makes me feel queasy) that was on Netflix in April feels a little more sensationalistic, the Hulu one has its problems but is probably better overall. 

Apparently Showtime used to have a show about male escorts called "Gigolos," and after one of the gigolos caught a murder charge Paramount+ made a docuseries about it. The pipeline from reality TV gruel to true crime gruel is very real. 

The real story of a guy who hid a chest of gold in the Rockies and left clues hinting at its location, which seems just too ridiculous to be true, I feel like sometimes people just do obnoxious stuff because they want a documentary made about them. 

I feel like just when social media was finally no longer obsessed with YesJulz, Netflix put her on a "Basketball Wives" knockoff and made her more famous. 

y) "Polo" 
I think polo is an interesting sport that I don't know much about, but this Netflix show is much more interested in the upper class social politics of it all. 

I feel like sometimes these sports docs that spend a year with a particular team get lucky and end up documenting a historic season, but sometimes there's stuff like this where it's just another year and they try their best to make it seem interesting or dramatic. 

2:43 PM

Monthly Report: June 2025 Albums

Wednesday, July 30, 2025
























1. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Phantom Island
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard has been so prolific for so long now that it's kind of mind-boggling to think that a band's 27th album is one of their very best and they've arguably only just hit their prime in the last few years and are still steadily growing in popularity. Phantom Island is their first time making an album with an orchestra and these songs seem really well suited to having all these strings and brass all over them. It's a little less proggy than a lot of their records, I think pretty much the whole thing is straight ahead 4/4, but there's a lot of room for the orchestration to add texture and drama. Supposedly this is a mellower counterpart to Flight b741 but I've found it pretty upbeat and catchy. I particularly "Panpsych" and "Aerodynamic" but the whole thing flows together well. King Gizzard pulled all their music off Spotify last week (more power to them for taking that stand), but Phantom Island and everything else are still on Bandcamp. 

2. Pulp - More
This album has grown on me a bit since I ranked Pulp's albums last month, although I think I'd still put it in the same spot, just belove We Love Life. I have eagerly greeted every new record from Jarvis Cocker over the last 20 years and never really pined for the band to return, but I will admit that there's a lovely familiarity to what Banks/Doyle/Webber bring to More, which probably reminds me of His 'n' Hers more than any other previous Pulp album. "Farmers Market," which is about the day Cocker met his wife, is really something, one of the most moving songs he's ever written, and some of the other slower songs ("Background Noise," "The Hymn of the North") hit pretty hard too. 

3. S.G. Goodman - Planting By The Signs
I never heard S.G. Goodman's first two albums, but my interest was piqued when I heard "Fire Sign" from her third album on WTMD. I like the sound of the album and the Kentucky twang of Goodman's voice. But my first listen of the album didn't really grab me until I got to the 9-minute closing track "Heaven Song" and was like shit, that's how you end an album, and listened more closely the next time I played it. I also really like "Snapping Turtle" and "Nature's Child," the duet with Kentucky indie rock royalty Will Oldham. 

4. Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums
Bruce Springsteen's 1998 box set Tracks was a dad rock event nearly on the same scale as The Beatles Anthology, 66 mostly previously unreleased songs from a major artist's vault -- I actually bought Tracks for my own dad that Christmas, and listening to the first disc of it, particularly those first few demos he made for Columbia, really set me on the path to becoming the big Springsteen fan I am today. And Tracks II actually dwarfs the previous box with seven full albums of almost completely unheard stuff. The last disc, Perfect World, is from sessions spanning 17 years, but otherwise each disc captures a specific period of time and pretty much is its own self-contained album, which I really appreciate and makes this more engrossing and digestible than the first Tracks (though that one may contain more top shelf songs overall). The long-rumored Streets of Philadelphia Sessions probably would've been a big hit on the heels of Springsteen's Oscar win, but I'm kind of glad this odd little experiment with Springsteen singing over trip hop beats and the "Ashley's Roachclip" break surfaced now as this intriguing little road not taken. As someone who thinks Western Stars is Springsteen's best post-Rising album, I also really love the disc from that era, Twilight Hours, and the first disc of stuff from between Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. is pretty special too. Both Tracks boxes (149 songs in total!) comprise a pretty remarkable shadow discography that's bigger and better than a lot of artists' entire careers. 

5. Turnstile - Never Enough
I never saw Turnstile live or knew those guys, but I love that a band that used to play Charm City Art Space and the Sidebar like me and all my friends is now totally fucking huge, at this point possibly the biggest band to come out of Baltimore (I think Beach House are probably bigger by most metrics, but were never really in the zeitgeist as visibly as Turnstile are right now). And I probably enjoy their music more as they get further from hardcore orthodoxy, there's cello and flute and Hayley Williams popping up on one of the several songs that have that Andy Summers-style chorus pedal guitar effect that instantly makes a band sound like The Police. I particularly love when "Look Out For Me" takes a turn into a Baltimore club beat with a sample of Randy from "The Wire." And they still get pretty heavy on "Sole" and pretty fast on "Sunshower" as well. There's a show on MTV Live called "Metal Thrashing Madness" that regularly plays Turnstile videos, though, and that doesn't seem quite right. 

6. Little Simz - Lotus
I liked the previous Little Simz albums but didn't always love Inflo's production, and have always found Sault a little overrated. So this whole thing where they fell out over Inflo borrowing money from Simz for Sault's first concert and not repaying it, I feel bad for her but it's a net positive for me because I like Miles Clinton James's production on Lotus. And the righteous anger of "Thief" and "Hollow" makes for some of the most compelling music she's ever made. 

7. Georgia Beatty - The Book of Stars: Collection of the Heir
Georgia Beatty is a Baltimore musician who recently sent me her latest album (which is on Bandcamp), The Book of Stars: Collection of the Heir is mostly cello and voice and sometimes guitar, but it feels very ambitious and expansive. I especially like tracks like "Pin Hole Light" and "Yarro" where you can just kind of luxuriate in the deep, warm tone of the cello, that's one instrument I just love listening to with little or no accompaniment. There's a whole companion illustrated book of folktales that go with each song on the album, I don't have that but I think it's pretty cool that she's created this whole multimedia thing.

8. Matmos - Metallic Life Review
Matmos has made many albums with a conceptual hook, like building tracks exclusively out of sounds made with plastic objects or from surgery. Metallic Life Review is made entirely with metal objects, which of course gives them a little more leeway to use conventional instruments like horns, vibraphone or pedal steel guitar, though the sounds on this album are still largely pretty novel and unusual. I particularly like the way they shied away from obvious 'industrial' sounds for quieter clangs and reverberations. And it's lovely and bittersweet to hear Susan Alcorn on "Changing States" just a few months after her death. 

9. Jill Sobule - Fuck 7th Grade: Original Cast Recording
I wasn't too familiar with Jill Sobule's music besides her two hits when she died in May, but when I sat down to make a deep cuts playlist soon after, I really fell in love with a number of her songs and mourned her. Sobule hadn't released an album since 2018, but in 2022 she unveiled her musical Fuck 7th Grade, which was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and the cast recording was released posthumously. Many of Sobule's songs are autobiographical, so it feels very natural for her to string together some songs from her album and some new compositions into a narrative arc, and it ends with the same beautiful song that I ended my playlist with, "A Good Life." 

10. Juicy J & Logic - Live And In Color
When I interviewed Logic a year ago, I asked him about Juicy J turning his voice into a producer tag, and he revealed that they're actually pretty good friends and had been working on album together. Juicy J is such a legend in the Memphis crunk lane that he helped create that I don't think anybody really cares if he diversifies his sound, but it's actually pretty fun to hear him experiment with his sound on last year's jazzy, Robert Glasper-assisted Ravenite Social Club and now the album with Logic. Logic had Juicy J do his usual cadences on the kinds of beats he usually raps on, and then put the vocals on Logic's beats that had, in his words, "Dilla/Tribe vibes," which really sounds pretty dope, it was a clever way to fuse their styles together organically. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Keke Palmer - Just Keke
Keke Palmer has been singing as long as she's been acting. And as her film career has thrived in the last few years, it feels like she keeps trying to pull a J.Lo and leverage that into success in music as well and it's really just not happening. 2023's Big Boss was a decent, slightly dated R&B album, she can definitely sing. But Just Keke is a real chore to listen to, partly because there are all these interludes where she tries to remind you she's personable and funny and that social media was briefly obsessed with her relationship with her kid's father, before she goes back to singing these bland, mediocre songs.

2:42 PM

Saturday, July 26, 2025

 





I wrote a Stereogum piece about Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits, which just turned 20. My favorite reaction to the article is from someone who tweeted to me that they were actually at the meeting at the ringtone company where it was decided to change The Annoying Thing's name to Crazy Frog. 

9:43 AM

Friday, July 25, 2025










This week on Spin, I ranked Black Sabbath's albums (R.I.P. Ozzy). I also ranked Paramore's albums, and wrote about an early Billy Joel track for Deep Cut Friday. 

9:42 AM

Movie Diary

Thursday, July 24, 2025

 






a) Sinners
This is one of those rare occasions I kinda wish I had gotten out to see this in the theater, but it was great at home too. Ryan Coogler has gone above and beyond in his work on franchises and based on true stories, but this is his career-defining statement, an unapologetically pulpy horror flick that weaves history and race and music into a story that turned out more emotionally resonant than I expected after the smoke cleared. Even Michael B. Jordan's duel role as twin brothers, a very popular Hollywood flourish these days, felt like an earned and necessary storytelling device by the end. The whole ensemble was great, particularly Hailee Steinfeld, Jayme Lawson, Delroy Lindo, Jack O'Connell, Li Jun Li, and that great little acting turn by Buddy Guy. 

b) Opus
Opus was written and directed by Mark Anthony Green, who used to profile pop stars for GQ, so I was really rooting for it as someone who has also profiled pop stars for GQ, aside from the fact that it stars Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich in an intriguing premise. I can understand why Opus has gotten withering reviews, because at times it does feel like Midsommar or The Menu if they were set in the music industry, and I feel it's a big miscalculation for A24 to make a movie that so readily reminds people of another A24 movie. Malkovich played a Bowie-esque reclusive pop star (with songs by Nile Rodgers, no less) was pretty fun, though, and I think the movie got a little closer to having a real idea driving it than some people gave it credit for. 

c) Fountain of Youth
So many of Guy Ritchie's movies stick to his particular signatures, but it was fun to see him kind of let loose on someone else's formula, he really threw himself into making a very derivative but entertaining pastiche of National Treasure, Indiana Jones, and other movies in that vein. If this had been in theaters instead of on Apple TV+. I would have sat there chomping popcorn and enjoying myself, even if it got a little overbearingly predictable in that CGI-heavy third act. 

d) KPop Demon Hunters
The girl group Huntr/x currently has four songs on the Hot 100, including one in the top 5, which means that they're arguably the most successful K-pop group in America since the big one, BTS. But they're not a real group, they're the protagonists of a wildly popular animated feature on Netflix. I'm not entirely sold on the music, but the movie is cute and funny, I like that something like this has taken off. 

e) Captain America: Brave New World
Yeah this was rough, I don't know if I would call it the worst MCU movie but it was definitely down in the lower tiers. 

f) Every Time You Lose Your Mind: A Film About Failure
These days, it feels like a big pitfall of music documentaries is that it's sometimes possible for the subject of the film to have too much control over the final product, getting in the way of a filmmaker presenting an objective and/or interesting perspective on their story. Failure frontman Ken Andrews has a background in film (he directed a bunch of Ice-T videos back in the day) and directed the feature about his own band, but I think it turned out pretty well. I saw the "Stuck On You" video on 120 Minutes back in the day and eventually checked out Fantastic Planet after it became known as a cult classic, but I didn't know much of their story or the niche they carved out at the time (including making their first album with the late Steve Albini, who's in the movie, or touring several times with Tool). There are a lot of familiar beats here (label woes, drug addiction, reuniting and finding a younger new audience) but the sincere enthusiasm of talking heads like Hayley Williams and Matt Pinfield and Margaret Cho really help you get to the heart of what's musically interesting about the band. 

g) Brick
This German horror movie on Netflix stars a couple actors I'd seen in the American action flick Army of Thieves. It starts out with a reasonably intriguing "Twilight Zone"-ish premise with a couple waking up one day to this big impenetrable black wall outside of all their doors and windows. But as they break through the walls to other apartments in the building, and find their neighbors trapped in the same bizarre situation, it just gets tedious and full of annoying predictable conflicts and I just completely lost interest by the end.  

h) Flight Risk
Mel Gibson had a reasonable amount of filmmaking ability at one point but it's just hilarious how hapless this movie is. I felt bad for Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace that they took the paycheck to make it halfway tolerable. And as a bald American, I resent the stolen valor of Mark Wahlberg just shaving off a patch of his full head of hair, he looked ridiculous. 

4:01 AM

Saturday, July 19, 2025

 




The August 19th release date of my book Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music is just a month away now, and Stereogum has published a 4 thousand word excerpt that includes the previously untold story of how Tierre Brownlee gave Unruly Records its name. Thanks also to Resident Advisor and Steal This Music Taste for their recent posts about the book. Preorder it here! 

10:55 AM

Friday, July 18, 2025

 




For this week's Deep Cut Friday, I wrote about "Rocket Queen" by Guns N' Roses. 

10:05 AM

Monthly Report: June 2025 Singles

Wednesday, July 16, 2025























1. Sabrina Carpenter - "Manchild" 
As someone who always had mixed feelings about "Please Please Please," I rolled my eyes the first time I played the lead single to Sabrina Carpenter's forthcoming album and it was another shrill trebly country/indie pop Jack Antonoff production instead of one of her better-sounding Julian Bunetta or John Ryan tracks. But the video, easily the best music video I've seen this year, helped hold my attention, and by the time they synced the crash cymbal in the chorus to Carpenter shooting across a pool table with a shotgun, I was sold on the song as well. This song rules, there's so much casual pop craft here, the two verses have completely different vocal melodies and the first one has a pre-chorus that never repeats. I will say, though, most misandrist pop songs are about cheating cads so I can enjoy them without feeling implicated, but I am an absent-minded doofus often enough that I worry that if my wife heard this song she might identify with it. This song also makes me think about reading in the '90s that so many magazine articles referred to Beck as a 'manchild' that he started performing the song "Asshole" with 'manchild' in place of the title lyric. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist I update throughout the year. 

2. Hudson Westbrook - "House Again"
Hudson Westbrook is a 20-year-old Texan who moved to Nashville and signed with an independent label, wrote a sad little breakup song inspired by his parents' divorce, racked up 40 million streams with it by the time a major label signed him, and is releasing his debut album later this week. He also did a version of "House Again" with Miranda Lambert that he released alongside a cover of her signature song "The House That Built Me." He's off to a good start, and I'm definitely interested to see where his career goes. 

3. Sombr - "Back To Friends"
Sombr is another 20-year-old kid who just blew up in the last few months -- his ridiculous stage name and matinee idol cheekbones make him seem vaguely like a parody of a pop star from a movie, but I really like "Back To Friends." It and another similar but far less catchy Sombr song, "Undressed," entered the Hot 100 a week apart back in April. And as they kept racking up big streaming numbers, I heard both on the radio for the first time on the same day in May, "Back To Friends" on an alternative station and "Undressed" on a Top 40 station. Both songs are still doing really well and from week to week it's hard to tell which one will ultimately be remembered as his first big hit, but I know which one I'm rooting for. 

4. The Weeknd - "Cry For Me"
It wasn't until I started putting together the S.O.S. Band deep album cuts playlist that I posted the other day that I realized that "Cry For Me" is built on a sample from an obscure S.O.S. Band track from the early '90s. I kind of feel like these days the Weeknd is mostly veering between his signature slow creepy R&B and his pop songs in the uptempo "Blinding Lights" vein, but this song really works because it's pretty fast and danceable but still really cinematic and ominous. 

5. Megan Thee Stallion - "Whenever"
I feel like people have gotten weirdly nitpicky about Megan's output, I don't know why people would rave about "Bigger Than Texas" but hate "Whenever," I feel like they're both an example of a great rapper picking a track they'd sound fantastic on, love the Ms. Cherry sample. 

6. Pluto & Ykniece - "Wham Whamiee"
Another song that went mainstream recently referencing an old Atlanta regional hit that never really went national, in this case Mook B from D4L's "Whim Wham." I'm such a huge Zaytoven fan, I love that he's got a hit like this a full 20 years after "Icy." And Pluto's album is pretty good, I feel like she's a real music head who's doing her best with her skill set, I think it's kind of a shame that she set herself up to be looked at the same way Sexxy Red is by putting her on the remix. 

7. Keith Urban - "Straight Line"
It's been a minute since Keith Urban did one of those high energy anthemic songs in the vein of "Somebody Like You" and "Days Go By" and that's always my favorite shit from him, he just needs an excuse to really cut loose on the guitar solo. 

8. Mariah The Scientist - "Burning Blue"
Mariah The Scientist has definitely been building a bigger fanbase and inching closer to chart success for the last few years, but it was surprising to see this song just instantly surpass anything she'd ever released before in both streaming and radio numbers. Also interesting that she's kind of part of a power couple with Young Thug but she's blowing up while the buzz around his new music has kind of cratered. 

9. Mariah Carey - "Type Dangerous"
Strange to find ourselves in a moment where Mariah Carey has a new song but a different Mariah is outperforming her on the Hot 100! She'll get her revenge in December, though. Carey is a great songwriter but I do think she needs the right collaborators in her corner and making music with Anderson.Paak is probably gonna be good for her, I'm interested to hear what else they do together. 

10. Ariana Grande - "Twilight Zone"
"Warm" is by far my favorite new song from the deluxe version of Eternal Sunshine, but I do like hearing this one on the radio. I saw a review of this song that described it as "chillwave-adjacent" and I feel like people will just say that about absolutely anything now. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Alex Warren - "Ordinary"
I feel like it's kind of an easy target to use this space to single out the very unhip current #1 song in the country, but yeah I'm sick of changing the station when this comes on. "Burning Down," the minor hit about Alex Warren's TikTok creator house figuratively burning down, is probably worse than "Ordinary," but "Ordinary" is a lot more annoyingly ubiquitous. 

12:03 PM