TV Diary

Monday, October 30, 2017
















a) "Mindhunter"
David Fincher produced, and directed 4 of 10 episodes, of this Netflix series, and between Seven and Zodiac, probably nobody is better qualified to bring us a largely fact-based story of the FBI agents who interviewed serial killers to develop a psychological profile for them. Sometimes the show can be a little on the nose, particularly with musical choices (one episode ended with "Psycho Killer" and another ended with "I Don't Like Mondays"), and I thought the way the last episode concluded was a little heavy handed, but otherwise I really just loved everything about it. Holt McCallany, who was great in FX's otherwise bland boxing drama "Lights," gets a lot to chew on here, and is a perfect foil for Jonathan Groff, who I can never forget voiced Kristoff in Frozen even when he's talking to serial killers. Cameron Britton as Edmund Kemper is one of the year's best performances, and I have to admit even Anna Torv is good, though I still give her the side eye for being a member of the Murdoch family who launched her TV career with a FOX show.

b) "Ghosted"
Adam Scott and Craig Robinson reteaming for more sci-fi comedy doesn't necessarily seem like the most promising idea after Hot Tub Time Machine 2, but this show is pretty entertaining. It kind of started off like "People of Earth" with an alien conspiracy guy being vindicated with proof that aliens are real, but then it just kind of turns into a loony version of "X-Files." I feel like the quality of the show is really scattershot, but I loved the most recent episode with the office on lockdown, and I feel like Ally Walker's deadpan boss is kind of the cast's secret weapon.

c) "The Halcyon"
I feel like I've tried out so many British period shows in the last couple years and this World War II era ensemble drama is the first one that's really hooked me and feels like something I could stick with, just a really good cast and a lot of entertaining little character moments that flesh out the historical context of the show.

d) "Kevin (Probably) Saves The World"
The 'heartwarming supernatural dramedy' is a weird genre of TV, I don't really know who was looking to make the next "Early Edition" when they made this. But it's such an odd hodgepodge of broad comedy and maudlin melodrama, even the charming moments feel a little forced.

e) "White Famous"
I remember one time a few years ago I spent a few minutes backstage with Jay Pharoah because I was teleprompting a corporate event where he was hosting and doing a bit in character as Obama, and he seemed like a pretty sharp dude who probably had it in him to do something more than the smattering of celebrity impressions he was consigned to on "SNL." And this show really feels like that vehicle for him. Doing a satire of Hollywood that is basically a black comic meeting clueless and/or racist white executives and directors over and over feels a little fish in a barrel, but there have been some funny moments, it has potential.

f) "Dynasty"
When I was a kid I'd always get "Dallas" and "Dynasty" confused, and when this new "Dynasty" series was announced I was like "didn't that already happen?" because of the "Dallas" series that ran from 2012 to 2014. Elizabeth Gillies was the best thing about "Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll," so I'm disappointed that she's rebounded into an even worse show.

g) "At Home With Amy Sedaris"
I always felt kind of alone in not liking "Strangers With Candy" and thinking that Amy Sedaris's performance in that show was like nails on chalkboard. Otherwise I generally like her, though, and this show is a really good fit for her, just kind of letting her loose on a cooking show format to do whatever odd little subversive curveballs she feels like throwing.

h) "Snoop Dogg presents The Joker's Wild"
I never saw the original "The Joker's Wild" game show but apparently Snoop was a fan of it growing up and wanted to reboot it. As far as his weird little pop culture side projects, this is pretty fun, I'd much rather watch it than his show with Martha Stewart or whatever. I feel like there's so many silly little gags packed into this show, it reminds me of "Win Ben Stein's Money" in that it's as goofy as possible while still a functional game show.

i) "The Jellies"
I like Tyler, The Creator's sense of humor even less than I like his music, but his new Adult Swim cartoon is actually worse than I expected, in the 2nd episode the main character has a sex change operation that is framed as a "Pimp My Ride" parody and then, uh, gets pregnant.

j) "Superstition"
SyFy has been on a really good run of original series lately, but this is just one of the worst pilots I've seen in recent memory. The acting was just appalling, every line reading was flat and stilted, I'd compare it to SyFy's original movies but those are at least campy and silly, this was just kind of solemnly incompetent.

k) "Lore"
This show is based on a podcast and it's narrated by the host of the podcast, who has one of those really bland monotone podcast voices, which is a shame, because the subject matter is interesting, they probably could've made it work without narration but as is I just can't stand it.

l) "I Love You, America"
My favorite thing about this show is that when it was announced, Vanity Fair oh so gently destroyed Chelsea Handler with the headline "Can Sarah Silverman Launch The First Successful Streaming Talk Show"? Silverman and Handler are basically trying to solve the same problem of how to do a chill topical weekly comedy show about Trump's America with a less strident tone than, say, Samantha Bee. I've always thought that Silverman kind of started with a unique comedic voice but it calcified into this winking 'ain't I a stinker' delivery that she can't stop doing constantly, and it doesn't really wear well on the earnest "coastal showbiz professional tries to understand flyover country" angle of this show, even if some of the interviews have had thought-provoking moments. But I love Mather Zickel as the 'comforting white man at a desk' they occasionally cut to to lighten things up.

m) "The Rundown with Robin Thede"
The same day Silverman's show debuted, she got some help from BET in raising the paltry number of talk shows hosted by women. Robin Thede was the headwriter and a frequent panelist on "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore," a show I have dearly missed in the year since its cancellation, so I like that she's brought a little of that show's sensibility back to late night. I have mixed feelings about her as a host, though, I feel like she oversells a lot of jokes.

n) "Valor"
I liked Christina Ochoa on SyFy's recent horror comedy series "Blood Drive," it's a shame that show got cancelled and she wound up on this CW show about Army pilots, which is not as bland as NBC's "The Brave" or CBS's "SEAL Team" but still feels like part of this big boring chunk of new military dramas.

o) "Suburra: Blood On Rome"
Italian-American crime families take up such a large space in pop culture that it's interesting that we so rarely see the Italian crime families they're descended from outside of, like, The Godfather Part II. So this show is refreshing in that respect, although as usual I don't think I have the patience to watch an ongoing series with subtitles.

p) "The Mayor"
This show about a rapper running for mayor of a California town as a publicity stunt and unexpectedly winning feels like a preemptive satire of Chance The Rapper's possible future political aspirations. But for every timely joke there's something that feels really hokey and stereotype-driven. The dynamic between Brandon Micheal Hall and Lea Michele is the funniest part of the show but I don't think the show has figured that out yet.

q) "9JKL"
I think of myself as pretty old fashioned in my affection for traditional sitcoms, but then CBS keeps putting this incredibly hacky laugh track shows and I'm like uh maybe not. I feel bad for everyone involved in this, but especially Elliott Gould.

r) "Tin Star"
I feel like Amazon's original programming is kind of the retirement home for a lot of prestige TV tropes that other networks have moved on from, and "Tin Star" feels like a lot of those tropes wrapped up in one show. Tim Roth is the antihero cop who moves to a small town to try, in vain, to save his family from consequences of his violent double life, and his double life is so literal that he has an alter ego who sometimes talks to him in the mirror, it's all really dark and gritty and kind of stupid.

s) "Wanted"
An Australian series that U.S. Netflix just picked up about two women who kind of fall into a violent criminal underworld when they get abducted together. The first episode seems pretty promising but again, it features so many familiar cable drama tropes that it feels a little redundant.

t) "The Deuce"
I love the rhythm of this show and how David Simon basically gives you this granular view of sex work and pornography much as "The Wire" did for the war on drugs. But I really never get used to James Franco with a hat arguing with James Franco without a hat, it's just too annoying. And them hanging around Chris Bauer just makes it feel like Franco is playing both Nick and Ziggy Sobotka, which made me disappointed that neither character had a violent downfall at the end of the season. A lot of the minor characters really make the show worth it as an ensemble show, though.

u) "Better Things"
Sam's British mom was one of the oddest touches on this show that didn't really work for me in the first season, but the recent episode that was kind of partly from her perspective was pretty great.

v) "Vice Principals"
The description of the upcoming series finale of this show implies that the school itself will be closed or possibly destroyed, which feels a bit extreme even for "Vice Principals," but I suppose they've escalated the premise so much at this point that that's the only place it can go. But the show hasn't improved that much since it moved from the discomforting "white guys try to destroy a black woman's life" plot.

w) "Stranger Things" 
I tried a couple episodes of the new season but I still don't totally understand how it became such a big phenomenon, there's something really blank and charmless to me about pretty much all the characters. And it feels like they're really doubling down on the "story about characters who are obsessed with the same '80s pop culture that they're living in a pastiche of" concept.

x) "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"
The first two seasons of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" were some pretty special television, partly because they were willing to keep moving the story forward and letting each season have pretty different personal dynamics between the characters. But that means they've once again thrown everything into emotional disarray for a darker storyline before, which feels a little weird, but it kind of makes for a nice contrast with the show's default silly musical format. "I Go To The Zoo" from last week's episode belongs on the short list of the show's funniest songs.

y) "Broad City"
I guess season 4 is about the point where a show that seemed ahead of the curve can start to feel like a relic, but mostly I think the problem is this show really just doesn't make me laugh nearly as much as it used to. Peri Gilpin as Abbi's mom was as good a casting choice as Susie Essman was as Ilana's mom, though.

z) "The Mindy Project"
As this show's 6th and final season approaches its conclusion and its weird amorphous rotating cast of supporting characters still refuses to cohere, I think Ike Barinholtz deserves some credit as the glue of the show. It's cool that he's directed quite a few episodes of the show, too, I feel like he may have the most promising future after the show other than Mindy Kaling.

Saturday, October 28, 2017
















Rolling Stone did a list of Jay-Z's 50 greatest songs, and I helped vote on what made the list and wrote a few blurbs about '90s Jigga. 

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 98: Taylor Swift

Friday, October 27, 2017



















Taylor Swift has been the most consistently successful artist in American music for the past decade. Each of her 5 albums sold at least 4 million copies domestically, which would be highly impressive in any era but is downright staggering in the iTunes/streaming era. Her 6th album Reputation, out next month, already seems poised to be the first album where she may face a serious backlash and/or a significant commercial downturn. Her legacy is already pretty secure, it only seems like things can slow her down, but not stop her. But she's really pretty divisive, and I've always had mixed feelings about her. Since she finally ended her cold war with Spotify and made her back catalog available over the summer, I figured it was a good time to delve into these records that always seemed too ubiquitous for me to bother seeking out.

Taylor Swift deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Forever & Always
2. Holy Ground
3. Dear John
4. All You Had To Do Was Stay
5. Tell Me Why
6. Invisible
7. State Of Grace
8. How You Get The Girl
9. Long Live
10. You're Not Sorry
11. I Almost Do
12. Enchanted
13. Stay Beautiful
14. I Wish You Would
15. Starlight
16. The Outside
17. Haunted
18. Clean
19. The Best Day

Tracks 6, 13 and 16 from Taylor Swift (2006)
Tracks 1, 5, 10 and 19 from Fearless (2008)
Tracks 3, 9, 12 and 17 from Speak Now (2010)
Tracks 2, 7, 11 and 15 from Red (2012)
Tracks 4, 8, 14 and 18 from 1989 (2014)

Recently Rob Sheffield ranked all of Swift's songs for Rolling Stone, and I kinda started there to see what was well regarded among her album tracks and work my way down until I had my own opinions that sometimes diverged pretty widely from his. I always felt like a lot of Swift's singles just passed me by, but every 3rd or 4th one would connect. The ones that basically sound like power pop like "You Belong With Me" and "The Story Of Us" and "Red" always appealed to me the most, which is why I'm really bummed that she's put the guitar down and started basically making synth pop lately. So it was fun to seek out more of that stuff, and kick off the mix with "Forever & Always" and "Holy Ground," which I think became my favorite Taylor Swift song in the course of making this mix.

I always like to point out that Taylor Swift had already sold about 7 million albums before the night Kanye West likes to say he "made" her famous. But of course, even while she was quickly crossing over from country to pop, those oddly distant worlds can take some time to traverse. It's interesting how little even her first couple albums scan as country to me now, though. I wouldn't mind her 'going back to her roots' and putting a little more banjo and fiddle on her records someday, but it's really not that key to her musical identity.

With the enormous scale of her success, it's hard to even call any of Taylor Swift's songs deep cuts. 8 tracks on this mix charted on the Hot 100, and 5 went Gold or Platinum. And so many of her songs made headlines for what other celebrities they were allegedly written about that I felt like I'd read a lot of these lyrics before I heard them. But really, once I weeded out the songs I couldn't stand like "Welcome To New York" and "Better Than Revenge" and "Innocent" and "Speak Now," I found a lot to enjoy.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze

Wednesday, October 25, 2017



















Last night I went to Pier Six Pavilion in Baltimore to see Steely Dan on their first tour since the death of Walter Becker, and I wrote about the show for Billboard

Movie Diary

Thursday, October 19, 2017























a) Colossal
I'd been really looking forward to seeing this movie, partly because of the bizarre concept, and partly because the director, Nacho Vigalondo, made one of my favorite segments in the short horror film anthology The ABCS of Death. And it really lived up to my expectations, I just adored it. It reminded me of Groundhog Day in that it set up this fairly odd, convoluted concept with some internally consistent 'rules' and played it out to a narratively satisfying conclusion, but there's no real attempt at explaining how or why this all happened, you end the film in the dark just like the characters.

b) The Babysitter
It's weird to think that at one point in time McG graduated from directing Smashmouth videos to multiple $100 million budget features. But his bubble burst eventually and he's now just another hack who does suitably low profile stuff like this horror comedy for Netflix. As with most uninspired horror comedies, this kind of plays the middle so much that it just winds up not being funny or scary much at all, although there is a fair amount of gore and some loud young actors trying to yell their way into campy hilarity.

c) All Nighter
This movie is basically one prolonged set up for J. K. Simmons to berate and roll his eyes at quirky and eccentric millennials, which seems like kind of a lazy way to solidify the Simmons brand post-Whiplash. But the cast is decent, it's relatively spirited and charming even if it falls short of what it could've been.

d) Mine
I'm a sucker for movies that consist almost entirely of one character going through one violent or painful ordeal more or less by themselves, your 127 Hours type scenarios. So this movie where Armie Hammer steps on a landmine, and spends the rest of the movie trying to stay alive and not step away from the mine and setit off, had some potential to be pretty gripping. I felt they kind of threw too many ingredients into the pot to make it exciting, though, particularly once he starts hallucinating and reliving memories and whatnot. But really, Hammer is barely enough of a movie star to even carry the noisy action flicks he's done, so he really isn't fit to handle a role like this.

e) The Program
My wife and I are both big fans of Ben Foster, I feel like if he'd had the right breakthrough role early in his career to get to a certain level of fame he really could've thrived with a DiCaprio type career, but he's done pretty well for himself with a more slow burn of steadily impressive performances. And this movie where he plays Lance Armstrong is really a great showcase for what he does well, he really disappeared into the role more than I thought he would. There's a funny scene where Foster-as-Armstrong, before his public disgrace, hears that there's a biopic about him in the works and speculates on whether Matt Damon or Jake Gyllenhaal will play him. It struck me as an interesting meta moment, maybe deliberately or maybe not acknowledging that if Armstrong had remained an American hero the story of his life would be a more upbeat movie with a bigger star.

f) Mr. Holmes
This movie came out at a point when 4 actors had portrayed Sherlock Holmes in major film and TV projects in the space of as many years, so it just seemed like overkill even for one of the most adapted characters in literature. But I'm glad I got around to it, it was a well rendered imagining of an elderly Holmes working one last case, kinda makes me wish it had followed a long series of films of Ian McKellan as Holmes.

g) Maggie
It's kind of fitting that even an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger's serious quiet performance in a movie fairly low on action scenes is still a zombie apocalypse flick. It seemed decent but the whole thing was just so slow and muted that I just lost interest pretty quickly. 
I have loved Tom Petty's music for as long as I can remember, and had watched bits and pieces of Peter Bogdanovich's 4 hour documentary about him on cable here and there over the past decade. But I didn't finally sit down and watch the whole thing until the week Petty died, which was just a great way to drink in the Heartbreakers' whole remarkable career and appreciate his legacy. 

Monthly Report: October 2017 Singles

Wednesday, October 18, 2017



















1. Sam Smith - "Too Good At Goodbyes"
Sam Smith always seemed like a one trick pony who's at his best when he gets away from his core sound on stuff like "Latch." Like, really, a gospel choir? Fuck off. But this song is really the best case scenario or what he could do with that sound, I'm not surprised that Stargate was involved, they really have a magic touch. This is their biggest U.S. hit in a while, too. Here's the favorite 2017 singles playlist I update every month.

3. Hailee Steinfeld and Alesso f/ Florida Georgia Line and watt - "Let Me Go"
This song really feels like the strangest grab bag collaboration on the pop charts in recent memory: the girl who won an Oscar for True Grit, a Swedish DJ, a member of a country duo, and a blues singer/songwriter. It's really a beautifully bittersweet song, though, it has such a strong little melancholy hook that kind of transcends the trendy production, I hope Steinfeld finally gets to release an album off the back of this song, I feel like they messed up by not following through on the success of "Starving."

3. X Ambassadors - "Ahead Of Myself"
As much as I was initially skeptical of X Ambassadors, they really won me over with "Unsteady" and my wife played their album around the house a fair amount. And this new one is another really strong showcase for Sam Harris's voice, which is really the thing that makes them worth a damn.

4. Rich Homie Quan - "Gamble"
I really enjoyed the Back To The Basics project that Quan released a few months ago, but nothing on it leapt out at me as an obvious hit that could bring him out of his dry spell. But once this song started getting some spins I realized how catchy it is, it kind of has the "Flex" tempo but a darker palette.

5. U2 - "You're The Best Thing About Me"
I think my least favorite aspect of 21st century U2 is their tendency release these big loud chest-thumping lead singles like "Vertigo" and "Get On Your Boots" that seem to totally misunderstand what actually made them one of the biggest bands in the world. So "You're The Best Thing About Me" is refreshing just by virtue of scaling back and letting the melody and texture and emotion that really drive the band's best moments lead the way. It's still a little slight and flawed, but it's really grown on me.

6. Brad Paisley - "Last Time For Everything"
It makes me sad that Paisley's batting average has fallen off a bit, both commercially and creatively, in recent years, because he really is one of the sharpest guys in Nashville. And this is a classic example of those songs he used to make all the time where he just comes up with a premise and fills it with as many clever and funny or poignant riffs on the concept as he can fit. The video added some other layers to it really well, too.

7. Rita Ora - "Your Song"
Rita Ora's status as some kind of music industry charity case that U.S. labels keep trying to make into a stateside star is kind of a running joke now, but she has an appealing voice, she really just needs decent material and rarely gets it. But Ed Sheeran wrote her a good one here, I kinda wish he gave away his clubbier songs more often even if it's obviously beneficial for him to keep the occasional "Shape of You" for himself.

8. Cold War Kids f/ Bishop Briggs - "So Tied Up"
I was disappointed that Bishop Briggs wasn't able to keep up the commercial momentum of "River" and get an album out, so her label just tossed out an EP of all the singles she'd been releasing. But her new single "Dream" is very good and her presence really livens up the latest hit by middling indie crossover act Cold War Kids.

9. Queens Of The Stone Age - "The Way You Used To Do"
Queens Of The Stone Age is one of those bands that most people seem to love or at least admire that I find off-putting even when I like the occasional song. I think Mark Ronson is kind of a hack too. But that's an interesting artist/producer combination, I applaud it, it's kind of appealing to hear Ronson put his plastic funk sheen on a QOTSA groove. And it's interesting that this came out around the same time as the Foo Fighters/Greg Kurstin record, I like this trend toward heavy guitar bands hiring producers who don't usually make heavy guitar records and finding some kind of fusion of styles.

10. Kodak Black - "Patty Cake"
Painting Pictures was kind of the point where I gave up on any hope of Kodak Black becoming a great rapper and accepted that he's just kind of a mediocre MC who will never improve. But this song stuck out as one of the album's few bright spots, and I was happy to see it break out as a minor hit, even if I was uncomfortable with the video where schoolchildren joyously celebrate a cartoon version of a shitty dude with an open rape case.

Worst Single of the Month: Quality Control f/ Quavo, Takeoff and Offset - "Too Hotty"
The artist credit for this song is such an eyesore, it's so funny to think that Quality Control needed to rebrand a Migos song as a posse cut 'featuring' all 3 members of the group and nobody else in order to promote the label's upcoming compilation. But it's also really just by far the weakest Migos song on the charts in a year in which they've totally saturated the airwaves, and I'm glad it's being outperformed by a much better track, Gucci Mane's "I Get The Bag," even as Migos keep working it with performances on "TRL" and the BET Hip Hop Awards.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 97: Squeeze

Wednesday, October 11, 2017























I've often spoken about this series being inspired in part by growing up with amazing, perfect greatest hits collections by acts like Queen and Tom Petty and wanting to make companion compilations of the non-hits. And I would put Squeeze in that category, too, because as a teenager I fell in love with their best known singles and then heard, as people have for decades, their incredibly jam-packed 1982 collection Singles - 45's And Under. And I think a band having a compilation like that can be a mixed blessing, because it kind of pushes every other album down a rung in cultural presence even as it may help elevate the stature of the band and/or some of their songs. But this week Squeeze are releasing their 14th (or 15th -more about that later) album of new songs, The Knowledge, so here's a look back at the albums from their first decade.

Squeeze deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Vicky Verky
2. In Quintessence
3. Slightly Drunk
4. Wrong Side Of The Moon
5. I Can't Hold On
6. Revue
7. First Thing Wrong
8. Someone Else's Ball
9. Someone Else's Heart
10. Cigarette Of Single Man
11. Separate Beds
12. You Can't Hurt The Girl
13. Break My Heart
14. Get Smart
15. There At The Top
16. Touching Me Touching You
17. Woman's World
18. Onto The Dancefloor
19. Misadventure
20. The Knack
21. Man For All Seasons
22. The Prisoner
23. Mumbo Jumbo
24. Points Of View

Tracks 7 and 14 from Squeeze (1978)
Tracks 3, 6, 16 and 20 from Cool For Cats (1979)
Tracks 1, 4, 11, 15 and 19 from Argybargy (1980)
Tracks 2, 8, 9, 17 and 23 from East Side Story (1981)
Tracks 5, 18 and 24 from Sweets From A Stranger (1982)
Tracks 12 and 21 from Difford & Tilbrook (1984)
Tracks 13 from Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti (1985)
Tracks 10 and 22 from Babylon And On (1987)

Hearing "Vicky Verky" on a mixtape somebody made me was what really got me to check out Argybargy and East Side Story and enjoying Squeeze beyond the singles, and it's still just one of my favorite Squeeze songs, so compact and full of little twists and turns, so I had to lead off this playlist with it. I'm a huge Elvis Costello fan, and I feel like Squeeze are really one of his closest contemporaries in terms of being able to write songs that are as dense and verbose as they are fast and hooky.

Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook are one of the great modern songwriting duos in my book. And I find it interesting that instead of a Lennon/McCartney dynamic of two singer/songwriters who have their own songs and help each other, there's more of a division of labor of Difford writing the lyrics and Tilbrook writing the melodies, which is kind of unusual in the rock world (Fall Out Boy is one of the only major bands I can think of with a similar way of working). Both sing, but Tilbrook tends to sing more and has a much more appealing voice, and he's the voice of most of the band's hits, with a couple of exceptions: Difford sang the band's first big U.K. top 10 record, "Cool For Cats," and of course keyboardist Paul Carrack famously sang one of Squeeze's signature songs, "Tempted."

Usually when a band has one main frontman and another member that just sings occasionally, I tend to really like or kinda root for "the other guy." But I tend to really not like the Difford songs as much as the Tilbrook songs, so there are only three there ("The Knack," "Someone Else's Heart," and my personal favorite, "Wrong Side Of The Moon"). But there are a fair number of good songs where Difford sings back up or he and Tilbrook kinda sing in unison, which I think works better than Difford's sort of monotone voice.

As I said, Squeeze have either 14 or 15 albums, and that's because even when the band nominally broke up for about 2 years in the '80s, the band's two songwriters continued collaborating and released one album as a duo, the self-titled 1984 album by Difford & Tilbrook. Then they reformed Squeeze, and have remained the band's only two constant members throughout its history, so it kind of makes sense to count the Difford & Tilbrook album as part of the Squeeze discography, even if its sound is a bit more synthy than the band's output.

If there's any album that sticks out like a sore thumb, it's actually Squeeze's first album. They went into the studio with Velvet Underground legend John Cale as their producer, and Cale basically threw out the songs the band had written and gave them instructions on what kind of new material to write. The results are interesting at times and resulted in a few decent songs, although "First Thing Wrong" seems to me like kind of a fitting statement from a band whose debut album went awry. The fact that Squeeze went on to make much better albums by doing things their way without Cale, though, I think speaks to that record being kind of a bust.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain

TV Diary

Monday, October 09, 2017



















a) "The Gifted"
As tired as I get of Batman and Spider-Man movies telling the same stories about the same characters over and over, I'm glad that something with a far wider cast of characters like X-Men has been able to spin off so many screen adaptations over the last 17 years with a variety that really expanded a lot just in the past year with Logan, "Legion," and now "The Gifted." My favorite part of the pilot is Emma Dumont, who has a really interesting, memorable performance as Polaris, daughter of Magneto, but for the most part "The Gifted" is just a story about mutants in a world without X-Men that is untethered from the characters and storylines we're used to seeing, and I'm pretty excited to see where it will go (and thankfully so far it seems a lot less indulgently artsy than "Legion," which I felt kind of alone in hating).

b) "Inhumans"
About a week before FOX premiered "The Gifted," ABC rolled out its own new Marvel Cinematic Universe series, "Inhumans," and the enormous gap in just the production values alone was striking before you get into the overall quality of the series (I've noted more and more, in recent years, that anything on ABC that attempts something more visually ambitious than a standard courtroom or hospital procedural tends to look like total shit, which is strange considering this was the network of "Lost" not too long ago). "Inhumans" was, of course, spun off from the Fantastic Four, which is a lot less promising than an X-Men spinoff just on its face, but I was really surprised by just how dull and incoherent this show is, you just get plunged into this grandiose story without really being drawn into caring about the characters at all.

c) "Ghost Wars"
This new SyFy show about a haunted town in Alaska features Vincent D'Onofrio and Meat Loaf flapping their jowls at each other and the pilot episode was pretty promising, good ominous mood and look.

d) "Big Mouth"
Nick Kroll's "adult animated sitcom" for Netflix about puberty, which is some poorly drawn and fairly gross shit with occasional animated child penises and shit like that, basically one step above "Brickleberry." I hate how "Family Guy" and "South Park" have opened the floodgates for cartoons to be as unabashedly shitty looking and 'edgy' like webcomics.

e) "The Magic School Bus Rides Again"
I never watched the original "Magic School Bus" much, I was kinda too old for it already by the time it came along. But I put on the new Netflix version for my kids, my 2-year-old liked it but the 8-year-old had no interest. I liked the animation style, though.

f) "50 Central"
50 Cent was, in his heyday, one of hip hop's funniest artists, especially when he wasn't even rapping and just talking shit at the end of songs. And even after his peak he'd do some ridiculous shit like the 'Pimpin' Curly' video that would be pretty memorable. So it's not entirely a bad idea for him to do a comedy show, and I thought the FOX sitcom he had in development a couple years ago had some potential. But this sketch show on BET, where Fif basically hosts and does occasional cameos and lets a cast of actors do the heavy lifting, seems kind of like a waste of his post-"Power" juice in the TV world. There have been a couple decent sketches but I think the funniest thing about this show is how the token white guy in the cast looks like Fabio with a manbun.

g) "Liar"
This British series currently airing on Sundance is pretty impressive in terms of the acting and storytelling and production values, I found the first episode pretty gripping. But the entire premise is a little troubling. TV right now is full of season-length story arcs about accused murderers and criminals that constantly try to push the viewer's suspicions this way or that way for a titillating mystery. And I feel like we really don't need a show like that about a rape accusation that could possibly ultimately be about a hysterical woman falsely accusing a man, at a time when the relatively few instances of false rape accusations have been obsessed over and inflated as a cornerstone of rape culture.

h) "Rosehaven"
Another foreign acquisition running on Sundance, a sitcom that takes place in a small town on Tasmania. It's kind of sweet and quietly charming, haven't found it terribly funny but it's likable and unique enough to keep coming back to.

i) "Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders"
The O.J. show was of course pretty good and I recently enjoyed the show about the Unabomber investigation, but I'm starting to really tire of the scripted TV trend of just reliving every big news story of the 1990s (David Koresh miniseries coming next year!). And there's just something particularly pathetic and loathsome about NBC shoehorning this trend into the "Law & Order" franchise with no real link besides the famous "L&O" font being used whenever the date or location is flashed on the screen. The cast is pretty good, though, I'm always happy to see Josh Charles in the mix (and I'm amused that Elizabeth Reaser in this as well as "Manhunt: Unabomber," like she's just stuck in this mini-genre right now).

j) "Me, Myself & I"
I really warmed up to Bobby Moynihan over the course of his "SNL" tenure to the point that I miss him there a little now, so I wish that his first TV project after leaving was better. It even has sitcom MVP John Larroquette, as well as Kelen Coleman, who I still have a massive crush on from when she was the only sympathetic character on "The Newsroom." But the whole concept of watching one character at three different ages in every episode, it kind of collapses under its own weight, there are some sweet moments but it's missing something. Also, when watching the pilot, my wife pointed out how weirdly pervasive the comedy trope is of the male protagonist becoming single when he walks in on his wife/girlfriend with another man. I can't even begin to count how many shows and movies start with that scene.

k) "The Opposition with Jordan Klepper"
It's been over a year since Comedy Central sadly cancelled "The Nightly Show," and it appears that their best idea for an 11:30 "Daily Show" companion is to basically redo "The Colbert Report" except lampooning Alex Jones instead of Bill O'Reilly (and this is after a few months of Colbert himself doing a Jones-inspired character on "The Late Show"). It's certainly not an idea without comedic potential, and Klepper had throwing himself into a 'terrible white guy' character on "The Daily Show" with fearless abandon for a few years anyway. But there are a lot of pitfalls to a show like this, as evidenced by the fact that Klepper had to open the 2nd week of the show by breaking character and saying something sincere about the Las Vegas shootings, on the same day that the real Alex Jones basically said it was a false flag. There are parts about the show that work pretty well, particularly Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson's Milo-like characters. But I still wish they had went with my idea of Desi Lydic as a sendup of Fox News blondes.

l) "The Brave"
I feel like Anne Heche has starred in so many forgettable TV shows since she flunked out of not being particularly memorable in movies either. "Hung" was good at least. There were one or two scenes where I felt like this show kind of punctured the usual military drama mythology, but mostly it feels like more of the same.

m) "SEAL Team"
Another network military drama, but even blander because it's on CBS.

n) "The Good Doctor"
This show seems kind of well intentioned in forwarding the idea of people on the autism spectrum holding complex, high pressure jobs. But it's pretty boring and I hate that Richard Schiff has been in like half a dozen unremarkable TV shows in the past couple years instead of just one good one. I'm amused that the lead actor is Freddie Highmore, since a decade ago in his child star days he starred in August Rush, which I reviewed and mused about whether the viewer was supposed to assume that the character was autistic.

o) "Young Sheldon"
Sheldon on "The Big Bang Theory" is another TV character who I guess we're supposed to assume is on the autism spectrum? But the ridiculous prequel show about him as a child is mostly a bland little show about an uptight kid in Texas. My favorite theory is that you could change the name of the show to "Young Ted Cruz" and change nothing but the name of the character.

p) "Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father"
I'm not familiar with Jack Whitehall's standup but the premise of just following a guy and his cantankerous father around the world to different countries is kind of fun. It kinda makes me wish I could've done that with my dad.

q) "Baroness Von Sketch Show"
IFC picked up this show after it already aired two seasons in Canada, so they've been just airing both seasons back to back, and I really feel like there's a notable step up, both in production values and execution, the second season is really funny.

r) "Room 104"
HBO's horror/dark comedy/random bullshit anthology series has a different story with different characters every week, and I've really disliked the majority of the first season's episodes so far. But given its grab bag nature, I keep giving it a try and hoping for the best. I liked the episode starring Sarah Hay that was kind of a story told through dance similar to her work on "Flesh And Bone."

s) "Channel Zero: The No-End House"
SyFy's creepypasta-inspired horror anthology series "Channel Zero" has one story per season, and I had mixed feelings about last year's first season, but I'm glad it's an ongoing project, I think it has a lot of potential. "The No-End House" has been good so far, John Carroll Lynch is always so good in creepy roles and here he's a dead family member who's mysteriously alive again. If I ever do another "the busiest actors of Peak TV" piece, I'll need to make special mention of Aisha Dee, perhaps the first actor to star in 3 full seasons of 3 different shows ("Sweet/Vicious," "The Bold Type," and "Channel Zero") in the space of 12 months.

t) "The Exorcist"
I really loved the first season of "The Exorcist," but now that that story arc is over, I'm a little unsure of how well they can follow that up and put the 2 priests into a new story that is as gripping. And I definitely raised an eyebrow at how the second season opened, with them performing an exorcism in the back of a pickup truck while pursued by cops through the countryside, as if they were 'The Dukes of Pazuzu' or some shit. But it's starting to get interesting, I really don't know exactly where the foster home story is going and I'm curious.

u) "The Good Place"
The first season of "The Good Place" had one of the all-time great season-ending twists, not so much that it was impossible to predict but that it was deployed so well to completely upend the logic of the show and basically give the writers a completely differently playing field to work with in the second season. And it's been really funny this season to watch them throw out the rulebook and really get laughs out of such an increasingly insane context. I have no idea how they can keep up this pace without kind of blowing through every possible scenario in just a few episodes, but I'm excited to see whether they keep it up.

v) "Kevin Can Wait"
I watched the first episode of Kevin James's unremarkable new sitcom last year and then promptly moved on with my life and forgot about it. But I wanted to check back in on it because of the bizarre development that they mysteriously killed off the wife character, played by Erinn Hayes, between seasons to bring in James's old "King of Queens" costar Leah Remini as the new female lead. It's still a flimsy, unremarkable show, I'm just kind of fascinated that they decided that such a traditional light family sitcom could easily weather the abrupt death of the mom.

w) "Nathan For You"
Every time this show comes back I try to give it a chance because the people that like it really like it. And there are always a couple of really inspired absurd moments in every episode, but it just feels like there's so much dry quiet airtime just setting up the Rube Goldberg machinations for that payoff, and I just don't have the patience for it.

x) "Will & Grace"
I was never a big fan of "Will & Grace" and don't think it has aged especially well beyond the particular cultural moment it captures. But it increasingly feels like old shows come back mainly because the stars don't have a lot of better stuff to do, and the aggressively topical first episode back seemed hellbent on planting the show's flag into our current 2017 cultural moment. Like, the first five minutes of the episode featured the phrases "woke" and "fake news," and then the episode ended at the Trump White House. But I will say, I'm as attracted to Megan Mullally, and Mullally as Karen, as ever, and she's almost 60, damn.

y) "TRL"
"TRL" is another show that debuted in 1998, captured the zeitgeist for a time, then went away, and doesn't seem entirely ready to be back in 2017, but here we are. I was already kind of a cynical budding music nerd by the time "TRL" premiered while I was in high school, but I still will sporadically tune into just about any music video countdown show. The new version is hardly more vapid and obnoxious than the original, but the multitude of hosts drafted from YouTube and farming of content from the internet feels a little desperate. And it was funny to see the first week of the show make a few gestures at Trump resistance after the showrunner told the press he'd "love" to have the president on the show.

z) "Saturday Night Live"
This really feels like the Kate McKinnon show now, which I really don't mind since she's a bit more chameleonic and unreliant on running characters compared to the last unofficial star of "SNL," Kristen Wiig. I feel like Cecily Strong is finally creeping back into the spotlight a little more, 3 years after leaving the "Weekend Update" desk.

Tuesday, October 03, 2017



















My band Woodfir is playing a couple shows this month and breaking in some new material we just recorded. First, we'll be at the Windup Space on Friday the 13th of October with Domino, Bong Wish, and Dougie Poole. The next night, October 14th, we're playing a house party with KnifeCrime, Zombii, and Young Program. 

Reda and Tim and I also recently sat down with Kelsi Loos for a Woodfir episode of her podcast about Baltimore/D.C. music, Corridor Cast. This is my 2nd Corridor appearance after appearing on an early episode in 2012, and my friend Mat Leffler-Schulman also recently appeared on Corridor Cast and talked about the Woodfir and Western Blot sessions I just had at Mobtown Studios. 

Monthly Report: September 2017 Albums

Monday, October 02, 2017


























1. Ted Leo - The Hanged Man
2001's The Tyranny Of Distance was my favorite album of the 2000s, and Ted Leo was thrilling to follow throughout that whole decade live and on record, just an incredibly thoughtful songwriter and an equally energetic performer (a rarer combination than you might think). But he's kept a relatively low profile for most of this decade, and a recent Stereogum feature that preceded his first solo album in 7 years detailed some of the hard times he'd been through. The Hanged Man is a little longer, darker, and less spirited than my favorite Ted Leo albums, so it's taken longer than usual to grow on me. But it's obviously also a record he needed to make, and songs in the second half like "Make Me Feel Loved" and "Lonsdale Avenue" draw me into its mood and its headspace. Here's the 2017 albums Spotify playlist I add records to as I listen to them.

2. Midland - On The Rocks
Midland is a trio of nudie suit-wearing country traditionalists that includes an underwear model and soap opera actor on lead vocals and a seasoned video director and pal of Bruno Mars on bass. But there's no contradiction between old-fashioned country and the flash and polish of show business professionals, and there's something about how well put together and considered Midland is, from the great lead single "Drinkin' Problem" on down. But I think "Check Cashin' Country" and "Electric Rodeo" are the songs that really sum up their aesthetic and their subject matter most perfectly.

3. Rapsody - Laila's Wisdom
Roc Nation is such a weird label with a relatively amorphous identity relative to Jay-Z's other business interests, and it's always been heard to tell even how much their occasional success stories like J. Cole can be credited to the label's work. So I'm irritated that this Rapsody album has had such a low profile compared to even the modest push Vic Mensa got. This album is so relaxed and melodic that sometimes I forget to pay attention to how good Rapsody is but I really like her flow and her personality.

4. The Effects - Eyes To The Light
Dischord Records has slowed down its output over the last couple decades, mostly issuing new music from people that have been associated with the label since the '80s or '90s. On the upside, that has meant a steady trickle of records featuring Devin Ocampo, a brilliant drummer for Smart Went Crazy, Beauty Pill and Deathfix, and an equally brilliant singer/guitarist for Faraquet, Medications and now The Effects. Eyes To The Light is very much of a piece with the Faraquet and Medications albums, pretty much the same aesthetic with a new rhythm section (which includes Matt Dowling, bassist from the great D.C. band Deleted Scenes that broke up a couple years ago). Ocampo still pulls his songs into tight, complicated shapes, but his lyrics and his melodies have perhaps gotten stronger and more memorable, "Set It Off" is one of his catchiest tunes to date.

5. J. Roddy Walston & The Business - Destroyers Of The Soft Life
It's been about a decade since the first time I saw J. Roddy Walston & The Business at the Ottobar and was just taken aback by how insanely good this band and their songs are, and it's been very gratifying to see them become a pretty famous national touring act. Walston is based out of Richmond now but some of the band is still around Baltimore, until recently I shared a practice space with Business drummer Steve Colmus and he's a nice guy. Destroyers Of The Soft Life is that kind of restless overhaul of their sound that bands tend to do eventually when they've been going at it this long, and while I miss a little of the piano-driven sound, they're mostly still playing to their strengths.

6. Outcalls - No King EP
Outcalls is another Baltimore act that blew me away the first time I saw them at the Ottobar, just a few weeks ago, two singers harmonizing over a tight 4-piece band. After the show I was raving about them to a friend, who told me the whole backstory about how their friend Evan Kornblum formed Outcalls and wrote and produced their first album, and then split with the band, who carried on without him. Their first album was really good and so is this new EP, and I guess they're similar enough that it makes sense to keep the name, it's just an interesting story.

7. Lee Ranaldo - Electric Trim
As someone who's been collecting Lee Ranaldo solo records and making mixes of the songs he wrote and sang on Sonic Youth albums for decades, it's gratifying to me that he's had pretty fruitful output as a songwriter since SY dissolved. I don't like this one as much as 2013's Last Night On Earth, but the introduction of some subtle programmed and looped drums works better than I would've expected. And there's some great instrumental moments throughout, particularly the guitar freakout with Nels Cline over a horn section at the end of "Purloined."

8. Demi Lovato - Tell Me You Love Me
On her first couple albums as a teen Disney Channel star, Demi Lovato was a guitar-strumming acolyte of the Kelly Clarkson/Pink wave of pop/rock, and in the years since then I feel like she's been a little adrift aesthetically even as she's had a better batting average than most of her contemporaries. Tell Me You Love Me finally feels a little closer to finding a consistent sound for her, with less clubby experimentation (although in light of Cheat Codes' "Promises" I wouldn't mind if she leaned a little more EDM). She's been addressing her complicated private life and public image in music for a while, but it feels like the sneering sense of humor of "Sorry Not Sorry" and the oddly funny "Daddy Issues" suit her more than earnest empowerment anthems like "Skyscraper." And "Ruin The Friendship" and "Concentrate" are up there as some of the best songs she's ever made.

9. Gregg Allman - Southern Blood
It's hard not to tie the recent deaths of various baby boomer classic rock icons to losing my dad this year. I had just come back from my dad's memorial the day I glanced at a TV and saw that Gregg Allman had passed away. A few weeks ago my brother sent me a bunch of dad's CDs that included an Allman Brothers Band compilation that I've been listening to in the car. And Allman's final album was recently released that includes covers of songs by some of dad's favorite acts like Jackson Browne and Little Feat (I mentioned Allman's cover of "Willin'" in this piece). So Southern Blood is a heavy album for me, but a beautiful record, a worthy addition to the depressing canon of farewell albums that artists made while they knew they were dying.

10. Fergie - Double Dutchess
The Dutchess was such an improbably great pop blockbuster that I found it disappointing that instead of capitalizing on the momentum of that album, or even the momentum of the huge album Black Eyed Peas album that followed it, Fergie just kinda waited until nobody was waiting for her to follow it up. So Double Dutchess arrives after 3 years of good but unsuccessful singles, a week after her divorce was announced, and probably wouldn't have come out at all if the album hadn't been unceremoniously leaked in unfinished form recently. But this album is actually really solid and continues to make the case for Fergie as a pretty talented singer and songwriter and vessel of forward-thinking production regardless of the decade of obnoxious white girl swag that she helped kick the door open for. The section of the album with the interlude after "You Already Know" leading into "Just Like You" is really sublime. And I still think "M.I.L.F. $" should have been a massive hit.

Worst Album of the Month: A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie - The Bigger Artist
There's probably no sound on the radio this year that I react to like nails on a chalkboard more than A Boogie's voice on "Drowning." But I think the worst thing about his major label debut is not just that he sounds like a total twerp but that he seems to take himself way more seriously than Kid Ink or the other anonymous radio rappers he reminds me of. The moment on "Get To You" where he starts interpolating Lauryn Hill's "Ex-Factor" is just staggeringly awful. On the bright side, the Chris Brown feature is so awful it probably won't get played on the radio.