Reda, Tim and I have released some new Woodfir music on Bandcamp, 3 brand new songs recorded by Steve Johnson and 1 previously released song recorded by Mat Leffler-Schulman. We had some performances planned that are obviously not happening now, but it's nice to at least get some music out there in the meantime. Tim's old band Wishing Rock also released a final single this week.


 

Billboard has been running a series of articles looking back at the year 2000 and big albums like *NSYNC's No Strings Attached, and I wrote an essay about how the sound of the album was a turning point for teen pop.

I posted a list of my top 100 albums of 2010-2019 back in November, and I knew I wanted to do more 2010s lists throughout 2020. Here in March, though, in the middle of the global coronavirus crisis, it feels like maybe I'm looking back nostalgically already at what feels like the last halfway normal time in our lives. I think this list looks pretty different from my 2000-2009 list, even with a handful of the same shows, because TV changed a lot in the last 10 years, creatively and as a business -- 14% of the list is Netflix, which didn't even start showing original series until 2013. In any event, everyone's at home and looking for TV recommendations, so maybe you'll listen to the guy who was already watching way too much TV.

1. Terriers (FX, 2010)
One of the reasons ranking TV series is harder than, say, albums or films, is a much larger degree of variation between how much material is being evaluated. How do I weigh a show with 13 episodes against shows that had dozens if not hundreds of episodes? As much as I would've loved more seasons of Terriers, though, I'm happy with the story we got -- as perfect and self-contained a 'one season wonder' as anything since Freaks & Geeks, a sunny beachside neo-noir with endless quips and plot twists courtesy of Ocean's Eleven screenwriter Ted Griffin. There's a 5-minute stretch in the third episode of Terriers where you realize how deeply fucked up the 3 main characters are, and then you continue to root for them for the next 10 episodes. I've been happily revisiting Terriers since it and other old FX shows started streaming on Hulu recently, and I might love it more now than I did 9 and a half years ago.

2. Bob's Burgers (FOX, 2011-present)
H. Jon Benjamin and Loren Bouchard have been making me laugh for 25 years, from Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist to Home Movies. But I never necessarily expected their dry sense of humor to thrive on primetime network TV, running for hundreds of episodes with the kind of show that inspires Halloween costumes every year. But Bob's Burgers has been remarkable consistent for 9 seasons and counting, still at the top of its game even at a point where The Simpsons had started to show signs of strain. In the process of making this list, I added together all the year-end TV lists I did from 2010 to 2019, and while there were some shows I praised year after year that I decided not to place so highly here, I felt pretty good about Bob's Burgers coming out at #1 in that tabulation.

3. Hannibal (NBC, 2013-2015)
Bryan Fuller is one of the most brilliant cinematic level creative talents who works exclusively in television, but he frustratingly rarely gets to work on a show for very long: Pushing Daisies got 2 seasons, Wonderfalls only got one, and Fuller left Dead Like Me and American Gods amidst creative differences. So even though I would've loved for Hannibal to go on longer, and potentially get to do its version of the Silence Of The Lambs story, I'm pretty grateful that Fuller got to make 3 incredible seasons of it, one of the weirdest, goriest and most immersive and indulgently artsy shows to ever air on a network that breaks for commercials every 10 minutes.

4. Justified (FX, 2010-2015)
TV dramas have rarely ended on a high note. But as the artistic prestige of television has risen, so have expectations for series finales, with the ambiguity of The Sopranos finale and the hapless nonsense of the Lost finale creating the climate for a full-blown national anxiety attack about the Game Of Thrones finale. There's debate to be had about what show had the best ending (some people will say Breaking Bad, and they're wrong, it was stupid), but for my money, it was absolutely Justified. A show that seemed to be building to a violent showdown through its whole 6-season run found an elegant and satisfying way to close the book on all its characters, and it rose my overall opinion of a show that I'd somewhat taken for granted as a guilty pleasure that peaked in the 2nd season but was, in retrospect, remarkably consistent.

5. Russian Doll (Netflix, 2019-present)
What an absolute delight this show has been, how great it was to see Natasha Lyonne resurrect herself from a pretty dark period and create something that so perfectly distills her unique screen presence and personality into a hilarious and kind of poignant time loop story with enough twists and turns to not just be an awkward child of Groundhog Day. I have no idea if they can make a show like this work for more than one season, but there's nothing I'm anticipating more on TV right now than the second season of Russian Doll.



























6. The Venture Bros. (Cartoon Network, 2003-present)
Few animated series have ever packed more into every minute than The Venture Bros., sight gags and dialogue dense with references overlapping each other so rapidly that I have to watch each episode at least 2 or 3 times to catch some of the best jokes. Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have started making shorter and more sporadic seasons of The Venture Bros. in the show's second decade, sometimes going almost 3 years without a new episode. But their dedication to quality control, and finding new ways to wring laughs out of an expanding satirical mythology, makes every season worth the wait.

7. Community (NBC/Yahoo! Screen, 2009-2015)
The only reason Community lasted for six seasons is because there was a throwaway gag in the second season about a fan of a low rated show expecting it to last for "six seasons and a movie." If the line was "five seasons and a movie," Community would have never staggered into a 6th season on Yahoo Screen! without 3 of the 7 members of the show's original study group (although the last season was still pretty good thanks to Keith David and Paget Brewster). But that kind of illustrates how far Community always went in its dedication to a good joke, the way each episode became a playground for a different genre or concept, something Dan Harmon had spent years preparing for by making dozens of 'pilot episodes' for Channel 101 and Acceptable.TV.

8. Barry (HBO, 2018-present)
Bill Hader was a 25-year-old production assistant and aspiring filmmaker when he took his first improv class, and he ended up on Saturday Night Live less than three years later. Barry is kind of a bizarro fantasy where Hader plays a hitman who gets the acting bug from an improv class, but can't leave his violent dayjob behind, and it's become proof that Hader was really a gifted filmmaker who got his shot at making something hilarious and dark like this because he also just happened to be one of the most gifted impressionists SNL had ever hired.

9. 30 Rock (NBC, 2006-2013)
30 Rock straddles two decades almost perfectly evenly -- 66 episodes in the 2000's, 72 episodes in the 2010s -- but the second half of the show's run was equal to, if not better, than the first half, which took a season or two to reach its top speed of jokes per minute. Even the weird live episodes were great, they just never fell off.

10. Fleabag (Amazon, 2016-2019)
I think I'm in the minority that liked Fleabag's first season more than the second -- the poignant moments of grief hit admidst the fast-talking comedy were more memorable to me than the whole hot priest thing. But both seasons were just a delight, the announcement of Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a major new voice in comedy, I can't wait to see what she does next.

















11. American Vandal (Netflix, 2017-2018)
Mockumentaries have been one of the most fertile genres of comedy since This Is Spinal Tap, but I feel like they lost their way a little bit in the past decade, when people just started doing straight sitcoms like Modern Family and Parks & Recreation that had no real idea of what ostensible documentary was being filmed, it was just the aesthetic of handheld cameras and people breaking the fourth wall. But the rise of true crime docs gave American Vandal a set of tropes to satirize, and it did so hilariously.

12. Documentary Now! (IFC, 2015-present)
Documentary Now! took the mockumentary concept to a new extreme, with each episode parodying a different famous documentary. It feels like Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and John Mulaney all freed themselves up to make these incredibly detailed satires of films that, for the most part, would never be considered pop culture enough to be Saturday Night Live sketches during their time at SNL.

13. Happy Endings (ABC, 2011-2013)
When Happy Endings debuted, a sitcom about 3 guys and 3 gals that opens with one of the gals leaving her fiancee at the altar, I feared the worst kind of fourth generation Friends knockoff. And then it turned out to be one of the funniest shows on TV, with great cast chemistry and its own odd, unique rhythm of dialogue that felt like a group of weirdos sharing all their inside jokes with you.

14. Succession (HBO, 2018-present)
Although Succession creator wrote an unproduced screenplay about the Murdoch family that doubtless provided some of the foundation for Logan Roy and his dysfunctional media dynasty, it's really for the better that he created fictional creators instead of joining executive producer Adam McKay's Rich Asshole Cinematic Universe. Succession is far funnier than reality, but shot more handsomely like a drama than the similarly ruthless Veep, and I'd rather laugh at Alan Ruck as Connor Roy running for president than the rich morons we had running for president in real life this year. The creative license of characters that merely parallel real life has given one of the best casts on TV in recent memory the freedom to breathe life into this horrible, entertaining family.

15. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (The CW, 2015-2019)
Uniting music with scripted television is a challenging balancing act, and most of the success stories have been shows that use already written pop songs like Glee. But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which presented catchy, memorable original songs alongside sharp dialogue and impressively three dimensional characters for four seasons, was a herculean achievement in both TV production and songwriting.

















16. The Magicians (Syfy, 2015-2020)
The Magicians is airing its final episode next week, and the news that this would be the final season only broke earlier this month. So I've been watching the 2020 episodes with a bittersweet feeling, and thinking more and more that it was one of the best shows of the 2010s -- the snarkier thought that crossed my mind is that it's the show people thought Buffy The Vampire Slayer was. Summer Bishil as Margo Hanson is maybe my favorite character on TV right now, both for her endless supply of quotable quips and for her interesting, well written relationships as Eliot's best friend and Josh's hookup-turned-girlfriend. Lev Grossman's novels provided the setting and the characters, but it feels like The Magicians' showrunners have really built the show around the strengths of its cast.

17. Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix, 2017-2019)
Between Justified and Santa Clarita Diet, Timothy Olyphant may be my personal MVP of 2010s television. Victor Fresco has always created odd, funny sitcoms that didn't last long on broadcast networks like Better Off Ted and Andy Richter Controls The Universe, and Santa Clarita Diet was both more weird and high concept than those shows and had a bigger heart. And while many were disappointed that Netflix canceled Santa Clarita Diet after 3 seasons, I think it's important to remember that a bloody sitcom about an undead mom probably would've gone off the air much faster before the streaming era.

18. The Young Pope (HBO, 2017)
The cliche that a season of prestige TV is really a "ten hour movie" has been rightfully ridiculed many times by people that understand that episodic television is a great medium that doesn't need to be constantly compared to feature films. But if I was to call anything here a ten hour movie, it would be Italian filmmaker Paulo Sorrentino's first venture into television. The cinematography, the score, the poetic sense of the surreal, I think The Young Pope and its 2020 sequel series The New Pope are one of the few times outside Twin Peaks that the "not like other TV shows" hype was really justified.

19. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix, 2015-2019)
Tina Fey's weird, scrappy follow-up to 30 Rock was built on an unusual foundation -- who thought a sitcom based on the women in Ariel Castro's basement was a good idea, really? But The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has such a great deranged energy to it thanks to the core trio of Ellie Kemper and  Titus Burgess and Carol Kane that it felt like essential viewing to me just like 30 Rock had been.

20. The Amazing World Of Gumball (Cartoon Network, 2011-present)
There are 4 Cartoon Network shows on this list, but 3 of them aired on the channel's nighttime 'adult swim' programming block. The Amazing World Of Gumball, however, airs in the daytime, and my kids sometimes watch it after school. Cartoon Network has some really good shows for kids, but Gumball, my god, it's just brilliant, its odd mixed media animation style and densely clever writing are as ahead of the curve as any Adult Swim show.



























21. Schitt's Creek (Pop TV, 2015-2020)
I kind of slept on Schitt's Creek at first -- I watched some of the first season, but when some episodes weren't available to watch on demand at the time, I kind of fell off track and stopped watching it. And then, it became a word-of-mouth Emmy-nominated hit, something I didn't think was even really possible for a show on Pop TV. So now I'm catching up on Netflix and kind of kicking myself that I didn't keep up with it before. Television thrives on fish-out-of-water stories, and Schitt's Creek is a classic 'miserable urbanite living in the sticks' show in the tradition of Green Acres and Northern Exposure, with comedy legends Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara very justifiably sharing their spotlight with Levy's son and co-creator, Dan Levy, the breakout star of the show.

22. Atlanta (FX, 2016-present)
As I sit here writing this, I'm listening to the terrible new Childish Gambino album and thinking about my observation years ago that Donald Glover consistently makes great television but mediocre music. Atlanta is, of course, ostensibly a show about southern rap and misadventures in the music industry, but that's really just the window dressing for a show that's been whatever it wants to be from episode to episode, held together largely by incredible, career-launching performances by Bryan Tyree Henry and Lakeith Stanfield.

23. Speechless (ABC, 2016-2019)
In a decade when the old-fashioned family sitcom kind of lost its place in the pop culture firmament, just barely held in place by Modern Family, it's been a procession of other, better ABC shows that have really kept the genre alive -- Black-ish, Fresh Off The Boat, and the short-lived Suburgatory and The Real O'Neals. The best of all of them, however, was Speechless, a show about a family of five whose eldest child is a high schooler with cerebral palsy, that handled difficult conversations about disability sensitively while still being incredibly funny and frank about the daily realities that every family must face. Minnie Driver as Maya DiMeo was one of the funniest and most completely realized matriarchs I've ever seen on television, a mom who fights hard for her son to get the same opportunities as everyone else, but can also be a little self-righteous and isn't always right. Few cancellations have ever pissed me off more than Speechless going off the air after three seasons last year.

24. BrainDead (CBS, 2016)
Another great 'one season wonder' that was simply too strange to last long on TV's most staid and traditional network, BrainDead was a classic weird summer show. As they neared the end of their highly acclaimed legal drama The Good Wife, Robert and Michelle King used their clout to get a show about extraterrestrial insects eating the brains of Washington, D.C. politicians on the air on CBS primetime. It's as smart and insightful about politics and the law as the Kings' other shows, but it's also a bizarre sci-fi satire about aliens that love listening to The Cars.

25. True Detective (HBO, 2014-present)
This show would probably be higher on the list if it was only one for one amazing season -- although season 2 was a little better than its dire reputation suggested and season 3 was solid. But Nic Pizzolatto's pretentions and ambitions really found an ideal outlet in that first season, with the greatest performance of Matthew McConaughey's career and one of a career's worth of perfect straight-talking sidekick performances from Wood Harrelson.


















26. Mindhunter (Netflix, 2017-2019)
27. Party Down (Starz, 2009-2010)
28. Brooklyn Nine-Nine (FOX/NBC, 2013-present)
29. Grace And Frankie (Netflix, 2015-present)
30. Bored To Death (HBO, 2009-2011)
31. The Good Place (NBC, 2016-2020)
32. Billions (Showtime, 2016-present)
33. Veep (HBO, 2012-2019)
34. Billy On The Street (Fuse/TruTV, 2011-2017)
35. UnREAL (Lifetime/Hulu, 2015-2018)
36. Better Things (FX, 2016-present)
37. Selfie (ABC, 2014)
38. Lodge 49 (AMC, 2018-2019)
39. Watchmen (HBO, 2019)
40. The Leftovers (HBO, 2014-2017)
41. Rick And Morty (Cartoon Network, 2013-present)
42. Halt And Catch Fire (AMC, 2014-2017)
43. Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013)
44. Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime, 2017)
45. The Night Of (HBO, 2016)
46. Homecoming (Amazon, 2018-present)
47. New Girl (FOX, 2011-2018)
48. Don't Trust The B---- In Apartment 23 (ABC, 2012-2013)
49. Black-ish (ABC, 2014-present)
50. Killing Eve (BBC America, 2018-present)
51. Broad City (Comedy Central, 2014-2019)
52. Childrens Hospital (Cartoon Network, 2010-2016
53. Workin' Moms (Netflix, 2019-present)
54. Inside Amy Schumer (Comedy Central, 2013-2016)
55. How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 2005-2014)
56. Pitch (FOX, 2016)
57. Future Man (Hulu, 2017-2020)
58. Lady Dynamite (Netflix, 2016-2017)
59. Jessica Jones (Netflix, 2015-2019)
60. Men Of A Certain Age (TNT, 2009-2011)
61. Better Off Ted (ABC, 2009-2010)
62. Masters Of Sex (Showtime, 2013-2016)
63. Superstore (NBC, 2015-present)
64. Mom (CBS, 2013-present)
65. Suits (USA, 2011-2019)
66. Watchmen (HBO, 2019)
67. American Princess (Lifetime, 2019)
68. The Exorcist (FOX, 2016-2017)
69. Sorry For Your Loss (Facebook Watch, 2018-2019)
70. Westworld (HBO, 2016-present)
71. Downward Dog (ABC, 2017)
72. Brockmire (IFC, 2017-2020)
73. Sons Of Anarchy (FX, 2008-2014)
74. Difficult People (Hulu, 2015-2017)
75. iZombie (The CW, 2015-2019)
76. Big Little Lies (HBO, 2017-2019)
77. Fresh Off The Boat (ABC, 2013-2020)
78. Preacher (AMC, 2016-2019)
79. Episodes (Showtime, 2011-2017)
80. Hung (HBO, 2009-2011)
81. GLOW (Netflix, 2017-2020)
82. Pose (FX, 2018-present)
83. Key & Peele (Comedy Central, 2012-2015)
84. Jett (Cinemax, 2019-present)
85. Veronica Mars (Hulu, 2019)
86. Los Espookys (HBO, 2019-present)
87. Suburgatory (ABC, 2011-2014)
88. The Grinder (FOX, 2015-2016)
89. True Blood (HBO, 2008-2014)
90. Dietland (AMC, 2018)
91. Bullet In The Face (IFC, 2012)
92. Channel Zero (Syfy, 2016-2018)
93. You (Lifetime/Netflix, 2018-present)
94. Diablero (Netflix, 2018-present)
95. The Mindy Project (FOX/Hulu, 2012-2017)
96. Castlevania (Netflix, 2017-present)
97. The Affair (Showtime, 2014-2019)
98. Parenthood (NBC, 2010-2015)
99. Love (Netflix, 2016-2018)
100. Treme (HBO, 2010-2013)

I spoke with Chad Clark and Erin Nelson of Beauty Pill about their new song and video "Pardon Our Dust" for Spin.

(photo by Morgan Klein)

Like everyone else, I woke up to the news on Saturday morning that Kenny Rogers had passed at the age of 81. And I thought it'd be a little more interesting to look at his entire career, beginning with the group The First Edition, whose first hit predated Kenny's first solo hit by a decade. I've done playlists before where I've folded together a group and a solo career, and Kenny had a similar career arc to Ray Parker Jr. And Raydio or Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan -- releasing albums first under the group name, then with the lead singer and the group getting equal billing on some albums, and then albums from them as a solo artist. Rogers had some great solo songs -- I think my favorite is "Lucille" -- but The First Edition's biggest hit "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" is definitely a high point of his long career.

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I Found A Reason w/ The First Edition
2. If I Could Only Change Your Mind w/ The First Edition
3. Last Few Threads Of Love w/ The First Edition
4. Good Time Liberator w/ The First Edition
5. A Stranger In My Place w/ The First Edition
6. Love Woman w/ The First Edition
7. Tulsa Turnaround w/ The First Edition
8. Calico Silver w/ The First Edition
9. There's An Old Man In Our Town
10. Puttin' In Overtime At Home
11. Mother Country Music
12. Lying Again
13. The Loving Gift w/ Dottie West
14. Something About Your Song
15. Morgana Jones
16. Making Music For Money
17. You Turn The Light On
18. Gideon Tanner
19. Long Arm Of The Law
20. Goin' Back To Alabama
21. Greybeard
22. Maybe You Should Know
23. Farther I Go
24. Living With You
25. Heart To Heart
26. With Bells On w/ Dolly Parton

Track 1 from The First Edition by The First Edition (1967)
Track 2 from The First Edition's 2nd by The First Edition (1968)
Track 3 from The First Edition '69 by The First Edition (1969)
Track 4 from Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (1969)
Track 5 from Something's Burning by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (1970)
Track 6 from Tell It All Brother by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (1970)
Track 7 from Transition by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (1971)
Track 8 from The Ballad Of Calico by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (1972)
Track 9 from Love Lifted Me by Kenny Rogers (1976)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Kenny Rogers by Kenny Rogers (1977)
Track 12 from Daytime Friends by Kenny Rogers (1977)
Track 13 from Every Time Two Fools Collide by Kenny Rogers & Dottie West (1978)
Track 14 from Love Or Something Like It by Kenny Rogers (1978)
Tracks 15 and 16 from The Gambler by Kenny Rogers (1978)
Track 17 from Kenny by Kenny Rogers (1979)
Track 18 from Gideon by Kenny Rogers (1980)
Track 19 from Greatest Hits by Kenny Rogers (1980)
Tracks 20 and 21 from Share Your Love by Kenny Rogers (1981)
Track 22 from Love Will Turn You Around by Kenny Rogers (1982)
Track 23 from We've Got Tonight by Kenny Rogers (1983)
Track 24 from Eyes That See In The Dark by Kenny Rogers (1983)
Track 25 from What About Me? by Kenny Rogers (1984)
Track 26 from Once Upon A Christmas by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton (1984)

Kenny Rogers was already almost 40 with the signature silver in his beard by the time he became a major star, so naturally he'd kicked around the music scene a good while before that. He released doo wop singles as 'Kenneth Rogers' in the '50s, then played upright bass with the folk institution The New Christy Minstrels, before breaking off with a few NCM bandmates to form The First Edition, who had this cool, unique sound that combined country, R&B, and psychedelic rock. At first, Kenny Rogers was mainly The First Edition's bassist, with primary songwriter Mike Settle sharing most of the lead vocals with Thelma Lou Camacho. But Rogers sang lead on two songs on the group's self-titled debut that both became singles, foreshadowing how he'd ultimately become the face of the group. One of those singles was the top 10 hit "Just Dropped In," famously featured in The Big Lebowski. The other single, "I Found A Reason," didn't chart, so it felt like fair game to feature in the deep cuts playlist, given that it's pretty much the first Kenny Rogers lead vocal on an album.

On The First Edition's 2nd, Rogers continued to sing more and notched his first couple writing credits, including "If I Could Only Change Your Mind" co-written with guitarist Terry Williams. By the group's 4th album, they were officially billed as Kenny Rogers & The First Edition, and remained that way until the band's mid-'70s breakup. By that point, they'd totally lost commercial momentum -- they released 12 studio albums, but the last 4 failed to chart. Even now, only the first two First Edition albums are available on streaming services in their full original running order, so I cobbled together tracks here from their first 8 albums largely from best-of compilations -- the group didn't have that many hits, so quite a few album tracks appeared on those comps.

It only took Kenny Rogers two solo albums to match and exceed The First Edition's commercial success, and he was off and running. He was never a prolific writer, and penned very few of the singles he's best known for (the biggest being "Love Will Turn You Around,""Sweet Music Man," "What About Me?" and "Love Or Something Like It"). But the same warm, effortlessly inviting voice and trademark vibrato that made Rogers the star of The First Edition turned him into a remarkable hit factory, the 43rd biggest Hot 100 artist of all time. It was fun to dig through here and find some great songs, "Puttin' In Overtime At Home" took on a different meaning for me as I head into my 2nd week quarantined in my house during the coronavirus outbreak.

Kenny Rogers definitely has a legacy as one the people that made country into pop music. And I think at his best he was evolving the 'countrypolitan' sound Billy Sherrill developed with George Jones, particularly on his biggest album, the Sherrill-produced The Gambler. A number of songs Rogers first recorded with The First Edition -- some self-written, some by Alex Harvey and other songwriters -- were re-recorded for his solo records, and The Gambler alone featured 4 songs first recorded by The First Edition. It's funny to think that "Making Music For Money" originated on The First Edition's unsuccessful final album that was only released in New Zealand, and then was re-recorded for an album that went 5x platinum -- the lyric can really take on different undertones depending on the context. Rogers scatting along with the guitar solo on "Morgana Jones" is probably the most entertainingly silly moment in his catalog. And I especially love Kenny's 1978 version of "Something About Your Song," which expands on the funky horn arrangement of The First Edition's 1973 version.

For someone who didn't necessarily make very ambitious records, Kenny Rogers ended up making two concept albums, albeit written and conceptualized by other people. The First Editions's The Ballad Of Calico was written by Michael Murphey, who went onto a solo career as one of the leaders of the 'outlaw country' movement. And at the height of Rogers' solo fame he made Gideon, a concept album about a cowboy, sort of a charming Red Headed Stranger-style record, that was written by Kim Carnes and featured a duet with Carnes that really launched her career as a solo artist.

Rogers and Dottie West made a couple albums together and made some of country's biggest male-female duets. And I thought their best track together was "The Loving Gift," a song Kris Kristofferson wrote a few years earlier for Johnny Cash to sing with June Carter Cash. Of course, Rogers made his biggest duet with Dolly Parton, but the only full-length they ever recorded together was a Christmas album. And "Islands In The Stream" was from an entire album written and produced by the Gibb brothers, "Eyes That See In The Dark," but there's a lot of talent all over later Rogers album. I particularly like "Maybe You Should Know," which features Beatles/Stones sideman Billy Preston on keys and Little Feat's Fred Tackett on guitar.

One of his most famous songs, "Lady," was recorded as a new track for his 1980 Greatest Hits album, which featured another unreleased song, "Long Arm of the Law," that wasn't released as a single but is still probably pretty well known just for appearing on his only diamond-selling record. After the success of "Lady," Lionel Richie produced the next Kenny Rogers album, Share Your Love, although none of the four songs Richie wrote on the album was ever released as a single -- even "Goin' Back To Alabama," which has Michael Jackson and Richie on backing vocals. It's interesting that Richie never recorded "Goin' Back To Alabama" himself, since it's clearly an autobiographical song about his home state (Rogers is from Texas and lived in Georgia).

I wrote a piece for Spin about a dozen "difficult 4th albums" throughout pop music history, from The Beatles to Bruce to Beyonce.

Morrissey is releasing a new album this week, and while he's pretty much a reprehensible bastard now, I did want to take a look back at his old band and the albums that are the reason anybody continues to pay attention to him.

The Smiths deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I Know It's Over
2. Nowhere Fast
3. Death Of A Disco Dancer
4. Still Ill
5. Unloveable
6. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
7. You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby
8. Paint A Vulgar Picture
9. The Headmaster Ritual
10. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want
11. The Queen Is Dead
12. Meat Is Murder
13. Vicar In A Tutu
14. Pretty Girls Make Graves
15. Asleep
16. Frankly, Mr. Shankly
17. Well I Wonder
18. Unhappy Birthday
19. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
20. London

Tracks 4 and 14 from The Smiths (1984)
Tracks 2, 9, 12 and 17 from Meat Is Murder (1985)
Tracks 1, 6, 11, 13, 16 and 19 from The Queen Is Dead (1986)
Tracks 3, 8 and 18 from Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)
Tracks 5, 7, 10, 15 and 20 from Louder Than Bombs (1987)

The Smiths are probably the biggest theoretical reunion tour that will never happen, other than ABBA, as far as groups where everyone's still alive but they're just never going to stand onstage together again. They were together for almost exactly 5 years, and were a hugely popular recording act (at least in the UK) for 4 of those, and then it was over.

I kind of feel like 4 must be the magic number for albums an alternative band can leave behind before flaming out to leave a lasting, influential legacy, if you're to go on The Smiths, The Pixies, (sort of) The Velvet Underground, and so on. But The Smiths also released a lot of standalone singles and non-album stuff that was collected into compilations that are about as much part of their canon as the albums -- Hatful Of Hollow and The World Won't Listen in the UK, and much of the same material on Louder Than Bombs in the US. Bombs is basically one of their biggest records in America, so I kinda treated it as the de facto 5th album here.

Because there's something in the DNA of the British rock press that each era has to have its big bands paired up as rivals (Beatles/Stones, Blur/Oasis), you can rarely bring up The Smiths without people bringing up whether you prefer them or The Cure, and vice versa. I've always had more of a natural affinity for The Cure, although for a long time I kind of only liked British rock from the '60s and '70s and took a while to come around to embracing the UK rock of the '80s. And I play Jeff Buckley's small discography around the house a lot, which includes some lovely covers of "I Know It's Over" and "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" that have really ingratiated me to those songs.

I included "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," which was eventually released as single in the '90s to promote a compilation but wasn't really part of the band's proper singles output. Over the years it's grown into the band's most streamed song, ahead of even "How Soon Is Now," so I think it's interesting that it was never promoted back when The Queen Is Dead was in stores -- even the 1992 single was only the band's 14th-highest charting song in the UK. "Asleep," "I Know It's Over" and "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" are other non-singles that are among the band's most streamed songs now.

I like the song "Vicar In A Tutu," although you can imagine my disappointment the first time I played it that the chorus didn't go "vicar in a tutu, I know, I know, it's serious." The lyrics of "Paint A Vulgar Picture" about record labels cashing in on dead stars -- "reissue! repackage! repackage! reevaluate the songs! double-pack with a photograph, extra track and tacky badge!" -- are a bit more amusing given how many compilations have been issued of the band's small catalog since their breakup.

The Smiths are I think part of a lineage of rock, particularly British bands, where the singer and guitarist functionally are the band in the public mind and the rhythm section doesn't matter at all. But even if they weren't part of the songwriting braintrust that made The Smiths stand out, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce have some pretty choice moments on these records, I particularly think they loosened up on later songs like "Death of a Disco Dancer." And it appealed to me to end the playlist with one of their faster, more rocking songs, "London."

I probably would've done this earlier, but I did a Complex list of the best Erykah Badu songs a few years ago that scratched that itch for a while, but now I feel like doing a proper playlist.

Erykah Badu deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. My Life
2. Rim Shot (Intro)
3. Master Teacher
4. Woo
5. Sometimes
6. Agitation
7. Green Eyes
8. Hello featuring Andre 3000
9. Me
10. In Love With You featuring Stephen Marley
11. 20 Feet Tall
12. Telephone
13. Searching (live)
14. 4 Leaf Clover
15. I Want You

Tracks 2, 5 and 14 from Baduizm (1997)
Track 13 from Live (1997)
Tracks 1, 7 and 10 from Mama's Gun (2000)
Tracks 4 and 15 from Worldwide Underground (2003)
Tracks 3, 9 and 12 from New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)
Tracks 6 and 11 from New Amerykah Part Two (Return Of The Ankh) (2010)
Track 8 from But You Caint Use My Phone (2015)

In a couple weeks we'll be 10 years out from Erykah Badu's last proper album, Return Of The Ankh. I know a lot of people thought the mixtape that appeared a few years later, But You Caint Use My Phone, was as good as an album, but I found the whole thing mostly disappointing and forgettable -- I definitely wanted to include the great Andre 3000 collaboration, but all the covers and guest verses by a Drake soundalike that Erykah wanted people to think maybe actually was Drake, it was weird.

But even before this long break between releases, Badu tended to take her time between records -- not quite as much as D'Angelo or Maxwell, but it definitely feels like the artists who came up in that mid-'90s neo-soul wave share an indifference to the hurried pace of major label release schedules that I respect. Generally speaking, those folks are worth waiting for (incidentally, I teleprompted the Urban One Honors broadcast a few months ago -- Badu was supposed to present an award, but kept us waiting so long that we had to scramble to give her lines to someone else and adjust the script, but I couldn't even be mad, it's Erykah Badu).

Badu's early success has kind of overshadowed the rest of her career commercially -- Baduizm is by far her biggest seller, and the live album released the same year isn't far behind. But while I'm kind of annoyed by people with big debut albums having a live album really earlier in their career before they've amassed a catalog -- I'd love to hear another Badu live album now -- 1997's Live holds up pretty well. It featured the debut of the classic "Tyrone" as well as a nice selection of covers to distinguish it from simply being a live version of Baduizm, including a rending of "Searching" by Roy Ayers, years before Badu started working with Ayers himself on Mama's Gun.

I think there's a case to be made for any of Badu's albums being your favorite, I certainly respect Mama's Gun being the answer for a lot of people, but for me 4th World War is just a classic, still one of the best albums of the 2010s. And of course "Master Teacher" now has the strange legacy of giving the world the phrase "stay woke" and kicking off the last decade's slide into 'woke' being the new thing people say instead of "politically correct" to belittle ideas about justice and equality. The song is still good, though. I would've liked to fit more than 15 songs into my 80-minute cap, but I didn't feel like I could lose either of the 10-minute epics "Green Eyes" and "I Want You," or the 7-minute Dilla tribute "Telephone," she just does well with long songs. The 93-second "Agitation" is one of my favorites too, though.

a) Them That Follow
Sometimes I won't even hear about a movie until it pops up one day on an OnDemand menu and I'm intrigued, which was the case for Them That Follow, which apparently premiered at Sundance last year but never got a wide release or awards season buzz. The cast, which includes Olivia Colman, Walton Goggins, Kaitlyn Dever, and Jim Gaffigan, really caught my eye, and the Pentecostal snake handling stuff is an interesting community to set a story in. However, as the movie went on, it became kind of a simple, not terribly interesting story about Alice Englert and Thomas Mann as star-crossed lovers, and the rest of the cast felt a little overqualified to play an Appalachian version of Montagues and Capulets.

b) Ma
I wasn't sure what to make of this movie when it came out or whether I wanted to see it. But I'm not gonna lie, the photoshopped posters kinda pushed me in the direction of seeing it. And I kind of dig that the director of The Help wanted "to do something really fucked up" and got a script from Blumhouse and tailored it to Octavia Spencer so she could play against type as a lead. I'm sure it would be a very different movie as it was originally written with a white lady with no backstory in the lead role, but  it took on a lot of subtext as a black woman that's been wronged and taken for granted by two generations of obnoxious white people. It gets a little over-the-top at times but overall I thought it was a pretty solid thriller with a couple of big laughs.

c) Alita: Battle Angel
I've always admired Robert Rodriguez for his dyi roots and his ability to make action movies on smaller budgets with more practical effects than his contemporaries, so it's interesting to see him helm a big $170 million budget James Cameron production, which still has kind of a bright cartoony Spy Kids aesthetic, in addition to the movie's most distinctive feature, Rosa Salazar playing the cyborg title character with giant CGI'd anime eyes. But what I really liked about the movie was the cast, Christoph Waltz and Mahershala Ali and Jennifer Connolly all grounded the movie pretty well and kept it from being just a big noisy fx showcase.

d) Creed II
This was a decent enough sequel that hit all the necessary notes well enough. But it definitely felt a little like Ryan Coogler being too busy with Black Panther to do another Creed movie doomed it a little bit to not measure up to the original, nothing wrong with Steven Caple Jr.'s direction but it just didn't pop in the same way.

e) Anna
I like Luc Besson's violent action movies way more than his space operas, and this one was pretty good. It was the right role that required a kind of icy intensity that made for an ideal model-to-actress transition project for Sasha Luss, Helen Mirren was great, and the fight choreography was just unreal.

f) Godzilla: King Of The Monsters
This had more actual Godzilla in it than the 2014 Godzilla and was better overall, but I still feel like all of America's modern 9-figure budget Godzilla movies are just tremendously missing the point by inserting these vaguely respectable human dramas with actors like Kyle Chandler and Vera Farmiga into them. 

g) Tolkien
Nicholas Hoult has a weird waxy look and limited acting range, I sometimes have trouble buying him playing a human being, much less a famous author, so this didn't do much for me.

h) Redcon-1
My wife and I have always watched horror movies on Valentine's Day, it's a little tradition of ours. But often we kind of just click around and arbitrarily pick the first streaming movie that seems a little interesting, so we often end up watching a pretty bad horror movie. This British zombie movie kinda felt like a more low rent 28 Days Later, was moderately well paced and watchable but I don't know if I'd recommend it.

i) A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Shaun The Sheep isn't the top of the top Aardman Animations franchises for me, but it's really cute and I've always enjoyed when my kids have watched the series and the first movie, so I liked the silly flying saucer-themed sequel.

j) Woody Woodpecker
My son was watching this 2017 movie and I was very amused to look it up and learn about the enormous popularity of Woody Woodpecker cartoons in Brazil going back for decades. This movie was filmed in Canada with English dialogue, but only released on VOD in America while it got a big theatrical run in Brazil. Otherwise, though, pretty mediocre kid's movie.

1. Halsey - "You Should Be Sad"
I like the weird quasi-country sound Greg Kurstin put together for this song that still feels like it has a light dance music pulse under it and occasionally bursts into this big screaming hair metal guitar leads, by some distance my favorite thing Halsey has done to date. But I think it's kind of funny that she says "I had no warning about who you are," because c'mon, you didn't have a hunch G-Eazy might be a bad boyfriend? That guy dresses like the Fonz. Here's my favorite 2020 singles Spotify playlist.

2. Moneybagg Yo f/ Blac Youngsta - "1 2 3" 
One of my favorite subgenres of southern rap is beats where the keyboard part consists mainly of 3 or 4 keys on the lowest octave of a piano, those tracks always sound hard. I've said before that Moneybagg Yo is my favorite of the current wave of Memphis rappers and Blac Youngsta is my least favorite, but they definitely bring out the best in each other, this might be the best performance of Blac Youngsta's career. 

3. Demi Lovato - "I Love Me"
"Anyone" was a good song for Demi Lovato to tentatively step back into the spotlight with after the dark days of an overdose and rehab, but I've always preferred her uptempo material to her ballads, and "I Love Me" was the kind of song I was hoping for from her, something with a couple of the same co-writers as "Sorry Not Sorry" that has a little more heart in it. But what I really like about this song is this big swinging pivots from a big sound to a spare sound, you don't really get classic quiet/loud dynamics much in current top 40 music. 

4. Harry Styles - "Adore You"
Finally, Harry Styles has a bona fide U.S. radio hit, something that surpassed the perfunctory spins "Sign Of The Times" got 3 years ago, and it feels like he just kinda came around to it when he felt like making one. I think the weird video where he sings the song to a fish makes the song more charming than I initially thought it was. And now when he sings "would you believe it!?" I picture him saying it to a fish while pointing to a taco.

5. The 1975 - "You & Me Together Song" 
The 1975 have a tendency to put scarequotes and meta gestures around their hookiest and most memorable songs, it's one of the things that makes them interesting and one of the things that makes them annoying. And you can see that right in the extraneous use of the word 'song' in this song's title, and the over-the-top nods to mid-'90s Britpop in both the song and the video. But I really dig this one, it's growing on me a lot. 

6. Jonas Brothers - "What A Man Gotta Do"
I'm kind of bummed that this hasn't done as well as the Happiness Begins singles, it's really good (although I think the title/chorus would annoy me less with a more grammatically correct "what a man's gotta do"). The Jonases are managing that balancing act of being a real instrument-playing rock-influenced band in the current Top 40 climate better than, say, Maroon 5, and in this song I feel like they've shrewdly taken cues from George Michael's "Faith" in the taut arrangement of chunky acoustic guitar strums and light clicky percussion. 

7. Taylor Swift - "The Man"
It took 4 singles for Taylor to get to a song on Lover that's actually good -- unfortunately, all the bad single choices have meant she's now falling out of that upper echelon of pop artists where people actually care about your 4th single. Really, this could've been the 1st single.

8. Doja Cat - "Say So" 
I've been kind of quietly confused the last few months as Doja Cat has started to get lumped in more and more with full-time rappers who make hip-hop -- she can rap well, but I look at it as kind of one component of her sound that's slightly more prominent now than it was on her earlier stuff. So I'm kinda glad that a big melodic pop song like "Say So" is becoming her biggest hit, even if it has one rapped verse, it kind of puts her in that Gwen Stefani kind of sound that I associate her with more. 

9. Lady Gaga - "Stupid Love" 
I've been interested to see how well Lady Gaga would return to her old bright loud pop sensibility after the A Star Is Born stuff kind of put her back on top. And while her first collaboration with Max Martin kind of falls short of what I'd hoped for from her at this juncture, it's also her best lead single in a long time, easily better than "Perfect Illusion" and "Applause Plause." 

10. The Strokes - "Bad Decisions" 
One of the things that making a Strokes deep album cuts playlist confirmed for me was that they've made plenty of good songs since the dreaded "Juicebox," but "Bad Decisions" might be the first actually good single they've released since then. And it's still a little goofy, it basically sounds like they wrote "Melt With You" but changed the chorus to "stop the world and melt with you" to "making bad decisions with you," but they've always been at their best when they're stealing a little. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Nicki Minaj - "Yikes" 
I think Nicki Minaj still has a lot of potential to come back and make great music, but this song really was not the move, I'm kind of glad this fell off the Hot 100 quicker than "Chun-Li" or "Barbie Dreams" so she can try something besides a tired trap song. After Rosa Parks didn't like the Outkast song while she was alive, I don't know why Nicki thought "all you bitches Rosa Parks, uh oh get ya ass up" was a good idea.

Daniel Kohn and I spoke to people at the artist, management, and festival organizer level for a Spin report on the impact of COVID-19 on the concert industry.

Mazzy Star guitarist and songwriter David Roback passed away in February at the age of 61, so I wanted to take a look back at their catalog, which has really seemed to earn more respect and more listeners over the past couple decades since their '90s heyday.

Mazzy Star deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Mary Of Silence
2. Ride It On
3. Bells Ring
4. Look On Down From The Bridge
5. Before I Sleep
6. Happy
7. Into Dust
8. Under My Car
9. In The Kingdom
10. She Hangs Brightly
11. So Tonight That I Might See
12. That Way Again
13. Blue Light
14. Things
15. Flying Low
16. Take Everything

Tracks 2, 5 and 10 from She Hangs Brightly (1990)
Tracks 1, 3, 7, 11 and 13 from So Tonight That I Might See (1993)
Tracks 4, 6 and 16 from Among My Swan (1996)
Track 8 from the Deep Cuts EP (2009)
Tracks 9 and 16 from Seasons Of Your Day (2013)
Track 12 from the "I'm Less Here" single (2014)
Track 14 from the Still EP (2018)

Mazzy Star's 4 albums kind of perfectly epitomize the career arc of a '90s alternative band. They had the cult classic indie debut, championed by Kurt Cobain and picked up by a major label for re-release. Then they had the big platinum breakthrough sophomore album, and the less popular but critically acclaimed third album. And many years later after a period of inactivity, a return for the fourth album after they'd been celebrated as an influential touchstone for younger bands.

I often think about how 1994, the year Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" was inescapable, was the moment when mainstream alternative radio sounded the most indie rock that it would ever get. Pavement, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Meat Puppets and Liz Phair all had some of their biggest singles that year, and I was hearing some of those acts for the first time and in fact heard the phrase 'indie rock' for the first time in 1994, so I didn't totally recognize what was going on there next, or that I'd spend the next few years exploring those bands' back catalogs and influences while alt-rock radio became something very different. So I didn't really recognize Mazzy Star as representing a hip underground subculture with their ballad with pianos and slide guitars, but in retrospect "Fade Into You" was really a commercial and creative high point for a particular dream pop/psych rock revival aesthetic that has otherwise usually thrived at an indie level. And certainly Hope Sandoval's voice has this really distinct, haunting quality that few others can really lay claim to.

One thing I didn't realize at the time was that the moderately successful "Fade Into You" follow-up, "Halal," was actually not from the same album, So Tonight That I Might See. Instead, for whatever reason, a 5-year-old track from their debut got promoted to radio. And a lot of their songs have been continued to be resurrected and popularized years later. Their 2 most popular songs besides "Fade Into You" on streaming services are "Into Dust," which charted in 2009 after being featured in multiple commercials, and "Look On Down From The Bridge" has been in several films and episodes of "The Sopranos" and "Rick And Morty." So Tonight That I Might See is definitely the biggest Mazzy Star album, but Among My Swan seems to have a devoted following too, and the highlight "Take Everything" features guitar from William Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain.

I was amused to see that Mazzy Star released an EP titled Deep Cuts in 2009, so perhaps you got to this page my searching about that release. Anyway, it appears to be some kind of weird thing Capitol Records slapped together long after the band left the label, perhaps to capitalize on the viral popularity of "Into Dust," that actually misspells their name as 'Mazzy Starr' on the crappy-looking cover art. Nonetheless, it does have some good songs, including the "Fade Into You" b-side "Under My Car." It was around that time that Hope Sandoval and David Roback began performing again as Mazzy Star, and released an album, a one-off single, and an EP over the past decade.

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
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar broke his customary long pre-album silence last week with a weird announcement about a new company called pgLang. I'm still not convinced it isn't some kind of high concept album promo, but either way we're probably getting new music soon. Kendrick has been looked at as one of the greats or on his way to it since pretty early in his career, but now that he's got a catalog going back a decade, it really feels like he's in the conversation. If nothing else he's gonna be at the top of every conversation about his generation of rappers.

Kendrick Lamar deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Hood Politics
2. m.A.A.d city featuring MC Eiht
3. ELEMENT.
4. Black Panther
5. Hol' Up
6. Money Trees featuring Jay Rock
7. You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said)
8. untitled 08 | 09.06.2014.
9. Blow My High (Members Only)
10. FEEL.
11. Complexion (A Zulu Love) featuring Rapsody
12. Ignorance Is Bliss
13. Opps with Vince Staples and Yugen Blakrok
14. untitled 06 | 06.30.2014.
15. Keisha's Song (Her Pain) featuring Ashtro Bot
16. u
17. DUCKWORTH.
18. Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst

Track 12 from Overly Dedicated (2010)
Tracks 5, 9 and 15 from Section.80 (2011)
Tracks 2, 6 and 18 from good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012)
Tracks 1, 7, 11 and 16 from To Pimp A Butterfly (2015)
Tracks 8 and 14 from untitled unmastered (2016)
Tracks 3, 10 and 17 from DAMN. (2017)
Tracks 4 and 13 from Black Panther: The Album (2018)

Obviously his catalog still isn't that large yet -- 3 big blockbuster albums, a couple of beloved early independent projects that are on streaming services, plus an outtakes collection and a soundtrack. And there's not really much on his major label albums that can be categorized as an obscurity -- hell, "m.A.A.d city" was performed at the Grammys, and at one point it was one of Kendrick's most streamed songs, but still, it was never a radio single, so it's fair game. And that Beach House sample on "Money Trees" is so awesome, still probably the high water mark for rap sampling indie rock.

I remember hearing a song or two from Section.80 and not being really taken with him yet, it really took some time with good kid and his features that era to really appreciate Kendrick. And even now there are things about his writing, his awkward and forced way of putting words together for the sake of rhyming, that grate on me, but he's still at the top of his field in so many other ways, particularly the production team he's got. And I go back now and enjoy Section.80, even if I disagree with the early adopters who still swear it's his best album. That at Overly Dedicated are still pretty impressive for what they are, and apparently "Ignorance Is Bliss" is the song that made Dr. Dre want to work with him.

In my end of decade list, I put To Pimp A Butterfly near the top and good kid in the middle, but DAMN. is no slouch either. I'm reticent to include a really long song when I can use that playlist space for multiple shorter songs, but I really couldn't do without the 12-minute "Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst." And putting it after "u" and "DUCKWORTH." makes that song land even heavier, he's really got some amazing music.