The 2021 Remix Report Card, Vol. 3

Tuesday, August 31, 2021















Here's Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 from earlier in the year, and the Spotify playlist of all of these remixes.

"Bad Habits (Fumez The Engineer Remix)" by Ed Sheeran featuring Tion Wayne and Central Cee
Ed Sheeran has been sporadically rapping and doing rap collabs for most of his career so there's nothing too surprising about him remixing his latest hit with a drill beat and a couple of London's current top rappers. And while I have no desire to encourage hip hop Sheeran, I will say it's not bad, he's barely on it and it mostly just makes good use of the ominous guitar line that's really the only thing I like about the original "Bad Habits." 
Best Verse: Tion Wayne
Overall Grade: B-

"Bundles 2" by Kayla Nicole featuring Flo Milli and Taylor Girlz
The first time I heard the original "Bundles" it gave me kind of a Flo Milli vibe so I'm glad they got her on the remix, she killed it. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+

"Butter (Remix)" by BTS featuring Megan Thee Stallion
My least favorite part of any BTS song is the sub-BEP rapping and I don't necessarily want to hear Megan on more pop features, so I wasn't really looking forward to this when it was announced. But the thing is, I really like "Butter" and this is a good tempo for Meg to rap over so it works better than I think anyone wants to admit. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"EPMD 2" by Nas featuring EPMD and Eminem
"EPMD" was one of my favorite songs on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack and I'm a sucker for that thing where a song is named after a classic rap act and then they show up on the remix. And as cool as it is to hear Erick and Parrish go back and forth on the opening verse, and Eminem's verse is pretty good by modern day Em standards, Nas really just effortlessly carries the track. Also it was really funny to realize that the last word Nas says before Eminem's verse is "spaghetti." 
Best Verse: Nas
Overall Grade: B

"Essence (Remix)" by Wizkid featuring Justin Bieber and Tems
Justin Bieber's winning strategy for the past five years has been to do collaborations for every demographic he can possibly reach: reggaeton, country, Billie Eilish, rap, EDM,  and now Afrobeats. I hate it. I mean, say what you will about Drake going Gary Oldman and adopting the accent of whatever song he's on, but Justin Bieber sings the same way on all these very different styles of music and most of the time he sounds like shit. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F

"Karma (Remix)" by Donell Jones featuring Carl Thomas, Dave Hollister, RL, and Jacquees
The remix of Donell Jones's latest single also marks the debut of The Chi, his LSG-style supergroup of four Y2K-era R&B stars who are all from Chicago (well, almost all, RL from Next is from Minneapolis). And then for some reason they threw Jacquees on the track too. No 'best verse' because they all sort of take turns singing lines and harmonizing, but I think Carl Thomas's voice has aged the best of the older guys. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Lick Back (Remix)" by EST Gee featuring Future and Young Thug
The original "Lick Back" is only 93 seconds long, so this feels less like a remix than a finished version of a popular fragment of a song. I like hearing Future and Thug on an evil-sounding ForeveRolling beat like this, it's a little harder than most of the stuff they've done together. 
Best Verse: Future
Overall Grade: B

"Lie To Me (Remix)" by Kem featuring Wiz Khalifa and Troy Taylor
Well over a year after Kem released the original "Lie To Me," he released this remix with a somewhat surprising guest. But Wiz Khalifa is kind of growing into old man R&B collabs so he sounds alright on producer Troy Taylor's new beat, which makes good use of a familiar Brenda Russell-via-Big Pun piano line. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Memories (Remix)" by Maroon 5 featuring YG and Nipsey Hussle
Maroon 5's latest album Jordi and its lead single were dedicated to the band's manager, Jordan Feldstein, who died in 2017. Still, it was a little jarring to see that a couple west coast street rappers are on the remix to this lilting guitar-driven ballad, which has the same backing track as on the original. I mean I get it, Nipsey died tragically too so it's sort of a tribute to him, and his verse works better than it should, considering that must have just found an unreleased verse on the same BPM and grafted it on here, but it's still a pretty weird track. 
Best Verse: Nipsey Hussle
Overall Grade: C-

"Nunnadet Shit (Remix)" by Asian Doll featuring Ivorian Doll, Dreezy, Rubi Rose, and Dreamdoll
There a lot of women in rap right now who are striving to be the next big breakout star after Saweetie and Coi Leray, and this remix is sort of a summit of four of them, plus the perennially underrated Dreezy. And the healthy competition really brought out the best in just about all of them, there's not a bad verse in this whole track, and I really had a hard time picking a favorite, although I'll give the edge to Dream Doll. Don't really like that beat, though, wish they'd done this with a different song. 
Best Verse: Dream Doll
Overall Grade: B+

"She Make It Clap (Remix)" by Soulja Boy featuring French Montana
Soulja Boy and French Montana are both kind of one-dimensional knuckleheads who tend to thrive when there's a more traditional skilled rapper on the track to balance them out, so it's weird to hear them on a track together. But French almost seems to recognize this and puts in an above average effort. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C-

"Slow Down (Remix)" by VanJess featuring Lucky Daye
Lucky Daye was a good choice for this track, their voices blend together really nicely. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Trenches (Remix)" by Morray featuring Polo G
There's sort of a running joke/meme about how Polo G only raps over sad piano loops, and it's more or less true although I think it underestimates how like half of the rappers out these days constantly rap over sad pianos. There are quite a lot of sad piano beats on Morray's album, so hilariously Polo G hopped on one of them for the radio remix, and sounds right in his element. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"2055 (Remix)" by Sleepy Hallow featuring Coi Leray
I mainly know Sleepy Hallow as the guy who made Foushee's "Deep End" into a viral hit before she did her proper solo version, but I guess this song is doing well for him too. Coi Leray has kind of earned a reputation as someone who raps terribly on most of her hits and high profile songs, but her verse on this is actually really good. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Whole Lotta Money" by BIA featuring Nicki Minaj
Nicki doesn't really bring the right energy to this track, I liked the combination of BIA's nonchalant delivery and the blown-out bass of the track. But their little back-and-forth flow at the end is cool. 
Best Verse: third verse (BIA and Nicki Minaj together)
Overall Grade: C+

8:32 AM

My Top 50 Albums of 1988

Monday, August 30, 2021





Last month I posted my favorite 1989 albums and singles, so now we continue backwards through the '80s. Here's my Spotify playlist with a deep cut from each album. 

1. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
2. Slick Rick - The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
3. Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
4. Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
5. Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session
6. Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
7. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
8. N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton
9. Big Daddy Kane - Long Live The Kane
10. They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
11. Eric B. & Rakim - Follow The Leader
12. Sade - Stronger Than Pride
13. Biz Markie - Goin' Off
14. EPMD - Strictly Business
15. Tony! Toni! Tone! - Who? 
16. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper
17. Crowded House - Temple of Low Men
18. Fishbone - Truth And Soul
19. The Posies - Failure
20. Metallica - ...And Justice For All
21. The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues
22. Pet Shop Boys - Introspective
23. MC Lyte - Lyte As A Rock
24. Too $hort - Life Is... Too $hort
25. Ultramagnetic MCs - Critical Beatdown
26. Living Colour - Vivid
27. New Edition - Heart Break
28. Bobby Brown - Don't Be Cruel
29. Ice-T - Power
30. Dinosaur Jr. - Bug
31. R.E.M. - Green
32. Run-DMC - Tougher Than Leather
33. Pixies - Surfer Rosa
34. Mudhoney - Superfuzz Bigmuff EP
35. Kix - Blow My Fuse
36. Little Feat - Let It Roll
37. The Traveling Wilburys - The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1
38. Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
39. Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman
40. Ciccone Youth - The Whitey Album
41. The Dead Milkmen - Beelzebubba
42. The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good
43. The Bangles - Everything
44. U2 - Rattle And Hum
45. Prince - Lovesexy
46. Lemonheads - Creator
47. Stetsasonic - In Full Gear
48. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Ooh Yeah!
49. Boogie Down Productions - By All Means Necessary
50. Salt-N-Pepa - A Salt With A Deadly Pepa

Compact discs outsold vinyl for the first time in 1987, so albums were starting to get longer in 1988, but most albums were still sequenced to fit on one LP, sometimes with bonus tracks or remixes added to the CD and/or cassette editions. So I think of Daydream Nation as the last great double LP of the vinyl era, the last time an artist who had previously been making 35-minute albums ramped up their ambition enough to justify the additional expense and resources to spread 70 minutes of music across two slabs. After that, it became normal for artists to make a 50 or 60 or 75-minute album every time, throwing on every song they had, and I think it took a couple decades for albums to recover from CD bloat effecting so many albums in the '90s. 

8:29 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 242: Timbaland/Timbaland & Magoo

Friday, August 27, 2021





A few weeks ago, Blackground Records made the exciting announcement that its back catalog would finally come to streaming services. The biggest news, of course, is Aaliyah's music, but it also includes albums by Tank, JoJo, Toni Braxton, several notable soundtrack albums, and a lot of music from Aaliyah's brilliant producer Timbaland. All three Timbaland & Magoo albums are streaming for the first time today, as is the first of Timbaland's three solo albums. So I thought I'd put together a collection of my favorite tracks from all 6 of those Timbo records, and salute the boot boy and the cartoon character.

Timbaland/Timbaland & Magoo deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Deep In Your Memory
2. Peepin' My Style
3. Writtin' Rhymes f/ Troy Marshall
4. Man Undercover f/ Aaliyah
5. John Blaze f/ Aaliyah and Missy Elliott
6. To My f/ Nas and Skillz
7. Who Am I f/ Twista
8. Party People f/ Jay-Z and Twista
9. Roll Out f/ Petey Pablo and Smokey
10. Considerate Brotha f/ Ludacris
11. I Am Music f/ Aaliyah and Static Major
12. Straight Outta Virginia (Intro)
13. Can We Do It Again
14. Shenanigans f/ Bubba Sparxxx
15. Release f/ Justin Timberlake
16. One & Only f/ Fall Out Boy
17. Boardmeeting
18. Ease Off The Liquor
19. Lose Control f/ JoJo

Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Timbaland & Magoo's Welcome To Our World (1997)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from Timbaland's Tim's Bio: Life From Da Bassment (1998)
Tracks 8, 9, 10 and 11 from Timbaland & Magoo's Indecent Proposal (2001)
Tracks 12, 13 and 14 from Timbaland & Magoo's Under Construction II (2003)
Tracks 15, 16 and 17 from Timbaland's Shock Value (2007)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Timbaland's Shock Value II (2009)

I loved Timbaland's sound from Aaliyah and Ginuwine's first hits with him, but I remember not really knowing that he was the common denominator in all these records until a bit after the first Timbaland & Magoo album. But Welcome To Our World is an amazing album, still a lot of my favorite stuff Timbo ever did, I remember my brother got both that album and Missy Elliott's Supa Dupa Fly when they came out within a few months of each other in 1997, and it took me a couple years to realize how unique and unprecedented their sound was, I just knew that this stuff sounded incredibly fun and funky. 

Given that he wasn't a producer like Timbaland and never really had a solo career, Magoo has gone down in history as this sidekick with the Q-Tip-esque voice and weird punchlines, but he really did have a great flow and a flair for memorable phrases. The Timbaland solo albums have some jams, but Tim definitely did better work when he had Magoo as a counterpoint to bounce off, one guy with a deep voice and one with a really high one. 

And of course these records have an incredible roster of collaborators, a lot of the superstars Timbo produced as well as their incredibly talented Supa Friends/Swing Mob/Beat Club extended family of Aaliyah, Missy, Ginuwine, Static Major and Playa, and Bubba Sparxxx. And I thought it was cool the way Tim and Magoo picked up on the success of the futuristic old school aesthetic of Missy's Under Construction album and made their own sequel to it, was an interesting way to continue that sound across two different acts' albums. 

1:25 PM

TV Diary

Thursday, August 26, 2021





a) "The Chair"
I don't think Amanda Peet's ever worked behind the camera in her couple decades of acting, so I was surprised to see that she co-created this Netflix series and wrote half its episodes. But it's pretty good, glad to see Sandra Oh already back on a quality series before "Killing Eve" has even aired its final season. It's kind of fun to have a college show mainly from the perspective of professors, including great supporting roles from Bob Balaban and Holland Taylor. But the main storyline gets kind of irritating as it goes on and most of the student characters are humorless campus activist stereotypes who perform a Hamiltonized version of Moby Dick. 

b) "Heels"
The Showtime wrestling drama "Heels" hits a lot of the familiar beats of cable dramas -- a family business with a sibling rivalry, moderately successful athletes/entertainers striving to get to the next level, emotionally dysfunctional manly men and the women who love them, etc. But the cast is strong and the first couple episodes are pretty promising, each one had one big climactic scene that kind of revealed something interesting about the main characters and changed the relationships between them. 

c) "Nine Perfect Strangers"
My wife read the book this is based on and she had a lot of thoughts about the casting, but without that context I'm mostly just impressed by a show that includes Nicole Kidman, Michael Shannon, Melissa McCarthy, and Regina Hall. It's a weird one, though, I'm not really sure what to make it yet and am just kind of enjoying the character moments. 

d) "Fantasy Island"
I never saw the original "Fantasy Island" growing and I don't know what I thought it was about but I didn't realize there was actually like a supernatural fantasy element. But FOX's new reboot is kind of charming, and the super fine Roselyn Sanchez plays the host who's the grand-niece or something of the Ricardo Montalban character. 

e) "Brand New Cherry Flavor"
A very odd, interesting Netflix show that starts out as kind of a satirical look at a young woman trying to become a filmmaker in Hollywood and getting harassed and taken advantage of, and then takes this weird supernatural horror turn, very curious to watch more and see where this is going. 

f) "Clickbait"
A tawdry little thriller series on Netflix where a woman sees a viral video of her brother held hostage and holding up signs basically saying that he's a rapist and he's going to die when the video hits 5 million views. Things rapidly escalate from there but it all feels kind of over-the-top and a little dated, like this would've been an exciting premise 10 years ago but not so much now.

g) "The Defeated"
This show is like a murder mystery that takes place in Berlin just after the end of WWII, pretty interesting premise, but I can't take Taylor Kitsch seriously with these weird old timey detective voice he's doing. 

h) "Chapelwaite"
A creepy old timey horror show starring Adrien Brody, seems well made but I just couldn't bring myself to pay attention to it, just got disinterested very quickly. 

This Showtime was one of the better new comedies of 2020, I'm glad it's back for a second season, although it's really one of those shows that's more of a half hour drama or dramedy, it's less about laughs and more about characters and emotions. The season premiere was really good, a little less into the flashback-heavy second episode but I appreciate how it served the storytelling. 

j) "The Other Two"
"The Other Two" is one of those shows that had one great season before the pandemic and then an incredibly long wait for another season, but I'm glad it's finally back 2 years later, moving from Comedy Central to HBO Max. I'm glad they followed up on the gag at the end of the first season with Molly Shannon's character getting her own talk show because that's definitely the funniest part of the new episodes. 

k) "Modern Love"
I feel a little silly enjoying this show as much as I do, but it really scratches that rom com itch with the added dimension of being based on real stories and sometimes not having these simply happy endings. What I've watched so far of the second season has been excellent, other than the Kit Harington episode being a little flat

l) "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"
"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" premiered less than a year before Mike Brown's shooting, and has managed to be a funny, silly, mostly beloved show about noble police officers through years of a historic surge of protests against police brutality. But last year after George Floyd's murder, it finally reached a tipping point where the pushback was enough that "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" decided that the occasional social commentary and good cops vs. bad cops storylines they'd done so far weren't enough and they'd have to really address the cultural climate now. And the first episode of the final season is really quite awkward, this sudden cautious tone change and one character leaving the force and becoming a P.I. while another has a crisis of confidence and another goes comically overboard with being anti-racist and woke. The second episode is a little back to normal and it's still a pretty funny show with a great cast, but it feels like they're going out on a weird note. 

m) "Grace & Frankie"
"Grace & Frankie" also just kicked off its final season, although due to pandemic production delays we're just getting 4 episodes now and the rest next year. But it's nice to have these characters back after a long break, having the four principals under one roof was kind of an inevitable storyline I'm glad they finally did, although the hiding money stuff got a little over-the-top goofy. 

n) "Everything Will Be Fine"
This was created by Diego Luna, I only knew his work as an actor but apparently he's directed a couple features. This show is really good, though, definitely one of the best imports I've seen on Netflix lately, a very entertaining little comedy about a recently split up couple trying to raise kids and having all this bad shit happen to them. 

A French show on Netflix about this guy who's had a couple tragedies in his life and then has to search for his missing girlfriend, very dramatic and mysterious but I don't think I'm really hooked by the story enough to keep watching. 

A Netflix show that takes place in Jordan but is basically about pretty universal stories of adolescent girls being mean to each other, although the extent of the violence in the first episode did shock me a little. 

I enjoyed this frothy Spanish show on Netflix last year, happy to see it back for a second season. Although now when I watch it I keep feeling weird remembering that I recently wrote a song called "Valeria," it was just one of those things where I wanted to use a woman's name in the chorus that hadn't been a famous song title before and that one had a nice ring to it. 

Some of the premises on this animated MCU show are kind of silly and not interesting to me, but as far as the animation style and the storytelling, I like the execution. They have a lot of the actors from the movies voicing their characters, including Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa one last time, although sometimes they have other actors doing the voices, including Lake Bell instead of Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, which I think is a total improvement personally. 

This is a very cutesy animated series where Peter Parker, Miles Morales, and Gwen Stacy all have spidey powers and fight crime together. I think my favorite thing about is Patrick Stump's theme song, I love that between this and his song for The Lego Batman Movie he's now a part of silly animated versions of both the D.C. and Marvel universes. 

I always think of Andy Cohen as the Bravo executive who put himself on TV but I guess at this point he's famous enough that he can do shows with other NBC Universal properties like Peacock, which released "Ex-Rated." 

This Disney+ docuseries is pretty charming, I loved the first episode with a mama bear and her two cubs. I was very stressed out when they had to cross the river, though. 

This is a competition reality show for streetwear designers, which is a whole world I find a little surreal and ridiculous to begin with. Some of the contestants seem like nice talented folks worth rooting for, though, even while they're doing weird challenges like trying to dress A$AP Ferg and him telling them when the clothes look too A$AP Rocky. 

This other HBO Max reality show about young ambitious urbanites is produced by Issa Rae and sort of feels like they tried to make a show about real life equivalents of the characters on "Insecure." But of course, "Insecure" has talented writers and a charismatic cast, and the people on this show just kind of come off really boring and devoid of personality. Also one of them is a guy who has a Drake heart shaved into his hair, which almost made me turn off the show right there when I saw it. 

A pretty charming baking competition show on Netflix, not really the sort of thing I tend to watch every episode of, but one or two was entertaining enough. 

This Showtime docuseries that kind of looks at how gossip columnists changed the media and political landscape over the last few decades is pretty good, there's some good tawdry stories but also some pretty clear-eyed analysis. 

z) "UFO"
The latest wave of revelations about government files on UFOs has predictably birthed a new wave of documentaries -- 5 days after Netflix premiered "Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified," Showtime rolled out their own docuseries. The Netflix one was pretty mediocre but this was produced by J.J. Abrams and is a bit more polished and entertaining even if it's covering a lot of the same ground. 

1:23 PM

Wednesday, August 25, 2021





Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones passed away this week, and I wrote about 10 of my favorite Stones drum tracks for Spin. 

1:10 PM

Tuesday, August 24, 2021





I wrote a piece for Billboard about the new Santana/Rob Thomas and Nas/Lauryn Hill collabs and the history of duos who made a big hit together and later reunited. 

10:07 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 241: The Everly Brothers

Monday, August 23, 2021





Don Everly passed away over the weekend, and his brother Phil Everly died in 2014, so I wanted to look back at the Everly Brothers' catalog, which is really rich and a joy to listen to. 

The Everly Brothers deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Maybe Tomorrow
2. Leave My Woman Alone
3. Oh, So Many Years
4. Kentucky
5. Nashville Blues
6. You Thrill Me (Through And Through)
7. Sleepless Nights
8. Love Hurts
9. Made To Love
10. Donna, Donna
11. That's Just Too Much
12. Sigh, Cry, Almost Die
13. Love Is Where You Find It
14. When It's Night-Time In Italy It's Wednesday Over Here
15. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
16. This Is The Last Song I'm Ever Going To Sing
17. Lonely Island
18. The Facts Of Life
19. Radio And TV
20. The Drop Out
21. Lonely Weekends
22. Man With Money
23. It Only Costs A Dime
24. I've Been Wrong Before
25. Devil's Child
26. I Don't Want To Love You
27. Illinois
28. I'm Tired Of Singing My Song In Las Vegas
29. Somebody Nobody Knows
30. The Story Of Me
31. I Know Love
32. Brown Eyes

Tracks 1 and 2 from The Everly Brothers (1957)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Songs Our Daddy Taught Us (1958)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from It's Everly Time (1960)
Tracks 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 from A Date With The Everly Brothers (1960)
Track 13 from Both Sides of an Evening (1961)
Track 14 from Instant Party! (1962)
Track 15 from Christmas With The Everly Brothers (1962)
Track 16 from The Everly Brothers Sing Great Country Hits (1963)
Tracks 17, 18, 19 and 20 from Gone, Gone, Gone (1964)
Track 21 from Rock'n Soul (1965)
Track 22 from Beat & Soul (1965)
Track 23 from In Our Image (1966)
Track 24 from Two Yanks In England (1966)
Track 25 from The Hit Sound Of The Everly Brothers (1967)
Track 26 from The Everly Brothers Sing (1967)
Track 27 from Roots (1968)
Track 28 from Stories We Could Tell (1972)
Track 29 from Pass The Chicken & Listen (1973)
Track 30 from EB 84 (1984)
Track 31 from Born Yesterday (1986)
Track 32 from Some Hearts (1988)

Don Everly was born in Brownie, Kentucky and died in Nashville, Tennessee, so it felt right to put "Kentucky" next to "Nashville Blues" in the playlist. I cap all of my playlists in this series at 80 minutes, so the number of songs varies based on the lengths of the songs, and this playlist ties They Might Be Giants for my previous record for the most songs. But I kind of amazingly managed to fit in something from each of The Everly Brothers' 21 studio albums. 

The Everly Brothers were success stories of the singles era -- they had over a dozen top 10 songs from 1957 to 1962, but only two of their albums went top 10, both of their 1960 releases peaking at #9. They were making proper albums all the while, though, only a handful of their biggest hits ("All I Have To Do Is Dream," "When Will I Be Loved," "Let It Be Me") never appeared on studio albums. But most of them did, although in typical fashion of the era their singles were also constantly being repackaged in best-of compilations. They were one of the biggest acts of the era immediately before the Beatles and the British Invasion, but their fusion of country and rock and their close harmony singing style proved in some ways more prescient and influential than most other stars of the late '50s and early '60s, and as country-rock became its own genre over the next couple decades a lot of people covered them, emulated them, and worked with them. I think their records have aged really well for their era, maybe because the focus is so much on their voices and acoustic guitars that I don't mind that the rhythm sections aren't really loud and rockin', which is sometimes what makes rock from before the late '60s sound a little lacking to modern sensibilities. 

The Everly Brothers' biggest hits were mostly penned by the wife-and-husband songwriting team of Felice and Boudleaux  Bryant. Some Bryant songs among their earlier album tracks include "Nashville Blues," "You Thrill Me," "Donna, Donna," "Lonely Island," and "Radio and TV." One of the Everlys' first hits was a cover of Ray Charles's "This Little Girl Of Mine," and they covered a few more Ray Charles song over the years, including "Leave My Woman Alone." Charles sort of returned the favor, covering "Bye Bye Love." 

Don Everly, who wrote hits including "Cathy's Clown" and "So Sad," also wrote the album tracks "Maybe Tomorrow," "The Facts of Life," "The Drop Out," and "I'm Tired Of Singing My Song In Las Vegas." Phil Everly wrote or co-wrote "Made To Love," "Up In Mabel's Room" and "Brown Eyes." And both brothers wrote "That's Just Too Much," "Sigh, Cry, Almost Die," and "It Only Costs A Dime" together.

A couple of Bryant songs that the Everlys first recorded but didn't release as singles went on to become more famous via covers. "Love Hurts" was a big hit for Nazareth in the '70s. "Sleepless Nights" was made into sort of a country/rock standard by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and subsequently covered by Elvis Costello, Eddie Vedder, and the Mekons, among others.  

The second Everly Brothers album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, was a collection of country and folk covers that didn't chart and had just one minor hit single, kind of an early example of a pop act pausing in the middle of a hit parade to salute their influences. But in 2013, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Norah Jones recorded Foreverly, with covers of every track on Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, including "Oh, So Many Years" and "Kentucky." 

One song that really stood out to me is "Love Is Where You Find It," a song by Broadway composer Nacio Herb Brown that was first sung by Kathryn Grayson in the 1948 Frank Sinatra film The Kissing Bandit. What the Everlys do with that song is really striking. I also really dig the way the drums explode on "You Thrill Me (Through and Through)," there are a few moments on these records where the arrangements just jump out and it's not all about their voices, although their harmonies were gorgeous on almost every song. 

Both brothers enlisted in the marines in 1961, so their career dropped off a bit after that, and never recovered like it did for Elvis after the army -- their last top 10 hit was in 1962 and their last top 40 hit was in 1967. The Everlys also had a falling out with the publisher that the Bryants worked for, and so they mostly stopped recording their songs after 1960 (except for 6 songs on 1964's Gone, Gone, Gone, although at least half of those were circa 1960 compositions, so it's not clear if they ever reunited with the Bryants professionally). Still, they made a lot of music after that, some of it pretty interesting.

Two Yanks In England was partly recorded at Decca Studio in London with The Hollies backing and writing for The Everly Brothers, including songs later recorded by The Hollies on their own albums like "I've Been Wrong Before." And it's also been said that the session musicians on the album included Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Elton John. Roots has gained a cult following among critics like Robert Christgau as one of their best albums, with songs written by Randy Newman ("Illinois"), and George Jones, and Glen Campbell. In the '70s and '80s, the brothers released solo albums -- 3 by Don and 5 by Phil -- but they never really stopped being a duo. In later years they recorded songs by Kris Kristofferson ("Somebody Nobody Knows") and Jeff Lynne ("The Story of Me"), the latter of which is from EB 84, their biggest post-'60s comeback album, which had a single penned by Paul McCartney. 

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
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements
Vol. 240: Genesis

10:06 AM

Friday, August 20, 2021






Consequence of Sound is doing a Punk Week this week, and the first piece I've ever written for the site is a quick guide to punk in 10 songs. I also contributed some blurbs to their lists of the best punk songs of all time and the best punk bands of all time. 

11:00 AM

Movie Diary

Thursday, August 19, 2021





a) Val
I've loved Val Kilmer as an actor for a long time and occasionally you'd see these peeks at his personality on social media that were really charming, and I was so sad to hear about his throat cancer diagnosis a few years ago. So it's really emotional to watch this documentary he made telling his life story, now that he's cancer free but he barely has a voice left to speak with, and the movie very cleverly and movingly solves this problem by having Val's son Jack, who sounds just like him, reading his father's narration. There's a certain amount of social media transparency we're used to seeing from celebrities now, but the fact that this movie star was just making home movies all through the '80s and '00s and you get this candid footage of Marlon Brando and Kevin Bacon and so on is really neat, and helps the movie not be all film clips and newsreels like a lot of retrospective docs. I never knew about his brother that died as a teenager, or how many years he put into his Mark Twain project until the cancer cut it short, so many bittersweet stories. I just loved the doc, even though it pretty much breezed past my two favorite Val Kilmer movies, Real Genius and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, in about 5 seconds each. 

b) CODA
One of my favorite movies of the past year, Sound of Metal, was about a musician going deaf, and CODA, about a young singer with deaf parents, is a story with some similar elements but goes in a very different direction. It hits a lot of familiar notes of a story of a prodigy with a difficult and unusual life, and it's taken some fair criticism for how over-the-top the plot gets in making the only hearing member of a family seem burdened with being their interpreter at all times, which is both unrealistic and feels a little forced as storytelling. I also thought it was odd that Apple+ doesn't default to subtitles for the ESL dialogue -- I didn't turn on captions at first because you could kind of get the gist of what was being said without them, but as the movie went on I'm glad I put on captions, there were some great lines I would've missed. But for the most part the movie works, with Eugenio Derbez jumping energetically into the 'stern but caring mentor' role. And Troy Kotsur's performance is just remarkable, he expresses so much with his face and body even with you barely hearing his voice. 

c) The Suicide Squad
I have no problem with only three actors from the first Suicide Squad movie returning for the second movie, since the idea that it's dangerous work and people die all the time is baked right into the premise. But I do wish they'd been able to being back Jared Leto and Will Smith for 5 minutes to be among the canon fodder killed off in the entertaining opening scenes of The Suicide Squad. James Gunn totally gets how this whole thing should be done much more than David Ayer did, and it's it's fun to see a comic book movie that just revels in being a silly hyperviolent spectacle instead of taking itself a little too seriously. The movie didn't rely on Margot Robbie too much to carry it and John Cena and Daniela Melchior were great too. 

d) Men & Chicken
I respect that Mads Mikkelsen still makes movies in Denmark even after finding success in Hollywood, but I hadn't seen any of them until I saw the poster for Men & Chicken and simply knew it was something I need to see. And I'm glad I did, because apparently Danish filmmakers will let Mikkelsen play a broader range of characters than the villains and killers he usually plays in American and British films, and he's just a great comic actor, incredibly funny in this movie about two brothers in search of their real father.. The story takes some pretty bizarre twists and turns, but Mikkelsen and Soren Malling are both hilarious and I just loved this strange, gross movie.

e) Beckett
John David Washington was excellent in BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm & Marie, but I think his relative inexperience as a movie star comes through a little more in an ostensibly simpler movie like Beckett, a straight ahead action movie where he plays an American on vacation in Greece who ends up on the run from a criminal syndicate. He's decent at the action stuff and makes you really feel like he's in pain in a movie that starts with a car crashes and then proceeds to him constantly getting stabbed and shot at. But there are long stretches of the movie where he's the only character onscreen or the only English-speaking character onscreen, and he just doesn't carry it the way some capable mook like Bruce Willis would. It doesn't help that Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino doesn't really have much visual flair and will do cheesy shit like play a shot in slow motion when he wants you to recognize a character from earlier in the movie. Boyd Holbrook, who was great in Logan, is another entertaining villain here -- at one point Beckett pins him down and interrogates him about the conspiracy, and he goes "Google it," which is just about the only really good line in the movie. 

f) Vivo
My son was very excited to watch this Netflix animated movie where Lin-Manuel Miranda is the voice of a singing kinkajou. It's a sweet little movie, some sad parts made him cry but mostly he enjoyed it. Miranda wrote better songs for Moana, though. 

10:02 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 240: Genesis

Tuesday, August 17, 2021





Genesis is embarking on The Last Domino? Tour this fall (for now, I guess, at this point it's hard to know what's happening with various tours). So I thought I'd finally get around to doing a Genesis playlist, since I'd already done ones for the Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins solo catalogs years ago. 

Genesis deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. In The Beginning
2. Dusk
3. For Absent Friends
4. The Musical Box
5. Horizons
6. More Fool Me
7. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
8. Back In N.Y.C.
9. Squonk
10. Afterglow
11. Scenes From A Night's Dream
12. Behind The Lines
13. Another Record
14. Just A Job To Do
15. Domino (Pt. 1 & 2)
16. Since I Lost You

Track 1 from From Genesis To Revelation (1969)
Track 2 from Trespass (1970)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Nursery Cryme (1971)
Track 5 from Foxtrot (1972)
Track 6 from Selling England By The Pound (1973)
Tracks 7 and 8 from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974)
Track 9 from A Trick Of The Tail (1976)
Track 10 from Wind & Wuthering (1976)
Track 11 from ...And Then There Were Three... (1978)
Track 12 from Duke (1980)
Track 13 from Abacab (1981)
Track 14 from Genesis (1983)
Track 15 from Invisible Touch (1986)
Track 16 from We Can't Dance (1991)

Even though the era with Phil Collins on lead vocals was by far the most successful part of Genesis's career, the first six albums with Peter Gabriel really established the band in the UK and continue to have a diehard following. And I think those early albums, particularly the ones with guitarist Steve Hackett from 1971 to '76, kind of became more revered by a lot of rock fans after Collins became a pop balladeer, while Gabriel kept a bit more of his art rock cred in his solo work. So I wanted to really capture both eras and give them near equal time (as with my Van Halen playlist, I skipped the late '90s album where the band unsuccessfully attempted to relaunch with a third lead singer, Calling All Stations). 

One of the remarkable things about Genesis's career is that they may have the longest streak of upward commercial momentum of any band in modern pop history. Most long-running acts have ups and downs or peak early, but pretty much every Genesis album sold a little more than the last for 13 albums. Their debut From Genesis To Revelation only sold about 600 copies in its first year of release, but they kept climbing and climbing until Invisible Touch sold over 6 million in the U.S. alone. Of course, that streak includes two very different eras that could very well have been different bands if they'd decided to change the name after Gabriel left. But even their solo careers kept climbing on the same path. There was that very unexpected moment in the mid-'80s when Genesis and its members' solo projects were absolutely dominating the charts. I grew up on that stuff -- my dad had Invisible Touch, So, No Jacket Required, and Mike + The Mechanics, and played all of them a ton. 

My self-imposed 80-minute cap for these playlists makes things a little more difficult with prog rock bands and other acts whose standout non-singles tend to be very long. "Supper's Ready" is one of the most revered early Genesis songs, but it's 23 minutes, I'm just not gonna give over a quarter of the playlist to one song. But I got a couple 10-minute epics into the playlist, "The Musical Box" and "Domino," picking shorter songs from some other albums to make room for them. The Peter Gabriel era has some good stuff, particularly his last couple albums with the band, and I've always liked "Back In N.Y.C." since hearing Jeff Buckley's cover. But I'm definitely a bigger fan of Gabriel's solo work, and the mid period Genesis albums with Collins singing -- Abacab and Face Value are probably by two favorite records Collins ever made, he was just on fire in 1981. 

Collins and Hackett joined Genesis for their third album, Nursery Cryme, really beginning their classic era. And although there was no way of knowing Phil Collins someday be a superstar singer, he was utilized as a vocalist immediately -- he was in part hired because he was a more capable backup singer than some other members of the band, and he sang lead on his first Genesis song on the brief "For Absent Friends," track 2 on Nursery Cryme, and sang lead again with increasing confidence on "More Fool Me." After Peter Gabriel left and the band extensively auditioned new singers, "Squonk" was the first song Collins sang lead on that led the band to move forward with him as the frontman. And when Genesis was recording "Behind The Lines," Collins heard the tape play back at double speed at one point and got the idea for the faster version of the song that appears on Face Value (he apparently offered "In The Air Tonight" to Genesis for Duke and they weren't interested). 

9:00 AM

Friday, August 13, 2021


 



I talked to John Oates about his current tour with Daryl Hall and their great back catalog for GQ. 

10:02 AM

TV Diary

Thursday, August 12, 2021





a) "Reservation Dogs"
There's a bitter irony to indigenous people being pretty much the last minority to get some significant representation TV, but 2021 has felt like a pretty notable year between "Reservation Dogs," "Rutherford Falls," and "Trickster" (if nothing else it's progress from a woman of Asian descent playing the most prominent Native American character on "Yellowstone"). But the Taiki Waititi-produced "Reservation Dogs" is, aside from all that, just a really funny, relatable show about broke teenagers getting into a trouble in a small town. Great Lee Hazlewood and Stooges needledrops, too. 

b) "Mr. Corman"
At Joseph Gordon-Levitt's peak as a movie star, he cashed in his name recognition on a flawed but enjoyable directorial debut, Don Jon. 8 years later, he's returned to series television for the first time since "3rd Rock From The Sun" with another passion project that feels similar in a lot of its strengths and weaknesses, although the title character is a bit more of a blank slate everyman than the bigger broader protagonist of Don Jon. After two episodes, I'm not totally sure what to make of "Mr. Corman," especially since the second episode was a bit more tense and darker in tone than the first. Is this an aspiring musician's heroic journey back to pursuing his ambitions after giving up? Are the weird fantasy moments leading to some kind of nervous breakdown? I'm a little intrigued but also a little frustrated by the ambiguity about exactly what this show is going for. 

I don't think Emily Mortimer had done much behind the camera before besides writing and creating her autobiographical comedy series "Doll & Em" a few years ago, so this 3-hour miniseries WWII period piece feels a pretty ambitious directorial debut for her. It's really good, though, it's interesting to me that the source material, Nancy Mitford's novel, was published in 1945, so there's a sense that this story came straight from how life was in Europe just before and during the war. It's very light and playful at times, with surprising modern rock music dropped into the soundtrack here and there (excellent uses of The Who's "Blue Red And Grey" and T. Rex's "Dandy In The Underworld") and great performances from Lily James and Emily Beecham, which makes the inevitable tragedy of the story hit harder. 

If you told me that Syfy's next scripted series would be a show about selling haunted houses called "SurrealEstate" starring the really bland handsome guy from "Wynonna Earp" and "Schitt's Creek," I would've dismissed it outright. But the first episodes of this have been promising, there's a humorous little spark to it and decent visual effects. 

This true crime drama stars Joshua Jackson as a neurosurgeon who harmed and killed patients in some crazy malpractice cases. Jackson isn't anyone's idea of a particularly great actor but I think what really undermines his performance as a villain here is that some of the good guy doctors he works with are played by Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater, both of whom would've sunk their teeth into a role like this a lot more (I mean, Baldwin kind of already did it in Malice, which makes his presence here feel all the weirder). 

After "Your Honor" and "The Beast Must Die," this is the 3rd drama series I've watched in the past year about someone seeking revenge after a loved one was killed in a hit and accident. I think this is the weakest of the three, but really the reason I'm unlikely to watch it past the first episode is the woman didn't look both ways crossing the street so I can't bring myself to feel that bad for her. 

I love the whole comedy anthology format "Miracle Workers" turned into with this great cast including Steve Buscemi and Danielle Radcliffe playing different characters in different settings each season. This season is off to a good start, possibly as funny as last year's "Miracle Workers: Dark Ages" was, I hope they do like 10 seasons of this show. 

Although Jason Sudeikis rightfully gets most of the credit for how charming "Ted Lasso" and his titular character are, the show had a great ensemble from day one. And it feels like the second season is wisely set on emphasizing that with sturdy B plots where Ted is often offscreen but you don't miss him, because Rebecca and Sam and Keeley and Roy and Jamie are all such engaging characters in their own right. After all, you can't do the fish-out-of-water thing forever, and now that Ted is more or less accepted by the club, you can't just keep showing everything through his wide-eyed perspective. That said, the third episode was far far better than the first two, so it hasn't been quite as consistent as the first season. 

Glad this show came back for a second season, just a good relatable, silly comedy and Alexa Davies is adorable. 

It's funny, I think the soap opera nature of the plots on "Grown-ish" finally wore my wife down and now she's like, every character on this show is an entitled brat, I can't stand any of them, and I mean, she's not wrong I guess. But it's a show about college kids, I like that they're mostly just making the mistakes that people that age make. 

This and Hulu's short-lived "Reprisal" have been trashy, heavily stylized crime dramas that I've been enjoying lately, I'm glad Netflix had two seasons of "Sky Rojo" in one year. The second season kept up the ridiculous pace of the first with all the violent setpieces and double crosses, and the finale had a pretty big "holy shit" moment I didn't see coming. 

I didn't even know this show came out in 2020, I'm surprised it took over a year for the Netflix algorithm to bring it to my attention because we've definitely watched some of Iliza Shlesinger's standup specials on there. It's pretty good, hit-and-miss like most sketch shows are but every episode has a sketch or two that really knocks it out of the park. 

I fucking hate most 'adult cartoons,' especially ones that satirize contemporary public figures. And "The Prince," which is about the British royal family, is just awful, possibly even worse than that "Our Cartoon President" Trump thing, just deeply deeply unfunny. 

One of my favorite things about having Disney+ is having all the Pixar and Disney shorts, sometimes my son and I will just watch a bunch of favorite shorts for an hour. So I was excited to find this series that premiered earlier in the year and just released a second season, which is all animated shorts preceded by brief interviews with the filmmakers. They're very short but often delightful, I really recommend it. Songs To Sing In The Dark is amazingly imaginative and original, and I'd totally watch a full-length feature of Puddles and a series of Dinosaur Barbarian. 

When I saw that Disney+ was doing this new Chip 'n' Dale series, I immediately sort of assumed it would be a reboot of the "Rescue Rangers" cartoon I grew up on, or possibly based on that Blur album. But it's really a throwback to the original Chip 'n' Dale shorts, with no dialogue and sort of retro animation, a little like "The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse." It's not bad, my kid likes it. 

A really zany, entertaining show where a horse from a serious 'action' cartoon winds up in an alternate universe that's more of a silly "My Little Pony"-style cartoon full of centaurs, really odd and funny stuff. 

Sometimes I wonder if animators are just competing to come up with the strangest things to make the main characters of a cartoon show -- this cute Cartoon Network series is about a raincloud and his pet walrus delivering mail. 

"Spongebob Squarepants" creator Stephen Hillenburg always dismissed the idea of spinoff series, so multiple spinoffs going into production after his death in 2018 has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I explained some of this to my 11-year-old son and I think it was one of his first experiences with seeing how artists can be betrayed by the corporations they work for. But anyway Patrick was always my least favorite character and this show seems pretty worthless. 

I never saw this when it originally aired in 2014, but apparently it was Cartoon Network's first miniseries. And it's really delightful, with a voice cast including Elijah Wood and John Cleese. Wirt and Greg remind me a lot of my 2 sons, who are all about "Gravity Falls" and "Infinity Train," and loved it and watched it multiple times recently. 

Something weird happened a few years ago where the phrase "fuckboy" went mainstream but people were really adamant about denying its homophobic roots as a synonym for f****t and insisting that a fuckboy was simply a jerky kind of guy that straight girls dislike dating. And so now we have "FBoy Island," a horrible dating show on HBO Max where a bunch of guys, half of them "fboys" and half of them "nice guys," compete for the affections of three women who have to figure out who is who. It almost had the potential to be kind of a satirical look at a certain kind of guy like VH1's "Tool Academy," but it's just kind of ceaselessly dull and stupid. The worst part, however, is that they I guess don't want to say "fuckboy" so they only say "effboy," over and over, as if the cast was coached to say it as often as possible and never use any other synonyms for a douchey or undesirable guy. 

This is the kind of show that I can't imagine ever would've happened if not for COVID-19, but Kevin Hart needs to work and so he'll do an interview show while he can't tour or he's waiting for a movie to go into production. And Kevin Hart is about the last person you'd expect to do a no-frills Charlie Rose-style interview show with one guest per episode, so it's kind of novel. He dials down the energy a little more than I expect and really tries to connect with the guests, there's still something very facile and show biz about these conversations and sometimes he just can't turn off the standup instinct when he should, but I'll give him points for making an honest effort. 

As someone who doesn't really follow the NBA but enjoys hearing about some of the big stories, "The Last Dance" was great, and the first episode of Netflix's sports docuseries "Untold," about the infamous 'malice in the palace' night, hits the same sweet spot. Crazy story, had never really heard about it in detail before and it seems like they shed some new light on the whole situation. 

This HBO Max docuseries about an independent TV station in rural Nevada is pretty charming for at least the first 8 minutes until they reveal, admittedly unsurprisingly, that the station owner is a huge MAGA fuckhead. Some of the actual journalists on the show become even more sympathetic after that, but it's kind of a hard watch since he's definitely the focal point of the show. 

I guess Paris Hilton was always sort of playing a character with her public persona but it feels like people will accept that kind of thing a little more readily than at the height of her fame. It's weird to see Kim Kardashian on her cooking show on Netflix, though, now that Paris is kind of in the pop culture rearview as Gerry & The Pacemakers to Kim K's Beatles. It's a silly little show but I don't know if Hilton just thinks not being able to cook is way way funnier than it actually is. 

I feel like I've seen a lot of the stuff in this Netflix docuseries in other shows so it's not that interesting to me. 

This CBS show has pretty much the same concept as the show "Celebrity IOU" on HGTV did last year, except that show had big deal movie stars like Brad Pitt and Melissa McCarthy and this show has, like, Lauren Alaina and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. 

10:01 AM