Saturday, January 29, 2022
The other day I talked with John Mellencamp for about an hour, and wrote about our conversation and hs career for GQ.
Thursday, January 27, 2022
I wrote and ranked about the 10 best original series in the history of the Showtime network for Consequence.
Monthly Report: January 2022 Singles
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
1. SZA - "I Hate U"
It's so ridiculous that SZA has been releasing a string of increasingly successful singles since 2020 and we're still waiting on TDE to give her album a release date. It's especially absurd because she was reduced to putting three songs on Soundcloud a few months ago and waiting for fan demand to build to release one of them officially. "I Hate U" even has a funky lo-fi Soundcloud sort of aesthetic to it, which I think makes it cool that this is the song that blew up. Here's my new 2022 singles Spotify playlist that I'll be adding songs to throughout the year.
2. Adele - "Oh My God"
There was a lot of speculation about whether Adele would finally modernize her sound or try to play catch up with more contemporary-sounding pop stars on 30, and I was happy with her releasing a very traditional piano ballad lead single and then having some mildly novel sounds on the album. "Oh My God" stands out in the context of an Adele album -- within a few days of the album coming out and fan favorites emerging, her label switched plans from "I Drink Wine" to "Oh My God" for the second single -- but on pop radio it just sounds like a really good but not particularly unusual song.
3. Megan Thee Stallion - "Megan's Piano"
Something For The Hotties didn't get too much attention as sort of a stopgap mixtape thing, but it was in my top 10 albums of the year and it really might be my favorite Megan project, just all aggressive beats and shit talking bars and no features. And "Megan's Piano" is a good breakout single for it, under 2 minutes and with an amazing minimalist piano beat (one of my local Top 40 stations does a drivetime dance mix and one time they played "Megan's Piano" with a generic EDM beat and it kinda kicked ass). But what I really like it the weird way she inverts that early 2010s Young Money/Big Sean punchline style, putting the punchline phrase at the beginning rather than the end of the line ("teacup / I can fit a bitch in my purse").
4. Kane Brown - "One Mississippi"
Kane Brown has been making inroads to pop crossover in the last few years and "Be Like That" with Swae Lee and Khalid was pretty good. And in 2021 he released two singles that probably set up a two-pronged approach for his 3rd album. "Memory" is mediocre pop radio fodder with Blackbear, but "One Mississippi" is his best country single since "Good As You," big effective chorus (despite its passing resemblance to Luke Bryan's bad 2020 hit "One Margarita") and a nice climactic guitar solo.
5. Lucky Daye - "Candy Drip"
Really looking forward to Lucky Daye's next album, feels like he's ready to make a big jump commercially, and as usual D'Mile's production is fantastic.
6. Cole Swindell f/ Lainey Wilson - "Never Say Never"
Cole Swindell's "Single Saturday Night" and Lainey Wilson's "Things A Man Oughta Know" were both high on my 2021 singles list, and their voices sound good together on a duet.
7. Parker McCollum - "To Be Loved By You"
I could never quite make up my mind whether I liked Parker McCollum's breakthrough hit "Pretty Heart" or not, catchy song but his voice was just so whiny. It's still whiny on "To Be Loved By You," but in a weird way it works better because the lyric is kind of needy and self-pitying.
8. Taylor Swift - "Message In A Bottle"
I don't really care enough about Taylor Swift to listen to the re-recordings of her old albums, and find the excitement around them and that overstuffed longer version of "All Too Well" kind of baffling. But I do think Red is one of her best albums, perhaps her very best, and it is nice to hear some outtakes from back when she was doing the pop crossover thing well before Reputation. Apparently the original unreleased "Message In A Bottle" was the first song she made with Max Martin and I'm kind of surprised it didn't make the cut originally, it's a little anonymous but much catchier and better than "22."
9. French Montana f/ Doja Cat and Saweetie - "Handstand"
French Montana isn't the star he once was, but he can still manage to put together a pretty good single if some guest rappers and a sample from a NYC rap classic can carry it for him. I don't know why Doja Cat's guest verses are so much better than the rap bits on her own songs now.
10. Carolina Gaitan, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero and Stephanie Beatriz - "We Don't Talk About Bruno"
As I wrote yesterday, I really enjoyed Encanto and its songs, and "We Don't Talk About Bruno" was the song that really got stuck in my head immediate the first time my kid watched it, although "Surface Pressure" was the one he started singing around the house right off the bat (between my two kids I think I've seen it at least 4 times now). So I'm pretty delighted about the surprise viral success of "Bruno," I heard it on a Top 40 station for the first time the other night and it actually worked pretty well in a radio context.
The Worst Single of the Month: Acraze f/ Cherish - "Do It To It"
After Imanbek/SAINt JHN and HVME/Travis Scott hits, house remixes of rap songs appear to be an ongoing pop radio trend, and now we've got this horrible flattening new version of Cherish's 2006 crunk & B chestnut that might be the nadir of the whole weird phenomenon.
Movie Diary
Monday, January 24, 2022
People with a bunch of Oscars making a black and white Macbeth adaptation the original Shakespearean dialogue doesn't necessarily sound exciting on paper, but Joel Coen, Denzel Washington, and Frances McDormand are just about the best set of people I can think of to do this (ironically, the Coens are working apart for the first time because one of them is directing an original play while the other is directing a movie of a very famous play). Denzel Washington is as fantastic as you would expect, but the part of the movie that really stuck with me was Kathryn Hunter, who played an old man and the three witches. Apparently she does mostly theatre and I'd never seen her in anything before, but she's just an amazing, unique presence, would love to see more of her.
People by and large really hated this movie, and I gotta say, I didn't. I haven't been a fan of Adam McKay's turn towards social commentary and particularly thought The Big Short was crap, but the decision to shoot Don't Look Up in the style of The Big Short did work, I thought. Mark Rylance was great, every scene with Jonah Hill and Jennifer Lawrence was hilarious, even Timothee Chalamet is better at comedy than I expected, plenty of little moments that I enjoyed. On the whole, though yes, the premise didn't really work, and in addition to being very smug about the reception to the movie, McKay and David Sirota seem to have missed how the whole 'A-list stars have a very important message for you' "We Are The World" vibe really undermines their media critique.
The direction Aaron Sorkin's career has gone in has kind of bummed me out because I actually like his writing, but his turn toward biopics and true stories doesn't play to his strengths because he's a distinctive writer who tends to imprint his own sensibility and obsessions on the material instead of capturing their essence. This tendency reached its nadir with the completely wrongheaded The Trial of the Chicago 7, and I feared the similarly poorly titled Being The Ricardos would be worse. But this turned out to be pretty good, which maybe I should've expected: his old-school style of patter is often better suited to the 1950s than the present day, and behind-the-scenes in the world of television is Sorkin's comfort zone (and Clark Gregg finally gets to play the network exec he was about to be when "Sports Night" got canceled). I've always thought of Nicole Kidman as someone who knocks it out of the park in roles that are right for her but not really very versatile or chameleonic, and only funny in a very certain kind of comedy, so I thought her Lucille Ball could be a disaster, but she's really great, got the voice just right and the hair and makeup really helped do the rest of the work. I still found plenty of problems with the overall execution of the movie, but Kidman, J.K. Simmons, and Nina Arianda were all fantastic, only Javier Bardem was completely miscast.
I saw The Matrix in the theater when it came out, but I've never had any particular reverence for it, and thought the first two sequels were such a waste that if nothing else a 4th movie at least had an opportunity to bring up the series' overall batting average. But The Matrix Resurrections is just a little too transparent about the fact that Lilly Wachowski wouldn't have made it if Warner Bros. weren't dead set on making a sequel with or without the original filmmakers, and in the end it feels like a serious version of Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back where the protagonists of the franchise are against it continuing. And I mean, The Matrix Reloaded was incoherent but still had amazing action sequences, the action in Resurrections just felt perfunctory and like the movie cost way less than $200 million to make. And it felt like a waste of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jonathan Groff to have them doing weird meta reinventions of Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving's iconic characters. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and then turned out right rancid when the credits rolled with a terrible ska cover of Rage Against The Machine's "Wake Up," as played by a band who recently became famous when the singer pissed on a fan onstage.
e) The House
I saw that there was an animated movie on Netflix starring Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and just immediately put it on. The House is a weird little British dark comedy anthology film with 3 stories, my favorite was definitely the one with the mouse voiced by Jarvis, but the whole thing is pretty cool, great animation.
f) Swan Song
Swan Song is a near-future sci-fi story where Mahershala Ali's character is a man with a terminal illness who decides to secretly sign up for a new service where a perfect copy of him, with all the same memories and no health problems, will replace him and be married to his wife and raise his children. It's an interesting premise, and it's a little irritating that I just saw the exact same premise barely 6 months ago in the Anthony Mackie episode of the Amazon anthology series "Solos" -- the framing of the story was a little different, it was obviously shorter and smaller-scale, but otherwise pretty similar. Swan Song has more time to explore the emotional implications, though, and Ali is great as usual, and has excellent chemistry with Naomie Harris (who sings Prince's "Sometimes It Snows In April" really beautifully at one point). The concept is pretty thought-provoking -- as a parent, I now primarily fear death as a fear of leaving my kids without a dad and leaving my wife to raise them without me. But I don't think I'd be able to leave them with a clone of me and hope it works out, it's just too weird and creepy.
g) Zola
I spent years kind of mocking the idea that that this overhyped "epic twitter thread" got turned into a semi-prestigious A24 movie that I was like, OK, I should at least watch it and give it a chance. But it kind of felt like even the hype over the Twitter story was like some kind of tail end remnant of the early 2010s trend of trashy Florida-based movies like Spring Breakers, Magic Mike, and Pain And Gain, so the movie's not just 5 years late but kind of a decade behind the zeitgeist. But Zola is fine, I guess, Taylour Paige carried the movie well, Riley Keough and Nicholas Braun were from that Aaron Paul school of somehow coming off really condescending and facile in just the act of playing a lower class white person who listens to a lot of rap music.
h) Black Widow
The saving grace of Scarlett Johansson playing Black Widow in the MCU is that they never got too serious about making her speak with a Russian accent. Unfortunately, for her solo movie they surrounded her with better actors (Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz) and then saddled them with bad goofy fake accents. Even Pugh's Yelena, the best thing about this movie, was better in the "Hawkeye" miniseries.
i) Encanto
I have mixed feeling about Lin-Manuel Miranda in general, but when it comes to writing songs for Disney movies, he's got the perfect skillset. The songs from Moana have been a staple of my household for 5 years and it wouldn't surprise me if Encanto has a similar shelflife, my youngest watched it two days in a row and has been going around singing bits of the songs ever since. And I just found the whole thing pretty charming, loved the stuff with house that's alive.
My kids have become big fans of the Hotel Transylvania movies, so this is another one my youngest was pretty into. I'm amused that Adam Sandler did 3 animated movies playing Dracula, each one making more money than the last, and then finally tapped out for the 4th one. Like, it took a long time, but we finally found something that Adam Sandler thinks is beneath him. My kid didn't notice that Dracula had a different voice actor, though, so it's probably a smart move to make it cheaper without him.
I was in no rush to see the 'photorealistic' Lion King remake, but it was on TV and my kid watched it. I thought visually it worked a little better than I expected, but still felt pretty unnecessary -- the closer they got to mimicking the original, the less flattering it was. Beyonce's line readings were ridiculous, and Chiwetel Ejiofor in particular just had none of the campy menace Jeremy Irons brought to Scar, and it felt kind of pathetic how they didn't even try to pull of "Be Prepared" and just skipped it. But at least they had new jokes in the Timon and Pumbaa scenes so those felt a little fresh. The sad/violent parts were a bit more visceral and made my kid cry, he watched the whole thing but then the next day he asked to watch the original Lion King.
My kid loves the "Hilda" series on Netflix so I was happy to see they made a spinoff movie, we watched and enjoyed it and then went back to rewatching the two seasons of the show.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
I recently wrote my first article for Bandcamp, and it's a look back at the life and work of Dwayne "Headphones" Lawson, a hip hop producer from Baltimore who passed away in November. I spoke to a lot of people who knew him and worked with him, including DDm, Kane Mayfield, Eze Jackson, Greenspan, and his Mania Music Group co-producer Brandon Lackey, and highlighted some of his best tracks. This was a real labor of love to show appreciation for a guy I had a lot of admiration for.
Saturday, January 15, 2022
I wrote a piece for GQ looking back at the history of records before The Weeknd's Dawn FM that had similar radio station-within-an-album concepts.
TV Diary
Friday, January 14, 2022
It's a strange thing, experiencing this pandemic in a world that's full of fiction about swifter and more dramatic pandemics and apocalypses and collapses of society. Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven, about a flu that kills off 99% of the Earth's population, was published in 2014, and this HBO miniseries had already begun production when COVID-19 hit, and I wondered if that would be hard to watch or would come off badly in this context. But it's a really beautiful, poignant story, and showrunner Patrick Somerville, a writer on "The Leftovers," gives it a bit of that show's vivid, intense texture. As usual, my wife has read the source material and I have not, so she was able to give me a little perspective on what was changed from the novel (apparently Frank's physical disabilities were more severe in the book, which makes his decision sort of easier to understand than it was in the series, so I'm not sure why they changed that). But the whole thing is really wonderful, particularly the performances by Mackenzie Davis, Matilda Lawler, Himesh Patel, and Danielle Deadwyler.
b) "MacGruber"
The 2010 MacGruber movie was way better than it had a right to be, but I wasn't really clamoring for Will Forte to revisit the character, and was surprised to hear a decade later that there'd be a series. But it picks up right where the movie left off, with Jorma Taccone still writing and directing and Kristen Wiig and Ryan Phillippe returning and Laurence Fishburne, Billy Zane, and Sam Elliott joining the cast. I feel like some episodes are much stronger than others, but it's still pretty damn entertaining. I actually slipped it into my best TV of 2021 list just off the strength of watching the first episode because of Maya Rudoph's song and Willl Forte saying "my country invited me to die for it and I RSVP'd 'yass queen'."
"Landscapers" is based on the story of a British couple who murdered the wife's parents and buried them in their garden, and got away with it until the bodies were found over a decade later. Olivia Colman and David Thewlis are obviously both amazing actors, and there's a lot of creative storytelling and arty direction in this miniseries. Really the whole cast is great, Kate O'Flynn steals every scene she's in. But the kind of wacky black comedy approach to this story does rub me the wrong way at times considering it's a true story about two murder victims.
d) "Harlem"
With the premiere of "Harlem" and "Run The World" and the finale of "Insecure" in the last few months there's been a lot of chatter about cable comedies about Black women and how they're sort of all about four thirtysomething friends. But obviously, there's room for a dozen more shows like that, so long as each one is good and has its own voice, and I think "Harlem," created by Girls Trip screenwriter Tracy Oliver, goes for bigger laugh-out-loud moments than those, which I like, some of these shows about striving young professionals can get a little too soap opera-ish for me.
e) "With Love"
"With Love" is a cute little rom com show on Amazon about all the romantic issues and relationships of the Diaz family, with each episode taking place on a different holiday. It's pretty formulaic stuff but I find it charming, although it's kind of annoying how the show takes place in Portland but doesn't feel like it at all and is very clearly all shot in L.A. And it's nice to see Vincent Rodriguez III from "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" again.
f) "Stay Close"
This British miniseries on Netflix about a missing person cold case is very moody and dramatic, but I didn't really find the story riveting enough to keep going past the first episode.
g) "Vigil"
Another British show about a mysterious disappearance, this time of a fishing boat near a military submarine, and it also was very somber and kinda lost my interest after one or two episodes.
This continues to be a pretty entertaining show, although it really mixes some wildly different tones, and while they pull of the more straightforward drama/action stuff well, I must admit I like the wackier episodes where Jaskier shows up more.
I've always had kind of mixed feelings about "Search Party" and its big tonal shifts and shaggy, unpredictable story. But having finished the 5th and final season, it kind of holds together as a whole better than I ever would've expected. It almost seemed like the odd-numbered seasons were the funniest and the even-numbered seasons veered toward being a little too dark, as if it was on purpose. In any sense, I like that they kept swinging for the fences at the end with the increasingly insane storyline of season 5, Alia Shawkat got to give her best performance of the series and a lot of the new characters, including ones played by Jeff Goldblum and John Waters, were hilarious.
j) "The Sinner"
I love how this show has turned into an anthology about Bill Pullman's detective character, although I'm always way behind on watching it, I just recently finished the 3rd season and started the 4th season that concluded airing a few weeks ago. Season 3 got a little silly at the end -- the main character wound up like Harvey Dent deciding whether to kill people with a paper fortune teller instead of flipping a coin -- but I like how they kind of made season 4 sort of an extension of the same storyline instead of making it all self-contained.
I enjoyed the first season of this Australian import on Peacock but I didn't realize it was coming back for a second season until months after it premiered last August. It's kind of funny how it felt like the story had come to a natural end already but now they're moving into a different house, it'd be goofy if all of them went to a different house every season.
Kyle Mooney is on his 9th season at "Saturday Night Live" and it's hard to think of anybody who's been on the show that long with as little screentime or impact as he's had. I've always liked and rooted for him, though, and I'm glad he got his own little Lorne-produced show over on Netflix. But "Saturday Morning All Star Hits" is very much in the '80s/'90s syndicated TV camp/nostalgia zone that other SNL people like Robert Smigel and The Lonely Island have plumbed, to say nothing of half of Adult Swim's programming, so it's funny and well executed but not especially fresh or original.
m) "Santa Inc."
This is one of those terrible edgy adult cartoons, in the style of the old stop motion Christmas specials, where a female elf (Sarah Silverman) wants to take over Santa Claus (Seth Rogen)'s job. And I guess enough dumb right wingers found this plot offensive that Rogen was able to just deride everyone who hated the show as a Nazi, but it honestly is a crappy, unfunny show for apolitical reasons.
A Netflix thriller about a girl being kidnapped by ISIS, some good exciting direction but another show I kind of abandoned after one episode.
o) "Kitz"
This German show on Netflix is a lot like the show "Revenge" that was a hit on ABC a few years ago, with a young woman sort of moving to an affluent area and infiltrating high society to exact revenge on people she blames for a death in her family. But I like the dialogue and the cast, I think it has potential.
This Swedish show on Netflix is a pretty entertaining little black comedy, one of those things where police that aren't used to solving serious cases are suddenly confronted with this big bank heist/hostage situation, I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
q) "Rebelde"
I've seen American networks do English-language remakes of telenovelas, but it's kind of funny that Netflix did a remake of this Mexican show that's still in Spanish and takes place in Mexico. It's a fun frothy little teen drama about kids at an elite music school, though, I wouldn't be surprised if The CW eventually did make an English version.
A dystopian Netflix show from Korea about a future when the Earth is running out of food and water and people are trying to find a solution, definitely kind of a bummer but some good special effects.
I'm not familiar with the Colombian comedian Alejandra Azcarate, but I like her series on Netflix, it's sort of a "Chappelle's Show" or "Inside Amy Schumer"-type mix of sketches and standup, lots of self-deprecating cultural commentary and witty wordplay.
t) "Voir"
Netflix did a terrible job of announcing this show because they basically teased that they were doing something new with David Fincher, and everyone was immediately bummed out that it was a series of video essays about classic films and not a feature or a new season of "Mindhunter" or something. Each episode is by a different person, and I feel like the quality of the episodes varies pretty wildly depending on the strength of the writing and how well their voice works with voiceover narration.
This show, meanwhile, is completely let down by the voiceover, the footage is amazing but the person doing the narration basically sounds like Stewie from "Family Guy," it's just too ridiculous to take.
v) "Baking It"
I don't watch the "Making It" craft competition reality show hosted by Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, but I much prefer this spinoff because I like the hosts more (Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg), and I generally prefer reality shows about food.
This Netflix show is about Colton Underwood, a former pro football player who came out as gay after appearing on multiple seasons of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette." And the one episode I watched was kind of interesting because he's just dealing with the fallout of coming out after spending years on TV presenting himself as a straight guy looking for a girlfriend, and grappling with what led him to do that, I sympathize with him but man, what a mess.
I'd never heard of the story in his HBO docuseries, three women getting murdered in an Illinois state park in 1960 and a guy being wrongly convicted for the crime, really crazy fascinating stuff.
I kind of roll my eyes at a lot of Will Smith's inspirational Instagram content, but he is inarguably a great person to host a nature docuseries like this, he has a very genuine and infectious sense of wonder. And I'm glad he shot this before he shaved his mustache and started rocking that weird-looking beard.
I'm amused that this Netflix show just says "fuck it, we're gonna rip of 'The Real World' with 8 strangers instead of 7 strangers."
Monthly Report: December 2021 Albums
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
1. Nas - Magic
It's funny to think that not that long ago, there was a 7-year stretch where the only things of note Nas did were a song called "Nas Album Done" and then, 2 years later, the deeply mediocre 7-song min-album Nasir. But he ended 2021 with his second excellent album in a year and broke the I Am/Nastradamus curse, and it's inspiring to see. Hit-Boy seemed like he had the tools to become one of the best producers of his generation a decade ago, and these albums have really put him back in that conversation, the "Speechless" and "Hollywood Gangsta" beats are amazing.
2. Joy On Fire - Unknown Cities
The New Jersey-based punk jazz band Joy On Fire is another act who was already in my top 50 albums of 2021 list but then released another record in December that's possibly even better. Unknown Cities feels a little heavier than their other stuff, John Paul Carillo has great grimy distorted bass guitar sound on a lot of the record, and it's just full of great moments like this really memorable sax line Anna Meadors plays at the end of "Kung Fu Tea Party" or the 11/8 groove they get going on "China, North Carolina."
3. Tierra Whack - Rap? EP
I already put this on my list of the best EPs of 2021. And considering that Tierra Whack's only album to date ran under 15 minutes, she really underplayed releasing 26 minutes of music in December by spreading it across three EPs, we got a nice little pack of music from one of the most promising rappers in the world. Rap? and especially "Millions" are my favorite of her December releases, but Pop? and R&B? have gems too.
4. Beauty Pill - Instant Night EP
This, like the Tierra Whack record, already placed very highly on my list of the best EPs of the year. "Instant Night" came out as a single in 2021, and the other three tracks include a remix and an instrumental miniature, but Beauty Pill remains one of the most exciting and unique bands in the world and I'm glad Chad Clark is trickling out great new songs like the funky, slippery "You Need A Better Mind" on EPs since so many years tend to pass between the band's full-length albums. And even that instrumental track "Common Chokecherry" is a delightful little thing showcasing Devin Ocampo on brushed drums.
5. Roddy Ricch - Live Life Fast
In December 2019, Roddy Ricch's Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial exploded and exceeded all expectations in a way that rap albums rarely do in an era where 'breakthrough' albums tend to be carefully set up with a year's worth of hit singles. In the space of a few weeks, Roddy went from a guy with a strong west coast buzz to a major star with a #1 album and a #1 single, and that single, "The Box," was just certified diamond. And while Roddy Ricch hasn't been a recluse by any stretch of the imagination in the last two years, he took his time on a follow-up album while promising along the way that it would be a "full blown masterpiece." And then Live Life Fast came out and just completely flopped, terrible word of mouth, tepid reviews, deflated commercial performance. And the reception baffles me a little because it's not exactly a risky album -- Roddy Ricch stuck with big name guests and big name producers and the same kinds of flows that made him a star. Yeah, it's not as good as Please Excuse Me, but I think the margin between them is a lot slimmer than it's made out to be, "Hibachi" and "All Good" and "Everything You Need" and "Move To Miami" are great.
6. Styles P & Havoc - Wreckage Manner
Havoc is an all-time great MC/producer and had a lot to do with what made Mobb Deep legendary, but of course Prodigy was always the bigger star, and looms even larger over the group's legacy after his death. And that has left Havoc, who never had a lot of solo success, kind of unfairly adrift in the last years. But Wreckage Manner is a brilliant move, pairing Havoc with another great MC from his generation who was also never the biggest star in his group but has carved out a niche for himself over the years. I'd love Havoc to do more collaborative projects like this, have him produce a whole Griselda record or something, show people how much he originated production styles that are still beloved today.
7. Big Boi & Sleepy Brown - Big Sleepover
Big Sleepover is another cool duo project from a couple of '90s veterans that kind of fills a certain void well: Big Boi clearly wishes Outkast still made albums, but Andre's never coming back, and making an album with other Dungeon Family guys (including Cee-Lo, Big Rube, Killer Mike, Backbone and the rest of Organized Noize) is the next best thing. Big Boi and Sleepy Brown could easily just coast on their reputation and make a lot of smooth stuff in the tradition of "The Way You Move" and "So Fresh, So Clean," and there are some songs in that vein like "Animalz" and "Can't Sleep," but there's a lot of variety and harder-edged stuff too.
8. Alicia Keys - Keys
I don't look at or think much about Narrowcast web traffic stats, but occasionally I take a glance and notice weird unexplained trends, and for the past year the big one has been my Alicia Keys deep album cuts post from 2015 suddenly consistently getting lots of clicks half a decade later -- it's literally my most popular post of all time now, almost 10 times as many hits in 2021 as anything new I posted last year. In the off chance I now have a large readership of Alicia Keys fans, here's my take on her new album. Keys is one of those double albums with two versions of most of the songs. The 'originals' on disc 1 are some of the most stripped-down piano-based tracks she's released since her first two albums, with occasionally great results. But the 'unlocked' tracks on disc 2, mostly remixes by Mike WiLL Made It, are largely unnecessary and occasionally embarrassing -- I would go so far as to say that there's at most one or two songs that are better the second time around, "Old Memories (Unlocked)" has a cool Bruce Hornsby-via-Ghosttown DJs thing going on. But disc 1 is really all you need, especially the Raphael Saadiq collaborations, and "Love When You Call My Name" is one of the most gorgeous things Alicia Keys has ever done.
9. No Rome - It's All Smiles
No Rome's singing voice is pretty close to Matty Healy's, and the brilliant George Daniel co-produced It's All Smiles, so this album really fills my desire for new The 1975 music for the time being, "I Want U" and "Everything" are my favorite tracks so far.
10. Saucy Santana - Keep It Playa
Saucy Santana is at that sort of transitional point between a social media personality and a rap star that Cardi B was at before "Bodak Yellow" -- he started out as City Girls' makeup artist/friend and then started making his own songs a couple years ago, and he's never charted or anything, but there must have been dozens of times 'Santana' trended on Twitter and it was always about Saucy, never Carlos or Juelz. His music isn't all the way there yet, but it's improving, his verses on "Pressure" are great.
The Worst Album of the Month: A Room Full Of Mirrors - Money Bag EP
Top Dawg Entertainment president Punch is the guy who I most associate with TDE's odd decline as a label, because he's constantly tweeting in defense of the fact that SZA's album never comes out even as her singles chart higher and higher, and explaining that it's fine that Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free are leaving and starting their own company. Meanwhile, Punch has started a new group with battle rapper Daylyt and a few others, A Room Full Of Mirrors, and their blandly anonymous debut EP isn't even on TDE, just feels like the guy is dicking around while rap's former most exciting label goes down the tubes.
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
DMC of Run-DMC fame is publishing a children's book this week, and I had a great conversation with him about it and a lot of other topics for Spin.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 250: The Monkees
Tuesday, January 04, 2022
9 years ago this week, I posted my first Deep Album Cuts playlist. In my fondness for lining up the big milestones, I may try to hit the 300th post in the series on the 10th anniversary next year, which is possible since I did post over 50 of them in 2020, but I guess we'll see if that happens. In the meantime, it's pretty crazy that I've done a quarter of a thousand of these things, and I still feel like I'm nowhere near running out of worthy subjects.
Michael Nesmith died in December, leaving Micky Dolenz as the only surviving member of The Monkees. But shortly before that, from September to November 2021, Nesmith and Dolenz embarked on The Monkees Farewell Tour, promising "all the hits, deep cuts & fan favorites" one last time. Like many older touring acts these days, Nesmith and Dolenz used a lyric teleprompter monitor onstage to help ensure they'd sing the right words, and I believe someone on their crew usually does the job but they hire operators in different cities when they're able to. So on October 18th when they played the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C., the teleprompting company I work for was hired and I scrolled lyrics for The Monkees. It was a fun night, they had a great backing band and a real palpable love for their fans and their songs. Nesmith was definitely moving slow, and would take breaks and sit behind me backstage a few times while Dolenz would sing solo, but I'm really glad he got to do that last run of shows before he passed away. I kept my copy of the setlist from that night (you can hear largely the same set on their 2020 live album The Monkees Live - The Mike & Micky Show).
The Monkees deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Saturday's Child
2. Take A Giant Step
3. Papa Gene's Blues
4. I'll Be True To You
5. Sweet Young Thing
6. Your Auntie Grizelda
7. The King Of Girl I Could Love
8. Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)
9. Sometime In The Morning
10. When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)
11. You Just May Be The One
12. Sunny Girlfriend
13. Zilch
14. No Time
15. For Pete's Sake (Closing Theme)
16. The Door Into Summer
17. Love Is Only Sleeping
18. Cuddly Toy
19. Star Collector
20. Peter Pervical Patterson's Pet Pig Porky
21. P.O. Box 9847
22. I'll Be Back Up On My Feet
23. As We Go Along
24. Ditty Diego - War Chant
25. Circle Sky
26. Poll
27. You And I
28. If I Knew
29. It's Got To Be Love
30. Gettin' In
31. Run Away From Life
32. Birth Of An Accidental Hipster
33. House Of Broken Gingerbread
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from The Monkees (1966)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 from More Of The Monkees (1967)
Tracks 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 from Headquarters (1967)
Tracks 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
Tracks 21 and 22 from The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968)
Tracks 23, 24, 25 and 26 from Head (1968)
Track 27 from Instant Replay (1969)
Track 28 from The Monkees Present Micky, David, Michael (1969)
Track 29 from Changes (1970)
Track 30 from Pool It! (1987)
Track 31 from Justus (1996)
Track 32 from Good Times! (2016)
Track 33 from Christmas Party (2018)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 from More Of The Monkees (1967)
Tracks 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 from Headquarters (1967)
Tracks 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
Tracks 21 and 22 from The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968)
Tracks 23, 24, 25 and 26 from Head (1968)
Track 27 from Instant Replay (1969)
Track 28 from The Monkees Present Micky, David, Michael (1969)
Track 29 from Changes (1970)
Track 30 from Pool It! (1987)
Track 31 from Justus (1996)
Track 32 from Good Times! (2016)
Track 33 from Christmas Party (2018)
The Monkees are kind of rock and roll's Pinocchio fable, a fake band assembled for a TV show that willed themselves into becoming a real band. When Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were cast in the NBC sitcom "The Monkees" in 1966, they'd sing the songs assigned to them by the show's producers and mime their instruments. But there were exceptions even on the beginning -- Nesmith, who'd quickly emerge as the band's most prolific songwriter, penned 2 songs on the first Monkees album, and Tork played guitar on one of them, "Papa Gene's Blues" (all in all Nesmith wrote or co-wrote 10 songs on this playlist).
The Monkees quickly became a music industry phenomenon that competed with the more respected '60s rock legends of the day -- in 1967 they outsold The Beatles and toured with Jimi Hendrix as their opening act. Inevitably, the prefab nature of the Monkees became embarrassing, particularly to the members of the band, who fought for the right to actually write and perform the music on their albums, beginning with their third album Headquarters ("No Time" being the first proper song co-written by all four Monkees, although they gave studio engineer Hank Cicalo a co-writing credit as a lucrative gift). And though the real Monkees all played on the band's third and final U.S. #1, "Daydream Believer," their popularity soon did started to wane, and "The Monkees," never a huge ratings hit relative to the sales of the albums, got canceled after only 2 seasons.
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were the songwriters behind a lot of The Monkees' biggest hits, and at one point in the '70s they toured with half the Monkees and released an album as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. But the group had a whole stable of impressive Brill Building songwriters working on their records, as well as legendary session players. Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote "Take A Giant Step," "Sometime In The Morning" and "Star Collector," which features Peter Tork playing some of the earliest Moog synth heard on a pop record. Goffin and King also co-wrote "Sweet Young Thing" with Michael Nesmith. King also co-wrote "As We Go Along," and Goffin co-wrote "I'll Be True To You," which was a hit for The Hollies (under the title "Yes I Will"). Neil Diamond wrote "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" alongside the hit "I'm A Believer." Harry Nilsson wrote "Cuddly Toy" and "Daddy's Song." Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer Sager wrote "When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)." Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote "Love Is Only Sleeping," which has a really great use of 7/8 meter.
The Monkees' first and only feature film, Head, was famously a box office flop, but reputedly a really strange and experimental little movie that's gained a cult following over the years. I haven't seen the movie, and the companion album would probably make sense if I had, but there's some interesting stuff on there (for that matter I've never really seen much of "The Monkees," which is surprising because I saw a ton of campy '60s sitcoms like "Gilligan's Island" and "I Dream of Jeannie" on TV in the '90s).
The Head album was sequenced by Jack Nicholson, who co-wrote the screenplay and appeared in the film, and co-wrote the song "Ditty Diego-War Chant." Frank Zappa appears in a small role in Head and some of his dialogue makes its way into the song "Poll." "As We Go Along" has a cool 5/4 section at the end that I may use in a future 5/4 DJ mix. And on the next album, Instant Replay, Neil Young plays guitar on "You And I," which is a really cool song with an interesting performance by legendary Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine. After Head, things slowly unraveled and members of the band began leaving, first Tork and then Nesmith, and Justus is the only one of their last 7 albums that features all 4 Monkees.
Dolenz, Nesmith, and Tork released two albums after Davey Jones's death, both of which were produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, who weirdly co-wrote "House Of Broken Gingerbread" with novelist Michael Chabon. Good Times! was the album that really cashed in on their goodwill with alt-rockers who grew up on their music, in addition to Schlesinger there are songs written by Rivers Cuomo, Ben Gibbard, and Andy Partridge, and "Birth of an Accidental Hipster" was written by Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. At the D.C. show, they were proud to note that the Good Times! single "Me & Magdalena" was written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie. After Nesmith's death in December, Gibbard played a short tribute set on Instagram that included "Me & Magdalena" and "You Just May Be The One."
The band's setlist at the D.C. show that I worked on included "Papa Gene's Blues," "Sweet Young Thing," "The Kind Of Girl I Could Love," "You Just May Be The One," "For Pete's Sake," "Sunny Girlfriend," "The Door Into Summer," "Love Is Only Sleeping," and "Birth Of An Accidental Hipster." Those selections are, naturally, heavy on Dolenz and Nesmith songs, but they also did some Jones songs. Tork had by far the least contributions as a lead singer, but I put a few on the playlist, "Your Auntie Grizelda," the goofy little a cappella piece "Peter Pervical Patterson's Pet Pig Porky," and "Gettin' In." This playlist is actually the most tracks I've ever crammed into my self-imposed 80-minute cap for Deep Album Cuts (the previous record held by both the Everly Brothers and They Might Be Giants playlists, which each had 32 songs).
A couple years back, I appeared on DC Hendrix's podcast to talk about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and one of the things he asked me was whether I think The Monkees had been inducted. I answered yes, mostly on instinct, because I'd love their inclusion to kind of challenge the Hall's ideas about authenticity and who gets counted as a real artist, and The Monkees' story is so unique and sort of inspiring in that respect. But now that I've really taken a deep dive into their catalog, I believe in moreso that they deserve to at least get nominated for the first time.