My Top 50 Albums of 1984

Thursday, March 31, 2022






Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. The Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime
2. The Replacements - Let It Be
3. Prince - Purple Rain
4. Van Halen - 1984
5. The Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II
6. REM - Reckoning
7. Bruce Springsteen - Born In The U.S.A.
8. The Pretenders - Learning To Crawl
9. Madonna - Like A Virgin
10. Metallica - Ride The Lightening
11. Sade - Diamond Life
12. The dB’s – Like This
13. The Young Fresh Fellows – The Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific Northwest
14. U2 - The Unforgettable Fire
15. The Cure - The Top
16. Run-DMC – Run-DMC
17. Whodini – Escape
18. John Prine - Aimless Love
19. The Bangles - All Over The Place
20. Queen - The Works
21. Bryan Adams – Reckless
22. Tina Turner - Private Dancer
23. Chaka Khan - I Feel For You
24. Judas Priest – Defenders of the Faith
25. Sheila E. – The Glamorous Life
26. Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward
27. Talk Talk - It's My Life
28. The Smiths - The Smiths
29. INXS - The Swing
30. XTC - The Big Express
31. Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense
32. Wham! - Make It Big
33. The Time - Ice Cream Castle
34. Husker Du - Zen Arcade
35. Violent Femmes - Hallowed Ground
36. The Cars - Heartbeat City
37. Rush - Grace Under Pressure
38. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Weird Al" Yankovic In 3-D
39. The Go-Go's - Talk Show
40. New Edition - New Edition
41. Sonic Youth - Sonic Death
42. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Big Bam Boom
43. Iron Maiden - Powerslave
44. Pat Benatar – Tropico
45. Janet Jackson - Dream Street
46. The Minutemen - The Politics Of Time
47. Black Flag - My War
48. Difford & Tilbrook - Difford & Tilbrook
49. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Red Hot Chili Peppers
50. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Goodbye Cruel World

1984's lasting legacy may be as the year that Minneapolis officially became one of the most exciting places in the world for music fans, thanks to the #2, #3, #33, and #34 albums. But it's just a really cool year in so many respects, so many different strains of alternative rock and metal and pop and R&B reaching maturity around the same time, along with some of the first significant hip hop albums. 

Previously:
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1985
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1986
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1987
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1988
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1989
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1990
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1991
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1992
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1993
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1994
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1995
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1996
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1997
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1998
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1999
My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2000
My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2001
My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2002
My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2003
My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2004
My Top 25 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2005
My Top 25 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2006
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2007
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2008
My Top 50 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2009
My Top 50 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2010
My Top 50 Albums and Top 50 Singles of 2011
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2012
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2013
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2014
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2015
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2016
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2017
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2018
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2019
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2020

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 255: Eminem

Wednesday, March 30, 2022






Eminem is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside A Tribe Called QuestBeckPat BenatarKate BushDevoDuran DuranEurythmicsNew York DollsRage Against The Machine, Lionel Richie, and Dionne Warwick, among others. So here's a look back at his catalog and all the bars you know and love: That's an awfully hot coffee pot! It's fun for me just to grab a boob! You're usin' way too many napkins! Your girl want an M&M so I gave her an M&M! Her honkers were bonkers! All men are friends!  

Eminem deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I'm Shady
2. '97 Bonnie & Clyde 
3. Bad Meets Evil (f/ Royce Da 5'9")
4. Kill You
5. Criminal
6. Drug Ballad
7. 'Till I Collapse (f/ Nate Dogg)
8. Business
9. Square Dance
10. My 1st Single
11. Yellow Brick Road
12. Insane
13. So Bad
14. Rhyme Or Reason
15. Heat
16. Normal
17. Unaccommodating (f/ Young M.A)

Tracks 1, 2 and 3 from The Slim Shady LP (1999)
Tracks 4, 5 and 6 from The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from The Eminem Show (2002)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Encore (2004)
Track 12 from Relapse (2009)
Track 13 from Recovery (2010)
Track 14 from The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)
Track 15 from Revival (2017)
Track 16 from Kamikaze (2018)
Track 17 from Music To Be Murdered By (2020)

I must admit, I've never been too big on Eminem. The first time I saw the "My Name Is" video, I was just totally turned off by the beat, the hook, the lame jokes, the cartoony aesthetic. And as his career went on and he made some undeniably great music, there were always some really bad songs and embarrassing shit right alongside it, so I kept him at arm's length. I kind of feel like, just because I'm a white rap fan (a white fan of rap) doesn't mean I have to be a white rap fan (a fan of white rappers). And even when Eminem was at his peak, so were Jay-Z and Outkast and DMX and Big Punisher and Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes and Scarface and The Roots and Ludacris and Jadakiss, it was just an incredibly exciting and competitive era of mainstream hip hop, so I was never really too pressed to spend my CD budget on these Eminem albums that people were listening to everywhere I went. 

Now that Eminem has been outright embarrassing for over a decade, I can look back at his early stuff and appreciate what was special about it more than I did at the time. I like Em the best when he was just this kid who loved Redman and Pharcyde and didn't think he deserved to sell any more than they did. But I can also hear the stuff that put me off of him, and it was a little exhausting to listen to a bunch of his stuff and relive that cycle of Eminem rapping slurs and jokes about domestic violence, doubling down, and then writing tediously smug songs about the controversy. 

After those first three albums contained some pretty great stuff, Eminem started to fall off pretty hard, and Encore and Relapse contain some of the worst music ever made, but there are still some decent songs I was able to pluck out for the playlist. "My 1st Single" is an album cut that's kind of an extended joke about Eminem's need to make super accessible lead singles. Meanwhile Encore's actual first single was the incredibly bad "Just Lose It," and even with a bunch of poop sound effects "My 1st Single" is a far better song. 

"Yellow Brick Road" was written in response to The Source unearthing an early '90s song where Em raps this weird offensive rant about dating a Black girl. And it's interesting to hear Eminem rap this thoughtful, carefully worded notes app apology sort of song about race when he otherwise always refused to back down or concede anything to his critics after rapping something offensive. It kind of proves that he does understand how these power dynamics work but prefers to play dumb most of the time. 

I didn't realize until I put this playlist together that "'Till I Collapse" featuring Nate Dogg is hugely popular, 8x platinum with more streams than every other Eminem song except "Lose Yourself." That totally caught me off guard because I don't think I've ever heard that song outside of The Eminem Show. But apparently it's been used in some video games and movies and as athletes' entrance music, which makes sense, it totally has that vibe. 

The 2022 Remix Report Card, Vol. 1

Tuesday, March 29, 2022






I've been doing the Remix Report Card since 2007, and I've been doing it quarterly since 2014. And this is one of the quieter quarters I've covered, especially compared to 2021, but a couple pretty high profile remixes just came out in the past week. Here's the Spotify playlist:

"Big Energy (Remix)" by Latto featuring Mariah Carey and DJ Khaled
I'm on the record as not being a fan of "Big Energy," but obviously it was always going to be a major hit with the bulletproof "Genius of Love" sample and the desperate attempt to cash in on a ubiquitous catchphrase. And now we've got the probably inevitable outcome, a remix featuring one of the stars that the sample reminds people of, and Mariah shows up to dutifully hit a whistle note and sing a bit of "Fantasy." One of Latto's verses from the original is cut-and-pasted in along with some pretty boring Khaled ad libs, a real zero effort remix that they managed to get a week of press coverage out of by staggering the release 3 days after Latto's album. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade:

"Big Steppin' (Remix)" by Stunnaman02 featuring E-40 and P-Lo
"Big Steppin'" by San Francisco rapper Stunnaman02 has been a big regional hit since last summer, and he's already created custom remixes for the 49ers and the Warriors, which is kind of wild since this is a pretty dark song where the first verse opens with "Last year I told n----s put they gun down (what happened?)/ They shot Kool John, I got a gun now." But I suppose it's not truly a Bay Area hit until 40 Water jumps on it, and he sounds great on this beat. 
Best Verse: E-40
Overall Grade: B+

"Bing Bong (Remix)" by Nems featuring Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes and Styles P
"Bing Bong" is another kind of inevitable song built around a social media catchphrase like "Big Energy" -- in this instance, a video where a Knicks fan said "bing bong" went viral, and it became a rallying cry for the Knicks and eventually kind of broadened into part of the obnoxious New Yorker vernacular, sort of supplanting or becoming a synonym for "bada bing." Nems, a 40-something battle rapper from Coney Island of no particular distinction, latched onto it and made it into his breakout hit, although he says "STOOPID" in that annoying 6ix9ine way on the song about as much as he says "bing bong." Nems released "Bing Bong" on his album Congo last year, but this year he went all in with a 10-track collection called King Bong that is comprised entirely of different versions of "Bing Bong," including a Knicks-themed remix and a Houston remix with Paul Wall and Trae The Truth. The main remix he's pushing, though, is this one with three NYC vets. They save the Busta Rhymes verse for last and it's really disappointing, just really repetitive in that constipated voice he does sometimes, but Fat Joe's verse is solid and Styles sounds predictably great on this hard beat by D-Block/Dipset producer Vinny Idol. 
Best Verse: Styles P
Overall Grade: B-

"Good Morning Gorgeous (Remix)" by Mary J. Blige featuring H.E.R.
I'm not a big fan of R&B remixes that just add one singer when the song isn't really suited to being a duet. But H.E.R.'s voice sounds really good on here and adds something to this song, which isn't one of my favorites from Mary J.'s recent album. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade:

"Lost My Mind (Remix)" by Slim Baby featuring Boosie Badazz
"Lost My Mind" is another regional hit from an up-and-comer like "Big Steppin'" that got remixed with one of the big elder statesmen figures of his scene. It's hard to find much info about Louisiana rapper Slim Baby (because, y'know, Slim and Baby from Cash Money), but this song is pretty good. And Boosie, though he's embarrassed himself and tarnished his legacy with a lot of social media foolishness in recent years, still knows how to rip a great intense guest verse. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade:

"No Love (Extended Version)" by Summer Walker featuring Cardi B and SZA
Summer Walker and SZA are probably the two biggest female R&B stars of their generation. So "No Love" was kind of an event when Walker's album dropped last year and was steadily getting airplay even before she released this remix as the single/video version and upped the ante with another major star. I kind of expected Cardi to just rap in her usual flow over like she has on Normani's recent single and other R&B collaborations, but she plays around with a more melodic delivery here and it sounds surprisingly good. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade:

"Peru (Remix)" by Fireboy DML featuring 21 Savage and Blxst
"Peru" by Nigeria's Fireboy DML is the latest Afrobeats song to go really worldwide and make a dent on the U.S. charts, and there's a remix with Ed Sheeran getting played on pop radio. But I'll focus on the remix with a couple of hip hop/R&B radio fixtures. 21 Savage has kind of become famous for being a big R&B head, which is not something people really expected form his early music, and over time he's kind of toyed with softer songs and more melodic delivery, and it still surprises me when his monotone flow sounds good on something like this. 
Best Verse: 21 Savage
Overall Grade: C-

"Thought I Was Gonna Stop (Remix)" by Papoose featuring 2 Chainz, Remy Ma, Busta Rhymes and Lil Wayne
Papoose is sort of an emblem of how insular and isolated New York rap has become from the rest of the hip hop world over the last couple decades, but he still makes these little perfunctory gestures at crossing over to a wider audience like "Thought I Was Gonna Stop," which is produced by Timbaland and features Lil Wayne. It's actually a pretty good song, though and I don't think I'd know it was Papoose if I just heard it not knowing anything about it. And the original is pretty short, so adding a few guests is welcome, 2 Chainz hangs with the New Yorkers well as usual. 
Best Verse: 2 Chainz
Overall Grade: B

"Too Easy (Remix)" by Gunna featuring Roddy Ricch and Future
In December, Roddy Ricch released a moderately good but not particularly exciting album, and Gunna did the same in January. But their trajectories are headed in opposite directions, and Roddy Ricch got raked over the coals for his album and basically was being treated as a has-been by the time Gunna's album came out with Roddy Ricch on a remix on his lead single. Roddy's still a talented guy and sounds good on this beat, though. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

Sunday, March 27, 2022





Rest in peace Taylor Hawkins, I wrote about my favorite Taylor performances for Spin

TV Diary

Friday, March 25, 2022






a) "Welcome To Flatch"
I was never a huge fan of the mockumentary style of sitcom that became ubiquitous after "The Office," and in the last few years it seemed to be falling out of fashion. But "Abbott Elementary" and the Paul Feig-produced "Welcome To Flatch" are two of the best comedies of 2022 so far so I guess there's still some life in the format. "Flatch" is about a fictional rural town in Ohio, and it feels like an affectionate satire of how strange small towns can become when everybody knows everybody. Sean William Scott plays against type as a priest and Aya Cash is like the opposite of her character on "You're The Worst," but there's this great cast of odd hilarious supporting characters, including Krystal Smith, Chelsea Holmes, Taylor Ortega, and William Tokarsky (the killer from "Too Many Cooks," finally in a real sitcom!). FOX just started airing it last week, but the first 7 episodes are all on Hulu and are worth watching. 

b) "Minx"
"Minx" is another excellent new show produced by Paul Feig about a woman with an idea for a feminist magazine meeting a pornographer and getting talked into making erotica for women in the early '70s, kind of an alternate history about something getting started a year or so before Playgirl existed. Thematically, it reminds me of some other recent period piece shows like "The Deuce" and "Physical," but after watching a couple episodes of "Minx," I think it's already miles ahead of those shows, just way more entertaining and more inventive in turning its concept into a story with characters and a context. Part of that is that Ophelia Lovibond and Jake Johnson have great chemistry and their characters are constantly pulling the idea in opposite directions, part of it is I think creator Ellen Rapoport and Feig just really know what they're doing and hit the mark. 

c) "Bust Down"
Peacock's "Bust Down" is an incredibly funny show, co-created and starring four Black comedians including Chris Redd from "SNL" and Langston Kerman, who's a writer and recurring actor on "South Side." It has a bit of the same sense of humor as "South Side" but has its own tone and rhythm that's a little more blue and a little more over-the-top. It's kind of surprising to see something that feels this current with a Lorne Michaels exec producer credit, but in some ways it's also an old-fashioned workplace sitcom, like if "Taxi" was about low level employees at a midwestern casino. 

When there were two competing biographical Aretha Franklin projects last year, there was really never any question that the feature film would outshine the TV series in every way. But Hulu's miniseries about Elizabeth Holmes, starring Amanda Seyfried, is good enough that the upcoming feature with Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Adam McKay may feel unnecessary by the time it arrives. I think Seyfried's always deserved meatier roles and it's great to see her totally kill this in her sort of deceptively airy way. I never saw the HBO documentary about Theranos, which is probably better because I'm not looking at her performance in terms of accuracy of the impersonation (The Social Network benefited from coming out back when we all had a more vague sense of what Zuckerberg looked or sounded like). And I also don't know all the details of the story already, and am finding it way more engrossing than I expected to, it's really just jaw-dropping how far they took this scheme before it fell apart. And there's a lot of great supporting performances, from Alan Ruck and William H. Macy and Bill Irwin and Laurie Metcalf and Bashir Salahuddin and Camryn Mi-Young Kim.  

e) "The Thing About Pam"
This is another one of those true crime shows where they treat the story of an actual murder as a dark comedy and the whole tone just feels distasteful. Renee Zellweger wears a fat suit and they really play up the tacky Missouri yokel thing with most of the characters, it's just bad. Judy Greer is probably the one person who doesn't embarrass herself but I just wish she wasn't in it at all. 

f) "Shining Vale"
The latest series created by Sharon Horgan is kind of a horror comedy where Courtney Cox plays a novelist who moves into a haunted house with her family (weirdly I don't know if the title is a deliberate allusion to The Shining or the parallels are not deliberate at all). The first couple episodes I've watched haven't knocked it out of the park but I like the weird mix of tones and think it has a lot of potential. 

g) "DMZ"
This HBO Max miniseries based on a comic book is about a dystopian future where another civil war has divided America into two countries and Manhattan is a demilitarized zone between them where Rosario Dawson is a medic looking for her missing son. Coming so soon after "Station Eleven," it feels very goofy to watch this cheesy apocalypse where a bunch of cyberpunk gangs in the future are dancing to "Swagga Like Us," of all songs. But I like Hoon Lee's character, the idea that this normal quiet working class dude just robbed a bank when everything started going to shit and made himself into an apocalyptic warlord who runs Chinatown. 

h) "Our Flag Means Death"
"Our Flag Means Death" is about a real historical figure, the "gentleman pirate" Stede Bonnet, an 18th century aristocrat who left his comfortable life to live to become a pirate and was for a time on the same ship as Blackbeard. And they go all the way silly New Zealand comedy with it, with Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as Blackbeard. It's pretty great, they had a lot of fun with the obvious comedic potential of the story. 

i) "Pivoting"
Back in 2018, there was this mass exodus of live action comedies on FOX (the end of "New Girl" and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" going to NBC, etc.), and they've had a small number of pretty lousy sitcoms like "Call Me Kat" since then. But with "Welcome To Flatch" and "Pivoting," FOX finally has a promising sitcom roster coming together. "Pivoting" is about 3 women who kind of upend their lives in different ways after the 4th friend in their group of best friends dies -- one of them leaves their job as a surgeon and works at a grocery store, one decides to have an extramarital affair, etc. Eliza Coupe is one of the best comic actresses working today so it's always great to see her, but so far "Pivoting" is hit and miss, some episodes are hilarious and some just feel like they're trying too hard to be irreverent. 

j) "Life & Beth"
I already went pretty in-depth about this show in my Consequence review, but I will add that there were a lot of good bit parts from Gary Gulman, Murray Hill, and Rachel Feinstein. 

Apparently "The Blacklist" is still on the air in its 9th season and renewed for a 10th, but "The Endgame" feels like NBC looking around for a successor, with Morena Baccarin as kind of a glamorous lady version of a criminal mastermind-type character like Red Reddington. It's kind of a show, but kind of campy in a half-assed way, I wish they'd just go all the way to making Baccarin's character into a Bond villain. 

I feel like the pilot of this FOX show was pretty strong and had a promising fish-out-of-water premise with a normal working class woman getting sort of pulled into this criminal underworld. But it was all downhill from that episode, especially when Oliver Hudson showed up, he really just oozes network TV mediocrity. 

m) "Grand Crew"
This NBC sitcom has a very light, goofy energy and they occasionally get in a good sharp line, but I don't know, the sets look distractingly weird and cheap even by sitcom standards and it just doesn't quite click most of the time. 

n) "Fairview"
"Fairview" airs alongside "South Park" on Comedy Central and has similarly hideous little bobblehead characters talking about hot button issues of the day in this dopey, condescending way. The main difference is that "Fairview" is exec produced by Stephen Colbert and it has a much more smug liberal POV than the more politically chaotic perspective of "South Park," and there are a few times "Fiarview" gets in a clever line about recent events, but I just hate the look and overall tone of the show too much to want to give it any credit. 

o) "Naomi"
"Naomi" is yet another DC comics adaptation on The CW, but so far it doesn't seem too tied into the existing plot lines of all their other shows that I can just watch it by itself. It's not that great, thoug. 

p) "The Kings Of Napa"
I always get confused when a network's shows are all over the place in terms of production values and the caliber of acting. OWN has some really high quality shows like "Queen Sugar" but then I'll see something like "The Kings of Napa" that's a couple whole brackets below it, barely better than a soap opera in terms of the look of the show and the performances. 

q) "Good Sam"
"Good Sam" is a network medical drama that is unfortunately not about a hospital called Good Samaritan -- that's right, it's about a doctor named Sam who is good. Sophia Bush is a generic hot person who's never really been in anything I've wanted to watch for any other reason than that Sophia Bush is in it, and while I tried to give "Good Sam" a chance, it's really just kind of stupid. 

r) "Sanditon"
I enjoyed the first season of this PBS series adapted from Jane Austen's uncompleted final novel, but it felt like kind of a self-contained story that didn't necessarily need to continue, and co-star Theo James didn't return for the second season. So in the first new episode they kill off his character and promptly introduce a new love interest, and I'm sure they lost some viewers there but I dunno, it still seems like an enjoyable little show worth watching. 

s) "Shenmue"
I've never been too into anime, especially compared to my wif eand my oldest son, but this new Adult Swim show is decent, apparently it's based on an old Sega Dreamcast game. 

t) "Central Park"
Now that "Central Park" has been going for a couple years I feel like I can say it's never gonna reach the level of "Bob's Burgers," partly because they spend a lot more time and effort on songs but they tend to be less comedic or memorable or entertaining. But I like it, I'll watch it just for the Titus Burgess character. 

This insane cartoon on Netflix got a second season but apparently it's not gonna get a third, that's a shame, I liked it. But then I don't know how much its sense of humor really appeals to kids, and it's not a typical 'adult animated sitcom' like "Bojack Horseman" or whatever. 

Apparently this Disney Channel series made over 100 episodes from 2015 to 2019 and I never heard of it at the time. But lately both my kids have become obsessed with it and have been watching it all the time, it's pretty clever and funny. 

w) "One Perfect Shot"
The popular Twitter account One Perfect Shot features memorable or striking frames from different films. For HBO Max to turn that idea into a half hour series means extrapolating that very simple idea into a whole thing where a film's director walks you through everything in the movie and in their career that lead to that shot, which is a decent idea. But they've focused on current filmmakers who get to pick the film, so you get Patty Jenkins talking about Wonder Woman and Aaron Sorkin talking about The Trial of the Chicago 7, instead of some iconic moment from a classic. I'm not sure how to feel about the high tech parts where they create a 3D version of the scene where the director can walk you into the freezeframe and show you the characters and the environment from every angle, it's kind of cool but also a little cheesy. Again, it might be exciting if it was about a movie I gave a damn about it. 

x) "Is It Cake?"
"Is It Cake?" is another show that wouldn't exist without Twitter, to be specific, those viral tweets from a while back of people cutting knives into cakes that look uncannily like non-cake objects. Game shows have gotten really over-the-top and absurd in the last couple years, often resembling "SNL" game show sketches, and some of them feature actual "SNL" cast members like "Is It Cake?" host Mikey Day. I like that the show is both a competition to make the cakes that can fool people, and a competition to guess what's a cake and what isn't, but obviously it's all pretty ridiculous and doesn't stay entertaining for very long. 

y) "Lizzo's Watch Out For The Big Grrrls"
"Watch Out For The Big Girl" is a '90s Baltimore club classic by Jimmy Jones, who passed away in 2021 (here's my 2008 interview with Jimmy). So it's kind of cool that a pop star like Lizzo named her new reality show after the song, and the show's theme song is a cover of it. In the show, Lizzo auditions plus size dancers to perform with her in concert, and I like that there's an emphasis on everyone trying their best and trying to break the mold and overcome preconceptions, so there's not a lot of the usual reality show drama and fighting, Lizzo is really supporting and rooting for these women and even if they don't all get into the final squad it's not really about eliminating most of them or pitting them against each other. 

z) "Animal"
I like this Netflix nature doc show where each episode features a different celebrity narrator and a different species or type of animal. But I think they're getting a little too cute with the pairings in season 2, Andy Serkis from Planet of the Apes narrates the episode about apes, Anthony Mackie (The Falcon from the MCU) narrates an episode about birds, etc.

Wednesday, March 23, 2022




I interviewed Duran Duran's Roger Taylor for Spin

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 254: Lionel Richie

Tuesday, March 22, 2022





Lionel Richie is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside A Tribe Called QuestBeckPat BenatarKate BushDevoDuran Duran, EurythmicsNew York DollsRage Against The Machine, and Dionne Warwick, among others. I don't think he has the best chance of getting in, but I'd like to see it -- for a few years he was one of those artists that crossed over from R&B and became one of pop's biggest stars, alongside people that are already in the hall like Michael and Whitney, and he did it more with pure songwriting talent than the showmanship of his contemporaries.  

Lionel Richie deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Dreaming Of You with Diana Ross
2. Tell Me
3. Wandering Stranger
4. Serves You Right
5. Just Put Some Love In Your Heart
6. Round And Round
7. You Mean More To Me
8. Can't Slow Down
9. Love Will Find A Way
10. The Only One
11. Don't Stop
12. Tonight Will Be Alright
13. Night Train (Smooth Alligator)
14. I Wanna Take You Down
15. (That's) The Way I Feel
16. How Long
17. Road To Heaven

Track 1 from Endless Love (Soundtrack) (1981)
Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 from Lionel Richie (1982)
Tracks 8, 9 and 10 from Can't Slow Down (1983)
Tracks 11, 12 and 13 from Dancing On The Ceiling (1986)
Track 14 from Louder Than Words (1996)
Track 15 from Time (1998)
Track 16 from Renaissance (2000)
Track 17 from Just For You (2004)

Lionel Richie recorded 9 albums with The Commodores before launching his solo career -- I think they have a distinct enough legacy, including some successful post-Richie records, that I'm leaving them to be a separate playlist I'll do later on at some point. His first release as a solo artist was the Diana Ross duet "Endless Love" from the film of the same name. And the Endless Love soundtrack also featured one more Richie/Ross collaboration, "Dreaming of You," that shockingly was never even released as a single after "Endless Love" topped the Hot 100 for nine weeks. 

Lionel Richie only released three solo albums in the '80s that constitute his reign as an A-list pop star -- then he took 10 years between albums, and returned as a comfortable legacy act who never seemed too bothered with trying to return to the top of the charts. And I included pretty much all his '80s deep cuts, because there aren't that many of them -- 3 of the 9 songs on Lionel Richie were hits, 5 of the 8 songs on Can't Slow Down were hits, and 6 of the 8 songs on Dancing On The Ceiling were hits. The CD and cassette editions of Dancing also had a 9th track, "Night Train (Smooth Alligator)," which is about as ridiculous as its title. 

There's a lot of talent on those records. "Wandering Stranger" alone includes guitars by Joe Walsh and Little Feat's Fred Tackett, backing vocals by Richard Marx, and prolific session guys Clarence McDonals, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler, and Joe Chemay. Sheila E. plays percussion on "Don't Stop," which is one of the few Lionel Richie tracks that feels like an attempt at some sleek modern Prince/MJ sort of groove. His '80s deep cuts almost all sound like they could've been hits, and are less heavy on ballads than the singles, "Serves You Right" and "Love Will Find A Way" are really good groove-driven songs. And the 84-second "Just Put Some Love In Your Life" is incredibly schmaltzy but works well as a brief miniature piece. Can't Slow Down famously won the Grammy for Album of the Year in an incredibly competitive year, and while it's not as good as Purple Rain, Born In The U.S.A., She's So Unusual, or Private Dancer, it is a really solid, fun record. 

I just included a little of his post-'80s work since that stuff never made a very big impact besides 2012's Tuskegee, which was all duet re-recordings of earlier hits. There's some decent later stuff, though. 1996's Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis-produced "I Wanna Take You Down," which uses the same Ohio Players sample that turned up on Jay-Z's "Brooklyn's Finest" a couple months later, which is crazy on a couple of levels because the Commodores were contemporaries of the Ohio Players. "Road To Heaven" was, weirdly, co-written by Richie and Murder Inc. hitmaker 7 Aurelius and produced by Lenny Kravitz, and it's great. 

Sunday, March 20, 2022




I wrote a piece for Consequence about the best Pearl Jam needle drops in film and television. 

Saturday, March 19, 2022

 




George Bonanza (chug) has another EP out with one track featuring me on drums. 

Movie Diary

Friday, March 18, 2022





Domee Shi directed one of the best Pixar shorts, Bao, and her first feature as director is really funny and sweet, and kind of feels like a refreshing change of pace from Pixar's last few movies. Mei is such a charming character and the way her bond with her friends was the heart of the movie is really touching, but I also just thought the story and the way they subverted the usual beats of a "adolescent has a weird supernatural secret and tries to hide it from everybody" story and had the fun little twists where every kid at school knew and she made money off of it. 

It's hard to say that this is groundbreaking or novel in any way, but it is Steven Spielberg's first musical and sort of his first remake (I guess technically it's just the second adaptation of the stage musical, but it's much more an homage to the 1961 West Side Story than his War of the Worlds was an homage to any previous adaptation or anything). And it is thrilling to see such a pure display of craftmanship, just his command of camera movement and colors and choreography and the old school movie musical emotion of it all. It made me an instant fan of Ariana DeBose and Mike Faist and Rachel Zegler, and I really wish Ansel Elgort wasn't in this but he didn't get in the way too much. 

This is also kind of a love letter to musical theatre, but to be more precise it's a sopping wet celebration of theater kid energy. I only have kind of a passing familiarity with Rent, but just the idea that Jonathan Larson died so young, right before his play made its Broadway debut and became an enormous success, it's heartbreaking stuff. And it's kind of remarkable that he made this autobiographical play that could be adapted into a sort of hybrid biopic by someone else who made a huge impact on Broadway at a pretty young age, Lin-Manuel Miranda. It can be kind of an exhausting, relentless movie, but I admired the creativity of how it's put together and Andrew Garfield's performance. I don't know enough about Broadway to recognize all the cameos and stuff, but I liked seeing Andre De Shields in there, I worked with him recently and he's incredibly talented. 

I have watched a lot more foreign language films and series in the last few years than ever before, and I'm excited that things like Drive My Car and Parasite have gotten into major categories at the Oscars in recent years. But I will admit that I'm probably still too much of a philistine to fully appreciate Drive My Car. By the end the meaning of the story started to sink in, but it's almost 3 hours long and a whole lot of the time I just felt a little confused and occasionally bored and had to read a plot summary to make sure I understood everything that had happened. 

e) Flee
Flee is a very unique movie that got an unprecedented trifecta of Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary Feature, and Best International Feature. It tells the touching, harrowing story of an Afghani refugee fleeing for Denmark, but I gotta say, I didn't really like the hybrid documentary/animation, I don't think it helped the storytelling and while I appreciate that it wasn't just trendy rotoscope animation that often gets used for this kind of thing, it had such a low frame rate that it just felt like I was watching the halting jerky motion of a buffering video stream. 

f) The Hand Of God
Now this is the movie I'm really rooting for in the Best International Feature category. Youth and "The Young Pope" made me a big fan of Paolo Sorrentino, and The Hand Of God is a very autobiographical coming-of-age film about a kid who grows up wanting to be a filmmaker, whose parents both die when he's 16 like Sorrentino's did. The film climaxes with Sorrentino's stand-in, Fabietto, arguing with one of his filmmaking role models, Antonio Capuano about the point of making movies, and it all kind of gets a little indulgent and on-the-nose. But it's still a wonderful movie, Sorrentino's ear for memorable dialogue and his gift for composition and lighting is so distinct and enjoyable. And things like The Little Monk still gave the story that kind of eerie otherworldly quality of Sorrentino's other work. 

I really found Pablo Lorrain's Jackie impressive, felt like a very textured and intimate sort of biopic of a a historical figure. And Lorrain arguably brings the same level of craft to Spencer, but unfortunately Kristen Stewart's Diana is maybe 1/10th as good as Natalie Portman's Jackie O. (for that matter, Johnny Greenwood's Spencer score is maybe 1/10th as good as Mica Levi's masterful Jackie score). Kristen Stewart is known for being in really successful bad movies and for giving good performances in small movies, and Spencer is her first real awards season contender. But I've only ever her seen her be good in supporting roles (Panic RoomStill Alice) or terrible in movies that wouldn't seem to really demand that much of an actor (American UltraHappiest Season). In any event, I didn't even buy her as English, let alone as one of the most famous English people of the past century. And I hated that pretentious little "a fable from a true tragedy" chyron at the beginning of the movie. Timothy Spall's really good in it, though, he's the one who should've gotten an Oscar nod. 

h) Kodachrome
I watched this movie while researching an article recently, really nice little movie from 2018 with Jason Sudeikis and Elizabeth Olsen that probably would've gotten a lot more attention if it came out today, post-Ted Lasso and post-WandaVision. They took the real story of the last photography processing facility that developed Kodachrome film in Kansas closing down in 2010, and a bunch of photographers making a pilgrimage to it, and grafted on this story of a famous photographer who was terminally ill asking his estranged son to take him. That kind of fictional burnishing of an already interesting true event kind of annoys me sometimes, but the story was told well and Ed Harris gives a great performance. 

My Top 100 Singles of 1985

Thursday, March 17, 2022









Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. A-ha - "Take On Me"
2. Katrina And The Waves - "Walking On Sunshine" 
3. Tears For Fears - "Everybody Wants To Rule The World"
4. Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - "The Show" 
5. INXS - "What You Need" 
6. Prince and the Revolution - "I Would Die 4 U"
7. Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire" 
8. The Cure - "Close To Me" 
9. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Don't Come Around Here No More" 
10. Kate Bush - "Running Up That Hill" 
11. Run-DMC - "King Of Rock" 
12. The Waterboys - "The Whole Of The Moon"
13. Madonna - "Material Girl"
14. Tears For Fears - "Head Over Heels"  
15. Phil Collins - "Sussudio" 
16. The Hooters - "And We Danced" 
17. Talking Heads - "And She Was" 
18. Simple Minds - "Don't You (Forget About Me)"
19. The Cult - "She Sells Sanctuary"
20. Sade - "The Sweetest Taboo" 
21. Prince and the Revolution - "Pop Life"
22. John Mellencamp - "Lonely Ol' Night"
23. Schoolly D – “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?”
24. Howard Jones - "Things Can Only Get Better"
25. Bryan Adams - "Somebody"
26. Frankie Goes To Hollywood - "Relax"
27. Murray Head - "One Night In Bangkok"
28. The Dead Milkmen - "Bitchin' Camaro"
29. Camper Van Beethoven - "Take The Skinheads Bowling"
30. The Nails - "88 Lines About 44 Women" 
31. Don Dixon - "Praying Mantis"
32. Bruce Springsteen - "Glory Days" 
33. 'Til Tuesday - "Voices Carry"
34. Madonna - "Into The Groove"
35. LL Cool J - "I Can't Live Without My Radio" 
36. Zapp – “Computer Love”
37. U2 - "Bad (live)"
38. Bryan Adams and Tina Turner – “It’s Only Love”
39. The Time - "Jungle Love" 
40. Fishbone - "Party At Ground Zero"
41. Starpoint - "Object Of My Desire"
42. Wham! - "Careless Whisper"
43. Stevie Nicks - "Talk To Me"
44. The Pointer Sisters - "Neutron Dance" 
45. Eurythmics - "Would I Lie To You?"
46. Phil Collins - "Inside Out" 
47. The Cure - "In Between Days" 
48. Talking Heads - "Road To Nowhere"
49. The Replacements - "Bastards Of Young"
50. Prince and the Revolution - "Raspberry Beret" 
51. The Smiths - "How Soon Is Now?" 
52. George Thorogood & The Destroyers - "I Drink Alone"
53. Ready For The World - "Oh Sheila" 
54. Colonel Abrams - "Trapped" 
55. Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - "La Di Da Di" 
56. Level 42 – “Something About You”
57. Bryan Adams - "Summer Of '69"
58. Sting - "Fortress Around Your Heart"  
59. Harold Faltermeyer - "Axel F"
60. Jan Hammer - "Miami Vice Theme"
61. Glenn Frey - "You Belong To The City"
62. Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force - "I Wonder If I Take You Home" 
63. DeBarge - "Rhythm Of The Night"
64. John Fogerty - "Centerfield"
65. Rene & Angela - "I'll Be Good" 
66. Talking Heads - "Stay Up Late"
67. R.E.M. - "Cant Get There From Here" 
68. Phil Collins - "Don't Lose My Number"
69. Tears For Fears - "Shout"
70. Oingo Boingo - "Weird Science" 
71. Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing" 
72. Motley Crue - "Home Sweet Home" 
73. Whitney Houston - "Saving All My Love For You" 
74. John Mellencamp - "Small Town"
75. Bryan Adams - "Heaven"
76. Madonna - "Dress You Up" 
77. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Like A Surgeon" 
78. Dead Or Alive - "You Spin Me Right Round (Like A Record)"
79. Heart - "What About Love"
80. David Lee Roth - "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody"
81. Glenn Frey - "The Heat Is On"
82. Sting - "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" 
83. Lionel Richie - "Say You, Say Me"
84. Klymaxx - "Meeting In The Ladies Room"
85. John Waite - "Change"
86. Thompson Twins - "Lay Your Hands On Me"
87. Teena Marie - "Lovergirl"
88. Billy Ocean - "Loverboy"
89. Huey Lewis and the News - "The Power Of Love" 
90. Tina Turner - "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)"  
91. Cyndi Lauper - "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough"
92. Limahl - "The NeverEnding Story" 
93. John Parr - "St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion)"
94. R.E.M. - "Driver 8" 
95. New Edition - "Mr. Telephone Man" 
96. Don Henley - "Sunset Grill" 
97. Mary Jane Girls - "In My House"
98. Phil Collins - "One More Night" 
99. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "One More Minute" 
100. Mike + The Mechanics - "Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)"

I was only 3 in 1985, so we're getting back to the point where I don't have any firsthand memories of music at the time, although I can remember hearing some of these songs by Tears For Fears and Mike + The Mechanics in my parents' old house that we moved out of in 1988. 

My Top 50 Albums of 1985

Wednesday, March 16, 2022





I last left this series off a few months ago with 1986 singles, now getting back into it. Here's the playlist with a track from each album:

1. Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
2. Tears For Fears - Songs From The Big Chair
3. The Meat Puppets - Up On The Sun
4. Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love
5. The Cure - The Head On The Door
6. Run-DMC - King Of Rock
7. The Replacements – Tim
8. Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
9. John Mellencamp - Scarecrow
10. Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising
11. Schoolly D – Schoolly D
12. LL Cool J – Radio
13. R.E.M. - Fables Of The Reconstruction
14. The Golden Palominos - Visions Of Excess
15. INXS - Listen Like Thieves
16. The Pogues - Rum Sodomy & The Lash
17. Prince - Around The World In A Day
18. Phil Collins - No Jacket Required
19. Sade - Promise
20. Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
21. Husker Du - New Day Rising 
22. The Smiths - Meat Is Murder
23. Talking Heads - Little Creatures
24. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Southern Accents
25. Kix - Midnite Dynamite
26. Game Theory – Real Nighttime
27. New Order - Low-Life
28. John Fogerty – Centerfield
29. Green River – Come On Down EP
30. The Jesus And The Mary Chain – Psychocandy
31. The Minutemen - 3 Way Tie (For Last)
32. U.T.F.O. – U.T.F.O.
33. Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms
34. Scritti Politti - Cupid & Psyche 85
35. Squeeze - Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti
36. Husker Du - Flip Your Wig
37. Mike + The Mechanics - Mike + The Mechanics
38. Whitney Houston - Whitney Houston
39. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Pack Up The Plantation: Live!
40. Eurythmics - Be Yourself Tonight
41. The Fat Boys – The Fat Boys Are Back
42. Aerosmith – Done With Mirrors
43. "Weird Al" Yankovic - Dare To Be Stupid
44. Dinosaur Jr – Dinosaur
45. Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way
46. The Minutemen - Project: Mersh EP
47. The Family - The Family
48. ZZ Top – Afterburner
49. Sting - The Dream of the Blue Turtles
50. Peter Gabriel – Birdy: Music From The Film

Since I've had this post in the works since last year and knew what was going to be on it, I was amused that in the space of a couple months I scored interviews with Tears For Fears, DMC of Run-DMC, and John Mellencamp knowing they'd all be in the top 10 in this list. I've also interviewed members of Sonic Youth, The Minutemen, and Kix, and would love to keep building my collection of interviews with 1985 all-stars, if Tom Waits or Kate Bush sees this, feel free to reach out. 

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 253: Eurythmics

Tuesday, March 15, 2022





Eurythmics are nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, alongside A Tribe Called Quest, BeckPat BenatarKate BushDevoDuran DuranNew York DollsRage Against The Machine, and Dionne Warwick, among others. I'm rooting for Eurythmics to get in, it's been cool to see '80s synth groups that were passed over when they first became eligible 10-15 years ago finally get nominated. And I think Annie Lennox has a chance of getting in as a solo artist someday, which would make her one of the few female double inductees (right now Stevie Nicks and Tina Turner are the only ones). 

Eurythmics deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. The First Cut
2. Somebody Told Me
3. I Need You
4. Conditioned Soul
5. A Little Of You
6. Take Me To Your Heart
7. Cool Blue
8. I Could Give You (A Mirror)
9. Adrian
10. The Last Time
11. Anything But Strong
12. No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)
13. Savage 
14. I Love You Like A Ball And Chain
15. Let's Go!
16. Aqua
17. This City Never Sleeps
18. You Hurt Me (And I Hate You)

Track 6 from In The Garden (1981)
Tracks 2, 8 and 17 from Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) (1983)
Tracks 1, 7, 12 and 16 from Touch (1983)
Tracks 4, 9 and 14 from Be Yourself Tonight (1985)
Tracks 5, 10 and 15 from Revenge (1986)
Tracks 3 and 13 from Savage (1987)
Track 18 from We Too Are One (1989)
Track 11 from Peace (1999)

Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart first played together in The Tourists, a guitar-driven new wave quintet that released three albums from 1978 to 1980, before they decided to break off and become a duo. The Tourists had a couple of top 10 hits in the UK, and their biggest original song was a catchy track called "So Good To Be Back Home Again," which is a funnily appropriate song title for a band called The Tourists. 

The first Eurythmics album, In The Garden, wasn't successful even at the modest level of The Tourists' biggest records, and they hadn't quite committed as much to the synth-driven sound yet -- the album featured live drums by guests including Blondie's Clem Burke (who also played on the later album Revenge) and Can's Jaki Liebezeit. And Lennox was a great singer from the beginning, but it kind of felt like she didn't find this commanding, theatrical presence she's known for until "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," and once things clicked there, they were off to the races. But I'll give them credit for not getting too stuck in the sound that made them famous, Be Yourself Tonight leaned in an R&B direction, and Revenge is heavy on guitar and harmonica. "Adrian" has a nice harmony vocal from Elvis Costello. 

The deep cuts that Eurythmics have played in concert the most include "I Love You Like A Ball And Chain," "This City Never Sleeps," "I Could Give You (A Mirror)," "Somebody Told Me," "Let's Go!" and "Take Me To Your Heart." One thing that surprised me if that Eurythmics released two albums in 1983, and the second, Touch, actually sold better than the breakthrough with their most iconic single, Sweet Dreams. But Touch genuinely is a better album and I guess it was the moment that cemented they were gonna be around for a while. At the height of their fame, Eurythmics recorded an entire soundtrack album for Nineteen Eighty-Four, a George Orwell adaptation starring John Hurt. But 1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother) is currently unplayable on Spotify, which probably has to do with it being released by a different label than their other albums.