TV Diary

Friday, October 27, 2023

 





a) "Lessons In Chemistry"
I enjoy thinking about the whole intersection between science and cooking (Netflix's "Salt Fat Acid Heat"? Awesome show, I loved it). And "Lessons In Chemistry" and the novel it's based on have a lot of fun with that in the story of a '60s chemist who becomes a cooking show host. As with the many many other period pieces on TV the last few years about fictional female trailblazers, there's a lot of feelbad moments old school sexism and feelgood moments of the resourceful young woman triumphing over adversity, and I'm often left wondering if there was a real life figure with a similar story they could've made this about where it would feel a little less calculated to appeal to modern sensibilities. It's a pretty good show, though, one of Brie Larson's best performances to date, and I always find Lewis Pullman charming. I did, however, really dislike the episode narrated by a dog (voiced by B.J. Novak), that was pretty stupid. 

b) "The Fall of the House of Usher"
"Midnight Mass" and Oculus are still by far my favorite things Mike Flanagan has made, but this is pretty far up there. It felt like a really loving and inspired tribute to Edgar Allen Poe much in the same way Doctor Sleep was to Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick, there's tons of plot elements and names from other Poe stories and poems (I can't tell you how excited I was when they finally Cask of Amontillado'd a guy). But it's also kind of a "Succession"-style satire of a wealthy family with lots of nods to the Sacklers, and Flanagan's repertory cast has a lot of fun with these characters (plus two people from "iZombie"!). There were times when it went more over-the-top than it needed to, but I still really enjoyed it. 

c) "Bodies"
"Bodies" is a Netflix show with four parallel timelines of London murder investigations in 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053. The first couple episodes didn't really appeal to me, though, it just felt like it just crumpled under the weight of its own high concept ambitions and didn't grab me with the characters or the story. 

d) "The Irrational"
"The Irrational" is, like the awful "Found," one of the only new network shows this fall that NBC had delayed before the WGA strike. It's better than "Found," but a bit of a more formulaic procedural, with "Law & Order" veteran Jesse L. Martin, I find it a little charming but also a little dull. 

e) "Little Bird"
A Canadian series currently airing on PBS in America, about a First Nations woman who was adopted into an affluent Jewish family in the '60s. I like it so far, feels like it's tonally and visually closer to the mark than a lot of recent '60s period pieces, without being too flashy or self-congratulatory about it. 

f) "The Spencer Sisters"
A Canadian series currently airing on The CW in America, about a former cop and her mystery novelist mother (who's vain and keeps bringing up the time somebody said they look like sisters), who kind of stumble into becoming amateur detectives. A pretty fun show, I feel like Lea Thompson probably always had a good role like this in her and just hadn't been given the right opportunities very often. 

Another Canadian series currently airing on The CW in America, this one a little more generic "a woman in crisis returns to her hometown after many years away" show with actors from "One Tree Hill" and "Gilmore Girls." 

h) "Neon"
Shea Serrano made the jump from journalism and bestselling books to scripted television with Freevee's "Primo" earlier this year, and now he's got another pretty good sitcom, "Neon," on Netflix. "Neon" is about an aspiring reggaeton star, and it follows the template of most scripted shows about the music industry or show business in general, that "Entourage"-type thing about a plucky hero and the crew of friends that believes in their talent. Not my favorite formula, but "Neon" is pretty charming, good cast. Emma Ferreira was on another new Netflix sitcom earlier this year, "Unstable," and is one of the best things about both shows, I hope she keeps booking gigs everywhere. 

i) "Goosebumps"
I never really read R.L. Stine when I was a kid -- I went straight to darker stuff like Edgar Allen Poe and Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark -- but I like that there's kind of entry-level horror stuff for children of a certain age. This new Disney+ series is alright, some cool visual effects, and I'm glad the Travis Scott hit "Goosebumps" has finally been used in the Goosebumps franchise. I'm irritated that Disney+ put out the first 5 episodes and is then releasing the other 5 weekly, feels like they couldn't decide between the two popular ways to roll out a streaming series and tried to do both. 

j) "I Woke Up A Vampire"
Another kid-friendly horror show, a Netflix sitcom about a 13-year-old vampire. Cute, but not really for me. 

k) "Wolf Like Me"
The first season of "Wolf Like Me" was a pretty weird little horror comedy that had a surprising amount of dramatic tension given that the leads, Isla Fisher and Josh Gad, are known mainly for comedy. I'm really please it's back for a second season, and I think they've leaned a little more into laughs, without losing that dramatic gravity. 

l) "Our Flag Means Death"
"Our Flag Means Death" seemed to me like a fun little oddity the first time around, but I think I underestimated it, it's just a great time with a ton of great characters. And the ensemble got even bigger and better in the second season, I particularly loved the additions of Ruibo Qian and Madeleine Sami.  

m) "Loki"
There have been so many Marvel shows on Disney+ in the past few years, many of them one-offs that just kind of zipped by in 6 or 8 episodes without really leaving much of a lingering impression. So I'm glad that they brought back "Loki" for a second season and it's actually getting better, it feels like they've finally got something that feels like series television. And I'm glad the show feels a little less about Loki in a universe full of parallel Lokis thanks to some great additions to the cast including Ke Huy Quan and Rafael Casal. 

n) "Frasier"
Kelsey Grammer had a pretty great and unlikely run, appearing as a recurring character on the third season of "Cheers" and eventually turning Frasier Crane into a TV icon for 20 years and many Emmys. But bringing Frasier back one more time for a sequel series where he goes back to Boston, without any of the other characters from "Cheers" or the original "Frasier," just feels kind of thirsty. The new show has an okay cast and occasionally makes me laugh when the writing falls into those familiar old rhythms, but there's just a weird uncanny valley quality to all of it. 

o) The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is The Blood Of The Baboon Heart
"The Venture Bros." had a remarkable run, with 80 incredibly entertaining episodes over the last 20 years, and as a fan I don't think I could ask for more. That said, it was really frustrating that Cartoon Network renewed the show for an 8th and final season, and then reneged and canceled the show during the pandemic, after Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer had already worked on writing the season, and allowed them to just do a finale movie. Radiant Is The Blood Of The Baboon Heart is even more dense and action-packed than "Venture" usually is, since they probably tried to fit as many of their ideas for the final season into the equivalent of three episodes, and the big reveal about Rusty and The Monarch felt like a nice button to put on the story to make it really feel like a finale. So if this is the end of the entire franchise, I'm happy with it, but I'm very curious to see what these guys do next whether or not it has anything to do with Team Venture. 

p) "Bargain"
I've only watched one episode of this Korean series on Paramount+ but it was good, and felt like it could've worked very well as a self-contained horror movie. I don't know if any of the subsequent episodes can quite match the setup and reveal, I like how they did most of it with just two characters in a hotel room with a long dialogue-driven scene. 

q) "Creature"
A pretty good Turkish update on Frankenstein on Netflix, I probably would've watched more of it by now if there wasn't such a glut of horror-themed TV coming out in October. 

r) "Pact Of Silence"
This Netflix telenovela has a pretty intriguing plot about a young woman taking on a false identity to infiltrate a family and get revenge, but as with telenovelas, there are so many episodes I don't think I'll stick with it to see where the story goes. 

s) "Doona!"
This Korean show on Netflix is about a university student who realizes that one of the girls living in his dorm is a former K-Pop idol (and apparently the actress really was in a pop group). If this was an American show, the premise wouldn't really work (mainly because we haven't had multiple successful girl groups in U.S. pop music in decades), but the whole K-Pop angle makes it interesting because I'm sure there are a lot of kids who get chewed up and spit out by that industry and then try to lead a normal life. 

t) "Kaala Paani: Dark Water"
This Netflix series from India is a pretty gripping thriller about people living on two islands that are overcome with a myserious illness. 

John Carpenter's first TV series, about true stories that sound like horror movies, seems like an exciting idea. But I always kind of hate this format of combining documentary elements with scripted reenactments, and it just doesn't have that magic touch of his best movies. 

v) "Stranded With My Mother-In-Law"
A Netflix reality show where six couples go to a beautiful island and compete in challenges to win a prize, and find out that their mother-in-laws are also there, predicated on the whole '70s sitcom premise that everybody hates their mother-in-law. My mother-in-law is pretty great! This show is dumb. 

Another Netflix reality show where contestants show up at a beautiful vacation destination and are surprised with survival challenges, but it's a little more straightforward, no corny twist. 

x) "Living For The Dead"
A queer ghost hunter reality show created by Kristen Stewart and her hairstylist friend? Sure, why not. Silly but fun. 

y) "Big Vape: The Rise And Fall Of Juul"
This kinda feels like an example of the documentary industrial complex, we don't need hours of television about this subject. A good solid magazine feature about this, maybe, that I'd read. 

z) "Who Killed Jill Dando?"
Apparently a BBC journalist was shot in broad daylight in front of her house in 1999 and nobody's really sure who did it, pretty crazy story that I'm surprised I'd never heard of before this Netflix docuseries. 

1:57 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 326: Cypress Hill

Thursday, October 26, 2023







Cypress Hill's biggest album Black Sunday turned 30 this past summer, and I wrote several pieces for Spin as part of their coverage of that anniversary: a track-by-track breakdown of the album, and rankings of their albums and TV performances. So while I was just listening to a ton of Cypress Hill over the last few months, I put together a deep cuts playlist. 

Cypress Hill album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk
2. Hole In The Hand
3. Tres Equis
4. Ultraviolet Dream
5. Shoot 'Em Up
6. Hits From The Bong
7. I Wanna Get High
8. A To The K
9. What Go Around Come Around, Kid
10. Break 'Em Off
11. Real Thing (with Pearl Jam)
12. I Love You, Mary Jane (with Sonic Youth)
13. Strictly Hip Hop
14. No Rest For The Wicket
15. Stoned Raiders
16. (Goin' All Out) Nothin' To Lose
17. Checkmate
18. Get Out Of My Head
19. Valley Of Chrome
20. Red, Meth & B (featuring Method Man and Redman)
21. Last Laugh (featuring Prodigy and Twin Gambino)
22. Light It Up
23. Put Em In The Ground
24. Takeover

Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Cypress Hill (1991)
Track 5 from Juice (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1991)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 from Black Sunday (1993)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Judgment Night: Music From The Motion Picture (1993)
Tracks 13, 14 and 15 from Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom (1995)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Cypress Hill IV (1998)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Skull & Bones (2000)
Track 20 from Stoned Raiders (2001)
Track 21 from Till Death Do Us Part (2004)
Track 22 from Rise Up (2010)
Track 23 from Elephants On Acid (2018)
Track 24 from Back In Black (2022)

I feel like there's now this very entrenched narrative about mid-'90s hip hop and who the major players were, like Biggie and 2Pac and Nas, that kind of glosses over how huge groups like Cypress Hill and Bone Thugs were. Cypress Hill's reach was massive, although I still pretty specifically associate the group with my middle school friend Nic, who was one of the first kids I knew who loved hip hop so much that he got bored of rock and made fun of the bands I listened to. I also have a deeper appreciation for DJ Muggs now, he definitely deserves more props as one of the greatest crate digger '90s rap producers. I like the song "Strictly Hip Hop" in part because there's a great radio show named after it here in Baltimore that I've guested on a couple times. 

I remember how the Judgment Night soundtrack was this exciting novelty when it first came out, in the early days of rap/rock, even though I knew nobody who'd seen the movie (has anybody, really? It may as well not exist as anything but an album). And Cypress Hill was notable for being the only group that appeared on the album twice, on songs with two of my favorite bands of the '90s. It's funny to listen to Cypress Hill as someone who doesn't really like weed, I've always been around a lot of smokers and feel sort of steeped in weed culture, but I don't enjoy smoking it, it's just not my thing. 

8:00 AM

Saturday, October 21, 2023

 





Stereogum has a column called We've Got A File On You where celebrities get interviewed about various moments from their careers. I've always wanted to write one of these, and I recently got a great opportunity to interview the legendary producer No I.D. for the column and ask about the stories behind some of the music he's made with Jay-Z, Kanye, Common, Beyonce, Vince Staples, and more. 

10:00 AM

Movie Diary

Friday, October 20, 2023

 







a) The Burial
I went into this movie knowing nothing about it, and really enjoyed it. A clever legal drama full of great actors at the top of their game is the kind of thing that would've played in theaters and maybe got a couple Oscar nominations a decade or two ago, but now it feels like The Burial just kind of got tossed out there on Amazon Prime. Definitely worth watching for Jamie Foxx alone, but the whole ensemble is excellent, Bill Camp is one of my favorite character actors in the world these days and he got a few great moments. 

b) Totally Killer
Totally Killer is sort of a playful high concept twist on a slasher movie involving time travel, kind of in the same wheelhouse as some stuff I love like Happy Death Day. And director Nahnatchka Kahn has done some cool stuff, including creating "Don't Trust The B---- In Apartment 23," so my hopes were high. I thought Totally Killer was just okay, though, didn't really hold my attention, felt like it needed a little more going on with the characters and/or performances to be engaging. 

c) Reptile 
I came of age in the MTV era, when music videos had big budgets and looked amazing, and the directors who made the best videos often jumped to features and made some great movies like Fincher, Jonze and Gondry, and I wish that was still the case. Grant Singer is one of the few people who seems to have made a name off of directing videos in the last decade, including several of The Weekend's biggest hits, as well as Taylor Swift, Future, etc. So I was kinda rooting for his debut feature to continue that tradition (another reminder of the MTV's golden age: a nice supporting performance from Alicia Silverstone). Singer co-wrote the screenplay with the star, Benicio del Toro, and it's a nice bleak crime thriller that benefits a lot from Singer's eye, there's a number of scenes that feel like they really pop because of the very deliberate camera angles he uses to give a character's perspective or build up suspense with withheld information. I think Justin Timberlake has had a couple really good movie roles over the years, don't entirely know how I felt about him in Reptile though -- I liked seeing him as a villain, but felt like his fame was distracting and those scenes might have worked better with a different actor in that role. 

d) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
I feel bad that my kids and I talked about going to see this while it was in theaters but we never got around to it, so I'm glad it's finally on streaming. It's funny, I grew up on the TMNT franchise but the shows and movies that were around when I was a kid weren't really any good, whereas the adaptations my kids have gotten are much better, particularly the 2012-2017 series and this movie, which has some pretty hilarious moments. Jeff Rowe directed this and also The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and I feel like his stuff (along with the Spider-Verse movies) kind of points toward a new direction for computer animated movies  that isn't that slick bubbly Pixar style, he has a distinctive visual style that almost has more of a painted texture to it. I already praised the soundtrack album, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's score sounds even better in the context of the movie, one of their best to date. 

e) Haunted Mansion
Justin Simien seemed to have so much potential as a bold and funny new writer/director when Dear White People came out in 2014. But almost a decade later, he's mostly worked on the less acclaimed Netflix series version of "Dear White People," and then this year he finally released his second feature, a fucking movie based on a Disney World ride. Haunted Mansion is better than it needs to be, and makes decent use of a wildly overqualified cast (Lakeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, etc.), but a family-friendly horror comedy feels like an inherently toothless proposition that never gets a chance to be especially scary or especially funny. And the whole thing just feels like kind of a humiliating illustration of Simien's squandered potential, that he sold out for a movie that didn't even turn a profit. 

f) Odd Thomas
My wife read the Dean Koontz novel Odd Thomas this week and wanted to watch the 2013 film adaption, so we checked it out. The late Anton Yelchin plays the title role, a guy who sees dead people and uses what he learns from them to avenge murders or prevent tragedies. Overall it was a decent movie and my wife said it was very faithful to the novel, but it mostly made me wonder what happened to Stephen Sommers -- he directed a string of big profitable action movies including The Mummy, Van Helsing and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra that were at least pretty slick and professional, if not masterpieces. And then the only thing he's directed in the last dozen years was this modestly budgeted horror movie that had some bad-looking visual effects and some dialogue that was so flat and emotionless that I couldn't tell if the actors or the director was the problem. 

f) Big Time
I've wanted to see this movie for probably 20 years, just hearing that Tom Waits made a concert film in the '80s and you could see him perform Rain Dogs/Swordfishtrombones/Franks Wild Years songs with the musicians from the albums. So while I was recently working on my piece ranking Tom Waits albums I realized the movie is currently on Tubi and finally got to see it. And I'm kind of surprised this doesn't come up more in discussions of great concert films, it really is a great visual translation of the music of somebody who hasn't made a ton of high profile music videos. Weirdly, the biggest gig it seemed to lead to for director Chris Blum was the video for Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire." 

8:44 AM

Monthly Report: October 2023 Singles

Thursday, October 19, 2023





1. Tyla - "Water"
I heard this song on the radio and Shazam'd it a while back, before the "Water" challenge on TikTok really took off and made this song go viral. And I was a little confused at first because South African singer Tyla and American rapper Tyla Yaweh have been breaking through on Billboard around the same time, it reminds me of when two country singers named Tenille had hits around the same time a few years ago. Here's the 2023 singles Spotify playlist that I add songs to every month. 

2. Parker McCollum - "Burn It Down"
Speaking of artists with shared first names, I was amused back in May when two country singers named Parker McCollum and Parker Millsap released albums on the same day. Both albums were good, but McCollum's more mainstream sound was a little more my speed, and he's now had 3 singles in a row that I've really liked. I've always obsessed with the glitchy stuttering acoustic guitar loop on Madonna's "Don't Tell Me" so I love hearing a similar kind of sound on "Burn It Down." 

3. Victoria Monet - "On My Mama"
I'm as tired of R&B radio being full of samples of songs that were hits on the same stations 10-20 years ago, but "On My Mama" is a good example of how to do it so it doesn't sound too obvious: a vocal sample from Chalie Boy's 2009 regional hit "I Look Good," put over an original beat with a cool horn arrangement. I'm still a little disappointed that "Smoke" wasn't the breakthrough single for Victoria Monet, but the follow-up that caught on instead is pretty damn good too. 

4. Tate McRae - "Greedy"
It's been interesting to watch Tate McRae develop from the Billie Eilish-lite zoomer balladeer of "You Broke Me First" to doing gradually more uptempo singles like last year's "She's All I Wanna Be," "Uh Oh," and "10:35." And then "Greedy" came out about a month ago and just exploded, it's already her highest charting song to date. I love the video because it's about damn time that a Canadian pop star drove a Zamboni in a music video and did choreography in hockey gear. 

5. Zach Bryan f/ Kacey Musgraves - "I Remember Everything"
Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves have had somewhat similar paths, as country artists who managed to reach the level of platinum albums and Grammy recognition without really fitting comfortably into the mainstream country radio. Musgraves had one country radio top 10 a decade ago with her breakthrough single "Merry Go 'Round," and last year Bryan got to #20 with his breakthrough "Something In The Orange." So I found it pretty exciting, as a fan of both artists, to see them kind of pool their fanbases together to get a good country song to #1 on the Hot 100 after a summer of crappy country songs by Morgan Wallen, Jason Aldean, and Oliver Anthony topping the chart. 

6. Teddy Robb - "Question The Universe"
A few weeks ago I was at work looking at my phone, and read a Billboard piece about Teddy Robb's latest single. And it was a very absorbing story about Robb meeting a woman, sparks flying, and then him finding out she was about to move across the country (spoiler, they wound up together), and Robb told this all to Old Dominion guitarist Brad Tursi, who wrote a song about it. Since I was at work,  I was like, "I'll listen to this song later when I get home, and it better not suck because I'm invested in the story now." Fortunately, it is really good, with an interesting laid back swing to the instrumentation and Robb's vocal cadence. He only had one minor hit on the national charts back in 2019 so I'm really rooting for this song to hit big. 

7. Cardi B f/ Megan Thee Stallion - "Bongos"
When "Bongos" came out last month, it felt like there was pretty instant consensus that it was just not as good as Cardi and Meg's previous huge collaboration "WAP." But the song has really grown on me as it's crept into rap radio rotation. Pitbull doesn't make hits very often anymore, so it sort of fulfills my general desire for zany fast pop rap full of latin percussion and sexual innuando. And obviously it can't possibly match the shock value of "WAP," but "pussy tight like a nun" is a hilariously unhinged thing to say. 

8. NewJeans - "Super Shy"
I don't check for a lot of K-Pop because it feels like so many of those groups are stuck in some kind of 2000s TRL holding pattern, so I feel like NewJeans has gotten a lot of buzz with American pop fans for actually sounding like they've been paying attention to western pop in the last decade. And as a Baltimore club fan, I love hearing the "Think" breakbeat sort of seep into unexpected corners of popular music like a K-Pop song like "Super Shy." 

9. Lainey Wilson - "Watermelon Moonshine"
I love that Lainey Wilson just notched another #1 on country radio, feels like she's got a lot of potential to be one of the few women of her generation with a thriving career in the Nashville establishment. And I like how "Watermelon Moonshine" has kind of a slower tempo like her last hit "Heart Like A Truck" but they feel like very different songs, musically and emotionally and vocally. 

10. Chris Stapleton - "White Horse"
Those old Semisonic albums hold up, so I always love to see Dan Wilson turning up in the songwriting credits of a hit single, and "White Horse" feels like a really strong distillation of Chris Stapleton's sound. That big build up to the first verse is awesome, as is the one measure in 5/4 in the chorus where the beat turns around. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Miley Cyrus - "We Used To Be Young"
I thought Endless Summer Vacation was a pretty good album and "Jaded" and "River" were excellent singles, even if they couldn't keep up the momentum of "Flowers." So I was really annoyed when she released a new single just as "Jaded" was starting to do well on the radio, and it's this dull, soppy ballad that doesn't suit her voice at all. 

7:00 AM

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

 




I ranked and wrote about every Rolling Stones album, including the new Hackney Diamonds out this Friday, for Spin. 

9:20 AM

Saturday, October 14, 2023

 





I wrote a Brothers Osborne profile for The Baltimore Banner. 

10:31 AM

Friday, October 13, 2023

 





Western Blot's sixth album Two Dollars And A Casio is out today on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and all the other usual platforms. A lot of my favorite bands have amazing B-sides compilations, so as I started to release more non-album songs on singles, EPs, and compilations over the past six years, I got excited about the idea of making a collection like this, and it turned into a big 22-song double album with some of the best stuff I've ever done. 

10:30 AM

TV Diary

Thursday, October 12, 2023






a) "Found"
NBC was originally going to premiere "Found" as a midseason replacement, but once they pushed it back, it wound up being one of the only new scripted dramas to premiere on one of the big 4 networks this fall due to the WGA and SAG strikes. That's the kind of twist of fate that could turn a show from an also-ran to a hit, but unfortunately "Found" totally sucks. Shanola Hampton is a total babe and displayed serious comedy chops on 11 seasons of "Shameless," but she's stuck in this bland missing person procedural that has no idea what to do with her talent. There's a big twist in the premise revealed at the end of the first episode, and not only is the twist really stupid, but it was completely spoiled by the promo Peacock played immediately before the episode when I streamed it. Mark-Paul Gosselaar recently admitted that he wanted to quit Hollywood after the cancellation of his amazing short-lived Fox show "Pitch" a few years ago, which makes it all the more frustrating that he's currently in a show as bad as "Found." 

This British series on Apple TV+ is about two insomniacs, a man and a woman, who've never met but spend nights talking on the phone -- I've had minor bouts of insomnia in my life but I don't know what it's like as a serious condition or if this show treats it realistically, it mildly feels like a flimsy plot device. But it's a pretty charming show, and inevitably the characters are experiencing problems in their love lives and are developing feelings for each other. 

A Netflix show about a British teenager who gets out of the hospital after struggling with anorexia and has this bucket list of life experiences they've been missing out on that they want to experience now. Have only watched the first episode but it seems pretty promising and well done. 

For months, people have been fascinated by reports of orcas damaging yachts, and a broader sentiment that with the way humans have been fucking up the planet, maybe animals should be getting revenge on us. So "The Swarm," and ambitious international sci-fi series about the world's marine life kicking humanity's ass, should be a perfectly timed zeitgeist-grabbing event show, if it was airing in America almost anywhere besides The CW. The visual effects are a little weak, but otherwise I like it. 

I still know absolutely nothing about the Spaghetti western Django movies aside from being the basis of Tarantino's Django Unchained. This Netflix show is pretty good, though, between "Warrior" and this I'm starting to understand why westerns were the most popular TV shows for years and years. 

"The Boys" is one of the most entertaining shows on television, partly because they don't shy away from the kind of violence and gore that goes with a darkly satirical and semi-realistic depiction of a world with superheroes, and I don't have a weak stomach for that kind of thing in general. But the show really borders on sensory overload or outright poor taste sometimes, so doing a spinoff in the same style like "Gen V" has some potential for overkill. So far I like it, the cast is strong and I like the idea of an X-Men-style superhero college campus in "The Boys" universe. But sometimes they do something just outrageously gross and I'm like, well, I guess that was fun, but they don't have any characters compelling as Homelander yet, so I hope it doesn't fall into empty shock value. I loved seeing Derek Wilson on last week's episode, though, that guy was amazing on "Future Man" and deserves lots of work. 

You can do shows about Gotham without Batman, but something in the universe of John Wick without John Wick just seems kind of stupid, and that title is dogshit -- especially because 'The Continental' will always been Christopher Walken's old "SNL" character to me. Sure, the overall tone and expertly choreographed violence, sure, that translates to this series pretty well, but it feels like the most distinctive thing this show actually has in common with the movies is the wacky fonts on the subtitles for any foreign dialogue. The cast is pretty good aside from that old dickhead Mel Gibson. I just wish they cut this into normal TV episodes instead of running it as three movie-length episodes. 

My wife really loved Netflix's "Castlevania" series, which concluded after its 4th season two years ago, and was pretty excited to hear about this new spinoff, which takes place 300 years after the previous series. It's pretty good, but unfortunately, "Nocturne" creator Clive Bradley just doesn't make a show as entertaining as the disgraced creator of the other "Castlevania" show, Warren Ellis. Too many spinoffs! Enough spinoffs! 

Dan Harmon's "Krapopolis" is one of several shows that networks snapped up from "Rick & Morty" creators in the wake of "Rick & Morty"'s success. Two years ago, before the crypto bubble popped, it was announced that "Krapopolis" would be "the first ever animated series curated entirely on the blockchain" and that NFT owners would be able to cast votes that effect the content of the show, which made it sound like the most horribly uncool shit of all time. So far, though, the show just seems like a silly Dan Harmon cartoon about ancient Greece with Matt Berry in the voice cast, and it's not bad, but also not nearly as good as it could be. 

I think the reason romantic comedies are popular but rarely have sequels is that you can only do so much will-they-or-won't-they and they-broke-up-but-reunite stuff before it feels contrived (or realistic but not in a romantic way). So in its third season it kind of feels like "Starstruck" just keeps breaking Jessie and Tom up and getting them back together because they don't think the show should just be them getting together and staying together, but really I'd be fine with them just becoming a couple and the show finding other sources of dramatic tension. And I kinda wish Minnie Driver's character was in more than 1 or 2 episodes per season, though, she's very funny in it and there's definitely a potential version of this show where she's part of the main cast. Either way, though, I'm gonna keep watching because I adore Rose Matafeo and Emma Sidi. 

"The Morning Show"'s seasons have all been spread out two years apart at this point, which isn't that uncommon these days, but it feels like it's contributed to a pretty good show having trouble finding its rhythm and becoming great. The third season has a new showrunner and I'm not sure if it's an improvement -- Billy Crudup was consistently the best character in the first two seasons and they've made him more earnest and less of a slick talker lately. Most of the new episodes so far have been pretty good, but it feels like there are so many self-contained stories that don't carry over into other episodes, like Nicole Beharie was amazing in a couple episodes and then barely in the others. A recent episode had a funny line about Aaron Sorkin doing a Kissinger biopic, but honestly this show is pretty Sorkin-lite, in good and bad ways. 

I haven't finished the fourth and final season of "Sex Education" yet, never loved it like the show's diehard fanbase seems to, but I do like these characters, it's been fun watching them grow up and develop a little over the show's run. 

A few years ago, my Woodfir/Lithobrake were making inside jokes to each other that I didn't understand that were quotes from "Letterkenny," and I felt insanely jealous that my friends watched a Canadian cult comedy that I'd never seen (Lithobrake actually has a song called "Wayney Day" and the title is a "Letterkenny" reference). So I'd checked out "Letterkenny" here and there, and this past summer I decided to catch up, and have now watched almost all 75 episodes aired to date. I really enjoy it, it's in some ways a sitcom but in other ways something else with its own strange rhythms, sometimes characters just sit around and riff on puns for several minutes straight. 

I guess it was a matter of time before someone would seriously try to make Kim Kardashian act for a prolonged stretch of screentime, and it was probably always going to be Ryan Murphy. I don't know where this season ranks for people who watch "American Horror Story" more faithfully than I ever had, but so far this definitely seems like one of their least promising seasons to date. 

This Lebanese thriller on Netflix is about a friend group whose secrets start to come to the light after one of them is murdered, I enjoy a good dark trashy thriller. 

p) "Choona" 
This Indian show on Netflix is pretty entertaining, almost feels like an Ocean's Eleven thing, with a group of people all realizing they have a common enemy and planning a heist together. 

This Korean series on Netflix takes place in the 1920s during Japan's occupation of Korea, which has made me more curious about a chapter of history I really didn't know much about. 

This is a Korean game show with celebrity contestants on Netflix, I'm really interested in how the game works, a whole thing with earning and winning currency you can use as power-ups, or to avoid "prison" and decide which contestants do go to the prison, it's a weird cleverly structured concept. 

Given that so many zoos have had popular livestreams whenever a baby animal is born, it's probably a good idea that Netflix decided to get in on it with hours and hours of gorilla habitat footage from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. I prefer tightly edited nature documentaries, but there's a certain appeal to just kind of virtually hanging out with animals like this and watching their silly uneventful lives unfold moment by moment. 

I really enjoyed the first season of Hulu's "Welcome To Wrexham," a docuseries about actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a Welsh football team, it had a nice mix of silliness and heart. It kinda feels like the second season retooled to emphasis the drama a little more, make it a little less about Reynolds and McElhenney goofing around. And to an extent I really respect that they've made the show more about the people of Wrexham, but it doesn't quite have that balance of different tones that I enjoyed. 

This Hulu reality show exec produced by Reese Witherspoon about the love lives of five Alabama women is interesting because it's shot to look like a scripted show, that kind of thing has been done to some extent before with things like "Laguna Beach" but it's a little seamless here. I'm always deeply suspicious of the line between documentary and scripted being blurred, but it's at least pleasant to watch. 

This Apple TV+ docuseries profiles a few of the big '80s/'90s models like Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. And certainly their stories have been told many times before, but it feels like this is really well done and is looking at that era from a more serious contemporary perspective and letting them speak frankly about the good and the bad and the ugly. 

This Netflix series is one of the best documentaries about UFO sightings I've ever seen. It has lots of eyewitness accounts from different places around the world, stories I haven't heard before, the whole thing done with a bit more journalistic credibility and less sensationalism than you usually get about this stuff. 

I'm sad that "Heels," one of my favorite recent cable dramas, just got canceled. So I kind of like that Netflix has this docuseries that's about a similar sort of regional wrestling promotion, I'm a little more interested in that whole world now and how it works. 

An athlete as famous and accomplished as David Beckham is a good subject for a docuseries, and I caught myself being interested in this a couple times, but I dunno, it was mostly background noise for me. I always forget how high David Beckham's voice is, it's funny.

This HBO miniseries is about a woman, Renee Bach, who was a Christian missionary who worked with malnourished children in Uganda and was accused of basically acting like a doctor without medical training and causing deaths, it's a pretty horrifying story. Bach is being sued but is not in prison or anything she probably should be, so they interviewed her for the doc, and when a trailer first came out, there were some weird reactions on Twitter, people kind of outraged that they let her tell her side of the story and that it's irresponsible and sympathetic to her, but if you actually watch it, it's really clear that the filmmakers are not holding back here and that Bach probably makes herself look worse with the interviews in this. 

10:29 AM

Monthly Report: September 2023 Albums

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

 





1. Sparklehorse - Bird Machine
I seldom get excited about posthumous albums of material artists were working on when they died -- I mean, I'll check it out, sure, but with no expectations. I was incredibly excited to learn a few months ago, though, that a final Sparklehorse album would be coming out, 13 years after Mark Linkous's death, lovingly completed by Linkous's brother and occasional bandmate Matt. When I wrote about Linkous on the 10th anniversary of his death, I mentioned that a tribute project had been blocked by Linkous's estate, and quickly dismissed the notion that the unfinished 5th Sparklehorse album would ever see release. But it turns out there had been more extensive sessions than I'd imagined, both with Steve Albini in Chicago and at Linkous's home studio Static King, and Matt Linkous discovered enough recordings and notes to finish it. In a way, Sparklehorse is a perfect candidate for a project like this -- Linkous's sound was always a strange patchwork of high-fi and low-fi, so aesthetically it's totally consistent with the previous albums. I think it's probably his best since It's A Wonderful Life, great balance of fuzzed-out rockers like "I Fucked It Up" and evocative slow songs like "Everybody's Gone To Sleep." Here's the 2023 albums Spotify playlist of all the new albums I've listened to this year. 

2. Olivia Rodrigo - Guts
I think one of my favorite things as a music fan is when you just want someone who had a great debut to make something half as good again, and they go ahead and totally surpass it on their second album. Guts makes me feel the way it probably felt to hear This Years Model or De La Soul Is Dead when they were new, like holy shit they're even better than I thought? Guts already has 3 great singles like Sour did, but it's got a bit more really hooking me beyond the singles, especially "Love Is Embarrassing," "Pretty Isn't Pretty," and the fantastic album opener "All-American Bitch." 

3. Cleo Sol - Gold
Cleo Sol and her partner/collaborator Inflo are both "rumored" members of the "anonymous" British collective Sault, who surprise released 5 albums last November. I found that flood of music kind of unwieldy and difficult to digest, and don't think Sault's faceless public image does them any favors, since they have such a human sound and specific perspective. But Cleo Sol released an excellent album, Heaven, in September, and then followed it two weeks later with an even better album, Gold, which I thought was a better and more exciting way for them to roll out multiple albums. There's a flat "indie rock practice space demo" sound to a lot of the drums on these albums, but the keyboards and bass and Cleo Sol's vocals are all so lush and sumptuous that it's easy to get past, "Only Love Can Wait" and "There Will Be No Crying" are really gorgeous songs. 

4. The Beaches - Blame My Ex
Last year I visited my brother who lives in Milwaukee, and one day we went to the big annual music festival they have out there, Summerfest, and saw The New Pornographers, who were awesome. And before they took the stage, we watched another Canadian band I'd never heard of, The Beaches, who also played their own great set of snappy power pop. So I went home and started listening to their first album and singles, and now their second album, featuring some of the songs I heard live last year, is finally out. My favorites on the album so far are "Shower Beer," "Everything Is Boring," and "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Paranoid."

5. Department - Dumb Angel
Two years ago, a musician from Melbourne named Adam Kyriakou sent me a song called "Fear Of The Heavens" that I thought was really cool (I think that song has since been wiped from the Internet, unfortunately), and I encouraged him to send me any other music he made. So I was pretty excited a couple weeks ago to see an e-mail from Adam that he'd released his first album. Department's music is kind of in the same sample-collage plunderphonics world as The Avalanches (or maybe they just come to mind because they're also from Australia and Tony Espie has mixed both artists), but Dumb Angel uses samples in a way that's driven much more by melody and emotion, these big "wall of sound" arrangements influenced by producers like Joe Meek or Phil Spector that are comprised of recontextualized samples of stuff like Mariah Carey or Parliament or  J-Kwon or 702 or Spiritualized (he uses the bit of the Spiritualized record that interpolated "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" that was removed from the album for years because of Elvis Presley estate lawyers, which is a funny thing to put on an album made of unlicensed samples, whether Adam did that deliberately or not). I've pitched different outlets on this record, I hope I get to write something more substantial about it or somebody else does, so please, any editors or writers, by all means, check it out, it's on Bandcamp and all the streaming services. 

6. Ashley McBryde - The Devil I Know
Ashley McBryde is really on an amazing run right now, there aren't many artists, if any, that have released four albums since 2018 as good as hers, three of them with my favorite producer in country music, Jay Joyce. The Devil I Know's title track is the real stunner, maybe the best song she's ever written, but that was already a promo single and I'm still settling into the rest of the album. "The Coldest Beer In Town" is a great example of how McBryde is a master of the trick of cleverly taking the long way around to relating the song title to a seemingly unrelated lyric. 

7. Brothers Osborne - Brothers Osborne
The first three Brothers Osborne albums were produced by Jay Joyce, so I was a little nervous when they made their new album without him. But their new producer is Mike Elizondo, an insanely versatile guy who co-produced Dr. Dre hits like "In Da Club" and also produced the last Turnstile album (weirdly, my favorite Elizondo production is Maroon 5's It Won't Be Soon Before Long, he made them sound amazing on that record). I shouldn't have worried, because he's as great at producing Brothers Osborne as anyone else, and it's fun to hear them try something new while still retaining their style of country and southern rock. I have a piece about Brothers Osborne coming out later this week, watch this space. 

8. Nas - Magic 3
In August, Nas released Magic 2, and I ranked every Nas album for Spin. A few weeks later, though, Nas released Magic 3 on his 50th birthday, so I went back and added that to the ranking. His 6th album with Hit-Boy is supposedly his last of this insanely prolific run the last three years, and I'm curious if he's gonna just keep killing it with different producers or finally take his foot off the gas. 

9. Willie Nelson - Bluegrass
I've spent the last few years sort of cataloguing every song Willie Nelson's ever written and each time he's recorded it -- not really sure what kind of project will come of that, but I'm trying to figure that out while he's still alive and kicking. He's written over 300 songs and released over 140 albums, which means an average of only about 2 new songs per album, but a lot of those songs were comprised mainly or entirely of covers, and he's recorded some of his favorite compositions over and over on different albums, in different styles. And Willie's first bluegrass album is fun because instead of just covering the obvious bluegrass standards, he's finding songs of his own that work in that style, including old warhorses like "Bloody Mary Morning" and "Sad Songs And Waltzes" as well as "Still Is Still Moving To Me," which was first recorded in 1993 and seems to consistently be Willie's favorite song he's written since early '80s. This might be one of his best sounding albums in a while, the bluegrass approach feels very compatible to how much time has weathered his voice by now. Bluegrass actually includes his first ever studio recording of "On The Road Again," which was recorded live for its famous original version. 

10. Diddy - The Love Album: Off The Grid
September was a pretty eventful month for Diddy. He released his first solo album in 17 years, received the 'Global Icon Award' at the VMAs, and announced that he was giving Bad Boy artists their publishing back (although that seemed to have strings attached and was not the feelgood story he wanted it to be). And then Keffe D, a guy who has said for years that Sean Combs paid him and his nephew to kill Tupac Shakur, was arrested as a suspect in Shakur's murder. You almost have to wonder if Diddy knew this was coming and wanted to have one big last splash as a celebrity. I mean, we always had questions about Biggie and Tupac's murders and wondered if they were connected to their beef, but it's weird to think that there are finally new developments decades later. In that context, it feels trivial to talk about The Love Album: Off The Grid, but as a big fan of Last Train To Paris, I'm happy with it, it's like a more midtempo variation on the same vibe. He even reunited Dirty Money on one track! And the Jazmine Sullivan song is amazing, I really dig the Jeremih track too. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Peter Frampton - Peter Frampton At The Royal Albert Hall 
Peter Frampton has an odd career, with no studio album that has ever come close to selling anywhere near even half as much as his blockbuster 1976 concert album Frampton Comes Alive! It makes sense that he would continue to release live albums, and 1995's Frampton Comes Alive II featured a completely different set of songs. But at the end of the day, he has a pretty small number of songs people care about, so Peter Frampton At The Royal Albert Hall has 6 of the 9 songs from Frampton Comes Alive. His voice is still in decent shape but it really is just kind of depressing hearing these low energy renditions, it feels like this album has no reason to exist except as a souvenir of his farewell tour (although in the tradition of many recent farewell tours, it's still going and recently added new dates).  

10:23 AM

Friday, October 06, 2023

 




I ranked and wrote about every Tom Waits album for Spin. 

10:29 AM

Movie Diary

Thursday, October 05, 2023

 





a) No One Will Save You
Alien invasion movies are often more exciting in theory than in execution, but No One Will Save You is honestly one of the best that I've ever seen. It's kind of funny that for two years in a row, the most acclaimed Hulu movie has been a movie with little dialogue about a young woman battling an alien invasion -- I think this one's even better than Prey. Kaitlyn Dever's just been too good in too many totally different projects to not be a big star at this point, she managed to carry the emotion of every scene but also pull off the weird dark comedy at key points. And the design of the aliens was pretty creative, I liked that they didn't all have the same body. 

b) Theater Camp
Theater Camp stars a lot of the coolest people in comedy right now (Molly Gordon, Ayo Edebiri, Jimmy Tatro, Patti Harrison) but also star and co-writer Ben Platt, who's extremely uncool after the Dear Evan Hansen movie. He kind of lends Theater Camp credibility as a hardcore theater geek, though, so it feels like it's people making fun of themselves than just ridiculing an easy target. 

c) Flora And Son
Flora And Son is from John Carney, the writer/director of Once and Begin Again, so you kind of know what you're getting into with a charming, romantic movie about music with original songs. But I felt like it was less saccharine than I was expecting, Eve Hewson's character Flora is a single mom who curses like a sailor, the story and the relationships don't really proceed in a predictable way or get a forced ending, it's more charming by not trying to be perfectly charming. 

d) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
When I was a kid I went a probably not uncommon phase of just checking out every Roald Dahl book at the school library, I just love his stuff. When it was announced that Netflix bought the Roald Dahl Story Company, though, I figured they'd just be trying to turn more of his stories into Willy Wonka-type pop culture franchises. So it was a pleasant surprise that they got Wes Anderson to make some shorts of Dahl stories, an inspired pairing of director and material that highlights Dahl's weird dark sense of humor. 

e) The Flash
Back in 2014 someone important decided that Ezra Miller was the Tobey Maguire that DC needed to turn The Flash into a franchise, and they never wavered from that conviction even as Miller turned out to be a violent criminal who they had to hide for a year before The Flash finally came out and underperformed. Miller's screen presence is more like a young Chris Kattan, and some of the comic relief moments in The Flash are so wacky that I found myself laughing out loud, but more at the movie and with it.  

f) Office Race
With the decline of theatrical studio comedies, Office Race feels like the kind of thing that would've gotten a wide release 10 or 15 years ago, but now it just airs on Comedy Central. And that's fine I guess, it's just a moderately amusing movie with Beck Bennett and Joel McHale, with a premise that, as my wife pointed out, is pretty similar to Run Fatboy Run. It was decent, though, the whole McHale subplot was pretty entertaining. 

10:28 AM

Wednesday, October 04, 2023

 





I have a new story in The Baltimore Banner about Wright Way Studios, and I'll be on WTMD around 9:20 this morning talking to Alex Cortright about the article. 

8:02 AM

My Top 100 Singles of 1977

Tuesday, October 03, 2023






Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. Heart - "Barracuda"
2. Stevie Wonder - "Sir Duke"
3. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "American Girl"
4. Peter Gabriel - "Solsbury Hill"
5. Steve Miller Band - "Fly Like An Eagle"
6. Donna Summer – “I Feel Love”
7. Boston – “Foreplay/Long Time”
8. Queen - "We Will Rock You"
9. Queen - "We Are The Champions"
10. Boz Scaggs - "Lido Shuffle"
11. Television – “Marquee Moon”
12. Fleetwood Mac - "Dreams"
13. The Emotions - "Best Of My Love"
14. Steely Dan - "Peg"
15. Talking Heads - "Psycho Killer"
16. Marvin Gaye - "Got To Give It Up"
17. The Sex Pistols - "Pretty Vacant"
18. Kansas - "Point Of Know Return"
19. Elvis Costello - "Alison"
20. David Bowie - "Heroes"
21. Billy Joel - "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)"
22. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Breakdown"
23. Ram Jam - "Black Betty"
24. Electric Light Orchestra – “Do Ya”
25. Van Morrison - "Moondance"
26. The Commodores - "Brick House"
27. Fleetwood Mac - "You Make Loving Fun"
28. Paul McCartney & Wings - "Maybe I'm Amazed (live)"
29. Kraftwerk – “Trans-Europe Express”
30. Manfred Mann's Earth Band - "Blinded By The Light"
31. Foreigner - "Feels Like The First Time"
32. Jackson Browne - "The Pretender"
33. Elvis Costello - "Watching The Detectives"
34. AC/DC - "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"
35. The Ramones - "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker"
36. Aerosmith - "Back In The Saddle"
37. The Marshall Tucker Band - "Can't You See"
38. Rush - "Closer To The Heart"
39. Iggy Pop - "Lust For Life"
40. Boston – “Peace of Mind”
41. The Commodores - "Easy"
42. Eddie Money - "Baby Hold On"
43. Heatwave - "Boogie Nights"
44. Steve Miller Band - "Jungle Love"
45. Earth, Wind & Fire – “Serpentine Fire”
46. Fleetwood Mac - "The Chain"
47. The Sex Pistols - "God Save The Queen"
48. Queen - "Tie Your Mother Down"
49. Bob Marley and the Wailers – “Three Little Birds”
50. Kiss - "Love Gun"
51. Aerosmith - "Walk This Way"
52. Rose Royce – “I’m Going Down”
53. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - "Rock And Roll Never Forgets"
54. Boston – “Rock & Roll Band”
55. Neil Young - "Like A Hurricane"
56. The Isley Brothers - "Voyage To Atlantis"
57. Billy Joel - "Only The Good Die Young"
58. Supertramp – “Give A Little Bit”
59. The Eagles - "Life In The Fast Lane"
60. Fleetwood Mac - "Go Your Own Way"
61. Barry White – “It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me”
62. KC and the Sunshine Band - "Keep It Comin' Love"
63. AC/DC - "Big Balls"
64. Daryl Hall & John Oates - "Rich Girl"
65. Stevie Wonder - "Isn't She Lovely"
66. Bee Gees - "How Deep Is Your Love"
67. The Brothers Johnson – “Strawberry Letter 23”
68. Steve Miller Band - "Jet Airliner"
69. Stevie Wonder - "As"
70. Joni Mitchell - "Coyote"
71. Al Green - "Belle"
72. The Ramones - "Rockaway Beach"
73. Foreigner - "Cold As Ice"
74. The Eagles - "Victim Of Love"
75. Jimmy Buffett - "Margaritaville"
76. Thin Lizzy - "Dancing In The Moonlight (It's Caught Me In Its Spotlight)"
77. Fleetwood Mac -"Don't Stop"
78. Heart – “Kick It Out”
79. Carly Simon – “Nobody Does It Better”
80. Toulouse – “It Always Happens This Way”
81. Bob Marley and the Wailers – “Jamming”
82. Elvis Presley – “Way Down”
83. Talking Heads – “Pulled Up”
84. The Doobie Brothers – “Little Darling (I Need You)”
85. The Clash - "White Riot"
86. T. Rex – “The Soul of My Suit”
87. Billy Joel - "She's Always A Woman"
88. Pablo Cruise – “Whatcha Gonna Do?”
89. Iggy Pop - "The Passenger"
90. Little Feat - "Time Loves A Hero"
91. Dolly Parton – “Here You Come Again”
92. Jimmy Buffett – “Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes”
93. Peter Gabriel – “Modern Love”
94. David Bowie – “Sound And Vision”
95. Elvis Costello - "Less Than Zero”
96. The Eagles - "Hotel California"
97. Parliament – “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)”
98. Steve Miller Band - "Swingtown"
99. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - "Mainstreet"
100. Meco - "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" 

The explosion of punk was easier to reflect in my 1977 albums list than in the singles list, since most of those bands took a couple years to become a real commercial force, and some never did. "Marquee Moon" wasn't a hit, and I already gave it its due on the album list, but it was a single, so I felt compelled to include the song here as a perfect piece of music, R.I.P. Tom Verlaine. Otherwise, though, I'm happy to challenge the notion that punk was necessitated by conventional rock become stale, because c'mon! "Barracuda"? "Fly Like An Eagle"? Talk about a great classic rock year. I thought about giving "We Will Rock You" / "We Are The Champions" one shared spot on the list as one of the greatest 2-sided singles of all time that still consistently gets played on the radio as a pair, but it's two songs, I wanna give Queen full credit for both being masterpieces. 

Previously:

8:01 AM