Deep Album Cuts Vol. 392: Donna Summer

Monday, February 23, 2026









I've been wanting to make this playlist for a long time, I started seriously putting it together in 2023 when the excellent HBO documentary Love To Love You, Donna Summer came out, and then I got close to finishing it last year. So when Alysa Liu did her amazing gold metal-winning figure skating routine to Summer's rendition of "MacArthur Park" at the Winter Olympics last week, and it rocketed up the iTunes charts, it reminded me that I really wanted to get my Donna Summer playlist up on here. 

Donna Summer deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Wounded
2. Need-A-Man Blues
3. Come With Me
4. Wasted
5. Summer Fever
6. Autumn Changes
7. Take Me
8. Sweet Romance
9. Say Something Nice
10. Mimi's Song (live)
11. My Baby Understands
12. Our Love
13. Lucky
14. Grand Illusion
15. (If It) Hurts Just A Little
16. (I Do Believe) I Fell In Love
17. People People

Track 1 from Lady of the Night (1974)
Track 2 from Love To Love You Baby (1975)
Tracks 3 and 4 from A Love Trilogy (1976)
Tracks 5 and 6 from Four Seasons Of Love (1976)
Track 7 from I Remember Yesterday (1977)
Tracks 8 and 9 from Once Upon A Time (1977)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Live And More (1978)
Tracks 12, 13, and 14 from Bad Girls (1979)
Track 15 from The Wanderer (1980)
Track 16 from Donna Summer (1982)
Tracks 17 and 18 from She Works Hard For The Money (1983)

Summer worked with Italian songwriter Giorgio Moroder from the very beginning, at first with British producer Pete Bellotte. But Summer and Moroder were both versatile talents and made music in many different styles, and her debut Lady of the Night had more of a pop/rock sound before they started to find a more danceable electronic sound that made her the Queen of Disco. 

Summer made some really great cohesive records, including the concept albums Four Seasons of Love and I Remember Yesterday and the double LPs Once Upon a Time and Bad Girls, and was right between Fleetwood Mac and ELO on my favorite album artists of the '70s list. A lot of these records run together with continuous transitions between tracks, so it was tough to pull out individual tracks without interrupting those grooves, I think there's only one or two abrupt cuts on here. In the '80s, Summer started to branch out with other producers including Quincy Jones, and I included a couple of those albums, but I decided to stick to just the first 10 years of Summer's career. I try to cover an artist's whole career when it makes sense to, but sometimes I really just want to focus on their prime years, especially for someone whose songs can be pretty long and make it harder to cram a lot of them into 80 minutes. 

Moroder's team of collaborators, the "Munich Machine," included lots of people who went on to do great things. German engineer Reinhold Mack produced huge records by Queen and Billy Squier, and English drummer Keith Forsey would make produce hits for Billy Idol and Simple Minds. And Icelandic keyboardist Thor Baldursson gets a mention in my book for his group Gaz, whose track "Sing Sing" features one of the most sampled breakbeats in Baltimore club music. 

The "MacArthur Park" suite that Alysa Liu skated to is from Live and More and I included a sweet song Summer wrote for her daughter that never appeared on a studio album, "Mimi's Song." "My Baby Understands," a great song, was sampled on Ne-Yo and Jamie Foxx's "She Got Her Own." "(If It) Hurts Just A Little" was sampled on a lot of dance tracks (Cassius, Deaf'N Dumb Crew, Love & Mind, etc.). "Sweet Romance" was sampled on a bunch of New York rap tracks (most prominently DJ Kay Slay and the Lox's "The Streetsweeper")

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements
Vol. 371: The Beastie Boys
Vol. 372: Marianne Faithfull
Vol. 373: Sly and the Family Stone
Vol. 374: Billy Idol
Vol. 375: The Jam
Vol. 376: Roberta Flack
Vol. 377: Chubby Checker
Vol. 378: Bad Company
Vol. 379: Mana
Vol. 380: Joe Cocker
Vol. 381: The Kinks
Vol. 382: Phish
Vol. 383: Faith No More
Vol. 384: The Alarm
Vol. 385: Jill Sobule
Vol. 386: Luther Vandross
Vol. 387: Angie Stone
Vol. 388: MC Lyte
Vol. 389: The Beach Boys
Vol. 390: The S.O.S. Band
Vol. 391: Bad Bunny

6:00 AM

Friday, February 20, 2026

 





I wrote about Radiohead's "Palo Alto" for this Spin's Deep Cut Friday column this week. 

5:36 PM

Movie Diary

Tuesday, February 17, 2026


 





















a) If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Oscar season is weird because the awards ultimately feel more like a validation of individuals and their entire careers than their specific nominated work, so I end up rooting for someone regardless of whether I've seen the movie or how much I liked it. I've thought that Rose Byrne has been a consistently great actress since "Damages," but as someone who's done a lot of their best work on television (and only has two Emmy noms and no wins), I didn't really expect her to ever get a shot at an Oscar. And her nomination for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is very deserved, it's a very intense film fully driven by her performance. It reminded me of Eraserhead and Jacob's Ladder, both big films in my personal canon, in the way you're kind of inside someone's head for two hours, going through very stressful experiences from their possibly distorted or exaggerated experience -- I had a headache the night I watched it and just felt unbelievably horrible by the time I finished it, but in a way where it felt like I just experienced the movie very acutely. Of course, that's offset by the film's dark sense of humor and the colorful casting decisions like Conan O'Brien, A$AP Rocky, and Ivy Wolk -- I was amused that they had to flatten and tame O'Brien's hair, because he couldn't be a stern and unfriendly therapist with a fabulous pompadour. Writer/director Mary Bronstein also has a supporting onscreen role, and she's gorgeous and made a really original film, I adore her now. 

b) Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
I'm not one of those people that considers Nebraska to be Bruce Springsteen's very best album (I put it at #6), but I will grant that it represents one of the most interesting chapters of his story that really shaped his legacy. And while I generally prefer musical biopics that focus on a specific era rather than spanning an artist's entire life, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere unintentionally makes the argument that there's not really enough there for a movie, padding things out with gratuitous childhood flashbacks and mood-setting. Jeremy Allen White rises to the occasion, not a transcendent performance but a damn good one. The second-billed actor, Jeremy Strong, isn't really given enough to make Jon Landau's relationship with Springsteen seem as interesting as it actually is, and ends up with possibly the worst performance of his career, delivering clumsy rock critic-therapist-philosopher analysis in a stupid Woody Allen voice. The third-billed actor plays the guy who sets up the 4-track in Bruce's rental, and the fifth-billed actor plays Bruce's fictionalized composite girlfriend who has no relevance to the story or the songs. Imagine how good a Springsteen movie could be if it was about his band and his relationships with guys like Clarence Clemons and Little Steven! I remember someone joking 20 years ago that Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase looked like Max Weinberg, so it was very amusing to see him play that role in a Springsteen biopic. And I will say, '80s period pieces can be pretty irritating if the hair's wrong, but Odessa Young looks fantastic in feathered '80s hair. 

c) Ash
My wife and I have an old tradition, going back to our first Valentine's Day as a couple, of ordering Chinese for dinner and watching horror movies on VDay. Our eternal struggle is whether to try to find a really good horror movie, or go for something low budget and obscure and embrace the possibility that it will be terrible. This year, we put on a movie that looked promising, Ash, and after we started it, I realized it was Flying Lotus's directorial debut that I'd heard about. As the first feature from a musician, Ash is really visually impressive, especially considering that it was made on a six figure budget, just really inventive and memorable imagery. From a story standpoint, it's a bit more familiar, not too different from Alien, and sometimes the dialogue-driven scenes were a little flat and made me miss the parts where there was almost no dialogue -- call me a hater, but I think Aaron Paul might genuinely be a bad actor? He always sounds so stilted and unnatural. But overall, Ash is pretty good, I recommend it and hope Flying Lotus makes more films. 

d) Night Carnage
We finished Ash early enough that we decided to make it a double feature and watch one of the low budget movies that caught our eye: a movie called Night Carnage with a plot description about "a blogger who is also a werewolf." And I gotta say, if you enjoy watching shitty B movies, I highly recommend this one, they really don't make 'em laughably bad like this very often anymore, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" could genuinely make a good episode out of this. Digital blood is added in post-production, the werewolf costume looks like it was bought at Spirit Halloween, and the father of one of the main characters gives a long expository speech at the beginning of the movie and then has one of the most unconvincing onscreen deaths I've ever seen. 

e) I Saw The TV Glow
I Saw The TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun was born in the '80s like me, and made a movie that's a loving tribute to how good and obsession-rewarding TV for teens and tweens was in the '90s, complete with cameos by "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" actors, and a fictionalized show named after the Cocteau Twins compilation The Pink Opaque. There's a lot more to it than that, but I really connected to that nostalgic element about adolescent escape, and it made me hope for a happy ending for the characters, which made the way the story does end feel all the more haunting. 

f) The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Oh I just hate this movie's title, I know two of the main characters have a baby in this movie but it makes it sound like a "Muppet Babies" version of the Fantastic Four. It's above average for a 2020s MCU movie but I don't love it, it's irritating to see Vanessa Kirby introduced to the wider public in something like this after her incredible performance in Pieces of a Woman, Joseph Quinn has no juice to play a fun character like Johnny Storm, and The Thing and the Silver Surfer improbably look worse than they did in previous movies. 

g) The Threesome
I'm pretty sure commercials for the 1994 film Threesome introduced me to the concept of threesomes (this was about a year before the "menage a trois" episode of "Seinfeld"). I never saw Threesome, probably because it's about a threesome with two guys, one of whom is played by Stephen Baldwin, but I did watch the unrelated recent film The Threesome, which is about a threesome with two girls, both of whom are played by actresses I find extremely attractive. It end up being a pretty tame and heartwarming little story, but Ruby Cruz is absolutely adorable and Jaboukie Young-White gets in some good comic relief moments. 

I put this on one day when I just wanted a movie on as background noise and ended up finding it a lot more engrossing than I expected. I don't think Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield really even have onscreen chemistry, they're just both such good actors that they made me believe them in these roles. It felt a bit emotionally manipulative -- the chronology of the story is all jumbled up and nonlinear, mostly to extract maximum suspense from a cancer plotline -- but the quality of the writing and acting was high enough that I happy let it manipulate my emotions. 

i) Relay
A pretty good little conspiracy thriller, but I put it on as background noise and it never quite commanded my attention enough to be much more than background noise. 

j) A House of Dynamite
A better conspiracy thriller, not perfect, but a reminder of how talented Kathryn Bigelow is, and frustrating to see that her first feature in 8 years was a Netflix movie that barely appeared in theaters. 

Maybe my expectations were just on the floor because of how bad the reviews and word-of-mouth for Love Hurts were, but I thought it was a decent little action comedy. Ran out of steam a bit by the end, but okay overall. 

A pretty good Netflix doc about the great films of 1975, although it felt like everyone wanted to talk more broadly about the '70s or mid-'70s but the conceit of the film required them to fit their observations and narratives into this really specific 12-month sliver of time. 

1:47 PM

Friday, February 13, 2026


 










This week on Spin I ranked Lady Gaga's albums and wrote about the Patti Smith Group's "Ain't It Strange" for the Deep Cut Friday column. 

5:49 PM

My Top 100 Singles of 1969

Thursday, February 12, 2026


 



















Here's the Spotify playlist:

1. The Jackson 5 - "I Want You Back"
2. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Fortunate Son"
3. Isaac Hayes - "Walk On By"
4. Dusty Springfield - "Son Of A Preacher Man"
5. Led Zeppelin - "Whole Lotta Love"
6. David Bowie - "Space Oddity"
7. Frank Sinatra – “My Way”
8. Elvis Presley - "Suspicious Minds"
9. The Who - "Pinball Wizard"
10. Crosby, Stills & Nash – “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”
11. The Rolling Stones – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
12. Diana Ross & The Supremes - "Someday We'll be Together"
13. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Proud Mary"
14. The Zombies - "Time of the Season"
15. Stevie Wonder - "My Cherie Amour"
16. The Beatles - "Something"
17. Neil Diamond - "Sweet Caroline"
18. The Doors - "Touch Me"
19. Bobbie Gentry – “Fancy”
20. The Foundations - "Build Me Up Buttercup"
21. MC5 – “Kick Out The Jams (live)”
22. The Kinks - "Victoria"
23. Led Zeppelin - "Good Times Bad Times"
24. The Rolling Stones - "Honky Tonk Women"
25. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Bad Moon Rising"
26. Three Dog Night – “Eli’s Coming”
27. The Delfonics – “Ready Or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love)”
28. Joe Cocker – “Feelin’ Alright”
29. Smith – “Baby It’s You”
30. The Beatles – “Come Together”
31. Harry Nilsson – “Everybody's Talkin'”
32. Neil Young and Crazy Horse – “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”
33. The Temptations – “Runaway Child, Running Wild”
34. Merle Haggard and the Strangers – “Okie From Muskogee”
35. The Stooges – “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
36. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Down On The Corner"
37. The Band – “Up On Cripple Creek”
38. Canned Heat – “Going Up The Country”
39. The Friends of Distinction – “Going in Circles”
40. Johnny Cash - "A Boy Named Sue"
41. The Rolling Stones - "Sympathy For The Devil"
42. Tommy James & The Shondells - "Crimson & Clover"
43. King Crimson – “The Court of the Crimson King”
44. Marvin Gaye – “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby”
45. Three Dog Night - "One"
46. Simon & Garfunkel - "The Boxer"
47. The 5th Dimension – “Wedding Bell Blues”
48. Aretha Franklin – “I Can’t See Myself Leaving You”
49. The Beatles - "Get Back"
50. James Brown – “Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose”
51. Bob Dylan - "Lay Lady Lay"
52. The Isley Brothers - "It's Your Thing"
53. Peggy Lee – “Is That All There Is?”
54. The Who - "I'm Free"
55. The Guess Who – “Undun”
56. Linda Martell – “Color Him Father”
57. The Rolling Stones - "Gimme Shelter"
58. Jackie DeShannon – “Put A Little Love In Your Heart”
59. The Temptations - "I Can't Get Next To You"
60. Blind Faith - "Can't Find My Way Home"
61. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Born On The Bayou"
62. Neil Young with Crazy Horse – “Down by the River”
63. Elvis Presley - "In The Ghetto"
64. Isaac Hayes - "By The Time I Get To Phoenix"
65. James Brown – “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothin’ (Open Up The Door, I’ll
Get It Myself)”
66. Led Zeppelin – “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman)”
67. Sly & The Family Stone - "Stand!"
68. Tommy James & The Shondells - "Crystal Blue Persuasion"
69. The Stooges – “1969”
70. Aretha Franklin – “Gentle on My Mind”
71. The Beach Boys – “I Can Hear Music”
72. Mama Cass Elliot – “Make Your Own Kind Of Music”
73. Blood, Sweat & Tears – “And When I Die”
74. Gun – “Race with the Devil”
75. The Meters – “Cissy Strut”
76. James Brown – “The Popcorn”
77. Kenny Rogers and the First Edition - "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town"
78. Johnny Cash – “See Ruby Fall”
79. The Archies - "Sugar, Sugar"
80. The 5th Dimension - "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In"
81. Bob Seger System - "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man"
82. Stevie Wonder – “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday”
83. Frank Zappa – “Peaches En Regalia”
84. The Youngbloods - "Get Together"
85. Jefferson Airplane – “Volunteers”
86. The Guess Who - "These Eyes"
87. James Brown - "Mother Popcorn (You Got To Have A Mother For Me)"
88. Aretha Franklin – “Share Your Love With Me”
89. Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – “Good Lovin’ Ain’t Easy To Come By”
90. The Beatles - "The Ballad of John And Yoko"
91. Desmond Dekker & The Aces - "Israelites"
92. Bee Gees - "I Started A Joke"
93. The 5th Dimension – “Blowing Away”
94. George Jones – “I’ll Share My World With You”
95. Sly & The Family Stone - "Hot Fun In The Summertime"
96. Steppenwold – “Rock Me”
97. Dyke and the Blazers – “Let A Woman Be A Woman”
98. James Brown - "Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn”
99. Cream - "Badge"
100. Steam - "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"

I like to think of this list as having a subplot of James Brown going about his life and then suddenly becoming obsessed with popcorn. I was also fascinated to look up a random week in November 1969 and realize that three songs in the top 10 were Laura Nyro covers (#26, #47, and #73 on this list), she really really had a little run as a hitmaker there (#93 is also one of her songs). 


Previously:
My Top 50 Albums of 1969
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1970
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1971
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1972
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1973
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1974
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1975
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1976
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1977
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1978
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1979
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1980
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1981
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1982
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1983
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1984
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
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2021
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2022
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2023 
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2024
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 2025

3:47 PM

Monthly Report: February 2026 Singles

Tuesday, February 10, 2026























1. Doechii f/ SZA - "Girl, Get Up"
When new rap songs sample fondly remembered rap hits from 20 or 30 years ago, they'll often add more new drums that align current production trends (trap, drill, etc.) to make an old track sound a little more modern. And I understand that impulse, but I really hate hearing that done to old Neptunes or Timbaland tracks where the drums were the coolest part of the song to begin with. So it was a nice change of pace to hear some of the most amazing Neptunes drums ever, from Birdman's "What Happened To That Boy," used so well on "Girl, Get Up" with different flows and a great new bassline. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist that I'll update every month throughout the year. 

2. Bad Bunny - "DtMF" 
The sort of title track from Debi Tirar Mas Fotos was already Bad Bunny's biggest Hot 100 hit (Cardi B feature aside) when it peaked at #2 a year ago after the album was released. But with his streaming numbers skyrocketing around the Grammy win and the Super bowl halftime show, "DtMF" has re-entered the top 10 and will probably become his first solo #1 next week, and it's a pretty beautiful, poignant song to become the focal point of this crazy career pinnacle he's at right now. After making my deep album cuts playlist last week, I feel more confident that this is probably his best album and/or best song. "EoO" was the song from the album that actually got some pop radio airplay last year, but I hope English-language radio gives it a chance now. 

3. Turnstile - "Look Out For Me" 
Another great Grammy moment was Turnstile winning one for the first time and ending their acceptance speech with "to Baltimore, thank you, we love you." As I pointed out in my Baltimore Banner year-end piece, the second half of "Look Out For Me" is basically Baltimore club, with the "Dick Control" kick drum pattern popularized by DJ Technics and a "Think (About It)" breakbeat, which is pretty awesome, if this album had come out a few months earlier I definitely would've talked about it in my book. Of course, "Look Out For Me" is over 6 minutes long, so I assume radio stations play a shorter single edit that might not include much of that part of the song (there are only two rock stations in Maryland that play new music, but they don't play much new music, even when it's one of the biggest bands to ever come out of Maryland, so I only heard "Never Enough" on the radio a few times and have yet to hear "Look Out For Me" once). 

4. Harry Styles - "Aperture" 
I'm not going to say the new Harry Styles single is directly influenced by Baltimore club, but I mean, it's got the "Dick Control" kick drum and the BPM is around 130, it really shows how much that sound has entered the bloodstream of popular music. I've always liked how Harry's first three solo albums followed the kind of dad rock-influenced template of One Direction instead of trying to do some sleek sexy modern thing like Zayn's records, but now that he's established his solo identity on a real huge level, I think it's cool that he's experimenting with a more danceable sound, while still working with longtime collaborator Kid Harpoon. 

5. Kameron Marlowe - "Seventeen"
This song recently dropped off the country radio after hanging around in the lower reaches for a few months and I'm really bummed that it didn't become a hit, it's fantastic. At one point in the first verse, Marlowe sings a bar of "Born in the U.S.A." According to a Billboard piece, they had to clear the interpolation with Bruce Springsteen, and Bruce complimented the song, but they took more inspiration from John Mellencamp's The Lonesome Jubilee, a personal favorite of mine, for the accordion and fiddle on the chorus. 

6. Stephen Wilson Jr. - "Gary"
Stephen Wilson Jr. is a guy from Indiana whose career is just now starting to take off in his mid-40s, and he currently simultaneously has his first song on alternative radio and his first song on country radio. Alt-rock radio is playing faithful but unremarkable cover of "Tonight, Tonight" by Smashing Pumpkins, but country radio is playing "Gary," which is a real stunner with a clever lyric and a boiling crescendo. I'm rooting for this guy to thrive in that gray area between country and alt-rock where guys like Zach Bryan and Sturgill Simpson have become huge. 

7. NMIXX - "Blue Valentine" 
The title track to the K-pop girl group NMIXX's debut album recently became their first #1 song in Korea, and in America it's spent a couple weeks in the lower reaches of the Pop Airplay charts. And it has really grabbed me way more than any other recent K-pop stuff, they bend the tempo in a really disorienting way as the song goes from a sort of R&B verse to a fast pop/rock chorus. 

8. Jason Aldean - "How Far Does A Goodbye Go" 
Jason Aldean has never been a great singer or written much of his own material, so I don't mind terribly that most people have completely written him off after "Try That In A Small Town." Unfortunately, I think Aldean has a really talented songwriter, John Morgan, working on a lot of his stuff these days, so I really enjoy his latest single, which has a cheesy but effective hair metal power ballad lead guitar bit that I love. 

9. The Marias - "Sienna" 
I really liked the non-album single "Back To Me" that The Marias released last year after "No One Noticed" blew up, but I'm not surprised that the song from their album that sounds like most like "No One Noticed," "Sienna," has become a radio hit instead. 

10. Sienna Spiro - "Die On This Hill"
This is a pretty generic British piano ballad, but I like it. And I'm amused that a singer named Sienna is on the Hot 100 for the first time while a song called "Sienna" is also on the chart, like what are the odds? 

The Worst Single of the Month: Kanye West - "Preacher Man" 
Last summer, a few weeks after releasing a song called "Heil Hitler," Kanye West released 5 songs from his forthcoming album Bully, some if not all of which use AI deepfakes of his voice instead of real Kanye vocal performances. Even before West did his whole unconvincing apology thing and announced a March release date for Bully, one of those songs, "Preacher Man," was starting to get radio spins, and  "Preacher Man" has now reaching #18 in its 8th week on Billboard's R&B/hip-hop airplay chart. Just about every other song in the top 20 of the chart is something I've heard on the radio regularly and/or have seen people post or talk about online, etc. "Preacher Man," I don't know what stations are playing it, but it feels like a total phantom hit, the worst possible example of radio programmers blindly playing anything with name recognition. 

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