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. 

5:00 AM

TV Diary

Monday, February 09, 2026

 







I really enjoyed this, it was fun to see Marvel explore the idea of people with superpowers being banned from acting in movies (as opposed to the universe of "The Boys" where actual superheroes star in their superhero movies) through the lens of a goofy Hollywood satire. Ben Kingsley's performance as Iron Man 3 as Trevor, the actor playing The Mandarin, was one of the great one-off MCU roles, so it was brilliant to bring him back and make him a foil to Simon Williams, the superpowered aspiring actor. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has done a lot of action and drama (including superhero roles in "Watchmen" and Aquaman) so I was surprised that he's actually really funny playing Simon as this neurotic, ambitious actor who gets in his own way with his obsessive drive to be a star. Definitely up there with "WandaVision" as one of the best Marvel TV projects. 

This new Tracy Morgan sitcom, created by "30 Rock" showrunner Robert Carlock, is pretty promising. The first episode didn't quite have that relentless joke-after-joke-after-joke rhythm, but even "30 Rock" didn't master that right away, first season episodes can feel a little slow if you watch them now. Daniel Radcliffe is a fun choice to be Morgan's foil, and his character claims to be a University of Maryland professor from Baltimore (spoiler: his backstory is revealed to be a lie). 

I don't know how many people are in the Venn diagram that are interested in both a dark comedy starring Keke Palmer and a reboot of the Tom Hanks cult classic The 'Burbs, I'm definitely in there but even I'm a little iffy about the results. So much of The 'Burbs is specific to its era and Joe Dante's tone, things like Corey Feldman as a metalhead teen, and the whole concept of paranoia and intrigue in a suburban cul de sac was moderately novel at the time. It's just hard to do this show now without it feeling like a generic post-"Desperate Housewives" thing, and in the episodes I've watched so far Palmer hasn't really gotten to be hilarious like she was in One of Them Days or Nope. So I'm enjoying it, and there's a great supporting cast including Paula Pell and Mark Proksch, but I'm kind of hoping it builds some more momentum by the end of the season. 

d) "Bookish"
Apparently there's a new cable channel for crime and mystery shows in the UK called U&Alibi, and this is one of their shows that PBS recently started airing in the U.S. "Bookish" creator Mark Gatiss plays a post-WWII book shop owner named Gabriel Book (sigh) who uses his knowledge of mystery novels to help police solve crimes. Pretty charming show, I like how the six episodes are broken up into three 2-parter mysteries, I think that's a good way to structure a show like this. 

e) "The Muppets"
ABC/Disney+ has taken the unusual step of making a one-off special episode of "The Muppets," in the variety show style of the old '70s "Muppet Show," with the plan to wait and see how it does before they greenlight a series. That has irritated some people, justifiably, but it feels like there's been a lot of so-so attempts to keep the Muppets franchise going in recent years so I understand them moving cautiously. The early numbers look promising, though, and the episode, with Sabrina Carpenter as the token guest host human, was really good, I'm hoping we'll get more. 

Bert Kreischer is a standup comic who's famous for his kind of one-note 'big fat party animal who takes his shirt off onstage' persona, I'm not a huge fan but I think he's moderately charming, I liked him when he used to be a frequent guest on a local morning radio show. Apparently a magazine profile of him as a college student was the basis of Van Wilder, so he's just been milking that for decades. "Free Bert" is a sitcom where Kreischer plays a fictionalized version of himself with actors playing his family, it derives most of the comedy from Kreischer earnestly wanting to be more than just a one-trick-pony who takes his shirt off for a laugh, and fish-out-of-water bits about him living in an upper class suburb among doctors and lawyers. It's a decent show, nothing special, but there are some really funny scenes with Kreischer and Lilou Lang, who plays his younger daughter. 

g) "Coldwater"  
I imagine Andrew Lincoln has his pick of projects now, and his first non-"Walking Dead" series in a long time is "Coldwater," created by an award-winning playwright David Ireland. I'm really not enjoying at all, just feels kind of dreary and melodramatic and I'm not curious at all where this ominous story is going. 

This 3-hour HBO docuseries directed by Judd Apatow is a delight. I read Brooks's memoir All About Me! a couple years ago so I knew a lot of the details of the story already but it's delightful to see Brooks talk about it all with clips of his work. There's a really funny bit in the doc where Silent Movie screenwriter Ron Clark actually points out that Brooks took credit for one of his jokes in the memoir ("I called Mel and he said 'it was funny so I just assumed it was my idea'"). The doc does a great job of highlighting the principles and philosophy behind Brooks's approach to comedy and directing, and there's some beautiful stories, I especially liked the part about turning The Producers into a Broadway show. 

David Attenborough, like Mel Brooks, is 99, and I'm impressed that both of these guys still work as much as they do, it feels like we get multiple Attenborough-narrated series every year still. "Kingdom" is about lions and leopards and hyenas in a national park in Zambia, I love watching the hyenas, such a weird-looking and fascinating species. 

I'm disinterested in sports to the degree of not even watching the Olympics much, but I really loved this Netflix docuseries about ice dancing, which is probably the closest thing to an artform that's an Olympic sport. The three teams they focus on in the doc are all insanely talented, I guess the husband-and-wife team Madison Chock and Evan Bates are superstars in that world but I wasn't familiar with them and just loved their story, and was so invested by the end of the third episode. 

I grew up in the era of the 49ers dominating the NFL, so even though I don't follow football it was cool to get into the nuts and bolts of how the team got to that level. 

Another docuseries that managed to make football interesting to me, this one about top ranked high school quarterbacks starting their college careers. 

Wade Wilson is a guy on death row for killing two women, for a while this story was all over social media but I didn't really follow it in detail. I didn't realize his own dad testified against him in court, this guy's just horrifying. 

Fox and Gordon Ramsey did a baking-centered "Next Level Chef" spinoff for the holidays, I liked seeing the kind of imaginative Christmas cookies people came up with. 

I feel like people have gotten good and sick of topical comedy/news satire shows as a genre but I still generally like them, and this CNN show has become a reliably enjoyable part of my watching routine along with "The Daily Show" and "Last Week Tonight." And because "Have I Got News For You" is less scripted than those shows, sometimes it feels like the panelists get to really react to how outrageous the news is in a more genuine and visceral way, Amber Ruffin in particular does not mince her words. 

Very weird but kind of charming Japanese reality show on Netflix where people with checkered pasts or criminal records live in a house together and try to find love, a bit less depressing than the "Bad Girls Club" genre of American reality shows. 

This docuseries is about a really horrible story of an Argentinian law student who got beaten to death on camera, really dark shit, I only got through one episode. 

I've really enjoyed the Korean restaurants I've been to, but I've never had tteok, a type of rice cake, and this Netflix series really made me hungry and I'm gonna have to try them sometime. 

This Japanese series on Netflix is not about soda at all, it's about a chain of dark secrets that are uncovered when human bones are discovered at a construction site. One of the better foreign language dramas I've seen lately. 

A pretty dark, violent German spy drama on Netflix about retired agents who have to flee their safe house. Not super into it. 

In contrast to all the TV I watch, my wife reads way more books, and only occasionally gets into a show enough to keep up with every episode (lately it's been "The Pitt"). She loves playing D&D and listening to the Critical Role podcast, so we did watch their first animated series "The Legend of Vox Machina" pretty intensely for a while, but we're now a couple seasons behind. And we watched one episode of their newer show "The Mighty Nein" and I thought it was promising, but we haven't gotten around to watching any more episodes. 

This Netflix anime series is a historical romance about early 1900s London art students, I like its visual style. 

My 10-year-old has really been digging through Netflix's archives lately and finding shows that were made a while ago like this one, which had a couple seasons in 2018 and 2019. Really funny show, reminds me a bit of Cartoon Network gems like "Adventure Time" and "Gumball. 

Another Netflix one that I think was canceled a while ago that my son stumbled upon, not as good as "Cupcake & Dino" but has its moments. 

Another decent canceled Netflix find from my son, with Haley Joel Osment voicing a corgi who's the captain of a spaceship.  

Another old Netflix find, this produced by Pharrell Williams and explaining scientific concepts for kids, I'm disappointed this didn't continue for more than one season. 

4:18 PM

Friday, February 06, 2026

 




I ranked Janet Jackson's albums on Spin this week, and also wrote about Warren Zevon's "Carmelita" for the Deep Cut Friday column. 

9:49 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 391: Bad Bunny

Wednesday, February 04, 2026

 







The last 6 months have been my longest pause between Deep Album Cuts playlists since I started the series way back in 2013. That was partly, though not entirely, because I started doing Spin's Deep Cut Friday column last summer. But I'd like to get back in the habit of doing more of the playlists here this year. Given that Bad Bunny just won Album of the Year at the Grammys (the Spanish language albums to ever win the award), and is doing the Super Bowl Halftime Show this Sunday, it felt like this should be the time to do a Bad Bunny playlist if I'm ever gonna do it, he's certainly built up a large enough catalog in just the last 8 years. 

Bad Bunny deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. La Mudanza
2. Ensaname a Bailar
3. Solia
4. Tenemos Que Hablar
5. Gracias Por Nada
6. Maldita Pobreza
7. Un Verano Sin Ti
8. Perfumito Nuevo featuring RaiNao
9. Vou 787
10. Trellas
11. Que Malo featuring Nengo Flow
12. Como Antes
13. Mojaita with J Balvin
14. Como Un Bebe with J Balvin and Mr. Eazi
15. Voy a Llevarte Pa' PR
16. Otro Atardecer featuring The Marias
17. Bye Me Fui
18. Telefono Nuevo featuring Luar La L
19. Sorry Papi featuring Abra
20. Cuando Perriabas
21. La Zona
22. Weltita featuring Chuwi
23. Thunder y Lightning featuring Eladio Carrion
24. Agosto
25. <3

Tracks 4, 12, and 20 from X 100pre (2018)
Tracks 13 and 14 from Oasis with J Balvin (2019)
Tracks 3, 11, 21, and 25 from YHLQMDLG (2020)
Track 17 from Las Que No Iban a Salir (2020)
Tracks 6, 10, and 19 from El Ultimo Tour del Mundo (2020)
Tracks 2, 7, 16, and 24 from Un Verano Sin Ti (2022)
Tracks 5, 9, 18, and 23 from Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Manana (2023)
Tracks 1, 8, 15, and 22 from Debi Tarar Mas Fotos (2025)

Some people, predictably and pathetically, are outraged at the idea of a Super Bowl halftime show with lyrics entirely Spanish. If there's any English in Bad Bunny's set, it will probably be the "selfie, say cheese" bit from "Titi Me Pregunto," but I would also love to hear "I don't speak in English" from "Vou 787" or "yes I know, men are trash" from "Telefono Nuevo." I always liked Bad Bunny's early run as a duo with J Balvin and was bummed out when they fell out and Bad Bunny had an odd diss lyric on "Thunder y Lightning" that didn't even make J Balvin sound bac ("I'm always hanging out with the same people, while you're friends with everyone like J Balvin"). Bad Bunny and J Balvin reunited onstage in 2025 (just like that other "oasis" duo!), so I'm hoping Balvin has a cameo in the Super Bowl performance. 

Of course, I'm not fluent in Spanish myself (I regret taking French in high school when there are so many more Spanish speakers in America). So I acknowledge I'm not going to get the full effect of Bad Bunny's lyrics -- I will occasionally look up English translations of his lyrics and appreciate what he's saying (I particularly like the sentiments on ""). But I'm not going to get a lot of the nuance of the rhymes he chooses, the wordplay and musicality of the language that comes with rapping. But I love the lyrics of "La Mudanza," I put that at the top of the playlist initially because I liked the idea of opening with the a cappella intro, and then I read the translation and realized it's also a perfect opener because it's basically an origin story of his parents meeting. I tried to get a bit of every era of his career, although I only took one track from the outtakes compilation Las Que No Iban a Salir (the title literally translates to "the ones that weren't going to be released," which I love). 

Bad Bunny performed "Perfumito Nuevo" with RaiNao on "Saturday Night Live" last year, and a few months later I saw RaiNao in person when I worked at the Hispanic Heritage Awards. She played a saxophone solo at the end of the song she sang there, and was one of the most absurdly hot people I've ever seen, she's an example of one of the newer Puerto Rican artists that he's given a boost in visibility to. He also featured the L.A. indie pop band The Marias on his biggest album a couple years before they had their big pop crossover with "No One Noticed." I like the little experiments with guitar-driven alt-rock songs on Bad Bunny's albums like "Tenemos Que Hablar," I tried to really highlight the sonic variety of his music with this playlist. 

4:23 PM

My Top 50 Albums of 1969

Tuesday, February 03, 2026

 





Here's the Spotify playlist with one track from (almost) every album:

1. Neil Young with Crazy Horse – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
2. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
3. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy And The Poor Boys
4. James Brown – Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud
5. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
6. Sly & The Family Stone – Stand!
7. The Beatles - Abbey Road
8. Joni Mitchell – Clouds
9. The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
10. King Crimson – In The Court Of The Crimson King
11. The Stooges – The Stooges
12. Miles Davis – In A Silent Way
13. Crosby, Stills & Nash – Crosby, Stills & Nash
14. The Meters – The Meters
15. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River
16. The Kinks – Arthur (Or The Decline And Fall of the British Empire)
17. The Who – Tommy
18. Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul
19. Dusty Springfield – Dusty In Memphis
20. Gun – Gun
21. Frank Zappa – Hot Rats
22. Grateful Dead – Live/Dead
23. MC5 – Kick Out The Jams (Live)
24. Taste – Taste
25. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II
27. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country
26. Herbie Hancock – The Prisoner
28. Laura Nyro – New York Tendaberry
29. Townes Van Zandt – Townes Van Zandt
30. Merle Haggard and The Strangers – Okie From Muskogee
31. Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left
32. The Band – The Band
33. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
34. The Isley Brothers – It’s Our Thing
35. Joe Cocker – With A Little Help From My Friends
36. Tim Buckley – Happy Sad
37. Os Mutantes - Mutantes
38. Shocking Blue – At Home
39. Jimmy Cliff – Jimmy Cliff
40. The Beach Boys – 20/20
41. Grateful Dead – Aoxomoxoa
42. The Doors - The Soft Parade
43. Great Speckled Bird – Great Speckled Bird
44. Stevie Wonder - My Cherie Amour
45. The Allman Brothers Band - The Allman Brothers Band
46. Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies – The American Metaphysical Circus
47. Strawbs – Strawbs 
48. The Tony Williams Lifetime - Emergency! 
49. Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline
50. The Shaggs – Philosophy of the World

Last year I completed my round of lists for every year of the 1970s, and I thought about starting to tackle the 1960s more quickly, but '69 is just an incredibly packed year so I had fun taking my time going through a ton of music and finding some more obscure gems (the London proto metal trio Gun, the Irish blues rock band Taste, Canadian country rock band Great Speckled Bird, etc.). But of course it was also the year of the Woodstock and the end of an era, the last year that all of the big four British Invasion bands released albums. The further back in time I go with these lists, the more common it was for artists to release multiple albums in a single year. So increasingly a lot of my listening time goes into figuring out which of an act's albums from that year should represent them in a list, or if they deserve multiple spots, which I'm kind of loathe to do because it takes a spot away from another artist. Sometimes it's necessary, though, and this is a rare time when I had to include three albums from one artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival's incredible trio of 1969 albums. And I know rock is going to crowd out jazz in the late '60s lists but as I go toward the beginning of the decade there's going to be more and more jazz representation here. Still haven't made up my mind about doing yearly lists for the 1950s as well, but it's a more and more attractive idea to me. 

4:22 PM

Monthly Report: January 2026 Albums

Monday, February 02, 2026

























1. Zach Bryan - With Heaven On Top
Zach Bryan took a break from cranking out an album a year in 2025, sort of -- he released a bunch of non-album singles last year, announcing With Heaven On Top as an EP and then upgrading it to a typically bloated 78-minute album at the top of 2026. This guy is really good at what he does, and he keeps marking these unlikely career milestones -- a multiplatinum album, a #1 single, record-breaking concert attendance -- without changing much about the earthy, intimate music he's been making since he was a cult indie artist. Little controversies and feuds keep piling up that make me wonder if he could crash and burn at one point, but he's still here for now, simply shrugging at "all of this fame and other corny shit" on "Appetite." Bryan teasing a song on Instagram in October that was critical of ICE prompted a whole news cycle with several responses from government officials, but now that "Bad News" is actually out it feels a lot less pointed Bryan collaborator and influence Bruce Springsteen's recent protest song "Streets of Minneapolis." Bryan released an acoustic of With Heaven On Top three days after the proper album to preempt complaints that it's "overproduced," but it's got the same unvarnished grit as all his other stuff, and I like the addition of horns and strings on some songs. Here's the 2026 albums Spotify playlist that I fill with new releases that I listen to throughout the year. 

2. Nomad War Machine & Susan Alcorn - Contra Madre
Baltimore pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn passed away almost exactly one year ago -- the anniversary was on Saturday, and a day before that, her collaboration with the Philadelphia metal duo Nomad War Machine was released. When I interviewed Susan in 2023, we talked about several projects she'd recorded that hadn't been released yet, and this was the one that took the longest to finally see the light of day, and I was so excited to hear from my old City Paper mentor Lee Gardner a few months ago that his label VG+ Records would be releasing Contra Madre. It's a blast to hear Alcorn play in such a different context, "Face of Unknown Stars" is probably my favorite track but "Those Who Do Not Dance" and "Boing Vortex" are the ones where they really get wild and loud and show the full potential of this collaboration. 

3. Peaer - Doppelganger 
The Brooklyn-based band Peaer has been described as both slowcore and math rock, which sound almost like contradictory categories given that a lot of math rock is pretty intense and uptempo. But I've found that I really like the way that Peaer negotiates these tricky, unpredictable time signatures and meter changes at slower, more deliberate tempos on their 4th album, it allows me to savor the ingenuity of their arrangements. I particularly like the mid-album stretch of "No More Today" and "Rose in My Teeth." 

4. Courtney Marie Andrews - Valentine
Arizona-born singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews started her career as an auxiliary keyboardist/backing vocalist for Jimmy Eat World circa 2010, and has since carved out a pretty successful niche as a solo artist, even getting a Grammy nomination in the Americana category in 2020. Valentine is her 9th album, but the first one I've heard, and I like it a lot, great distinctive guitar tones and vocal melodies on the side 2 highlights "Only the Best for Baby" and "Best Friend." 

5. Roc Marciano - 656
Hip hop careers are so often built on being around the right people at the right time, so I'm especially impressed by people who left a crew before their peak and created remarkable catalogs as free agents -- like Curren$y, who left Young Money before it became a star factory, and Roc Marciano, who left Flipmode Squad before they even released an album. Roc Marciano is a huge influence on the current wave of guys writing crime raps over drumless loops that define "underground rap" in the 2020s (mind you these guys are all pretty famous, underground just means they're not on the radio). But I think he still does it better than most of his disciples, his internal rhyme schemes are so tightly constructed and his punchlines can be so surprising and funny, and "Tracey Morgan Vomit" is my favorite kind of beat in that style, there's so many different textures but you still get a sense of a lot of empty space for the vocal to fill. 

6. Ari Lennox - Vacancy
It really seemed like Ari Lennox's career was going in the right direction when she released 2022's Age/Sex/Location, her second album with J. Cole's Interscope-distributed Dreamville label. But then she had a very public falling out with the label, and parted ways and released her third album directly through Interscope. And this is a good, confident album full of unapologetically horny slow jams like "Pretzel" and "Deep Strokes." She's gotten a lot of criticism for the kind of thirsty, catchphrase-driven singles she's made like "Soft Girl Era," it probably would've been better to leave that off the album, but it sounds fine in the context of Vacancy. 

7. The Soft Pink Truth - Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever? 
Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt have created such a unique and ambitious catalog as Matmos that it's really impressive that Daniel has created a whole other very engrossing discography as The Soft Pink Truth that feels like its own little universe. Many of his albums zero in on a particular sound or genre -- dance or industrial or metal or punk -- while somehow all feeling like a connected tapestry of Daniel's various interests and convictions, and the classical instrumentation of Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever? feels like a new frontier of conventional beauty in The Soft Pink Truth's catalog, with all these tickling, surprising textures embedded in the lush arrangements. And like many recent Soft Pink Truth records, it features piano by my friend and occasional Western Blot collaborator Koye Berry, big ups. 

8. Galecstasy & Mike Watt Trio - Wattzotica
Mike Watt is such an inspiration, it means a lot to me that he's still making records and finding new people to play with and new ways to challenge himself. And his latest record, a collaboration with the L.A. experimental duo Galecstasy, is probably the closest thing he's done to a straight-up jazz record, a way for him to work out some of the things he's gotten from the Coltrane records he often puts on the PA before shows. Galecstasy's Jared Marshall aka Primary Mystical Experience can really swing as a drummer and makes a good rhythm section sparring partner for Watt. 

9. various artists - Naive Melodies
Talking Heads were a great band in part because they were attuned to so much music outside of what contemporary rock bands were doing, and they molded those influences into a unique sound that belonged only to them. And it feels like a couple of generations of artists have taken the wrong lessons from the Talking Heads catalog and have simply imitating their particular quirks, streamlining them into a new default contemporary rock band sound, which is mostly what I heard on the star-studded 2024 compilation Everyone's Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. The new tribute album Naive Melodies from British dance/hip hop label Barely Breaking Even, by contrast, feels more true to the spirit of Talking Heads because the artists are a lot less beholden to singing like Byrne or recreating Frantz and Weymouth's fidgety grooves. Astronne covers "Psycho Killer" without that iconic massline, EBBA rearranges "Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town" in a 7/8 rhythm, Pachyman does a dub reggae version of "Sugar On My Tongue," Theo Croker and Theophilus London do a jazz rap deconstruction of "Born Under Punches," and Bilal's version of "Seen And Not Seen" is a little quieter than the original, but it's not exactly R&B either. I already know the originals are great and can listen to them anytime I want, but it's fun to hear them in a new way and notice lyrics I never noticed before. 

10. Lucinda Williams - World's Gone Wrong
Lucinda Williams has such an unusual yowl of a voice that it's taken a long time to grow on me, but I've begun to appreciate that she write songs that suit it. And she sounds justifiably righteous and pissed off about current events on World's Gone Wrong. I was also pretty excited to see that Brittney Spencer, the Baltimore-born country singer I interviewed two years ago, guests on the two fired-up tracks that open the album, "The World's Gone Wrong" and "Something's Gotta Give." 

The Worst Album of the Month: SAULT - Chapter 1
I've enjoyed a decent amount of the British collective SAULT's voluminous output over the last few years, but I've been skeptical enough of their whole mysterious image and unorthodox career path that I was very amused last year when SAULT contributor Little Simz sued her mentor and SAULT mastermind Inflo over an unpaid debt (apparently a loan to fund SAULT's heavily hyped debut concert) and dropped a great album, Lotus, that repeatedly called out an unnamed "thief." Given that Simz is a rapper and Inflo is not, I didn't really expect this conflict to turn into a back-and-forth of diss tracks or anything, and since nobody's naming names on these songs that isn't necessarily what's happening here. But I put on Chapter 1 not really expecting anything that sounded like a respond, and the title track's refrain of "you're just a loser and hate that I'm a winner" just sounds like an incredibly childish and laughable thing to put out at this moment in time, and there's not much on this album of the caliber that attracted SAULT's diehard following anyway. 

3:24 PM

Friday, January 30, 2026

 





My Deep Cut Friday column for Spin is about "Paint A Vulgar Picture" by The Smiths this week. 

12:02 PM

Movie Diary

Thursday, January 29, 2026

 







a) The Rip
This is pretty cleverly plotted, a good use of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's natural chemistry, and Sasha Calle is really a star, I hope she gets more good roles in non-superhero movies. Smokin' Aces director Joe Carnahan's whole visual style is really dated and suffocatingly gloomy, though, I hate this movie's color palette so much. As far as recent crime movies starring Ocean's Eleven guys, I thought The Instigators and Wolfs were a lot more enjoyable. 

b) F1
On paper, I think it's good for there to be the occasional Best Picture nominee that's a just a big loud crowd-pleasing movie with some charismatic stars and impressive setpieces with cool cars or planes (at least in the ten Best Picture noms era). In practice, though...F1 probably has a little more merit than Top Gun: Maverick as a contender, I rolled my eyes at it a lot less and was actually engaged in the plot, Damson Idris and Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem did a lot to make it feel like a little more than an empty Brad Pitt-and-fast cars spectacle. But a fast car movie should probably be better than this to get that kind of awards recognition. 

I can't think of many movies that have had worse word-of-mouth than Materialists in recent memory, and on one level I get it. There are probably a lot of people who went into the story of a love triangle with three glamorous movie stars hoping for a romcom, and probably some cinephiles who enjoyed Past Lives and found this almost overly academic and conceptual as an essay on contemporary dating and how people weigh income and height and all these superficial concerns against their actual emotions. I liked it, though, I thought it was pretty thoughtful and well done, aside from the supporting role from terrible person/terrible actress/podcaster Dasha Nekrasova. A lot of the criticisms I saw were from the kind of people that this movie is about who didn't seem to appreciate what it was saying about them. Definitely could be Chris Evans's best performance, if we're looking at MCU people who haven't always thrived in non-Marvel movies. 

d) Caught Stealing
The idea of Darren Aronofsky making a crime caper comedy is very intriguing, and it's probably for the best that he didn't write the screenplay for Caught Stealing. I wouldn't say there's a total lack of humor or levity in his other movies -- there's some playful, darkly funny cruelty in what he puts his protagonists through in stuff like Black Swan or Pi. But a lighter tone doesn't come naturally to him, and at a point it feels like Caught Stealing would've been a better movie if he just doubled down on how traumatic the events of the movie are to Austin Butler's character, all the colorful jaunty casual violence and punk rock needle drops felt a little inorganic, I just kind of walked away from the movie never laughing or feeling much of anything about it. 

e) Mickey 17
My wife read and enjoyed the novel Mickey7 but was apprehensive about watching Bong Joon Ho's adaptation because of what she'd heard about it. Finally, one night we decided to put it on, and she really hated the changes made to the story and found them all unnecessary. We also both really hated Robert Pattinson's weird Tobey Maguire voice, I really think Pattinson has this ambition to be a chameleonic adventurous actor who plays a wide range of roles but he should play British characters more often, most of his American accents are catastrophically bad and distracting. That being said, I liked Mickey 17 a lot, thinking about it as Joon-ho's follow-up to Parasite is pretty unflattering but I enjoyed it as a weird spectacle with great visual effects like Okja and Naomi Ackie is great in it. 

f) The Strangers: Chapter 1
Renny Harlin has made some bangers like The Long Kiss Goodnight but he's mostly an undistinguished journeyman who's taken all sorts of jobs, and a lot of his horror stuff has been just babysitting a franchise (the fourth Nightmare on Elm Street movie, an Exorcist prequel). The Strangers was a pretty good, pretty distinctive 2008 horror hit, but it wasn't so wildly popular that I really understand why someone decided to greenlight a Strangers trilogy directed by Renny Harlin 16 years after the original. Madelaine Petsch is adorable but she should stick to lighter stuff, she wasn't really up to the scream queen task here and that probably hurt the movie more than Harlin just blandly emulating the original. 

g) Call Me By Your Name
It's kind of funny to see Call Me By Your Name now, almost a decade later, while Timothee Chalamet has gone on to several more Oscar-nominated performances while Armie Hammer has become a disgraced laughing stock. They're both really good in this, though, the praise is deserved. As a straight guy I found it to be one of the more moving gay love stories I've ever seen in a film, but also predictably found myself infatuated with Esther Garrel. Luca Guadagigno is kind of a funny director sometimes -- the 6 seconds of the movie that were un infra red heat vision, though, what the fuck was that? -- but it still pretty great. Michael Stuhlbarg is also great even if I thought his speech at the end was, I don't know, gilding the lily a little. 

h) Depeche Mode: M
Depeche Mode on record, or even in music videos, have such a cool brooding mystique, and I feel like the totally different vibe of their live shows can demystify them a lot. It makes me like them more as people to watch Dave Gahan as an old man in a vest yelling "ARE YOU READY?" and "TAKE IT, BOYS!" over their hits, but I don't particularly think the songs sound as good live or take me back to how much I enjoy the records. I think I'd have a great time at a Depeche Mode concert, just didn't really dig them in the concert film format. I should watch 101 at some point, though, I've never seen that.

i) The New Yorker at 100
A decent little doc, I enjoyed seeing some big name writers and artists on film talking about their craft, but I dunno, felt a little bland and surface level for something celebrating a century of a cultural institution. 

j) Misery
Misery was such a huge pop culture phenomenon in the '90s and I've seen so many bits and pieces of it on TV, but I'd never actually watched it from front to back, and it was probably the most significant Rob Reiner movie I hadn't seen, so I put it on this week. What a ride, Kathy Bates really earned that Oscar. But what I enjoyed the most were the little things I didn't expect like the great scenes of Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen as the sheriff and his wife/deputy. 

12:01 PM

Friday, January 23, 2026

 




David Bowie's Station To Station is 50 today and I wrote about "Word on a Wing" for Spin's Deep Cut Friday column. I also wrote a piece about artists who's appeared on the National Independent Venue Association's Live List over the years. 

11:26 AM