Monthly Report: July 2026 Albums

Monday, August 10, 2026























1. Nia Archives - Emotional Junglist
Jungle/drum'n'bass was my favorite style of electronic music back in that initial American mainstream embrace of electronic music in the late '90s and early 2000s. And while I dug albums by Plug and Squarepusher and Roni Size, it really excited me to see artists from other genres incorporate those jagged, jittery d'n'b rhythms into vocal-driven songs, the things that Bjork and Nine Inch Nails and Soul Coughing and the Roots and Outkast and David Bowie did with jungle beats was so cool to me. And incorporating drum'n'bass production into melodic songwriting has had a nice resurgence in recent years with British women like PinkPantheress and Kenya Grace and Nia Archives, whose aptly titled new album Emotional Junglist goes all in on introspective songs over slamming jungle breaks. "There Goes Ma Head" and "Get Me Down" are so good and so exactly what I hoped for when I saw the album's title. Here's my 2026 albums Spotify playlist that I'm constantly updating with new releases. 

2. Charli XCX - Music, Fashion, Film 
The cover of Music, Fashion, Film flexes Charli XCX's taste and clout with a cover photo featuring three legendary old white dudes from each of the three titular mediums: John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese (David Cronenberg is also the album's only feature, with a spoken cameo on the closing track). If that seems vaguely self-important, though, the lyric that the album title is taken from, on the single "SS26," instead evokes a fragile feeling a lot of us get these days, looking at bleak headlines about world politics or climate change when you've devoted a lot of your life to art and creativity, and the things that usually matter to you about can feel so useless and trivial: "We're walking on a runway that goes straight to hell/ Nothing's gonna save us, not music, fashion, or film." So far I like Music, Fashion, Film's four advance singles more than any other songs (although "Persona" is growing on me). But I like those four songs more than the whole of Charli's celebrated 2024 album Brat, which I liked but maybe never quite loved. As I suspected, the lead single "Rock Music" wasn't really a sincere indication of the musical direction of the album, but I like the way she incorporated more guitars into the glitchy hyperpop aesthetic, and her husband, a member of a chart-topping rock band, didn't even have anything to do with the album. 

3. Parts & Labor - Set of All Sets
The New York trio Parts & Labor had a killer run of records from 2006 to 2011, making massively loud, catchy noise rock anthems on three albums with Christopher Weingarten on drums and then two with Joe Wong on drums. Each member of the band has done lots of cool stuff outside the band, particularly those drummers -- Wong scored TV shows and interviewed drummers on his podcast The Trap Set, and Weingarten is a prolific and accomplished music critic that I can call a friend and peer (he's also one of my most argumentative peers, but a genuinely sweet and talented guy). So I was pretty elated by the news this year that Parts & Labor was coming back this year, this time as a quartet with Weingarten and Wong bringing double drummer chaos for the first time. The 79-minute Set of All Sets is appropriately by far the band's longest album, and very maximalist at times, but they use that larger canvas in part to alternate more peaks and valleys, patiently building up to the big crescendos to great effect. On early listens my favorite tracks are "Haunted Limbs" and "Better Run."

4. Brian Ennals & Blockhead - Boatshoes
I don't mind being ahead of the curve, I was telling people that Brian Ennals was dope 16 or 17 years ago, and a growing number of people all over the place know how good he is now. After breaking through on his albums with Infinity Knives, Ennals is now branching out and working with other people, including NY indie rap veteran Blockhead on Boatshoes. And his dark sense of humor just gets sharper with every release, the way he can rap about addiction and parenthood and far left politics while throwing in clever internal rhymes and pop culture punchlines is really compelling. Blockhead's a good foil for him, too, I particularly like the jazz sample stuff like "Bareback." 

5. Future - The Real Me
Future has the kind of longevity that's both an asset and a liability in rap. It's incredible how long he's been operating near his peak musically, really most of his 16-year career. But with that kind of Rolling Stones-like consistency, people might think they've already heard everything there is to hear from Future, which is fair to some extent, because he never reinvents himself, but his ability to keep writing great Future songs is impressive. There are some fun experiments on The Real Me like "Hollywood" and Alice" but they're closer to novelties than innovations -- appropriately, if you map his career over the Stones', he's roughly in the year of "Emotional Rescue," not "Miss You." The Real Me is solid, though, some of my favorites so far are "Trench Coat," the Glen Campbell string loop on "Weight Up," and Future bringing back the hilarious flow from 2018's "King's Dead" on "2018."

6. The Rolling Stones - Foreign Tongues
Speaking of the Stones! I like this one a little more than Hackney Diamonds, "In the Stars" is easily the best Stones single in decades and "Never Wanna Lose You" is even better, and those are the kind of modest milestones that can feel like miracles when a band's been going for 6 years straight. I think Andrew Watt does a better job of recording the band than Mick's vocals, though, he could stand to improve on that front. 

7. Madonna - Confessions II
Madonna is someone else whose only competition at this point is her own back catalog. I always cast a suspicious eye at artists making a sequel to one of their more beloved albums, but I guess she had to give you part 2 of her Confessions, and in a way this album feels much more personal and autobiographical than the original Confessions on a Dancefloor, all the songs that touch on her club kid past and articulate how she views her career and dance music itself. I wish "Danceteria" didn't sound like the "American Idol" theme song, though, that's the song everybody likes that I don't think really works, I prefer "Bizarre" and "My Sins Are My Savior." It's hilarious that Madonna does so much speak-singing on this album and finally dropped the British accent to the point that people don't recognize her speaking voice anymore, but she still kind of sings Britishly. 

8. Ariana Grande - Petal
The Ariana Grande discourse is very intense these days, people seem to be in agreement that she's startlingly thin, and while some are more firmly stating that she's in grave danger, she talks past them with lyrics about people who "hate to see women endure" and giving statements about making decisions "from a thoughtful and empowered place." It reminds me a little of the strangest and most contentious chapters of Michael Jackson's or Britney Spears' careers. And I'd like to say that someday we'll look back on this time when we have more answers and agree about what was going on, but we're all still arguing about Michael and Britney too. So you can't really talk about Petal as just music, there's a lot going on in and around it, but I do like it from a musical standpoint. The talk of it being an "experimental" album is a little exaggerated, it's very much an Ariana Grande album in this very specific vocal and aesthetic space she's cultivated over the years. But I do like the modest outliers, "Oh Well" could be one of those jungle/garage-y PinkPantheress tracks, and "Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)" is the closest she's come to an Olivia Rodrigo-style pop/rock banger. 

9. Willow - The Thread
Willow Smith produced and played almost everything on the album she released in February, Petal Black Rock, which really impressed me. The Thread is a bit more like her other recent albums, with Chris Greatti co-producing and playing a lot of the instruments. But I still think she's really just growing musically in some remarkable ways, making these twitchy, intricate jazz fusion songs like "Tall Baby," which is in the time signature I am famously obsessed with, 5/4. The Thread's songs are also a bit more fleshed out and expansive, it has two fewer tracks than Petal Black Rock but is ten minutes longer. 

10. Allison Russell - In the Hour of Chaos
A couple months ago in this space, I raved about Jobi Riccio's album and the experience of working on a John Prine tribute concert that she was part of, and in July two more performers from that event released records I really enjoyed, Allison Russell's third album and Margo Price's protest music mixtape Days of Unrest. I'd seen Russell live before, opening for Hozier, but my memory of the Prine tribute is that she radiated this positive energy, even when she wasn't performing, I didn't meet her but she just seemed. She performed the then-unreleased song "Really Real" with I'm With Her singing backup, but on In the Hour of Chaos the other vocalist is Norah Jones (I'm With Her's Sara Watkins is on another track, "Chaos Theory"). In fact all but one song on the album has a guest vocalist, I guess it's a collaboration project, but they're original songs that Russell wrote with the same people she wrote her other albums with. I also really like "Black Lavender" with Baltimore's own Brittany Spencer, who I interviewed once. 

The Worst Album of the Month: The Strokes - Reality Awaits
The Strokes made two great albums with a particular sound, and it was certainly a derivative sound with influences that were easy to spot. But in the ways that matter, it was their sound, they owned it and knew what to do with it. There's nothing wrong with a perfecting an aesthetic and then moving on, but it's good to know where you're going next, but it was clear from their 3rd album's lead single "Juicebox" that were just taking that leap without knowing where they'd land, and they're still flailing and falling 20 years later. Julian Casablancas's affection for AutoTune has attracted the most criticism on Reality Awaits, but the other four guys deserve plenty of the blame for these inert first draft arrangements and lifeless performances that no longer the sound like the work of alluringly aloof cool kids. "Going to Babble On" and "Going Shopping" are decent but wouldn't be highlights on a good record. I think people have overcorrected a little on dismissing Rick Rubin's work as a producer because he's absolutely helped some artists make their best albums when he clicks with them, but he doesn't have that chemistry with the Strokes. 

4:00 AM

Friday, August 07, 2026

 




This week on Spin, I ranked every movie directed by John Hughes, and wrote about "Magnolia" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for my Deep Cut Friday column. 

8:54 AM

Movie Diary

Thursday, August 06, 2026

 








a) They Fight
They Fight, which is now on Hulu, is based on a 2018 documentary of the same name, and stars Andre Holland as a boxer who gets out of prison and starts coaching kids at a rec center in Washington, D.C. Director Sheldon Candis filmed it in his hometown, Baltimore (it also co-stars two "The Wire" alums, Wendell Pierce and Andre Royo). And I kind of wish the story didn't take place in D.C., because Candis really captures the streets of Baltimore on film so well, along with Holland's expressive face and understated performance -- people who haven't spent time in either city won't know the difference, but the exteriors are very Baltimore. I'm so used to sports dramas, even ones based on true stories, loading up on the genre's familiar beats and cliches that I found it refreshing that They Fight just told its story empathetically without an excess of Hollywood tropes. 

b) Obsession
I was a little more impressed by this year's other surprise horror phenomenon, Backrooms, but I liked Obsession too. I love that Andy Richter is the only previously known actor in a massive box office hit (in the same year Conan was in an Oscar-nominated film!), although he really has a thankless role, no real comic relief or dramatic heavy lifting, just a human plot mechanism. Inde Navarrette is amazing in this role, the movie would not work so well without a performance that committed, and she deserves every opportunity that's coming to her right now. It's sad to see how many people misinterpreted the plot in misogynist ways, but I felt like the movie set things out pretty clearly and there are a handful of moments -- the screaming on the phone, the real Nikki speaking in bed, the film's only brief sex scene -- that were so disturbing that they've stuck with me more than any of the big violent setpieces. And the cash falling from the ceiling was such a cartoonish little flourish out of nowhere, I kinda loved it. 

On paper this looks pretty silly -- ballerinas who have to fight their way out of a seedy hotel in Budapest -- but I thought it was really entertaining, highly recommended to fans of stuff like Ready Or Not or The Hunt. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen a better action movie written by, directed by, and primarily starring women. Maddie Ziegler, whose film career has included famous flops like Music and The Book of Henry, really surprised me in this, she just seemed like a natural movie star. 

d) The Drama
I compared this to B.J. Novak's "The Premise" immediately after watching it. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are truly movie stars who have earned a lot of public goodwill, because I have no idea how such an outrageously misconceived, insultingly stupid movie made so much money and got fairly positive reviews, I never even heard the kind of negative buzz that I heard about The Materialists (which I actually liked). If you haven't seen The Drama and don't know what it's about, please watch it and tell me if I'm wrong, because I could not believe this bullshit. It kind of makes sense that a Norwegian guy wrote and directed this, I don't know if an American could make a movie this glib about this subject matter -- I'm not even going to call it insensitive, it just rings false on several levels. 

e) Mile End Kicks
I have to applaud and root for a fellow millennial music critic, Chandler Levack, for making the jump into directing films, and her second and third features have come out in the past year. One of them, Roommates, was made for Happy Madison from someone else's screenplay with a starring role for Adam Sandler's daughter, and nobody could make a good movie in those conditions, so I won't hold it against Levack. The much better Mile End Kicks, on the other hand, is her autobiographical 2010s indie rock movie, with Barbie Ferreira playing a Canadian rock writer who's working on a 33 1/3 book, dealing with cheapskate publications, and sleeping with gross scenester guys. Rodrick from the Wimpy Kid movies is in a band with an even worse name than Löded Diper, and Jay Baruchel has sex in a Hold Steady t-shirt. I felt plenty of secondhand embarrassment, but most or all of it was intended by the filmmakers, and the cast was very good, especially Ferreira and Juliette Gariepy.

I'm glad Charli XCX's excellent new album was well received, because an unfunny mockumentary is the kind of thing that can really slow down a recording artist's winning streak. Maybe nobody saw it, or everybody who saw it just kind of quietly agreed not to dwell on it. The least subtle stuff, like Alexander Skarsgard's character, probably could've been pushed further to produce some actual laughs, but it all just felt like a failure of Charli trying to transfer the dry self-deprecation of her lyrics to a different medium, the music industry is too ridiculous to satirize in a toothless way. 

g) Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World)
Questlove's latest documentary is another wonderful tribute to the Black music of his youth, this one a little more simply telling Earth, Wind & Fire's story rather than using it as a lens for exploring a wider theme like his Sly Stone movie (I kind of want him to do one on The Roots next, I can't think of any other musician who's actually qualified to direct the definitive doc of their own band, though others have tried). EWF founder Maurice White is the one guy who's not still here to help tell that story, and his bandmates and Questlove do a great job of capturing White's genius as well as his human flaws, it was a really loving portrait. I'm glad they interviewed Baltimore native and recording studio innovator George Massenburg, I'm fascinated with that guy, and one of the best moments of the movie was him describing playing back "Shining Star" for the first time: "So I turned it the fuck up." Philip Bailey telling the story of "Reasons" was hilarious, too. They took "September" out of the chronological flow of most of the film to make it the finale, and I have to say it totally worked, what a lovely story. 

h) The Dink
Jake Johnson plays a middle-aged former tennis prodigy who gets into pickleball in The Dink. It feels like an overly familiar addition to the overstuffed canon of sports comedies about aging athletes' redemption arcs -- in fact I counted at least two of the same supporting players from Will Ferrell's recent "The Hawk." Moderately enjoyable movie, though, Jake Johnson is just a very charming guy, and Patton Oswalt and producer Ben Stiller each waltz in and steal a couple scenes. 

i) Wicked: For Good
I really would like to see the musical live someday, it's about half as long as the two movies and I imagine it flows a lot better with just dialogue and songs, I could really just feel all these long bloated sequences of score and CGI visuals just dragging the whole thing out, even moreso in the second movie, which I had a much harder time paying attention to than the first one. 

j) Drop
Drop isn't nearly as fun or memorable as previous Christopher Landon flicks Happy Death Day 2 U and Freaky, but the second half picks up the pace once the tense cat-and-mouse setup has been exhausted and things really start happening. There a few action sequences that are just so cool and creatively shot, and I think Meghann Fahy is ready for whatever great role you could give her, she might be a little overqualified for stuff like this. This is one of those movies where a lot of important dialogue is happening via text message, and I liked that the words just flashed across the screen instead of the camera zooming in on a phone (but I didn't like the font, if I may nitpick). 

k) Goodbye June
Goodbye June is Kate Winslet's directorial debut, and she cast another great Australian actress of her generation that she'd somehow never worked with at any other point in the last 30 years, Toni Collette, as her sister. Either of them is reason enough for me to watch a movie, so I enjoyed finally seeing them onscreen together, especially as sisters whose dying mother is played by Helen Mirren. I like when skilled actors get into directing and make these kinds of small character-driven films, there's nothing particularly flashy or unique about Goodbye June but Winslet gets great performances out of an impressive cast just as you'd hope she would. 

l) The Faculty
My wife was nostalgic to watch this one night and I'd never seen it, as much as I'm a horror fan who was a teen in the '90s, I have kind of an aversion to that Kevin Williamson '90s teen horror boom (Scream, I Knew What You Did Last Summer, etc.). I'd unfairly dismissed this, though, I think it was pretty fun, one of Robert Rodriguez's better movies, some really good visual effects. Also, '90s Bebe Neuwirth...man. 

m) Tron
I realized that three Tron movies have been made in three different decades and I hadn't really watched any of them (but have listened to two of the soundtrack albums), so I decided to finally give them a shot. I love the visual texture of the 1982 original, there's still almost nothing that looks like it, including the sequels. 

4:00 AM

Friday, July 31, 2026

 




This week on Spin, I ranked Steely Dan's albums, and wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about "I Married a Martian" by Sparks. 

3:30 PM

Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Cassowary Records · western blot - hit em hard and soft

 




new western blot out today, the hit em hard and soft ep is on soundcloud

11:41 AM

My Top 100 Singles of 1967

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

 



Here's the Spotify playlist of all 100 songs:

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "Purple Haze"
2. Otis Redding - "Try A Little Tenderness"
3. Aretha Franklin - "Respect"
4. The Spencer Davis Group - "Gimme Some Lovin'"
5. The Doors - "Break On Through (To The Other Side)"
6. Lalo Schifrin – “Theme from ‘Mission: Impossible’”
7. The Who - "I Can See For Miles"
8. The Beatles - "Strawberry Fields Forever"
9. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
10. Jackie Wilson - "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher"
11. Buffalo Springfield - "For What It's Worth"
12. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "The Wind Cries Mary"
13. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - "I Second That Emotion"
14. The Rolling Stones - "Let's Spend The Night Together"
15. Aretha Franklin - "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"
16. The Kinks - "Waterloo Sunset"
17. James Brown - "Cold Sweat"
18. The Box Tops - "The Letter"
19. The Four Tops – “Standing in the Shadows of Love”
20. Jefferson Airplane - "Somebody To Love"
21. The Bee Gees – “To Love Somebody”
22. Van Morrison - "Brown Eyed Girl"
23. The Turtles - "Happy Together"
24. Louis Armstrong - "What A Wonderful World"
25. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "Burning of the Midnight Lamp"
26. Frank Sinatra & Nancy Sinatra - "Somethin' Stupid"
27. Johnny Cash & June Carter – “Jackson”
28. Sonny & Cher - "The Beat Goes On"
29. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – “If This World Were Mine”
30. Otis Redding & Carla Thomas – “Tramp”
31. The Beatles – “Hello Goodbye”
32. Tommy James and the Shondells - "I Think We're Alone Now"
33. Jefferson Airplane - "White Rabbit"
34. James Brown – “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)”
35. The Doors - "Light My Fire"
36. The Monkees – “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone”
37. Bobbie Gentry - "Ode To Billie Joe"
38. The Impressions – “We’re a Winner”
39. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "Manic Depression"
40. Procol Harum - "A Whiter Shade Of Pale"
41. Neil Diamond - "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon"
42. The Beatles - "I Am The Walrus"
43. The Bee Gees – “New York Mining Disaster 1941”
42. James Brown – “Bring It Up”
44. The Who - "Pictures Of Lily"
45. Aretha Franklin - "Chain Of Fools"
46. The Rolling Stones - "She's A Rainbow"
47. Arthur Conley - "Sweet Soul Music"
48. The Cannonball Adderley Quintet – “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy!”
49. Small Faces – “Tin Soldier”
50. The Monkees - "Daydream Believer"
51. Pink Floyd – “See Emily Play”
52. Glen Campbell – “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”
53. The Easybeats – “Friday On My Mind”
54. Frank Sinatra – “This Town”
55. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "Hey Joe"
56. Stevie Wonder - "Hey Love"
57. The Beatles – “All You Need is Love”
58. James Brown – “Get It Together”
59. Aretha Franklin – “Baby I Love You”
60. The Beach Boys – “Darlin’”
61. The Lovin’ Spoonful – “Darling Be Home Soon”
62. Otis Redding – “Shake”
63. The Four Tops – “7-Rooms of Gloom”
64. Sly & The Family Stone - "Dance To The Music"
65. The Association – “Never My Love”
66. Simon & Garfunkel - "At The Zoo"
67. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "Foxey Lady"
68. Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – “Your Precious Love”
69. The Beatles - "Penny Lane"
70. Nina Simone - “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
71. James Brown – “Let Yourself Go”
72. Dave Davies / The Kinks - "Death Of A Clown"
73. George Jones – “If My Heart Had Windows”
74. Small Faces – “Itchycoo Park”
75. Otis Redding – “Glory of Love”
76. Dolly Parton – “Dumb Blonde”
77. Bob Dylan - "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat"
78. The Four Tops – “Bernadette”
79. Aretha Franklin - "Do Right Woman - Do Right Man"
80. James Brown – “Kansas City”
81. The Beach Boys – “Heroes and Villains”
82. Stevie Wonder - "I Was Made To Love Her"
83. Tim Buckley – “Once I Was”
84. The Doors - "Love Me Two Times"
85. Otis Redding – “I Love You More Than Words Can Say”
86. The Rolling Stones - "Ruby Tuesday"
87. Buffalo Springfield – “Bluebird”
88. The Isley Brothers – “Got To Have You Back”
89. Harpers Bizarre – “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”
90. The Velvet Underground – “Sunday Morning”
92. Aretha Franklin - "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)"
93. Dionne Warwick - "I Say A Little Prayer"
94. Osborne Brothers – “Rocky Top”
95. The Box Tops – “Neon Rainbow”
96. Leonard Cohen – “Suzanne”
97. Al Green – “Back Up Train”
98. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band – “Electricity”
99. The Doors - "People Are Strange"
100. Cream - "Strange Brew" 

Obviously we're all well aware of the 'Summer of Love' narrative and all the cliches of '60s pop. And while I think 1968 overall had better albums than 1967, the hits of '67 are really insane. Motown and the British Invasion were still riding high, and you were also getting Stax and the L.A. and San Francisco scenes on the rise, Aretha Franklin and Jimi Hendrix went supernova, I mean, goddamn. 

Previously:
My Top 50 Albums of 1967
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles of 1968
My Top 50 Albums and Top 100 Singles 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

5:01 AM

My Top 50 Albums of 1967

Monday, July 27, 2026

 





Here's the Spotify playlist with one song from each album:

1. Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You
2. The Who - The Who Sell Out
3. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold As Love
4. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
5. The Kinks – Something Else By The Kinks
6. Pink Floyd – The Piper At The Gates of Dawn
7. The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
8. The Doors - The Doors
9. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced
10. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - United
11. Cream - Disraeli Gears
12. Love – Forever Changes
13. Pharoah Sanders – Tauhid
14. Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle
15. Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
16. The Rolling Stones - Between The Buttons
17. Nina Simone – Silk & Soul
18. Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding
19. The Turtles – Happy Together
20. Laura Nyro – More Than A New Discovery
21. The Four Tops – Reach Out
22. Merle Haggard - I'm A Lonesome Fugitive
23. Lalo Schifrin – Music from Mission: Impossible (Original Television Soundtrack)
24. The Beach Boys – Wild Honey
25. Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band - Safe As Milk
26. The Byrds – Younger Than Yesterday
27. Sonny Rollins – East Broadway Run Down
28. Nico – Chelsea Girl
29. Jake Holmes – “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes
30. Tim Buckley – Goodbye And Hello
31. Buddy Guy – Left My Blues In San Francisco
32. The 13th Floor Elevators – Easter Everywhere
33. James Brown and the Famous Flames – Cold Sweat
34. Grateful Dead – Grateful Dead
35. Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe
36. The Impressions – The Fabulous Impressions
37. John Coltrane – Expression
38. Aretha Franklin - Aretha Arrives
39. Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen
40. Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim – Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
41. The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request
42. Miles Davis – Miles Smiles
43. Thelonious Monk – Straight, No Chaser
44. Sun Ra and His Myth Science Arkestra – Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy
45. The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour
46. Waylon Jennings – Waylon Sings Ol’ Harlan
47. The Mothers of Invention – Absolutely Free
48. Dolly Parton – Hello, I’m Dolly
49. The Cannonball Adderley Quintet – Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Live at “The Club”
50. George Jones – Walk Through This World With Me

I will note, as I go into an era full of albums by UK-based bands that were often released in America with completely different tracklists, usually adding non-album singles, that I am defaulting to the canonical UK versions. That will actively hurt some albums' standings here, and Are You Experienced, Between the Buttons, and Magical Mystery Tour in particular would all be ranked higher if I'd gone with the American versions. But the Jimi Hendrix Experience in '67 may be the only time I've put two albums by the same artist in my top 10 for a year, I really had to put both of them in there. 

5:00 AM

Saturday, July 25, 2026

 



Episode 3 of Total Ship Show is out now! 

6:16 PM

Friday, July 24, 2026

 




Sunday marks the third anniversary of Sinead O'Connor's death, and my Deep Cut Friday column for Spin this week is about "Black Boys on Mopeds." 

12:27 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 411: L7

Thursday, July 23, 2026


























L7 bassist Jennifer Finch died of brain cancer on Saturday at the age of 59, so I thought I'd take a look back at the band's catalog. 

L7 deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Cat-O'-Nine-Tails
2. It's Not You
3. Cool Out
4. Uncle Bob
5. Deathwish
6. Till The Wheels Fall Off
7. Broomstick
8. (Right On) Thru
9. One More Thing
10. Shitlist
11. Diet Pill
12. Scrap
13. Baggage
14. Stuck Here Again
15. The Bomb
16. Shirley
17. The Beauty Process
18. Non-Existant Patricia
19. Moonshine
20. Livin' Large
21. Freezer Burn
22. Garbage Truck
23. Proto Prototype

Tracks 1, 2, 3, and 4 from L7 (1988)
Tracks 5, 6, 7, and 8 from Smell the Magic (1990)
Tracks 9, 10, 11, and 12 from Bricks Are Heavy (1992)
Tracks 13, 14, 15, and 16 from Hungry For Stink (1994)
Tracks 17, 18, and 19 from The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum (1997)
Tracks 20 and 21 from Slap-Happy (1999)
Tracks 22 and 23 from Scatter the Rats (2019)

L7's debut album had Roy Koutsky on drums, but Demetra Plakas soon became the drummer of the band's best-known lineup, and L7 were probably the most commercially successful all-female rock band of the 1990s (I specify rock band because obviously the Dixie Chicks sold a lot more records). Granted, they weren't as big as the Go-Go's or the Bangles were in the '80s, or a number of female-fronted bands that had at least one male member in the '90s. But they were a bit more visible at a mainstream level than Sleater-Kinney or Bikini Kill, all over radio and MTV with "Pretend We're Dead" and on the main stage of Lollapalooza in 1994. 

L7 were from L.A. but seemed to fit right in with the Seattle boys' club of grunge, even their first album on Epitaph sounded like it should've been on Sub Pop, which is where they went for their second album. Just a great scuzzy sound, the guitar pedal choices sometimes more memorable than the melodies, lots of sarcastic expressions of genuine convictions in a way that often reminds me of Mudhoney. L7 toured with Nirvana, Finch dated Dave Grohl at one point, and Bricks Are Heavy was pretty much the first high profile Butch Vig production to come out after Nevermind. 

In 1994, Greenpeace released Alternative NRG, an all-star compilation of live tracks recorded with a solar-powered mobile studio, my favorite tracks on that were always the uptempo version of R.E.M.'s "Drive" and L7's "Shitlist." Obviously "Shitlist" was never released as a radio single, but I was unsurprised to learn that it's a widely acknowledged L7 classic, their most performed song and 2nd most streamed song after "Pretend We're Dead." I don't think a ton of people say "shitlist" but it's definitely in my vernacular because of the song, did people use that term before the song? Absolute banger either way. Lionel Richie is credited with the count off at the beginning of "Moonshine," I'm sure there's an interesting story there. 

Guitarists Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner each wrote lyrics and sang about half the time on L7's records, with their more popular songs like "Pretend" and "Shitlist" featuring Sparks's more deadpan singsong delivery. But Finch wrote and sang a handful of really good L7 songs, including "(Right On) Thru," "One More Thing," "The Bomb," "Shirley," and "Garbage Truck." Finch left the band in 1996 and they made a couple of albums without her, one of the other bassists who played in L7 was Belly's Gail Greenwood, who plays on "Freezer Burn." Finch returned to L7 for their 2010s reunion and played on Scatter the Rats, and was going to be part of the current farewell tour before her cancer diagnosis. She announced a GoFundMe days before she passed away, probably still worth donating that to help her loved ones. 

12:26 PM

TV Diary

Tuesday, July 21, 2026





























a) "Lucky"
"Lucky" stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a woman named Luciana who goes by Lucky, who catches some very bad breaks and some good ones after pulling off a heist in Vegas. It's based on novel. Does nobody have any shame about cutesy name stuff like that? Anyway, it's pretty good. It's not as consistently enjoyable as Jonathan Tropper's other current Apple TV series that has you rooting for a thief, "Your Friends & Neighbors," and I don't like the Fiona Apple theme song as much as the one she did for "The Affair," but the first two episodes are reasonably gripping. 

b) "The Hawk"
"The Hawk" stars Will Ferrell as a typical Will Ferrell character, a delusionally confident athlete (in this case a pro golfer). Playing that kind of character for 10 episodes instead of a movie or a sketch, though, I don't know, it feels harder to stretch a deliberately one-dimensional character like that over so much more screentime without getting repetitive (this is also why I never loved Danny McBride's wannabe Ferrell schtick in "Eastbound and Down"). "The Hawk" has some occasional good moments that kept me watching, though, and a nice supporting cast including Jimmy Tatro, Chris Parnell, and Patty Guggenheim, who was so funny on "She-Hulk." Luke Wilson is in this too, but that mostly just reminds me that Owen Wilson's recent golf show "Stick" is better than this. 

c) "Ride Or Die" 
Amazon Prime seems to gravitate towards certain genres way more than other streamers, and their focus on YA has worked out well for them, but I don't know if they've gotten any kind of return on their investment in shows and movies about sexy spies. But Hannah Waddingham is the spy who fucks in "Ride Or Die" and what can I say, they have my attention. It's light and silly, but her friendship with Octavia Spencer drives the show and it's charming. 

d) "The Westies"
If J.K. Simmons is the lead of your show, I'm definitely going to watch it, but I'm disappointed with "The Westies" so far, it made me annoyed all over again that the much better "Counterpart" was canceled after only two seasons. "The Westies" is based on real '80s Irish-American mobsters, but it feels like they tried as hard as possible to copy The Departed, including a Dropkick Murphys theme song and a cop-playing-both-sides character. I'm still trying to give it a chance for Simmons and the dreamy Sarah Bolger and her Irish accent, but the first episode ended with a scene that felt pretty contrived, and then the final line of the scene was so corny I gave my TV a middle finger. And the two episodes since then have only slightly redeemed it. 

"The Five-Star Weekend" stars Jennifer Garner as a famous food blogger taking her friends on a Nantucket getaway while mourning her husband. Jennifer Garner being friends with Chloe Sevigny is just weird casting, I don't buy it for a second, but this is a decent little soapy show with a great cast including Regina Hall, D'Arcy Carden, and Timothy Olyphant. The main plotline they're really focusing on with Garner and Gemma Chan is not interesting to me at all, but there's lots of good little character moments with the whole ensemble, it's well written. 

Since we signed up for BritBox for "The Other Bennet Sister," I've been checking out other shows and really enjoy this one that came out a few months ago. Not quite as good as the other show about a British all-female band, "We Are Lady Parts," but charming with a very good cast. 

g) "Vanished"  
"The Flight Attendant" was a great project to transition Kaley Cuoco out of sitcoms while still utilizing her comedy chops in a thriller context. "Vanished" has a similar premise, with Cuoco as an American woman abroad suddenly getting pulled into a tense, deadly conspiracy, but it's closer to a straight up drama and, while occasionally exciting, not really very interesting. 

h) "Elle"
The full title used in some of the advertising is "Elle: From the World of Legally Blonde," which is just awful, even worse than "The Continental: From the World of John Wick." In the Jaafar Jackson era of casting, I guess it's nice that Reese Witherspoon's daughter who looks like her didn't get this role, the actress they did get, Lexi Minetree, is pretty good. But it's pretty corny, it's all about Elle Woods going to high school in Seattle in the '90s, so she's a fish-out-of-water in a public school full of grunge kids instead of a fish-out-of-water at Harvard Law School, all the humor is so lazy and on-the-nose. 

i) "Little House on the Prairie"
Another reboot I don't think anybody needed, but it's okay, I guess. I just have so many memories of the old series being on TV constantly in the '80s and '90s and it feeling like the very essence of channel surfing boredom. 

j) "Silo"
The end of the second season of "Silo" sort of pulled me back into the show. The entire series up to that point had taken place underground in an undetermined point at least 150 years in the future, and suddenly they flashed back to present day Washington, D.C. to start to fill in the backstory of what happened. I think that was the exact right time to do it at the midway point of a show that's going to end after the fourth season, and it added Jessica Henwick and Jessica Brown Findlay to the cast, which is also a plus. I had started to tune out a bit but now I'm reinvested in the show. 

k) "Trying"
With "Trying" in its fifth season it feels like they've kind of gone through the entire story arc they probably had in mind when creating the show and are now just in a comfortable groove and idly introducing different subplots to keep it going, which I don't mind because it's a sweet little show with a likeable cast. I also like that each season of "Trying" has a different soundtrack artist that writes a new song for every episode, more shows should do something like that, and it was a pleasant surprise to hear Orla Gartland's voice and realize she did the soundtrack for season 5. 

l) "Survival of the Thickest"
Still a pretty good show in its third and final season, I don't know if it found an audience of people who loved, say, "Insecure," but I feel like it should. 

m) "Sparks of Tomorrow" 
This anime on Netflix has an interesting sort of alternate history steampunk vibe, it takes place in an early 20th century Japan where electricity hasn't been discovered/'invented'(?) yet. 

This takes place in France in 1936 but feels like one of those modern murder mysteries involving upper class people at a hotel or resort that are so trendy now. Pretty good, one of the better Netflix imports I've seen lately. 

A Korean psychological drama about a literature professor that's based on a play, kind of enjoy seeing something this stagey with mostly one setting. 

One of those Chinese historical dramas with really beautiful costuming, there are so many episodes in a season so I don't think I'll stick with it but it was fun to watch a little of. 

This South African show seems to be really globally popular, it's about somebody who's internet famous who gets dragged into a family scandal, people love that kind of thing I guess but it doesn't interest me much. 

Erika Toda has starred in probably the 2 best Japanese shows I've seen this year, "Straight To Hell" and "Reboot." The latter is about a guy trying to find his wife's murderer, wish it didn't have such a generic title. 

s) "Proud" 
This Polish show on HBO Max is about a male model who has to care for his nice after his sister dies, and just suddenly has to make this huge change from a party animal lifestyle to parenthood, great performance from Ignacy Liss. 

t) "Nation's Dumbest" 
I'm not generally much into game shows and reality competition shows that B-list and C-list celebrities do just to stay on television, but I kind of love this show. A dozen contestants answer fairly basic general knowledge questions or do little goofy problem-solving challenges, and whoever does best each week gets to go home, until the last remaining person is crowned the dumbest of them all. There's a nice range of people who have an airhead reputation they might want to refute (Steve-O, Carmen Electra, Hilaria Baldwin), some well educated people who it's fun to point and laugh at when they don't do well (Dr. Drew, Andrew Yang), and some random likeable people to root for (Anthony Michael Hall, Ice-T, Jon Heder). It's pretty entertaining, I don't think I've been this invested in seeing who's still standing at the end of a season of a reality show since the heyday of "American Idol." 

As someone who will watch almost any TV show but will almost never listen to any podcast, I'm slightly vexed by Netflix's new move toward just putting established podcasts in their library next to all their TV shows. But "Switched On Pop" is just the kind of podcast I'd listen to if I did regularly listen to podcasts, and it was fun to watch I guess their first episode in a visual format, I like the way they embrace really looking at modern pop songs from a compositional standpoint and digging into production methods and song structure. 

The main "Hot Ones" series I guess still lives on YouTube, but the first episode on Netflix with the "Extra Heat" subtitle seems to be more or less the same show, but with Will Ferrell and a couple of his co-stars from "The Hawk" promoting their golf show in a baseball park (?). Maybe this is just going to be one-off Netflix episodes of "Hot Ones" that are ads for other Netflix shows, but it's fine, "Hot Ones" is all good with me. 

It's always interesting to find out where a movie based on a true story took creative liberties. But this 3-part docuseries seems to be just a bunch of people who knew Jordan Belfort griping and nitpicking about Belfort's book and Scorsese's movie or saying 'I wasn't as fat as the guy that played me' or whatever. 

A Tennessee high school teacher has students in his sociology class investigating cold cases and uncovering new info about an '80s serial killer, wild fascinating stuff. 

I've gotten this far in life knowing as little as possible about Burning Man and not having much curiosity about it, but this HBO Max docuseries is moderately interesting I guess. 

I watched this when it first came out on Netflix, before Norway's World Cup run really became this huge deal, and it helped me get invested in that whole story. Highly recommended if you've become a fan of Erling Haaland in the last few weeks. 

12:50 PM

Monthly Report: July 2026 Singles

Monday, July 20, 2026






















1. Jon Pardi - "Boots Off"
About a decade ago, Jon Pardi released "Head Over Boots" and "Dirt On My Boots" as back-to-back singles and they became his first two #1s on country radio, and remain arguably his two biggest hits (both 7x platinum while none of his other songs are more than 4x platinum). Now, country music is full of songs about boots, so that's not incredibly unlikely, but that always amused me, and PardiNextDoor finally released a third song with that word in the title. So far "Boots Off" doesn't seem to be in any danger of being as big as those two songs, but I like it. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

2. Tems - "What You Need"
This is quickly becoming Tems's biggest song since "Free Mind." Maybe she just resonates more with her inconsolably sad songs, which is I guess an interesting thing about the international success of Afrobeats, like dancehall never really had songs like this become huge crossover hits. 

3. Cannons - "Starlight" 
I feel like Cannons singles would get played on pop radio instead of alternative radio if they were credited to Michelle Joy as a solo artist instead of a band, but I'm glad they do well on alt radio, I like their glossy '80s synth jams. 

4. Kehlani f/ Usher - "Shoulda Never" 
Over the years some rap and R&B producers have taken to making loops that sound like old records when they're incorporated into new songs -- sample-free sampling, which is pretty clever. Apparently that's the case with "Shoulda Never," but the first few times I heard it I was paranoid that the 'sample' was generated by AI. Anyway, good song, I'm glad it's not AI. 

5. The Last Dinner Party - "Count The Ways"
This didn't jump out to me as a single when the Last Dinner Party's second album came out last year, but it sounds good on the radio, I'm glad this record is finally gaining a little more traction, "This Is the Killer Speaking" was a really cool song but maybe a little too risky as a lead single. 

6. Carly Pearce f/ Riley Green - "If I Don't Leave I'm Gonna Stay"
A good smoldering duet, their voices sound great together and I like the line "we're getting close to losing clothes, I should go look at the time, it's getting late." Devin Dawson co-wrote this, he released one album that was pretty good in 2018 but I guess he's still in Nashville working as a songwriter. 

7. Latto f/ GloRilla - "GOMF" 
I didn't like Soulja Boy's "Yahhh!" at the time because I felt like it commercially overshadowed the other single he had out at the time, "Donk," that I liked a lot more. But history has been kinder to "Donk," so I feel vindicated there, and can admit that "Yahhh!" is a fun song to hear sampled on "GOMF." The Latto album is solid, this isn't necessarily one of the more impressive songs but the whole thing is good. 

8. Beyonce - "Morning Dew (Donk)"
Speaking of "Donk"! I love B'Day so I'm glad Beyonce is doing a 20th anniversary reissue. But it's a little irritating that the first song she's released from it is a song that everybody already knows was recorded for a different album roughly 7 years later, like can you please take your own catalog seriously? 

9. Victoria Monet - "Let Me"  
I don't know something this low key is really the song she can launch her next album with, but I'm glad it's at least doing pretty well on R&B radio. 

10. Social Distortion - "Born To Kill" 
Some bands I just appreciate them still being around doing what they've always done. Their latest album has a cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" that works better than I would've expected and could probably be massive. But I also like the old-fashioned sneer of the lead single, especially the line "look out, man, you're in my pissing range." 

The Worst Single of the Month: Chris Brown - "Obvious"
Well it's aptly titled, I'll give him that.

5:00 AM