My Top 50 Country Singles of the 1980s

Wednesday, June 03, 2026


























I was never an "everything except rap and country"-type music fan, but of the genres I write about on here regularly, country is the one I heard the least growing up, it just wasn't on my radar as much. That worked out well for me because I got to kind of go into the genre as an adult without a lot of strong opinions and gradually find stuff that resonated with me, and eventually feel confident enough to post things like my favorite country singles of the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. It surprised me how much traffic those lists got -- the 2000s one is the #2 most popular post in the history of Narrowcast, and the '90s one is #4. So I'm glad I worked hard on trying to get those right and it motivated me to try and get this one as right as I could as well. Here's the Spotify playlist, which has 49 of the 50 songs here (Garth Brooks has one song here and Amazon has the exclusive streaming rights to his catalog): 

1. George Jones - "He Stopped Loving Her Today" (1980)
Nothing else could be #1. And it's all the more remarkable that someone who had his first big hit in the 1950s could make what would ultimately be his signature song in the 1980s, just incredible longevity. All credit to producer Billy Sherrill for believing in the song despite Jones's skepticism, and framing his voice with that incredible surge of strings. I wrote a song a few years ago riffing on the title of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" after watching somebody get consumed by heartbreak until their death, so it means something else to me now. 

2. Randy Travis - "Forever And Ever, Amen" (1987)
It speaks to how much I didn't grow up on country music and had to find my own way into it that for years I only vaguely knew of this song as what Ben Folds Five were referencing with the title of their album Whatever And Ever Amen. And I was missing out, it's a great song. Last year I worked an event in D.C. where Randy Travis appeared, and "Forever And Ever, Amen" co-writer Paul Overstreet sang the song with Travis in the audience, which was a pretty special moment to witness. 

3. Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson - "Pancho and Lefty" (1983)
According to Marc Eliot's excellent biography The Hag, Willie Nelson's daughter Lana was the one who suggested Texas cult hero Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" for his album with Merle Haggard, playing him Emmylou Harris's version. Haggard wasn't doing great in this era, and had already made the mistake of passing on Nelson's offer to record "Always On My Mind" as a duet before it became Nelson's biggest hit. Nelson had to drag Haggard out of bed to record his vocal for "Pancho and Lefty," and it was only later that he realized what they'd made. "Merle told Willie how much he loved the song, but he had no memory of recording it. He wanted to take another shot at recording it, this time while awake. Too late, Willie told him, it was already at Epic Records." 

4. Dwight Yoakam - "Guitars, Cadillacs" (1986)
I used to look through the cheap cassette bin at the Sound Garden in Baltimore as a teenager and pick out tapes to listen to in my first car, and Dwight Yoakam's debut Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. may be the first country album I ever bought. I was curious what Etc., Etc. was abbreviating, turns out it's "hillbilly music."  

5. Tanya Tucker - "Love Me Like You Used To" (1987)
The Nashville song factory fascinates me because you can pair a great song with a great singer but that doesn't mean they're gonna be a suitable match, and sometimes songs have to fail before they succeed. "Love Me Like You Used To" was recorded by Johnny Cash in 1985, during what was famously a pretty fallow decade for him, and the song just doesn't really sound right for him. Absolutely perfect for Tanya Tucker, though. 

6. George Strait - "Amarillo By Morning" (1983)
Terry Stafford co-wrote "Amarillo By Morning" and made it a minor hit in 1973, but it really became a classic in the hands of George Strait a decade later. In the early '80s, Strait became the dependable neotraditionalist who could top the country charts without crossing over like Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton -- he didn't even chart on the Hot 100 until his 25th country #1, and he eventually racked up 44 of them, more than anybody in history. And "Amarillo By Morning" is referenced in the country song that's currently #1 song on the pop charts, Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas." 

7. Keith Whitley - "I'm No Stranger To The Rain" (1989)
Keith Whitley was just becoming a major star in 1989, and "I'm No Stranger To The Rain" became Whitley's third country #1 just weeks before he died of alcohol poisoning at 34 years old. It's a song about surviving whatever life sends your way, rendered all the more poignant in that context, and Sam Goldner wrote an excellent piece about it for Pitchfork just a couple weeks ago. 

8. Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris - "Wildflowers" (1988)
Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris first attempted to record an album as a trio in 1978, but they didn't pull it off for another 9 years. 1987's Trio went platinum and Parton's "Wildflowers," one of the album's only original songs and its fourth top 10 country hit, is really just one of the most gorgeous things she's ever written, I'm glad she recorded with two other amazing voices. 

9. Alabama - "Mountain Music" (1982)
Alabama had an incredible run in the '80s, with a streak of 21 consecutive country #1s out of 27 through the whole decade, there aren't a lot of artists who've dominated any radio format like that. The title track from 1982's Mountain Music was the sixth single in that streak, and Alabama interpolated it on another #1, Brad Paisley's "Old Alabama," in 2011. 

10. Reba McEntire - "Little Rock" (1986)
I love a little Nashville wordplay, you think it's gonna be a song about Arkansas and then Reba sings this bubbly, catchy little tune about slipping that little rock off her finger and getting out of an unhappy marriage. She really sells a lyric like few others can. 





















11. Rosanne Cash - "Seven Year Ache" (1981)
Although Rosanne Cash did record duets with her father, and one of her hits was a cover of his "Tennessee Flat Top Box," she's really established herself as the rare child of a legend who's got her own estimable legacy that occupies its own space. "Seven Year Ache" crossed over and became a Top 40 hit, and probably has the most prominent synthesizers of any song on this list, but they lead into a beautiful pedal steel break. 

12. George Jones - "Tennessee Whiskey" (1983)
"Tennessee Whiskey" was a minor hit for David Allan Coe in 1981 and then a smash for George Jones a couple years later. These days, it's best known for Chris Stapleton's 2015 version that is 20 times platinum(!!), the highest certified country song of all time, but I gotta be honest, I don't like Stapleton's arrangement. He turned a 4/4 song into a waltz, slowed it down, and made it two minutes earlier than the '80s versions, I'll take the George Jones version any day of the week. 

13. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - "Fishin' In The Dark" (1987)
Jackson Browne was briefly a founding member of Long Beach's Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (songs by Browne appeared on the debut abouts by both Nico and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1967, which really shows you what a fascinatingly varied career he's had). For a few years they pivoted to soft rock and went by simply The Dirt Band, which seems really stupid and reminds me of when Ghostface Killah released an album as just Ghostface, but they went back to their original name and hit their stride as country hitmakers in the '80s. 

14. Willie Nelson - "On The Road Again" (1980)
A year after his supporting role alongside Robert Redford in The Electric Horseman, Honeysuckle Rose became Willie Nelson's first lead role in a film. Two of the songs he wrote for the film, the Oscar-nominated "On The Road Again" and "Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground," were massive hits, and both live recordings. It's appropriate that the anthem of his love of touring was never released as a studio track (well, not never -- he did record a bluegrass arrangement of "On The Road Again" in 2023). 

15. Kathy Mattea - "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses" (1988)
I checked out Kathy Mattea's music for the first time when I was working on my '90s country list and she's got some great singles, I love a good character sketch about a trucker. Kind of feels weirdly dated to hear a song about working class Americans actually being able to afford to retire, though. 

16. The Judds - "Had A Dream (For The Heart)" (1983)
Dennis Linde wrote Elvis Presley's "Burning Love" early in a career as one of Nashville's greatest songwriters. And Linde's song originally known as "For the Heart," which Presley recorded in 1976, was retitled as the career-launching hit for Naomi and Wynonna Judd's run as country's greatest (only?) mother-daughter duo. 

17. Ronnie Milsap - "Smoky Mountain Rain" (1980)
It's funny to think that the token new song on a Greatest Hits album could wind up being the artist's definitive hit, but that's what "Smoky Mountain Rain" was for Ronnie Milsap. The arrangement is really incredible, the way the strings spiral upward and then the piano just hammers down, it's so cool. 

18. George Strait - "The Chair" (1985)
I love how this song ends, and how the pure charm of Strait's delivery of the lyric makes it work, he's just so effortlessly smooth. 

19. Hank Williams Jr. - "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" (1984)
The elder Hank Williams looms large over country music as perhaps the genre's most revered legend. His son has had a pretty great career in his own right by any measure, but certainly only a fraction as important as his father in the grand scheme of things. It's like if there was a Buddy Holly Jr. or a Sam Cooke Jr. running around the last few decades making fratty party songs and football promos. Some of those songs are fun, though, "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight" is a sequel of sorts to Hank Jr.'s 1981 hit "All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)," which jokingly lamented that many of his rebellious country star contemporaries were getting older and mellower. 

20. Dolly Parton - "9 To 5" (1980)
Only a handful of female country singers have ever reached #1 on the Hot 100 with solo songs: Jeannie C. Riley, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Ella Langley...I suppose Taylor Swift counts, although her only #1 that got played on country radio was a Max Martin production, so she already had one foot out the door. Parton reached that pinnacle by writing a title song that brilliantly matched her breakout film role in 9 To 5, and I love the story of her coming up for the rhythm of the song while tapping her acrylic nails.  

























21. Emmylou Harris - "Born To Run" (1982)
In 2015, I ran the lyric teleprompter for an all-star tribute concert that was released as an album and DVD called The Life & Songs of Emmylou Harris. It was a really amazing show to be a part of, and when they weren't onstage Harris and Kris Kristofferson were seated about 6 feet away from me. Lee Ann Womack sang Harris's 1982 hit "Born To Run" at that show, and that was one of the songs I heard for the first time that night that I fell in love with. A little ballsy to release an original song that shared a title with a classic, but Emmylou Harris leaned into it, following her "Born To Run" with a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "The Price You Pay" on her 1981 album Cimarron. And Jessie Buckley sang it in her award-winning turn in the 2018 film Wild Rose. 

22. Lynn Anderson - "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" (1980)
Speaking of borrowed titles and Emmylou Harris -- Even Cowgirls Get The Blues was first the title of a Tom Robbins novel in 1976, later adapted into Gus Van Sant's 1993 film. Then, Rodney Crowell wrote a song about her using the title, and "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" was recorded by La Costa, Mary Kay Place, and Harris herself (her first time singing on record with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt) in the late '70s. But it was Lynn Anderson, a star since 1967's "Rose Garden," who wound up with the most chart success for the song. 

23. George Jones - "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" (1980)
George Jones's reputation as an alcoholic preceded him, and he built a catalog of great drinking songs to go along with it. "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me" is my favorite from his vein of tragicomic drinking songs, and when I was out with friends earlier this year and was prodded to sing at a karaoke bar for the first time in my life, this was the first song I decided to sing. 

24. Juice Newton - "Queen of Hearts" (1981)
Juice Newton's commercial peak came around the time I was born (in 1982), so I didn't really have any idea who she was, if you'd ask me I might have guessed Juice Newton was a competitor to Orange Julius. But she broke out of country and crossed over with her recording of "Angel of the Morning," the biggest Hot 100 entry of a song that's been a hit for several artists. And then her follow-up was even bigger, a song that had been a hit for Dave Edmunds in the UK but hadn't been released as a single in America. 

25. Willie Nelson - "Always On My Mind" (1982)
Elvis Presley had a minor country hit with "Always On My Mind," but it became an enormous Top 5 pop hit for two very different artists in the '80s, first Willie Nelson and then Pet Shop Boys. I got into Willie Nelson's '70s stuff first and for a long time didn't really pay much attention to his big '80s hits, but his "Always On My Mind" really is remarkable, his voice and Mickey Raphael's harmonica really do capture the melancholy of that tune. 

26. Dwight Yoakam - "Please, Please Baby" (1987)
More excellence from Yoakam, there's really very little in his catalog that I don't like so it was hard to choose songs from him but after some consideration this is my favorite hit from Hillbilly Deluxe. 

27. Blue Rodeo - "Try" (1987)
Plenty of Canadian country singers have had success in America, from Shania Twain and Terri Clark to more recent stars like Josh Ross and Tenille Arts. But the Toronto country rock band never got on the U.S. charts with any of their 20-something Canadian hits. In fact I didn't hear their career-launching hit "Try" until recently when it popped up in an episode of the Canadian cult comedy series "Shoresy" and I went 'wait, that's a good song, what is that?' 

28. K.D. Lang - "I'm Down to My Last Cigarette" (1988)
K.D. Lang is another Canadian artist, but one who eventually became pretty famous in the '90s as she transitioned out of country with "Constant Craving" and also came out of the closet. I really like her early country stuff, though, particularly "I'm Down to My Last Cigarette," co-written by songwriting legend Harlan Howard (who also penned Bobby Bare's "The Streets of Baltimore," which I recently wrote about).  

29. Waylon Jennings - "Rose in Paradise" (1987)
Waylon Jennings weathered the changing sounds of the '80s pretty well commercially, but I didn't found much I liked out of his '80s solo singles, with the exception of "Rose in Paradise," which is just gorgeous. 

30. Kenny Rogers - "Lady" (1980)
By the time Kenny Rogers was a superstar, he'd lived many musical lives, as '50s doo wop singer Kenneth Rogers, a bass player for New Christy Minstrels, and a psychedelic hitmaker with The First Edition. So who was gonna tell the guy that he couldn't record a song written by Lionel Richie of the Commodores and top the country and pop charts simultaneously while even touching the R&B charts? Nobody! People have lots of opinions about country's early '80s crossover moment, but there's no doubt that Kenny Rogers had the voice and vision to be its poster boy. 



























31. Lyle Lovett - "If I Had A Boat" (1988)
I thought about including Lyle Lovett's only country radio Top 10 hit, "Cowboy Man," but I decided to go with this gem, which crystallizes his loopy sense of humor so well, and has become one of his biggest streaming tracks over the years after a modest chart run. 

32. Dolly Parton - "Why'd You Come In Here Lookin' Like That" (1989)
The horniest hit by country's biggest sex symbol, practically drooling at a guy's "little behind" in his "painted-on jeans." Behold, the female gaze! 

33. Johnny Lee - "Lookin' For Love" (1980)
It'd be simplistic to say that John Travolta's 1980 film Urban Cowboy did for country what Saturday Night Fever did for disco, but it was certainly just as big a part of country's mainstream moment in the early '80s as Kenny Rogers, who of course made one of the soundtrack album's six Top 5 country radio hits. The biggest of those songs was Johnny Lee's "Lookin' For Love," which is such a ubiquitous song that I'd never really thought about who sings it or when it came out until I started putting together this list. 

34. Barbara Mandrell featuring George Jones - "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool" (1981)
Amidst all those crossover moments, Barbara Mandrell came out with a song that was a little defensive but also kind of the perfect reaction to the suddenly warm cultural climate for country music. Mandrell released it on a live album, but crowd noise was simply added to a studio track. And once you realize that, it's glaring how fake it sounds, like a sitcom laugh track, when the audience "cheers" at the mention of George Jones's name in the first verse, and then cheers louder when Jones "appears onstage" to sing the last minute of the song. I love it. 

35. George Strait - "All My Ex's Live in Texas" (1987)
The title alone makes this an instant smash, but I love all the other rhymes of women's names with Texas town names, "Rosanna's down in Texarkana," "Eileen's in Abilene," and so on, it's so perfectly put together. 

36. Willie Nelson - "Me and Paul" (1985)
Paul English was Willie Nelson's drummer from 1955 until his death in 2020. Nelson immortalized their friendship and their misadventures on the road together in "Me and Paul" on one of his first great albums, 1971's Yesterday's Wine. And then the song became a minor hit as the re-recorded title track for Nelson's 1985 album Me and Paul. 

37. The Oak Ridge Boys - "Elvira" (1981)
Dallas Frazier wrote a lot of hits in the '60s and '70s, including some of my favorite George Jones, but just moderate success as a recording artist, and "Elvira" was his only song that made the Hot 100 in 1966, peaking at #72. Then the Oak Ridge Boys covered it 15 years later, and rocketed it to #5. 

38. Vern Gosdin - "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)" (1985)
The first version I heard of "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)" was Dwight Yoakam's 2012 recording, which I realize now is by far the fastest and loudest version. But the song was written in 1952 and has been recorded by an array of country and bluegrass luminaries including Flatt & Scruggs, Conway Twitty, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and John Prine. The lyric is kind of slut-shaming or scolding a woman who loves the nightlife, but I still kind of hear it as musicians celebrating their own lifestyle. I think Vern Gosdin's recording is the only one that's actually charted, and it's quite good. 

39. Crystal Gayle - "You Never Gave Up On Me" (1982)
Country legend Loretta Lynn (born Loretta Webb) had seven siblings, three of whom also had musical career and chart hits. Her youngest sister, Crystal Gayle (born Brenda Gail Webb) was 18 years younger, and started racking up #1 singles in 1976 and 1977, as Loretta Lynn was releasing her last #1s. Crystal Gayle definitely has a more pop country sensibility, but I like her voice. "You Never Gave Up On Me" is from the same year that Gayle sang duets with Tom Waits for the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola's One From The Heart. 

40. Steve Earle - "Guitar Town" (1986)
Country rock fusions like the Eagles became a big business in the '70s. But by the '80s it doesn't seem like there was a whole lot of room in mainstream country or mainstream rock for people who operated in that gray area between the two genres until 'alt-rock' or 'Americana' became marketable in the '90s and beyond. The people that got closest to really thriving in that gray area in the '80s were the band Lone Justice and Steve Earle, a Texan who idolized Townes Van Zandt and had an uncomfortable alliance with the Nashville establishment. Earle's debut Guitar Town had two Top Ten hits on country radio, then the title track from his third album Copperhead Road was a Top Ten hit on the Mainstream Rock chart. And then, perhaps inevitably, Earle continued onward as a critical favorite, winning three Grammys in folk categories and getting occasional airplay on the Adult Album Alternative chart. 


























41. Eddie Rabbit - "I Love A Rainy Night" (1980)
I remember when Eddie Rabbit died in 1998 because, well, to be honest, that was the first I'd heard of him. I was surprised to learn that he had a #1 song on the Hot 100, albeit before I was born, but it was a good one. 

42. Ray Charles featuring Mickey Gilley - "It Ain't Gonna Worry My Mind" (1985)
The two 1962 volumes of his Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music albums were a landmark moment in country's complex but often fertile relationship with the rest of American pop and Black music, and Ray Charles enjoyed a strong relationship with Nashville in the decades to follow. His most notable return to country was the 1984 album Friendship, which was his highest charting album between 1973 and 2004, and spun off a string of country radio hits featuring Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr., B.J. Thomas, and Mickey Gilley. 

43. Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton - "Islands In The Stream" (1983)
After topping the pop charts with a song written by Lionel Richie, it wasn't much of a leap for Kenny Rogers to do it again with a song written by the Bee Gees. It kind of sets the standard for all superstar country duets to follow, at least in what to aspire to as an event, even if it musically feels more like what they know call 'yacht rock.' 

44. Conway Twitty - "Slow Hand" (1982)
Conway Twitty had at least one country #1 single, usually more than one, in almost every year from 1968 to 1986 (he only got to #2 in 1979), just a tremendously consistent hitmakers. He didn't court crossover success much, but one of my favorites was his cover of "Slow Hand," which had been a pop hit for the Pointer Sisters the previous year, he really made it his own. 

45. Garth Brooks - "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)" (1989)
Garth Brooks became a mainstream star pretty quickly after the release of his self-titled 1989 debut, but the album's first two hits "Much Too Young" and "If Tomorrow Never Comes" present this earnest young Oklahoman in the familiar mold of a George Strait-influenced neotraditionalist. I can't imagine anyone in 1989 having any idea that he would becoming arguably the biggest star country music has ever seen in the '90s, a bombastic master showman who headlined stadiums. And it happened pretty rapidly once the next decade started! 

46. David Allan Coe - "She Used To Love Me A Lot" (1984)
David Allan Coe, who died a few weeks ago, is a complicated figure, inarguably talented and integral to country history -- he wrote Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It" and, as I said earlier, was the first artist to record the iconic "Tennessee Whiskey." But he was also pretty thirsty to align himself with the "outlaw country" movement and try to get as much credit for it as the genre's biggest and most definitive stars, and he eventually became heavily associated with his 'underground' albums full of lewd edgelord humor. He had a decent run of good radio hits in the '80s, though. 

47. Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash - "Highwayman" (1985)
Jimmy Webb wrote "Highwayman" in the '70s, and both he and Glen Campbell recorded the song as solo artists. But the song's whole conceit, with four verses sung from the perspectives of four reincarnations of the same person in different periods of time, really makes more sense with four singers, and the song eventually united four legends as a supergroup that would be called The Highwaymen after the song. I remember the first time I really listened to this song and got to the end where the Johnny Cash verse takes a futuristic sci-fi turn, my mind was just blown, it still gets me every time. 

48. Dwight Yoakam - "It Won't Hurt" (1986)
I've been drunk and I've been heartbroken, but I've never really mixed those two afflictions. I love country songs about that particular combination, though, here's a few more for the road before I go. 

49. George Jones - "The King is Gone (So Are You)" (1989)
The 44-track The Essential George Jones: The Spirit of Country is kind of my personal country music bible, and while Jones continued to have some success in the '90s, I kind of like looking at the key years of his catalog ending with that compilation's last track. "The King Is Gone (So Are You)" is tragicomic alcoholic Jones at his weirdest, drinking Jim Beam out of a decanter that looks like Elvis Presley and a Flintstones jellybean jar and having a surreal conversation with the King of Rock'n'roll and Fred Flintstone. 

50. Merle Haggard - "I Think I'll Just Stay Here And Drink" (1980)
There are two drummers, Jerry Kroon and Larry Londin, credited on Merle Haggard's Back to the Barrooms, but the closing track "I Think I'll Just Stay Here And Drink" is the only song where you hear both drummers at once, or possibly one of them overdubbing two distinct drum tracks. A really interesting choice, kind of subtle and doesn't sound like, say, any famous two-drummer band like the Allman Brothers Band or the Grateful Dead. 

11:38 AM

Sunday, May 31, 2026

 




I wrote a piece for Complex ranking the 10 greatest Jay-Z/producer pairings. 

10:04 PM

Friday, May 29, 2026

 





I wrote about "Reptile" by Nine Inch Nails for Spin's Deep Cut Friday column this week. 

1:37 PM

Movie Diary

Thursday, May 28, 2026

 




a) Send Help
I wouldn't rate this quite as highly as Drag Me To Hell, but Sam Raimi's first non-franchise horror movie in 17 years was well worth the wait and I'm glad that another one is happening soon. One of the best Rachel McAdams performances in an already pretty rich career, I rolled my eyes at the early scenes when they made a perfunctory effort at her character being an awkward, unattractive office drone, but it just made the rest of the movie all the more entertaining. Some of the gore and some of the twists I didn't see coming at all, great stuff. My wife made the suggestion that when the title flashed onscreen before the credits, it should have said SEND HEPL. 

b) Marty Supreme
Stunt casting has always been one of the Safdie brothers' many signature gimmicks, but it still kind of surprised me how much Josh Safdie surrounded Timothee Chalamet's justifiably Oscar-nominated performance with a random gallery of famous people who don't usually act -- Tyler The Creator, Luke Manley, Gwyneth Paltrow, and especially that "Shark Tank" shithead Kevin O'Leary, who had so much screentime that it actively detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. And I did enjoy it, despite my difficulty in separating Safdie's good ideas from his bad ideas. The Marie Antoinette-style use of '80s synth pop in a story that takes place decades earlier is really effective, and the camera work is kinetic and alive in a way that not a lot of directors do these days -- I mean how many people besides Spielberg even actively remind you that a camera can actually move through the scene as if it's a character now? 

c) Honey Don't! 
I feel like a lot of people gave Drive-Away Dolls a chance on the strength of goodwill for Ethan Coen's past work, and then had very little patience for Honey Don't! when it turned out to be in many respects more of the same and part of a 'lesbian B movie' trilogy. But I think Honey Don't! felt like a slightly more complete movie, or at least darker and a little more plot-heavy, which was a pleasant surprise. I've been kind of a Margaret Qualley skeptic but she carried the movie well, one of Aubrey Plaza's best performances too. Chris Evans was the weak link of the movie -- in an old Coen Brothers movie that could've been an incredible performance from a character actor instead of a smug supporting turn from a slumming leading man. 

d) Remarkably Bright Creatures
Remarkably Bright Creatures is based on a novel about the lives of people who work at an aquarium, told through the eyes of an octopus. In the very charming film adaptation, the octopus's narration is voiced by Alfred Molina -- Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2, which may constitute typecasting? Very charming movie, though. I kind of wish it was more of a story about simple human connection than people being tied together by fate, but still heartwarming and full of great performances. 

e) Zootopia 2
Disney and Pixar have been on quite a run of massively profitable sequels that ultimately didn't feel half as memorable or beloved as the originals -- The Incredibles 2, Frozen II, Inside Out 2, Moana 2, none of which really rose to the bar set by the Toy Story sequels. Zootopia was a fun movie that didn't leave as much for a sequl to live up to as some of those movies, but I'll still take it as a win that Zootopia 2 was really enjoyable, probably just as many laughs as the original. When the new mayor was a horse voiced by Patrick Warburton, I was just like yeah, we're on the right track with this one.  

f) Anemone
Even for an Oscar-winning actor, I find Daniel Day-Lewis's on-and-off "retirement" over the past 29 years to be a bit over-dramatic. When he has worked, it's often been for big name directors like Spielberg and Scorsese, but also for his wife Rebecca Miller, and now their son Ronan Day-Lewis's directorial debut. Anemone surprised me a little -- it's not a great movie, but pretty emotionally engaging and visually arresting, and Bobby Krlic's score is on the same level as his work on Ari Aster's movies. 

g) Ella McCay
This kind of amiable James L. Brooks dramedy is so rare and out of fashion as a theatrical release that it felt like people didn't know what to make of Ella McCay and tried too hard to make it into a meme. It is annoying that they thought they could make a governor and lieutenant governor the main characters of a movie without specifying what state elected them, though, that's just stupid. This movie felt like a big test for Emma Mackey, a role that required a lot more of her as a lead than the Netflix series that made her famous, "Sex Education," and I don't think she was up to the challenge, her performance was a little flat. You put an Emma Stone or Anne Hathaway-level actress in this movie and it's instantly a lot better. The Julie Kavner narration felt very unnecessary too. But most of the cast was good, it was fun watching Jamie Lee Curtis and Kumail Nanjiani and Ayo Edebiri doe the snappy James L. Brooks dialogue. 

h) A Sacrifice
As a thriller about a cult this felt a little mild, but a decent movie. 

i) GOAT
Sony Pictures Animation has a pretty undistinguished sub-DreamWorks track record outside of the Spider-Verse movies, and famously fumbled releasing KPop Demon Hunters in theaters, but I enjoyed this talking animal basketball movie produced by Steph Curry, it was decent. 

j) Penguins of Madagascar
Speaking DreamWorks, I've never particularly liked the Madagascar movies, but my son watched this recently and it was worth it for me just to hear John Malkovich as a villainous octopus. 

k) First Reformed
I recently watched a bunch of movies from about a decade ago for my 2016 and 2017 lists, and this was probably the best of them. Obviously Paul Schrader has written some classics, but I didn't think he had a movie this good in him as a director, it leaves American Gigolo in the dust. Great atmosphere, great performances from Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, a surprisingly solid turn from Cedrid the Entertainer, and the story didn't quite go where I expected it to go. 
 
l) Princess Cyd
One of the best things I hadn't heard of that I found when I went looking for 2017 films, I actually liked it as much or more than the big coming-of-age movies of that year, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird. A very moving story, Jessie Pinnick really should've gotten more big roles from this. And it was premiered at the Maryland Film Festival! 

m) The Death of Stalin
I put this on just kind of expecting a straightforward historical drama, not realizing it was written and directed by "Veep" and "In the Loop" creator Armand Iannucci. Hell of an ensemble, Steve Buscemi and Paddy Considine and Michael Palin and everyone else are hilarious in it, I kind of want Iannucci to do more period pieces portraying idiocy and dysfunction at all levels of power throughout history. 

n) Mary Shelley
I was kind of surprised I hadn't heard of a Mary Shelley biopic starring Elle Fanning, probably would have been a much bigger deal if it came out a few years later or today. Not a masterpiece but I thought it did a good job of explaining Shelley's life and the circumstances around her writing Frankenstein and it becoming a classic. 

Australian actress Melissa George is so beautiful, I feel like she could have been a major star but never really got there outside of a few horror hits and TV roles. This low budget Aussie drama is pretty good, though, probably her best non-horror performance. 

Terrence Malick filmed Song To Song over multiple years at SXSW and other music festivals, I remember lots of music media reports about Ryan Gosling and Michael Fassbender and Natalie Portman being spotted at those fests making an "indie rock movie." And it is a little surreal watching these movie stars cavort around with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Patti Smith, but for the most part it's a pretty straightforward, almost banal romantic drama that just happens to have a music industry backdrop and Malick's slow pacing and distinctive camera work. Maybe the hottest Portman has ever looked, though. And I'm looking at this movie a little differently after learning that Malick dated Carly Simon and appeared on the back cover of her album Another Passenger. 

q) The Zookeeper's Wife
A movie about how hundreds of Polish jews were allowed to hide in the Warsaw Zoo during the Holocaust, sourced directly from the diaries of the woman Jessica Chastain portrays. Pretty good, but a better movie probably could have been made from this remarkable story. 

r) Silence
Another one of the best movies I've seen in my recent '16/'17 dive, definitely one of the best late period Scorseses. I was a little disappointed that Adam Driver had way less screentime than Andrew Garfield, but Yosuke Kubozuka and Tadanobu Asano really had some of the most memorable performances of the movie. 

Now here's a good Adam Driver vehicle. In that typical Jim Jarmusch style, you can imagine how this movie would play in a more conventional filmmaker's hands with more plot and more drama, but I appreciate Jarmusch's dry, ambling way of introducing you to these characters and their setting in Paterson, New Jersey. It's also pretty funny that Adam Driver plays a poet who frequently says "another one" like DJ Khaled before reading a poem. Golshifteh Farahani, who plays Driver's wife, is absolutely gorgeous, and was recently in the news for her supposed platonic friendship with the president of France. 

t) Wind River
Taylor Sheridan wrote and directed this a year before he really became a brand name with the premiere of "Yellowstone," and like "Yellowstone" it drew criticism for the problematic casting of Asian American actress Kelsey Asbille as an indigenous character. A decent movie with a really dark story and a memorable villain turn by frequent Sheridan collaborator James Hordan, but some of the action felt a little over-the-top and stupid, especially when Jeremy Renner just felt like he was in a different movie playing an invincible super cop. 

u) Take Me
Pat Healy is one of those character actors who's been good in a lot of small roles, sometimes in big things, but it seems like he won't ever get a leading part unless he writes and directs one for himself. His Duplass-produced low budget debut feature is a clever little comedy about a woman being kidnapped, apparently he's got a couple other good screenplays that have appeared on the Black List.  

v) The Fundamentals of Caring
I feel like Paul Rudd's one guy who genuinely doesn't care about winning awards or being considered a great actor and just knows what his strengths are as a performer and seeks out projects he'd be good in, and I say that with the utmost respect. So, for instance, this dramedy where his character cares for a disabled teenager is still really funny and lets the poignant heartwarming parts take a backseat to it just being an entertaining movie with good cast chemistry. Even Selena Gomez is good in this movie, I don't know why she can't act this well in "Only Murders in the Building." 

11:32 AM

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

 





I talked to William, Gerrit, and Mike of Future Islands for a Baltimore Banner piece about the band's 20th anniversary, their new rarities collection, and their big Pier Six Pavilion show coming up on Thursday. 

11:15 AM

Monthly Report: May 2026 Singles

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

























1. BossMan Dlow - "Motion Party" 
Super short songs are a modern rap trend that people tend to look down upon, and it is a little ridiculous that one of the biggest songs of BossMan Dlow's career, which genuinely sounds like a deliberate single and samples an old hit (Khia's "My Neck, My Back"), is only 95 seconds long. Like, he could have easily at least padded it out to a standard 2 minutes, but he didn't, and it's still a hit, which I guess is a flex. And I usually hold those kinds of big obvious samples against a song, but it just sounds so different from most of BossMan Dlow's other beats and he finds a good pocket. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist I update every month. 

2. Harry Styles - "American Girls" 
This probably would have been a smarter first single than "Aperture," I think he lost a lot of momentum, but I like both songs a lot. 

3. Lady Gaga and Doechii - "Runway"
Bruno Mars went full-on elevator music with his latest album, but I'm glad he's still lending his ability to make fun pop jams to other artists, between this and "Die With A Smile" I kind of want him to exec produce a whole Gaga album. 

4. French Montana and Max B - "Ever Since U Left Me (I Went Deaf)" 
Back when they were mixtape-level stars in the late 2000s, Max B was the guy people were actually passionate about and French Montana was the sidekick. Then Max went to prison for 16 years, and French managed to punch above his weight level as a pretty successful mainstream rapper, but he always felt like kind of a stand-in rap star to me, even if he wasn't necessarily standing in for the career Max might have had. But I will give French a lot of credit, when Max became a free man a few months ago, French was waiting and ready to introduce him to the good life and make more music together, and they made a serious hit. Max is still kind of rough around the edges for radio rap, which is part of his charm, so it feels oddly right that Max just has this quick entertaining 23-second verse but French carries the bulk of the song. 

5. Olivia Rodrigo - "Drop Dead"  
I found this a little initially underwhelming compared to the singles from Olivia Rodrigo's first two albums, but it and "The Cure" have been growing on me. It feels like she's matching the emotional pivot from heartbreak and anger to infatuation and yearning with a different melodic and vocal approach, so I'm interested to hear how that plays out over an entire album. 

6. Freya Skye - "Silent Treatment"
British Disney starlet Freya Skye is a very post-Taylor Swift pop singer, she even echoes the "too young to be messed with" line from "Dear John" in her breakthrough single "Silent Treatment." But as a vocalist she sounds more like fellow Taylor disciples Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams to me. 

7. Charli XCX - "Rock Music" 
I rolled my eyes a few weeks ago when Charli XCX was quoted by British Vogue as saying "I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we're making rock music" because that kind of genre-switching gamesmanship feels so played out and corny right now. But it turned out that those words are verbatim lyrics on a very tongue-in-cheek single called "Rock Music," and I'm kind of amused that people have taken it as an earnest statement of intent, it's a pretty funny, ridiculous song. 

8. Baby Keem f/ Kendrick Lamar and Momo Boyd - "Good Flirts"
People keep trying more and more to treat Baby Keem as a genuine star, but there hasn't been a rapper in a long time who's so thoroughly the Memphis Bleek of his generation, anything he does with his superstar mentor is always guaranteed to get ten times as much attention as anything else. "Good Flirts" sticks out as a calculated radio record on Keem's album, but it's enjoyable, one of Kendrick's funniest verses in recent memory ("shit, I gossip with my bitch like I'm Young Thug too") and Momo Boyd sounds great when she's not doing that weird faux-Lana Del Rey voice that she does on her solo material. 

9. Juvenile f/ Megan Thee Stallion - "B.B.B. (Remix)"  
We haven't had this kind of Meg on the radio in a minute, it's great to hear, she kills this beat and the Juvenile album is pretty good, I'm glad he got his biggest hit in a while with it. 

10. Lainey Wilson - "Can't Sit Still"
I wish country radio embraced Lainey Wilson's uptempo singles as much as her slower hits. Excellent vocal and Jay Joyce stuff the second verse with lots of cool little sonic details, a rare moment when one of my favorite producers really shows off. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Tyla - "Chanel" 
I generally like Tyla and am looking forward to her album, but I really do not like this song, I'm irritated that it did better than most of her other post-"Water" singles. 

6:41 AM

Friday, May 22, 2026

 




I wrote about Dinosaur Jr.'s "Never Bought It" for my Deep Cut Friday column on Spin this week. 

10:53 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 405: Cake

Thursday, May 21, 2026

 





Guitarist Greg Brown, a co-founding member of Cake, passed away in February, and that sad news made me want to make this playlist. 
 
Cake deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Open Book
2. Ain't No Good
3. Bound Away
4. Comfort Eagle
5. Guitar
6. Dime
7. She'll Come Back To Me
8. I Bombed Korea
9. Walk On By
10. Daria
11. Is This Love? 
12. Shadow Stabbing 
13. Cool Blue Reason
14. Got To Move
15. Conroy
16. Opera Singer
17. Nugget
18. Take It All Away
19. Mexico
20. Easy To Crash
21. Mr. Mastodon Farm
22. Commissioning a Symphony in C
23. End of the Movie

Tracks 2, 8, 11, and 21 from Motorcade of Generosity (1994)
Tracks 1, 7, 10, and 17 from Fashion Nugget (1996)
Tracks 5, 9, 13, and 19 from Prolonging the Magic (1998)
Tracks 4, 12, 16, and 22 from Comfort Eagle (2001)
Tracks 6, 18, and 23 from Pressure Chief (2004)
Track 15 from B-Sides and Rarities (2007)
Tracks 3, 14, and 20 from Showroom of Compassion (2011)

I was very amused by the minor hit from Cake's debut, "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle." And then I loved the big hit from their second album, "The Distance" and had a friend or two who bought Fashion Nugget, but I never got deep into the band at the time. Frontman John McCrea has always been Cake's primary songwriter and Greg Brown was only in the band for those first two albums, but Brown had the largest number of co-writing credits on those albums, including "Open Book" and "Is This Love?" and "Mr. Mastodon Farm" and "Nugget." The only Cake song solely written by Brown was actually "The Distance." I don't know the circumstances of his death, or the circumstances of leaving the band shortly after writing their signature song, but I gotta give him respect for that masterpiece. Brown also returned to guest on one later Cake song, 2011's "Bound Away." 

In the era of countless interchangeable guitar bands on alternative radio, I really appreciated the '90s bands that actually had a unique and instantly identifiable configuration of instruments and voices like Morphine or Soul Coughing or They Might Be Giants or Cake. Those bands could sometimes be dismissed as "quirky" and had cult followings, but Cake managed to be pretty reliable hitmakers. Half of their six albums went platinum (one multi-platinum), and their most recent album, the self-released Showroom of Compassion, actually debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 in 2011, which is pretty impressive. There's only been one new Cake song in the last 15 years, the pretty good 2018 single "Sinking Ship," but the band has played hundreds of shows in that time. They've been in that "active band saying an album is coming this year or next year" mode for almost as long as The Cure was between 4:13 Dream and Songs of a Lost World at this point. 

Almost every Cake song has most or all of the same familiar elements. John McCrea's droll talk-singing and acoustic strumming, the strutting electric guitar riffs by Greg Brown and members of later lineups, Vince DiFiore's clarion call trumpet lines, the nimble rhythm section, the Moog melodies, the frequent vibraslap and other auxiliary percussion, the gang shout vocals and McCrea's ad libs. McCrea is almost as consistent as Jeezy in saying the same phrases over so many songs whenever there's a a few open bars of the band grooving out: "Hyaa," "allllllright," "so good!" or "so sad!" and so on. I wouldn't call it a formula per set, but again, I like that Cake had such a specific sound. 

Cake had some straight up country songs (and a pretty cool repertoire of '60s country covers) but weren't alt-country. They had one horn player but never ventured into ska. They had staccato vocals but no hip-hop influence outside of an occasional breakbeat loop. There was a sort of general thrift shop retro sensibility to the band's sound, clothing, and album covers, but they weren't really revivalists of any particular era. You put all that together and it's all uniquely Cake's own thing. Comfort Eagle's title track was apparently all set to be the album's second single but that plan was changed after 9/11, although I feel like the song's lyrics could only be abstractly interpreted as in poor taste. 

12:35 PM

TV Diary

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

 








a) "Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed"
Tatiana Maslany plays a divorced mom who gets caught up in a weird sex worker murder extortion scam thing in this new Apple TV series. I like its weird, jumpy tone, it almost feels almost like a cross between "Search Party" and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. Creator David J. Rosen has written for mostly shows I thought were terrible or fatally flawed ("Hunters," "Sugar," "Roadies"), but I think "Maxmum Pleasure Guaranteed" has a lot of potential, and Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness steals every scene she's in. 

Steve Coogan's the lead in this crime drama about British drug smuggling in the '90s, kind of interesting to see him in something serious, he has some gravitas. Some good atmosphere and direction but not terribly gripping. 

This Amazon Prime series is based on a YA novel, kind of a goofy old-fashioned love triangle where a girl pretends to date the hockey player she's tutoring to make the musician guy she likes jealous. Except the hockey player and the musician look almost identical, even if you can eventually tell them apart because they have different accents and personalities it's just kind of funny and weird casting. I like the show, though, it's charmingly silly and Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli have genuine chemistry. 

Jack Thorne, who co-created and co-wrote my #1 show of 2025, "Adolescence," made this miniseries adaptation of the classic William Golding novel. Pretty good so far but I haven't finished it yet, Thorne definitely has a gift for working with child actors and portraying them as complex, three-dimensional characters. 

This new Netflix series from "Power" creator Courtney A. Kemp is pretty boilerplate crime drama stuff. I love Gabrielle Dennis, I'd prefer if she was still on something lighter like "The Big Door Prize" or "Rosewood," but she's good in this too.  
 
"Baby Reindeer" is probably the last huge breakout hit that won a ton of Emmys that I just didn't like at all. Creator and star Richard Gadd's new show feels pretty similar, except instead of playing the victim of a violent obsessive character, this time Gadd plays the violent obsessive one. 

I don't think I've seen British actress Molly Windsor before, but she's really good in this Netflix about a woman living in a conservative Christian sect. 

"Ozark" creator Bill Dubuque's new Peacock show is about a Miami woman out for revenge after drug runners kill her whole family, very melodramatic. 

In the seven years since "Euphoria" premiered, the show went from having one movie star in the cast to three, two other cast members died, and after a pandemic and guild strikes and a bunch of other factors specific to "Euphoria," they're only just now airing the third season. The main characters are out of high school now, so it's no longer an edgy show about teenagers, but it feels like Sam Levinson feels some need to keep upping the ante to keep it edgy as a show about twentysomethings. That being said, I feel like this season is pretty consistent with the other ones, particularly in the case of the whole over-the-top OnlyFans storyline with Sydney Sweeney's character Cassie, which people seem to hate and think is just beyond the pale. Sweeney and Alexa Demie actually get to do their best work as comedic actresses on "Euphoria," but who I really think is wasted on the show is their more famous and talented co-star Zendaya, who narrates the show but doesn't have a lot of dialogue, mostly just making goofy faces reacting to everything that happens around her character. 

"Citadel," like "Euphoria," had a huge budget (the first season cost $300 million!) and has gone 3 years between seasons. The main difference is that people don't watch "Citadel" or even know it exists, it's just something Amazon thought people wanted. It's not a bad show, but the first season felt a little like a spy soap opera with all the memory loss and secret children storylines. So far I feel like the second season is a little lighter, some pretty entertaining scenes with Stanley Tucci and Jack Reynor. 

I only watched a few episodes of "Your Friends & Neighbors" last year, but finished the first season and starting the second season recently, man, excellent show, some sharp dialogue and plotting. There's occasionally some clumsy stuff (speedrunning an introduction of the main character's parents just before trying to to get some emotional weight out of one of them dying), but I really enjoy it. And it's another one of those Apple TV shows where the theme song and opening sequence are by far the worst part of every episode, though, just feels like some bullshit out of a Showtime series from 15 years ago. 

I think "For All Mankind" is the first Apple TV series to get to a 5th season, and I like that they've been able to take the parallel-universe premise this far, all the way from 1969 to 2012 so far. Unfortunately, I feel like their imagination feels more and more limited as they go forward, there's a Mars colony but I don't particularly care about the story, and Joel Kinnaman is pretty much the only person who's been a consistent character through the whole thing. I am glad that Ruby Cruz has been added to the cast now, her hair in "For All Mankind" may be the cutest she's ever looked. 

m) "Hacks" 
The fourth season of "Hacks" really felt like it could've been the series finale until the last few minutes, and would've ended well there, but I like that they came back for one more Deborah Vance misadventure, I laugh out loud a few times in every episode. I've grown to love the whole ensemble, I'm happy that Marcus has come back into the fold and almost every line Rose Abdoo has lately is hilarious. 

I've never been a major Neil Gaiman fan, but Good Omens is my favorite thing that he's written, and I was happy with the Amazon series adaptation, even if I didn't think it was as good as the book. Then some horrible revelations came out about Gaiman and the third season was downsized into a finale movie. The second season felt a little unnecessary to me but I was like well, I got this far, I may as well watch it. A few entertaining scenes, it was fine. 

In May, two one-off 'special episodes' starring and co-written by Jon Bernthal came out -- one an episode of "The Bear" that I haven't watched yet, and this. I don't know if it's supposed to be a belated finale for the Netflix "Punisher" series or a backdoor pilot for a Disney+ sequel series like "Daredevil: Born Again," but I thought it was really stupid and pointless. Like if they'd doubled the runtime and got a little more ambitious, it'd be a decent TV movie, but 50 minutes feels kind of paltry for a one-off. 

2017's The Snowman was a critically panned box office flop in America, and people loved to snicker about how the main character's name was Harry Hole. But the source material was just one of many Jo Nesbo novels about Detective Hole that are a popular franchise in Norway, so now Netflix is showing Hole. The series is alright, if you're into the whole 'Nordic noir' thing. 

This Netflix series is about 3 sisters from Spain who are on vacation in the Dominican Republic when one of them hits a guy with a car and things spiral out of control from there. A pretty entertaining show, lots of plot twits, gorgeous cast. 

Another one of those tragic romance Korean dramas on Netflix, didn't really get into it. 

A more interesting K-drama that has a insurance fraud murder scheme plot entangled with the romance. 

More murder in a K-drama, this time a woman wrongly accused of killing her husband, didn't get far enough to find out if the mystery was interesting at all. 

This French series got way more publicity than any other foreign language Apple TV project when the release was delayed for 3 months amidst accusations that it plagiarized a novel from the '70s. But now it's here and nobody cares, kind of a bland mystery thriller. 

Apparently this is the most popular mainland Chinese series on American Netflix to date, a pretty well made period piece romance story. 

This Taiwanese show has an entertainingly weird pulpy premise about an influencer predicting the murders of other influencers. 

It's funny watching documentary's about American men's soccer knowing how irrelevant we are on the world stage in that sport, but obviously that's part of the conversation here and it's pretty interesting stuff. 

And the longest-running American reality show about soccer is back for a fifth season, and has been renewed for three more. I like that we've kind of had big triumphant arcs for the team a couple times and then you have another rough patch or a new goal to reach, so you really get the exhausting year-to-year drama of a team that a sports movie or miniseries can't capture. 

I really miss "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," that was great late night TV. So I'll even watch the game show version of "Scrabble" sometimes now that Ferguson has replaced Raven-Symone as the host. 

12:19 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 404: Aerosmith

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

 




I started to put this playlist together last year when I ranked Aerosmith's albums for Spin, so I just circled back to finish it recently, so let's honk on Bobo. 
 
Aerosmith deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Somebody
2. Lord of the Thighs
3. Spaced
4. Round and Round
5. Uncle Salty
6. Nobody's Fault
7. Combination
8. Sight for Sore Eyes
9. I Wanna Know Why
10. Cheese Cake
11. Bone to Bone (Coney Island White Fish Boy)
12. Jig is Up
13. She's On Fire
14. Simoriah
15. Young Lust
16. Monkey on My Back
17. Line Up
18. Attitude Adjustment
19. Light Inside
20. Shame, Shame, Shame
21. Tell Me

Track 1 from Aerosmith (1973)
Tracks 2 and 3 from Get Your Wings (1974)
Tracks 4 and 5 from Toys in the Attic (1975)
Tracks 6 and 7 from Rocks (1976)
Tracks 8 and 9 from Draw the Line (1977)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Night in the Ruts (1979)
Track 12 from Rock in a Hard Place (1982)
Track 13 from Done with Mirrors (1985)
Track 14 from Permanent Vacation (1987)
Track 15 and 16 from Pump (1989)
Track 17 from Get a Grip (1993)
Track 18 from Nine Lives (1997)
Track 19 from Just Push Play (2001)
Track 20 from Honkin' on Bobo (2004)
Track 21 from Music from Another Dimension! (2012)

A lot of classic rock dinosaurs were still pretty ubiquitous in the late '80s and early '90s when I started paying attention to popular music, but none more than Aerosmith. MTV didn't just play their new hits, they played their '70s chestnuts -- the Run DMC version of "Walk This Way," the video they made for "Sweet Emotion" for the 1991 Pandora's Box compilation, and a live performance of "Dream On" for MTV's 10th anniversary special. 

One of the first episodes of "Saturday Night Live" I can remember watching was the one where Aerosmith appeared in a Wayne's World sketch. They performed "Monkey on My Back," a deep cut from Pump, a cassette that got a lot of mileage in my mom's car. I eagerly bought Get a Grip when it came out, but by that point I was a lot more into Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, and lost in the album quicker than most of the other CDs I spent my money on once I realized that there was nothing else as good as "Livin' on the Edge" on it, certainly not all those songs with Alicia Silverstone in the videos. 

My somewhat odd Aerosmith opinion is that I think Joe Perry is a much more interesting guitarist than he gets credit for. I think the working assumption is that he's just a blues rock guitarist in the '60s mold, not as important as Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton and not as flashy as the post-Van Halen heavy metal shredders, which is obviously true. But growing up I also found myself looking forward to his solos in almost any Aerosmith hit, even when the song wasn't great he'd find some cool tone or unusual sequence of notes to keep my attention. Brad Whitford, I realize now, also did some lead guitar, but Perry was the one you'd usually see playing solos in the videos, so I kind of assumed it was all him at the time. Some of my favorite solos on this playlist include "Cheese Cake," "Uncle Salty," and "Nobody's Fault."

"Sight For Sore Eyes" was co-written with David Johansen of the New York Dolls and Jack Douglas, who'd engineered the Dolls' debut before producing most of Aerosmith's best albums. The reference to 'Coney Island white fish' in the title of one of the best songs on Night in the Ruts is a colorful slang term for a used condom. Lenny Kravitz co-wrote "Line Up," and Marti Frederiksen, who sang Jason Lee's Stillwater parts in Almost Famous, co-wrote "Attitude Adjustment" and "Light Inside." 

As the band leaned more on power ballads and song doctors in their later years, I made an effort to pick through those records and find the best uptempo stuff. The playlist really ended up being pretty much 75 minutes of back-to-back rockers with one nice mellow song at the end, "Tell Me," a rare solo writing credit from bassist Tom Hamilton. So I'm proud of it, I think you could play the whole thing without bailing out after track 11 or track 16 like you might be bracing yourself to. 

12:18 PM

Monthly Report: April 2026 Albums

Monday, May 18, 2026
















1. Jai'len Josey - Serial Romantic
Between this album and the recent Leven Kali record, Def Jam is putting out some quality R&B from people who aren't household names or even getting any radio play yet. Atlanta's Jai'Len Josey co-wrote Ari Lennox's hit "Pressure" and has some of her own stuff in the same wheelhouse, but I feel like she's got her own distinctive way of emoting and stacking harmonies, great voice. And I don't think there's a single track on here that I don't like, but the album really hits its highest peaks on the second half with the breakbeat house of "Serial Romantic" and the piano ballad "I Believe (Selfish)." Here's the 2026 albums Spotify playlist that I constantly fill with new releases. 

2. Friko - Something Worth Waiting For
I heard the Something Worth Waiting For single "Seven Degrees" on WTMD a few weeks back and immediately had to look up this Chicago band and and see that their album was about to come out. Niko Kapetan's singing is mannered and dramatic (I was a little surprised to see that they're American and not British or something), but it adds a little welcome oomph to their ragged guitar-driven jams. It's always exciting to hear a band so fully figure out what they're doing with total confidence and purpose on their second album, my favorite songs so far are "Still Around" and "Alice." 

3. They Might Be Giants - The World Is to Dig
TMBG's debut will turn 40 later this year, and I'm really impressed by the sheer volume of songs they've written over the years. The majority of them are 2 minutes long and have absurd or comedic premises, but there's an incredibly high level of craft and consistency. On some of the later albums, John Flansburgh's more broadly goofy lyrics tend to dominate, but The World Is to Dig is a pretty John Linnell-heavy album. And he's in great form, there's a lot of unspecified menace and dread drifting just out of frame in "Character Flaw," "What the Cat Dragged In," and "Je n'en ai pas." 

4. Julia Cumming - Julia
The promotional literature for the debut solo album by Sunflower Bean frontwoman Julia Cumming boasts of "echoes of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick," so I expected some swinging '60s retro aesthetics. But both the language and the production are fairly contemporary -- two of the best songs are named "Fucking Closure" and "Emotional Labor." Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's really the architecture of the songs, the way Cumming sings long, articulate sentences with poise over rhythmically intricate jazz pop, that justifies that lofty Brill Building comparison. 

5. Ella Langley - Dandelions
Ella Langley was my favorite breakout country star of 2024, but I was still a little thrown by how quickly "Choosin' Texas," currently in its 9th week at #1 on the Hot 100, took off in ways that no solo song by a female country singer has in arguably decades (Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA," are the closest points comparisons, both from long before Langley was born). Miranda Lambert, who knows a thing or two about creating good, cohesive mainstream country albums, co-wrote "Choosin' Texas," which led to her executive producing Dandelions and appearing as the album's only featured guest on "Butterfly Season" (a Morgan Wallen duet was tacked onto the album 2 weeks after the initial release, but I'm going to ignore that and keep listening to the original release). And Dandelions feels like a step forward from Langley's debut creatively as well as commercially, and "Low Lights" and "Loving Life Again" in particular are great displays of the subtly expressive power of her voice. And I like that the album's one cover feels like a nod to the historical lineage she's now a part of: "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" by Kitty Wells, which was the first country #1 for a solo woman on Billboard way back in 1952. 

6. Jackson Dean - Magnolia Sage
On Saturday, Jackson Dean will headline a music festival at the Maryland high school he graduated from in 2019, which is just 20 minutes from where he lives. I interviewed Jackson a few years ago and am friendly with one of the guys in his band, and I'm happy to see his continued success with his third Big Machine album. He's one of those singers who had this cool raspy tone even as a teenager and he's just getting more and more in command of his instrument with time, I think "5th of July" and "Make a Liar" are some of his best vocal performances to date. 

7. Bruce McCulloch - Dark Purple Slice
Shame-Based Man, the album that Bruce McCulloch released in 1995 at the end of the original TV run of "The Kids in the Hall," is one of my favorite comedy albums of all time, I really think it's a masterpiece. So I was delighted to see a few days ago that Brucio just released a new album -- I thought it was his second but it's actually his third, I need to go find 2002's Drunk Baby Project, which isn't on streaming services. Dark Purple Slice isn't as consistently hilarious and strange as Shame-Based Man, but I'm still so hyped that it exists, this guy has such a huge influence on my sense of humor, my favorite tracks so far are "Sad Mall," "Songs That Didn't Make The Record," and "Sobriety." 

8. Noah Kahan - The Great Divide
The Great Divide outpaced J. Cole's album for the biggest first week of 2026, at least for the time being until that record gets officially broken by Drake in a few days. And that's not a surprise per se given that Kahan's last album, 2022's Stick Season, is four times platinum, but it's still kind of fun and unlikely that a folky singer-songwriter from Vermont is in the big leagues with the superstar rappers. The album is 77 minutes long, and a week later he released a deluxe version that's 96 minutes long, so it's really a lot for someone like me who never had very strong feelings about Kahan before The Great Divide's excellent title track. But he's really growing on me, there's a darkness and lacerating wit in songs like "Haircut" and "Dashboard" that I didn't expect. 

9. Kehlani - Kehlani
"Folded" became the biggest song of Kehlani's career pretty quickly, so I was skeptical about her releasing an album more than 10 months later, like maybe she wasn't capitalizing on the song's momentum. But I was wrong, because "Folded" is still top 3 on both R&B radio and pop radio right now, and she's made an album that strikes the same delicate balance of evoking '90s and early 2000s R&B without leaning on samples and interpolations to do that most of the time like hacks like Tory Lanez. There are a lot of guests, many of them from that era, but they're mostly used to great effect, I particularly like the songs with Missy and Usher. 

10. Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize - Nine Inch Noize
My brother had a couple tickets to Nine Inch Nails in Wisconsin a few months ago and offered one to me, but it fell on one of the busiest weeks of the year for the company I work for, so I had to pass. Ultimately I wound up not even working the day of the concert, so maybe I could've made a flight out, I dunno, that was a bummer. But one of the things that people loved about the Peel It Back Tour was the B-stage where Trent Reznor and the tour's opening act, German producer Alex "Boys Noize" Ridha, would do live remixes of NIN songs, and now there's an album of those remixes (that I guess was recorded on the tour, because you can occasionally hear crowd noise). I particularly like the version of "Heresy" on here and that they resurrected one of the songs from Reznor's underrated How To Destroy Angels project. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Zayn - Konnakol
I never really cared whether One Direction would reunite, but I at least kinda hoped that the other guys would be united on some level by the tragedy of Liam Payne's death, and was encouraged by the news that Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson were making a road trip docuseries for Netflix. And then production shut down amidst reports that Zayn punched Louis, and there were earlier allegations of violence in his relationship with Gigi Hadid, so I think this guy might just be a piece of shit, I'm kind of glad that his U.S. tour was canceled. Konnokol features the most Zayn collaborations with Frank Ocean producer James "Malay" Ho since his debut, but I never really liked the 'alt R&B' vibe of Mind of Mine, I think Nobody is Listening might quietly be Zayn's best solo album. 

9:47 AM