My Favorite Artists of the 1970s

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

 




I've previously done this for the 2010s, the 1990s, and the 1980s -- taking all my lists of favorite albums for each years of those decades, creating a weighted points system, and tabulating which artists made the most records that I love the most. An extremely nerdy thing to do on top of an already pretty nerdy pursuit, but I find it a lot of fun. And I'd been really looking forward to doing this with the 1970s because it's kind of the peak era of artists I loved who often made one or two albums every year, meaning there's a lot more data to work with. So now that I've listed my 50 favorite albums and 100 favorite singles of each year of the '70s (links at the bottom of the post), I crunched the numbers, and in some instances surprised myself a little bit. 

My 50 Favorite Album Artists of the 1970s:

1. David Bowie
2. Joni Mitchell
3. Steely Dan
4. Little Feat
5. Stevie Wonder
6. Neil Young
7. Elton John
8. Thin Lizzy
9. Led Zeppelin
10. Queen
11. Grateful Dead
12. Marvin Gaye
13. Jackson Browne
14. Funkadelic (tie)
14. Willie Nelson (tie)
16. Al Green (tie)
16. The Allman Brothers Band (tie)
18. The Rolling Stones
19. The Who
20. Elvis Costello
21. Tom Waits
22. Bruce Springsteen
23. Fleetwood Mac
24. Donna Summer
25. Electric Light Orchestra
26. The Ramones
27. Todd Rundgren
28. Big Star (tie)
28. Talking Heads (tie)
30. Black Sabbath
31. Van Morrison
32. The Clash
33. Paul Simon
34. Bill Withers
35. Billy Joel
36. Aerosmith
37. Yes
38. Bob Dylan
39. Bob Marley & The Wailers
40. Pink Floyd
41. Parliament (tie)
41. T. Rex (tie)
43. Rush
44. Patti Smith
45. Can
46. Curtis Mayfield
47. George Jones (tie)
47. The Isley Brothers (tie)
47. Roxy Music (tie)
50. Sparks (tie)
50. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (tie)

The top six artists were about what I expected but not in the order I would've predicted. The points totals for those artists was pretty close so it could've gone totally differently if I'd re-listened to certain albums and liked them a lot more or less when I was making the lists. I expected Stevie Wonder to be at or closer to the top, particularly since I rate some of the albums outside his 'big four' more than other people, but then again, he only made two albums (and only one good one) in the second half of the decade. Bowie, on the other hand, was really active through the whole decade, and I rated 10 of his 11 albums pretty highly (sorry, Pin Ups).   

A few artists did managed to get on the list with only three '70s albums if they were all great, Elvis Costello being the most prominent of those. If I'd counted Parliament and Funkadelic as the same act, which they essentially were in all but name, they'd actually pull ahead of Stevie Wonder. There are a few other artists who'd move up a spot or two if I'd counted solo albums, and Lou Reed would be on the list if I'd counted Loaded with his solo stuff, but I tried to keep it simple instead of bending the rules for things like that. If I counted every album Brian Eno produced or played on (Roxy Music, Talking Heads, Devo, Bowie, Genesis, John Cale, etc.), he'd be #1! I felt ridiculous having Bob Dylan and Bob Marley next to each other and Bill Withers and Billy Joel next to each other, but that's genuinely just how the numbers shook out. 



























My 50 Favorite Singles Artists of the 1970s:

1. Steely Dan
2. Stevie Wonder
3. Queen
4. Elton John
5. David Bowie
6. Led Zeppelin
7. Al Green
8. The Who
9. Marvin Gaye
10. The Doobie Brothers
11. The Rolling Stones
12. Fleetwood Mac
13. The Eagles
14. Earth, Wind & Fire
15. Elvis Costello
16. Billy Joel
17. Neil Young
18. George Jones
19. The Isley Brothers
20. The Bee Gees
21. Electric Light Orchestra
22. James Brown
23. Aerosmith
24. The Allman Brothers Band
25. Paul Simon
26. Lynyrd Skynyrd
27. Parliament (tie)
27. Bob Seger (tie)
29. The Doors
30. The Police
31. Paul McCartney (tie)
31. Steve Miller Band (tie)
33. Bill Withers
34. Bruce Springsteen
35. Pink Floyd
36. Donna Summer
37. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
38. Van Halen
39. Bad Company
40. Bob Marley & The Wailers
41. Creedence Clearwater Revival
42. Barry White
43. Thin Lizzy
44. Chicago
45. Heart
46. Van Morrison
47. Boston
48. Jackson Browne
49. The Cars
50. Chic

Things were very close here between Steely Dan and Stevie, but they were well ahead of everyone else. The Doobie Brothers are the top singles act that didn't make it onto the albums list, and Joni Mitchell is the top albums act that didn't make the singles list. If Parliament-Funkadelic were counted as one act here, they'd place just ahead of the Eagles. And Funkadelic did better on albums and Parliament did better on singles. Tom Petty is the only artist who appeared on my '70s, '80s, and '90s artist lists, which feels about right to me. 

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

TV Diary

Monday, June 30, 2025

 





I will always love Owen Wilson for Dignan from Bottle Rocket, so "Stick" won me over immediately with his character who's a little bit of a middle-aged Dignan, but with a backstory that's more like Luke Wilson's character from The Royal Tenenbaums. In terms of the pretty high bar a lot of Apple TV+ shows have set, it feels like a very simple, unambitious show, but it's grown on me a lot. Pretty much the whole show is 5 characters driving around in an RV, and I enjoy the interactions between pretty much amy pair of those characters, it's a great little ensemble cast. But the golf prodigy Santi (Peter Dager) is the reason all of those people have been brought together, and he's by far the least likeable character and least likeable actor in the show, especially after being a seriously irredeemable little shit in the last episode. 

Disney+'s MCU series have been really hit or miss, and given that Ryan Coogler is an exec producer on "Ironheart," which centers on a character that was in Wakanda Forever, and has a bunch of actors I usually enjoy, I hoped this would be one of the good ones. But my feelings are pretty mixed after the first three episodes. The main character has an AI assistant who looks and acts like her dead best friend, which is certainly a timely premise, but I don't care for the way that 

Melanie Scrofano battled reincarnated dead people for four seasons on "Wynonna Earp," one of my favorite SyFy of the past ten years. So I'm happy that she's back in another SyFy show about people rising from the dead, nothing wrong with having a niche. And this show has a different tone and premise, apparently it's based on an Image Comics series, I'm enjoying the creepy small town Wisconsin atmosphere and the ensemble cast. 

Kevin Williamson has created some very popular properties including the Scream movies and "Dawson's Creek" and I've seen very very little of his work. Maybe a couple episodes of a show he did with Kevin Bacon a decade ago? I don't know about "The Waterfront," Jake Weary and Humberly Gonzalez have a lot of chemistry so I end up paying attention to their scenes and then tuning out a lot of the rest of the time, which means they're really not utilizing Holt McCallany well. 

I like seeing shows like 2022's "As We See It" where characters on the autism spectrum are played by actors on the spectrum, and Ella Maisy Purvis plays the title character on "Patience," a British show about an autistic archivist in a criminal records department who starts to help a police detective solve crimes. It's so easy to imagine an American version of this show where it's a totally formulaic procedural that depicts Patience's talent as a gimmicky superpower, so I appreciate the subtle and sensitive way this show approaches the story. 

This is a downbeat Australian drama about the family of a teenager who died in a storm in Tasmania. My wife and I had our honeymoon in Australia and I have particularly fond memories of the day or two we spent in Tasmania, so I like seeing it onscreen even if that's not really at all the point here. 

"We Were Liars" is based on a YA novel and reminds me a lot of stuff I've seen before about people leading scandalous lives in beautiful idyllic places, especially the way they keep teasing some big catalyzing event without telling you right away what happened. And I have to say I'm probably not sufficiently curious enough to keep watching to learn more. 

My wife loves Jensen Ackles from "Supernatural" so I was like hey let's watch his new Amazon show, but she tuned out well before the end of the first episode and I didn't last much longer, really rote crime drama stuff. 

Like a lot of people, I've been a little less interested with "The Bear" with each passing season, but I haven't bailed on season 4 or started to actively dislike it like some have. I do think it'd be good if it stopped winning comedy categories at award shows and/or got moved to drama categories, though. Out of the first six episodes of the season that I've watched, I didn't laugh at all until the third episode, although I did laugh pretty hard at that one on multiple occasions. And I haven't seen any self-indulgent episodes that made me despair like S2E7 or S3E1, although Syd's more serious storylines are a lot more compelling than Carmy's at this point. I liked when Carmy finally set a repeating menu, though, that was a nice moment of rare actual character development. Generally, I still like the cast and their characters and the atmosphere and really effective use of music, the episode with Talk Talk and Pretenders songs was especially good. 

This Cartoon Network series about an orphan who discovers she has mystic powers has a pretty cool visual style. I feel like my kids might dig this one but I haven't gotten them to watch it yet. It's already a hit, though, and recently got renewed for a second season, and some Baltimore guys from a production company called Blakwater Music do a lot of the music for the series, happy to see them doing well. 

This Netflix anime series is about a lunar rebellion, which is just an awesome premise, although I'm not that into the animation style. 

l) "Go!"
A South African show on Netflix about a sprinter going to an elite school on a scholarship, didn't really take much of an interest in it after sampling an episode. 

New Jersey novelist Harlan Coben's books have sold 90 million copies, and since 2018 he's had a huge production deal with Netflix that has adapted at least a dozen of his books into series, all limited series that run 5 to 8 episodes, some American productions and some made in France or Poland or Argentina, which is where "Caught" was made. And I have no idea if any of these shows are particularly popular even by Netflix standards, I've never heard anybody talk about any of them, my only  knowledge of any of this stuff is seeing it pop up on my Netflix menu. "Caught" is pretty dour, I didn't get too far with it. 

"Just One Look" is another Harlen Coben adaptation, I think the third or fourth Polish production, so maybe they really love this stuff in Poland. This one is about a woman whose husband has disappeared, I found it a little more interesting than most of the Coben shows I've seen. 

"Until You Burn" is a Colombian show about a guy avenging his dead brother, it's based on a very old novel but my frame of reference is that it mostly reminds me of that ABC show "Revenge." 

I guess the title of this Netflix series is riffing on a '60s martial arts movie called Japan's Number One Judo-Man. It's a dramedy about a politician who's kind of a shitty selfish person who gradually becomes a better person in the process of trying to improve his public image, which is a very interestingly unfamiliar concept to someone who mainly knows what politicians are like in America, like I can't even imagine a show with that storyline taking place here unless it was a lot more pointedly satirical. 

A charming Turkish show about a guy who can see a ghost and helps them try to solve their murder, I like it and the actress Elsa Bilgic is so beautiful. 

This is an example of the kind of great title and premise -- an action series about a teenager who outsmarts his bigger and stronger bullies at school -- that you can get from Korea that you would never get from American TV. 

I've been complaining a lot lately about the trend of game shows and reality shows being hosted by actors, not totally washed-up actors but reasonably good and respected who should be doing a scripted show instead. In this case, NBC's "Destination X" is hosted by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who stars in a current hit show, "The Boys," and I don't know if that makes it better or worse. I kind of like the concept of "Destination X" even if it's still pretty stupid, and some of the women on the show are really beautiful, as is often the case with these shows. 

"Call Her Alex" is a two-part Hulu documentary about Alexandra Cooper, host of the "Call Her Daddy" podcast. I don't know much about all this stuff but it's one of those situations where someone is a lot more earnest about what they do than you might expect, the whole thing takes itself very seriously. One of the episode descriptions is "what starts as a sex podcast evolves into the foundation of an empire."  

A nice Disney+ docuseries about a competitive figure skating team from Harlem, it's such an interesting sort of combination of athleticism and choreography. 

I have a higher tolerance for Ryan Reynolds than a lot of people, but this Disney+ show where he does wacky voiceovers to nature footage is pretty annoying. 

This show continues to feature Ryan Reynolds in agreeable small doses alongside more interesting figures like Welsh football hooligans. I like how it's a sports doc that deals with the actual games but also gives you such a wide view of the business side and the fans in the team's city, there's some really great storytelling in this show. 

I don't know much about sports or sneakers but I remember how Reebok and Nike were the two big brands when I was growing up, and then at some point I realized that Nike was still huge and Reebok had fallen way behind. So it's interesting to see this show about Shaq and Allen Iverson leading Reebok's effort to be competitive again and land some big athlete endorsements, it's all about the behind-the-scenes process like that movie Air

There are so many docuseries about cults now, and every episode of this Freeform series is about a different cult, which really shows you what an epidemic it is in America. 

Netflix frames each "Trainwreck" installment as a feature film but they're really not that much longer than an hour and they release a new one every week, it's really a series. Of the new season, I've watched the Rob Ford one and the Astroworld festival tragedy, and that one really made me angry. I love that some people risked their careers or their business relationships with Live Nation to talk about what happened. 

Saturday, June 28, 2025

 




I took a look back at the history of country/rap collaborations for Complex

Friday, June 27, 2025

















I wrote t
he first edition of Spin's new weekly column Deep Cut Friday about "Wind Chimes" by the Beach Boys. I also wrote pieces ranking the albums of Fugazi, Pulp, Marianne Faithfull, and Alanis Morissette

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

 








Today is the 3rd annual Baltimore Club Music Day and I'm very happy to announce that my first book Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music will be out on August 19 via Repeater Books! The book is up for preorder pretty much anywhere books are sold, but don't hesitate to reach out (my email is shipley.al@gmail.com) if you have an independent bookstore or media outlet or podcast or really anywhere I can sell this book or get the word out about it, I am very excited to finally share this thing with the world! I interviewed 50 people over a span of 18 years for this book and I'm really proud of it. 

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 389: The Beach Boys

Monday, June 16, 2025

 





Brian Wilson died on Wednesday at the age of 82, two days after Sly Stone, who was also 82. People have compared it to when David Bowie and Prince died in the same year, but I don't know if we've ever lost two titans of popular music in the same week in unrelated deaths like this before. As this series stretches into nearly 400 volumes, I've covered most of the big names I could possibly cover, but there are always certain indispensable artists I haven't gotten to yet, and the Beach Boys are one of those that stayed at the top of my to-do list, I just kept putting off the exciting but daunting task of trying to boil down this catalog to 80 minutes. Kinda wish I'd gotten it done before Brian passed away, but it gave me a reason to dig in and work on it finally. 

The Beach Boys deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Heads You Win, Tails I Lose
2. Chug-A-Lug
3. Farmer's Daughter
4. Catch A Wave
5. No-Go Showboat
6. The Warmth of the Sun
7. All Summer Long
8. Merry Christmas, Baby
9. She Knows Me Too Well
10. In The Back Of My Mind
11. Girl Don't Tell Me
12. Let Him Run Wild
13. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
14. I'm Waiting For The Day
15. Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
16. Wind Chimes
17. Vegetables
18. Aren't You Glad
19. Let The Wind Blow
20. Busy Doin' Nothin'
21. Be Still
22. Our Prayer
23. Cabinessence
24. All I Wanna Do
25. Forever
26. 'Til I Die
27. Feel Flows
28. All This Is That
29. California Saga (Big Sur)
30. Back Home
31. The Night Was So Young

Tracks 1 and 2 from Surfin' Safari (1962)
Track 3 from Surfin' U.S.A. (1963)
Track 4 from Surfer Girl (1963)
Track 5 from Little Deuce Coupe (1963)
Track 6 from Shut Down Volume 2 (1964)
Track 7 from All Summer Long (1964)
Track 8 from The Beach Boys' Christmas Album (1964)
Tracks 9 and 10 from The Beach Boys Today! (1965)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (1965)
Track 13 from Beach Boys' Party! (1965)
Tracks 14 and 15 from Pet Sounds (1966)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Smiley Smile (1967)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Wild Honey (1967)
Tracks 20 and 21 from Friends (1968)
Tracks 22 and 23 from 20/20 (1969)
Tracks 24 and 25 from Sunflower (1970)
Tracks 26 and 27 from Surf's Up (1971)
Track 28 from Carl and the Passions - "So Tough" (1972)
Track 29 from Holland (1973)
Track 30 from 15 Big Ones (1976)
Track 31 from The Beach Boys Love You (1977)

Growing up, the Who and Hendrix were a bit more important to me than the Beach Boys and the Beatles, in terms of me just having an immediate connection to the '60s music that was more about the raw energy of a band. So for me, part of my musical maturation has been caring just as much about studio craftmanship, in a weird way Steely Dan and Burt Bacharach were my gateways to appreciating what Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys did. 

Pet Sounds was the only Beach Boys album I heard as a teenager. I'd only just gotten into their great '70s albums Surf's Up and Sunflower and Holland for the first time in the past year and I was amazed, as many people have been, at how modern "All I Wanna Do" and "Feel Flows" sound. And this past week it was really fun to listen to the '60s albums in chronological order and really experience that incredible creative journey the band went on. Hearing how they got to Pet Sounds made me appreciate that album even more. I really almost opened the playlist with "Chug-A-Lug" because I love the idea of starting that journey with a song about drinking root beer. 

Of course, the big dividing point in the Beach Boys story is before and after Smile, the legendary 'lost' album that remained uncompleted after Brian Wilson reached a breaking point in 1967, despite the success of the lead single "Good Vibrations." Several tracks written for Smile appeared on other Beach Boys albums over the next few years, sometimes in very different arrangements, including "Vegetables," "Wind Chimes," "Our Prayer," and "Cabinessence" on this playlist (I will say, I like the Smile version of "Wind Chimes" a lot more than the Smiley Smile version here, but both are good). 

Smile was eventually completed in a couple forms -- with new recordings as 2004's Brian Wilson Presents Smile, and with the original tapes as 2011's The Smile Sessions. Listening to those, I don't think Smile ever would've surpassed Pet Sounds -- I think it would've been a great follow-up to their pinnacle, the Wish You Were Here to their Dark Side of the Moon. It still feels like one of popular music's great what-if albums, though. I think the band would've been commercially and creatively a lot better off if they'd finished Smile in '67 and released that instead of the comparatively lo-fi Smiley Smile.  

Stephen Thomas Erlewine's excellent Stereogum piece about some of Wilson's best deep cuts included some of these tracks ("Farmer's Daughter," "The Warmth of the Sun," "Let Him Run Wild," "Busy Doin' Nothin'," and "The Night Was So Young"). Given that the Beach Boys made 29 albums over the course of 50 years, I thought about whether to try to cover that entire run or cut it off somewhere. And seeing that 1989's Still Cruisin', the album that contained the band's divisive last #1 single "Kokomo," isn't on streaming services kinda made me feel free to end the playlist somewhere earlier, and '77's The Beach Boys Love You seemed like a good place to stop as one of their last well regarded albums.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements

My Top 50 Movies of 2021

Friday, June 13, 2025































1. Annette (Leos Carax)
2. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
3. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
4. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum)
5. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
6. No Sudden Move (Steven Soderbergh)
7. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen)
8. Passing (Rebecca Hall)
9. The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
10. CODA (Sian Heder)
11. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (Dean Fleischer Camp)
12. Dune (Denil Villeneuve)
13. Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond)
14. Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King)
15. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Questlove)
16. The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright)
17. Pig (Mark Sarnoski)
18. Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
19. There’s Someone Inside Your House (Patrick Brice)
20. Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro)
21. The Green Knight (David Lowery)
22. Malignant (James Wan)
23. The Survivor (Barry Levinson)
24. The Mitchells vs The Machines (Mike Rianda)
25. Val (Leo Scott and Ting Poo)
26. Encanto (Jared Bush and Byron Howard)
27. In The Heights (Jon M. Chu)
28. Last Night In Soho (Edgar Wright)
29. The Suicide Squad (James Gunn)
30. X (Ti West)
31. No One Gets Out Alive (Santiago Menghini)
32. The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
33. How It Ends (Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones)
34. Mixtape (Valerie Weiss)
35. Good On Paper (Kimmy Gatewood)
36. The Harder They Fall (Jaymes Samuel)
37. Moxie (Amy Poehler)
38. Locked Down (Doug Liman)
39. Eternals (Chloe Zhao)
40. Language Lessons (Natalie Morales)
41. Reminiscence (Lisa Joy)
42. Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
43. Luca (Enrico Casarosa)
44. Army of the Dead (Zack Snyder)
45. Ron’s Gone Wrong (Sarah Smith and Jean-Philippe Vine)
46. Antlers (Scott Cooper)
47. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)
48. Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin)
49. Jolt (Tanya Wexler)
50. Tick, Tick… BOOM! (Lin-Manuel Miranda)

I recently rewatched both Annette and The Sparks Brothers while working on my Sparks piece and those are both a good time. I am pretty grouchy about late period Wes Anderson but I think The French Dispatch is easily my favorite since his first three movies. 

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024