Deep Album Cuts Vol. 401: Billy Joel

Tuesday, April 21, 2026

 







It's been almost a year since Billy Joel canceled his usually robust concert schedule because of his diagnosis of a brain disorder called normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), but he played two songs with a Billy Joel cover band in January, so I hope he's doing better and still has some good times ahead of him, whether performing or not. 

Billy Joel deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I Can Tell (with The Hassles)
2. Amlifier Fire (with Attila)
3. You Can Make Me Free
4. Stop In Nevada
5. Los Angelenos
6. Summer, Highland Falls
7. Get It Right the First Time
8. Everybody Has A Dream
9. Stiletto
10. Half A Mile Away
11. Sleeping With The Television On
12. Close To The Borderline
13. Laura
14. She's Right On Time
15. Christie Lee
16. Running On Ice
17. Why Should I Worry
18. Storm Front
19. Famous Last Words
20. Suite For Piano (Star-Crossed): Delusion

Track 1 from The Hassles with The Hassles (1970)
Track 2 from Attila with Attila (1970)
Track 3 from Cold Spring Harbor (1971)
Track 4 from Piano Man (1973)
Track 5 from Streetlife Serenade (1974)
Track 6 from Turnstiles (1976)
Tracks 7 and 8 from The Stranger (1977)
Tracks 9 and 10 from 52nd Street (1978)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Glass Houses (1980)
Tracks 13 and 14 from The Nylon Curtain (1982)
Track 15 from An Innocent Man (1983)
Track 16 from The Bridge (1986)
Track 17 from Oliver & Company (Origional Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1988)
Track 18 from Storm Front (1989)
Track 19 from River of Dreams (1993)
Track 20 from Fantasies & Delusions (2001)

I wrote a Deep Cut Friday column for Spin last year about "You Can Make Me Free," and how it ended up on streaming services today in an edit that's less than half as long as the original album version. There's a YouTube of the full 6-minute song in my article, it's awesome, but I had to settle for the shorter one in this playlist. At the end of the piece I singled out "Stiletto," "Sleeping with the Television On," and "She's Right On Time" as some other essential deep cuts, while also mentioning a variety of Joel album tracks that felt kind of too famous to include in this playlist because of their contemporary popularity on rock radio, streaming services, and/or at Joel concerts: “Captain Jack,” “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant,” “New York State of Mind," “Zanzibar,” and “Miami 2017." There are still some fairly famous songs on the playlist, because I didn't want to whittle away the presence of certain top tier Joel albums, so it was ultimately a gut thing. 

Billy Joel recorded three albums with his early bands, two with The Hassles and one with Attila, and there's a handful of tracks from before Joel's solo career on his 2005 box set My Lives. So I grabbed the one Attila song that's on My Lives and a song from the resequenced reissue of The Hassles' debut that's on streaming services. I've long been fascinated by Attila, Joel's psych rock duo with Hassles drummer Jon Small, where he played heavily distorted organ. I really like that album, it would be nice to pick any track of my choosing, but I still enjoyed including "Amplifier Fire." 

I recently watched and enjoyed the movie Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, which opens with Ben Schwartz singing Billy Joel's song from Oliver & Company, "Why Should I Worry." I have a very vague memory of seeing that movie as a child, possibly in the theater when I would've been 6 years old. And I'm pretty sure I loved the song then before I had any idea who Billy Joel was, because the memory just came rushing back when I heard that song again, for the first time in 30-something years. "Running On Ice" is a pretty good Police song, but it is 100% a pastiche of The Police to an almost eerie degree. 

It's funny to think that the piano is such a central instrument of western pop music, and yet there are few enough major stars known primarily for singing behind a piano in the last 60 years or so that Elton John and Billy Joel kind of stand apart as the token piano guys. I wish I had seen one of the tours they did together back when they were buddies, it made me sad that they've fallen out to enough of a degree that they didn't appear in each other's recent career-spanning documentaries (Billy Joel: And So It Goes is a great watch, though, see it on HBO if you haven't). I mentioned this in another recent post, but I grew up thinking of them as guys who were both just generally active and successful at the same time. It was only later, upon looking closer, that I realized that Joel's first really huge album The Stranger came out less than a year after Elton John's career started to cool down for the first time with Blue Moves. Maybe there wasn't even room for two token piano guys at a time, just one. 

One bone of contention between Billy Joel and Elton John was that Joel stopped writing songs and making albums after River of Dreams and happily transitioned into just performing his back catalog, releasing only a classical album in 2001 (a pretty good new single, "Turn the Lights Back On," came out two years ago, but it appears to be a one-off). Since River of Dreams, Elton John has made 7 solo albums, 4 albums of duets and collaborations, and 5 film soundtracks or stage musical scores. And I've listened to all of that stuff and really like some of it and respect Elton's creative drive and passion for championing new artists. But I don't think he's significantly added to his legacy in that time in ways Joel hasn't, Lion King aside. Plus, not to take anything away from the Elton John/Bernie Taupin partnership, but Billy Joel doesn't have a dedicated lyricist sending him pages of new words to get him started on songs if he's not feeling inspired (Joel says something in the doc about freeing himself from "the tyranny of the rhyme"). 

And to simply stop recording after a huge album that went platinum 5 times over, continuing to live and perform but never going back to the well trying to extend that time on top, is kinda badass. I don't know if anybody else has really done that in popular music. Some albums sold more than others, but he never really had a flop after The Stranger made him a major star. And River of Dreams isn't his best but it ain't a bad one to go out on. I'm generally not very into covers albums, but it could be cool for Billy Joel to do one, his voice is in much better shape than most stars his age. 

10:08 AM

Monthly Report: March 2026 Albums

Monday, April 20, 2026























1. Raye - This Music May Contain Hope
British retro divas have been a staple of popular music for decades now, and Raye is conscious of her place in that lineage, referencing comparisons to Amy Winehouse a few minutes into her second album. And while Raye has a great voice and a solid command of a few different styles of mid-20th century popular song, This Music May Contain Hope is just bursting at the seams with words and humor and big ambitious ideas, it reminds me more of Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city than Adele's 21. It's very earnest and heart-on-its-sleeve in a way that I can see being offputting to some people, but I really get swept up in the emotion of "I Know You're Hurting" and "Goodbye Henry" and "Nightingale Lane" and even the 6-minute closing track where she thanks every person who worked on the album, including every single member of the London Symphony Orchestra, which is oddly kind of beautiful and affecting. 
I remember saying a year ago that I expected big things from Raye's next album, and I'm very happy that I was right. Here's the 2026 albums Spotify playlist that I'm constantly putting new releases in. 

2. Leven Kali - LK99
A dude named Joe from Twitter who's put me onto some good R&B told me this was his favorite album of the year so far, so I moved it up in my queue of new releases to listen to, and it was definitely worth it. Leven Kali is a Dutch-born multi-instrumentalist and singer based in L.A. whose father's the bassist in the underrated '70s band Mother's Finest. Kali had credits on some big albums (Drake's More Life, four of the best songs on Beyonce's Renaissance) and put out a couple albums on Interscope that I somehow missed. But his new one, his first for Def Jam, is just absolutely killer, deep grooves and gorgeous production. The album really hits its stride for me with the middle stretch of "Starlet," "Grab It," and "Just a Lil' Bit," but the whole thing is so smooth and enjoyable. 

3. Ty Myers - Heavy On The Soul
Austin teenager Ty Myers is probably my favorite new country star to emerge in the past year, a really promising songwriter with great taste. He recorded his second album in the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, and it just has a great relaxed sound and "Songs For You" and "Me Neither" are some of my favorite songs. But what really cemented my love of this album is the cover of Little Feat's "Two Trains" with Marcus King, it's just awesome to hear a couple of talented guys born in 2007 and 1996 play a deep cut from Dixie Chicken and totally do it justice, 

4. Darsombra - SYZYGY
After Darsombra's Ann Everton died in a car crash last year, I spent a week talking to people who knew her for a Baltimore Banner piece. And at first I didn't even have any expectation of talking to Brian Daniloski, who survived the crash, just because I had no idea what state he was in physically or emotionally. But I let people who knew him pass my number along, and one morning my phone rang, and I spent an hour talking to someone who'd just lost their wife and bandmate, and I'm really grateful that Brian was willing to give me some of his time in the aftermath of that tragedy and share happy memories of Ann. A few weeks ago there was a two-night Ann Everton tribute concert at the Ottobar, I only got up there from D.C. for the very last set of the second night by Celebration, which was awesome, and soon after, Brian released a new Darsombra album. Brian told me about how excited he and Ann were about the next album they were planning to make together, but SYZYGY is a collection of more minimal ambient work from their fertile 2020-2022 COVID-era sessions, and I love this really spacey 'slowly drifting in the ether' side of their catalog. 

5. Underscores - U
April Harper Grey aka Underscores has toured with 100 Gecs and makes music in a somewhat similar 'hyperpop' style, lots of different influences mushed together with AutoTune vocals and glitchy post-dubstep sonics. And I'm generally not hugely into that stuff, at this point it just sounds like a dated 2010s concept of 'the future of music' to me. But Grey is a really gifted songwriter, U has hooks for days, "Bodyfeeling" and "Tell Me (U Want It)" would put a lot of Top 40 pro songwriters to shame. And the idiosyncratic laptop production never gets in the way of the tunes, really just enhancing them with energetic, unpredictable arrangements. 

6. Charlie Puth - Whatever's Clever! 
Charlie Puth is one of those Top 40 pros that it's easy to sneer at, but he really broke down my skepticism and won me over with his second album, 2018's Voicenotes, and his fourth album is even better. Whatever's Clever! is his first album since Taylor Swift famously declared "Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist" on The Tortured Poets Department's title track two years ago, and the sympathy shoutout from a superstar doesn't seem to have given his boost to his career, if anything he's even less commercially successful now. The album is co-produced by BloodPop, a guy who started his career working with Grimes before making huge hits with Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, but the electronics are pretty subtle on Whatever's Clever!, it's mostly high gloss '80s pop and soft rock, but there's more feeling in the tracks than just nostalgia, like the tracks featuring Kenny G and Michael McDonald are genuinely great songs. 

7. Haute & Freddy - Big Disgrace
Michelle Buzz and Lance Shipp are both veterans of the big pop song machine who have written for people like Katy Perry and Britney Spears, and when I interviewed them for Spin last year early in the launch of their alt-pop duo project Haute & Freddy, they were pretty disinterested in talking about that part of their careers, although I would've loved to pick their brains about it. But I dig the way they've carved out a different niche with Haute & Freddy that's still very pop and makes sense as a major label album. I think that the early single "Shy Girl" is still my favorite song on Big Disgrace but I like the whole thing, "Showgirl at Heart" and "Sweet Surrender" are really good, Buzz does the pouty, stylized Cyndi Lauper '80s pop diva vocal style so well. 

8. Terrace Martin - Perspective
L.A. jazz/soul/hip-hop producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin amazed me with the 8 albums or EPs he released in 2023, and it feels like he might have an even more prolific 2026 based on the pace he's set so far with four albums in the first three months of the year. Perspective is my favorite of those releases, which kinda feels like a mostly instrumental R&B record with lots of retro synth and drum machine sounds and occasional saxophone and vocals, sometimes vocoded, great chillout music. 

9. Kim Gordon - Play Me
I loved Kim Gordon's sort-of first solo album, 2019's No Home Record, and thought the wildly acclaimed 2024 follow-up The Collective was a bit overrated by comparison. But going back to both as well as the new one, Play Me, I just like what Gordon and producer Justin Raisen are doing together in general, I like when there's a bit more guitar in the mix and the beats aren't so "trap," but she's doing something that's in conversation with her Sonic Youth work but also pretty different and it's awesome to see. 

10. Harry Styles - Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. 
I observed recently that since winning the Grammy for Album of the Year, Harry Styles is uncool and overexposed in a way that even One Direction never was, and some people thought I was just insulting him outright. But I think all his solo records are good and in the same rough ballpark of quality (although none as good as One Direction's Four), I was just observing the fluctuations in public opinion. Styles isn't the typical ex-boy band superstar who's an irrepressible born entertainer like George Michael or Justin Timberlake, and he's not on some kind of journey off the beaten path like Scott Walker either. He just makes these gently hooky, unassuming records with Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, even the new one that is far more overtly danceable than his previous records is a relatively mellow take on those influences. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Jack Harlow - Monica
In the early 2020s, Jack Harlow released two platinum albums driven by hit singles that swiftly expanded his audience and made him the latest in a long line of white rappers that have seduced America. And then, for whatever reason, he decided to decouple his album efforts from his single efforts, and his last two albums will probably never go gold. 2023's "Lovin On Me" was an absolutely enormous hit, #1 on the Hot 100 and #5 on the year-end Hot 100 for 2024, and if he'd put it on an album of similar material he'd have probably had a blockbuster on his hands. Instead, that song was not on 2023's Jackman, 10 songs of 'serious' raps with no guests or crossover-friendly hooks, or on 2026's Monica, 9 songs of mumbly half-assed R&B that have been widely ridiculed over a rollout that included Harlow proudly saying "I got blacker" to two white music critics. Maybe he'll bounce back from this, maybe he won't, I really don't care because always been kind of a dull middleweight talent. But it's grimly funny to watch someone who had a winning formula dismantle it for a couple of really misguided, unsuccessful plays for musical credibility and acclaim. 

10:07 AM

Friday, April 17, 2026

 





I wrote about Lady Gaga's "Jewels N' Drugs" for Spin's Deep Cut Friday column this week.

3:49 PM

TV Diary

Thursday, April 16, 2026

 







Dan Levy's first feature Good Grief was a decent little dramedy, but I'm glad he's back with a new Netflix series he co-created with Rachel Sennott that feels a little more like his proper follow-up to "Schitt's Creek." Levy and Taylor Ortega, who I've adored since "Welcome To Flatch," play a pastor and his sister who piss off some mobsters and cartels and get mixed up in a bunch of dangerous shit. The story just keeps jumping through all these tangents that don't always make sense, I think "Search Party" did this kind of thing with a little more energy and gleeful absurdity, but overall I really like it. Every scene with Ortega and Jack Innanen is hilarious, they have this great dynamic as a very specific kind of dysfunctional couple. And Levy just plays a bit more of an earnest protagonist here, he's more the anchor of the story than he was on "Schitt's Creek" but not as funny as he was on "Schitt's Creek." 

This reminds me of Alexander Payne's Downsizing in that it's got some impressive writing and acting that feels at odds with the wacky Honey, I Shrunk The Kids-style premise and visual effects. Certainly that's a deliberate choice to some extent, but it still results in a weird mix of tones and some inevitably corny physical comedy revolving around one character being shrunk down to a few inches tall. The meat of the show, though, Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen trapped in a bitter, loveless marriage, is pretty well done. 
 
c) "Rooster" 
As someone who has always enjoyed Bill Lawrence's sitcoms, I'm happy to say that 2026 feels like peak Bill Lawrence -- "Shrinking" has hit its stride and is I think one of his best shows to date, the "Scrubs" revival was better than I thought it'd be, his biggest hit "Ted Lasso" is returning soon, and "Rooster" had HBO's biggest ratings for a new comedy in over a decade. "Rooster" has a completely different HBO-y look from Lawrence's other shows (even the episodes directed by Zach Braff!), but the tone is familiar, Steve Carell and John C. McGinley are hilarious as always, and it's cool to see Charly Clive in something like this after her star-making role in "Pure," she's great. Michael Stipe did the theme song, which is a pretty cool get, but I wouldn't have even guessed it was him if I didn't know. 

I love horror movies, but the trope of repeated fakeouts where you're led to anticipate a scary or violent turn of events long before they start happening, is not my favorite thing about horror movies, although it can be done well to comedic effect. Netflix's "Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen," true to its title, has a whole lot of that, I find it a little exasperating, but otherwise it's pretty good. I thought "The Magicians" had one of the best casts on television in the 2010s and I'm annoyed that those actors aren't all over the place now, so it's nice that at least Adam DiMarco is staying booked. 

Scott Speedman always seemed to me like a super generic early 2000s actor that never left a strong impression in his various roles in the Underworld franchise in other stuff. But now he's in the title role in a hit ABC show based on Carl Hiaasen novel and I feel like it's the first time I've found his performance charming and memorable, he's good as a hardscrabble private investigator down on his luck. And he has good chemistry with Jaina Lee Ortiz, who I previously loyally watched in another crime drama set in Miami, "Rosewood." 

Last month I complained about the style of murder mystery that's in vogue on TV when I wrote about "DTF St. Louis," but "Imperfect Women" is really a better example of how boring these kind of flashback-heavy mystery shows can be. One of the weakest Apple TV shows I've seen to date, big waste of Kerry Washington and Elizabeth Moss. 

I've heard people complain that The Count of Monte Cristo isn't actually very well written for a classic book, so I'm going to selfishly take that as an excuse to watch an adaptation without having read the source material. But I know the gist of the story, of course, and this miniseries with Sam Claflin and Jeremy Irons, which aired on Swiss television in 2024 but just recently came to PBS in America, has some pretty good atmosphere and production values. 

I adore Minnie Driver and always thought she deserved a few Emmys and a career resurgence for "Speechless." So it's depressing that she's been in three TV series already in 2026 and two of them are among the worst shows I've seen this year, "Run Away" and this Fox miniseries of Bible stories (the third is a Canadian show that I think is coming to America on some obscure streamer I don't use). We as a society are failing Minnie Driver! At least this one had one hilarious scene where she yells at God about her womb. 

i) "Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair"
"Malcolm in the Middle" was a reasonably entertaining show for its time, although even as a teenager I thought it was clear that Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek were carrying the show. This revival was initially going to be a 2-hour TV movie and then they decided to make it a 4-episode miniseries, and either way I think a bite-sized trip down memory lane is all that's really warranted here. Unfortunately, it feels like a lot of other revivals of old shows where they put a lot of focus on new cast members playing the old characters' kids, in this case Malcolm's daughter who's now the narrator. It's fun enough, though, Cranston steals a few scenes. 

j) "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters"
This spinoff of some forgettable 2010s movies that started in 2023 has just now returned for a second season, it's not terrible but it really just feels like a big lumbering waste of Apple TV money. 

k) "Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord"
This has gotten rave reviews from people who are fine with the visual style of animated Star Wars shows, but I am not one of them, just hate the way this stuff looks. 

l) "Invincible" 
I'm a few weeks behind on the fourth season of "Invincible" and it seems like the latest episode was one of those really action-packed ones that gets everybody talking and makes the show worth following. But it kind of feels like most seasons of this show are like that, not every episode leading up to the climax is very entertaining. I like that there's been maybe a return to a bit more humor this season, though. 

m) "The Ramparts of Ice" 
A new Netflix anime series, a very introspective and sensitive sort of teen soap opera. 

n) "Little Lunch" 
My 10-year-old very rarely takes an interest in watching anything that's not animated, but lately he's been binging this Australian live action sitcom that was made about a decade ago about kids roughly his age, it's pretty charming, reminds me of some of those Nickelodeon sitcoms from the '90s. 

"Crap Happens," or "Kacken an der Havel," is a Netflix sitcom about the career struggles of a white rapper from Berlin. It's like a German version Lil Dicky's "Dave," but not even as good as that comparison implies. 

I'm used to a lot of the international fare on Netflix being crap like, well, "Crap Happens," so I was pleasantly surprised by this moving series based on Orhan Pamuk's 2008 novel. 

This is an HBO miniseries about an Italian TV host who was accused of being part of a crime syndicate in 1983, I'm only a couple episodes in but it has a great lead performance by Fabrizio Gifuni.

She hasn't posted on Twitter in a year or two, but it still matters a lot to me that Padma Lakshmi is probably the most famous person that follows me on social media. Her new show on CBS is really good, kind of a corrective to the formula of "Top Chef" and a lot of cooking competition shows where people have to do what they can with a limited set of ingredients and/or resources, instead a bunch of award-winning chefs are given everything they need to do their very best work. And some of the dishes they come up with look so delicious and unique, but there still plenty that old school reality show tension and suspense, because of course there's time limits and some people kind of scramble to finish their dishes. 

A riff on the title of "That '70s Show" in 2026? Timely! But this is a cute show. 

A kind of depressing but good and necessary nature series about how various animals and communities have adjusted to life in the time of extreme climate change. 

I love bees and this new National Geographic docuseries is fascinating, some of the footage they got of inside beehives or bees protecting themselves from a hornet are just amazing. 

Oh man, this true crime doc about a polygamist sect in Utah is just so unsettling and gross, I did not want to watch more than one episode of it. 

Another really stomach-turning true crime series, this one about a Spanish tour guide who assaulted countless tourists. 

I'd never heard of the famous and controversial rock climber Dean Potter, the first episode of this HBO docuseries was pretty gripping, but then I was like well now I have to look up how he died and stuff, why live in suspense about the other episodes. 

This dating reality show produced by the "Call Her Daddy" podcast lady is just kind of cartoonishly absurd, with some contestants living it up on a yacht while other contestants work hard below deck. I don't know if some degree of class consciousness or social critique is going to seep into this thing, deliberately or by accident, but the execution seems largely shamelessly stupid. 

Apparently Byron Allen has been hosting this show for hundreds of episodes over the last 20 years, but I've only started to see it pretty recently, kind of by accident if I still have CBS on after Colbert ends. It's just absolute dogshit, feels almost more like an infomercial than a comedy show, and of course it was recently announced that this is what CBS is putting in Colbert's timeslot after his show ends next month.

3:48 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 400: Al Green

Monday, April 13, 2026

 



I was looking through some old files and found a list I made, way back in early 2013 when I had just started the Deep Album Cuts series, of about 60 artists that I was interested in making playlists of. Most of them, I posted a long time ago, but there were some names peppered in there that, 400 volumes later, that I still hadn't gotten around to: Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Incubus, John Mayer, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and this guy, Al Green. I've never come remotely close to running out of artists I wanted to include here, but it was fun to get a reminder that some have been on the bench for way too long. Al Green's 80th birthday is today, which I funnily didn't even realize until last night when I was finishing this post. 

Al Green deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. I'm A Ram
2. Stand Up
3. I'm Glad You're Mine
4. Rhymes
5. Take Me To The River
6. Something
7. It Ain't No Fun To Me
8. Simply Beautiful
9. Tomorrow's Dream
10. I Wish You Were Here
11. Feels Like Summer
12. What A Wonderful Thing Love Is
13. I'll Be Good To You
14. All Because
15. So You're Leaving
16. The City
17. For The Good Times
18. Your Love Is Like The Morning Sun
19. Truth n' Time
20. Beware
21. I'd Fly Away

Track 13 from Back Up Train (1967)
Track 9 from Al Green Is Blues (1969)
Tracks 1 and 14 from Al Green Gets Next To You (1971)
Tracks 7 and 15 from Let's Stay Together (1972)
Tracks 3, 8, 12, and 17 from I'm Still In Love With You (1972)
Tracks 2 and 18 from Call Me (1973)
Track 20 from Livin' For You (1973)
Tracks 5 and 16 from Al Green Explores Your Mind (1974)
Tracks 4 and 10 from Al Green Is Love (1975)
Track 21 from Full Of Fire (1976)
Track 6 from Have A Good Time (1976)
Track 11 from The Belle Album (1977)
Track 19 from Truth n' Time (1978)

When I started to really get into classic soul music as a teenager, I started buying Marvin Gaye albums and also loved my dad's best-of compilations of Stevie Wonder, Barry White, and especially Al Green. The double platinum Al Green's Greatest Hits is his best-selling release, my dad had the 1995 CD reissue that added and swapped out several tracks from the original 1975 sequence, and that's really a musical bible for me, although I eventually started exploring Green's proper albums. I don't think he's the reason I started going by Al instead of Alex, in person and in bylines, but he might have been an influence. 

In 1976, Green was ordained as a Baptist minister and established a church in Memphis, and in 1980 he began exclusively recording gospel for many years. I focused on his years as a secular soul star in the '60s and '70s, his remarkable run with Hi Records (his debut Back Up Train was released with a different label, although it doesn't sound that different from the signature sound he'd develop at Hi with Willie Mitchell). There are some pretty dark stories and allegations about Green in the '70s, which were always pretty disappointing and disillusioning to learn about, because his music radiates so much joy and warmth and he's written some of the greatest love songs. Hopefully he found his way after that. 

Livin' For You's 8-minute closer "Beware" is the only time he really stretched out a song like that in the studio, it's fun to hear the Hi Rhythm Section really cut loose. I'd never seen or heard about Green playing any instruments, so I was surprised to realize just recently that he started playing guitar on his records from The Belle Album onwards, so you can hear his guitar on "Feels Like Summer" and "Truth n' Time." Green hasn't released an album since 2008, but he's released occasional tracks and this year's To Love Somebody EP, which had covers of the Bee Gees, R.E.M., the Velvet Underground, and a duet of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" with Raye. Raye also featured Green on her great recent album This Music May Contain Hope, and I just love the way she sounds awed and humbled to be on a song with him. 

"Rhymes" was covered by Donald Fagen and Todd Rundgren and "It Ain't No Fun To Me" was covered by Graham Central Station. "Take Me To The River" is one of Green's most famous songs thanks to Talking Heads turning it into a Top 40 hit, but Green didn't release it as a single, I guess David Byrne was just an Al Green fan who really liked the song. I've almost never heard the original Al Green Explores Your Mind version unless I was listening to that album, and the many other covers of it usually mimic the slower Talking Heads arrangement, so I felt like including the original version of "Take Me To The River." 

Of course, Al Green is one of the most sampled artists in the soul canon, just tons of great hip-hop made from his records. "I'm Glad You're Mine" has a legendary drum break sampled on lots of tracks, including "I Got A Story To Tell," which is on my Notorious B.I.G. deep album cuts playlist. "I Wish You Were Here" was sampled on "Eye For A Eye (Your Beef Is Mines)," which is on my Mobb Deep playlist. "Tomorrow's Dream" was sampled on "I Remember," which is on my Coolio playlist. "What A Wonderful Thing Love Is" was sampled on Kendrick Lamar's "6:16 in LA." "Simply Beautiful" was sampled on Talib Kweli's "Good To You" and Maxwell's cover was a hit a couple years ago. And "Your Love is Like the Morning Sun" was sampled on KRS-One's "The French Connection."

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements
Vol. 371: The Beastie Boys
Vol. 372: Marianne Faithfull
Vol. 373: Sly and the Family Stone
Vol. 374: Billy Idol
Vol. 375: The Jam
Vol. 376: Roberta Flack
Vol. 377: Chubby Checker
Vol. 378: Bad Company
Vol. 379: Mana
Vol. 380: Joe Cocker
Vol. 381: The Kinks
Vol. 382: Phish
Vol. 383: Faith No More
Vol. 384: The Alarm
Vol. 385: Jill Sobule
Vol. 386: Luther Vandross
Vol. 387: Angie Stone
Vol. 388: MC Lyte
Vol. 389: The Beach Boys
Vol. 390: The S.O.S. Band
Vol. 391: Bad Bunny
Vol. 392: Donna Summer
Vol. 393: The Wu-Tang Clan
Vol. 394: Raekwon
Vol. 395: Ghostface Killah
Vol. 396: RZA
Vol. 397: GZA
Vol. 398: Method Man
Vol. 399: Redman

4:00 AM

Friday, April 10, 2026

 




This week on Spin, I interviewed GoldFish, and wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about "Would You Mind," the Janet Jackson song that made miscellaneous uncs shoot poison. 

11:32 AM

Movie Diary

Thursday, April 09, 2026

 






a) Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
The time travel comedy is a subgenre that tends to aim low for lots of self-referential, self-aware fun like Hot Tub Time Machine. And Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice isn't entirely an exception, but I found it to be a pleasant surprise, a gleefully ridiculous movie that hides its heart long enough that you might be caught off guard by the sweet, clever third act as you realize that every single character in this movie has watched a lot of "Gilmore Girls." Vince Vaughn and James Marsden are both the right kind of comic actors who can play their parts like a straight-up crime drama for enough of the movie for the silly parts to hit harder, and my favorite moment is Keith David yelling "it's raining titties over here!" while "Ants Marching" plays in a strip club, 

b) The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
As a father, I pretty much know what to expect when my sons want to go to the movies and see one of Illumination's animated blockbusters, and both of their Mario movies are weaker than Despicable Me but better than The Secret Life of Pets. My kids seemed pretty happy with this one, much like the last one, and as before, I mostly only chuckled when Bowser voiced by Jack Black was onscreen. I hoped that Donald Glover's addition to the cast as Yoshi would add to the entertainment value, but he just did the little Yoshi squeaks and occasionally said "Yoshi," kind of pointless casting, anybody could've done that and you'd never guess it was him. 

c) Eternity
It's a thought experiment that people have proposed many times before: if you're reunited with your spouse in the afterlife, what happens with people who outlived a husband or wife and then remarried? Eternity is just a feature-length exploration of that question, with Elizabeth Olsen as a women who dies and has to choose between her first husband who died young in a war, and the second husband she spent over 60 years with. I liked it, but it might be the most conventional A24 movie ever, if it had been written in the '90s it probably would've starred Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks. Eternity is no Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but in its best moments, it's a similarly affecting meditation on relationships and the disconnect between idealized memories and reality, Olsen and Miles Teller were good and really brought the premise to life, and John Early and Da'Vine Joy Randolph were good comic relief characters. Ultimately a little forgettable and less than the sum of its parts, though. 

d) The Testament of Ann Lee
People talk about a lot about how studios try to advertise movie musicals now without letting people know they're musicals, but man I really had no idea that The Testament of Ann Lee was a musical until people started singing in the middle of scenes. It's also an origin story of the Shakers, but it's not a Book of Mormon-type satirical musical, although, almost more of a horror movie in tone. Usually I kind of roll my eyes when a historical film stars an actor who's way more beautiful than the real person was or probably was, but it kind of works here, if Amanda Seyfried was starting a religious movement I'd be like, to quote Maria Bamford, "sure, I'll join your cult." Also, there aren't many American actors these days who seem to be capable of decent British accents, but she's one of them, I was impressed. 

e) Alien: Romulus
I think Alien and Aliens are classics and everything else that has come out of that franchise, including last year's hit series "Alien: Earth," has squandered its potential in really irritating ways. Alien: Romulus kept my hopes up for longer than usual, I was pretty on board with it right up until that final monster, that was a really stupid twist, I'd have a much higher opinion of the movie if it had just ended 20 minutes earlier, it was already pretty action-packed up to that point. Fede Alvarez really has a great eye, I liked his earlier movies but I was really impressed by how he nailed the Alien aesthetic with some dazzling modern visual effects. 

f) Crime 101
This was better than I expected it to be based on it being a crime movie with a stupid title starring two Avengers and one of the X-Men. Nick Nolte looked really rough in this movie, I was joking around about it on Twitter earlier this week but I hope he's okay! 

I'd never seen this, the 1987 adaptation of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's funny just how very 1987 its vision of 2017 is, but also a little scary how prescient its game show dystopia was, better than I expected it to be. 

Edgar Wright's recent Running Man adaptation is different from the earlier film in some interesting ways, some I liked and some I didn't, but overall I think a better movie, a little overlong but worth it for that third act. I hope Wright gets back to something more quirky and/or personal after this, though. 

i) Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
This cleared the low bar of being better than Crystal Skull, although I was still amused at just how ridiculous the plot ended up being. Keep scrolling if you want to avoid spoilers for a blockbuster from 3 years ago, but it's fucking hilarious that the villain is like "I'm going to go back in time and kill Hitler, but for evil reasons." I'm a little baffled by Phoebe Waller-Bridge's career, it's been almost a decade since "Fleabag" debuted and this is the only other substantial live action role she had in her thirties? 

I heard this was going to be on PBS and I randomly found one night that it was about to be on, I really enjoyed it. An 80-minute film about a career that spanned 60 years and 100 albums is inevitably only going to scratch the surface, I wish it got more into just a few specific records or compositions. But I thought it had a good mix of interviews with collaborators and insights from talking heads, and I liked how they delved into his early days in Chicago, his experimentations with synthesizers, his unlikely commercial breakthroughs, fascinating stuff. 

I drew heavily on Graeme Thompson's Phil Lynott biography Cowboy Song when working on my recent Thin Lizzy piece. But I also put on this 2008 documentary that had low production values but a pretty decent amount of insight in interviews with a few band members, friends, and rock writers. 

My wife loved Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal growing up, while I grew up on all the other Jim Henson stuff but not those. I will often play David Bowie's music while the family's eating dinner, and "Magic Dance" invariably comes up on the Amazon Echo shuffle, and my son loves that song now, so his mother took the opportunity to do a Labyrinth movie night. It was fun to finally see it, Bowie's performance is so ridiculous, in a good way. 

11:31 AM