That keyboard is simply iconic. I’m pretty sure when it hits, it rouses everyone of a certain age group. Like a lot of hit songs at this time, it’s a vague wisp, like “I think I remember this.” What I do remember is “Dick in a Box.” (Okay, that was a weird sentence to type.) It felt like no one I knew or encountered online could shut up about “Dick in a Box.” SNL goes through waves of popularity, and all those Lonely Island songs were a big reason why they were riding that particular wave.

I think I’m in agreement with the 9. What holds it off from a 10 for me is the guest verse. It has nothing to do with T.I., I just think it slows the momentum. JT really works that falsetto effectively. The chorus is a monster earworm. Admittedly I don’t care too much for the intro either, so I’m only scoring based on the single version of “My Love.”

Oh, and on the subject of T.I., I don’t need allegations to be uncomfortable with him. His admission that he accompanied his daughter every year to a gynecologist to make sure her hymen was still intact was enough for me. Sorry, guys. Good morning.

I presented at the Experience Music Project’s Pop Conference–which brought together critics, academics, and musicians–three times during the mid-2000s, so I got to see the shift towards “Poptimism” in real time. I remember the first year I attended in 2003, people were raving about the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, but by 2006, there was a lot more talk about challenging “rockist” critical assumptions. And I still think that was important work; look through any old edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, and you can see how those rockist biases dismissed whole genres of music.

However, in my opinion, the rise of Poptimist discourse in music criticism can’t really be understood outside of the death of print media and the move toward online forums that rely on clickbait. So rather than promoting more obscure pop artists, like the ones we frequently mention in this comment section, there was a strong incentive to hype up releases by the biggest pop artists in the world, who didn’t really need the hype. I’ve got a longer rant about how this whole discourse about “imperial phases” and pop “queens” who “slay” the competition helps to naturalize a media landscape that reflects the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, but I won’t go into that here!

I recently spent time in my storage room in my hometown, where I still have thousands of pages of often embarrassing material from my youth – diaries from a (hopefully) dumber, narrow-minded version of myself, letters (remember those?), cards, essays… and… here goes….several hundred handwritten pages of music lists. Sure, many detailed American Top 40s written down (yes, with the last 3 weeks’ positions and WOC included, what were you thinking?). But mainly these lists were my personal charts. Every Thursday between 1980-1982 I counted down my Top 5 and with a points system tabulated these into Quarterly Top 20s and the year-end chart I turned into a spoken-word, hosted 2-cassette extravaganza…I would then lend these  out to my poor friends from whom I would ask copious commentaries.

I also compiled statistics of my charts, and treated them with the reverence some might approach the Oscars: Longest time at  #2 without reaching #1 (To Cut A Long Story Short); #1 debuers (Body Language, Silvery Rain); most songs (Human League, 7); Longest Climb to #1 (Ai No Corrida, Situation); Artists with 2 songs in the Top 5 simultaneously (Sheena Easton, John Foxx, Rough Trade, Gary Numan); longest run on my charts (Lipps Inc’s How Long, 19 weeks followed by Walking On Thin Ice, Hey 19 and New Toy), and on and on.

My mother would just look on and shake her head. She still does, bless her soul.

But that’s not all. I was so desperate to create lists, any, that by 1983 I (for 3 months, I got bored with it quickly) wrote down every day, the Earworms of the Day. And I thought it would be fun here to mark my first entry, for Feb 16 1983, precisely 40 real-years ago. You’ll all be fascinated, I’m sure, to know that from about 8am through to mid afternoon, H&O’s One On One floated through every corner of my mind. It was then replaced into evening with The Stranglers’ The European Female and Depeche Mode’s Get The Balance Right (only the original extended version of course, there is no other). And so here is that gorgeous track by Hall & Oates – I’ll link it from the final third (almost half), the vocal deliciousness on which places this at the very top of my Best Ad Lib To Fade  list. Oh dear. 

Some things don’t change. Nowadays I assiduously compile Spotify playlists (each year gets its own playlist, naturally), ranked in order of preference, and I still spend hours wondering, mmm, is this song really my #27 of 1985, or should I bring it up to #18? Must be born that way… But – thanks for listening to this. Few would understand. You…do…understand…doncha?

https://youtu.be/4dlWGUW4LBg?t=179

A 20 year mystery I’ve never been able to solve:

“And I will block the door like a goalie tending the net in the third quarter of a tied game rivalry”

What sport is he talking about?? Basketball and football have quarters but no goalies. Hockey and soccer have goalies, but use periods and halves respectively.

We can conclude that he can only be singing about lacrosse or water polo. Which, really Ben?

Going out on a limb here to say the best approach response to stuff like this prob shouldn’t be, ‘shit happens, man.’

‘boys will be boys’…that actually made me nauseous. where even to begin to unpack that. this non-excuse should have been left in the 1950s where it didn’t belong either but at least had more cultural capital

David Bowie’s Final Live Performance-11/09/06

“Time may change me but I can’t change time”

David Bowie’s tour in support of Reality was a big one, sending him to 22 countries in nine months. He was then 57, and a heart attack put off what would have been yet another month on the road. As Bowie historian Chris Larson shrewdly noted, “It’s fair to say Uncasville (CT), the Quad Cities…and Hershey (PA) have seen their last Bowie concert.”

What did indeed become his last concert and tour turned into his last live performance, period, when he assumed the stage on November 9th, 2006 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in support of another cause. Bowie had co-founded a charity with an annual gala called the Black Ball and on this evening he regaled the exclusive audience with “Wild Is the Wind” (awesome), “Fantastic Voyage” (yes!) and, of course, “Changes.” For the last, he was joined by Alicia Keys. Was this planned to be the end? I don’t know, but for the last ten years of his life he seemed content to spend time with family and occasionally send audio missives from the studio to overjoyed fans.

The sound quality is not the greatest, but here is video of the performance.

(Please do visit Chris Larson’s wonderful Bowiesongs blog. It helped guide me through the Bowie discography and, as a bonus, he’s a great writer. https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PPVmEwtAkI

Lizzo is charming, and a pleasant pop star.

Why does she always draw the ire of middle aged white indie rock dudes? I mean she is not stopping you from going to see the Pavement reunion show, or obsessively pining for a Wrens album that will never come.

*I mean we all know why really, but sometimes it is hard to really see yourself, but I would suggest perhaps some self reflection.

i read the phrase “everybody has a right to be forgiven” and notice the orwellian prison of language we’ve built all around us.

Take it to twitter, buddy

“The Sound of Failure” is a top 5 Lips track for me. It soars in majesty, and it has a pan flute over the chorus! I think At War With the Mystics in general is due for a reassessment – “Free Radicals” is the only track on there I think is kinda stupid, while the rest is pretty great.