The last album I really listened to as an album was Taylor Swift's Fearless. Which isn't to say that there've been no albums since then that have had an identity for me, such as a common sound to the whole thing or interesting ways the tracks play off and sometimes against each other. In Babes Wodumo's Crown, for instance, from my 2021 albums list ( Read more... )

Tonight's The Night
Frank Kogan, top 50 songs in reverse alphabetical order
Posted originally at Rockcritics.com

The Shirelles' "Tonight's The Night" isn't about the night, it's the need for the night. And Debbie Deb, from her other dance hit, "Lookout weekend, here I come," not the party but anticipating the party. "When I hear music it makes me ( Read more... )

Closed my 2017 Top 100 on March 3, giving myself a sigh of relief that "Gummo" and "The Race" were near misses and I wouldn't have to write about them. But here those guys are anyway, 6ix9ine and Tay-K, sure things on this list for "Billy" and "After You." And I still haven't done my writeup for 2017. Probably don't have much more to say about ( Read more... )

Stubs of ideas, some of which may turn into future posts:

(1a) A punk votes for a punk (Johnny Rotten says nice things about Trump). Okay, he's not necessarily saying that he did vote for Trump, though from what he said it's a good assumption he did; but anyway, my armchair psychosocial analysis of the Trump win already had been "Punks voted for a ( Read more... )

In 1987 I tossed an insult at a loose aggregation of people that included me, calling us "PBS for the youth." Basically, I was fingering the punk/postpunk indie-alternative "underground," but also worlds and hairstyles and rampages that surrounded it: rock critics, letters-to-the-editor, on-edge heroin poetry zines, the appreciation and ( Read more... )

Missed most of February (and most of everything else). Ash-B is the great discovery here, a strong and throaty rapper like Choi Sam but with a tone that's more supple and subtle. Will say more when I post my 2014 albums list. "The Song Of Love" is a low-rent slow dance from Core Contents Media (yeah, it's not Core Contents Media anymore, but in my ( Read more... )

Scott at rockcritics.com links some of the commentary that's followed Lou's death ( Read more... )

Just came across J-Tong's Mohican And The Barefoot from last October: hip-hop but with rhythms that are hard rock more than they're R&B.* I like the album version of "개판" ft. Nobrain far more than the one from two years ago that gets streamed online, so here's a raw live clip of what I assume is the newer, better version ( Read more... )

A couple of posts last month by Sabina that I bookmarked and am only returning to now, hoping that she'll return to them as well:

Here's a thought, by the way

One effect of growing up with parents who didn't get rock

The question that leaps into my mind is why haven't Sabina's immigrant parents taken to rock? As she says, "access" isn't the only ( Read more... )

What's going on with Rainbow's "concept"? And how do "concepts" work in general in K-pop? Even though performers do sometimes change 'em like costumes, that doesn't necessarily mean those very performers aren't committed in some deeper way to what the concepts mean. Or at least it doesn't mean that they're not committed in the audience's eyes, or ( Read more... )