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... )

Laryssa's voice is penetrating with a whipcrack when necessary but is fundamentally as solid and steady as she is. She's able to ride her own rhythm into other rhythms that are as aggressive and mobile as any in the world. I don't know the production process so I don't know how much it's her wending her way through rhythms, her being the center and ( Read more... )

DJ Wesley Gonzaga's "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil" may be the greatest example I've got of a particular strain of funk carioca, the tendency to subordinate or delete the bass entirely and make the rhythm come down from the top, voices or clave or handclaps or mouth farts or beeps or screeches or samples or squiggles. 2021 might turn out to have been the ( Read more... )

Beneath these comments is my ballot for ILM's 2021 End of Year Tracks & Albums Poll

We could vote 25 of each, though only for tracks and albums nominated by the voters; there were over 900 tracks, but I only nommed three - the first three on my ballot - since it seemed to miss the spirit and the adventure to nominate a whole bunch of tracks and then ( Read more... )

Here are my Uproxx Music Critics Poll ballot and my Pazz & Jop Rip-Off poll ballot. These are exactly* as I sent them except since my Uproxx email was just for my write-in votes, I've now inserted my number 2 Uproxx album into it in brackets (I originally voted for that one via their dropdown menu; nothing else I voted for was on their menus). For ( 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... )

EMINEM: Into The Labyrinth And Out Of Control
Frank Kogan, The Village Voice, Pazz & Jop 2000 Supplement, February 14-20, 2001

I think gays genuinely give Eminem the creeps, but I also note that in the oft-quoted song where he seems to be saying that he kills fags and lezzes, the oft-quoters leave out the beginning, where he makes clear that he's not ( Read more... )

Here's a top 10 of the '10s. My desired number one, Brown Eyed Girls' Nivea lip care ad "Smile Chock Chock," turns out to be 2009, too bad. In the category Cheesy Eastern European Dance Tracks, "Money Maker" isn't as outrageously ridiculous as "Mi Mi Mi" - it's very normal by comparison and wasn't even the version of the song that got pushed ( ( Read more... )

Chuck Eddy sent me his Pazz & Jop and his Country Critics ballot early last month (which I've reprinted down in the comments along with shitloads of other stuff from Chuck and other people's lists). I actually had no idea there still was a Pazz & Jop. I'm not commenting on the results because I haven't read them yet - still - but here are my Freaky ( Read more... )

I finished this list mid February, then was beset by various blocks and distractions and by thinking I had to write something good, also that I'd waited and dithered just as long on the 2016 list. "At least I won't be as late as I was last year." And now I'm later.

And it feels like a different world: Over the past ten months American hip-hop became ( Read more... )