Deep Album Cuts Vol. 383: Faith No More 8:53 AM (7 hours ago)

Lately, Faith No More's been in the news a little bit. They announced and then canceled a 2021-2022 tour, and more recently members of the band have been saying that Mike Patton doesn't want to play with them these days and the band might be done for good, which is kind of a bummer. And it occurred to me that they'd be a fun band to make a playlist of.

Faith No More deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. As The Worm Turns

2. The Jungle

3. Introduce Yourself

4. Fast Disco

5. Underwater Love

6. The Real Thing

7. Zombie Eaters

8. Woodpecker From Mars

9. Caffeine

10. Land of Sunshine

11. RV

12. Be Aggressive

13. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

14. Star A.D.

15. Just A Man

16. Naked In Front Of The Computer

17. Collision

18. Sunny Side Up

19. Matador

Tracks 1 and 2 from We Care A Lot (1985)

Tracks 3 and 4 from Introduce Yourself (1987)

Tracks 5, 6, 7, and 8 from The Real Thing (1989)

Tracks 9, 10, 11, and 12 from Angel Dust (1992)

Tracks 13, 14, and 15 from King For A Day... Fool For A Lifetime (1995)

Tracks 16 and 17 from Album of the Year (1997)

Tracks 18 and 19 from Sol Invictus (2015)

One thing that fascinates me is bands whose most famous member wasn't on their first album. Faith No More is just one example, there's also Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Journey, the Doobie Brothers, the Geto Boys, the Black Eyed Peas, the Dixie Chicks, and Iron Maiden. Drummer Mike Bordin and bassist Billy Gould are the only people who have been in Faith No More through every iteration of the band since 1979, which kind of makes them the Mick Fleetwood and John McVie of FNM.

Faith No More had several different lead singers in the early '80s (including, fascinatingly, Courtney Love) before Chuck Mosley sang on the band's first two albums. Then Mike Patton joined in 1988, nearly a decade into the band's career, and they shot to fame with the platinum success of The Real Thing. Now, Patton is regarded as one of hard rock's greatest, most versatile vocalists of all time, and it's taken as a given that if he doesn't want to tour with Faith No More, the band won't tour (sadly, Mosley passed away in 2017).

That said, the Faith No More sound, as unpredictable and amorphous as it sometimes is, feels pretty identifiable and developed on those first two albums with Mosley, who was a more limited vocalist but had the right weird bellow for a band like this. The band continued performing the big Mosley-era hit "We Care A Lot" with Patton, along with some deep cuts like "Introduce Yourself" and "As the Worm Turns."

About 20 years ago, I joined my roommate's band Zuul when they needed a new drummer, and had a 2-year run with them that was a lot of fun, we played a few gigs, mostly as the Sidebar in Baltimore. It's the only time I've really played in a metal(ish) band, and Zuul's biggest influence was probably Faith No More, and I was the only guy in the band who was not a diehard FNM fan. So that experience gave me a bit more of an appreciation for Faith No More outside of the singles (Zuul never made any records but I uploaded a couple of our demos to Soundcloud a few years ago). My favorite songs on here include "As The Worm Turns," "Underwater Love," "Caffeine," and some of the odd un-metal stuff like "RV" and "Star A.D." And as always I like some of the gnarly weird time signature grooves the most, "Collision" is another song in 5/4 for my collection.

Movie Diary 28 Apr 8:52 AM (yesterday, 8:52 am)

a) Companion

Companion is the excellent debut feature by Drew Hancock, who wrote on a number of good TV series including "Suburgatory." I feel like Sophie Thatcher never quite gets enough screentime on "Yellowjackets" for me to form much of an opinion of her as an actress but she's great in Companion, a difficult role that requires you to empathize with a robot more than the humans in the story while believing she is a robot. There are a few little twists and reveals that are handled so deftly, and Jack Quaid and Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillen are all great in it too.

b) Better Man

After watching a couple of very conventional music biopics, I decided to watch the movie where Robbie Williams is depicted by a CGI chimpanzee as a palette cleanser. I thought this was just alright, though. Neither the Robbie Williams songs I like nor the ones I don't know were used very evocatively. Even though CGI has certainly improved over time, it's still kind of shitty replacement for a human performance. And the thing is, this movie exists because Robbie Williams is genuinely a very charming, charismatic guy, and a lot of that is lost or at least blunted when you just make his voice come out of a mildly expressive CGI animal's face. Also, this movie is full of human women who have sex with a monkey, and even more who want to have sex with the monkey, and it isn't so weird that it ruins the movie, but it's not not weird.

c) O'Dessa

O'Dessa retells Greek mythology as a musical in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It looks cool and takes a big swing at being bold and colorful and surreal, and in some respects in succeeds, but it never really takes off. The parts with Murray Bartlett just feel like offbrand Hunger Games scenes.

d) G20

A pretty good action movie starring Viola Davis, I have to admit I put this on as kind of a background movie and then regretted it, might have to put it on again and give it more of my attention.

e) Hellboy: The Crooked Man

The fourth live action Hellboy movie is the first one with a screenplay co-written by Mike Mignola. And while it doesn't hold a candle to the Del Toro movies, I liked it, especially how it was a bit more of a horror movie than the other ones.

f) Venom: The Last Dance

I've really enjoyed Dan Deacon's film scoring work, and got to interview him about it a while back, so I was excited that he got to work on a movie as big as Venom: The Last Dance. I feel like the score was barely audible for most of the movie, though, and Tom Hardy's Venom voice really started to sound like his Bane voice in this movie and things just a little too goofy in this one. There's a dance scene set to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" and a sentimental montage set to Maroon 5's "Memories."

g) Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party

I think Long After Dark is a really great underrated Petty album so it was great to see this unearthed MTV special from that era, expanded by director Cameron Crowe. I almost wish it was more of a straight up concert movie because the live footage is great, and as a rock doc it feels like a dry run for later Crowe stuff like his Pearl Jam movie, or for Bogdanovich's more definitive Petty movie, but there's still some really good stuff in here.

h) Heaven Adores You

I watched this Elliott Smith documentary while working on my recent Spin piece about Smith. The first five minutes center on Smith's Oscar nomination, the next five minutes after that center on his death, so I really feared the worst. But they delved into his catalog and spoke to a lot of people close to him, and man, it really just becomes a very emotional thing to watch, it brought back all of the feelings of falling in love with Smith's music as a teenager and then being heartbroken by his passing.

Chin-Yer Wright interviewed me for her WEAA radio show, The Baltimore Scene, and it was a really fun conversation and I got to share some cool news. You can hear the whole interview here.

I ranked Elliott Smith and Aerosmith albums for Spin.

TV Diary 21 Apr 8:51 AM (8 days ago)

a) "North of North"

I'm always happy when American streamers and networks pick up Canadian comedies, even if it's not a gem on the level of "Letterkenny" or "Workin' Moms" the stuff that finds its way down here is usually pretty good. Anna Lambe leads a mostly indigenous cast, with the great Mary Lynn Rajskub as the token White character, in a pretty charming Arctic twist on a familiar sort of sitcom about small town life.

b) "Your Friends and Neighbors"

Three years ago, there was a cute little ad, 'everyone but Jon Hamm,' that emphasized that so many actors had Apple TV+ projects that Hamm was sitting at home feeling left out. Since then, he's had an entertaining arc on "The Morning Show" and now his own starring vehicle. "Your Friends and Neighbors" almost feels like Showtimecore in its enthusiastic embrace of all these cable dramedy tropes of shows about once affluent suburbanites who are forced into a desperate but whimsically creative life of crime. But the dialogue is snappy and the cast doesn't feel squandered by the material, which puts it ahead of most of the Showtime series it reminds me of.

c) "MobLand"

"MobLand" was originally developed to be a prequel spinoff of "Ray Donovan," one of those quirky Showtime series I have very little affection for, but it ultimately got retooled into an original show, the kind of jaunty British crime story that exec producer and occasional director Guy Ritchie has made his bread and butter. Pierce Brosnan is having a great time playing against a mean bastard in this, it's probably worth watching just for him.

d) "Happy Face"

Annaleigh Ashford had a whole Broadway career before I became a fan when she was on "Masters of Sex," but I've still really enjoyed watching her work her way up to leading a series. In "Happy Face," she plays a woman whose father is a convicted serial killer, played by Dennis Quaid. Quaid has played wholesome likeable leading men and mentors for decades and I guess I applaud him playing against type, but I'm really unimpressed by his performance so far.

e) "Good American Family"

"Good American Family," like "Happy Face," is based on an interesting true story, and has started out a little slow but I think that's good, it makes me curious to watch things escalate.

f) "The Righteous Gemstones"

"The Righteous Gemstones" is by far my favorite thing Danny McBride has done, and I'm glad he's sending it off with a 4th season, I feel like that's a good number where you're probably not left wishing for much more and there was no time for a decline. The season premiere being basically a prequel film starring Bradley Cooper was more fun conceptually than in execution, but the episodes since then have been great, Editor Patterson needs an Emmy already.

g) "Black Mirror"

"Black Mirror" has only made 30-something episodes over the last 14 years but it really feels like we've reached the limits of Charlie Brooker's imagination and there have been so many variations on a handful of themes. I'll probably keep watching this season to see if there's a standout like "Joan is Awful" from the last season, but I haven't been impressed so far.

h) "Lazarus"

Loved the first episode of this, most exciting thing I've seen on Adult Swim in a minute, good premise. I also enjoyed hearing "Lazarus" by the Boo Radleys over the credits of the first episode, didn't expect that.

i) "Subteran"

A Romanian drama on Netflix about a young mother on the run from the gang that killed her boyfriend, wasn't particularly interested in it.

j) "Public Disorder"

"Public Disorder" has kind of an original idea, looking at the inner lives of an Italian riot squad the same way traditional cop dramas often do, but this would probably be considered an even worse type of copaganda than the usual fare.

k) "Lovers Anonymous"

Kind of an odd, quirky Turkish show where love is treated as a disease at the Love Hospital, I like it.

l) "Private Banker"

This Japanese show about a guy who manages the wealth of the super rich makes it seem like a really sordid line of work with some soapy storylines, not really my kind of thing but not bad.

m) "Shafted"

This French series about four middle-aged guys reminds me a little of the great American show "Men of a Certain Age," but is also a little more overtly a satire of toxic masculinity.

n) "The Trauma Code: Heroes On Call"

The title of this South Korean show had me expecting a serious medical drama, but it's a charming comedy in the vein of "MASH" or perhaps more accurately "Scrubs."

o) "Who Saw The Peacock Dance In The Jungle?"

This is a live action adaptation of a manga, I guess that's probably not uncommon on Japanese TV but I dunno if I'd seen one before.

p) "Prison Cell 211"

This very intense show is about a Mexican human rights lawyer who gets caught up in a prison riot and poses as an inmate to survive.

q) "The Åre Murders"

I've never been huge into the 'Nordic noir' thing but I like this show about a Swedish detective who goes to a ski resort and gets involved in the mystery of a missing girl.

r) "Cassandra"

This German show takes place in the present day, but in a world where there have been robot servants since the 1970s, and a family moves onto a house with an older model robot that soon becomes controlling and sinister, excellent performance from Lavinia Wilson as the robot.

s) "Melo Movie"

A little disappointed that this was a Korean comedy series and not a documentary feature about Carmelo Anthony, but it's a cute show.

t) "Churchill At War"

Didn't watch every episode of this docuseries but I thought it was interesting to focus on the British perspective of WWII through the prism of Churchill's leadership, I learned a little.

u) "Surviving Black Hawk Down"

I've never watched the movie Black Hawk Down and probably never will, getting a straightforward account of the events in the docuseries feels like enough for me.

v) "Filthy Fortunes"

This Discovery series is about going into cluttered American homes, searching through all the heirlooms and junk and collectibles that people just can't let go of, and finding the stuff that's actually got some monetary value, which is a pretty good idea, a whole lot of families could use a visit from these guys.

w) ''Confessions of Octomom"

It's been 16 years since Nadya Suleman became an overnight celebrity for giving birth to octuplets. And I guess I can applaud her restraint in waiting this long to do a reality show, now that her kids are teenagers and can actively consent to being on TV, but to me it's just another reality show about pretty boring people who have one interesting thing about them to justify following them around with cameras.

x) "Celtics City"

A 10-hour Celtics docuseries feels like what Bill Simmons has been building to with everything else he's ever done with HBO, but I feel like it's hard to make the Celtics as interesting as the Lakers even if they're an NBA dynasty on the same level.

y) "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman"

Sometimes I get nostalgic for watching Letterman growing up, and then I remember that Dave has a Netflix show that I just hadn't kept up with since the first season a whole 7 years ago. So I've been catching up on a lot of episodes as well as some of the recent ones like the Caitlin Clark episode, which is fun since she plays in Indiana and he's from there and they go duckpin bowling, I never realized Indiana is part of duckpin country. Dave may have been the GOAT of the 10-minute late night interview, but he hasn't adapted to podcasty long-form interviews as well as Conan, there's a pretty big variation in the quality of the episodes depending on whether he's genuinely knowledgeable or curious about the guest or their profession.

z) "Everybody's Live with John Mulaney"

After John Mulaney's 6 episode late night tryout "Everybody's In LA" last year, Netflix has brought him back to do it as a weekly show with a slightly different title. And while I've never been a huge Mulaney fan, the show has really grown on me, I love Richard Kind as a sidekick, the Wang Chung theme song, the very Letterman-ish bits like "know your H." Mulaney is also my age so he's really up my alley with music bookings like the episode that opens with solo performances by Kim Gordon and Kim Deal and ends with the Kims singing Sonic Youth's "Little Trouble Girl" together live for the first time ever.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 382: Phish 16 Apr 8:51 AM (13 days ago)

Phish is one of 2025's nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bad Company, the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Mana, Oasis, Outkast, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes. I believe we're finally finding out who's gonna get inducted in a week or two.

Phish deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. First Tube

2. Waste

3. Axilla (Pt. II)

4. The Squirming Coil

5. Insects

6. You Enjoy Myself

7. Ghost

8. Crowd Control

9. Llama

10. If I Could

11. All Things Reconsidered

12. Theme From The Bottom

13. Farmhouse

14. Guelah Papyrus

15. Dinner And A Movie

16. Horn

17. Thunderhead

Tracks 6 and 15 from Junta (1989)

Track 4 from Lawn Boy (1990)

Tracks 9 and 14 from A Picture of Nectar (1992)

Tracks 11 and 16 from Rift (1993)

Tracks 3 and 10 from Hoist (1994)

Tracks 2 and 12 from Billy Breathes (1996)

Track 7 from The Story of the Ghost (1998)

Track 5 from The Siket Disc (1999)

Tracks 1 and 13 from Farmhouse (2000)

Track 17 from Round Room (2002)

Track 8 from Undermind (2004)

Phish isn't a band that really has casual fans. There are a whole lot of people whose musical world revolves around Phish, and almost everyone else has either never heard Phish or does not care for what they have heard. Hit singles were never really their thing, although I did enjoy "Down with Disease" and "Free" when they were briefly on the radio in the '90s. So I've always kind of kept an open mind to the idea that I might enjoy Phish, especially after hearing that they covered albums like Little Feat's Waiting For Columbus and Talking Heads' Remain In Light in concert.

Often, if a band is beloved for their concerts and has a canon of live favorites that weren't singles, I really try to build my deep cuts playlist around those songs and maybe include selections from their official live albums. But I decided to go in the opposite direction here and just stick to Phish's studio albums, and pick the songs that appeal to me the most without paying much attention to which songs the band plays live the most, and hopefully come up with something that other Phish neophytes would enjoy. Maybe I'll see a show or hear a bootleg that blows my mind one of these days, but for the time being, I want to engage with their studio catalog, even if any fan could probably easily tell me what night they played a version that's far better than the one here.

Some of these songs are live staples, though -- "You Enjoy Myself" is the most played song in the band's catalog, and "The Squirming Coil" and "Llama" are also way up there. Farmhouse's title track has more than twice as many streams as any other Phish song, and "Waste" and "If I Could" are also in their Spotify top 10, despite none of those being in the band's top 100 most performed songs, which is interesting, the fanbase seemingly is embracing some of the studio stuff independently from the live repertoire.

Like my Jay-Z playlist, I decided to just focus on the albums up through the mid-2000s hiatus, since it doesn't seem like a lot of really essential career-defining stuff is from the later post-comeback years. That being said, they really took a few albums to get a good sound in the studio, I kind of understand why their live show became the focal point from very early on, but by Billy Breathes and Farmhouse they definitely started to figure things out in the studio more. These guys are undeniably talented musicians, though. My favorite Page McConnell piano moments are on "Theme From The Bottom," my favorite drumming from Jon Fishman is on "Crowd Control," some of my favorite guitar by Trey Anastasio is on "First Tube," and Mike Gordon's melodic basslines hold a lot of songs together, particularly "Farmhouse."

For a band that cares about lyrics enough that Trey Anastasio regularly collaborates with a lyricist who's not in the band, Tom Marshall, some of their lyrics are just incredibly awful, and a lot of the time here the challenge was finding songs that had great musical elements but no lyrics that made me cringe or reminded me of Barenaked Ladies. So I wasn't shy about including some instrumentals like "First Tube" (the only piece of music by Phish that's ever been nominated for a Grammy), "All Things Reconsidered," or "Insects" from the nearly-all-instrumental The Siket Disc. That album is comprised of outtakes from sessions for The Story of the Ghost, which was engineered by John Siket. Very little Phish music sounds remotely like indie rock, but it makes sense that I like the sound of their albums more once they started working with Siket, who'd done a lot of work with Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo, and Farmhouse co-producer Bryce Goggin, who'd worked on seminal Pavement and Sebadoh albums.

Monthly Report: April 2025 Singles 15 Apr 8:50 AM (14 days ago)

1. Chappell Roan - "The Giver"

I'm glad "Good Luck, Babe!" served its purpose of cementing Chappell Roan's breakthrough but then she waited almost a year to release any other new songs to let The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess get its moment in the sun. "The Giver" might have still come out a little too soon to make maximum impact, because "Pink Pony Club" is still in the top 10 after the boost it got from her Grammys performance. But "The Giver" is fantastic, even better than I expected from when she debuted it on "SNL" last year. I like that John Rich being a shitty MAGA conservative didn't stop Roan from being influenced by Big & Rich's classic "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" when writing her gay country anthem. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update with new songs every month.

2. Sleep Theory - "Stuck In My Head"

The Memphis band Sleep Theory already has three top 10 hits on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart and they haven't even released their first album yet, and "Stuck In My Head" is their first #1 and has started to cross over to alternative radio a little as well. Hard rock radio has been pretty uninspired lately but they're really a breath of fresh air, the guitars are heavy but Cullen Moore can actually sing and there's a little R&B in his delivery.

3. Lil Baby f/ Young Thug and Future - "Dum, Dumb, and Dumber"

Young Thug has an album coming out next month, but so far he's been relatively quiet since the RICO trial ended and he was released five months ago, I think the only new verses we've gotten so far are the two on the Lil Baby and Playboi Carti albums. Thug still has that casual way of slipping out these clever lines ("dog on the side like a bus" and "pocket full of grandparents") without emphasizing or explaining them that I love, really gives me hope that we might get another run of great music out of him.

4. Fridayy f/ Meek Mill - "Proud Of Me"

I've never said anything positive about Fridayy's music, but I will give him credit, this song is good, and features Meek's best verse in years, 32 bars of emotional catharsis about his dead father. Even if my family history isn't tragic like Meek's, it's hard not to feel what he's saying in the song, especially since last week would've been my dad's 75th birthday.

5. Tyler, The Creator f/ Lola Young - "Like Him"

Tyler, The Creator's absent father has always loomed large over his music, from the title of his debut album Bastard to stray lines on his breakthrough song "Yonkers" as well as an entire song addressed to him, "Answer." "Like Him" is his most earnest song on the topic to date, and it concludes with some new information, a clip of Tyler's mother explaining that his father wanted to be in his life, and her apologizing and taking the blame for the fact that he wasn't. Even as someone who's never been that invested in Tyler's music or persona, it's pretty moving and compelling stuff, and became an unlikely single when "Like Him" got more and more streams after Lola Young's solo work blew up. Hearing this alongside "Proud of Me" on the radio can really hit you with a lot of emotion when you're just driving and minding your business.

6. SZA f/ Kendrick Lamar - "30 For 30"

"Throw Some D's" is one of the greatest songs of its era, and I was wary of anybody else rapping on that Switch sample, even Kendrick, especially because "30 For 30" just feels lower energy, keeping the sample at the original 70bpm tempo when the Rich Boy track boosted it up to 80bpm. But it's grown on me, really fun song.

7. Shenseea f/ Di Genius- "Puni Police"

I sometimes go down a YouTube rabbit hole of watching every music video Shenseea's ever made just because she's a gorgeous woman and has some really good songs. And "Puni Police," the only solo single she's released so far this year, hasn't gotten much attention and isn't even in her top 10 songs on Spotify, but I think it's hilarious, she found a really entertaining way to talk about men who get possessive and paranoid in relationships. Run when you see the puni police! Hide when you see the puni police!

8. Jay Swishes - "Pronto"

Jay Swishes is a Brooklyn-based rapper who was born in Toronto to parents from Grenada, and "Pronto" recently spent a few weeks on Billboard's rap/R&B airplay chart. Pretty catchy song, almost sounds like it perfectly triangulates his NYC, Toronto, and Caribbean roots, I love the bassline.

9. Lil Nas X - "Hotbox"

People love to sample old Neptunes or do new songs with Pharrell, but what really restores that early 2000s feeling is to just make a new track with those Korg Triton "guitar" synth presets that the Neptunes used to use on everything, which is what Take A Daytrip and Omer Fedi did on Lil Nas X's "Hotbox."

10. Lil Tecca - "Dark Thoughts"

It's not astronomically coincidental, but it's still some funny parallel thinking that Lil Tecca and Lil Nas X released singles the same day that used that same Neptunes-style synth guitar sound on new beats with no samples. It surprised me a little that Lil Tecca's song has been doing better so far, "Dark Thoughts" is already his biggest Hot 100 hit since "Ransom" six years ago. Considering that he talked about retiring from rap at 16 years old, Tecca has really stuck around and wound up with a pretty nice career.

The Worst Single of the Month: Blake Shelton - "Texas"

Blake Shelton's 2001 debut single "Austin" managed to tell a good story about an ex who lives in Texas without going for any obvious George Strait allusions, but Shelton's mediocre latest goes Strait for the Strait references.

Movie Diary 14 Apr 8:49 AM (15 days ago)

a) A Complete Unknown

This was pretty good, I guess, I would say it was above average for a music biopic, as weary as I am about the tropes and history-flattening cinematic shorthand of that genre. Chalamet was solid, including his singing, but Dune: Part Two remains the 2024 film that actually substantially raised my opinion of his talent. But there's just a power in Dylan's early music that the movie almost never conjures on a visceral level, which makes all the bending of the truth for narrative feel especially futile, like you could have at least gotten some of the feeling. I did appreciate the little music nerd nods like how Al Kooper's iconic organ line on "Like A Rolling Stone" was improvised on the spot by someone who wasn't supposed to be in the session, playing an instrument he doesn't usually plays, but it was done in a slightly cheap fan service way. I will say this, though, I would totally watch sequels if they just brought Chalamet back every now and again with another movie about a different 5-year chunk of Dylan's career, kind of like "The Crown."

b) Bob Marley: One Love

I figured I should also catch up on last year's other big music biopic about a famous Bob. And it makes A Complete Unknown seem a lot better by comparison, watching this British guy in a bad wig hop around on stage. I often say that biopics and historical movies are better if they focus on a shorter timeframe instead of trying to cram an entire lifetime into two hours. But it kind of feels like One Love zooms in a little too much, pretty much the whole movie takes place between 1976 and 1978 outside of some brief flashbacks -- a very dramatic period in his life, sure, but also after many of his most famous songs had already been released. It also really pissed me off when one of his band's live performances somehow ended with a fadeout.

c) One of Them Days

I am still disappointed about the cancellation of "Rap Sh!t," but showrunner Syreeta Singleton's debut was a hit so I'm glad she's on to bigger and better things. As someone who thought Friday was one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen when I was 13, One of Them Days really brought me back to that a little bit, it might be the best vehicle to date for Keke Palmer's comedic talents. And SZA really hit the ground running as an actress with a better performance than I thought she had in her, sort of lampooning her own image as a spiritual woo woo girl. I think that physical comedy is harder than a lot of people think, though, and the handful of big physical comedy moments in this feel a little forced, but it's otherwise an increasingly rare excellent theatrical comedy.

d) The Silent Hour

I'm always a little wary of how movies that have a deaf or blind character often make their disability feel like a plot device, especially if it's an action or horror movie. But The Silent Hour, which stars Joel Kinnaman as a Boston police officer who's losing his hearing and has to project a deaf murder witness, played by deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank, was a pretty compelling crime drama that never felt like it used the deafness as a cheap device. I'd love to see Frank get a big award-winning role like Troy Kotsur or Marlee Matlin one of these days.

e) Gladiator II

I saw the original Gladiator in the theater and found it pretty thrilling but I've had very little desire to see it again or think about it again in the last 25 years, I don't think I would've bothered with the sequel if Denzel Washington wasn't in it. There were a few scenes that grabbed by attention but I basically treated it as background noise. Paul Mescal was okay, but it felt like a classic case of an actor getting in the gym and getting the muscles for a part but not really being suited for it.

f) The Life List

A decent little romcom by Adam Brooks, who's written and/or directed a lot of decent little romcoms. It would've been a lot better with a different lead actress, though, most of the girls who came up in the Disney Channel system have some real performing chops but Sofia Carson is just kind of stiff and unnatural even when she's delivering some funny, charming dialogue.

I ranked and wrote about every Elton John album and every Stevie Nicks album for Spin.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 381: The Kinks 10 Apr 2:00 AM (19 days ago)

Last fall I ranked every Kinks album for Spin, and as I was doing my deep dive on the band's catalog, I started picking out songs for this playlist.

The Kinks deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Just Can't Go To Sleep

2. Stop Your Stobbing

3. Nothin' In The World Can Stop Me Worryin' About That Girl

4. Where Have All The Good Times Gone

5. Baby Won't You Please Come Home

6. David Watts

7. Funny Face

8. Do You Remember Walter?

9. Brainwashed

10. Strangers

11. Moments

12. Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues

13. You Don't Know My Name

14. Daylight

15. Introduction to Solution

16. Have Another Drink

17. The Hard Way

18. Stormy Sky

19. Misfits

20. Attitude

21. Add It Up

22. Heart of Gold

23. Missing Persons

24. Think Visual

25. Now and Then

26. Close to the Wire

Tracks 1 and 2 from Kinks (1964)

Track 3 from Kinda Kinks (1965)

Track 4 from The Kink Kontroversy (1965)

Track 5 from Face To Face (1966)

Tracks 6 and 7 from Something Else By The Kinks (1967)

Track 8 from The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (1968)

Track 9 from Arthur (Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire) (1969)

Track 10 from Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One (1970)

Track 11 from Percy (1971)

Track 12 from Muswell Hillbillies (1971)

Track 13 from Everybody's In Show-Biz (1972)

Track 14 from Preservation Act 1 (1973)

Track 15 from Preservation Act 2 (1974)

Track 16 from The Kinks Present A Soap Opera (1975)

Track 17 from The Kinks Present Schoolboys In Disgrace (1975)

Track 18 from Sleepwalker (1977)

Track 19 from Misfits (1978)

Track 20 from Low Budget (1979)

Track 21 from Give The People What They Want (1981)

Track 22 from State Of Confusion (1983)

Track 23 from Word Of Mouth (1984)

Track 24 from Think Visual (1986)

Track 25 from UK Jive (1989)

Track 26 from Phobia (1993)

The Kinks were never as big in America as they were in the UK, so even though I totally grew up on the Stones and The Who, my experience with the Kinks for a long time was limited to a handful of ubiquitous songs from the '60s and early '70s. I didn't even hear their biggest '80s song, "Come Dancing," until I saw the video on MTV2 one day in the late '90s and was kind of baffled that it didn't sound much at all like the other stuff I knew by the band.

One thing I find myself doing in this column is lamenting when I got into a band via a compilation, because back in the CD era, if you had all the hits in one place, it kind of slowed you down from buying the proper albums. In college I got the 2002 compilation The Ultimate Collection, I can't even remember if it was a used bin acquisition or something a friend gave me. Still, that's a pretty comprehensive 2-disc best-of with all the hits plus a few famous album tracks, so it was at least a good crash course, but I wish I had picked up a couple of proper albums instead. In any case, now that I know the albums, it was fun to try to condense that history into this, I love when I can cram a little of something from every album from a 30-year career into an 80-minute mix and you can kind of hear their sound evolve from song to song.

The Pretenders covered "Stop Your Sobbing," Van Halen covered "Where Have All The Good Times Gone," The Jam covered "David Watts," and ELO very clearly nicked the intro from "Do You Remember Walter?" on "Mr. Blue Sky." Wes Anderson used "Nothin' In The World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl" memorably in Rushmore, and "Strangers" in The Darjeeling Limited. "Strangers" and "Funny Face" and "You Don't Know My Name" and "Close to the Wire." were written and sung by Dave Davies, who had a nice little run of songs on Kinks records alongside his brother Ray writing most of their material. "Close to the Wire" felt like a good closing song as a rare example of Ray and Dave trading off on lead vocals.

Monthly Report: March 2025 Albums 8 Apr 8:49 AM (21 days ago)

1. Saba and No ID - From The Private Collection of Saba and No ID

Saba really made me a fan with 2022's Few Good Things, so when I interviewed No ID in 2023, I was really excited to hear that they were working on a full-length project together -- in fact No ID revealed that he knew Saba's father, the Chicago R&B artist Chandler, way back in the '90s. And after a year and change of waiting, this tape totally lives up to my expectations, No ID's way of chopping familiar samples in refreshing new ways works is used to great effect on the first two tracks, and Saba's writing is just so frank and clear-eyed and he keeps switching up the flow, going more melodic on "Woes of the World" and more intricate and triplet-heavy on "Westside Bound Pt. 4." Here's the 2025 albums Spotify playlist I'm constantly updating with new releases.

2. Nels Cline - Consentrik Quartet

Nels Cline has been one of my favorite guitarists in the world for three decades now, and in most of that time he's been so prolific that there's been at least one new album from him as a bandleader or solo artist just about every year. But things have been relatively quiet on that front since 2020's Share the Wealth, although he's remained pretty active with Wilco and other sideman/session-type things. Judging from recent interviews, I guess the pandemic just slowed down his process of developing setting a set of new material with a band, but the first album from his new combo Consentrik Quartet is an excellent collection to return with. Cline and German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock will sort of weave together these different parallel lines and then suddenly lock into harmonizing on a busy run of notes, it's really a delight to hear them play together. I think my favorite part is on "Slipping Into Something," when that cool 15/16 bassline comes in and everybody just starts going off.

3. Lady Gaga - Mayhem

I've never really been blown away by any of Lady Gaga's post-Born This Way albums, but Mayhem is pretty fun even if I can't tell whether her heart's really in this return to her earlier style -- really I can never tell how much she means anything, for better or worse. I didn't consider "Disease" or "Abracadabra" to be particularly good Gaga singles, but they're perfectly good Gaga songs that kick off the album well (while "Die With A Smile" is a great single but barely a Gaga song at all). Most pop albums that slow down in the second half start to lose my interest there but that run of midtempo songs that starts with "LoveDrug" is really my favorite part of the record.

4. Brian D'Addario - Till The Morning

When I interviewed Brian D'Addario of the Lemon Twigs a few years ago, one of the things I was most curious to ask him about was the creative dynamic with his brother Michael and how their writing and production styles differ -- he had some interesting answers, but I still mostly distinguish them by Brian kind of have a mellow folk pop singing style and Michael doing some more affected punk and glam-type voices, which works well as a yin/yang. They seem to be such a tight creative unit that I was surprised to see that either of them released a solo album, but Till The Morning came out on the brothers' new label Headstack Records and Michael co-produced the album and did a little writing and singing. So it's really pretty much a Lemon Twigs album, albeit a mellower one in the style of Everything Harmony. I particularly like the twangy pedal steel guitar on "This Summer" and "One Day I'm Coming Home."

5. mssv - On And On

mssv (short for Main Steam Stop Valve) is kind of a similar deal to fIREHOSE -- Mike Watt plus a drummer he's played with for a long time (in this case Stephen Hodges) plus a younger singer/guitarist (in this case Mike Baggetta). A little noisier than fIREHOSE, though, which I like. They've had a couple previous albums but I think I like this one best, really captures the energy and immediacy of three guys playing together in a room well, and Watt really gets to let loose on the thunder broom on "Super Dumb" and anchor a dreamier soundscape on "On Its Face" and spiel a bit on "Boat Song" and "Careful What You Wish For."

6. Bob Mould - Here We Go Crazy

I recently ranked Husker Du's albums for Spin, but I haven't really kept up with Mould's post-SST adventures as much as I have with Mike Watt. I like this record, though, which has one of my favorite drummers in the world, Jon Wurster, doing great work. The songs Superchunk have released since Wurster stepped away from the band have been excellent, Laura King hit the ground running, but I'm still gonna make more of an effort to seek out whatever Wurster is playing on now. I think "Neanderthal" is my favorite track on Here We Go Crazy.

7. Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea

I hadn't actually heard Spiritbox until they did a couple tracks with Megan Thee Stallion, which were fun, but I wasn't sure if I'd like their music based on that. But I really like their new album, one of the few bands I really enjoy out of this whole metalcore or post-metalcore or whatever it is scene. They really throw a lot of different sounds in there but they make sense together, and Courtney LaPlante mixes singing in with the screaming really well.

8. Playboi Carti - Music

It seemed like Playboi Carti was going to jump into the A-list when the anticipation for Whole Lotta Red was mounting, but it didn't quite happen, I think maybe the Christmas day release was a bad call. But Music (which was for years called I Am Music right up until its release, much like Drake's Views From The Six/Views switcheroo) really did big numbers and got the world's attention. I think Die Lit is still my favorite Carti album, he's getting a little carried away with wacky voices now. The standout tracks for me so far are "Charge Dem Hoes A Fee" featuring Future, and "Toxic," where Carti does a Future impression. I get why "Evil Jordan" is the most popular song because the beat is great, but he really ruins it yelling "I AM THE MUSIC" at the end. Also I disagree with Kanye...on a lot of things actually, but specifically that I think Carti and Kendrick are a good combination.

9. The 1975 - Still... At Their Very Best (Live From The AO Arena, Manchester, 17.02.24)

The 1975 are a little more tongue-in-cheek about their quest to be the best band in the world than, say, Oasis, but I think they very much belong in that lineage of pompously ambitious UK bands, and the name of their last tour, The 1975 At Their Very Best (and the continued leg of the tour, Still... At Their Very Best) was pretty sincere about the greatness they're aiming for. And the thing is, I'm totally on board, I really think they're more or less the best mainstream band of the last decade or so and they're still operating at the top of their game. The Amazon concert special from earlier in the tour was paced a little better than this one, I know that a lot of their most popular songs are slow and the audience seems really pumped about the long stretch of slow songs in the middle of the show, but their studio albums do a better job of mixing tempos. That said, a pretty damn good live record.

10. Will Smith - Based On A True Story

Will Smith released his new album almost exactly 20 years to the day after his last album, Lost and Found, which is kind of a sentimental milestone for me as well, because the first time I ever got paid to write was my Lost and Found review for Baltimore City Paper. Both of these albums get far on my lingering youthful love of He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper, Based On A True Story isn't an amazing return to form like the last LL Cool J album, but it's pretty solid when Will isn't trying too hard to sound current (I don't like the songs with Big Sean and Russ).

The Worst Album of the Month: NAV - OMW2 Rexdale

I guess respect for NAV for not trying to reinvent himself as a mob boss like Drake, but it's crazy how he's been a bona fide rap star with consistent top 10 albums for like 7 years now and hasn't developed any swagger at all. He still raps in that blank monotone sounding like a middle schooler, and he still has that Mark Zuckerberg haircut that even Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have anymore.

TV Diary 7 Apr 8:48 AM (22 days ago)

a) "The Studio"

Seth Rogen has been producing some great TV series for a while now ("The Boys," "Preacher," "Invincible"), but 2023's "Platonic" was the first time he'd actually starred in a live action series since "Freaks & Geeks" and "Undeclared," and apparently that's coming back for a second season on Apple TV+ along with his new series, "The Studio." A cameo-filled satire of modern Hollywood could so easily be smug and unfunny or, I don't know, an "Entourage" retread, but "The Studio" really succeeds on the execution, it has a genuinely funny perspective and a strong creative vision, including lots of scenes consisting of one long shot that would probably be more impressive if the show hadn't debuted 2 weeks after "Adolescence," which is full of even more staggering oners. The percussion-heavy score is composed by Antonio Sanchez, who also scored Birdman, which I think tips off Rogen and Evan Goldberg's biggest influence for their directorial style on "The Studio" (one character also straight up mentions Birdman in an episode). All three episodes so far have climaxed with Rogen's character upsetting a well known director, so there's certain a formula emerging, but it's really good and the stories involving Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard had particularly good payoffs. And the great ensemble includes Kathryn Hahn kind of being ridiculous in the same way she was on "Parks & Recreation," and Chase Sui Wonders, who is really fulfilling the potential I saw in her as a comedic actress on the great short-lived series "Generation" a few years ago.

b) "Dying For Sex"

This Hulu series starts Michelle Williams as a woman with terminal cancer and Jenny Slate as her best friends, and it's based on a podcast the two women started in real life (sad spoiler: the woman Williams's character is based on passed away several years ago). The main story is about Williams leaving her husband and trying to have an enjoyable sex life before she dies, but I really enjoy the dynamic of her and Slate as friends, it's really a pretty sweet show about friendship aside from all the kinky stuff.

c) "The Residence"

I've never had strong feelings about Shonda Rhimes shows, I always seem to watch a season or two of "Scandal" or "How To Ge Away With Murder" or "Bridgerton" and enjoy it a little but then eventually forget to keep up with it. But I love "The Residence," she really brought a great cast together (including Uzo Adubo, Ken Marino, Randall Park, Eliza Coupe, and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) to fire some hilarious dialogue at each other in a White House murder mystery. It's really sad that Andre Braugher died during filming and they had to reshoot his scenes with Giancarlo Esposito, it would've been nice for this to be his final role. And it's a little embarrassing that they cast Al Franken as a senator, I don't know why some people are obsessed with relitigating him making the right decision to resign.

d) "Pulse"

There's always room for lots of medical dramas to thrive, but I feel like it's either really good timing or really bad timing for a show about an emergency room like Netflix's "Pulse" to debut right at the moment that people are obsessed with "The Pitt." "Pulse" is a much more conventional procedural and the CGI-heavy disaster sequences that open some of the episodes unfortunately remind me a lot of "9-1-1." But I think it's a decent show with a strong cast, and I absolutely adore Jessy Yates, who plays the sister of the lead, and want to see more of her.

e) "The Bondsman"

I'm fascinated with how at some point Kevin Bacon made this pivot from being the Footloose guy and a pretty conventional likeable leading man to all sorts of villain and antihero roles in horror flicks and dark comedies. In this new Blumhouse-produced series, he plays a bounty hunter who is killed, and then comes back from the dead under orders from the devil to hunt down demons, a good fun pulpy premise.

f) "Mid-Century Modern"

"Mid-Century Modern" was created by the guys who made "Will & Grace" and it feels very transparently like a vehicle for Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer to do "Will & Grace"-type patter. I was never a huge fan of that show but I respect that it was very good at what it did, and Lane is a comedic genius who's clearly really enjoying himself here.

g) "Side Quest"

"Side Quest" is a "Mythic Quest" spinoff, four standalone episodes about tertiary characters who work for or are otherwise connected to the video game studio the show is about. On paper that seemed like a perfectly good idea because "Mythic Quest" is a really good show with a big ensemble. But "Side Quest" is a bit more earnest than the main show and, I don't know, it feels like those pointless 'webisodes' that a lot of shows had to make in the early days of the internet, but longer. Like, a 30-minute episode about the career of a cellist playing in an orchestra that performs music from a video game? I don't know, man.

h) "Daredevil: Born Again"

I was a fan of Netflix's "Daredevil" series and was happy to hear that Disney+ was going to revive the show and continue telling the story with Charlie Cox. But I really thought the entire ensemble made the show work, and it was kind of bittersweet that they only brought Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll briefly for the first episode and then kind of pivoted to a different supporting ensemble. And the action scenes in this new series haven't really blown me away like they did in the Netflix show, I want more of that crazy fight choreography. Making Kingpin the mayor of New York City is a great (and unfortunately timely) storyline, though, Vincent D'Onofrio is always great in that role.

i) "Survival of the Thickest"

The first season of "Survival of the Thickest" was fun, I'm glad it's back for a second season, Netflix really doesn't have a lot of solid sitcoms, especially post-"Grace & Frankie."

j) "Yellowjackets"

I'm not generally someone who turns on a show just because they kill off one character I like, but the character death at the end of season 2 of "Yellowjackets" really felt like one more disappointment in an underwhelming sophomore season. Season 3 has been pretty good so far, and adding Hilary Swank is fun, I guess, but I miss the actress that they wrote out of the show, and I'm still kind of trying to feel the buzz of excitement of that first season again.

k) "Wolf King"

Computer animation that emulates the look of stop motion animation can be really beautiful, but this new Netflix fantasy cartoon really looks like dogshit.

l) "Devil May Cry"

I've never played the video game Devil May Cry, but the anime adaptation on Netflix is pretty fun, and I unironically love that the song's theme song is the Limp Bizkit classic "Rollin'."

m) "When No One Sees Us"

HBO is starting to get more into international shows that aren't in English, and this is the first Spanish-language Max series. It's about the investigation of of a suspicious suicide and has very artful direction, builds up a somber atomosphere very well.

n) "When The Stars Gossip"

This Korean series on Netflix imagines a near future with space tourists going up to spend time on a space station, which is a pretty interesting premise that hasn't really been done much on American TV, and the visual effects are pretty good for something without a huge budget.

o) "When Life Gives You Tangerines"

I just thought it would be funny to put all these shows with "When..." titles in a row because they look funny together. Another Korean show, a sweet romantic show that kind of spans generations, starting the story in the '50s.

p) "Newtopia"

Another Korean show, this one on Amazon Prime, a zombie outbreak story that really feels kind of distinctive and fast-paced compared to the deluge of American zombie shows.

q) "Inheritance Detective"

So many good stories are driven by the deaths of wealthy people and questions about inheritance and possible foul play so this is a great premise for a series, you get to explore that old trope from a different angle in every episode.

r) "La Palma"

This Norwegian show about people on a volcanic island that's on the verge of eruption really feels like a very mediocre derivative disaster movie-type thing with bad acting, bad visual effects.

s) "1992"

"1992" from Spain probably is just ahead of "La Palma" as the worst foreign language show I've seen on Netflix lately, just a very cheesy murder mystery with some gross scenes of burned bodies and a murderer who leaves a colorful little doll with their victims as a signature.

t) "Hound's Hill"

This Polish show is pretty good, it's about a novelist who's being blackmailed and returns to his hometown where he has a lot of complicated history. Good cast, good acting.

u) "The Breakthrough"

A cool Swedish crime drama based on a true story that shows how forensic investigators solved a 16-year-old cold case using genetic information from ancestry research websites.

v) "Soju Rhapsody"

I enjoyed this Netflix reality show about the history of Korean cuisine, that's an area I only have a little of firsthand experience in and it made me want to try a lot more.

w) "Million Dollar Secret"

Between Alan Cumming on "Traitors," Joe Manganiello on "Deal Or No Deal Island," and now Peter Serafinowicz on "Million Dollar Secret," I'm getting kind of tired of seeing actors I like host game shows, you guys should be off somewhere actually acting. I like the premise of this show and the way they sort of play the contestants off each other, though, it's not terribly original but the execution is good.

x) "Number One On The Call Sheet"

This 2-part Apple TV+ documentary has one feature-length episode about Black actors who've headlined major films and one about Black actresses. And I like that each doc has its own director and its own tone and approaches the subject matter from different angles, partly because the latter doc has to deal with Halle Berry being the only Black actress to ever win an Oscar for a leading role and how almost everyone they talk to deserves more opportunity than they're getting. But they're both great watches and they interviewed just about everyone you could hope to see.

y) "History's Most Shocking"

A decent little History Channel show looking at various disasters like the Hindenberg as well as more obscure stories. The production values aren't great but it's alright as a background noise kind of show to put on.

z) "Crash Course Cuisine with Hudson Yang"

Hudson Yang was the lead on "Fresh Off the Boat," and after basically watching him grow up on the 6 seasons of that show, it's fun to see him as a young adult hosting this reality show about cooking, especially the first episode that reunites him with his TV dad, Randall Park.

My Top 50 Mainstream Rock Singles of the 1980s 4 Apr 5:26 AM (25 days ago)

I've already done lists of my favorite hip-hop, R&B, alternative, and hard rock/metal singles of the 1980s. And this is the first time I've really split hairs this much and divided the rock music of a given decade into three different buckets. I'm almost tempted to break the genre into four pieces and make a soft rock list, but I figure a lot of the adult contemporary yacht rock stuff that did better on pop radio than rock radio in the '80s will just slide into my eventual pop list here and there.

Here's the Spotify playlist.

1. Queen and David Bowie - "Under Pressure" (1981)

Hearing a song via sample, particularly a sample in a far inferior song, can often ruin it for you, or at least fill your head with associations that are hard to shake. But I definitely knew "Ice Ice Baby" before "Under Pressure," and it hasn't done anything to stop "Under Pressure" from becoming one of my favorite pieces of music. It's probably the single most played song on my Amazon Music account, not so much because of my love for the song specifically but because Queen and Bowie are two of the artists I most frequently ask my Echo to shuffle songs by while my family has dinner.

2. Tom Petty - "I Won't Back Down" (1989)

I love that Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne made Full Moon Fever in Mike Campbell's garage and really were just having fun getting out the usual Heartbreakers way of making records and wound up with the biggest album of his career. I mean, they had to have known that "I Won't Back Down" and "Free Fallin'" and "Runnin' Down A Dream" were probably hits, but the album's genesis was a lot more casual than what it sounds like when you hear those massive hits on the radio just about every day.

3. Stevie Nicks - "Edge Of Seventeen" (1982)

Stevie Nicks actively campaigned to become a member of the Heartbreakers, which never happened, but she did make a few hits with Tom Petty. And even one of her biggest songs without Petty was directly inspired by his wife, who Nicks heard say "age of seventeen" in a thick Florida drawl (Benmont Tench also plays on the song). Waddy Wachtel, who Nicks has made music with her whole career, dating back to the Buckingham Nicks days, contributed that staccato guitar riff that makes "Edge Of Seventeen" sound so badass.

4. Phil Collins - "In The Air Tonight" (1981)

There are a couple of classic rock stations I listen to that both, naturally, play "In The Air Tonight." But one of them, WBIG-FM, always plays a version that has loud live drums layered over the quiet drum machine pattern in the first half of the song, which sounds really stupid and totally fucks up the whole point of the big dramatic ending (you can hear a little of this version here). It turns out this is the single mix that was originally released in 1981 at the suggestion of Ahmet Ertegun, before people defaulted to the mix on the Face Value album. Ertegun has a pretty glowing reputation in the music industry, but man he made the wrong call there.

5. Journey - "Any Way You Want It" (1980)

1997 was hip hop's jiggy era, the period in which the term 'jiggy' was popularized, and I submit to you that if other genres had jiggy eras, this song epitomizes mainstream rock's early '80s jiggy era. This is that Rodney Dangerfield dancing on a golf course music. Apparently this song's writing style was influenced by Phil Lynott when Journey toured with Thin Lizzy in the late '70s, which makes it even cooler.

6. Pat Benatar - "Heartbreaker" (1980)

Pat Benatar is such an incredible rock vocalist, she probably belongs up there with Freddie Mercury as someone who could've been a straight up pop singer or any number of other styles but chose to be a rocker. That little phaser effect on her voice on the a cappella breakdown on "Heartbreaker" is so fucking cool, what a dynamite record. A rep for Benatar was helping me set up an interview with her a few years ago and then they ghosted me, and I'm still bitter about that. Let's talk, Pat!

7. Neil Young - "Rockin' In The Free World" (1989)

A whole lot of the artists on this list are legacy rock acts from the '60s and '70s that very shrewdly adapted to the '80s with slicker records and music videos and were rewarded with enormous album sales. There are relatively few guys who really spent most of the '80s in the wilderness. I think Jimmy Buffett had the worst commercial dip in the '80s, while Bob Dylan had the most divisive '80s run. Neil Young was so far off in his own world for most of the decade that Geffen unsuccessfully attempted to sue him for not sounding like himself, but he was also the guy who ended the '80s with a career-defining smash that completely reset his trajectory for the '90s.

8. Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire" (1985)

Of the aforementioned '60s and '70s rockers who adapted well to the MTV era, nobody did it bigger than Bruce Springsteen, turning Born in the U.S.A. into a juggernaut with a run of seven Top 10 singles to rival Thriller. "I'm On Fire" didn't feel like one of the most ubiquitous hits from that album at the time, but in the streaming era it's pulled ahead of every track but "Dancing in the Dark" on Spotify, and I think it's totally justified, I love how it's gentle but fast, sad but sexy, rootsy but synth-heavy.

9. ZZ Top - "Gimme All Your Lovin'" (1983)

The members of ZZ Top were all born in 1949, the same year Bruce Springsteen was born. meaning they were pretty much the same age when they were ubiquitous on MTV in the mid-'80s. The once-scraggly Springsteen took on a youthful clean-shaven look to become a music video star, while Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill had grown out their beards and seemed like mystical Texas boogie elders in their videos.

10. John Mellencamp - "Cherry Bomb" (1987)

This song just makes me so happy, every time I hear it. When I interviewed John Mellencamp a few years ago, I just had to tell him it was one of my favorites and ask how he decided to have multiple singers alternate lead vocals on the second verse, and he expounded on his love of Sly and the Family Stone and how it was a direct homage to them.

11. The Who - "Eminence Front" (1982)

Sometimes I wonder if The Who's legacy would be any different if they never did another tour or album after Keith Moon died the way Zep did after Bonham died. We got some good stuff out of the Who's continued existence, though, and "Eminence Front" is way at the top of that list. Pete Townshend was still messing with some of the burbling atmospheric keyboards that were a big part of Who's Next and Who Are You, but Faces drummer Kenney Jones keeps a much more straightforward groove than anything Moon would've played, and the result is something special and hypnotic that just works every time I hear it, whether on the radio or on a recent episode of "Severance."

12. Rick Springfield - "Jessie's Girl" (1981)

Rick Springfield was a singer dabbling in acting when the stars aligned and he briefly became the king of all media in the early '80s when he had one of the biggest hit songs in the world and a popular 2-year stint on the soap opera "General Hospital." Springfield's existence has been boiled down to that moment, but his career is a lot longer and more interesting than he gets credit for, with a decade of hits with the band Zoot and as a solo artist in his native Australia before "Jessie's Girl," and four Platinum albums that each had at least one Top Ten hit in America. Still, if you're gonna be remembered for one song, you could do a lot worse.

13. Steve Winwood - "Roll With It" (1988)

There are a lot of White guys who sing "soulfully" in this list, especially British guys, and sometimes that stuff ages surprisingly well and sometimes it ages like milk. I don't think Steve Winwood gets enough credit these days as one of the very best vocalists in that particular niche, though, just a fantastic voice and a great catalog across his solo career, Traffic, the Spencer Davis Group, and Blind Faith. Holland-Dozier-Holland's lawyers were busy in those days, they got their names added to the songwriting credits of both "Roll With It" and Aerosmith's "The Other Side" for similarities to their old Motown hits.

14. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Refugee" (1980)

When I crunched the numbers for all my lists of albums of each year of the decade to make lists of my favorite artists of the 1980s, Tom Petty was in the top 10 for albums as well as singles, with his frequent collaborators Jimmy Iovine and Mike Campbell also in the top 10 for singles. "Refugee" is, like Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker," a 1979 single from a 1979 album that peaked in 1980, and I hate when songs straddle decades in a way that makes it hard to say which one it belongs to, but I'll just bite the bullet and make my choice here.

15. Genesis - "No Reply At All" (1981)

Genesis in the early '80s was really fucking cool if you ask me, those really taut grooves on "Paperlate" and "Turn It On Again" and "Abacab," to say nothing of the Phil Collins solo stuff, it's really right in a sweet spot of a style that I love. Collins putting the Phenix Horns from Earth, Wind & Fire on some of those Genesis songs and some of his solo stuff always sounded so good.

16. Bruce Hornsby and the Range - "The Way It Is" (1986)

I kind of wish Bruce Hornsby had come out in the era of Elton John, because I love the sound of his piano playing, but the production on his stuff is so slick, a lot of it reminds me of the "Wings" theme song. This song is perfect, though, one of those pop hits that feels so deceptively simple and pretty while he's slipping in all this history about civil rights legislation and just a general outlook about empathy and equality.

17. Toto - "Rosanna" (1982)

As a drummer there are times when I like the drummer more than the band, but that usually means it makes the band grow on me, and Jeff Porcaro was just incredible, man, I love the spin he put on the Purdie Shuffle on this song.

18. Queen - "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" (1980)

Queen's only two #1 songs in America were both from The Game and were both instances of the band wearing a musical costume rather than sticking to their core sound. And I think "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is an example of how what Queen did went beyond pastiche, like Freddie clearly took the Elvis Presley template, but created a song that Elvis would've been lucky to have been offered, it would've been one of his best songs ever.

19. The Romantics - "What I Like About You" (1980)

I always loved this song since I was a kid, and the "What I Like About You" video was probably the first time I ever saw someone play drums and sing at the same time, some thing I do in my bands now. It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be before I tried it!

20. Eddie Money - "Shakin'" (1982)

Eddie Money was a real goofball (check out the way he mouths along with the stuttering guitar lead in the "Shakin'" video) but he made some songs that really kicked ass. It's so funny that he slips in the line "her tits were shakin'" in the second verse and it never got censored on the radio or MTV. The 1997 compilation Shakin' With The Money Man is one of the best titles ever given to a greatest hits record.

21. Bruce Springsteen - "Hungry Heart" (1980)

Many people don't know, this song is written from the perspective of a man whose entire family was eaten by Baltimore Jack, the legendary Maryland cryptid.

22. Journey – “Stone In Love” (1982)

I love how the last two minutes of "Stone in Love" just go off on this tangent with a completely different melody than the first half of the song, I guess it's a bridge but they just keep going and never properly return to the chorus other than some harmonies repeating the title line.

23. The Greg Kihn Band - "The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)" (1981)

I didn't realize it until after both of them had passed away, but Greg Kihn went to the same high school at the same time as my father. This may be a quintessential power pop song not just for the hooky chorus but for the way it openly yearns for the songwriting of another time.

24. Pete Townshend - "Let My Love Open The Door" (1980)

The Who never cranked out albums as steadily as their contemporaries -- by the end of the '70s, they'd released 8 studio albums, while the Stones had 14 and the Kinks had 18. So I'm not sure what got into Pete Townshend in the early '80s that he decided to sign a solo deal and pushed out 4 albums (2 solo and 2 by The Who) in the space of two and a half years. He probably spread himself too thin and could've had a classic or two if he'd consolidated those songs into fewer releases, but I'm glad we got both "Let My Love Open The Door" and "Eminence Front" out of that burst of activity.

25. Don Henley - "The Boys Of Summer" (1984)

Since Tom Petty heard and passed on Mike Campbell's demo that became "The Boys of Summer," people like to imagine that it could've been a Petty song or that it's his "the one that got away," but I don't know, I really like it as a Henley song. I worked with Henley on a Leonard Cohen tribute concert last year, he was surprisingly friendly, although I think he was trying to riff on some weird joke that I had just come from Vegas and I totally failed to pick up what he was putting down.

26. Fleetwood Mac - "Gypsy" (1982)

I know the title of this song is a word people frown upon using and I respect the reasons why, but god I love this song, I know people are big on the Tango in the Night singles but this is by far my favorite post-Tusk song by Fleetwood Mac.

27. Traveling Wilburys - "Handle With Care" (1988)

I'm gonna go ahead and stamp this as the last classic hit song involving any of the Beatles, better this than "Free As A Bird" or "FourFiveSeconds." Joseph Quinn doesn't know how Timothee Chalamet got his number, or why his texts always begin with "Nelson, it's Lucky."

28. Fabulous Thunderbirds - "Tuff Enuff" (1986)

Stevie Ray Vaughan may be the most revered guitarist of the 1980s, but I kind of prefer the music of his older brother Jimmie's band the Fabulous Thunderbirds, who had sort of a more bubblegum take on blues rock on their four great Hot 100 hits "Tuff Enuff," "Wrap It Up," "Stand Back," and "Powerful Stuff."

29. .38 Special - "Hold On Loosely" (1981)

.38 Special is another band that features the brother of a more famous rock icon. Donnie Van Zant had a nice run of hits with .38 Special, which I think is a better career to have than Johnny Van Zant, who tried in vain to fill the shoes of their older brother Ronnie as the frontman of later lineups of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

30. John Mellencamp - "Jack & Diane" (1982)

Given that John Mellencamp is the archetypal "heartland rocker," I found it fascinating to realize that he started out as kind of a glam rock disciple of Bowie who was discovered by Tony Defries, manager of Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and Iggy Pop. And Spiders From Mars guitarist Mick Ronson was a big part of Mellencamp's biggest hit, playing guitar and suggesting some of the percussion choices and the vocal harmonies on the bridge.

31. Genesis - "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" (1987)

"Land of Confusion" has historically been my favorite Invisible Touch track (I loved the weird video as a kid) but this one has slowly crept up, it just feels so huge and cinematic. I forgot sometimes how weird the bridge is in the full 8-minute album mix -- not really proggy because they just ride the same 4/4 groove for the whole song, but they have fun with a variety of synth noises in there.

32. Rod Stewart - "Young Turks" (1981)

Rod Stewart felt so much more ubiquitous in the '80s and early '90s than he does now, I used to find him pretty annoying, but now I realize he made some pretty great music in the early '70s. And even after he started to get a bit obnoxious in the disco era, he made a pretty great song with some modern new wave-y influences on "Young Turks," the first video shown on MTV to feature breakdancing.

33. Styx - "Too Much Time On My Hands" (1981)

"Too Much Time On My Hands" is another example of how classic rockers adapting to new wave seems like a pretty terrible idea on paper but wound up giving us some great music. I also really enjoyed when Paul Rudd and Jimmy Fallon remade the song's video. It's Styx's only top 10 hit written and sung by Tommy Shaw, who leads the band now, while founder Dennis DeYoung, who wrote and sang their other 7 top 10 hits, sits on the sidelines. Apparently he played the singer in a Styx tribute band in a Hilary Duff movie once.

34. The Outfield - "Your Love" (1986)

I was kind of surprised to learn The Outfield was British. Maybe because I associate the word "outfield" with baseball? I don't know. I also think I assumed this song was more of an early '80s thing, maybe because there were so many bands with that raspy The Police/Men At Work vocal sound at the time.

35. Donnie Iris - "Ah! Leah!" (1980)

The first girl I was completely infatuated with in middle school was named Leah. Weirdly I don't think I ever heard this song, or at least didn't realize what it was called until many years later as an adult. And I'm kinda glad I didn't know it at the time, it doesn't feel like it lines up with the emotions I have attached to that name. Still a pretty good song, though.

36. Bryan Adams - "Somebody" (1985)

There are some Bryan Adams songs that have been so overplayed that I kinda never wanna hear them again, including "Summer of '69" and some of his '90s soundtrack ballads. But "Somebody," "Cuts Like A Knife," "It's Only Love," I never get sick of those jams. I feel like Counting Crows kind of ripped off the lead guitar from "Somebody" on "Hanginaround," but in a good way, I like both of those songs.

37. Queen - "Another One Bites The Dust" (1980)

Considering that John Deacon was inspired by Chic's "Good Times" for the "Another One Bites the Dust" riff and Michael Jackson was the person who told Freddie Mercury it should be a single, it feels a little funny to put this on a 'rock' list. But disco's influence on rock music was a greater force for good than it usually gets credit for, and this is probably right beneath "Miss You" by the Stones as the top classic of the form.

38. Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (1981)

Given how many simultaneous hits guys like Drake or Kendrick can have these days, it feels silly to think that the success of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," the highest charting song of Tom Petty's career, would stifle the Heartbreakers single that was out at the time, "A Woman In Love," but it was a different time.

39. Bonnie Raitt - "Thing Called Love" (1989)

Bonnie Raitt had been making records with occasional minor success for two decades when her tenth album, Nick of Time, won the Grammy for Album of the Year and hit #1 on the Billboard 200. And that album's yearlong climb to the top started with a pretty great lead single, which I didn't realize was written by John Hiatt until I bought a Hiatt best-of CD for a dollar last year and his version was on it.

40. Little Feat - "Let It Roll" (1988)

Little Feat were arguably the greatest cult band of the '70s, and one of my personal favorite bands of all time. Almost a decade after original frontman Lowell George died, the remaining members of Little Feat decided to make a go at reuniting. They considered some old collaborators, including Bonnie Raitt and Robert Palmer, before bringing on Craig Fuller of Pure Prairie League. Little Feat didn't quite become household names, but for a couple of albums they had a bit of the mainstream visibility that had eluded them for so many years, including a "Saturday Night Live" appearance and four top 10 rock radio hits. Paul Barrere's "Let It Roll" is my favorite of those hits and it sounded great when I saw the band last year and they threw it into a set of their '70s songs and blues covers.

41. Journey - "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" (1983)

Considering the way "Don't Stop Believin'" has become by far Journey's most ubiquitous song over the last couple decades, it might seem ridiculous that I have three Journey songs on this list but not that one. But listen, I like that one too, I just enjoy some other Journey songs more, and "Separate Ways" kicks ass, probably one of the hardest rocking synth-driven songs in the AOR canon.

42. Foreigner - "Juke Box Hero" (1981)

I still sort of think of Journey and Foreigner as two peas in a pod in that wave of really slick radio rock. Far more of Foreigner's best hits were in the '70s, but they had some good ones in the '80s too, and "Juke Box Hero" is just so deliriously hammy and over-the-top.

43. George Thorogood & The Destroyers - "I Drink Alone" (1985)

I lived in Delaware for about a decade growing up, and as a young rock fan in Delaware, there weren't many local success stories to get excited about -- Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell met in a private school in New Castle County and got out of there and headed to New York as fast as they could, I guess that's kinda cool. I remember Delaware rock stations playing a ton of Thorogood, though, and always referring to his band by their original name, The Delaware Destroyers. That's a pretty funny name, though, it sounds like they wanted to destroy Delaware, which I suppose could've been a popular position to take in Delaware.

44. Robert Plant - "In The Mood" (1983)

While dozens of bands tried to fill the void left by Led Zeppelin in the '80s, the band's frontman has always seemed wonderfully unconcerned with trying to recapture the band's sound or stature in his solo career. And I just adore the dreamy groove of "In The Mood," driven in part by Phil Collins on drums, I heard this song so much on the radio growing up that I was surprised to learn that another song from the same album, "Big Log," is technically far more popular.

45. Loverboy - "Working For the Weekend" (1982)

Loverboy is, like Rick Springfield, one of those acts where I'm surprised how successful they were -- four multi-platinum albums, and ten Top 40 hits, including two that were bigger than "Working For The Weekend," the only song I hear by them all the time today.

46. Pink Floyd - "Learning To Fly" (1987)

A lot of people kind of side with Roger Waters over David Gilmour in the Pink Floyd split, but you could do worse than having the band be led by the great guitarist with the best voice in the band. Certainly the post-Waters albums aren't as weighty and conceptual, but there are some pretty good songs, and "Learning To Fly" is a great one.

47. Jackson Browne - "In The Shape Of A Heart" (1986)

I heard a lot of Jackson Browne growing up (my parents met at a festival he was playing at), and my dad always loved this song. It's an incredibly sad song, about Browne's first wife who committed suicide, but I don't know, it's beautiful and I have a lot of memories attached to it. Also some really nice guitar leads from Rick Vito, about a year before he joined Fleetwood Mac

48. Bruce Springsteen - "Dancing In The Dark" (1984)

I love that Bruce Springsteen basically turned a writer's block fit in search of a lead single into one of his biggest hit, he always came up with great stuff when his back was against the wall and he needed to deliver.

49. The Rolling Stones - "Start Me Up" (1981)

The Stones' peak period was incredibly long, writing a song that rivals "Satisfaction" as their definitive hit a whole 16 years after "Satisfaction" is almost unheard of. And it's pretty hilarious that Mick Jagger sings "you make a dead man come" over the fade out in such a ubiquitous song.

50. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Don't Come Around Here No More" (1985)

Tom Petty famously couldn't quite crack Southern Accents as a concept album and wound up doing some songs with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics that didn't really fit the idea of the record but were still good, including its biggest hit. I love the way the Heartbreakers take over from the drum machine groove and rev up the song at the end.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 380: Joe Cocker 28 Mar 7:41 AM (last month)

Joe Cocker is one of 2025's nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bad Company, the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Mana, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes.

Joe Cocker deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Sandpaper Cadillac

2. Change In Louise

3. Do I Still Figure In Your Life?

4. That's Your Business

5. Dear Landlord

6. Hello, Little Friend

7. Give Peace A Chance (live)

8. Space Captain (live)

9. She Don't Mind

10. I Get Mad

11. Performance

12. Lucinda

13. Born Thru Indifference

14. Worrier

15. I Can't Say No

16. Marie

17. Come On In

18. Don't Drink The Water

19. Satisfied

20. You Know It's Gonna Hurt

21. Hitchcock Railway (live)

Tracks 1, 2, and 3 from With A Little Help From My Friends (1969)

Tracks 4, 5, and 6 from Joe Cocker! (1969)

Tracks 7 and 8 from Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1970)

Track 9 from Joe Cocker a.k.a. Something To Say (1972)

Tracks 10 and 11 from I Can Stand A Little Rain (1974)

Track 12 from Jamaica Say You Will (1975)

Tracks 13 and 14 from Stingray (1976)

Track 15 from Luxury You Can Afford (1978)

Track 16 from Sheffield Steel (1982)

Track 17 from Civilized Man (1984)

Track 18 from Cocker (1986)

Track 19 from Unchain My Heart (1987)

Track 20 from One Night Of Sin (1989)

Track 21 from Joe Cocker Live (1990)

I was a little surprised by Joe Cocker's nomination. He died about a decade ago, and it feels like his hits and his overall style are even further out of fashion now than they were then. He's considered more of an 'interpreter' than an artist, because while he did write songs, virtually every song he's known for is a cover. He could really sing the hell out of some songs and make them his own, though. There are plenty of good Beatles covers, and a few I like as much as original, but "With a Little Help From My Friends" may be the only Beatles cover that I think blows the original out of the water. Of course, I probably watched a hundred episodes of "The Wonder Years" before I ever listened to Sgt Pepper's, so I would say that.

So I made an effort to highlight Cocker the songwriter here, and the songs he wrote (often with his pianist Chris Stainton) on this playlist are "Sandpaper Cadillac," "Change in Louise," "That's Your Business," "She Don't Mind," "Something To Say," "I Get Mad," and "Born Thru Indifference." In addition to his famous Beatles covers, Cocker also frequently covered Bob Dylan ("Dear Landlord") and Randy Newman ("Lucinda" and "Marie"). Cocker was the first person to release Allen Toussaint's "Performance," later recorded by Aaron Neville, Dobie Gray, and others.

Cocker is one of those '70s acts whose highest charting album in the U.S. was a live record, and Mad Dogs & Englishmen is pretty killer. Leon Russell, who wrote "Hello, Little Friend" and the hit "Delta Lady" for Cocker's second studio album, was the musical director of that tour, and it included a song he wrote with Bramlett that has never been released elsewhere called "Give Peace a Chance" (not to be confused with the Lennon song of the same name). Russell discovered Matthew Moore, who sang backing vocals on the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour and wrote the fantastic song "Space Captain," and would continue to write songs for Cocker for many years after, including "Worrier," which has an Eric Clapton guitar solo and great backing vocals by Bramlett. His brother Daniel Moore also wrote songs for Cocker, including "I Can't Say No."

I think it's kind of funny that he released an album called Joe Cocker! and followed it with an album called Joe Cocker -- fittingly, the one with no exclamation point was less successful. My mom had the Joe Cocker Live album in the early '90s, and that was my first exposure to his music outside of "The Wonder Years." It may not be as good as Mad Dogs & Englishmen but I like that record and figured I'd end the playlist with something from that, although he continued to record many more records for a couple decades after that.

Movie Diary 27 Mar 7:40 AM (last month)

a) Anora

I saw and liked Sean Baker's earlier movies Tangerine and The Florida Project at the time and thought Mikey Madison had real star potential on "Better Things," so I was kinda vaguely pro-Anora during awards season to the extent that I get invested in these things at all. Winning a few Oscars definitely raised my expectations, though, and I dunno, I found it a little underwhelming, it was simplistic and Hollywood in some ways but almost not Hollywood enough in other ways. I thought Madison's accent work was dreadful and hackneyed, but it was a good performance otherwise (if anything she deserved an Emmy for season 5 of "Better Things" more if you ask me). Most of the other performances were nothing special, including the guy who also got an Oscar nod.

b) Blitz

After CODA's Best Picture win and Killers of the Flower Moon's 10 nominations, Apple TV+ was seemingly becoming a consistent Oscars contender, until they landed zero nominations this year for the only movie that had a little awards season buzz, Blitz. Steve McQueen's a remarkable filmmaker and it was great to finally get his first proper feature since one of my personal favorites, Widows. I thought it was a really strong concept, doing a war movie fully from the perspective of civilians in a city under siege, he captured that in such a visceral way.

c) The Electric State

There's a lot of schadenfreude anytime people who broke box office records with their Marvel movies make an underwhelming streaming movie, and there was even more than usual for The Electric State, which at a $320 million budget is one of the most expensive movies ever made. As usual, I wish the Russo brothers brought someone from the great sitcoms they've worked on to punch up the script, but I thought it was a decent middle tier Netflix popcorn movie, with some fun supporting performances from Ke Huy Quan, Stanley Tucci, and Jason Alexander.

d) Kraven The Hunter

Speaking of Marvel schadenfreude, it seemed like everybody seemed to take some pleasure in this bombing. Every time I see Aaron Taylor-Johnson in something I'm less convinced that he has any screen presence whatsoever, let alone leading man potential, so I only hope this movie's failure helped take him out of the running to play 007. Christopher Abbott and Ariana DeBose, however, are definitely too good for this movie, I was actually a little bummed out to see them in it. Incidentally, a few months ago, I spent a day in M&T Bank Stadium working on a really stupid cross-promotional Baltimore Ravens/Kraven The Hunter TV spot starring now-disgraced Ravens kicker Justin Tucker (I was pretty much there as a backup in case feeding lines to people before they went on camera wasn't working and they needed a teleprompter and they never did, so I didn't really do any work that day, I just got some hours on my timesheet for showing up and eating at the craft services table set up in John Harbaugh's office).

e) Personality Crisis: One Night Only

I remember liking Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot" as a kid and thinking this guy was so hilarious and magnetic in Scrooged and even enjoying the widely panned Car 54, Where Are You? movie on cable, well before I ever listened to the New York Dolls or realized it was all the same guy. So I really enjoyed this 2023 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, kind of David Johansen's last big project before his death in February, which centers on a cabaret show where he essentially performs the music of David Johansen in character as Buster Poindexter. It's one of those ideal music docs that would lay out his whole career well for anyone who's not familiar with him, but also is a lot of fun for fans as well. I particularly like the edits where you'd cut between the same song being performed in different decades, or even the same anecdote being told in different interviews.

f) How To Have Sex

A pretty strong directorial debut from cinematographer Molly Manning Walker, very much a feelbad kind of coming-of-age movie, but the subject matter is handled sensitively and realistically. One of those movies where you don't even feel like you're watching actors and then realize that the actors are better than you realized.

g) The Killer's Game

When I reviewed seasoned stuntman J.J. Perry's directorial debut, Netflix's Day Shift, I was impressed and suggested he deserves to book some bigger movies. So I'm glad that his next movie, The Killer's Game, got a theatrical release and was even better, even if it wasn't much of a hit. Dave Bautista has said that he'd like to do a romcom, and this feels like a good bridge in that direction, he has good chemistry with Sofia Boutella.

h) The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

I feel like both meta comedies where celebrities play over-the-top version of themselves, and the general cottage industry of making fun of Nicolas Cage's mannerisms and eccentricities, probably peaked well before this movie was made. That being said, it managed to work pretty well, like many Nic Cage movies, partly off the sheer commitment of his performance.

i) Rogue Agent

I'll watch anything with Gemma Arterton in it, but this kind of surpassed my expectations, interesting story. This movie does, however, end with one of the worst "easy listening cover of an old hit song" needle drops in cinematic history.

j) Come Play

I had never heard of this before I caught it on SyFy the other day, but apparently it was actually in theaters in 2020 and was #1 at the box office for one weekend. I don't think the premise and the CGI totally worked for me, but I liked seeing Gillian Jacobs in a horror movie, she could definitely do more horror.

Recently I've ranked the albums of the Meat Puppets, 2Pac, and Matthew Sweet for Spin.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 379: Maná 21 Mar 8:47 AM (last month)

Maná is one of 2025's nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bad Company, the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes.

Maná deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Tu Tienes Lo Que Quiero

2. ¿Dónde jugarán los niños?

3. Latinoamérica

4. Soledad

5. Mis Ojos

6. Tú Me Salvaste

7. Cachito

8. Ay, Doctor

9. Ámame Hasta Que Me Muera

10. Falta Amor featuring Alex Lora

11. Peligrosa

12. Ana (live)

13. Relax

14. La Sirena

15. Selva Negra

16. La Puerta Azul

17. Huela a Tristeza

Tracks 4, 10, and 16 from Falta Amor (1990)

Tracks 2, 7, and 17 from ¿Dónde jugarán los niños? (1992)

Tracks 5 and 15 from the Cuando Los Ángeles Lloran (1995)

Tracks 1, 9, and 15 from Sueños Líquidos (1997)

Track 12 from Maná MTV Unplugged (1999)

Track 8 from Revolución de Amor (2002)

Track 15 from Amar Es Combatir (2006)

Track 3 from Drama y Luz (2011)

Track 11 from Cama Incendiada (2015)

Maná are one of Mexico's biggest rock bands, and it surprised me to see their name on this year's list of Rock Holl nominations, but I get that they're trying to open the door to different sounds and different cultures, and I kinda hope they get in, it would push that door a little further open for other artists. But I wasn't too familiar with their music, so I decided to use this as an opportunity to familiarize myself with it.

I definitely remember the first time I heard of Maná was when they did an episode of "MTV Unplugged," and the first time I heard them, like a lot of English-speaking Americans, was when they appeared on Santana's Supernatural. Listening through some of Maná's top streaming hits, the ones that really caught my ear the most were "Clavado en Un Bar," "Labios Compartidos," "Te Llore Un Rio," and the Shakira collaboration "Mi Verdad."

Maná released a self-titled album in 1987, and released two albums under the name Somrero Verde before that, but that stuff's not on Spotify, so I just started with Falta Amor, which was their first charting album. Falta Amor's title track features Alex Lora, frontman of El Tri, who were one of Mexico's biggest rock bands in the '70s and '80s, so that's kind of a nice passing the torch moment. The harmonica part on "La Puerta Azul" contains a little melodic quote of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold," and a few songs give me heavy Police vibes, even some of Alex Gonzalez's drum fills on "Soledad" are very Stewart Copeland. And "Tu Me Salvaste" has my favorite guitar solo on this playlist.

The 2025 Remix Report Card Vol. 1 20 Mar 8:46 AM (last month)

I did my final 2024 Remix Report Card in early December, and so many remixes have come out since then, this is easily one of my longest RRC posts in the 18 years that I've been doing it. Yes, 18.

Here's the Spotify playlist:

"AGATS2 (Insecure)" by Juice WRLD featuring Nicki Minaj

"All Girls Are The Same" was Juice WRLD's second most popular song behind "Lucid Dreams," with nearly 2 billion streams. So it was surprising to learn that the song has a sequel featuring Nicki Minaj and co-written by Halsey that his estate waited to release it 5 years after his death. My suspicion is that the song was called "Insecure" and they renamed it long after it was recorded, and it's funny to think that Nicki and Halsey may not have known they were working on something that would have the "All Girls Are The Same" title on it.

Best Verse: Nicki Minaj

Overall Grade: C+

"Big Dawgs (Remix)" by Hanumankind featuring A$AP Rocky

Hanumankind's "Big Dawgs" was a rare Indian rap song that broke through all over the world, charting on the Hot 100 and going top 10 in a bunch of other countries. "Big Dawg" ends with a beat switch and pitched-down vocals that sound very A$AP Rocky-influenced, so he was a good choice for this remix, and he does verses both before and after the beat switch, I'm not generally a huge Rocky fan but he put in a good effort here. Rocky says "I feel like Afeni Shakur" multiple times and I have no idea what the fuck that's supposed to mean.

Best Verse: A$AP Rocky

Overall Grade: A-

"Blick Sum (Remix)" by Latto featuring Playboi Carti

Latto and Carti are probably the 2 biggest Atlanta rappers under 30 right now, and there aren't necessarily a lot of beats they'd both sound good on, but "Blick Sum" fits that description, they definitely chose the right song. But Carti does his verse in that one voice that sounds like a cross between Lil Yachty and a Minecraft villager, which is easily my least favorite voice that he does.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: C+

"Burning Down (Remix)" by Alex Warren featuring Joe Jonas

Alex Warren is following Joji down the "comedic YouTuber to earnest Top 40 balladeer" pipeline, and "Burning Down" is his first song to get pop radio airplay. I feel like he probably could've done better than the second most popular Jonas Brother for the remix, but I like Joe Jonas's voice more than Alex Warren's, so I'll consider this version an improvement.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"cLOUDs (Remix)" by J. Cole featuring Wiz Khalifa

J. Cole's latest song has a hook about smoking weed and an outro that samples an ad lib from an old Wiz Khalifa mixtape song, so it feels like the remix with Wiz was inevitable. Wiz sounds washed on this, though, he tries to adapt his flow to the beat and it just doesn't feel natural. This isn't on the playlist because it hasn't hit streaming but it's on YouTube.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: C

"Embrace It (Remix)" by Ndotz featuring Sexyy Red, Flo Milli, and RJ Pasin

"Embrace It" is British rapper Ndotz's breakthrough single, a top 10 hit in the UK, although outside his accent it sounds a lot more like American rap to me than most UK songs. Sexyy Red raps better than usual here, but Flo Milli still just decisively steals the track, going above and beyond the call of duty with a 24-bar verse. The song's producer, RJ Pasin, didn't have a feature credit on the original but does on the remix, I like the little guitar loop he played on the beat.

Best Verse: Flo Milli

Overall Grade: A-

"Giannis (Remix)" by Hurricane Wisdom featuring Polo G

Polo G's last album sucked and flopped hard so once again I feel like the artist could've held out for a better guest for the remix of their big hit, but Polo does sound good on this beat.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Heart of a Woman - but you're crying in the rain" by Summer Walker

"Heart of a Woman - but you're drinking wine by the fire" by Summer Walker

Summer Walker's Heart of a Woman (Quiet Storm) EP has her current hit with two new mixes that both have faux-quiet storm radio DJ intros and then just play the standard version of the song with lots of reverb, with rain sound effects added on one version and fireplace sound effects on the other. I'm not really sure what purpose this serves, the whole concept is just kind of hilarious, but to the very small extent that anybody is streaming these mixes, the fireplace one is doing better than the rain one. I was disappointed that she didn't actually do new versions of the track and make a slow and sultry song even slower and more sultry.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: C-

"Here We Go (Uh Oh) [Remix]" by Coco Jones featuring Leon Thomas

Leon Thomas has had a pretty cool career arc, going from acting on Nickelodeon to producing music for co-star Ariana Grande and eventually working with other stars like Drake and SZA and now having a hit as a solo artist. I can't say I love his voice or think he makes a great addition to this track, though.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: C

"I'd Rather Overdose (Remix)" by Honestav featuring Mod Sun

I already named this remix one of the 10 worst alternative radio hits of 2024, so it goes without saying I hate all this edgy 'toxic' White rapper bullshit. Mod Sun does more of a shouty voice than the mealy mouthed mumble Honestav and someone named Z did on the original song, and I can't say it's any kind of improvement.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: D

"ILBB2 (Remix)" by Jorjiana featuring GloRilla

Jorjiana is a TikTok creator and rapper from Indiana that people started called 'white GloRilla,' which I guess is why GloRilla did a song with her. This is one of the worst songs I've ever heard, though, and even Glo can't do much to save it, I hate that she did something like this when her career is thriving so much, and even helped the song go more viral by flirting with YouTuber Duke Dennis in her verse.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: C

"I'm On 4.0" by Trae Tha Truth featuring Busta Rhymes, Jeezy, Jay Rock, DMX, Ty Dolla Sign, Joyner Lucas, Method Man, D Smoke, Chance the Rapper, and G. Herbo

Trae Tha Truth released the original "I'm On" in 2011, a posse cut featuring Big Boi, Lupe Fiasco, and Wale, with a hook by Justin Bieber's songwriter Poo Bear. Sequels with different guests on variations on the original beat followed in 2012, 2017, and now 2025, with Ty Dolla Sign doing the hook this time. This might be the weakest of the four versions, but it's still pretty good, Meth and D Smoke did their thing. I'm not a reactionary Chance the Rapper hater, but he doesn't sound good on this beat and he kinda goes on too long. I don't like this whole thing with people getting ahold of I guess unreleased DMX verses and putting them on songs he probably never spit on, especially if you're going to just put him right in the middle of a song with 10 rappers, it feels tacky and not a fitting tribute in my opinion. I also find it very irritating when Trae says 'Billy Cyrus' instead of 'Billy Ray Cyrus.' "I'm On 4.0" isn't on Spotify so it's not on the playlist, but it's on YouTube.

Best Verse: Method Man

Overall Grade: B

"Jodeci (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Cash Cobain and Vontee The Singer

"Jodeci" samples Jodeci's "Can I Talk To You" in the sexy drill style that's all the rage these days, and Cash Cobain is kind of the king of that scene, so he's a natural choice for the remix and he delivers an excellent verse.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B+

"Lay Down (Remix)" by OMB Peezy featuring GloRilla

In my mind OMB Peezy works at the Office of Management and Budget. The "Lay Down" beat kind of cracks me up, the drum and synth sounds are so old-fashioned that it feels like something Whodini could have rapped on in the '80s. GloRilla brings some good energy to the song, though, I'd much rather she give features to someone like OMB Peezy than Jorjiana.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Let's Go (Remix)" by Key Glock featuring Young Dolph

This remix dropped almost a year ago when "Let's Go" was charting, but I missed it at the time and I'd rather cover stuff in this column late than not at all for the sake of having a more complete archive. Of course, Young Dolph had been gone for over 2 years already, so I'm guessing Key Glock just found an unreleased Dolph verse at the same BPM when "Let's Go" became a hit. Glock was Dolph's closest collaborator and is probably trying to keep his memory live as much as anything else, so I don't mind it as much as, say, that DMX verse on the Trae track. And Glock put a new verse on this as well, I'm always happy when the original artist writes a new verse for the remix.

Best Verse: Young Dolph

Overall Grade: B

"Lizzo (G-mix)" by Moone Walker featuring Kevin Gates and Big Boogie

"Lizzo (Shemix)" by Moone Walker featuring cupcakKe and Layton Greene

"Lizzo 2" by Moone Walker featuring Big Money Blitz and Kevin Gates

Here's something else kind of old that I'm covering now just for the sake of completism, sort of. The original "Lizzo" and the first couple remixes came out in 2022 and 2023, and then in late 2024 Moone Walker released another remix with a new Big Money Blitz verse and the Kevin Gates verse from one of the earlier remixes. I guess he's really gotta milk the only shitty hit he'll ever have. Everybody kicks really sexual lyrics on these lyrics, but Kevin Gates is both a better rapper than any of the others and a bigger pervert than any of the others (most memorable line: "make a fist with your pussy, yes ma'am make it squeeze").

Best Verse: Kevin Gates

Overall Grade: B-

"Make A Livin' (Remix)" by MC Lyte featuring Busta Rhymes and Lady London

Lady London is growing on me, I like her verse on this a lot more than the Ciara remix I covered here a couple years ago, it's big that she got a co-sign from Lyte, one of the greatest female rappers ever.

Best Verse: Lady London

Overall Grade: B

"Move 2.0" by Mello Buckzz featuring Monaleo

I put Monaleo in my top 10 list of 2024 rap albums by women and I'm glad to see she's still killing features, her flow sounds good on a Chicago juke beat.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Out (Busta Rhymes Extended Mix)" by Ann & Dom featuring Busta Rhymes and Wade Teo

Ann Winsborn is a Swedish pop singer who had a minor hit in her home country and Dominic Bugatti is a veteran UK songwriter who wrote hits for Sheena Easton and Air Supply in the '80s. Last August, Ann & Dom released their first song as a duo, "Out." In October, they released a dance mix by producer Wade Teo, and in January they released a remix with a Busta Rhymes verse and the Wade Teo beat. Unfortunately, this thing is just a total mess, it sounds like Busta recorded his verse to a completely tempo and they just threw it on here without synching anything up and almost making it sound like he's doing a poetry slam free verse flow. I'm embarrassed for everyone involved that this was released to the public, because "Out" is a decent little dance pop song and putting a rap verse on it isn't a bad idea if it was executed properly.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: F

"Please Please Please (Remix)" by Sabrina Carpenter featuring Dolly Parton

I think "Please Please Please" is a pretty good song that's not served well by some of the most annoyingly cutesy retro production of Jack Antonoff's career. Last summer when the song was still new, Sabrina Carpenter released a remix EP with an acoustic version that put her vocals from the original over some nice acoustic guitar and fiddle, and that's been my preferred go-to version of the song. I was hoping the new version with Dolly Parton on the deluxe edition of Short n' Sweet would use that acoustic backing track, but it sort of takes the original track, irritating synths and all, and layers lots of country instrumentation over it and makes it mostly tolerable. I don't think the song necessarily works as a duet, but Carpenter really has some of the spirit of vintage Dolly in her music and it's fun to hear them together.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B-

"Pookie's Requiem [hehe look y'all made it longer]" by Sailorr featuring Summer Walker

Everything about this song is aggressively quirky, I don't hate it but it feels almost like it's pandering to some target audience I'm not a part of. Summer Walker's addition to the song brings it a little closer to a conventional R&B track and I don't know if that improves it or waters it down on some level.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Popa (Remix)" by Ice Spice featuring Anuel AA

There were some songs on Ice Spice's album that I actually liked but "Popa" was definitely not one of them, and having this 'Latin trap' Trump supporter loser do a verse doesn't help or really suit the beat at all.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: D

"Pressure (Shawty You Pressure) (G-Mix)" by Big Money Blitz featuring Moone Walker

"Pressure 2 (Shawty You Pressure)" by Big Money Blitz featuring Big Boogie and BossMan Dlow

The better remix with Big Boogie and BossMan Dlow was briefly on Spotify and then taken off for some reason, but you can still hear it on Big Money Blitz's YouTube Channel. Not a great song and not a beat that brings out the best in anybody rapping on it, BossMan Dlow in particular sounds a little outside his comfort zone.
Best Verse: Big Boogie
Overall Grade: B-

"PTP (Remix)" by Babyfxce E featuring Monaleo

Just as the "Move" remix gave Monaleo a chance to rap over a juke track, "PTP" gives her a chance to rap over some Michigan rap, and it feels like she really leans into that Michigan style of goofy punchlines. When the video dropped, a lot of people were posting clips of just her verse on Twitter, this might be one that really helps turn her into a star.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: A-

"Push 2 Start (Remix)" by Tyla featuring Sean Paul

The early 2000s global crossover of Jamaican dancehall definitely feels like the template, both in musical influence and in business strategies, for this decade's global crossover of African styles like Amapiano and Afrobeats. So it's a shrewd move for Tyla to make that parallel more explicit with a Sean Paul collaboration, and he sounds pretty good on this song.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B+

"Rock Out (Remix)" by Trae Tha Truth featuring Busta Rhymes and A$AP Ferg

The original "Rock Out" is one of the worst songs I've ever heard, mostly because of the A$AP Ferg hook, but the beat is also kind of annoying. Busta Rhymes puts maximum effort into salvaging the song, though, doing one of those ridiculously fast flows like he did on Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now."

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B-

"Rock Your Hips (Remix)" by 310babii featuring Saweetie

310babii reunited with OhGeesy and BlueBucksClan from "Soak City" for his second biggest hit, but Saweetie is the only guest on the remix. This is definitely one of her better features, she talks her shit. And I guess "I'm the biggest bitch out the west" is more or less true, if you don't count Doja Cat (and I kinda don't consider her a fulltime rapper, so I'm fine with that).

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Shake Dat Ass (Twerk Song) (Remix)" by BossMan Dlow featuring GloRilla

"Shake Dat Ass" appeared on a BossMan Dlow album in early 2023 and then became a sleeper hit after the success of "Get In With Me." I feel like this remix could've been a big deal if it came out earlier, but it just came out quietly as a bonus track on Dlow's latest album a few months after the song peaked, which is kind of shame because it's one of Glo's best verses in recent memory. The way she flubs the word "psychic" is funny, though.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B+

"Shake It To The Max (FLY) - Remix" by Moliy featuring Skillibeng, Shenseea, and Silent Addy

Don't love this song, the beat feels kind of flimsy, but the Skillibeng and Shenseea verses definitely fill out the song and make me enjoy it more.

Best Verse: Shenseea

Overall Grade: B-

"Soft Spot (955 Remix)" by JMSN featuring Sada Baby

Texan Christian "JMSN" Berishaj has been around as a cult artist with industry connections for a while now -- he worked on 4 songs on good kid, m.A.A.d city -- but his 2023 single "Soft Spot" became his breakout hit when people starting making memes out of the video a year after its release. Given the Miami bass feel of the beat and the way JMSN put a Texas area code in the name of the remix, it's kind of odd that he got a verse from a Michigan rapper. Sada Baby sounds pretty good on this track, though, and JMSN's bit on the intro ("it's the remix to 'Soft Spot'/ fresh off the lot") made me chuckle.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Somethin' 'Bout A Woman (Remix)" by Thomas Rhett featuring Teddy Swims

I feel like it's a cliche at this point for country artists and non-country artists to record duets that they can perform together at award shows, and Thomas Rhett and Teddy Swims performed "Somethin' 'Bout A Woman" at the CMAs a few months ago. I think this sounds good and feels like a pretty organic collaboration, though -- they both regularly work with the same producer, Julian Bunetta, and Teddy Swims co-wrote Rhett's #1 country radio hit "Angels (Don't Always Have Wings)" before his career really took off.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Still Believe In Love (Remix)" by Mary J. Blige featuring Jadakiss, Fat Joe, Raekwon, and Vado

Another one from a year ago that I missed at the time and wanted to cover. It's kind of funny that the original "Still Believe In Love" featured just Vado, a former Cam'ron sidekick who's kind of like a replacement level NYC rap "star," but then the remix has three of the city's bona fide legends, and a new Vado verse that's better than his appearance on the original. Both versions of this song were oddly left off Gratitude, though. Jadakiss kills it as usual, he hasn't been in this column since 2022 and it's always nice to hear one of the GOATs of the remix circuit.
Best Verse: Jadakiss
Overall Grade: B

"10PM In Miami (RMX Again)" by Trillian featuring Busta Rhymes, Honey Bxby, and Connie Diiamond

Trillian is Busta Rhymes's son, and last year I covered a remix of "10PM In Miami" featuring Cash Cobain, but he's since released another remix featuring his old man. Busta does his best to attempt a sexy drill flow, but nonchalance is a big part of that whole style of rapping, and Busta sounds like he can't help shouting his way through his verse a little, it's awkward. Honestly Busta has been in this Remix Report Card a lot and he hasn't really caught a W the whole time, it's sad but he's still a top 5 remix guest. Honey Bxby bringing a little melody to the track really works out well, though.

Best Verse: Honey Bxby

Overall Grade: B-

"Tweaker (Remix)" by Gelo featuring Lil Wayne

When LiAngelo Ball released "Tweaker" back in January, people instantly latched onto how that catchy "woah-oh-oh" part of the hook reminded people of early 2000s club bangers, some people would bring up Nelly but even more would bring up old Cash Money hits. Very quickly there was talk of an all-star remix, and people like Moneybagg Yo and Boosie Badazz publicly hit up Gelo asking to do verses on the song, but eventually a remix came out with the biggest Cash Money rapper of all, Lil Wayne. Sounded like a great idea on paper, but the verse really sucks, one of Wayne's worst features I can remember, riffing for way too long on rhymes with his signature "remix, baby" ad lib. Def Jam seemed to really push radio to play this version of "Tweaker" instead of the original and it's actively stifled the song from growing into a bigger hit.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: D

"Way Out The Hood II" by Lil Tjay featuring Polo G

Polo G and Lil Tjay's first collaboration "Pop Out" was really the song that turned them both into mainstream stars six years ago, and they've frequently reunited, by my count this is their 9th song together. But their careers have both kinda stalled in the last couple years and it doesn't feel like this one generated any excitement. Polo G has rapped on so many sad piano loops over the years, including "Pop Out," that there's a whole meme about people calling him 'Piano G,' so I rolled my eyes pretty hard when I heard the sad pianos on "Way Out The Hood," but his verse on this is really good. This is another one that for some reason is not on Spotify but you can listen on YouTube.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

"Whites (Remix)" by Masicka featuring French Montana

I feel bad for new artists whose breakthrough single gets remixed with a French Montana verse, clearly someone is just strategizing for the song to get Hot 97 airplay but they didn't really think about every other market outside NYC where French hasn't mattered in over a decade, if he ever has. It's a shame, because this is really one of those Jamaican records that I can imagine a lot of American rappers sounding good on.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: F

"Worst Behaviour (Remix)" by kwn featuring Kehlani

I feel like both this and the remix of Jordan Adetunji's "Kehlani" have way overshadowed anything from the two solo projects Kehlani has released in the past year, it's like she's a star but doesn't have the hitmaking acumen to make big songs on her own and is better at making other people's songs bigger. She does sound really good on this song, though.

Best Verse: n/a

Overall Grade: B

TV Diary 19 Mar 8:45 AM (last month)

a) "Adolescence"

In my last TV Diary I wrote about "A Thousand Blows," a pretty good new show starring Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty, and both of them are also in this really remarkable Netflix miniseries. Graham plays the father of a 13-year-old boy accused of murder, and Doherty is in one episode as a psychologist assigned to work with the kid. That may be the single best episode of television I've seen so far this year, just incredible writing and acting. Director Philip Barantini made a film starring Graham called Boing Point that was all one 92-minute continuous shot, and a whole lot of the scenes in "Adolescence" last several minutes, maybe longer, I never kept count, but it's really technical impressive stuff on top of the very sobering subject matter and subtle storytelling.

b) "Dope Thief"

So far in the first two episodes, "Dope Thief" seems to conform to a familiar style of prestige TV, the crime drama where the protagonists are violent criminals who are given enough sympathetic qualities for you to root for them, or at least want to watch what happens to them. And Bryan Tyree Henry is, in my opinion, one of the best actors working today, so I love the idea of him having a Tony Soprano-type antihero to play. But then, in "Dope Thief," Henry and Wagner Moura play two friends who pose as as DEA agents to rob drug dealers, which seems like such an absurdly dangerous hustle that there's really no suspense when a job goes bad in the first episode and they get into some deep shit. Again, though, Henry's performance is just so beautifully nuanced and emotive that I'm enjoying it. And the first episode was directed by Ridley Scott, who's produced a lot of television over the years but hadn't actually directed a TV episode since 1969.

c) "Long Bright River"

Amanda Seyfried has a pretty good career by any standard, including an Oscar nomination and an Emmy win, but I feel like we should be seeing her in more and better things, she's so talented. "Long Bright River" is a good complex role in a dark story that can really show what she can do as a dramatic actress, she plays a beat cop who's trying to investigate the death of a homeless girl. But it's a very dour and depressing show, I don't find myself in a rush to watch more after I finish an episode.

d) "Grosse Pointe Garden Society"

"Grosse Pointe Garden Society" is a new show from the creator of "Good Girls" and has a bit of that same vibe of normal suburbanites getting mixed up in some serious criminal situations, but it's a little more soapy in a playful, self-aware way. Melissa Fumero, who was on "One Life To Live" before she starred in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," probably has the exact perfect background to star in a show like this.

e) "Deli Boys"

A pretty good new sitcom on Hulu about two Pakinstani-American brothers who inherit their father's business and learn that it was a front for a criminal empire. Saagar Shaikh is really funny on here, and I always liked Poorna Jagannathan in "Never Have I Ever," happy to see her in another series regular role.

f) "Good Cop/Bad Cop"

The CW has felt like a zombie network that barely exists anymore, the few new shows they have are imported from Canada or co-produced with networks from other countries. "Good Cop/Bad Cop," for instance, takes place in America but is fully filmed in Queensland and airs in Australia on a network called Stan (which just cracks me up...Stan). But it does star an MVP of The CW's glory days, Leighton Meester, and it's an enjoyably cheesy comedy about two sibling police detectives who become partners despite having very different working methods.

g) "The Hunting Party"

The NBC drama "The Hunting Party" is about a bunch of prisoners escaping after a mysterious prison explosion, and the FBI agent who then has to track down all the escaped killers and psychopaths, one in each episode, a very hacky and old-fashioned kind of network show. Colleen Foy is really good in the episode where they're tracking down a female serial killer, but it's pretty formulaic stuff.

h) "Watson"

Morris Chestnut plays Dr. Watson, sidekick of Sherlock Holmes, returning to his medical practice after Holmes's death, but he's a very sexy Dr. Watson who sometimes needs to take his shirt off for half a scene just to change into another shirt. It's a weird mix of generic medical procedural and Sherlock lore, but I dunno, this is exactly the kind of thing CBS should be airing, I think.

i) "House of David"

This is about David and Goliath, mostly from David's perspective in the run up to their battle, feels like Amazon Prime is leaning into making more shows that will appeal to "The Wheel of Time" and "The Rings of Power" viewers, and this one feels a little more normal scale and not a megabudget waste of money.

j) "Suits LA"

I watched every episode of "Suits" when it originally aired on USA and it was just this underrated, highly watchable basic cable drama, and I was amused when it belatedly became a huge hit on Netflix. By that point the producers had already attempted one pretty good short-lived spinoff centered on Gina Torres' character, but now that people really think there's money to be made, NBC has a west coast-based spinoff. What really made the original "Suits" work was the cast chemistry, and it doesn't really feel like the "Suits LA" captures that dynamic at all, even if creator Aaron Korsh made the tone consistent with the old show, and a couple of familiar faces from the original "Suits" do show up now and then. I'm happy to see the gorgeous Baltimore native Lex Scott Davis in a lead role, though, wishing all the best for her.

k) "The White Lotus"

I've never been someone who considers "The White Lotus" one of the best shows on TV, it feels like Mike White is kind of cynically pressing the buttons to make a titillating, zeitgeisty HBO watercooler show. That said, he gets great actors and often gives them really entertaining dialogue, so all he has to do is cast Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins and Parkey Posey and I'm happy on board for another season. I never find the big death scene reveal at the end of the season to be particularly interesting, but I like watching the characters careen towards some kind of climactic catastrophe.

l) "Reacher"

Still a pretty fun show, not tired at all of the big man getting into scrapes and beating people up, and Alan Ritchson is a good enough actor to make that character not a total caricature. I like that British actress Sonya Cassidy from "Lodge 49" joined the cast this season, but the American accent she does in this show is a lot more over-the-top and fake-sounding than the one she did on that show.

m) "United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper"

Most of my teleprompting work is for events, in-house videos for companies, etc., so I only very occasionally work on anything that gets aired on national television. But I spent several days in December and January working on the second season of this CNN docuseries, and I did the prompter for pretty much every host segment where Jake Tapper speaks directly to camera, and some of the ads and a little of the voiceover stuff too. It was an exhausting but fun shoot (great craft services tables too, lots of avocado toast). So far two episodes of the season have aired and it's been cool to see stuff I worked on in the full context of the episode, the Enron episode in particular did a really good job of explaining a story that I never really took the time to understand back when it was all over the news.

n) "With Love, Meghan"

I have a lot of lingering affection for Meghan Markle because, again, I watched every episode of "Suits," and I don't remotely care about the British royal family enough to understand half the reasons people now love or hate her. But doing a Martha Stewart-style lifestyle show on Netflix definitely seems like a listless experiment in her trying to find some way to stay in show business even if she's no longer acting, I dunno, the vibe is weird.

o) "Extracted"

A Fox reality show where amateur survivalists are dropped into the Canadian wilderness. Not really my thing but I like that they took normal people who have never been on TV and let them pick friends or family members to be on their teams, I feel like this would become a completely obnoxious show if it involved celebrities or 'reality TV all-stars.'

p) "The Americas"

The latest ambitious nature doc miniseries from the producers of "Planet Earth" is narrated by Tom Hanks, which was a really great choice. I'm still amazed how they can do so many of these docs around the world and I still feel like I'm seeing some locations and species of animals for the first time, this is stupid to say but wow, Earth is so immense and beautiful.

q) "Love You To Death"

This Spanish series on Apple TV+ is about two people who meet at a funeral, a good funny character-driven show with really engaging leads, Veronica Echegui and Joan Armagos.

r) "Berlin ER"

One of my favorite things about watching foreign shows on streaming services is that they usually still have the title card with the show's name in the country where it was produced. So when I put on "Berlin ER" on Apple TV+, the title card flashed onscreen as "KRANK BERLIN" (translation: "Sick Berlin"), which I liked a lot more. A pretty good show, if you're enjoying the medical drama adrenaline of "The Pitt" right now and could use more of that, I would recommend this show.

s) "The Mothers of Penguins"

A charming Polish show on Netflix about an MMA fighter's trials and tribulations as a mother.

t) "Born For The Spotlight"

This Taiwanese show is one of the few Asian imports on Netflix that feels like an HBO-grade prestige drama, about the friendships and tensions between several actresses at different levels of success.

u) "Adoration"

Another Netflix import that feels a little higher quality than usual, based on an Italian novel about the disappearance of a teenage girl, very textured and emotional storytelling, doesn't feel like the kind of formulaic "missing or dead teenager" show I've seen on American TV a dozen times.

v) "Bank Under Siege"

I haven't watched all of this Netflix drama about a famous 1981 bank heist in Barcelona, but the first episode is really well done, I love how they drop you into the action and let you watch it all unfold.

w) "Sisters' Feud"

This telenovela starts out with a good premise but I feel like it went off the rails and lost my attention pretty quickly, it's just not a style of storytelling or pacing that I'm used to.

x) "Beyond Goodbye"

This has a similar premise to the movie Return To Me (a person falls in love with a heart transplant recipent who got their dead spouse's heart), but with a supernatural twist where the guy has the memories of the person whose heart is now in house body. Sweet but kinda cheesy.

y) "Tomorrow + I"

This feels a bit like Thailand's answer to "Black Mirror," an anthology series about near future dystopian scenarios involving technology's effect on society. Some of the satire is really heavy-handed, though, even in comparison to "Black Mirror."

z) "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

I started watching this Netflix series and it was [retty compelling but I dunno, I feel like I should read the novel one of these days before I get through an adaptation.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 378: Bad Company 18 Mar 8:10 AM (last month)

Bad Company have been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year alongside the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Mana, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes.

Bad Company deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Deal With The Preacher

2. Live For The Music

3. Seagull

4. Too Bad

5. Until The Knot

6. Don't Let Me Down

7. Lonely For Your Love

8. Weep No More

9. Kick Down

10. Heartbeat

11. Simple Man

12. Wild Fire Woman

13. Crazy Circles

14. Sweet Lil' Sister

15. Peace Of Mind
16. The Way I Choose

17. Ballad of the Band

18. Rhythm Machine

19. Fearless

20. If I'm Sleeping

21. The Way That It Goes

Tracks 3, 6, and 16 from Bad Company (1974)

Tracks 1, 8, and 12 from Straight Shooter (1975)

Tracks 2, 11, and 14 from Run With The Pack (1976)

Tracks 4, 10, and 15from Burnin' Sky (1977)

Tracks 7, 13, and 18 from Desolation Angels (1979)

Tracks 5, 9, and 17 from Rough Diamonds (1982)

Track 20 from Fame And Fortune (1986)

Track 21 from Dangerous Age (1988)

Track 19 from Holy Water (1990)

When I think of Bad Company, I think of a favorite old "Kids in the Hall" sketch: "Popular music has been on the wane since 1974, the year of the first Bad Company release." After Foreigner were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, I wrote about how they were part of a wave of '70s and '80s bands, alongside Journey and Bad Company, that dominated classic rock radio playlists for decades without necessarily commanding a lot of respect. For a long time, the Hall of Fame ignored those bands, but now they all seem to be getting in, one by one, along with other radio-friendly middleweights like Peter Frampton, Steve Miller, and the Doobie Brothers. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, although it feels like the HOF is using these artists as filler inductions so that any given year's class isn't too young, too Black, too niche, or too light on guitar bands. My money is on Boston to be the next one.

I don't think Bad Company is thought of as a 'supergroup' today, because they wound up being bigger than any of the members' previous bands, but that's how they were looked at when members of Free, Mott the Hoople, and King Crimson formed a new band in 1973. They shared a manager, Peter Grant, with the biggest band in the world at the time, Led Zeppelin. And when Led Zeppelin formed its own label Swan Song, Bad Company became one of the label's marquee acts, really the only the only successful one besides Zep.

Bad Company never threatened to overtake their label bosses -- only their biggest sellers, their first two albums, sold as much as Zep's least popular album -- but they had several platinum albums, a pretty good run. They have a live album called In Concert: Merchants of Cool, which puzzled me a little, because were they ever considered particularly cool, even when they were popular? A lot of Bad Company's album artwork (including all the covers above) were designed by Hipgnosis, though, and those look pretty great.

"Bad Company," "Shooting Star," "Ready For Love," "Silver, Blue & Gold," and "Rock Steady" were never released as singles and never charted, but all of those are classic rock radio staples I've heard a hundred times, so I didn't consider them for the deep cuts playlist. But "Seagull" is an album track that's among the band's top songs on Spotify, "Live For The Music" appeared on the band's top-selling best-of compilation, 10 From 6, and "Simple Man" and "Deal With The Preacher" are live staples.

All four original members of Bad Company participated in the songwriting, and I have a hard time really distinguishing any difference in the writing styles of their two most prolific writers, frontman Paul Rodgers and guitarist Mick Ralphs. Drummer Simon Kirke, father of "Girls" actress Jemima Kirke and "Mozart in the Jungle" actress Lola Kirke, is the only person who's been a concistent member of every Bad Company lineup. Kirke co-wrote the song "Bad Company" with Rodgers and has a few solo writing credits on good Bad Company songs including "Weep No More" and "Peace of Mind." His drumming really elevates some of these songs, particularly "Don't Let Me Down."

A couple years ago I heard "Electricland" on the radio and it was probably the first time my ears perked up for a Bad Company song that hadn't been in steady rotation for my entire life. That song was the only single from Rough Diamond's the band's sixth and final album with Rodgers, and I think they split before doing any sustained touring for that album so most of it was never played live. I kind of like the piano-heavy sound of that record, though, "Untie The Knot" is so good.

One thing I didn't realize until recently was that Bad Company reunited in the mid-'80s with a new frontman, Brian Howe, who had singing on Ted Nugent's records. And Bad Company actually continued to be pretty successful with him, so I covered that era in the last three tracks on the playlist. The four Bad Company albums with Howe solid a combined 2 million copies and had spun off top 10 rock radio hits. I listened to the band's Howe-era hits and didn't recognize any of them, even "If I Needed Somebody," which is in the band's top streaming songs on Spotify today. I wouldn't surprised if I had heard some of those songs back in the day and either had no idea it was Bad Company, or had no idea that Bad Company had a different singer than they did before. Howe is a pretty generic soulful English rock singer, he doesn't sound exactly like Paul Rodgers but I feel like he's close enough that at least part of the radio-listening audience didn't even register that there was a lineup change. Bad Company had another singer, Robert Hart, for two unsuccessful albums in the '90s, and eventually reunited with Rodgers for tours and a handful of new songs, but never a full-length album.

Monthly Report: March 2025 Singles 13 Mar 7:27 AM (last month)

1. Lisa f/ Raye and Doja Cat - "Born Again"

Blackpink hasn't broken up or gone on hiatus (they have a world tour kicking off in July) but all four members have released a solo album or EP in the last few months. Lisa's Alter Ego is probably the weakest of those four projects (why is she rapping so much?) but the singles "Born Again" and "New Woman" are probably my two favorite songs to come out of this whole blitz of Blackpink music. And as usual the K-pop that appeals to me the most tends to be the obvious stuff where they just get songs from western hitmakers. "Born Again" is more or less a Raye song but a really good one, makes me think her next album is going to be huge if she can just give a song like this to another artist. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month throughout the year.

2. Kendrick Lamar f/ SZA - "Luther"

Kendrick has a pretty high batting average for melodic R&B-flavored singles even though it's not really the main thing people associate him with, "Loyalty" and "Love" and "Poetic Justice" and "All the Stars" have all aged really well and "Luther" may be even better than any of those. The recent documentary Luther: Never Too Much got into how Luther Vandross was wildly popular in the R&B world and never fully crossed over like Michael or Prince but did want to have a #1 pop hit and never quite got there (the closest he got was a #2 duet of "Endless Love" with Mariah Carey). So it's cool that Twista's "Slow Jamz" got to #1 with a Luther sample while Vandross was still alive, and now we've got another song sampling Luther and named after him a couple decades after his death.

3. Almost Monday - "Can't Slow Down"

The San Francisco-based indie pop trio Almost Monday has kicked around alternative radio with a few minor hits over the last few years, and "Can't Slow Down" recently became their first #1. I was a little surprised to see recently that it's starting to get pop radio airplay too, not a lot of alternative songs cross over these days and this one didn't strike me as a super slick Glass Animals-type thing that would go Top 40 easily. It's growing on me, though, that little distorted analog synth riff is killer.

4. Juiicy 2xs - "Leave My Man Alone"

Back in 2019, Future curated a pretty good compilation of newer and relatively unknown artists, 1800 Seconds Vol. 2. The Cincinnati-born singer Juiicy 2xs had the only track on that album with over a million streams, and she's steadily released more music and built an audience since then, with "Leave My Man Alone" becoming her first charting radio hit. It's a pretty, funny catchy song, a possessive girlfriend's warning to other girls (my favorite line: "Even if it's his birthday, don't tell him happy birthday/ 'Cause why the fuck you happy he's born?").

5. Sturdyyoungin f/ Ohthatsmizz and Zeddy Will - "Trippin"

"Clumsy" was the 5th single (and 5th-biggest single) from Fergie's 2006 solo debut The Dutchess, and I didn't think any remembered or liked that song as much as I did. So it was fun to hear it sampled in a fun way on "Trippin," a song by Sturdyyoungin, a teen TikTok creator/rapper from Philly. I don't like this kind of extremely online meme rap all the time, but sometime it really hits. Case in point: Queens rapper Zeddy Will has another song getting spins right now, "Twerkin Wit Ya Friends," that I hate.

6. Drake f/ Elkan - "Nokia"

I've been annoyed for a while at how Drake's collab albums always have solo tracks by both artists on them, it just felt a little lazy or antithetical to the spirit of the project. And it really turned out to be a pretty bad deal for PartyNextDoor, who's not as famous or established as Future or 21 Savage were when they did albums with Drake. $ome $exy $ongs 4 U has six Drake solo tracks and one PND solo track. And while I don't think I'm generally a good barometer for the taste of Drake fans, "Nokia" was immediately the song I found the most enjoyable and memorable on my first play through the album. Now both the album's big breakout hits, "Nokia" and "Gimme A Hug," are both Drake solo tracks. PND got his first #1 album out of the deal, I'm sure he's rich and happy, but I dunno, I think it kinda sucks for him. And Elkan, the producer from Sierra Leone who did the "Nokia" beat and the goofy, infectiously catchy hook on the second half of the song, could very well get a bigger boost from this album than Party.

7. Travis Scott - "4x4"

There's a weird paradox of the streaming era where one of the ways you can really measure the level of an artist's stardom is when they have songs that don't even feel like hits but went to #1 on the strength of their fame and the size of their fanbase. Drake and Taylor Swift each have a whole bunch of #1s that their casual fans would not be able to hum, and that's also the case for the several Travis Scott #1s that aren't "Sicko Mode." "4x4" had the biggest drop from #1 in Hot 100 history, but I'm rooting for it to have more staying power than "Franchise" or "The Scotts," though, the beat by Tay Keith and FnZ in really good. They sampled an old video of a college marching band playing "Say Sum," a forgettable single Migos released 8 years ago during a brief dry spell before "Bad & Boujee." That horn sample sounds way cooler than the original "Say Sum."

8. Debbii Dawson - "You Killed The Music"

I watch a lot of the secondary MTV channels that still play videos like MTV Hits and MTV Live, and it's mostly big obvious hits, but they'll occasionally play some lesser known artists. And this video caught my eye recently, the song is very ABBA and the video matches that with an old school VHS aesthetic, pretty good.

9. Ella Mai - "Little Things"

Jayson Tatum led the Celtics to an NBA championship last year, and narrative-obsessed fans and commentators have talked a lot since then about how Tatum doesn't have "aura" or is "cringe" or isn't a superstar in some intangible way that goes beyond his talent and accomplishments. But he had a baby with a gorgeous British R&B singer and she sounds completely infatuated with him on her recent songs, so I'm not going to sit here and talk about how Jayson Tatum is corny and uncool, I think he's doing alright.

10. Joe Nichols f/ Annie Bosko - "Better Than You"

Joe Nichols had his biggest hits about 20 years ago, and "Better Than You" feels like a kind of old-fashioned pop country ballad. So I assumed this song wasn't new when I heard it on the radio for the first time, but it is new, and I really like it.

The Worst Single of the Month: Falling In Reverse f/ Saraya - "Bad Guy"

Ronnie Radke is a real piece of shit who's done hard time for his role in a murder and has rape and domestic violence allegations, and his shitty metalcore band just seems to keep getting better as people become more aware of all the gross stuff she's done. He's really started to lean into this and troll people with Falling In Reverse's latest album Popular Monster, which features Radke's mugshot as the cover art (a move reminiscent of the late XXXTentacion) and the single "Bad Guy," Falling In Reverse's fourth #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, which is just putrid and unlistenable in ways I don't think I could adequately prepare you for. It's absurd that Epitaph Records releases this guy's music and music industry golden boy Jelly Roll is on his latest album and nobody seems to be experiencing any significant blowback for working with him.

Movie Diary 12 Mar 7:26 AM (last month)

a) Flow

My family have a whole thing about capybaras, we love them and my son has a stuffed capybara. A few months ago I was musing that it's crazy that there hasn't been a big animated movie about a capybara, and then shortly after that I learned about Flow, which is about a cat who befriends a few other animals, including a capybara, while escaping a flood. I was excited to see it after all the raves and the Oscar win, and it totally lived up to my expectations, just an amazing demonstration of what one twentysomething Latvian guy can create with open source animation software, it's really quite an emotional journey by the end. People expend so much energy making talking animal movies with celebrities reciting sassy dialogue that it's refreshing to see someone do such strong visual storytelling with no dialogue and no names and still have this really compelling plot with identifiable characters.

b) Nosferatu

I get the sense I'm not as amazed by Robert Eggers as some people are, but this was pretty cool, I enjoyed it, some really great gnarly visuals. Lily-Rose Depp won me over with her performance in "The Idol" but I think she was the weak link in this, could've been better with a more seasoned star in that role.

c) Saturday Night

I have a lot of issues with the formulas and narrative shorthand of decades-spanning biopics, so I much prefer something like Saturday Night, which is basically a real time depiction of the 90 minutes before the first episode of "Saturday Night Live" went on the air in 1975. The cast is almost shockingly good at capturing the essence of a lot of the key players without it feeling like mere impersonation, particularly Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, and Matthew Rhys as George Carlin. The second half of the movie piles up so many "that definitely didn't happen" moments that it gets kind of ridiculous, though, and Jon Batiste's score, while good and appropriate to the energy of the film, is mixed so loud that it was drowning out way too much of the dialogue, I don't know why they did that.

d) To Catch A Killer

This movie takes place in Baltimore but was filmed in Montreal, which I always find insulting. The city isn't iconic enough that you need to film on location but you still want to set the story here? Fuck you! It's a decent cat-and-mouse movie about a police officer trying to find a mass shooter, it gets good and intense toward the end, but nothing special. It's Argentinian director Damian Szifron's first English-language film, he definitely has a good feel for building atmosphere and choosing interesting angles in action scenes, hopefully he keeps getting some Hollywood opportunities.

e) The Beekeeper

I love formulaic Jason Statham movies, I'm so glad they're still making these things. The gas station fight scene kicked ass, and the overqualified supporting cast (Jeremy Irons, Minnie Driver, Josh Hutcherson) does good work.

f) Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

The whole ordeal of Kevin Costner reviving his career with "Yellowstone," using that as leverage to get back to directing indulgent passion projects and exiting "Yellowstone" in a huff is kind of more interesting than the movie itself. As one of the few people who actually liked The Postman, though, I thought this was alright, if not compelling enough to justify a trilogy of 3-hour movies. I'm happy that Ella Hunt from Anna and the Apocalypse is starting to book some high profile movies like this and Saturday Night, but her biggest scene feels like kind of old-fashioned gratuitous nudity, and another young actress, Abbey Lee, has a gross sex scene with Costner.

g) Back In Action

Cameron Diaz settled down and had a couple kids with the weirder-looking Good Charlotte twin and didn't take a single acting gig for a solid decade, which, y'know, good for her, she can do whatever she wants. Coming back to do a Netflix action movie doesn't really feel like much of a power move, but teaming her up with Jamie Foxx and a director who's mostly done straight up comedy was a good idea, it was light and fun.

h) The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep

It kind of feels like Netflix has really mishandled the Witcher franchise with the loss of Henry Cavill and the forgettable spinoff and all that, but I think the animated one-off movies are pretty well done. It wasn't really clear to me where this took place sequentially in relation to the series but it was kind of a standalone story so it didn't matter too much.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 377: Chubby Checker 11 Mar 5:13 AM (last month)

Chubby Checker is one of 2025's nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bad Company, the Black Crowes, Mariah Carey, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Mana, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden, and the White Stripes.

Chubby Checker deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. The Slop

2. The Chicken

3. The Strand

4. The "Mexican Hat" Twist

5. The Pony

6. The Jet

7. The Ray Charles-ton

8. Ballin' The Jack

9. Continental Walk

10. Fishin'

11. Dance-A-Long

12. Hi Ho Silver

13. Let's Dance, Let's Dance, Let's Dance

14. The Shimmy

15. Mary Ann Limbo

16. The Killer

17. Oo-Kook-A-Boo

18. (We're Gone) Surfin'

19. Limbo Side By Side

20. She's A Hippy

21. Let's Surf Again

22. Twistin' Round The World

23. Twist Marie

24. How Low Can You Go?

25. The Girl With The Swingin' Derriere

26. A Lotta Limbo

27. Mother Goose Limbo

28. Run, Chico, Run

29. Doncha Get Tired

30. Sippin' Cider Through A Straw

31. The Doodang

32. Ole Anna

33. Go Tell My Baby

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from Twist With Chubby Checker (1960)

Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 from Let's Twist Again (1961)

Tracks 12, 13 and 14 from It's Pony Time (1961)

Track 15 from Limbo Party (1962)

Tracks 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 from Beach Party (1962)

Tracks 22 and 23 from Twistin' Round The World (1962)

Tracks 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 from Let's Limbo Some More (1963)

Tracks 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33 from Chubby's Folk Album (1964)

At 83 years old, Ernest "Chubby Checker" Evans is by far the oldest and longest tenured artist nominated this year, and he's nominated for the first time. He's said many times that he deserves to be in the Hall, and even protested outside the induction ceremony in 2004, but most people don't seem that eager to take up his cause, even people that champion Black rock & roll trailblazers like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

In 2018, the Hall of Fame created a singles category that existed primarily to recognize significant songs by people who hadn't been inducted into the Hall in any of the artist categories, and "The Twist" was in that first set of songs. Nina Simone and Joan Baez are just about the only artist inducted into the Hall proper (not an 'influences' or 'excellence' category) in the last decade who peaked commercially before Beatlemania. Chubby Checker isn't a one hit wonder, because he had over twenty Top 40 hits. But he is a bit of a one trick pony, and an opportunist who just happened to make the biggest version of Hank Ballard's "The Twist" and turn it into a career.

One thing that surprised me is that "Let's Twist Again" is by far Chubby Checker's biggest song on Spotify, with nearly twice as many streams as "The Twist." In America, "Let's Twist Again" was a moderate hit, his 6th biggest Hot 100 hit, but in the UK and all over Europe it was huge, and was in The Help and I guess has had a pretty big pop culture footprint, although I can't say I remember hearing it much if ever (unlike some twist records by other artists, like the Isley Brothers and Beatles versions of "Twist & Shout" and Same Cooke's "Twistin' The Night Away"). It's a little bizarre to me, because it sounds like one of his most desperate attempts to simply prolong the crazy, the twist is literally "let's twist again, like we did last summer." Imagine Tommy Richman coming out with "Let's Million Dollar Baby Again" right now.

The availability of Checker's catalog is patchy on streaming services. This playlist covers 8 of his first 11 albums, 7 of which are available in full on Spotify. He made a few albums after the mid-'60s, but I decided I didn't need to check out his 1994 country album The Texas Twist. The only song I'm truly sad I couldn't include was the 1961 deep cut "The Lose Your Inhibitions Twist." Previously the Everly Brothers and They Might Be Giants were tied for the most tracks I've fit into my self-imposed 8-minute cap for deep cuts playlists. And Chubby beat their 32-song record by just one song here.

I'm kind of used to early rock acts not having very substantial albums beyond the hits and looking at it as an interesting challenge to still scrape together a playlist, but it is pretty comical just how unapologetically narrow and repetitive Chubby Checker's catalog is. When he wasn't making variations on "The Twist," he was covering other dance craze records, pitching new dance crazes, or jumping on other trends like the limbo, surf rock, and, uh, folk music. I particularly enjoyed opening the playlist with a song called "The Slop" because a lot of this stuff is shameless filler that you might, in modern parlance, refer to as slop. "The Killer" is a murderous parody of "Tequila" and "The Ray Charles-ton" mimics the arrangement of "What'd I Say." I often think of the Deep Album Cuts series as a vehicle for trying to find the hidden depths in the catalog of hitmakers that most people have a reductive view of, but I have to admit, there is absolutely no depth to be found here. That said, I don't wanna sound mean, because it's all pretty jaunty, listenable stuff, and I particularly like his vocal performances on "The Chicken" and "The Girl With The Swingin' Derriere." And "Sippin' Cider Through A Straw" has a really interesting melody and rhythm.

Chubby Checker recorded for Cameo-Parkway Records, which was co-founded by Kal Mann, and which hired Dave Appell as a producer and A&R director. Appell produced "The Twist," and Mann produced the bulk of Chubby Checker's albums. And the majority of the songs on this playlist were written by Mann and/or Appell (with Mann sometimes credited by the pseudonym Jon Sheldon). "The 'Mexican Hat' Twist" was a riff on "The Mexican Hat Rock," a 1958 hit Appell wrote for The Applejacks, so he was really cannibalizing his previous work twice on that one. I did find that Chubby Checker has songwriting credits on two songs on Chubby's Folk Album: the single "Hooka Tooka" (his last top 20 hit until a 1988 "The Twist" remake with the Fat Boys), and the deep cut "Doncha Get Tired." The latter is pretty much just a thinly veiled rewrite of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)," though.

Raw Deal by Jack Riedy

Jack Riedy's debut album Raw Deal is out today and I played drums on the 5th track, "Clockwork." I also really like the opening track "Why Say Anything."

I did an early COVID era experiment in fall 2020 where I tweeted out an offer to record tracks of me playing drums for anyone who asked, at the BPM of their choice. Jack, who lives in Chicago, asked for some 114 BPM drums, and last year he sent me the song he made with them, and now it's finally out. I sent drums to 27 people in 2020, and I think this is only the 2nd time someone has released a track they made with them. The other guy has since taken all his music off Bandcamp and has focused on making AI art. Oh well!

I ranked every Led Zeppelin album and every Tears For Fears album for Spin.

narrowcast View RSS

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 383: Faith No More 8:53 AM (7 hours ago)

Movie Diary 28 Apr 8:52 AM (yesterday, 8:52 am)

TV Diary 21 Apr 8:51 AM (8 days ago)

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 382: Phish 16 Apr 8:51 AM (13 days ago)

Monthly Report: April 2025 Singles 15 Apr 8:50 AM (14 days ago)

Movie Diary 14 Apr 8:49 AM (15 days ago)

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 381: The Kinks 10 Apr 2:00 AM (19 days ago)

Monthly Report: March 2025 Albums 8 Apr 8:49 AM (21 days ago)

TV Diary 7 Apr 8:48 AM (22 days ago)

My Top 50 Mainstream Rock Singles of the 1980s 4 Apr 5:26 AM (25 days ago)

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 380: Joe Cocker 28 Mar 7:41 AM (last month)

Movie Diary 27 Mar 7:40 AM (last month)

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 379: Maná 21 Mar 8:47 AM (last month)

The 2025 Remix Report Card Vol. 1 20 Mar 8:46 AM (last month)

TV Diary 19 Mar 8:45 AM (last month)

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 378: Bad Company 18 Mar 8:10 AM (last month)

Monthly Report: March 2025 Singles 13 Mar 7:27 AM (last month)

Movie Diary 12 Mar 7:26 AM (last month)

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 377: Chubby Checker 11 Mar 5:13 AM (last month)