134. Fine Young Cannibals, Fine Young Cannibals (1985) Guitarist Andy Cox and bassist David Steele didn’t know their band the Beat was breaking up. Vocalists Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger had already decided they were moving and started recording their … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #134 to #132
The Supreme Court Is Blowing Up Law School, Too by Mark Joseph Stern My master’s degree program included a class in constitutional law. It didn’t really make sense that it did, but I greatly enjoyed the class. In his lectures, … Continue reading Outside Reading — Unsettled Law edition
“Should be easy to remember cuz it’s the same day Taylor Swift is putting out her album,” Carly Rae Jepsen joked from the Radio City Music Hall stage recently when reminding fans of when her newest full-length studio effort will … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Carly Rae Jepsen (feat. Rufus Wainwright), “The Loneliest Time”
This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves. Several years after I hung up the studio headphones for the last time as an undergraduate student … Continue reading Radio Days — WPRK’s Top 30 for October 7, 2002
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Back in my college … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Julie Brown, “I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid”
A good amount of my time growing up was spent in a house that had country music playing all the time. This was in the nineteen-seventies and the first part of the nineteen-eighties, and while a poppier brand of country … Continue reading Loretta Lynn, 1932 – 2022
These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. Cameron Crowe was trying to crack a … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “In Your Eyes”
137. The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs (1987) Because of the uncertain approach Sire Records took to releasing music from the Smiths in U.S., there was a lot of material that hadn’t been pressed on LP, Yanks’ preferred format for record … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #137 to #135
If music artists have narratives that span their entire careers, Samia is sketching in her next page appropriately with her new single “Kill Her Freak Out.” According to her, the sedate, withdrawn, Bridgers-esque expressions of anger and despair embedded in … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Samia, “Kill Her Freak Out”
There are many building blocks of the internet, but the cornerstones are think pieces, offhand lists, and other hollow provocations meant to stir arguments and, therefore, briefly redirect web traffic. Engaging such material is utterly pointless. Then again, it’s not like I … Continue reading Bait Taken — Pitchfork’s 250 Best Songs of the 1990s
Coffee for Two 