Entries in the Category "music"
The Dixie Chicks and Our First Amendment Rights
Isn't it weird how you can love something and forget about it for awhile, and then have it be immediately rekindled when you experience it again? It's been like three years since the Dixie Chicks put out a new album, and I hadn't listened to them in ages. Then, today, I clicked over to the AV Club and saw this: Dixie Chicks, Badass Motherf**ckers. Yes, that's really the title. It's a write-up from Nathan Rabin, one of their music guys, who's trying to educate himself in country, as he realizes that just because the Dixie Chicks are cute doesn't mean they're not awesome.
I read the thing, I watched all the embedded videos (haven't seen "Goodbye Earl" in awhile?), and then I was seized by the desire to rewatch Shut Up and Sing, a documentary about the band trying to come back from the unexpected controversy that was generated over an off-the-cuff remark during a concert in 2003.
Rabin seems to be positioning most of the vitriol that was directed at the Chicks as based on them being women—pretty, (mostly) blonde, popular chicks. They're supposed to be wholesome, they're not supposed to have opinions at all, and certainly not divisive ones. Watching the movie again (which, of course, I did), I think Rabin is really on to something.
Continue reading "The Dixie Chicks and Our First Amendment Rights"
The Madonna Paradox
Hey, do you like Madonna?
Wait--before you answer that question, think really hard about it.
I'll ask again: do you like Madonna?
My theory is that anybody who likes pop music at all likes Madonna; we don't necessarily know that we do because her personality can be so overwhelming we forget about all her awesome music. It doesn't need to be. Madonna, I don't care about your personal life or your scandal-rousing or your politics or that you will keep doing Pilates until you look like Skeletor. Thanks for "Lucky Star" and "Crazy for You" and "The Power of Goodbye" and "Like a Prayer."
Tonight's contribution to Madonna Appreciation is thanks to blogger Mark Blankenship, who this week devoted his blog The Critical Condition to ranking every top-100 single by Madonna.
Even if you don't read the whole thing, read the top ten. His story about "Ray of Light" is both touching and hilarious.
Revisit the 90s with The AV Club
The AV Club has just started running an incredibly fun feature based on those ubiquitous NOW! compilation CDs. As he explains in the introductory feature, Nathan Rabin, one of the site's writers, recently was subjected to the original NOW! from 1999 and marveled at how much of a snapshot of the times it was. He writes...
A strange spirit of musical democracy pervades the CD. It’s a curious world where one-hit wonders like Marcy Playground breathe the same rarified air as Janet Jackson and Radiohead. For a brief period, they were peers, at least where Billboard and NOW That’s What I Call Music! is concerned.
This week the second feature went live, revisiting the Britney Spears phenomenon in its nascent stage, discussing whether the New Radicals' "You Get What You Give" has enough layers of subversion to be cool, and vindicating my secret belief that Semisonic was cool.
Read it--especially if you were a teen in the 90s like I was--but skip the comments section lest you get too engaged in the debate about which ironic cover of "Baby One More Time" is the best.
Travis?
Fountains of Wayne?
Bowling for Soup?
Even Tori Amos has done it!
For the record, my music taste never having been particularly cool, I never bought a NOW! CD, though if there had been a Lilith Fair edition, you can be sure I would have been all over it. Here's who I spent the majority of the 90s listening to...
Oh, you mean you don't remember Lisa Loeb?
Here, maybe this will help.
Pop Music Catharsis
A playlist for feeling bad so I can get feeling good.
"A Dustland Fairytale," The Killers
This song is dusty, like the title suggests, Midwestern, iconic Americana, with the Killers touch of New Wave-inspired Vegas-and-neon drama. See the band, including lead singer Brandon Flowers, perform this song on Letterman’s show, letting the orchestra behind them amp up the emotion without overpowering the pop.
Click ahead for 13 more great songs.
Continue reading "Pop Music Catharsis"
Green Day to Broadway?
Green Day's instant-classic rock opera album, American Idiot, has been adapted into a stage show in Berkeley, CA.
The Killers are Coming to Town!
Despite how sinister that sounds, it's a good thing! The Killers are my favorite band right now, and they're playing Cleveland on May 6. Coincidentally, that is the day my final grades are due and subsequently, the day that my school year is officially over.
Jeremy and I bought our tickets last night! The Killers will be my end-of-the-year blowout before the pleasant ennui of summer.
Here's "For Reasons Unknown," my favorite track from their second album, Sam's Town (the one in heavy rotation on my iPod right now).
They also released Day and Age, their fourth, this past fall.