I don't think that's him on "Armenia." He sings on a couple of the outtakes/bonus tracks, and also lead on "I Need You" on Magic Bus. You're right, though - not good, not terrible. But whereas his not-quite-in-the-pocket drumming was still frequently awesome up through Who Are You, his not-quite-in-tune singing kinda…

Just as impressively, a librarian at the Maryland Institute College of Art had this Lemonade study guide up just a day or two after the album came out: http://libguides.mica.edu/l…. It's gotten more fleshed out since then, I think, but it was remarkably complete off the bat.

Yeah, the huge lists of writing and production credits in pop music are kind of a combination of due diligence and representing collaboration where it's often a bunch of people programming instead of adding guitar parts or whatever.

Did a little more checking into this online and found you making this same argument in multiple venues. Which isn't to say I now buy it (because, come ON, the pose, color scheme, the genre— that album cover can't be coincidence), but I know better than to get into it with someone with a year-spanning axe to grind.

True, Jobriath was far from the cultural phenomenon Bowie or any of the other main UK players in glam were, but he was *gayer* than any of them, which is crucial to VG, and Haynes borrowed some of that to turn Slade's queerness up beyond Bowie's. Also, the influence isn't something Tobias made up — it's overt in the…

Adjusting for solo acts in which only one person actually appeared onstage, here's every notable act from the original Lilith Fair with all-female lineups:

Yeah, not surprisingly, the Springsteen (a Jimmy Cliff cover, but one I never heard until about a minute ago) and Prince songs are the big keepers there.

"Baby, I think tonight

And major statistical outliers. I'm trying to figure out how someone could become a big Mr. Bungle fan without having any idea that Mike Patton was in this much, much bigger band, and all I'm coming up with is "forcefully kept isolated from popular media and internet access and periodically given super specific,…

Midnight, another one that Wilder co-wrote with Charles Brackett, works in pretty much the same way (even if Mitchell Leisen isn't the name Hawks is, and Wilder didn't care for some of his rewrites). It feels more like a Wilder comedy than some Wilder-directed comedies do, and Claudette Colbert is a natural with his…

Yeah, I can't dock anyone cred for making that comparison, since I've been making it for years, and not just on their ethics and fan-friendliness. Fugazi is a pretty clear musical influence on the twisty rhythms and stops and starts on some of the tunes on Binaural ("Evacuation," "Grievance," and "Insignificance,"…

Diary has that three-song opening to die for and a great sound throughout, but the individual songs on HIFTBSO are more distinct and memorable. But the Pink Album has grown on me a ton over the years, too, and The Rising Tide gets a bum rap. It's a little more straightforward and has a couple missteps, but there are…

That comment makes it sound like the Constantines are more in line with the Shins and the Postal Service end of indie rock than they are, though. Think more like Fugazi or Jawbox with a streak of bar band grit, mostly courtesy of Webb's vocals.

To add to some proofreading/fact-checking concerns that I hope won't be taken as overly fussy—it's "Ranaldo" with two "a"s (it appears correctly in the first reference, but not later), and Gordon's first turn at the mic on Daydream Nation is technically on the "Teenage Riot" intro section.

I say this as a drummer who grew up on Quadrophenia and shamelessly ripped off aspects of Moon's style when I was in my teens: the dude was many things, but a good timekeeper he was not. There are live versions of "Baba O'Riley" where you can hear him slow down and get so far out of sync with the keyboard part that…

It doesn't hurt that, subject matter aside, Swift has been a talented songwriter for a long time. Red is her stretching musically and also lyrically. There's stuff that's definitely deliberately shallow, like this tune and "Trouble," but there's also "All Too Well," which is about as 'adult' and well-written as…

I always took "End of the Rainbow" to be at least a little comically bleak. For no-snark bleakness, there's definitely "Jennie," but also "The Woods of Darney," "Walking on a Wire," "Devonside," etc. Then there's the mix of bleakness and almost warm humor of "From Galway to Graceland." The guy can definitely do shades…

I really like Small Town Romance! For a while, it was the only commercially available live album of his, which initially bugged me since I wanted some of the wild soloing I'd sampled on the Watching the Dark box set (this was before I'd seen him live). But it helped me come around on his strictly acoustic solo…

Well, clearly the guy who named himself after the failed, jealous artist wannabe on Mad Men would have a lot of preconceptions about art that don't necessarily pan out in reality.  Zing!  Or you just picked your handle on a whim like I did.

LDR's not really the opposite, though—it's the exact same arc happening in a different context in which more idiots are hung up on "authenticity". No one knew about Katy Perry's 'false start' until she had a hit, either; the difference is that pop fans are less judgmental and perhaps a little more realistic than many…