No love for "Real Song for the Deaf" on QOTSA's "Songs for the Deaf"? That was a REAL hidden track, per Wikipedia:

It's all an elaborate metaphor for the gradual splintering and decline of the Wu-Tang Clan.

As a lifelong Angeleno, I can verify.

The weirdest thing to me about Robin Thicke is that scoring an unstoppable hit single was just about the worst thing that could've happened to him. I actually was dragged to see him at the Hollywood Bowl by my girlfriend a couple years before "Blurred Lines" hit — he wasn't yet a household name, but dude was somehow…

I don't know that I agree with this. I think the difference between The Martian and Apollo 13 is the difference between a stranded-on-a-desert-island movie and a ticking-clock-sinking-ship movie. The urgency of the two situations is entirely different.

FOUR entries apiece for Pitbull and Mike Jones, but not a single RZA "Bong Bong," Chuck D "Bass!" or Mobb Deep "dun"? I call shenanigans.

Does anyone remember “The Pelican Brief”? Also-ran John Grisham adaptation from the 1990s with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington? The character played by Denzel was a white guy in a book. Him being a white guy had absolutely no bearing on his character – it’s not like his Swedish heritage was a key plot point, or he…

In all seriousness, it was a doomed proposition from the start. The Neverland Indians of the original stories were drawn as racist caricatures that were acceptable at the time and are not acceptable today. So you can't just present them as they were written. But by making them a racially heterogeneous "tribe," you…

Lucinda Williams is one of our greatest living songwriters, full stop.

"Get On Up" was one the better cookie-cutter musician biopics of recent years. Which doesn't mean it was great — something like "Love and Mercy," which actually took chances with its narrative, was far better — but it was thoroughly fine, and definitely good enough to be considered as Oscar-worthy as the other equally…

Correct. Which is a little weird, because that was the slight that really bothered Owens. I think he actually campaigned against Roosevelt in subsequent years…

Love that one.

In this context, he means "do some heroin." Not the Baker ever needed help there.

In all seriousness, I do think it was a real problem that dozens and dozens of major news outlets wrote stories about the impending anti-Beyonce protest in the days leading up to this. Sort of like the widely-discussed "meninist backlash" to Furiosa's hero status in "Fury Road," which turned out to be like one or two…

The Grammy eligibility period stretches from one September to the next. Which is why Taylor's late-2014 release won in 2016, and also why Adele's late-2015 release will almost certainly win in 2017.

Getting mad about “1989” winning AOTY is like getting mad about “Titanic” winning best picture at the Oscars. It might not be your favorite, it might not actually be the best, and it might not even be all that great, but it’s such a huge, four-quadrant, state-of-the-monoculture behemoth that it’s like, “yeah, I get…

Same experience, except for the teenager part. I actually really respected the concept in a "painting-a-mustache-on-the-Mona-Lisa" sort of way, but the actual book doesn't work at all because Jane Austen is just genuinely so much fucking funnier than Seth Grahame-Smith is. Adding zombies doesn't puncture the…

I feel like they eventually figured out her character around the middle of the show's run, and I stopped being actively annoyed by her. Then they screwed her up all over again in the last season or two. Not the show's best work.

"Sadly no one asked me" almost certainly means "sadly no one met my asking price."

She's got a great, distinctive voice, she's got an intoxicating sort of vibe to her, and she's in one of those "too big to fail" positions in the industry where she's always going to have potential hits thrown at her. But…I dunno, I just don't hear an actual personality anywhere in her songs.