Kiss Me Kurt

How to Succeed in the Music Business Without Seeming Like You're Trying

Auntie Mame Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle

Hair….oin

Was recently having a discussion about whether current wokeness standards would ever allow something like punk to flourish. We decided probably not, and in a way that's awful, because at its best punk proved that there's a real power in bad taste and deliberate offense. As much as punk might have offended some…

That's the best thing I've heard all day.

When he broke out, 50 was sort of too big to fail — he had the "got shot 9 times" street cred, he had a bunch of monster Dre beats when Dre was on a hot streak, he had an Eminem cosign when Eminem was all but a cult leader, he looked good with his shirt off, and he was a New York rapper at a time when New York rap…

Diplo seems like one of the least likable people imaginable. But he's also been admirably upfront about the absurdity getting paid tons of money to basically push a button on a pre-recorded mix for a bunch of Vegas bros.

Still totally looking forward to hearing the record. Just getting tired of all these "cryptic billboards have appeared in 9 world cities with coordinates that fans can follow to find buried barcodes to unlock a teaser trailer for the album's first single" campaigns.

I just learned that those Jenner girls are Kardashians like a month ago. Now there's another one?

I miss the old pre-SoundScan days, where they'd tally the Billboard charts by calling random record store owners and asking them what was selling, knowing full well that half of them were being paid off by various labels.

The rise of Paris Hilton was legitimately one of the seminal cultural developments of the 21st century. From that strange little cultural moment we got an entire class of celebrities who do nothing other than perform the rituals of celebrity; a whole genre of increasingly classless television; the idea that everyone…

This is kinda funny, but man, this Arcade Fire album rollout is getting dangerously close to Katy Perry Witness-levels of offputting please-look-at-me marketing.

Confession: I've been a hip-hop fan pretty much my whole life. Even as I get older, I think I've been pretty open-minded about newer styles of rap. I think Auto-Tune can be used for both good and evil. But god help me, I just don't get Future. I've tried with him, I really have, but I just don't hear anything other…

Yes. I know.

Most actual con artists spend their time ripping off lonely senior citizens, desperate poor people, and the naively well-meaning. So when someone instead targets the idle rich or racist militiamen, I do try to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Oasis probably did this more skillfully than any band I've ever seen. Somehow, their marketers were able to almost immediately up the narrative around them from "is this band any good?" or "is this band better than the Stone Roses?" to "is this the greatest band in the world?" and "is this the greatest rock band since…

Probably should. But then, if everyone who needed therapy went, most of my favorite records wouldn't exist.

Yeah, I really wasn't expecting that kind of moment on a Jay Z album. Good for them.

Too soon!