I read the same. A real tragedy, this.

Thanks! Let me know in particular what you think of the Mvula. If you like those two songs, try “That’s Alright” and “She”—talk about anthems of empowerment!

God, Emerson. What a loss.

I’d add Beck’s “Sea Change” to that list. I'm a guy who isn't currently in a relationship, and that album makes me cry every time.

Yaz FTW! Moyet is gold. I'm getting to know Dead Can Dance...what fun!

I just ordered a delicious salad and some garlic bread. Now it’s wine and “Law & Order” rerun time! Clang clang!

Good evening, everyone! I’ve just returned from chaperoning a middle school trip to Washington, D.C., so “hanging out at home by myself with a glass of wine on a Saturday night and posting stuff on the Internet” is the cure for what ails me!

In my state, Connecticut, we can choose our electricity providers through this nifty website. I finally looked into it—and realized that I could go from paying $0.11 per kilowatt hour to $0.06 per kilowatt hour. So I signed up (10 month plan, no enrollment fee, $125 termination fee) and can’t wait to see that 45%…

But with a simple blog post, she’s now put herself on the map as a mommy blogger du jour.

Yet again, Sam Smith is plagiarizing “I Won’t Back Down.”

With careful application of songs by other bands.

I’ve often thought that I could play one of the directed dances from my childhood and they’d be into it.

Less now than you’d think.

It strikes me that there is so much media competing for their attention that any ads they respond to positively have to be quick and memorable. They’ve all got Ad Block on their laptops, so they don’t see any ads when they’re on, for example, YouTube, so the majority of ads they see are on television.

Love that!

Every year, I’m shocked when they ask me to play a song that I actually enjoy. During last night’s dance, I played a song called “Trndsttr,” and, as it was playing, I thought to myself, “Huh. This sounds like a cross between The Bird and the Bee and Everything Everything. Not bad!”

This is a true story that I’ve never told: in the early 1990s, I was obsessed with Technotronic (because, I mean, who wouldn’t be?), but we didn’t get our first CD player until the fall of 1992. I vividly remember having a dream as a child—I must have been 11 or 12—in which I went to my local music store and bought a…

Sure. My experience has been that my students are more likely to appreciate “anti-advertisements”—that is, ads that are clearly ads but that don’t seem like ads—and ads that are just plain nuts. I know I’m relying on a small sample size, but the Super Bowl ad that really got to them was that horrendous “PuppyMonkeyBaby…

I’m sure some of them do. However, because I was the DJ, the kids who won our dance contest won it to “Pump Up the Jam” and “Gonna Make You Sweat”—neither of which, I’ve been told, are officially “waltzes.”

“Yes” to both.