It’s hard to argue that Madonna including a rapped bridge on a pop song was innovative when Debbie Harry did it 22 years prior. Cringey is definitely how I would describe, but as long as you enjoy it, that’s what’s important. The rest of us can just avoid it.

I was with you all the way until Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. Despite the rancour behind the scenes, I think this is a fine, passionate album with great tunes (Your Possible Past, The Gunner’s Dream and Not Now John to name just three) and a real anger behind it. While most proggers were happy to live in prog-land,…

I tend to be more appreciative of artists who play instruments and write their own material personally, but the idea that someone who creates and records music professionally is not a musician is pretty silly.

It’s always annoyed me that every music writer who grew up in the ‘70s raves about KISS. Total nostalgia goggles. Their stage show may be fun, but the music is uniformly insipid and uninspired.

Experimental? Nah. Maybe in 1975 those sounds would’ve been.

Yes. There are “good” pizza places near me, but a single pizza costs $20 and I can’t afford that when I’m feeding my kids. Little Caesar’s pizzas are around $8. Pizza Hut gives you two for $16. Papa John’s is two for $14. Papa Murphy’s has medium 2-topping pizzas for $6.99 currently. Etc.

It’s a money issue, not a…

Games are not “more profitable than ever”. The market is bigger, and the biggest fish make more money than ever, but the same reason you can say “games are more profitable than ever” is why the words “games are more money losing than ever” is also true.

*higher prices for the non-programmers. We programmers make tons of money (although to be fair there are not enough of us and studios fight over us senior ones so that certainly keeps upward pressure on wages)

Yea she's no Motley Crue

This is emphatically not true. SNES games regularly cost $70 in the early 90s. There were some $50 titles from the beginning, but $60 has been the standard price since well before the 360, and it was in fact significantly more common to exceed that price before that. It was only around then that everything started to…

Gotta know your audience, though, and Idol’s was not one that was looking for electronica or concept.

Same, with regards to my background and experiences. The singers I’ve worked with who went to school to train their voices were still educated in the Music department, not Communications. What a weird take.

I'm sorry, but KISS was never a good band. 

I’ve played musical instruments for the last 30 years of my life and have always considered singers to be musicians. The voice is an instrument, singing is music. 

Musicians are sad and play guitar and appeal to a male-oriented audience. Non-musicians are everyone else.

How is a singer not a musician? 

I like their debut album. A bit heavier, more raw sound that they moved away from.

“forced-fake sex appeal of Spears and Aguiler”

I think Paul Rodgers would have been a fine fit with those musicians back in the early 70s, but by the 90s, Freddie had taken them all in a direction from where they could never return.

I will not sit idly by while you besmirtch The Fatboys