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All right! Long-time lurker, but first-time poster (if it isn’t corny to say that by now).

After scouring Spotify and finding multiple 10s playlists and a very incomplete 9s playlist, I decided to create a “greatest-hits” playlist, of sorts. Every song that Tom has ever graded an 8 or higher is on the playlist for TNOCS to enjoy, including “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me” (and those ratings are spot-on, if I say so myself). Now you can listen to “Back Stabbers” on the same playlist as all the 10s, while we wait for an “I Got You (I Feel Good)”-style regrade!

If you notice any songs that I missed — bearing in mind that Tom’s tastes are the guiding factor for inclusion — shoot me a comment and I will look into it. A few clarifications:

• A description of “perfect” without a rating does not qualify for inclusion, in a reflection of Tom’s policy not to rate songs that don’t make the top 10. The exception is the Pretenders’ “I’ll Stand by You”, where I simply didn’t feel like only putting the Carrie Underwood cover (an 8) when Tom clearly implied that the Pretenders version was better.
• Falco’s “Der Kommissar” and Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” were chart hits elsewhere but not in the US (and so don’t have ratings), but Tom specifically compared both of them favourably to songs that did chart and received 7s, so both are included.
• If Tom explicitly describes a chart hit that he cannot rate as deserving of a 10, it is included. So far, only “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart”, “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” and “The Humpty Dance” meet this criterion.
• “Mr. Jaws” is on the list, since he described it as an 8 on the first listen, which roughly tracks with the joy I had in listening to it. It sounds like the kind of preposterous musical punning I did a lot of as a kid, and I cannot in good conscience omit it.
• “Lean Back” is on the list, since he has implied here and in his Guardian interview (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/may/27/the-guide-stereogum-number-ones) that it will receive a 10. I hope I interpreted “probably my favourite #1 of all-time” as grounds for inclusion.
• “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” still has no rating.
• Why does “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before” have three different ratings? Anyway, it’s not on the list, obviously.
• Pay “I Ran (So Far Away)” respects, as the second-most-mentioned song to not earn a place on this playlist. You all know what the most-mentioned ≤7 is. (It describes me pretty accurately!)

As you may have guessed, the playlist is rather large, so I’ll post a link instead of embedding it directly.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1cVrLdE7eGuDKKjV2LqZi0?si=92f49ec0b33248fa

Have a great day, everyone!

Love this. I think you accidentally came up with the Kidz Bop version

Critics thought they were being so smart comparing this to Joy Division.

Well jokes on them because I checked out Joy Division because of my love of Interpol and their songs are also great!

A few thoughts…as always:

1. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this song, and if I had, I immediately forgot it. That’s a perfect 3 for me.
2. Speaking of 3’s, 3AM is an 8. Catchy as all hell. Push is a 5.
3. I don’t think I’ve heard another Matchbox 20 album…and if Tom was going to mention the bands with numbers in their names, why didn’t we jump to Sum 41 (who, hysterically in a video became “The Sums”)?
4. A friend of mine calls Imagine Dragons “Imagine if They Had Talent”. I can’t disagree.
5. Tom gives us glimpses into his own story occasionally thru his columns, but also his ratings. What happened in his life to make him hate the post alt-rock “rockers”, while loving the R&B female groups? I’m beginning to think there’s another book in there somewhere.
6. Since we know he doesn’t like this typical style of music, I assumed before reading he’d give it a 3. Not far off.

Happy weekend all!

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Confession time: I was today’s years old when I learned that Sisqó is singing about thongs in the “Thong Song”. I have heard this song hundreds of times on the radio and enjoyed it a lot, but never bothered to find out who was singing nor what the title was. (I might have seen the title written or mentioned it on the radio, but never retained it.). To my ears (English is not my native tongue), the singer was singing “Let me sing that song” and not “Let me see that thong”.

MoFi pressings do sound really great, and are also wildly overpriced. The two I have I managed to snag well below MSRP. There’s a specific step in the vinyl mastering process that almost always requires a digital step unless the engineer has been meticulous about every piece of equipment (it’s boring, has something to do with the playback head on the lathe; to clarify, this is not the issue with these particular pressings, just saying it by way of example) so I kind of assume “all analog” pressings are shy of 100%. I also don’t care (except when being price-gouged for it) because while I do love records and do subjectively think they have a “better” sound, I’m not an audiophile fetishist who thinks he can hear the difference between silver or copper wiring or whatever. There ARE levels of audio quality to be sure, but at some point there’s diminishing returns with audiophile gear and pressings. 

In summation, I think MoFi should have been more transparent. I also think their angry fans are mostly collectible hunters who want to fancy themselves golden-eared superhumans and this just burst their bubble.

Matchbox Twenty are among the most important, formative bands for me. I was too young to be aware during the Nirvana breakout. But I was seven when Yourself or Someone Like You dropped, and eight when “3 AM” hit the radio.

I can picture myself getting shuttled along in the back of my parents’ Jeep, and it’s this era where pop-rock felt omnipresent on Top 40 radio. Which was an eye-opening change-of-pace from the classic-rock-only sounds my parents usually played.

Matchbox (and Fastball, The Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind, Semisonic…) were the on-ramp for me getting into contemporary music, for engaging with post-80s pop and rock on a regular basis. Hearing the Top 40 countdown on the ride home from church was episodic. What’s the new character? What’s coming next? Will it be as good as what came before?

I was helpless to the charms of the hooks, to the warmth of the singing, to the pop-guitar. And the resulting curiosity for the “new” drove further listening. I mean this sincerely: I don’t think I’d be reading sites like Stereogum or Pitchfork without Matchbox Twenty igniting my passion for music.

By the time Matchbox Twenty dropped Mad Season and More Than You Think You Are, the band felt like a good friend. Even though “Bent” isn’t my all-time favorite Matchbox single, it’s still a warm bowl of Easy Mac. It’s comfort music, it’s uncomplicated, it’s exactly what I want it to be. It’s a nostalgic 10/10 without hesitation.

Even as I’d eventually grow into moodier sounds (hello middle school), and then more independent sounds (hello high school and college), I still found Matchbox Twenty to be a perfect road trip companion.

One winter in college, I drove some pals to-and-from Ottawa Ontario, from our little school in Northern NY. It was a day-trip for skating on the Rideau Canal, and watching a 67s game. On the way back, as we closed in on the Canadian border, everybody was exhausted. I was exhausted. I needed a pick-me-up, and the Tim Hortons in my cup-holder wasn’t enough. My roommate was running the stereo, and found the Matchbox Twenty files on my iPod. He click-wheeled to start… and “Real World” roared to life, and I felt actually giddy. And now *I* was driving that same Jeep, some ten-years later. Matchbox Twenty carrying me home again.

oh great now the woke mob is coming after our AI robot influencers, is nothing sacred?!