Recently, a Youtube user did a compilation of his film songs and underscores (which denies us his brilliant Muppet work, but I digress), and it's like a brain massage. Little Things may be a new contender for my favorite Sesame Street song. (And I do seriously enjoy Sesame Street's music, hence the thumbnail):
https://youtu.be/8TbjcFRXYcY
Would Post Malone be a good host? A good musical guest, sure, but are his acting chops good enough? SNL's taken big swings at seeing who can pull double-duty recently, and some pay off (Drake, Bruno Mars, Chance the Rapper), some don't (Bieber), and some only work in spades (Halsey).
Having been born fourteen years after "We Are the World" dropped, I've never lived in a world where it hasn't been mostly seen as a target of mockery. I think part of that is because it's the only real example of a giant charity single of its specific kind that the US can claim responsibility for. In the UK, there are plenty more where that came from. In the wake of the dual successes of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (for all intents and purposes the Beethoven's 5th of British charity singles) and "We Are the World," there were a shit-ton of mass covers and gloopy originals for every tragedy, major or minor, in the years to come. Many of them were/are done in conjunction with Comic Relief or Children in Need, the major charities in the UK that do things every year. There are good intentions behind the covers (mostly terrible) and originals (Popular fans can join me in shriveling in horror at the memory of "The Stonk"). A stupefying amount of them have gone to the top of the charts over there. I don't know who buys them, or who keeps them after they buy them, but thirty-odd years on, they still make bank, out of the goodness of people's hearts (at least that's the reason I want to believe behind sending a bunch of comedians covering "500 Miles" to the top of the hit parade).
Huh. I'm curious as to what a grunge album with Mariah Carey on lead would sound like. I could see her doing some awesome Poly Styrene-esque stuff if it was more upbeat and punky, but just doing a bad Shirley Manson impression for shits and giggles feels like a waste of potential. I appreciate artists who are willing to switch back and forth between styles without losing credibility. Beyonce and Lady Gaga could pull off more rock/country-influenced tracks with equal success.
Nah. This is lazy. What made his most famous Lauryn Hill-sampling song, All Falls Down, work so well is that it isolated and reinvigorated a sample from one of her most infamous moments. It made it work and turned it into something beautiful. There’s no artistry here.
I fucking love this song. It's the cheese-pop "Stairway to Heaven." That John Lewis ad came out in the UK right when I was really starting to love "Can't Fight This Feeling" so that was kinda crazy (and "Pompeii" is an 8, at least - I'd flip your ratings around for that and "Hello"). Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis did a very funny cover at a comedy event a few years ago, so that's worth looking up.
This might've been my first hint, as a budding (somewhat snobby) music buff, that I would eventually develop a soft spot for '80s cheese. My first big reference for what constitutes the "pantheon" of pop and rock was the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs list (highly imperfect, but it fulfilled its purpose). "I Want to Know What Love Is" makes the cut in the lower reaches (one spot ahead of "Sabotage," one spot behind "Last Nite" - truly, the bottom 300 is the most interesting part of the list if you don't just want the "canon" picks). No matter what part of the list you're looking at, it stands out, because no other ginormous '80s cheese classics are to be found. Not to say "I Want to Know What Love Is" isn't a well-known, fairly beloved '80s song, but there are bigger, more famous, generally more well-liked songs in a similar vein that are nowhere to be found ("Livin' on a Prayer," "Don't Stop Believin'," "Take on Me," "Come on Eileen," "I Wanna Dance with Somebody"...). How'd that one make it in? Well, it's just bigger and grander than all the rest. Good? I dunno. But it's too big to ignore. I kinda like it.
So I was at the Eurovision Song Contest last year in Israel, and the big news was that Madonna was going to fly in and perform an interval act in the grand final (one of approximately fifty - there was a loooong gap between the end of the competitive portion of the show and the voting sequence). I was cautiously optimistic, bearing in mind that this was 2019 Madonna, not 1985/1989/even 1998 Madonna. But this was on the anniversary of a certain career highlight that will eventually appear in this column, and the new album was supposed to be very good. She did a cute little interview with the hosts where she seemed not-crazy (as did Quavo - I have never seen anyone look as delightfully out of place as Quavo did being interviewed by a chipper Israeli comedian at the Eurovision Song Contest). Maybe this wouldn’t suck after all! But as we all know, the one aspect of this year’s contest that even non-Europeans got wind of was how terrible the actual performance was. This should’ve been the most gloriously gay moment at the world’s most gloriously gay event, but it was misguided and took said career-best track and turned it into a Gregorian chant for some reason. Give me Idan Raichel, Netta, and Verka Serduchka any day.
My grandparents aren’t as pop culture-savvy as I am (they were unsurprisingly totally lost during the Switch Song since they didn’t know who the handsome Swedish man and bearded Austrian getting rapturous cheers were, but they did know and sing along to “Hallelujah” because every Jew between the ages of 12 and 90 knows Milk and Honey’s Israeli evergreen), so about a week after Eurovision wrapped my grandma asked me what exactly was so special about Madonna in the first place. She was aware of her status as a pop culture icon, but after seeing that, for the life of her she couldn’t understand why. So I explained to her what exactly it was about Madonna breaking the mold for female pop stars that made her so culturally relevant. That all comes back to “Like a Virgin,” which I agree isn’t her best song but I think is THE song (that and another #1 single from 1990 I won’t name) to get at why she dominated pop culture for so long. But I am infinitely more familiar with “Like a Surgeon.”
Noel and Liam have this fun back-and-forth thing of deciding who's gonna be the fun grumpy-but-lovable asshole and who's going to be the irritating wrongheaded asshole. Ball's been in Liam's court for the last four years or so. Better solo records too. Who'd have thunk!
I literally can't comprehend how a person doesn't like Bruce Springsteen. I get how one might not like certain Springsteen songs, but his work as a whole? I don't get it. Respect your opinion, but I can't say I understand it.
Someone pointed out that this new show doesn't go far enough in making the guest stars look silly when the original show wasn't afraid to put them in ridiculous situations when they'd obviously be down. I think that's a key element: the Muppets aren't necessarily humiliating themselves in front of their respected guest star, nor is the guest star stooping to their level by doing goofy shit with them. It's a balancing act of silliness, and it's possible to have a guest star be aggravated by the Muppets while still having it be funny (Carol Burnett and John Cleese being two great examples). If the joke is just, "Kermit is interviewing RuPaul, but Gonzo's being random, and RuPaul's confused while Kermit's embarrassed," that's kind of limp. I also hear the new Bunsen/Beaker bits are way too mean to Beaker.
Fraggle Rock is its own thing with its own universe, so I'd only rank it if we were also ranking Sesame Street (which, by the way, is an easy #1). Muppet-wise, I'd put The Muppet Show on top (of course), then Jim Henson Hour (a little scatterbrained, but at its best it really got to the essence of Jim's desire to push puppet technology as far as it could go), then what I saw of The Muppets (not much, but I liked it fine), then Muppets Tonight (parts of which have definitely not aged well but was quite solid at recapturing the Muppet Show spirit when it didn't rely on being too topical. Also, it was before Steve Whitmire was firmly established as Kermit or Richard Hunt and Frank Oz had been replaced, so it's a weird in-between zone of characters like Kermit, Piggy, and Fozzie showing up sporadically and "rock" characters like Scooter, Rowlf, and the Electric Mayhem being nowhere). I haven't seen the new show yet, but I've seen it receive fandom-wide apathetic shrugs, so unless it gets better I'll probably give it a pass.
The show came and went before I was even born! I watched it on YouTube when I was getting into the Muppets. (The Talking Heads bit was also incredible).
My parents introduced me to Prince from a young age thanks to constantly playing "Starfish and Coffee" and "Raspberry Beret," so those will always be top-5 Prince songs for me ("Raspberry Beret" might even be my favorite).
I watched the movie and heard the album right after I heard Prince passed away (I really hate how many of my artistic deep dives happen because the artist just died and I finally feel motivated enough to educate myself). When you're younger and weren't around for older artists' moments of pop cultural dominance and only know it as a piece of history, sometimes it's hard to really grasp how huge those artists actually are. But the moment the movie starts and "Let's Go Crazy" begins, it's so fucking obvious how Prince was the biggest star in the world. Absolutely brilliant, and it says a lot (as Tom notes) that this Prince's character at the START of his journey of artistic growth. Most other people, this would be their peak artistic achievement, but this is the goddamn warm-up. Still insanely good (the movie's weird but fun). Also, watch that Muppets Tonight episode. There's a really cool music video-style segment with my first favorite Prince song, "Starfish and Coffee."
Never heard of this song before but I instantly love it. This is one of those great really introspective songs with an '80s pop sheen to it, and I love how those play into each other (same reason I love Men at Work's "Overkill"). Great stuff!
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