It was unexpected, but I am truly honored to be on this list!
As for best song of 2020 - I saw this last night, and I got a good chuckle out of it:
https://twitter.com/catatonichic/status/1344048018312425472?s=20
Happy New Year, y'all!
We've begun the era of what I call "Peugeot Music". I was 2, going on 3 at the time that Papa Don't Preach came out, and my mom was driving an old beat up blue Peugeot station wagon. It was right around now (that is, August of '86) that I guess I started to retain music, and now associate the previous few years of radio hits through to the early 90s with riding around in that car.
This is the era of TNOs that I've been patiently waiting for, since quarantine has been a wonderful time to regress to things you held onto earlier in life.
Also '02 but that's way cooler than mine. Our official class song was the Baz Luhrman Sunscreen song, which had already been the previous two or three classes' song.
So we tried to choose an unofficial song, and a friend of mine got everyone on board with the same song from his brother's graduation FOUR years prior... which was Here I Go Again by Whitesnake. In 2002.
If they hit this out of the park, this is going to be one sad damn movie. Also, a nice Whitney revival could be very cool.
I hate - but, have - to wonder if they'll include the famous (to me and my friends at the time) "Doodie Bubble" scene from Being Bobby Brown.
Two additional hours of alts/demos/etc:
https://trentreznor-atticusross.bandcamp.com/album/mank-original-musical-score-with-extras
Looking forward to checking it out later today, and am particularly interested to see what the pre-orchestration demos sound like!
On one hand, I agree with you about the relevance of the Grammy's as a whole. But in this day and age, with it getting harder and harder for artists to be properly compensated, a Grammy nomination and/or win can give a song or album new legs. Blinding Lights isn't a great example because it doesn't need new legs, but it would have also been mutually beneficial for the show to have him perform one of the biggest crossover songs ever.
Also, it's just bizarre that he was completely snubbed. I'm not a huge fan, but the song is undeniable so something might be afoot at the Circle K re: this whole sitcuation.
Blake's stuff hasn't really grabbed me, but I like certain aspects of his work so his go at ambient is intriguing (even without Eno - that's just icing).
There's been an uptick in Eno activity recently, and I'll check out anything he's had a hand in. I keep meaning to buy a deck of Oblique Strategies to see if it might give me the kick in the pants I need to hone and release some music, which is incidentally modeled after Another Green World.
I'm a sucker for all things Converge, so I'm hoping they DON'T release this song as a 7-inch. The last few times they've done that, I've convinced myself I need as many of the variant colors - and associated merch - as possible.
Oh well. Life is like a box of Converge non-album tracks, you never know what you're gonna get. I just know I'm gonna get it.
The Number Ones reliably dropping on M, W, F has honestly been some of the most substantial glue holding my reality together during this pandemic, when time has been a fussy beeyotch.
Thanks, Tom.
With this and the Hanson news this morning, we just need Beck and Courtney Love to pop up in this news cycle for the bridge of New Radicals' "You Get What You Give" to finally manifest itself in full.
Songs of Experience is kind of a charming mess. There's so much going on, and most of it is really great.
Songs of Innocence is my favorite post-00 album by far (SOE is close behind), despite ditching Danger Mouse halfway through and overcooking a few songs. It generally has a loose and ragged feel to it that I wouldn't have expected from them.
The three main B-Sides from these sessions - Crystal Ballroom, Lucifer's Hands and Book of Your Heart - are all major bangers.
Also, my ATYCLB hot take is that Wild Honey is the best song on the album, which itself so ridiculously front-loaded that the second half and especially the end suffer for it.
After becoming a devoted fan during the Pop era, this was the first U2 album I was able to anticipate via album roll-out promo/song leaks/rumors/etc. I saw them 3 or 4 times on the Elevation tour. It was a great time to be a fan.
The 2000-2010 era will probably end up being my least favorite U2 decade, musically, but being a (young-ish, mega-hyped) super fan in the midst of this album, the tour, the Super Bowl performance... try as they might, again and again, they'll very likely never hit this level. I do hope, for their sakes, that they can carve out a nice victory lap and overshadow the iTunes/Songs of Innocence debacle before they call it quits.
I like to imagine the lads watched the What We Do in the Shadows series during quarantine sessions and named "Ritchie Sacramento" as tribute to Jackie Daytona.
As with all of the Lost Themes so far, I like this Spooky Funk quite a bit.
I fell asleep watching Vampires the other night. I love that movie, but - and even taking James Woods out of the equation - it has aged... poorly.
That lazy accordion (??) solo in A Place Called Home, and the way it kinda stutters at the end, squeezing in those final notes before the vocals come back, is one of my favorite musical passages of all time. This album is incredible, and I'm hoping PJ eventually gives it the same treatment she's been giving the rest of her back catalog.
This is pretty good, and I think that I would have been WAY into this in ~2005. It's kinda like if City of Caterpillar and Botch collab'd, and threw some Evergreen Terrace riffs in for funsies.
This is awesome! I got pretty excited when Jacob started posting artwork for this yesterday - kind of his take on Geiger-esque portraits - thinking he was unveiling some sort of Industrial project... I guess I wasn't too far off, having never heard of the first iteration of the band. Looking forward to the rest of this release.
https://vimeo.com/8981772
This video got me hooked on Sharon around the time Epic came out/was due to come out. I was then lucky enough to see her at the Tea Bazaar in Charlottesville with about 30 people total, all sitting cross-legged on the floor in absolute awe of Sharon. That set has gotta be top 10 for me of all time, it was something really special.
Marissa Nadler opened and was kinda boring, but the first opener was this weird, cutesy Peter, Paul & Mary type of band called Breathe Owl Breathe. They were awesome.
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