Tom Petty Taught Us About Regret Without Even Using the Word
Every boy has this weird desire to be the “bad boy.” Any men who grew up watching Beverly Hills, 90210 would simultaneously agree that it was Dylan, not Brandon or Steve, that we most wanted to be like. It’s the rebellion. It’s the freedom. It’s the standing in the shadows, cigarette in hand, narrowed-eyes look that didn’t care about the wreckage of broken hearts left outside the door.
Sometimes the Car Isn’t Fast Enough
“Fast Car” is a love song. It’s not rooted in the tradition of what we think of in terms of a love song, but the depth of the story makes “Fast Car” a real love song.
Only Whitney Houston Could Get Me Dancing at the Prom
But what I cannot escape from, no matter how often I hear “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” is the sheer explosion of joy radiating from Whitney. The effortless range of her vocals. The laughter that invites you to, if not dance, to find a space where you can enjoy being you. Even better if you can enjoy it with someone who loves you.
The Best Song of 1983: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper
Cyndi Lauper is not demanding equal wages. She is not demanding law changes of any kind. She is simply telling us, telling the world, that girls can have fun too. After all, men do. Men get done with their workday and head off to the bar with friends or go home and sit to have a beer.
The Blueprint For Surviving America’s Worst Day
Post-9/11 music wasn’t just centered around 9/11 of course. The Blueprint was, obviously, not written with a national tragedy in mind. But the smirkiness of it, the considerable weight of Jay’s confidence was ideal. We might have been hurting as a nation, but we would not back down. We wanted to still feel invincible.
Pursuing Christ (and Punk Rock Music)
Throughout life, whatever age we’re in, whatever season of life, we choose songs that fit our mood. We find songs to soothe the emotions stirring inside our souls. Teenagers are often guided by emotion. So it was nothing for me to blare Korn driving to Wednesday night youth group, only to find myself popping in a Newsboys album on the drive home after.
The Best Song of 1981: “In The Air Tonight” by Phil Collins
Honestly, Phil Collins feels more like your goofy uncle than a devious killer. Phil Collins is not one to neglect the needy. I’d go as far as to say if you were drowning, Phil Collins might be the first one to find a floatation device and throw it to you.
Should We Still Listen to R. Kelly’s Music?
So, what do we do with this artist? How do we handle his art? Is it best left in a museum, mere sonic artifacts of our youth? Or can we really enjoy it now despite knowing the maniacal man on the other side of the speaker who is being accused of things unfit for even an episode of SVU?
The Best Song of 1984: “Jump” by Van Halen
It’s not fair for me to line up these songs side-by-side and say that Van Halen shrugged off a serious issue. They simply changed the inspiration to something else. Could they have done a somber tune related to depression and mental health? Possibly. But the band who had a hit with a song called “Hot For Teacher” is not a band you recruit for your PSA on suicide.
Country Music and the Confederate Flag
When you grow up in the south, and by south I mean the southeastern part of the U.S.A., the rebel flag feels almost pre-woven into the fabric of the landscape. It’s on t-shirts, beach blankets sold in shops along the coast, and towering above houses on poles, often but not always paired with the American flag. It’s on bumper stickers, license plates, and prominently flying from the bed of pickup trucks.
The Best Song of 1982: “1999” by Prince
Prince does not want you to feel safe. He is asking you to the dance floor, but it’s a dance floor that teeters on the edge of a cliff that stares down a dark abyss. After all, this is judgment day.
Sour Sounds Bitter But It’s Sweet
Had Olivia Rodrigo kept the at times desperate whimpering of “driver’s license” consistent across the whole album, it might have flopped into the clearance bin with Ashley Tisdale and Hillary Duff albums. As it is, Sour is diverse enough to garner acclaim from Swifties, Disney fans, and punk rockers alike.
The Best Song of 1985: “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams
Bryan Adams had a band. He had one in 1969, in fact. Or so the song goes. But one guy quits, the other falls in love and gets married, and Bryan Adams is left with nothing but a souvenir of the times. A cheap guitar from the summer he thought for sure would last forever.
The Best Song of 1986: “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi
The verses, the chorus, they all play their part. But it’s the 2:39 mark where the band reduces the sound to just their voices and a bass drum. You get the sense that they’re not joking. They’re not backing down from the hurt. They’re not backing away from the fun they’re having singing about the hurt.
Juicy or Regulate? Debating the Best Rap Song of 1994
1994, if you recall, was eventful in a variety of ways. You had Nelson Mandela becoming the president of South Africa (a good thing), Kurt Cobain killing himself (a sad thing), and O.J. Simpson ducked down in the back of a white Ford Bronco as he kinda sorta tried to escape the LAPD (a bizarre thing that shifted a number of things culturally). So 1994 was big, thus the music from the year was big. Rap music was becoming big.
428 Words on the Passing of Meat Loaf
At 13 years old, the love songs of the day were numerous, but I didn’t get them. You can imagine a prepubescent boy hearing “Paradise By The Dashboard Light”, wondering every time he got in the car with mom and dad and looked quizzically at the dashboard, trying to figure out what the fascination was.
Sob Rock is the Cassette Tape Stuck in My Car’s Stereo
What John Mayer is trying here on Sob Rock could very well be to transport you to a place in time where perhaps your greater joys consisted of shuffling through value-priced cassettes in a cardboard dump bin. To a time when the music and the lyrics meant something.
Losing a Whole 20 Years - A Look Back at Third Eye Blind's Debut Album
This month marks 20 years since that album was released. There’s a good chance you only know one (or two, maybe three) songs from this album, or God forbid, you’re one of those people who hears the name Third Eye Blind and says “I loooooove ‘Closing Time’!” (Sorry, that was Semisonic). That in mind, let’s take a look at the five best tracks on the album.
Life Really Is a Highway
Even if looking back now it feels a bit more like adult contemporary music, “Life Is A Highway” was a catalyst for me into the world of strong guitars, fun hooks, and emphatic drums. I was sold. I wanted to drive that highway. I wanted to know what it felt like to travel the world. Mozambique? Never heard of it. But Mr. Cochrane had, and singing about it made me want to go.
In 1996 Coolio Was Nominated for a Grammy and I Got Punched in the Face
“Gangsta’s Paradise” was one of the few rap songs to reach pop radio. It’s relatively clean and helped by a gospel choir singing the chorus. It also didn’t require the parental advisory warning for explicit lyrics like so many other rap songs at the time did. (Except you, Fresh Prince. You kept “Summertime” nice and clean. Though you did force me at the age of 13 to wonder what the word “aphrodisiac” meant.)
TLC Songs as Anthems for My Daughters
Mostly I hated “No Scrubs” the way Carly Simon’s man must’ve hated “You’re So Vain”. I hated it the way some women hated the misogyny found in rap songs. I hated “No Scrubs” because I, in many ways was indeed a scrub myself.
Coming to the End of the Road
As a generation before had in Barry White and Issac Hayes with deep baritone voices, Mike McCary became that for those growing up in the 90s. His deep vocals along with interludes of plain-speak in the middle of EOTR not only gave the song variance but gave pre-pubescent boys an unrealistic expectation of how their voice would sound after puberty. Man, the teen years were fantastic.
We Were Merely Freshmen
In 1997 when the Verve Pipe released their solo “The Freshmen”, I considered death more than I had to that point. Not only physical death but the death of love, of friendships, of relationships. I was 16 then and knew as I approached closer to my senior year of high school that day of finality would come again: staring into faces of boys and girls, all pretending to be men and women, knowing the vast majority of them I would never see again.
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