If Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” is the sacred text of Southern rock, then its “Sweet Home Alabama” is the genre’s national anthem: the song that most compellingly articulates the pride in Southern culture implicit in classics such as the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider,” the Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See” and “Free Bird” itself. […]
Jon Moskowitz
Bob Marley experiences — and rejects — temptation on ‘Kinky Reggae’
Bob Marley’s best selling album, by a wide margin, is the 1984 compilation Legend. As we’ve argued previously (see “Is This Love”), Legend was purposefully marketed to white, non-reggae listeners, and it depicted Marley as a sort of spiritual prophet of love and good vibes. But Legend was heavily slanted towards the second half of […]
Liz Phair has a fling with the youth audience on ‘Rock Me’
Let’s say you wanted to direct an update of the 1967 film The Graduate, only this time Mrs. Robinson –– the bored housewife played by Anne Bancroft — would be a Gen-X indie rock star, and Benjamin Bradock, the directionless boomer played by a young Dustin Hoffman, would be a twentysomething millennial. To be honest, […]
Rick James’ ‘Super Freak’ creates a whole new form of new-wave funk
If you were a teenager in the 2000s, you probably associate Rick James with one of three phrases, all first heard on the February 11, 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show: “Cocaine is a hell of a drug,” “Fuck yo’ couch!” and, most famously, “I’m Rick James, bitch!” If you were a teenager in […]
Slick Rick’s ‘Children’s Story’ tells one of hip-hop’s greatest tales
Hip-hop in the 1980s was a wonderfully weird scene. No one quite epitomized that creative weirdness as totally as the eyepatch-wearing, “truck jewelry”-festooned, British-sounding kid from the Bronx known as Slick Rick (a.k.a. Rick the Ruler, MC Ricky D). “Children’s Story,” the second single from Slick Rick’s classic debut album The Great Adventures of Slick […]
Camper Van Beethoven ushers in the alternative era with ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’
“Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Camper Van Beethoven was not the biggest modern rock hit of 1989, but it was one of the most significant. College rock was becoming something else as the decade drew to a close: it would be two years before it was clear what that new thing was, when Nirvana’s “Smells […]
Rockwell records the Eighties’ most paranoid hit with ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’
“Somebody’s Watching Me” is NOT a Michael Jackson song. Michael Jackson’s voice is the most interesting thing about it, but the single is by a completely different artist: a guy named Rockwell. It’s important to keep this in mind, despite what your ears tell you every time you hear “Somebody’s Watching Me.” The history of […]
When America got hooked on Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’
The first thing you think of is the video. That’s okay: everybody thinks of the video first. “Addicted to Love” has been viewed, referenced and imitated so many times that it’s familiar even to people who never had MTV — who weren’t even alive the last time the network played music videos. It represents Reagan-era […]
