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 […]
How ‘Do You Believe in Love’ made headliners of Huey Lewis and the News
Huey Lewis and the News kicked off a decade of U.S. pop chart dominance with their first Top Ten hit, 1982’s “Do You Believe in Love.” KSID::40xax96013442
George Clinton’s electro classic ‘Atomic Dog’ still raises the woof
George Clinton’s musical career spans two distinct realms. The first is physical: during the 1970s, he led the groundbreaking funk/soul collective Parliament-Funkadelic to intergalactic fame and fortune, recording more than 40 R&B chart hits. The other is spiritual: Clinton’s myriad compositions have exerted an immeasurable influence on American music, in particular shaping the sound and […]
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, […]
Saturday Night Forever: When Disco Dominated Dancefloors
Disco defined American life and culture during the latter half of the 1970s, emerging from the underground dance clubs of New York City to become a mainstream phenomenon that fundamentally reshaped popular music, dance, fashion and style.
Raise your glass and bang your head to Andrew W.K.’s ‘Party Hard’
Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard” is a blunt instrument. It’s big, loud, boneheaded and, in case it wasn’t obvious, about partying. The word “party” is uttered 57 times across its three minutes, and each utterance is swaddled in heavily overdubbed guitars spewing bludgeoning power chords. Decades on from its original release, “Party Hard” is still Andrew […]
Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ finds a home in the pop pantheon
Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” is one of the most enduring anthems of the 1980s. Unlike the bombastic power ballads typical of the era, its enigmatic lyrics and quiet dignity make the song timeless. KSID::F3Ua4040404a47
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 […]
Barry White’s ‘You’re the First, the Last, My Everything’ deserves unlimited love
What a weird and wonderful world we might now inhabit if racism and homophobia hadn’t killed disco at its cultural zenith — if sybarite symphonies like Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” still flew their freak flags from the highest reaches of the Billboard charts. There’s never again been a pop star […]
Loleatta Holloway remains the best part of Marky Mark’s ‘Good Vibrations’
Now we come to the payoff. In a commendable if inadvertent show of self-awareness, “Good Vibrations,” the 1991 hip-house hit from Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, wastes no time in letting the listener know that the majority of the song — a series of listless couplets by titular rapper Marky Mark, who would go […]
