Celine Dion defense, 1997

Published a full decade before Carl Wilson’s acclaimed 33 1/3 book about Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love. Just saying. Which isn’t to say I was the first critic to put in a good word for the lady — Simon Frith and Frank Kogan may well have preceded me. Should also note that I overstate my…

A Tribe Called Quest review, 1990

One of those reviews that periodically gets Twitter jerkwads and other busybodies cackling about how devastatingly “wrong” history has proven me, as if there’s a right or wrong when it comes to reviews, as if winding up on other people’s best-of-all-time lists proves anything. I gave the album three stars out of five; I might…

Ronald Shannon Jackson review, 1987

I listen to jazz, particularly of post-bebop persuasions, much more than my writing would imply — check just about any of the “150 Best Albums Of…” posts on this site for specifics. But honestly, I just never really figured out how to write about the stuff. I did try some though, mainly in the late…

Beastie Boys review, 1987

Not my most famous piece about the band. That came a couple of months later. Here, they hadn’t quite broke out yet. Pretty much the unbowdlerized original version of what became the Licensed to Ill entry in Stairway to Hell, if only because with alt-weekly reviews you don’t have to get permission to reprint multiple-lined…

Eric B. & Rakim review, 1987

Interesting to see this early take on the duo — i.e., that they were bringing the funk back to hip-hop — in light of how I felt about them just a few years later, which is that Rakim’s addiction to convoluted rhythms and rhyme schemes was a hip-hop equivalent of show-offy post-Sgt. Pepper’s prog-rock, or…

Charlene et. al. review, 1995

An excuse to rave about quite possibly the most ridiculous, brazen, inconceivably over-the-top soliloquy ever to go Top 10. And since you ask, yes I have indeed karaokied it. Did you expect otherwise? Eye Weekly, 25 May 1995

Two reviews of the same 1995 Michael Jackson album

One of the only times this happened: Two entirely different (albeit seeing eye to eye) longer-than-blurb reviews of the same album, contributed to two different publications with minimal shared readership. For deeper investigations of the troubled and troubling superstar in question, one can consult my writings about Dangerous and Blood on the Dancefloor, both collected…

El DeBarge review, 1992

Contributing to venues like Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone, you’re forced to walk a fine line between what you want to say and what they’ll let you get away with. So most of what I wrote for those publications (among others, at which I have less excuse) reads flat to me now. This might be…

Ganksta N-I-P review, 1992

No idea what could’ve possessed me to listen to this sickening slab in the first place, and even less what might convince me to check it out ever again (in 29 years, I haven’t so far) What can I say, I don’t watch horror movies, either. Also, my descriptive details don’t really suggest “gangsta rap,”…

Alison Moyet review, 1985

Stepping out of my hard-rock metal-punk comfort zone, a mere year into my Village Voice (and paid rock-crit in general) career. I just came across a Barry Walters review of a subsequent Moyet album from two years later in Spin, where he touched (and expanded) on some of the same ideas I’d had: “Over here,…