40+ Best Country Singles of 2022

From what I’ve read, 2022 is supposed to be the year that neo-traditionalism (i.e., singers trying to sound like Travis and Strait and McEntire trying to sound like Haggard and Jones and Wynette) returned to country radio while everybody showed how much they missed to the ’90s (i.e., Twain and Brooks and Brooks & Dunn.)…

37 Best Singles of 2022

As with 2021 and 2020, a determining factor here (besides how much I liked the things) is whether I actually heard the records in question as singles — i.e., apart from an album (though lead tracks on EPs are okay), which isn’t to say I might not eventually have connected with the albums some of…

Songs of the Days, 2008

Somehow I got paid to write these for Rolling Stone‘s website, where I’m still not sure anybody ever read them — including me, come to think of it. The Ted Leo song has the surprising distinction of being the only download in my life I’ve ever spent money on. Don’t worry, I got reimbursed. Then…

A Dozen Great 1984 Singles

All included in Rolling Stone‘s 100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year website feature, published on that year’s 30th anniversary. Not a bad year for albums either, as I recall. Bryan Adams, “Run To You” Former glam-rocker/future schlockmeister from Canada, at his commercial and creative peak, borrows hard-popping six-string jangle from the Byrds via…

Videos I’ve Loved Before

I didn’t notice until today, but last week Alfred Soto posted a list of his favorite music videos ever, after participating in an I Love Music poll calculating the top picks of lots of other folks. Realized I’ve never put together such a list, and I’m not sure how feasible it would be — my…

8 Indie 45s From the ’00s

Written in retrospective hindsight, as explained in more detail here. Cococoma “6 ¼ – 125”/”Take My Time” (2006) Recorded December 2005 in their hometown Chicago, so my release-year guess can’t be too far off. Either way, this speedy, muffled nugget is the sort of revisionist garage punk that genre addicts pretend rocks harder than it does…

Two Salt-N-Pepa singles, 1988

Have been wanting to post this for quite a while now, but my hard copy is too blurry to be legible. Now that the Boston Phoenix archives are on line, though — problem solved! I hope. As for Salt-N-Pepa, one single I write about here became their first pop hit — and, let’s be honest,…

35 Best Singles of 2021

I tend to live in my own bubble, if not on my own planet, when it comes to singles these days. Well, maybe I always did (you might be saying), but at least I used to not go through entire years without writing about any of them, or really talking to anybody about them at…

3 Broklyn Beats 45s

From a column called “Singles Again” (explained here), obscure little vinyl records picked off my shelf and decoded, with years of hindsight. Broklyn Beast: “March of The Oil Barons”/”The Vampire Strikes Back” (2002) Clearly there’s a concept of historical importance here, not to mention a craft project: The label – featuring a photo of George W.…

4 Indie 45s From the ’90s

Excerpts from a short-lived monthly column called “Singles Again” (should’ve been “Singles Again Again,” since I’d previously used the same title at the Village Voice) in the online magazine Blurt (after two installments on the Idolator website) in which I started to comb alphabetically (as you can see, I didn’t get very far) through my…