I deeply regret that Springsteen did not conclude his Super Bowl performance by playing a verse of “Outlaw Pete” (the first song on his new album, Working on a Dream) and then segueing into a barn-burning cover of Kiss’s “I Was Made for Loving You” (which hit #11 in 1979). If you’ve missed it, the […]

posted 2 February 2009 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

1. Duran Duran 2. Liquid Liquid 3. Talk Talk 4. The The 5. Mr. Mister

posted 12 January 2009 in Tasty Bits. 3 comments

I haven’t voted in Pazz & Jop since the Voice‘s shoddy expulsion of Robert Christgau, but I still enjoy compiling my top ten albums at the end of the year. 1. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals 2. School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms 3. Santogold 4. Lil Wayne, Sandwiches & Cats 5. R.E.M., Accelerate 6. The […]

posted 5 January 2009 in Tasty Bits. 4 comments

I apologize for the lack of posts this week; due to a family medical emergency, the regular schedule here at Rule Forty-Two HQ may be disrupted for some time to come. I did want to mention, in a followup to last week’s post about how various songwriting partnerships work, that in an effort to plumb […]

posted 21 November 2008 in Self-reflexive, Tasty Bits. no comments yet

I’ve been thinking lately about the stylistic tendencies in songwriting partners. Not the words/music split of Gilbert/Sullivan or Hammerstein/Rodgers, but the Lennon/McCartney model: two long-running partners who share credit on everything even though they often write songs individually. The differences between the two Beatles are well-known: in broad strokes, Paul McCartney favored sentimental ballads and […]

posted 12 November 2008 in Tasty Bits. 5 comments

That is, songs specifically about elections and/or voting, not just miscellaneous political or societal change. 1. X, “The New World” 2. Radiohead, “Electioneering” 3. Arcadia, “Election Day” 4. Little Steven, “Vote That Mutha Out” 5. Talking Heads, “The Democratic Circus” There are fewer of these than I would have guessed (although Lyle Lovett and the […]

posted 4 November 2008 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

I’ve been listening to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” for over twenty years now. (Thankfully, not continuously.) Only recently did I realize an odd quality of the song: the chorus doesn’t appear until the very end. Technically, that means it’s not a chorus at all, right?

posted 21 October 2008 in Tasty Bits. 10 comments

I had a surprise same-day deadline today, so the next installment of the 1988 countdown will have to wait until next week. But I thought I’d share a list I came up with last week while I was waiting for Beck to hit the stage: TOP FIVE MOST-FAMOUS MUSIC VENUES IN THE USA: 1. Carnegie […]

posted 2 October 2008 in Tasty Bits. 8 comments

From the latest (September 26, 2008) issue of Entertainment Weekly, Alicia Keys on her collaboration with Jack White: “I like to call it rock & soul.”

posted 21 September 2008 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Much craziness this morning at Rule Forty-two World Headquarters, where we’re migrating all our files to our new computer and fighting off a nasty virus with nothing much more than hand-waving. So the next installment of the 1988 countdown will have to wait until Thursday. Until then, the final installment of my series of condensed […]

posted 16 September 2008 in Tasty Bits. 6 comments