February 2012
130 posts
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This Rookie interview with Sky Ferreira is... →
Awesome as in “one of the best musician interviews I’ve read in a while” awesome. It goes a lot deeper than this one quote, but even this quote alone!
What I like about the song “One” is it sounds like dance music, but the lyrics are sad.
It’s a sad song. It has a lot of weird hidden messages. There’s a song called “108” that’s kind of about how I was exploited by some people....
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“Can’t stop doing Monkee math. It seems important right now.
See, my kids are...”
– Kristin Hersh, in 2009, on the Monkees.
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no but seriously I watched a LOUNGE VERSION OF... →
If I had to suffer through a lounge “Moves Like Jagger” (#trollgaze), so must you. But Idol was otherwise… comparatively OK! Today’s recap, of the guys, in which I really hope I’m not the only one who read Replica.
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“On one hand, it’s great that she’s this new hot blog thing, because she is a...”
– Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, “Deconstructing: Grimes” (See also.)
This post is really good overall, but I don’t really think Lykke Li, Charli XCX, Bat for Lashes and especially Fever Ray are fair comparisons here. They’re all female musicians who make electronic music, yes, and they do...
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“That brings to mind the Douglas Adams quote I’ve mentioned a time or six:...”
– I have never read The Easter Parade, but this discussion (Adam Cadre and Colin Marshall, who recommended it) is fantastic nevertheless, even before it gets into the (even better) societal stuff.
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the new Estelle/Janelle Monae and newish Regina... →
Today’s track roundup. I would love for the Regina, in particular, to usher in all her peers once more, but alas….
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“Passing cafes and restaurants, I walk though the bright glance of men in love,...”
– Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run The Frog Hospital
Starts pretty, continues pretty, continues with about five more commas than quota, then waits until the last possible second to stab elsewhere. This is what I mean when I mention sentences I’m jealous of.
(Also, I just went on Goodreads because I...
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oh, madonna. oh no. why. →
I’m working on a larger piece about female pop stars and this astounding, sad regression and/or backlash from almost all of them since 2011. In the meantime, here’s Madonna, with a depressing song, providing more evidence.
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“Kelly Clarkson unintentionally pranked Jason Aldean at Friday night’s...”
– The most perfect example you’ll ever find of the constant demand and subsequent flailing for writers to make the uninteresting interesting. (Not a shot at the writer.)
“Hardly anyone would notice this boom, of course, if all the oranges in the...”
– Yeah, sure, I’ll read this.
“A different kind of hip-hop epiphany: Going to a small liberal-arts college and...”
– Brandon Soderberg (via SPIN)
This is important. (via theremixbaby)
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The Love Letter →
Yeah, this is actually pretty cute.
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andyhutchins:
To determine if a thing on the internet is for real:
allimmaturityandallcaps:
1. Copy a selection of text that is unusual enough to get you a solid search result. Copying the dateline—probably no good. Copying generic who/what/when/where/why text—also probably no good. Copying specific details given three paragraphs down in the article—probably going to get some results for the...
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the moment
when you do a serious sit-down and assessment of your own writing skills, let alone get-up-the-gumption-to-write, and realize that nope, they’ve gotten worse over the past year, not better.
But this is a serious post, so — how does one pull oneself out of a writing slump? As much of a slump as you can even have as a daily blogger, but still?
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a little late, but our "Idol" thing is up →
Why it’s a little late will be posted in a bit. But yes: singers!
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“Susan Hockfield, the first woman and the first life scientist to serve as...”
– Something’s up.
“Thanks to the loyalty of their fans, these collaborations matter. In real life...”
– Caramanica’s thing in the NYT
I really hope this is just an accidentally unfortunate word choice. (The word called for is “ambiguous,” no?) But I’ve sat on posting this for about half an hour, and it still seems… off. More loaded than might be needed?
(via katherinestasaph)
i for one am...
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“Buttermilk is terrible for drinking but a godsend for baking; the chemical...”
– So this happened. (It happens quite a bit! Second time I’ve quoted one.)
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“what leaped out at me as the gold mine of the piece”
– Forbes aggregator, quoted on Romenesko
As gold mines do.
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But I can still be grossed out by the notion of... →
WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME THERE'S A VERONICA SAWYER... →
Isn’t this, like, blog bait laced with blog crack, coated in blog candy, covered in blog flashing lights and tossed into the blog sea amid a big puddle of blog blood for the blog sharks?
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five words awesome to see first thing you wake up →
= “Fiona Apple live in NYC.”
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how many ways is it possible to swoon, even? →
At least two ways. Capsule write-ups of the new tracks by Charli XCX (who I assume needs no introduction here) and Swedish indie/teenpop group Little Marbles (who I assume does.) They’re both great.
Back to Bedbugs →
cureforbedbugs:
Here’s an old-school rant in need of some healthy pushing back (like most of my recent writing it’s all polemic with few concrete or useful examples), but I’m asking people to actually come back to “my house” to fight about it or like it or whatever else. New Echo comments are terrible, but I can’t seem to get rid of them without deleting the most important Bedbugs comments...
“The comments under a newspaper article about music, a blog post, a video,...”
– From Nitsuh’s typically excellent column today on rockism, which is worth reading in full; the below is a tangent.
The thing is, I’d argue that it is a silent, depressing plurality. Yes, most of these arguments fall apart under scrutiny (don’t write your own material? Why, you...
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“Lana Del Rey recorded a version of Shirley Bassey’s “Big Spender”
– 1. YOU MEAN “BIG SPENDER” FROM SWEET CHARITY, GOD.
2. Of course she fucking recorded a version of “Big Spender.” It’s one of the first songs belters want to try during lessons and in the top 5 Broadway songs you’d expect Lana to cover. (The rest of the top 5 is...
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This is part of my stance on the Chris... →
My stance is generally “ugh,” but here’s the fuller version. Summary: there are a few astoundingly obvious things people are ignoring.
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in which I try so hard to make an "Idol" recap of... →
And fail, and just go off:
Vegas Round is one of the worst “innovations” <i>American Idol</i> has ever introduced. There is only one reason ever to go to Las Vegas on a reality TV show: pure, inky evil, the sort of junket that encourages singers to ply each other with diamond-infused vodka and go on poker-table crawls and whittle away whichever savings give them other...
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“He is almost as enthusiastic about PacMan, although you get the sense that he...”
– I’m not really an expert, I’ll admit, but I’ll go out on a common-sensical limb here and suggest there’s no way someone on GameFAQs hasn’t used this construction.
(Seriously, though, this is fascinating.)
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today I get to recap ACTUAL SINGING! →
Two things about today’s Idol recap:
- The cake story is a true story, except it actually happened with brownies, DESPITE the oven. I’m not the best baker sometimes.
- I guess now I’ve achieved my life goal of referencing “Cold and Fugue Season.”
