The Music List Archives

Top 25 Influential Rock Albums

May 1, 2020

So apparently everyone on Facebook is posting their ten most influential albums day by day. Nobody has challenged me to do that and I have my own website, so wh...

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In Defense Of: Ruben Studdard’s “Sorry 2004”

December 29, 2019

Who doesn't love the Velvet Teddy Bear? Seriously. This guy is like the most adored, lovable reality series winner of all time. Taking home the American Idol tr...

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Bad Music Take: Smash Mouth’s “All Star” Is Actually a Song About Climate Change

April 18, 2019

Forever known as that annoying-ass song from 1999 that took sports stadiums, sports highlights and, uh, MTV Sports by storm, "All Star" came off as a cynical, c...

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Musical Abomination: Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty”

September 10, 2018

Everything that Chad Kroeger touches dies. Witness this abomination from the once and former darling of the pop-punk world, Avril Lavigne, that came about after...

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Musical Abomination: Bastille’s Cover of Greenday’s “Basket Case”

August 29, 2017

I'm old enough to remember where I was the first time I heard Green Day's Dookie: surrounded by piles of Buffalo-wing bones, Camel Lights and empty Milwaukee's ...

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In Defense of: Bush’s “Swallowed”

July 31, 2017

Never has a song done so much with so little. "Swallowed," in typical 90s fashion, proves that a catchy song sung in an earnest way and produced like a fuckin' ...

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We Listened to Limp Bizkit and We Lost

February 28, 2016

Limp Bizkit somehow plays into my past. I mean we all had to put up with Fred Durst and the obnoxious swarm of rapcore shitheads he spawned, but they actually a...

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Great Lyrics: ‘Quicksand’ by David Bowie

January 11, 2016

To commemorate the passing of a true musical genius (and I use that word only for like 25% of all geniuses), here is a song that up until today I had no idea wa...

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2015 Albums of the Year

January 4, 2016

I do this every year. And every year I realize how little music I get to listen to. Or how little new music I'm exposed to, I suppose. I listen to a lot more th...

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In Defense of: Three Times Dope’s “Greatest Man Alive”

September 20, 2015

Sure, to you Three Times Dope was just the hip hop group from the eighties with the guy with a mustache and a really off-kilter Gumby haircut, but look beyond t...

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Slow Jams

March 20, 2015

I've been searching for years, and I've finally found my least favorite kind of music (and mind you, there's death metal and German industrial music out there)....

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Chick Lead Singers

March 2, 2015

I realize, scanning my music collection, that I have very few albums by bands that are fronted by chicks. Sure there are some solo acts (Lily Allen, M.I.A., Jul...

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Great Lyrics: ‘Album of the Year’

February 21, 2015

Tim Kasher has made a career of leading the emo revolution. Or at least the sensitive male, screaming at the top of his lungs about what horrible people women c...

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Great Lyrics: ‘Random Rules’

February 21, 2015

The Silver Jews, always sort of living in the shadow of their better known, better represented former agents, Pavement, are an amazing band in their own right. ...

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Great Lyrics: ‘Papa Was a Rodeo’

February 21, 2015

Stephin Merritt can write the hell out of a song. Shit, the man wrote three volumes of love songs (69 in all) for The Magnetic Fields' epic triple album, 69 Lov...

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2014 Albums of the Year

December 31, 2014

Looking back, 2013 was a weak-ass year for me for music. I couldn't even come up with more than eight albums to stick on my year-end list. This year -- a much s...

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2013 Albums of the Year

December 31, 2013

Just like 2012 and 2011 before it, I figure it's my duty to clutter the musical landscape with my completely uneducated opinion about the best albums of 2013. N...

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2012 Albums of the Year

December 31, 2012

So I figure everyone else is doing his top albums thing, so I might as well. Now I don't get free albums or anything, so I have to spend my hard earned money on...

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