This song is about heartbreak: it’s the song of someone pleading with you to stay, to never leave, to come back. Please don’t break my heart just yet or ever: first tell me you love me for a million years. This song is sly and funny: it’s the joking ultimatum of someone who doesn’t think …
First let me confess that I am weirdly fond of Springsteen; before he became rock and roll’s dad, young Bruce was weirdly hot as hell. And anyone whose songwriting shows that they know their girl groups gets a thumbs up from me. Lately I’ve been really into women covering Springsteen, and Electrelane’s aggressive and almost …
Over the past six months, I’ve gotten very into powerlifting. It’s the first and only sport where I have ever, in my whole life, felt like I have any kind of skill and like my body is an asset rather than a hindrance. Mass moves mass; often, a body that is larger is a body …
I would follow Amy Taylor’s voice off a cliff. I think what I love the most about this song is the way she sings like she’s summoning us, like she’s our fearless leader or maybe our cult leader, calling on us to rise up and follow her into the thick of a fire. She shouts …
Jackie DeShannon is so underrated. Just about she wrote is a total banger (see: When You Walk in the Room, Breakaway, even Put a Little Love in Your Heart, which has deeply corny hippie-pop vibes, yes, but it’s great anyway and the horn section is killer). She may have co-written Needles and Pins but didn’t …
When you sing along with I Wanna Be Sedated, it becomes so instantly clear that it’s a girl group song, and that girl groups were punker than punk!
I truly cannot get enough of Teena Marie and the way she lets you know a song is going to be a total banger by starting it with a whoop. So many of her songs are such odd assemblages of hooks, strange vocalizations, and bridges that take you to unexpected places. Teena Marie was so …
I’m sorry I’m sorry but every August as soon as the season starts to show the slightest whiff of wanting to change my brain gets totally colonized by nostalgia and all I want are moody tunes about missing people. Somewhere I still have an old calling card that I could use to make long distance …
I’ve probably only actually done karaoke once or twice in my life, and I cannot think of any circumstance in which I will be singing karaoke any time soon. However! This does not mean that I am not always on a quest for a perfect karaoke song. Gaga is generally near the top of my …
Nothing calms me down light wave after wave of guitar distortion that just obliterates and washes away my anxious thoughts. I could float on it forever.