Give ’em the ball, because they’re going to dunk it! (CREDIT: NBC Sports/Screenshot)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Black Phone 2 (Theaters)
–Blue Moon (Theaters)
–Frankenstein (Theaters; On Netflix November 7) – Directed by Guillermo del Toro.
–Good Fortune (Theaters)
–The Mastermind (Theaters)
TV
–Downey Wrote That (October 17 on Peacock) – Documentary about a notable SNL writer.
Music
-Chrissie Hynde, Duets Special
-The Last Dinner Party, From the Pyre
-Steve Martin and Alison Brown, Safe, Sensible and Sane
-Of Monsters and Men, All is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade
-Boz Scaggs, Detour
-Tame Impala, Deadbeat
Sports
-NBA on NBC Season Premiere (October 21 on NBC and Peacock) – Coming home.
Every week, I check the schedule of new albums coming out and listen to the ones that catch my ear. Then I make a note throughout the year of the ones that made a strong impression. And then to finalize my Best Albums of 2024 list, I re-listened to everything on that shortlist to confirm whether or not I did in fact like them enough to enshrine them among the crème de la crème.
As for my favorite new songs of the year, they can be hard to find, since I live in a city with reliable public transportation, and thus rarely drive, and thus rarely listen to the radio. So I hope that I’ll encounter some good ones on the albums that I seek out, or that they otherwise reach me via pop cultural osmosis. Also, I try to stick with songs that were released as singles, but it’s okay if they weren’t.
Anyway, here’s the music that happily stuck with me in 2024:
Damn, there were plenty of songs that made me go “Damn” in 2020. Check ’em out below!
1. U.S. Girls, “4 American Dollars”: What can I say, I love a good song about economic enlightenment that you can totally shake your little butt to.
2. Miley Cyrus, “Midnight Sky”: Miley is a rock star for the ages. It’s 100% official.
3. Doja Cat, “Say So”: Pure neon-soaked euphoria.
4. Cannons, “Fire for You”: Listen to the words she’s using: “I was on fire for you.” It feels like that to some of us sometimes, doesn’t it?
5. Dua Lipa, “Don’t Start Now”: Oh wow, that’s a lot of disco in the top 5. It’s back, baby! “Don’t Start Now”? More like “Don’t Stop Ever!” More
I didn’t listen to every new album that was released in 2020 – DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE! But I did listen to a few dozen; some were rockin’, some were poppin’, some were hippity-hoppin’, and a few even had some jazzy freakouts. Here are the 15 that most satisfied my ears and my tapping toes:
My Best of the 2010s list-making journey has finally come to a close! (Or has it? … For now, it has at least. The future will come as it may, and it may just surprise you, and me.) All this week, I’ve been posting my rankings of a few categories that I was inspired to put together after submitting them to a Best of the 2010s polls that I’m participating in with some of my fellow cultural aficionados. To wrap it all up, I guide you along to the realm of music and lyrics, as I present the Best Musical Artists of the 2010s.
My criteria was similar to that of my choices for Best Film Directors. I considered a combination of how much I enjoyed their musical output as well as how much – and how well – they influenced the industry at large.
Of all the pieces of art and entertainment that I’m ranking for the decade, songs are probably the most personal. Yet somehow I feel compelled to consider how they affected the world at large moreso than all the other categories. The tunes that I value the most aren’t just the ones that make my own heart sing but also the ones that draw all of us closer together. So as I assembled this list, I asked myself both, “What has made me dance these past 10 years?” and “How would I like to dance with everyone else?” Here’s what that playlist looks like.
(I aimed to stick only to songs that were released as singles, as opening this to deep album cuts would’ve made things so overheated.)
One of the big themes about entertainment in the past decade is the incomprehensible explosion of available content in every medium. While this may be a recent development in cinema and television, it’s been the case for music for centuries, or even millennia. Since humans have been banging on rocks and clapping their hands, really. Of course, it was a little more recent than that when recorded music became readily available.
This is all to say, I of course haven’t listened to every album of the past ten years that made its way onto SoundCloud or Spotify, or even all the Billboard chart-toppers. But I did listen to enough of them to be able to assemble a vibrant and varied soundtrack of my life in the 2010s. Here are the musical collections of the era that I just haven’t been able to stop pushing play on.
[4/2/20 2:00 PM UPDATE: This post originally mistakenly included Justice’s †, which came out in 2007.]
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Fantasy Island (Theatrically Nationwide) – I must watch every horror movie no matter how ridiculous.
–The Photograph (Theatrically Nationwide)
–A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Streaming February 14 on Netflix) – I loved the last Shaun the Sheep movie!
TV
–Duncanville Series Premiere (February 16 on FOX) – Is this the next great animated FOX show?
–Good Girls Season 3 Premiere (February 16 on NBC)
–Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Season 7 Premiere (February 16 on HBO)
Jeffrey Malone watches every new episode of Saturday Night Live and then organizes the sketches into the following categories: “Love It” (potentially Best of the Season-worthy), “Keep It” (perfectly adequate), or “Leave It” (in need of a rewrite, to say the least). Then he concludes with assessments of the host and musical guest.
Love It
Discover Card – There’s a current ad campaign about people reaching their doubles at customer service, and there’s a current hit horror movie about people being targeted by their doubles. Somebody at SNL made the connection and astutely decided, “Let’s mash ’em up!” And lo and behold, we have this hilarious commercial parody in which it turns out that the you’s of Discover Card are actually the Tethered of Us, and Ego Nwodim finally gets a showcase performance.
It’s good to know that everyone can be so wonderfully, specifically overwrought in the Test Prep sketch.
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