For my next project, I’m taking a break from my usual TV history to indulge a passion of mine: female pop stars and their otherworldly qualities. Pop Star Goddesses will be, according to the official announcement, “an illustrated guide to calling upon the...
First there was Wale, now there’s Grindfeld. Ten years after rapper Wale dropped the Seinfeld-themed Mixtape About Nothing, a metal band called Grindfeld is releasing its 5 Songs About Nothing EP. The first single, “The Contest,” is out now....
I go back to Emily Nussbaum’s perfect 2013 defense of Sex and the City in The New Yorker over and over again. But I particularly go back to this one part, so many times, and it’s always to defend some of my favorite shows, and even other pop cultural...
Pat Williams took the job of scoring the Mary Tyler Moore Show pilot because his friend Allan Burns, who co-created the show with James L. Brooks, asked him to. It wasn’t, to be sure, that he knew it would become a classic for the ages. In fact, he’d heard...
I want to talk about an apparently important issue facing our divided nation: whether it’s okay to change the gender markers in a cover version of a song. I’m a little late to the rush and crush of judgement unleashed upon Ryan Adams’ album covering...
I enjoy the Britney Spears in general, for many reasons I’ve enumerated here in the past. And as a self-proclaimed Britneyologist, I have to say that I enjoy her latest, Britney Jean, in parts — but overall, it’s not in the same league as her previous...
