- My newest obsession is looking at the weekly Billboard Hot 100 songs and Top 200 albums of the week every week. I very seldomly looked at the charts as a child but, with streaming services now being accounted for in the algorithms for the music charts, I feel it has never more accurately represented what Americans are listening to. It has also shown to me how boring our tastes (Not everyone but you know what I mean) have become when a song like The Chainsmokers' "Closer" just tied LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live Without You?" for the most weeks spent consecutively in the top 10. Also, any time a big name artist drops an album, their entire album tends to chart the very next week (see: Drake next week and Ed Sheeran last week) and much like the steroid era in baseball, once respected records are falling (Nicki Minaj has passed Aretha Franklin with the most top 100 songs ever by a female artist thanks to features and the streaming era). This has been going on for a couple of years now but, I just caught on to how odd the past of the top 100 is. For instance, No Doubt's "Don't Speak" never charted despite being the most radio-friendly song of 1996. Why? because it was never released as an "official single". It's amazing how the music landscape has changed over the past 21 years and I cannot begin to imagine how we define or try to accurately rank popular music in 21 years. We argue that no music has any staying power anymore and the Billboard charts tend to state the exact opposite as the truth.
- I probably go on Instagram once a month and my reaction every time is "wow, people sure are doing things" and five minutes later, I exit. I wish I could be into whatever I'm supposed to be doing on there but, I'm just not.
- Aubrey Plaza should win an Emmy of some sort for her portrayal of whatever the hell she is on FXs marvelous new Marvel program, Legion. The show is stylistically incredible and takes bold and confusing risks like this dance number every week. They are about to air the first season finale this week and I look forward to it on a weekly basis. Make sure to start from episode 1 because, that episode is one of the series premieres ever to air on cable television.
- Rest in peace to Workaholics, a show that was dumb fun for a while but, wore out it's welcome over seven seasons. The only Comedy Central show worth watching is now Broad City.
- The NCAA men's basketball tournament still lacks any game-altering buzzer beaters but, has been it's usual fun and entertaining self. #1 Kansas appears to be the obvious frontrunner while (my original pick) #1 North Carolina and #1 Gonzaga still remain. In the other region, #1 overall seed Villanova was ousted by #8 Wisconsin and #3 Baylor has all of the pressure of taking down 'Nova and #2 Duke out of the way so, we might have to talk about the ongoing investigations going on in Texas again.
- Contrary to popular belief, the UCONN women are going to win the tournament again this year.
- For the first time in it's four runs, I actually tuned into a majority of the World Baseball Classic. The tournament never grabbed my interest previously because it aired at unwatchable hours and was on a channel I only recently obtained (MLB Network). The whole thing was loads of fun and just what baseball needed to kick off a season after one of the best sports stories ever. Shout out to my favorite baseball player, Marcus Stroman on winning tournament MVP. Please lead my fantasy team to greatness this year.
 |
| Courtesy of MLB.com |
- The new Drake project surprised me with how listenable it was. I'm calling it a project because Aubrey refers to it as a "playlist" and that's just goofy as hell. I know albums, mixtapes and EPs are all interchangeable today so, let's start calling anything over 6 tracks projects. More Life is more Views than it is If You're Reading This, It's Too Late but, it bounces around in tone much more from song to song than last year's soundtrack to the worst parts of 2016, Views.
- Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? still holds up 55 years later and has inspired another fun show to view on Sunday nights with just enough "fucks" to make one hopeful for the future of uncensored television. Feud: Bette and Joan is another FX show (I swear, they are not paying me) that comes from Ryan Murphy (creator of American Horror Story, Scream Queens and last year's phenomena, The People vs. O.J. Simpson) and focuses on the creation of the Baby Jane movie and the feuding actresses on the downsides of their career with information that many did not know about at the time (Davis's tough relationship with her daughter and Crawford's abusive upbringing) because it was the sixties and people just trusted tabloids featuring celebrity-drama for some reason. We still are guilty of this but in this area, people have gotten much better.
- The Shins' new album, Heartworms, is fine but did not get me to binge on their music the way I did with multiple other bands from a similar era over the past month.
- Spoon's new album, Hot Thoughts, made me think about Spoon a lot while listening to Spoon. The album is in early discussions for album of the year in a year that has no obvious standouts yet and I am really happy about the time I spent thinking about Spoon and listening to Spoon this year. They have subsequently gotten me hyped up for new LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire and Gorillaz projects.
 |
| Spoon's cover for their eighth album, Hot Thoughts. |
- The year in NBA beefs continues with Lavar Ball entering the basketball gossip columns before any of his 3 sons enter the league by talking about Lebron James' kids in a not-totally negative manner by saying "they won't be as good as Lebron because he's Lebron" while Ball's kids should be awesome because Lavar sucked his way onto the bench in college. I approve of Lavar Ball being the male equivalent of Kris Jenner and look forward to the future stars of TMZ Sports.
- NFL free agency sorted itself out nicely with a few Quarterbacks (Colin Kaepernick, Jay Cutler, Ryan Fitzpatrick) and Running Backs (Adrian Peterson, Jamaal Charles, Rashad Jennings) now waiting for a team desperate enough to sign their aging, decrepit selves. Speaking of decrepit, where are the Tony Romo updates?! He looks like he might just stay on the bench in Dallas whether he likes it or not.
- As worthless as dreams are as an everyday topic of discussion, I can't help but bring up the bizarre dreams I have had recently. In one, I was attending my fantasy baseball league's draft and when I arrived, half the league had Lou Gehrig's Disease. That dream clearly means nothing but, it did unnecessarily freak me out. In another, I was back in Junior High and had to go to the locker room after recording a triple-double (noice) but, in order to get to the locker room, I had to crawl through a hole in the wall like it was Shawshank Redemption. Neither of those dreams tops the one where my grandmother and her eighty year old friend arrive in my front yard via helicopter and they demand me to go to church, only they had no space on the helicopter and I had to dangle off the side like I was Melissa McCarthy in Spy. Meanwhile, my front door was left wide open since we rushed out of there so quickly and the whole time I was "in church", I just kept panicking to myself about the wide-open front door. None of these meant anything but, it sure as hell took a lot of characters, meaning I couldn't explain those stories in one tweet.
- RIP Chuck Berry. I still can't believe that THIS was his only #1 song.
- Lastly, shout out to Colton Shearier on his new movie reviews blog. Everybody should check this out because not only does he keep better track of new movies than I do but, -leans in closely to whisper the shameful truth- he's also funnier than I am.
Until next time, here's a playlist I recently curated of my 20 favorite Santigold songs from 20-1.
No comments:
Post a Comment