Ian actually reached out to me a few weeks back to comment on a new series he was working on about how to make epic pop music. After weighing in on his questions, I thought to myself, “Hey! I’m about to be very busy getting hitched. I should reprint one of the articles in this series. Thankfully, Ian obliged. If you enjoy today’s piece, you should check out the rest of the series and subscribe to his newsletter.

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On Pop Music Breaking the Mold

By Ian Temple

Can pop music be epic?

To most people, the answer to this question is probably obvious: “Mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia, let me go!”

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” hit number 9 in the charts in 1976 and then number 2 in 1992 after the release of the film Wayne’s World, categorically proving the answer is “Yes!” That was certainly Chris Dalla Riva’s answer when I asked him:

 The quintessential example would have to be “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. That’s like quintessential epicness. It’s longer. It has a tremendous amount of dynamic range. There’s the whole operatic section in the middle. You got the big old guitar solo. You got the ballad. If I’m thinking just epicness, especially in the pop sphere, that would be the song I would go to immediately.

So, yes. The answer is yes. There is nothing more needed here. There is definitely no need to call up experts, to chat about it with everyone I know, or to spend a couple dozen hours listening to every pop hit since 1965 just to make sure.

Right? Riiiiight?

OK, here’s the thing: I wasn’t convinced.

My background lies more in epic music than pop. My idea of a good time is listening to an Icelandic band bowing a distorted guitar behind a wailing falsetto, ideally with an orchestra behind them. Give me 24 hours straight of drone music or an opera with a counter-tenor wailing over an ostinato for four hours. I want hard-won emotional peaks that crack you wide open, and to experience the results of human endeavor taken far beyond what’s reasonable.

From this vantage point, pop music seems a little anti-epic. At the risk of oversimplifying things:

• Epic music is long. Pop music is short.

• Epic music often complex. Pop music is often simple.

• Epic music often has slow builds and rewards patience. Pop music needs to grab your attention in the first couple seconds.

• Epic music often isn’t commercially viable. Pop is all about the money.

• Epic music offers a grand sweeping narrative arc. Pop music often has slightly nonsensical lyrics, like five good-looking dudes singing “I want it that way” without anyone anywhere including themselves or the person who wrote the song having any idea which way they’re talking about.

But … is any of that actually true?

Welcome to Episode 3 of How to Make Epic Music, my series exploring artists and music that take things too far. In episode one, we talked about the insistence focus of Chopin. In episode two, we dissected the surprising discipline of the jam band Phish. And today, we’re talking about pop music, at least the epic parts of it. Let’s dive in.

Once again, I bit off more than I can chew so this will be a two-parter. This is Part 1: the grand sweep of epic pop music through history. Part 2 will follow.

Is Pop Music Anti-Epic?

Pop is such a difficult word to define, right? Because at any one moment it can be a genre or sound. It can be the thing which is at the top of the charts. It can be just in the popular zeitgeist.  There are a lot of songs that are enormous in conversation and culture that actually don’t achieve huge commercial success.

That’s Charlie Harding, the co-host of the amazing, long-running podcast Switched on Pop and also a professor of songwriting at NYU and Berklee. I needed help with this topic, and Charlie has literally written the book on pop music. At the start of our conversation, he did validate my question a bit:

 Harding: I like to think about pop music going back to one of the great songwriters of pop music Irving Berlin.

Irving Berlin, one of the great American songwriters of all time. Wrote some 1,250 songs in the first half of the 20th century, including dozens of hits, standards, and classics, like “God Bless America,” “Cheek to Cheek,” and “White Christmas.”

Harding: He had a set of rules for songwriting published in a magazine, and he basically says to write a great pop song you have to write something that everybody can sing. Part of pop music is an intention more than it is a genre. It is: Do you want this song to be sung by many people?

Irving Berlin says, in order for it to be sung by many people, there are some particular rules to follow, like the words have to be sonorous. Some words don’t sing well. My favorite example is a 30 Rock episode in which Jenna Maroney’s character is in a film called The Rural Juror. The joke of the episode is nobody can understand what she’s saying “cause rural is a mouthy word and doesn’t sing well.”

Some of the other rules in Berlin’s list:

• The melody should be within the range of an average singer.

• The title should appear frequently in the lyrics so it’s more memorable.

• Songs should be sexless, available to men or women, and should deal with ideas, emotions, or objects familiar to everyone.

• They also need to contain “heart interest,” should be simple, and should endeavor to be original.

Basically, make songs that are singable, accessible, and marketable.

Harding: If you think about the rules of Irving Berlin, in some ways they are kind of anti-epic. They’re very populist, and I think they very much still apply to songs by Max Martin and all the great Swedish pop songwriters. There’s a preference for singable words, even over the intelligibility of the lyric, repeatable melodies that people can sing, not too many giant leaps, etc. If your song is too acrobatic, people can’t sing along with you.

So pop music is meant to be sung by the populace. In that way, its epicness might be more about its reach than in every part of its melodic structure.

This is an important anchoring thought: Perhaps more than anything else, pop music is an intention—the intention to be popular, to reach what Irving Berlin calls “the crowd.”

And this often dictates the choices that go into the music. It pushes certain aspects of the songwriting away from anything too weird or surprising that could turn people off and toward things that most people will find accessible. An anti-epic pressure, if you will.

But Berlin also hints at competing pressures, like the pressure to stand out, to be memorable, and to move people emotionally. If we focus on that side of the equation, I expect that’s where we might find the more epic pop music.

After all, can’t epic music also be popular?

Digging For Pop Epics

The logical next step was to go to the archives, to go panning for epic music among the pop pantheon greats. Luckily, the website The Pudding has created this great visualizer of every top 5 pop song on the US Billboard charts from the 1950s to 2015. That seemed like a good subset to start with. If there are epic songs among the hits, then that could help us learn more.

Using The Pudding’s data, I began listening to as many songs as I could, mostly number ones, gathering the ones I thought were epic-ish, and rating them according to a rubric I made up. Specifically, I graded every song I listened to according to how it performed along five parameters on a scale from 1 to 5:

• Scale: Does it feel big and expansive?

• Journey: Does it give the sense of a grand narrative with a massive build, strong contrasts, or multiple movements?

• Stakes: Does it feel like it matters, like something important is happening or being expressed?

• Commitment: Does the artist go all in, further than expected?

• Pay Off: Does it drive compellingly toward a big resolution and nail the landing?

I then averaged out the scores for each category to give each song an epic grade. A song with a 5 on each parameter is a perfect 5 in epicness. Here are the results.

In the first hour of listening, this seemed like a great idea. By hour 10, I was convinced every pop song was in fact epic. By hour 30, I decided none of them were. And by hour 60, my corporeal form had dissipated and slipped out of space and time.

What I Learned about Epic Pop

The most obvious conclusion is that there has in fact been a lot of epic pop music at the top of the charts. I included almost 300 songs on my list, and I’m sure there are lots of others that slipped through my fingers.

Of those, 231 reached number one on the charts. If we estimate that there were around 900 total number one hits in that time frame, then we can say that about a quarter of all number one songs are at least somewhat epic. This is fairly subjective—but that’s not a bad haul!

There are so many undeniably epic moments in here. The chord punches that kick off “Eye of the Tiger.” The driving, desperate intensity of “Lose Yourself.” The orchestral intro to K-Ci and JoJo’s “All My Life.” Are those actual cannon shots in Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”? (Sadly, no, but not for lack of trying from the songwriter Jim Steinman). How did I even question this?

Then, there are the divas. In almost any era, there’s one epic music formula that finds its way onto the charts: a diva with an orchestra singing a power ballad. Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Barbra Streisand, Adele, Diana Ross, Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift, etc. Almost 20% of the songs on the list could be categorized as some version of this.

This formula produced so many number ones it made me wonder if epic songs aren’t actually the most successful type of pop song in history.

American Idol clearly seemed to think so. When the show first aired in 2002, tasked with finding and launching new chart-topping pop stars, what did the big money producers bet on? What did the audiences vote for? You guessed it. Divas singing over orchestras. Kelly Clarkson, Fantasia, Carrie Underwood, even Clay Aiken and Taylor Hicks—all had hits with power ballads and orchestras.

Another thing that jumped out to me was how many of the epic hits were tied to films in some way. About 13% of the songs on my list were tied to a movie or TV show in some way—themes like the “Chariots of Fire” or a bizarre disco version of the “Star Wars Theme” that somehow hit number one in 1977, as well as soundtrack songs, like “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon. It makes sense: Movie music tends to be more dramatic by default, and being in a movie or TV show is a great way for a song to filter through the culture.

A great example of this happening recently is Kate Bush’s epic tune “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” which peaked at number 30 when it was first released, but hit number 3 a couple years ago when it was used in the TV series Stranger Things.

So we’ve got some good rules of thumb to start with: If you want to make an epic song and have it be a hit, get yourself a diva, an orchestra, and a hit film.

Where the “Epicness” Comes From

While listening, I tried my best to figure out where in each song the “epicness” was coming from. For instance, if a song swells to a massive orchestral build, then I’d give it a mark for having an epic arrangement. If it lasted 8 minutes with multiple distinct movements, I gave it a mark for having an epic structure. That sort of thing. Here’s what I found:

Basically, it’s more common to make a song sound epic through the arrangement, the production, and the performance than through the harmony, structure, and lyrics. That makes sense, since the arrangement, production, and performance are all elements that can be made epic within common pop structures and chord progressions.

Let’s talk more about the arrangements for a second. There are a few ways we see epicness play out in arrangements: big dynamic contrasts between highs and lows, lots of voices, melodies, or complexity, and of course the use of orchestras and choirs to expand the sense of scale and depth.

Take Diana Ross’s version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” The verse is so quiet that she’s practically whispering it in your ear, but the chorus is absolutely soaring, especially at the end with the punchy rhythms, howling vocals, and orchestral climax. She basically took a nice, mellow R&B number and made it something you roar at your enemies as you trample them underfoot. I gave it a 5.

Or “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles (4.8 rating), a seemingly simple song with the weirdest arrangement imaginable. Why are there so many horns playing fanfares? And why is everyone playing a different song underneath the actual song at the end? How many people are actually on this song? (Apparently, around 35, including a 13-piece orchestra, Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and a few others).

It’s notable that almost a third of the epic songs on the charts that I tracked had an orchestra in them. A choir is arguably even more epic. A good example might be Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” (4.8), one of my favorite epic songs on the list.

• Fun fact #1: The choir for “Like a Prayer” was arranged and conducted by Andraé Crouch, who also did the choir on Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror,” another song on the list (4.6).

• Fun fact #2: The guitar intro to “Like a Prayer” was played by Prince. Who knew?

• Fun fact #3: My sister-in-law just told me that her college friends have a tradition of taking off their shirts whenever this song comes on, which I think undisputedly proves its epic pedigree.

Different Eras, Different Types of Epic

In general, I’ve come to believe you can learn a lot about an era by exclusively looking at its most epic songs.

• In the 1960s, the epic songs were psychedelic and explored epic song structures.

• The 1970s liked long, multi-movement songs influenced by prog rock, schmaltzy ballads, and disco tunes with endless beats.

• The 1980s saw samples, effects, synths, and massive-sounding drums come to the fore, at least until the end of the era when hair metal-fuelled arena rock took over for a few years.

• The 1990s is the heyday of diva-driven power ballads.

• The ‘00s saw a proliferation of anthemic club hits designed to get fists pumping on the dance floor.

Here’s a list of the top five epic songs in each era, according to my ratings:

Interestingly, there are a couple specific producers and songwriters who appear on this list a few times: Giorgio Moroder, the synth and disco pioneer; Jim Steinman, the theatrical songwriter for people like Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler; David Foster, the dramatic producer of fanfares and power ballads; and of course Dr. Luke, the anthemic pop producer in the ‘00s. These are clearly people specifically interested in a certain epic sound, and their efforts are part of the reason that epic music keeps coming back on the charts.

The Rise of Epic-Style Production

Starting in the late 1970s and early 1980s, you begin to hear a lot more epic production. Partly, that’s because you no longer needed to hire an orchestra and choir to create a massive sense of scale. You could get a similar effect through a huge synth sound and reverb, and artists absolutely did.

Take “Flashdance… What a Feeling” by Irene Cara. Listen to the layers of synth textures and melodies. There are pads that sound very similar to a string section and melodies that sound like horns, all washed in reverb and given stereo width for an extra big feel.

But that’s not all. The 1980s is also famous for its massive drum sounds, most prominently the gated reverb used on tracks like Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” Producers started dialing up the compression and reverb to the limit but then adding what’s called a gate so that the effects are only heard above a certain threshold of sound, creating this massive booming sound that then cuts off abruptly. Like it’s recorded in a cathedral but the door keeps closing after each hit.

Chris Dalla Riva agreed that the 1980s feels like an inflection point in epic pop music:

I think there’s another way that pop music can lean into epicness and that’s through melodrama. The big melodramatic ballad became very popular in the 1980s. Pop singles got a little longer throughout the 1970s and I believe they topped out in the 1980s, so I think that by the 1980s, you have a combination of these very dramatic production techniques along with slightly longer pop songs that make it possible to have these big, epic ballads.

After the 1980s, production became one of the dominant ways to add a dash of epic to a pop song. This is even more true in the 2000s when anthemic pop came to the fore, influenced by EDM and dance music. The charts start to feature a lot of songs with big synth textures, driving beats, and choruses designed for pumping your fist on the dance floor. I think of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” with its driving, rhythmic synths and soaring chorus, Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” with its driving, rhythmic synths and soaring chorus, or Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” with its driving, rhythmic synths and soaring chorus.

What about Structure?

There aren’t a ton of structurally epic pop hits on the list. There are definitely some exceptions, like Paul & Linda McCartney’s slapdash ditty “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” or The Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” which is built on one long unchanging bassline for 7 minutes. But to a large degree, most of the songs on our list adhere to the generally accepted pop music formula of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, etc. The interesting thing is how much epicness you can still generate within that structure.

I put this to Charlie Harding, and he made a very good point: Maybe there’s actually something inherently epic about the structure of pop music.

Most pop songs follow a sort of epic-like structure. They often begin small, with an intro that will grab your attention. They build through the verse and pre-chorus, indicating change. The chorus is a moment of catharsis. And then you go through that entire process all over again, except the next chorus is going to be even bigger than it was before.

Then, you’ll go through the development phase. A great bridge or even a down chorus in the sort of final act of a song, its job is to say: “Whoa, things have changed. Things are different. You’re gonna see the chorus in a new perspective.” And when you arrive at the final chorus, it’s the most epic moment of the song.

So you have gone through this journey from a very small insular world in the intro to the third chorus, by which time you should be experiencing the most overwhelming emotions and catharsis and joy or sadness, or whatever emotion you’re supposed to be feeling in its biggest way.

So, maybe in some ways pop music is inherently epic, at least in the way it allows us to experience an emotional journey in the most concise and affecting way.

Epic Music Stays With Us

Let’s end with a pop saga, an epic pop story if you will about how epic music can echo down the decades.

The year was 1967. The Summer of Love. Hundreds of thousands of people descended on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s, Hendrix lit a guitar on fire on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival, and a sunshine pop band with a few number one hits called the Association needed a new song.

The Association was a little bit of an unusual pop band, the sort you can only find in the 1960s. Eccentric, counter-culture, a little psychedelic, with ornate vocal harmonies and somewhat baroque-ish arrangements. They have a “Requiem for the Masses” that I’d classify as cathedral pop. Their hit song “Windy” from 1967 is a great early example of an epic pop song (I gave it a 4 on my scale). It’s happy but also psychedelic, with a harpsichord, flute, and intricate backing vocals.

Their new producer asked a budding songwriter named Jimmy Webb to write them a pop song with classical elements in it, a reliable path to epicness. Webb wrote a “cantata,” an operatic multi-movement piece sung over symphonic orchestration and choir, called “MacArthur Park.” The Association declined it, so it was instead recorded by a prestigious actor named Richard Harris, fresh off his epic musical film Camelot and looking to kickstart his singing career.

Released in 1968, this 7-minute piece of puffed up baroque melodrama actually hit number 2 in the charts at a time when most radio hits were 3 minutes long. It was a weird pop hit. It’s dramatic and through-composed, more like a film score. It feels romantic, conservative, and saccharine, at a time when that was not the hip thing to do. Discordantly, the song below it on the charts in June 1968 contained the lyrics “Yummy, yummy, yummy / I got love in my tummy.”

“MacArthur Park” was mostly forgotten about, an epic little footnote in the history of pop, until a synth-obsessed producer also interested in making epic music named Giorgio Moroder heard it while driving in Los Angeles and thought it would make the perfect cover for a new disco artist he was working with named Donna Summer.

Moroder and Summer decided this long, slightly absurd ballad could be longer, more absurd, and a dance hit. They took the slow intro and slowed it down even more. They added a choir to the beginning, except it’s actually just Moroder’s voice recorded to tape, layered, and pitched. They added a maniacal cackle as Summer breaks out into a fast-paced disco beat.

It retains all the orchestral lushness, but adds some weird synths, congas, a pulsing bass, stuttered horns, and a catchy synth lead. Then they released the whole thing as a 17-minute medley, with a shorter single version that hit number one on the charts.

In my survey of epic pop music, there are only a couple songs that get a 5—the perfect epic score. “MacArthur Park” is one of them. But then twenty years later there’s another.

The story of this song starts in the late 1980s with an over-the-top songwriter named Jim Steinman and a larger-than-life artist named Meatloaf, whose theatrical album Bat Out of Hell from 1977 had remained on the UK best-selling album charts for almost a decade. In the late 1980s, they were working on the follow up album Bat Out of Hell II.

But there was one song that Steinman had written that he was adamant Meatloaf couldn’t have, a song inspired by Emily Brontë’s gothic romance novel Wuthering Heights. In fact, Steinman was so determined he sued Meatloaf to stop him using it.

That’s because Steinman wanted this song to have a female lead. A few years later, he found that female singer, the French-Canadian mega-diva Celine Dion.

And so Celine recorded and released “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” in 1996. More than 7 minutes long, it’s dazzlingly overwrought. It starts out with haunting wind and thunder sound effects behind pretty piano and verbed out electric guitar. It builds from there, tumbling in and out of multiple romance-drenched movements, through sleighbells, choir voices, and what sounds like more cannon shots. And then, of course, there’s this moment:

Remember what Irving Berlin said at the beginning? A good pop song needs to be singable by anyone?

I’m not sure anyone’s able to do what Celine does here. And yet, that hasn’t stopped us from trying. A pop song is for the populace, and that includes me occasionally mangling Celine in the shower. Haven’t we all?

I’m telling this story both because I think it’s a good insight into a few of the most epic songs on my list—and also there’s a way in which epic music echoes down the years, maybe even more than other songs, inspiring us to ever greater heights. The drama, the theatricality, the exuberance.

“MacArthur Park” recently made a bit of a comeback when the Donna Summer version was used by Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu for her gold medal performance. It was also performed live in 2011 by Donna Summer at a concert arranged and produced by David Foster, the legendary producer behind another 5 on epic pop scale: Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” And so the tradition continues.

Epic music makes us feel big things. So does pop music.

One of the reasons I struggled to get my head around epic pop music at the outset of this project is because there’s a way in which epic music self-consciously breaks the mold, while I assumed pop music was the opposite.

And yet, it’s more complex than that. Pop music is in dialogue with the mold, playing with an audience’s expectations to reach people and move them. I can’t imagine two songs that demonstrate that more clearly and ambitiously than “MacArthur Park” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” in every way.

 Pop music is just a matter of: Where do you want it to be heard? Do you want it to be heard on the radio or do you want it to be heard in a rarefied institution, in a museum?

Charlie Harding again. He points out that modern pop music isn’t usually intended to promote nationalism and grandeur, like Wagner or Tchaikovsky. Instead, it’s a reflection of our times, where the journey is personal, where artists are sharing what they’re going through in ways that the rest of us can relate to.

Pop music can make us feel big, epic feelings. Or it can make us feel quiet, small plaintive feelings. When I look at a great work that is considered epic, there’s a feeling of awe, and I think awe can be experienced in a enormous vista with the most beautiful sunset or staring into a raindrop on a leaf. Musically, I think we can experience the feeling of epicness in all kinds of modes of expression.

Pop songs give us the ability to experience those emotions as individuals in a fuller way.

Ultimately, epic music is just music that makes us feel part of something bigger than ourselves, like our emotions are tied into the endless tide of history and humanity before and after us.

Sometimes the music that does that goes under the radar. But other times, it’s exactly the song that everyone else is also listening to right now.

And when we all feel connected like that, it’s a beautiful, and I’d argue epic, thing.

Want more writing like this? Subscribe to ’s Soundfly Weekly to keep up with his epic series about epic pop music.

Want more from Chris Dalla Riva? Get a copy of his debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.

This week’s theme is “this year,” meaning albums that were released in 2026. Ken (rightfully) thought that this would be a good theme since we are almost half way through 2026. Let us know what other new albums you’ve been enjoying over the last few months.

#7 WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA by Slayyyter

Slayyyter’s third studio album has been getting rave reviews. Pitchfork gave it a “Best New Music” tag and scored it an 8.2 out of 10. Stereogum even called it the best record of the year so far. Ken and I weren’t really into it.

WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA is pop music as a genre turned up to 11. Tom Breihan from Stereogum said it “hits like the end-times blackout party night of our most euphoric nightmares.” Though the hedonistic production was interesting, I wasn’t in the mood for the apocalyptic black out party. Maybe next year.

#6 The Boys of Dungeon Lane by Paul McCartney

The Boys of Dungeon Lane is Paul McCartney’s ode to his childhood. As an octogenarian, that ode moves between wistful, somber, and somewhat saccharine (e.g., “Days We Left Behind”). But that’s who Paul McCartney is. The man has made some of the greatest songs in history while tapping into those feelings.

Musically, The Boys of Dungeon Lane is inventive. McCartney is still willing to mess with song structure and odd harmonies. The weird dissonance of the album’s opening chord gave me hope that we were in for a late-career masterpiece. That wasn’t the case. I don’t think McCartney tapped into being an old man as well as some other efforts we’ve listened to over the last few months, like Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker and David Bowie’s Blackstar.

That’s okay, though. Paul McCartney could spend the next decade making 8-minute, atonal songs on the tin whistle and nobody would have the right to complain. The man has earned the privilege to do whatever he likes.

#5 Wendy Eisenberg by Wendy Eisenberg

Before I started writing up recaps of every album Ken and I had listened to, we did a week of 1970s singer-songwriters. That week included Nilsson Schmilsson by Harry Nilsson, For Everyman by Jackson Browne, Pink Moon by Nick Drake, Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot, Court and Spark by Joni Mitchell, Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens, and Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs.

Even if you’re well acquainted with 1970s singer-songwriters, you might not had heard of Linda Perhacs. Perhacs recorded her debut album Parallelograms in 1970. The mystical set of tracks received almost no notice until the 1990s when Perhacs was rediscovered, eventually prompting a follow-up in 2017. Wendy Eisenberg, whether she knows it or not, seems to be descended from Linda Perhacs.

Though Eisenberg’s self-titled recorded doesn’t lean as heavily into psychedelia as Perhacs’, its deep musical and lyrical introspection point to back to the layered, acoustic world of Parallelograms.

#4 Little Wide Open by Kevin Morby

If Wendy Eisenberg’s folksy compositions fell from the heavens inhabited by Linda Perhacs, then Kevin Morby’s are more likely to have been pulled the earth that Lucinda Williams has been digging in for years.

That’s a point that I would make even if Williams were not featured on Little Wide Open’s fifth track. Morby, who’s lived all over the United States, turned to the midwest for inspiration while he built this album. It’s a place that I hope he goes again. His lyrics on Little Wide Open paint vivid images not just of the region but of the way that the landscape in that region shapes the psyches of people that live there (e.g., “Junebug”).

#3 I Used to Go to This Bar by Joyce Manor

Joyce Manor doesn’t want to waste your time. Like all of their previous efforts, I Used to Go to This Bar doesn’t even run for 20 minutes. But that network-sitcom length of music is filled with so much energy that it feels like more than enough time for the punk outfit to properly convey their tales about being lost, confused, and in pursuit of meaning at a neighborhood watering hole.

#2 Be Good to Me by Violet Grohl

A few weeks back, Ken and I listened to albums by “artist heirs,” or artists whose parents were famous musicians. Violet Grohl was on our shortlist. The progeny of Nirvana-Foo Fighters rock legend Dave Grohl, Violet had made a splash when singing lead vocals on “All Apologies” at a 2025 Nirvana reunion. The problem for us was that her debut album wasn’t out. That problem is now solved.

Be Good to Me is a strong first effort, especially from someone you know had an easier time getting a record deal than almost anyone else. The vocals—traversing the universe of rock styles—are very powerful. The songs are well-crafted too. Not to draw too many comparisons from the world in which Violet Grohl was birthed, but some of the best songs feel like they could have come from Courtney Love at the height of her powers.

#1 Masquerade by Cardinals

If you were getting in the weeds about the songs of Kevin Morby and Joyce Manor and Paul McCartney and Violet Grohl, you would likely say they all make different styles of music. Joyce Manor, for example, is firmly in the punk world. Kevin Morby, on the other hand, draws more influence from folksy singer-songwriters.

Even so, if you were to zoom out enough, we’d like agree that all of those people make some variant of rock music. Rock music usually deals with guitars. The rhythms are often focused on a four-beat count. The chords are usually diatonic. And the compositions rely heavily on the verse-chorus form. Outside of Slayyyter, every artist we listened to this week fits that mould, including the Cardinals. That said, the Irish quintet’s debut album stands apart.

Yes, they use distorted guitars, but they also create mysterious atmospheres with the accordion (e.g., “As I Breathe”). And while they too make use of four-beat rhythms, they also turn to waltz time to add some emotional flavor (e.g., “St. Agnes”). These combinations make Masquerade feel familiar enough to make most rockers happy but distinct enough to stand apart.

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This week’s theme is “Grammy Losers and Winners,” meaning we pick a year, listen to whatever won Grammy for Album of the Year in that year, and then listen to one of the albums that album beat (i.e., Grammy loser). Rather than ranking from least to most liked, we are ranking by quality disparity this week, meaning the how much better the loser was than the winner. As an added bonus, we listed our favorite albums from each year, whether they were nominated for a Grammy or not.

#7 2014: Random Access Memories by Daft Punk (Winner) and good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar (Loser)

2014 is the notorious year where The Heist by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis won the Grammy for Best Rap Album over Magna Carta... Holy Grail by Jay-Z, Nothing Was the Same by Drake, Yeezus by Kanye West, and good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar. good kid, m.A.A.d city suffered a similar fate that night when nominated for Album of the Year, the biggest award of the night.

While I would have preferred good kid, m.A.A.d city take the trophy over Random Access Memories, its loss is not as egregious as its loss to the appropriately name The Heist. I don’t think Random Access Memories is Daft Punk at the height of their powers, but it is a great dance record, summarizing the history of the genre with features from Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder, among others.

good kid, m.A.A.d city is just filled with such rich storytelling. I’d go so far as to say that nearly half the track list is made up of hip-hop classics: “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” “Backseat Freestyle,” “Money Trees,” “Poetic Justice,” “m.A.A.d city,” and “Swimming Pools (Drank).”

Who were all the nominees? Random Access Memories by Daft Punk, The Blessed Unrest by Sara Bareilles, good kid, m.A.A.d city by Kendrick Lamar, The Heist by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Red by Taylor Swift

Did the Grammys get it right? Random Access Memories is not an egregious pick, but I would much rather have seen Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city or Taylor Swift’s Red take home the gramophone trophy.

#6 1980: 52nd Street by Billy Joel (Winner) and Breakfast in America by Supertramp (Loser)

Is 52nd Street my favorite Billy Joel album? No. I’d put Turnstiles, The Stranger, and Glass Houses above it on most days. (If we’re counting live records, then Songs In the Attic would also be ushered in front of it.) But is 52nd Street still a great record? Yes. And Billy Joel is a great songwriter. In fact, beyond his occasional cheesiness (e.g., “Pressure”), intermittent bad sound effects (e.g., “You May Be Right”), and periodic condescension toward his songwriting subjects (e.g., “James”), we accept no Billy Joel hate in this newsletter.

52nd Street is packed with strong writing across a range of styles. “Honesty” is Billy Joel at the peak of his balladeering power. “Big Shot” brings more edge than almost any other song in the Billy Joel catalog. “Zanzibar” sees the Piano Man pair up with Freddie Hubbard for a jazz-infused jam.

Despite all of that, Supertramp mostly matches Joel and his band on Breakfast in America. The album combines great playing with (e.g., “Child Of Vision”) and tight vocal harmonies (e.g., “Breakfast in America”) with pop instincts (e.g., “Goodbye Stranger”).

Who were all the nominees? 52nd Street by Billy Joel, Minute by Minute by The Doobie Brothers, The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, Bad Girls by Donna Summer, Breakfast in America by Supertramp

Did the Grammys get it right? 52nd Street is a quality selection, but I think I would have given the nod to Bad Girls by Donna Summer, arguably the finest album of the disco era.

#5 1989: Faith by George Michael (Winner) and Tracy Chapman by Tracy Chapman (Loser)

“Faith” by George Michael is a generational track, the Bo Diddley beat for the electronic age. But some of the rest of the album it shares a name with drags, even on the hits. “I Want Your Sex” runs for 9 minutes. “One More Try” feels like it goes on just as long.

The heights of Tracy Chapman’s self-titled record (e.g., “Fast Car,” “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution”) are just as high as George Michael’s. While nothing drags as much on Tracy Chapman as on Faith, certain tracks feel a bit redundant at the end (e.g., “For You”).

Who were all the nominees? Faith by George Michael, Tracy Chapman by Tracy Chapman, Simple Pleasures by Bobby McFerrin, ...Nothing Like the Sun by Sting, Roll with It by Steve Winwood

Did the Grammys get it right? I’m fine with the selection of Faith. I also wouldn’t have been mad if Tracy Chapman won. The best songs on those records are better than entire albums.

#4 1964: The Barbra Streisand Album by Barbra Streisand (Winner) and Honey in the Horn by Al Hirt (Loser)

The Grammys love Barbra Streisand. Chris and Ken do not. Don’t get us wrong. Streisand can sing circles around nearly anybody else (e.g., “Cry Me a River”). But her voice is something I appreciate rather than enjoy. Like I could have died having lived a completely fulfilled life having never heard Streisand snap her way through “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

I don’t think I could say something about Al Hirt’s Honey in the Horn. While it’s not groundbreaking, it is an easy, enjoyable listen, Hirt fully living up to his nickname “The Round Mound of Sound.” I mean if you don’t smile listening to “Java,” you have never felt joy.

Who were all the nominees? The Barbra Streisand Album by Barbra Streisand, Bach’s Greatest Hits by Ward Swingle & The Swingle Singers, Days of Wine and Roses and Other TV Requests by Andy Williams, Honey in the Horn by Al Hirt, The Singing Nun by Soeur Sourire

Did the Grammys get it right? I’d give the nod to Al Hirt, despite the fact that none of my favorites from this year were nominated. To be fair, Album of the Year was much less focused on albums popular with young people when the awards first kicked off in 1958.

#3 1969: By the Time I Get to Phoenix by Glen Campbell (Winner) and Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel (Loser)

Glen Campbell’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix is a serviceable orchestral country record, the title track a prime example of songwriter Jimmy Webb’s ability to pull at your heartstrings with the smallest details. But even Jimmy Webb and the other songwriters on this album could not equal Paul Simon at the height of his powers.

Bookends is a strange record. Side A begins and ends with two instrumentals, the journey from childhood to old age chronicled in between. These compositions are some of Paul Simon’s strongest (e.g., “America”). Garfunkel is no slouch, though. Not only are his harmonies divine, but his sound collage “Voices of Old People” ties the entire concept together.

That concept does not continue on Side B. Side B is mostly songs from the previous few years that didn’t make the duo’s other releases. “Punky’s Dilemma” aside, they’re quite good, though (e.g., “Mrs. Robinson”).

Who were all the nominees? By the Time I Get to Phoenix by Glen Campbell, Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel, Feliciano! by José Feliciano, Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles, A Tramp Shining by Richard Harris

Did the Grammys get it right? The two best nominees are The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends. Those albums are oddly similar in that their Side A’s are built around a theme and Side B’s are assorted singles. As a Beatles freak, I’d still give the nod to Simon & Garfunkel.

#2 2006: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by U2 (Winner) and The Emancipation of Mimi by Mariah Carey (Loser)

From Bono shouting “Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce” on the opening track of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, I knew we were in for a disaster. This is rock music that was meant to played on one iTunes commercial and then never heard again, overdone musical platitudes aiming for the grandeur of The Joshua Tree and falling flat.

The opening of The Emancipation of Mimi could not be more different. The album kicks off with an off-kilter beat from Jermaine Dupri and Manuel Seal that sucks you in from the first clap. That opener is followed by the one-two punch of “We Belong Together” and “Shake It Off,” Carey running circles around every other R&B singer of the 2000s.

Unlike Daydream, the other Mariah Carey we listened to this year, The Emancipation of Mimi is much more indebted to hip-hop. Part of that is heard in the features (e.g., Snoop Dogg, Twista). Part of that is heard in the beats. The Emancipation of Mimi is also less bogged down by melodramatic ballads than many of Carey’s efforts from the previous decade.

Who were all the nominees? How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by U2, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard by Paul McCartney, The Emancipation of Mimi by Mariah Carey, Late Registration by Kanye West, Love. Angel. Music. Baby. by Gwen Stefani

Did the Grammys get it right? You could make the case that the Grammys never got it more wrong this year, especially when Kanye West, at the peak of his powers, was nominated for Late Registration.

#1 1997: Falling Into You by Céline Dion (Winner) and Odelay by Beck (Loser)

If you made a Venn diagram of people who had listened to Céline Dion’s Falling Into You and Beck’s Odelay, I would guess that the intersection contains vanishingly few people outside of me and Ken. Frankly, I can’t even imagine people listening to both of these albums the year they came out.

Falling Into You is an hour of the biggest, most melodramatic ballads you’ve ever heard. Odelay is a mishmash of 1990s signifiers: the alternative White rocker half-talking, half-rapping over unexpected samples and weird guitars.

Between Barbra Streisand and Mariah Carey, we listened to lots of big vocalists this week. But even they would have trouble matching the power of Céline Dion’s voice. Yet outside of the Jim Steinman-composed “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” that voice does very little for me.

Part of that isn’t Dion’s fault. The plastic-y production makes most of these songs feel dead inside. Compare her rendition of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” to the original by Aretha Franklin for an example.

Odelay feels like it was made to stand in contrast to Céline Dion and the entire industry set up around her. It’s strange and inventive and bizarre. It’s what you put on in your bedroom to drown out your mother blasting Céline Dion’s “All By Myself.”

Who were all the nominees? Falling Into You by Céline Dion, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins, Odelay by Beck, The Score by The Fugees, Waiting to Exhale: Original Soundtrack Album by Various Artists

Did the Grammys get it right? If you give the trophy to The Smashing Pumpkins, Beck, or The Fugees, I wouldn’t complain. Frankly, Céline Dion’s win is hard to comprehend.

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• How long does it take a classic song to become worn out?

• What’s the greatest punk album?

• How could the Billboard charts have been more accurate in the 1960s?

• Is Kalshi affecting the music industry yet?

• What’s the most popular lyrical topic?

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In your book, you bring up your distaste for “Sugar Shack” by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs and your love for “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes. While it looks wrong on paper, I’ve found myself preferring “Sugar Shack” over “Be My Baby” simply because I’ve heard the latter a billion times. Do you think there’s a way to measure the “longevity” of a song versus its “novelty”? Specifically, does data show a predictable “wear-out” point where a critically perfect masterpiece loses its emotional edge to a silly earworm? - Ethan

First, I’m glad to hear that someone out there likes “Sugar Shack.” I knew listeners like you must exist for the song given that the song was one of the biggest hits of 1963. I can also see your point. A forgotten song—even if you don’t think it’s great in some objective sense—could be more interesting than a ubiquitous hit purely because you haven’t heard it as much.

I don’t have a direct answer to your question, but I think I have something related to say. A few years ago, I worked on a piece with Chartmetric called “Decoding Perceptions of the Past With Spotify: What Makes a Song a Timeless Classic?” Our goal was to look at the canon of popular songs from each decade and see if those songs were popular upon release. For us, the “canon” was defined by inclusion on one of Spotify’s decade-focused playlists (e.g., All Out 80s, All Out 90s).

What we found was that far and away the songs in the canon were big hits in their day. 75% of songs on All Out 70s, for example, were top 40 hits when they came out. 27% were number one hits!

This doesn’t mean that a song can never reach classic status if it weren’t a hit. Despite never releasing anything remotely close to a hit, The Velvet Underground have multiple songs in the 1960s canon. That said, popular things often live on. This tells me that novelty isn’t that relevant to your average listener. Most people just want to hear the same thing again and again, even if it’s their 800th time dropping the needle on “Be My Baby.”

What’s the best punk album? - Randy

Each time somebody asks me to rank something, I know that Rolling Stone must have released a list about the topic. That was the case here. On May 18, Rolling Stone released a list of the 100 greatest punk albums in history.

In general, I like musical rankings. Even when you disagree with them, they force you to think critically about your musical opinions. Still, I am constantly astounded how many lists Rolling Stone is putting out. They have an entire section of their website dedicated to lists. They must be working on these things constantly.

Along with punk albums, they’ve ranked Harry Styles songs, alter egos, High School Musical songs, Prince songs, and guitar solos this year. I love Rob Sheffield. I’m worried that the Wenner family has this man trapped in room ranking every type of song against his will.

Regardless, let us return to punk. I want to say that I am not an expert on the genre. But I’ve played bass in my cousin’s punk band for the last few years, so maybe my credentials are a bit more respectable than I think.

So, what are my favorite punk albums of all time?

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The Rock Hall is Changing

By Chris Dalla Riva

The recently started a newsletter. (Full disclosure: I might be collaborating on a project with them in the future.) The beginnings of that newsletter have gotten me thinking about the 40 year project that is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the most persistent question/accusation levied at the institution: “Why are you inducting non-rock acts?!”

To be clear, I am pro-Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Is the name confusing? Yes. Do I think they get some things wrong? Also, yes. (If I were musical dictator, you would not be enshrining Foreigner in the same halls as The Beatles, “Urgent” notwithstanding.)

That said, I think any institution seeking to preserve our musical history is worth celebrating. There aren’t many places that have the time, money, and wherewithal to keep the respective memories of Professor Longhair, The Rolling Stones, and Mary J. Blige, among others, alive.

The Rock Hall is undoubtedly changing, though. We’re about to look at a ton of data that proves that. But I want to start by looking into how people oversell both (a) that the institution has lost interest in rock music and (b) that the institution was ever just interested in rock music.

Listen to My Favorite Rock Star, Etta James

When writing about the Rock Hall a few weeks ago, I noted how the first few years of inductees were unimpeachable. Chuck Berry. James Brown. Aretha Franklin. Roy Orbison. Smokey Robinson. These artists are not only tremendous talents but foundational to 20th century American music. But are they all rock artists?

No. Even as I note in my book that our notions of genre are deeply connected to race and gender, many early inductees do not make rock music in any sense. The Supremes are a great example of this. Despite the fact that they made almost no rock music, I think the Motown trio was well deserving of their 1988 induction.

Musical credentials aside, their inclusion makes even more sense when you consider the Rock Hall’s mission statement:

Born from the collision of rhythm & blues, country and gospel, rock & roll is a spirit that is inclusive and ever-changing. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrates the sound of youth culture and honors the artists whose music connects us all.

Even though you could argue that defining rock & roll as “a spirit that is inclusive and ever-changing” is a non-definition, a musical institution seeking to celebrate “the sound of youth culture” must include The Supremes. It also must include Elton John and 2Pac and Whitney Houston and many others. Because of that, the Rock Hall has been enshrining non-rockers since their founding.

Over the last week, I built out a list of all 327 performing artists inducted into the Rock Hall. I then went through and tagged each artist in one of 10 broad genres: Rock, Funk, Soul/R&B/Gospel, Blues, Folk/Singer-Songwriter, Country, Reggae, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Electronic/Dance, and Latin.

Do artists easily fit into single genre buckets? Nope. You could make the case that Bob Dylan should be in the Rock and Folk/Singer-Songwriter categories. But even if you label each artist “Rock” in the most generous way possible, only around 40% and 50% of inductees in any decade are rock artists.

I could see someone making the case that those earlier non-rock artists were part of genres that shaped rock. No one, for example, is claiming that B.B. King made rock music. But his blues were foundational for the rock that emerged in the 1960s.

You might argue that this isn’t the case with non-rock inductees anymore. There isn’t as direct a line between, say, rock and hip-hop as there is between blues and rock. But I think if we go back to the fact that the Rock Hall is preserving “the sound of youth culture,” then inducting Outkast is just as important as inducting The White Stripes.

Let the Ladies Rock

The early days of the Rock Hall were dominated by American men. This makes sense. Rock music is an American music, and most of the important figures from the early days were men. But as the years have marched on, the artists shaping popular music have become more diverse.

While the majority of inductees are still American—and the largest share of non-Americans hail from the United Kingdom—there has actually been a growing contingent of inductees from outside the Anglosphere.

Of note, 2026 saw the first Nigerian and Cuban artists inducted in the Hall. The former included afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. The latter included salsa legend Celia Cruz.

The late Celia Cruz is also a good reminder that women have made up a growing share of inductees. In the 1980s, only 9% of inductees were women. So far this decade, 35% of inductees have been women. That’s a massive increase.

As I was digging into this data, I was further convinced of my opinion that the Rock Hall should continue to nominate and induct artists from across the genre universe. The goal is to catalog our musical history and celebrate the greatest musical practitioners—the name of the institution aside. If you’re making great songs, I’ll tip my cap to you.

As someone who went to college during the peak of Chance the Rapper’s powers, listened to him rhyme “I made ‘Sunday Candy,’ I’m never going to hell / I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail” on Kanye West’s 2016 masterpiece “Ultralight Beam,” and then proceed to release uninspired music for a decade, the top question I ask myself anytime I hear something remotely good involving the Chicagoan is naturally, “Is Chance the Rapper back?!” Listening to his feature on Hurricane Wisdom’s latest single “Barbie Doll” has me hopeful that he might be.

The first solo woman inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was Aretha Franklin in 1987. Though she never made rock music, I don’t think anybody would dispute Franklin’s induction. Her voice continues to shake the world almost a decade after her death. There are so many recordings you could use to illustrate Aretha Franklin’s generational talent. But I want to turn to a deep cut: “Groovin'.”

“Groovin'” originally topped the charts for The Rascals in 1967. Franklin’s rendition has much of the same laid-back feel of the original. But her voice gracefully weaves through the arrangement in a way that nobody else can. When she wails “Life could ecstasy / You and me endlessly” near the end of the song, you get a glimpse of her power before she slips back into the cool tone she’s been working throughout the track. Very few singers have the control to do that.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

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This week’s theme is “artists you hate,” meaning, well, albums by artists you hate. We weren’t using this week to hate on small artists that we don’t like, though. The apathy the large majority of musicians are faced with is enough for them. We were focusing on major artists that we never really got into. We wanted to be fair, though. We tried to choose an acclaimed album by each of these artists. Please note that after listing the release year, I note whether Ken or I was the hater.

#7 Terrapin Station by Grateful Dead (1977 - Ken)

While I am far from a Deadhead, I do like the Grateful Dead. What that looks like is that while I am not going to rant about how you need to listen to the 40-minute version of “Casey Jones” performed at a Vermont high school in 1971, I do enjoy some of their studio cuts. “Friend of the Devil,” for example, is a great song. “Scarlet Begonias” is too. Because of that, I was excited for this record. I was left very disappointed.

Whereas I enjoy earthy Grateful Dead songs, Terrapin Station has many artifacts of the disco era from what it emerged. I don’t think this style suits the band. In addition, I found the cover of “Dancin’ in the Streets” abysmal and the 16-minute, title track medley torturous. I couldn’t believe that some fans hold the latter up as the group’s greatest musical accomplishment.

#6 Slippery When Wet by Bon Jovi (1986 - Chris)

I’m often surprised when people assume that I must be into Bon Jovi because I am a proud New Jersey resident and dedicated Bruce Springsteen fan. Does Bon Jovi’s hair metal riffs really have that much in common with Springsteen’s heartland rock? During my listening to Slippery When Wet, I found out that they do indeed share some overlap.

Both Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi conjure up anthemic musical stories about the downtrodden trying to survive. But while Springsteen’s stories are filled with nuance, Bon Jovi’s are cartoonish. Here, for example, are a few verses of “Never Say Goodbye,” the penultimate track on Slippery When Wet

As I sit in this smokey room
The night about to end
I pass my time with strangers
But this bottle’s my only friend

Rememberin’ when we used to park
On Butler Street, out in the dark
Remember when we lost the keys and
You lost more than that in my backseat, baby

Remember how we used to talk
About busting out, we’d break their hearts
Together, forever

Never say goodbye
Never say goodbye
You and me and my old friends
Hoping it would never end

But as much as a hater as I am, I can’t deny that Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and their collaborators could write a chorus. In fact, the massiveness of “Livin’ On a Prayer” might be reason enough that Bon Jovi outlives Bruce Springsteen in the public memory. Even The Boss couldn’t write a chorus that big.

#5 Automatic for the People by R.E.M. (1992 - Chris)

I inherited many of my musical tastes from my father. For example, I’ll always love the bombast of “Heat of the Moment” by Asia because my dad loves it. Similarly, I’ll probably never love R.E.M. because my dad wasn’t into them. That’s not to say that our tastes are trapped by whatever our parents like. My distates for R.E.M. emerged somewhat organically.

At some point in middle school, I was digging through my dad’s CD collection and stumbled upon Out Of Time, the only R.E.M. album he owned. I popped it into the computer and “Radio Song” started playing. “This is horrible,” I thought to myself. As I scanned through the other tracks on the album, like “Shiny Happy People,” I was no more impressed. Even “Losing My Religion” didn’t do much for me.

With my expectations low, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Automatic for the People. The songs were well crafted. The guitar work was all quite tasteful. When “Everybody Hurts” came on—a song I have (of course) heard before—I couldn’t believe how moved I was. I don’t think I’m a fan yet, but I’m willing to give the Georgia quartet another chance.

#4 Hot Rats by Frank Zappa (1969 - Chris)

Frank Zappa has always given me the vibe of a guy that he not only thinks he’s more clever than you but has to make sure you know it too. But that attitude makes his songs, even when they are virtuosic, feel lacking in emotion. Ken’s perception was quite the same. And while Hot Rats didn’t completely overturn that perception, we enjoyed it much more than expected.

Other than a brief vocal from Captain Beefheart on “Willie the Pimp,” Hot Rats is an instrumental album that veers between jazz fusion and blues rock. We’ve touched on fusion before in our album-a-day listening journey, and Zappa does the virtuosic style justice. “The Gumbo Variations” contained some of the most emotive guitar work I’ve heard this year.

#3 The Joshua Tree by U2 (1987 - Ken)

For a few years after college, my two friends and I had a podcast called Alright, It’s Settled where we debated silly questions (e.g., the best way to eat a potato, the youngest looking old person). One of my favorite episodes was when we looked at the best three-song run on an album. Though we settled on “Thriller,” “Beat It,” and “Billie Jean” from Thriller, the three opening tracks from The Joshua Tree were in the running:

1. “Where the Streets Have No Name”

2. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

3. “With or Without You”

These are monumental songs, Bono sounding like he’s channeling the voice of God, The Edge doing the same on his guitar with the Holy Spirit. Ken agreed. Kind of. While Ken couldn’t deny that the opening to The Joshua Tree is tremendous, the rest of the record didn’t do much for him. Much of it comes down to Bono’s vocal. Where I heard someone doing something generational, Ken heard someone who thought he was doing something generational.

#2 Ten by Pearl Jam (1991 - Ken)

While Ken went into this album a Pearl Jam hater, I approached from a neutral position. Ten changed both of us, though. From the biggest hits (e.g., “Even Flow”) to the deepest album cuts (e.g., “Why Go”), Ten represents a rock band at the peak of their powers. The riffs cut through your chest whether they are searing or droning. The vocals are emotive even when you have no idea what Eddie Vedder is saying.

I am not the first to make this point, but it is astounding that Pearl Jam is lumped under the “grunge” moniker. Geographically, it makes sense. They were from Seattle. But to my ear, they bear more debt to the alternative and hard rock communities than the noise and punk scenes that shaped grunge. I’m not the expert here, though. Feel free to tell me if I’m wrong.

#1 Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan (1965 - Ken)

Earlier this year, when I made Ken listen to Infidels by Bob Dylan, he told me that it was one of the worst afternoons of his life. Despite loving singer-songwriters and folk rock and blues rock, Ken is a Dylan hater. He, like many others, can’t do the nasally voice. I, like many others, love Dylan from the nasally-est nasal to the sweetest croon.

Despite this week being an act of masochism, Ken is no masochist. He wanted to pick an album he knew I liked just to avoid me pushing to rank The Joshua Tree at number one. What he didn’t realize is that I am not a disciple of Highway 61 Revisited.

Highway 61 Revisited is a foundational album for Dylan and popular music, respectively. It’s the perfect distillation of the Bard of Hibbing, Minnesota, combining folk, blues, and rock as he went electric. The opening track, “Like a Rolling Stone,” arguably reinvents the pop song. Along with that track, I think many of the other cuts are part of the bedrock of the Dylan catalog (e.g., “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Desolation Row”).

And, yet, I don’t think I would rank Highway 61 Revisited among my top five Dylan albums. I do love it. We’re ranking it above many other classics this week. But his catalog is so deep and varied. For good measure, here’s my top ten at the moment:

1. Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

2. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

3. Blood on the Tracks (1975)

4. John Wesley Harding (1967)

5. Blonde on Blonde (1966)

6. Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020)

7. New Morning (1970)

8. Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

9. Infidels (1983)

10. Time Out of Mind (1997)

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Dear Chris + those on thread. You can deep dive into the phenomena behind the album’s success in ‘the digital age’ in my book Body of Work: How the Album Outplayed the Algorithm and Survived Playlist Culture. Website here: https://www.songsommelier.com/body-of-work - get in touch if more curious about how and why I wrote it! - K

“That sounds like an interesting book,” I thought to myself. So, I told Mr. Jopling to shoot me an email. After his name appeared in my inbox, we set up some time to talk about why the album feels eternal in a world where everything is changing. If you enjoy our conversation, pick up either of Jopling’s books: Body of Work: How the Album Outplayed the Algorithm and Survived Playlist Culture and Riding the Rollercoaster: How Artists Survive the Music Business to Become the Legends We Love.

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The album format has been the dominant format for serious bodies of music for decades now. Can you start by giving us a bite-sized history of how the album format emerged? Was its development driven by technology, listeners, or artists?

Development was driven first by listeners and technology and then artists. Early collectors of 78 RPM records kept their collections (i.e., classical & jazz) in ‘books’ that looked like photo albums. In 1948 Columbia then manufactured the first 33 RPM that could hold 20 mins per side.

This is when record companies invented products. Imagine that! When artists realized they had this format to work with, that’s really when the album came full circle. In my book Body of Work, I point out the debate about who really utilized the format for breakthrough releases. Sinatra, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin all played critical roles.

The internet, and subsequently streaming, was supposed to kill the album, yet it continues to exist. Just this week, Drake released three albums that have people talking. Why do you venture the format has persisted even though there’s no technological reason for it to?

That’s why I wrote Body of Work. Explaining why (and how) goes beyond data analysis and defies logic. But first, artists stuck with albums because songs come in batches in a way. And it provides a container whereby the songs can be arranged thematically while also cherry-picking singles. All experiments and attempts to break away from the album cycle—from the artists perspective—have failed.

A song is not a story. They are chapters—extracts. It turns out the artistic format won out over commercial pressures, technological innovation and—right now—our attention spans. That’s why I’m so optimistic. I feel like right now, there is a great creative race to make really great albums by artists of all levels and genres. There is a desire to add to the catalogue of great works down the years. After all that’s why they create, not to be on playlists or viral videos.

I feel like this is their “antidote” to the platform tech world in which no one is quite comfortable. We call them artists, after all. Ultimately, we are the beneficiaries of this if we care to notice!

You and I both grew up with albums. So, it makes sense that we would still care about them in the digital age. Why do you think the album will live on even for kids who grew up their whole lives with streaming?

Because those kids want the artists’ histories—their trajectories and, indeed, bodies of work. And it’s all told in album form. Take Michael Jackson, who’s been back in the culture via a bad movie. He has amazing songs, but if want to dissect his creative career, you go one album at a time. Kids are discovering it—and guess what?—they get it.

For the last decade, people in the industry have talked about the primacy of the playlist. And there have been playlists that have grown followings, like Spotify’s lorem and Rap Caviar playlists. Even so, neither of those have the staying power of an album. Why?

I agree. Playlists were huge. They ate radio, then retail, and then the album. Almost. All three remain. And so are playlists, but they feel a little passé, I think because they always kept on getting bigger and became unwieldy. I think mixtapes will soon be back in cassette format! Those “old” formats were perfect vessels. We enjoy them.

Do you see any ways that streaming services could better enhance album listening?

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Drake is the Past. Drake is the Future.

By Chris Dalla Riva

Last week, Drake surprised fans by not only releasing the album he’d previously announced, ICEMAN, but two others: MAID OF HONOR and HABIBTI. These three records amounted to a runtime of nearly 2.5 hours across 43 songs.

The commercial reaction to this onslaught of music has been quite positive, Drake clogging up nearly every slot on Spotify’s daily charts. The critical reaction has been a bit more mixed, though. The pop critics at The New York Times fawned over the trio of albums. Pitchfork, on the other hand, rated ICEMAN a 4.8 out of 10, noting, “As his relevance falters, Drake’s eye for slights and score-settling has grown so microscopic that even his stans need tweezers.”

I’m probably not the guy you want to turn to for Drake takes, but what I’ve found most interesting about the discourse around his records is fans suggesting that Aubrey Graham needs an editor. Why not pick your best 14 tracks instead of releasing 43?

As someone who sometimes convinces himself that every double album would be better if it were trimmed down to a single disc, I think this is a great question. But it’s not a question you should only pose to Drake.

In 2022, Future released the 22-track I NEVER LIKED YOU. Two years later, Taylor Swift dropped the 31-track THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Morgan Wallen went even bigger the next year, putting out the 37-track behemoth I’m The Problem.

Maybe every pop star needs an editor. Outside of Stevie Wonder in 1976, almost nobody is releasing more than 15 masterful songs at once. But even if it’s a bad artistic decision, these endless albums make perfect sense in our current age.

If You’re Reading This, Just Know That I Never Thought I’d Have This Much to Say About Drake

Drake has always been a prolific artist. In the decade after the release of his 2006 debut mixtape, he released 8.5 hours of music across 135 tracks and 8 official full-length projects, bonus track excluded. As a point of comparison, fellow pop star Taylor Swift—who also happened to release her debut in 2006—released just under 5 hours of music across 71 tracks on 5 official full-length projects.

Even so, Drake wasn’t releasing an intractable amount of music. His most productive year during his first decade was 2015 when he released two mixtapes: If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and What a Time to Be Alive. Those projects were released 6 months apart and had a digestible 28 tracks over two hours.

But even for a prolific artist, something has changed for Drake as his career has progressed. If we break up his career into 5-year chunks, the last half-decade is outpacing every other by a wide margin.

Between 2021 and 2026, Drake has released 8.4 hours of music across 138 tracks and 8 official full-length projects. That’s not only double the albums—and 67% more music—than the 5-year stretch immediately prior (i.e., 2016-2020), but effectively the same output as the first decade of his career.

What changed for Champagne Papi? Does he just have more to say? Probably. But Drake—the man who famously wrapped “Money over everything”—is really just playing by the rules of the music industry like he always has been.

Decades ago, there were limited vectors through which you could promote your music. You had radio, a few television shows, some magazines, and live tours. If you released too much music—even if fans could afford it—there was probably going to be no way to properly promote it. You could only be booked on a television show so often in a short period. Plus, you could only be in so many places at once.

The internet started to break down these barriers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Physical shelf space was replaced by the limitlessness of the web. But the old promotional paradigm was tough to shake. Artists still hit many of the same media properties to get their music to fans.

Drake was borne in this world. And his early output reflects it. He would release a full-length project every year or so, and those projects would really only max out around 17 or 18 tracks. Through this model, Drake became an era defining superstar, a rare performer who could rap and sing with great facility. As I noted in the title of this piece, Drake is the past.

But Drake does not live in the past. And his last decade of output is proof of that. He’s released at least one full-length project ever year since 2020, many of which broach 20 tracks. This is the way pop stars now live. Why?

Promoting music has changed dramatically in the last decade. There are now endless ways to get your music to fans. At the same time, nobody seems to know what will work. Nobody knows which tracks will pop off on TikTok. Nobody knows which will spawn a meme. In a limitless world where no one knows anything, the best bet is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Curation doesn’t sell like it did in 1984. Drake, a man that feels like the last vestige of the 20th century’s monoculture, is pointing toward the future.

The Albums Lives Even if Curation Dies

A few weeks ago, I defended the album’s importance in the streaming age. “If you want a career,” I noted, “you need to make great albums.” Today’s newsletter may read like a point against that claim. If we’re just firing tons of songs off at once and seeing what people glom onto, isn’t that evidence that the album doesn’t matter anymore? I don’t think so.

First, even if we get these long, winding albums, they usually still have some level of sonic cohesion. Each album in Drake’s trio, for example, has a distinct feel. They respect the old-fashioned album format while also ushering us to something new.

Second, the multi-year gap between albums might have been a historical aberration. asked me about the evolution of the length of time between album releases in a mailbag a few weeks ago. In the 1960s, you were regularly seeing pop stars release multiple albums within a single year.

The three-year gap between albums that many middle-aged folks grew up with was a product of the 1980s. Since then, artists have been releasing more regularly with the time between albums shrinking faster during the streaming age. In many ways, it feels like we are headed back to the age of psychedelia.

That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You might get tons of musical crap if artists are releasing music too often, but you also might get The Beatles. The Fab Four not only released two albums per year in 1963, 1964, and 1965, but their entire career was over in less than a decade. If they had waited, we would have missed out on a lot of great music.

When I stumbled upon the artist monica.com last week, I naturally sent it to my friend Monica telling her that I’d just found a new favorite artist. At that point, I hadn’t even clicked play. I just thought “monica.com” was a funny name. When I eventually got around to listening, I was happily surprised. Their latest single, “frog,” was weird and glitchy and playful, perfect for turning your bedroom into a lo-fi rave.

The Beatles were remarkably prolific during their short run as a band. Even as a huge fan of the group, I’ll admit that they sometimes missed, especially on their early records. But because they weren’t limiting themselves, there are also so many underrated gems among those releases. “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You” is one of those gems.

It’s clear that this song was tossed off very quickly. It’s not even two minutes. But there are elements of sophistication hidden in this track. For a song about the joys of dancing with someone you’re coming to love, the minor key creates an unexpected tension. That tension is furthered by a rhythm guitar scratching along at breakneck pace. But above all that, George Harrison sounds relaxed on the microphone, capturing the heart-thumping rush of falling in love on the dancefloor.

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This week’s theme is “1960s girl groups,” meaning albums released in the 1960s by girl groups. Obviously. We focused specifically on vocal groups, meaning groups built around a lead singer and multiple back-up singers.

#7 Please Mr. Postman by The Marvelettes (1961)

While this album’s title track deserves its classic status, the rest of Please Mr. Postman kind of feels like Motown is still figuring things out. And they probably were. The label was only founded a few years prior to the release of this record. While the album would benefit from a remix, some things are beyond saving. In fact, I think the synth solo on “All The Love I’ve Got” is the worst musical performance I’ve heard this year.

#6 Where Did Our Love Go by The Supremes (1964)

If Motown was still finding their footing in 1961, then by 1964 they were a well-oiled machine. Number one hits “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love,” and “Come See About Me” are not only foundational to the Motown sound but pop masterpieces.

Still, I found an album of Diana Ross vocals a bit disappointing. It’s not that she’s a bad singer. Her crystal clear tone suits the hits on this record well. But she’s not as dynamic as some of the other singers we’ll encounter on this list.

#5 Heat Wave by Martha and the Vandellas (1963)

Even if you’ve never listened to anything by The Vandellas, you’ve probably heard every song on Heat Wave. It’s mostly made up of songs that were popular at the time, like “My Boyfriend’s Back” and “Then He Kissed Me.” That’s a problem for Martha Reeves and her group. I prefer other renditions of those songs to the versions they recorded here.

The one Holland-Dozier-Holland original on the record, the title track, is fantastic, though. That said, I still think that anyone who prefers “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave” to “Dancing in the Street” is crazy.

#4 Leader of the Pack by The Shangri-Las (1965)

Whether they were released on Motown or Scepter, girl groups of this era were recording stylistically similar music. The Shangri-Las are the outliers. Whereas most big girl groups were defined by nice vocal harmonies with a hint of soul, The Shangri-Las are defined by grit, their greatest records unfolding like short films.

If you are familiar with one song by the Queens group, it’s likely “Leader of the Pack,” a song I describe in my book as “the teenage tragedy songs to end all teenage tragedy songs.” And that song is a good introduction to The Shangri-Las’ audio melodramas. But “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” and “Remember (Walkin’ In the Sand)” are just as good.

If everything on Leader of the Pack were as good as those originals, it would rank higher on this list. But The Shangri-Las suffer from the same problem as The Vandellas. The rest of their record is fleshed out with inferior covers. If you want to listen to “Maybe,” you turn to The Chantells. If you want “Shout,” you look to The Isley Brothers. You don’t turn to The Shangri-Las.

Still, they remain quietly influential. You can hear them in proto-punk legends the New York Dolls quoting “Give Him a Great Big Kiss.” You can hear them in Jim Steinman’s 9-minute rock epics. You can even hear them in the attitude of Amy Winehouse’s voice.

#3 Chapel of Love by The Dixie Cups (1964)

1960s girl groups are largely defined by their singles. In fact, on nearly all of these records the stream disparity between the singles and album cuts are astonishingly large. “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave,” for example, has been streamed 124 million times on Spotify. The next closest on that record, “Quicksand,” has not even cracked 2 million streams.

The Dixie Cups suffered a similar fate. “Chapel of Love” and “Iko Iko” have been streamed tens of millions of times more than anything else from their debut album. What’s unique is that The Dixie Cups’ album cuts are much stronger than nearly anyone else on this list. “I’m Gonna Get You Yet” and “Gee Baby Gee” deserve as much love as their smashes.

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This week, we’re talking about great guitar solos, why you should (sadly) expect more music biopics to get made, a potential merger between two huge music companies, the death of sensual soul star, and so much more.

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What are the Best Acoustic Guitar Solos?

Last week, Rolling Stone published a list of the greatest guitar solos of all time. As I was opining on the topic, a question began to loom: Why is every list of guitar solos only made up of electric guitar solos? The acoustic guitar has a longer history than the electric. Surely, as much six-string genius has been played without amplification as with.

As I started to dig into this topic, I came to realize that the acoustic guitar solo is almost never discussed. Lists related to the acoustic guitar just focus on nice acoustic songs. Yes, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” is a great song with an acoustic guitar, but there is no acoustic guitar solo.

Growing up, my guitar teacher was an avid fingerstyle guitarist. So, I thought it would be easy to assemble a list of the greatest acoustic guitar solos. Not so! Everything that came to mind was a solo acoustic piece. “Little Martha” by the Allman Brothers Band. “The Clap” by Yes. “Spanish Fly” by Van Halen. “Classical Gas” by Mason Williams. “Midsummer’s Daydream” by Triumph. “Signe” by Eric Clapton. “Brom-Yr-Aur” by Led Zeppelin. “Watermelon” by Leo Kottke. “Sligo River Blues” by John Fahey.

I could go on. But this is not what I am looking for. These are closer to études, the classical composition used to demonstrate a particular technical skill. I wanted a solo like you’d hear in something like “Sweet Child O’Mine.” There’s a song. There’s an instrumental break led by a guitar. And that guitar is doing more than just recalling the vocal melody. It’s a solo, not an accompaniment.

So, with all of these rules, what are the greatest acoustic guitar solos of all time? I spent hours looking so you won’t have to.

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Settling the Greatest Guitar Solo Debate

By Chris Dalla Riva

Last week, Rolling Stone published their list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time. In some ways, it seems like a strange time to highlight godly guitar work. The guitar solo has not been prevalent in popular music for a while. In fact, last year when a reader asked me about guitar solos in contemporary pop songs, I could only come up with 9 examples from the last 15 years, including Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” and Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.”

Nevertheless, if you’ve keep up with music press, you would assume that the guitar solo—and rock music generally—is healthier than it’s ever been.

• “In 2025,” The New York Times declared, “rock was still hanging in. As artificial intelligence infiltrates music, the genre’s handmade imperfections are more crucial than ever.”

• Luminate, the data analytics firm behind the Billboard charts, noted that rock was both the fastest growing genre and second most popular genre in the US last year.

• And just last week, Jacobin—the magazine I would probably turn to last for music criticism—published the ridiculous headline “Liberal Poptimists Tried to Kill Rock. They Failed.”

So, maybe Rolling Stone has their finger on the pulse. Maybe now is the time to be debating the flashiest and most tasteful work on the six-string. Here’s what the famed magazine put in their top ten:

1. “Purple Rain” by Prince (Guitarist: Prince)

2. “Machine Gun” by Jimi Hendrix (Guitarist: Jimi Hendrix)

3. “Hotel California” by Eagles (Guitarists: Joe Walsh & Don Felder)

4. “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd (Guitarist: David Gilmour)

5. “Eruption” by Van Halen (Guitarist: Eddie Van Halen)

6. “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry (Guitarist: Chuck Berry)

7. “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin (Guitarist: Jimmy Page)

8. “Kid Charlemagne” by Steely Dan (Guitarist: Larry Carlton)

9. “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic (Guitarist: Eddie Hazel)

10. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by The Beatles (Guitarist: Eric Clapton)

Beyond the fact that I’ve never loved Clapton’s solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” I don’t take issue with celebrating the guitar mastery heard on these songs. They all have great solos. Maybe you don’t think “Purple Rain” should be in the top spot, but it’s undoubtedly a great solo.

Because I am who I am, I did begin to wonder if there was a better way to measure guitaristic greatness beyond Rolling Stone’s opaque criteria:

We didn’t include any jazz … and a few entries are instrumentals … The criterion isn’t sales or airplay — just the six-string brilliance on display. We also took into account that the solo makes the song, and that it doesn’t just repeat the melody line. (A bonus: if you can sing it note-for-note.)

Let’s see what the data has to say about the topic.

What Solos do the People Want to Hear?

Had I worked on this project a few months ago, I would have turned to one of my favorite resources: Spotify. The Spotify API allows you to scan hundreds of playlists with a click. Just search for something like “greatest guitar solo” and aggregate all the songs people have added to related playlists.

There’s one problem. Because AI companies have been scraping every piece of information on the internet, the Spotify API—along with many other APIs—have been made all but useless.

Luckily, there are other options. Both YouTube Music and Deezer have accessible APIs. I applied the same methodology to those streaming services, namely searching for greatest guitar solo playlists and saw what listeners were adding.

17 of the most playlisted 20 songs on great guitar solo playlists are on Rolling Stone’s list. The three that listeners prefer to the folks at the magazine are “November Rain” by Guns N' Roses, “Floods” by Pantera, and “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne.

Things start to diverge outside the top 20, though. Only 45 of the 100 greatest guitar solos as determined by listener playlist adds are on the Rolling Stone list. Some of these differences are shocking. Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” comes in at number 43 on the list built from listener playlists. It’s absent from the Rolling Stone list.

Equally shocking is Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”—a song not found on the Rolling Stone list—coming in at number 22 on the list built from listener playlists. Does “Aqualung” have a guitar solo? Sure. But it’s not one of the first things that comes to my mind when I think of “Aqualung” as is the case with, say, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” For me, “Aqualung” is more defined by its brief twisting riff, creepy lyrics, and tempo changes.

But this highlights how tricky making these lists can be. Scores of people can say a guitar solo is generational when it’s not something I’ve given more than ten seconds of thought to.

Fans and Critics Unite!

Maybe my quantitative process and Rolling Stone’s opaque process both have their strengths and weaknesses. My approach, for example, has some bias toward popularity. Obscure but masterful solos, like “Marquee Moon,” will get overpowered by those solos heard on pop hits (e.g., “Beat It”). Critical lists, though they can sometimes feel like clickbait, give these smaller works a chance to shine.

Let’s bring the critics and the fans together. To do this, I supplemented Rolling Stone’s critical list with two others: Digital Dream Door and Guitar World. I then aggregated the top 100 solos based on Deezer and YouTube Music playlist adds. That gave me four lists of solos. Weighting by the rank on each list, I used these to create a master list of the greatest guitar solos.

Would this be my personal list of the greatest guitar solos of all-time? No. But if, like Rolling Stone, we ignore jazz, I think it’s a list that most people can get behind.

• Must-haves, like “Free Bird” and “Eruption,” dominate the top of the list.

• Notable masterpieces that you aren’t likely to hear on your local classic rock station, like “Cliffs of Dover” and “Maggot Brain,” also get some love.

• Plus, well-regarded solos that Rolling Stone didn’t heap praise on, like “Highway Star” and “Sultans of Swing,” inch their way up the list.

No, my list—nor any of these lists—will end barroom debates about shredding. But hopefully they inspire some fledgling artist to tack a guitar solo onto their latest creation. Even if rock music isn’t dead, it wouldn’t hurt if someone breathed life into the solo.

I’m sure someone who follows rock music more closely would tell me otherwise, but I found it very difficult to find a new-ish song with a guitar solo, especially one I thought was tasteful. Luckily, a few hours of digging turned up The Gnomes and their latest single, “Magic Man.”

While the riff in “Magic Man” feels like it’s descended from The Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” the rest of the song is gnarlier than anything the 1960s television band could turn out. More importantly, it’s got a guitar solo that is both flashy and tasteful.

Rik Emmett was a rare shredder from the 1980s who was much too good for his band. I don’t say that to rag on his band, Triumph, but Emmett’s guitar work was always leagues better than the Canadian group’s songs.

“Petite Etude” is one of the many songs in the Triumph catalog that shows Emmett’s range. No, he doesn’t whip out a hair metal-informed solo like he does on “Allied Forces” or “Spellbound.” On “Petite Etude” he turns to a nylon-stringed guitar for a minute of classical counterpoint that would leave Bach inspired.

Shout out to the paid subscribers who allow this newsletter to exist. Along with getting access to our entire archive, subscribers unlock biweekly interviews with people driving the music industry, monthly round-ups of the most important stories in music, and priority when submitting questions for our mailbag. Consider becoming a paid subscriber today!

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This week’s theme is “actors who play,” meaning albums by Hollywood’s finest. The only additional rule here is that the person must primarily be an actor. Judy Garland, for example, doesn’t count because she was known equally for her singing and acting. If you think of any of these artists, “actor” must jump to your mind first.

#7 Let Them Talk by Hugh Laurie (2011)

From the first note of “St. James Infirmary,” I knew this album was going nowhere fast. Yes, actor and comedian Hugh Laurie is serviceable on the piano, but nearly every track on this record has been covered a million times. If you want to hear jazz-infused versions of “Swanee River” and “John Henry,” the last place you should turn is House, M.D.

#6 Break Up by Peter Yorn and Scarlett Johansson (2009)

Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson teams up with singer-songwriter Peter Yorn for an album of cutesy, folksy duets. While Yorn does the heft of the work, Johansson lilting voice is a good fit for the project. The problem is that if you’ve heard one song, you’ve heard them all, making even the 28-minute runtime feel excessive.

#5 龍的心 by Jackie Chan (1996)

Was action star Jackie Chan a better singer than I was expecting? Yes. Would I ever listen to his music again? No. The production on 龍的心 is packed with too much over-the-top melodrama for my taste. That said, I do appreciate the effort that the Chan band put into these songs. The intensity in their playing—especially on the shredding electric guitar—is palpable.

#4 You’re Speaking My Language by Juliette & The Licks (2005 - Juliette Lewis)

Though Ken was upset that I had no idea who actress Juliette Lewis, he was jazzed that I enjoyed her record You’re Speaking My Language. That record has a bit of riot grrrl energy, albeit lacking the political edge of the genre, Lewis’s lyrics mostly focusing on more prosaic matters.

#3 Dead Man’s Bones by Dead Man’s Bones (2009 - Ryan Gosling)

This album sounds horrendous in the abstract: The Notebook star Ryan Gosling teams up with Zach Shields to make an album of spooky songs built around a children’s choir. But Gosling and Shields somehow thread the needle. There’s a beautiful weirdness to these 12 tracks, a few numbers even feeling transcendent.

#2 Rare Bird Alert by Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers (2011)

Many albums we listened to this week felt gimmicky. “Oh, that’s cute,” I would think to myself, “[INSERT ACTOR’S NAME HERE] decided to make an album.” You can’t say that about Steve Martin’s musical forays, though. The comedian is a seriously talented banjo player. On Rare Bird Alert, he surrounds himself with some even more talented musicians.

I loved this album for its musical performances. I love it for how steeped it is in the bluegrass tradition. I also love it for its songs, even when Martin is adapting his goofy “King Tut” for a string band. I say this with no disrespect to Steve Martin’s comedy, but if he spent more time strumming on the old banjo than writing jokes, I wouldn’t complain.

#1 Volume One by She & Him (2008 - Zooey Deschanel)

Scarlett Johansson’s folksy album of duets technically exists in the same universe as She & Him’s Volume One. But where Johansson and Peter Yorn feel like they’ve run out of ideas by track two, Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward almost never run out of steam.

The difference is in the song craft. Deschanel and Ward are writing in the tradition of the great 1960s songsmiths. And they’ve done their homework, so much so that when they sneak in a cover of “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” you might mistake it for an original.

The only low point on this record—and the reason I said that “Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward almost never run out of steam”—is a cover of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” Deschanel’s voice doesn’t suit the spiritual heft of that song. But 12 out of 13 songs landing is quite the hit rate.

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I was wrong. Across her short volume, journalist and BBC presenter Samira Ahmed reshapes everything you thought you knew about this movie. Not only did A Hard Day’s Night basically invent the music video, but it documented the changing social and gender norms in the western world. Her book is a must read for any Beatles fan.

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At the beginning of your book, you note, “With the huge growth in Beatles scholarship in recent years, I was wary of adding another book.” What compelled you to press on even though it feels like everything that there is to say about The Beatles has been said.

I was first introduced to The Beatles as a child via their films. My brother taped their movies off television in 1979 when I was 11. A Hard Day’s Night is a fascinating film because it captures them in the white heat of Beatlemania in Britain just before they go on The Ed Sullivan Show. I wanted to look at how this film captures Britain at that time. It’s not glamorized. You see ordinary trains and ordinary girls. There’s no sense of it being a fantasy. I didn’t think anybody had really looked at the social history side of this film.

Additionally, a few years ago, I discovered the earliest complete recording of The Beatles, called The Stowe Tape. It was a show they played at a school in April 1963. A student secretly recorded the whole concert and shared the tape with me. I did a big story about it on my show. Many people who watched that episode told me that they were fascinated even if they didn’t care about The Beatles. Telling that story requires you to touch on social changes in Britain and the rise of youth culture globally. We are still living in the wake of that.

I always wonder if youth culture will become less important as populations continue to decline around the world.

My favorite scene in A Hard Day’s Night occurs at exactly the midpoint. George wanders into an advertising agency where they are recruiting young people to help market shirts to teens. I think the film captures this sense of how the adult mainstream is trying to monetize youth culture. If you go back and look at the advertisements for bands at the time, they were all very goofy.

The Beatles managed to transcend that commodification. Part of the reason is that their music is still so pure. But they also just had such distinctive personalities and stayed true to themselves. When I meet young people at book signings, I’m always fascinated by how they got into The Beatles. Some were introduced to the group by their parents. Others just came upon them through social media and streaming. People are still falling in love with them.

A Hard Day’s Night has got to be one of very few movies that was profitable before it was released because the album had recouped all film costs before the film even came out.

Yes! Of course, the goal was to sell records. Nobody thought the film would turn into what it did. They just wanted to cash in on this pop group. Most groups didn’t last that long. But the film was profitable before it even hit theaters.

It’s a fun album.

In my view, it’s their greatest album. It’s also interesting that half of the songs aren’t even in the movie. How often does a soundtrack contain songs that don’t make the movie? They just had so many great songs.

At the beginning of the book, you argue that A Hard Day’s Night “was in fact a kind of cinematic Big Bang, shaping entire genre of screen entertainment: sitcoms, rock band films and spawning a new form—the pop video, for which in 1984 MTV gave Richard Lester a special Vanguard Award.” Let’s talk about this quote piece by piece. How did A Hard Day’s Night change sitcom television?

The most obvious impact is The Monkees, which is essentially a sitcom replica of A Hard Day’s Night. In his book Funny or Die, the comedy writer Joel Morris argues that the sitcom requires a patriarch, matriarch, craftsmen, and clown. A Hard Day’s Night has all of those things. John is the patriarch, Paul is the matriarch, George is the craftsman, and Ringo is the clown.

Comedy was also a big part of their lives. They wanted to work with director Richard Lester because they loved his film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film. The Beatles were also natural comedians, though. Many of the contemporary reviews note how funny they are.

I think the biggest reason that The Beatles have stood the test of time is that their music still sounds so fresh. But their personalities are a big reason too. Decades later, those personalities are quite compelling.

Absolutely. It’s also important that they had a legitimate sitcom star, Wilfrid Brambell, in A Hard Day’s Night. (He was in Steptoe and Son, which was remade in the US as Sanford and Son.) His presence was almost a statement that The Beatles had entered the world of adults. This wasn’t just for kids.

Now, let’s talk rock band films. There are so many rock band films that it’s easy to think they were always around, but you contend that A Hard Day’s Night essentially birthed the genre. Is that really the case?

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Is the Album Dead?

By Chris Dalla Riva

You should always be on a quest. No, it doesn’t have to be death-defying quest to destroy the Ring of Power, but there’s something healthy about going on a long but accomplishable journey. Let me give you an example.

If you’re a regular reader here, you’ll know that my friend and I are listening to an album every day this year. A 365-day listening program represents a substantial amount of time, but I don’t think anybody will be shocked when we finish it. It doesn’t require much endurance or brain power. It just requires you to carve out around 45 minutes each day to listen to music.

Even using the term “carve out” is overstating things. You can listen to music passively while you’re at work, in the car, or at the gym. Still, there is something psychologically powerful about a long but attainable quest like this.

1. It Gives You Purpose: Even on the most boring day, you know you have something to do.

2. It Keeps You Social: While you can go on a quest alone, I suggest bringing along a friend. Assuming the quest requires daily work, it forces you to talk to at least one person each day.

3. It Makes You Think: A good quest requires at least a little bit of thought. For my current album quest, each week has a theme. Even when the theme is simple (e.g., an album you’ve never heard by an artist you love), you’ve still got to use your noggin.

One side effect of a quest is that you usually end up learning something unexpected. Just a few weeks ago, for example, our album quest had us listening to records released before 1950. I wasn’t expecting this to result in anything beyond gaining familiarity with the Bing Crosby and Woody Guthrie catalogs. But something strange happened. I realized that the album as we know it didn’t really exist before 1950.

• Albums were not common before 1950: What we know as the “album era” really only began after Columbia Records invented the 33⅓ rpm long-playing record, or LP, in 1948. Before that, an “album” was a collection of 78s sold in something that resembled a photo album. (That’s actually where the term album comes from.) But because of this technological limitation, albums were not common.

• Even if a pre-1950 album exists, it’s likely not on streaming services: Because popular music pre-1950 was more focused on individual songs, many of those original collections have not made it to streaming. To be clear, the songs are on streaming services, but they are usually packaged as retrospectives or greatest hits records.

In short, though the album feels like a very natural format for recorded music, it was enabled by technology. Artists and listeners were constrained by physical media. But I soon realized there was one problem with my epiphany: It wasn’t true.

Not long after publishing that, I was talking to jazz critic and historian . It’s actually a misconception, he told me, that the album was a technological invention of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He details that in his book The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums:

The concept of the album had a long and respectable run. We know of pop albums going back to at least 1926, when the dominant format—virtually the only format—was individual 78 rpm discs. The 10-inch LP medium, introduced in 1948, was the next step forward, succeeded by the 12-inch LP, which became the standard, in America at least, about 1955, and then the compact disc (from 1985 on). The CD would be, so far, the last physical format for which artists would put together programs of creative and interesting music. In the post-physical age of listening to music, the album is more or less passé: kids primarily download individual tracks, and pay attention to entire albums only secondarily. Thus the age of the pop music album is finite, stretching for roughly eighty years, picking up speed slowly from the mid-1920s onward and then losing momentum quickly in the mid-“aughts.”

So, the album age did have a beginning. It was just a few decades earlier than I originally thought. But what Friedwald’s writing got me thinking was that the album age ended with the rise of digital online music in the 2000s.

The Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Overstated

You don’t have to look far to find people prognosticating about the death of the album. People tweet about the album’s death. They write about about it on their personal blogs. They do the same in major publications. They are even litigating the matter on Wikipedia.

To be clear, there is no doubt that the relationship between the artist, the listener, and the album has changed dramatically since the rise of the internet. As I write in my book, “If you wanted to listen to ‘Honey’ by Mariah Carey when it came out in 1997, you’d likely have to buy her entire album Butterfly even if you disliked everything else on the record.”

Much to the chagrin of the music industry, this is no longer the case and hasn’t been for a long time. Not long after the release of Carey’s Butterfly, you could illegally rip your favorite tracks from the album on Napster. If you were a law-abiding citizen, in a few years you could buy those same tracks on iTunes for $0.99. Now, things are even simpler. Just open up your favorite streaming service and click play. Mariah Carey and her vocal histrionics are all yours. The single is supreme in the streaming age.

The problem with this narrative is that it actually doesn’t seem to be true. If the album were truly dead, I would expect stadiums to be sold out by artists who have multiple songs that go viral on TikTok. That’s not the case, though. The graveyard of TikTok hits is lined with artists whose names you’ve never heard of. If you want a career, you need to make great albums.

Lana Del Rey proves a great example of this. Despite having not released a top 40 single since 2014, Lana Del Rey is currently the 29th most popular artist on Spotify. Her albums are packed with structurally atypical songs often stretched over five minutes. Her audience is also more dedicated than anyone who’s scored a few viral hits on TikTok.

When you look at the biggest pop stars over the last decade, the thing that unites them is a dedication to the album format:

• Taylor Swift’s record breaking Eras Tour was built around celebrating her career one album at a time

• Geese, the most talked about indie rock band, grew a fanbase by releasing consistently quality albums rather than singles

• In 2025, LP sales in the US crossed $1 billion in revenue for the first time since 1983

I’d go so far as to argue that if there is an artist consistently selling out arenas that they have built their name around albums rather than singles. That’s not to say that the album is held up as sacrosanct in the streaming age. If you look at the stream counts on, say, Billie Eilish’s WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO, you’ll see that the first track—a 13-second introduction—has only 241,000 streams. The most streamed has billions. If people were listening to the album straight through, those numbers would be much closer.

But were people always listening to albums straight through during the true album era? No. You couldn’t pick albums apart as easily as you can on your streaming service of choice, but albums have been sliced and diced for generations.

• In the radio age, singles were given primacy over the album cuts

• In the vinyl age, you could choose to start with Side B if you didn’t like Side A or drop the needle on a specific song

• In the cassette age, mixtapes were made and traded by recording songs from the radio

• In the CD era, you could easily skip to specific tracks on albums

Older technology made it more natural to play an album front-to-back, but the human desire to hear specific songs is nothing new. As Glenn McDonald notes in his book You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song:

[M]ost of the albums released during the LP/CD era were not so artistically albumesque. Most of them didn’t come in gatefolds, and most of them were not ‘concept albums’ … Most popular albums were just commercially strategic packaging of groups of popular songs, or more accurately, of carefully planned combinations of popular and not popular songs …

So, while the album in 2025 is different than the album in the 1975, it is still the vital force in an artist building a career that lasts. If you ignore it, you’re bound for the discount rack—or whatever the digital equivalent of that is.

Despite releasing his latest single “Too Easy” just a few days ago, Tig3r Lewis seems to be following a well worn path for artists in every genre. A few buzzy songs were followed by a record deal. His debut EP will follow next month. If he wants to have a long career, he is sure to release an album after that. His husky voice is one that could stick around if he’s got a great collection of songs in him.

“Albums,” Prince intoned when he stepped to the stage to present Album of the Year at the 2015 Grammys, “still matter, like books and Black lives.” The Minneapolis musician lived by those words for the entirety of his all-too-short life. A Prince album was always a cohesive statement.

I recently listened to Prince’s underrated 2004 album Musicology for the first time. Though it is mostly an exploration of R&B, it reminded me how Prince could toss off pop rock songs better than most musicians strictly working within the genre. “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” “When You Were Mine.” “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” On Musicology, he breaks off another: “Cinnamon Girl.”

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This week’s theme is “ones you missed,” meaning albums you have somehow never heard by artists you love. That’s a broad theme, so we’re all over the place this week. But I think it ended up being one of our stronger batches of albums thus far.

#9 Devils and Dust by Bruce Springsteen (2005)

Bruce Springsteen is undoubtedly my favorite artist, his oeuvre etched on my brain. But even our favorite artists can upset us. And I really hate when The Boss puts on a faux southern accent. You catch hints of this on Nebraska and “My Hometown,” but the Springsteen-ian twang really came to prominence in the 1990s. And it’s all over 2005’s Devils and Dust.

Maybe it’s knowing that Springsteen and I grew up an hour from one another, but his drawl comes across as phony. Only Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan can get away with the fake twang. The rest of us should leave it to the real southerners.

All that said, the title track on this album is powerful. But that doesn’t outweigh the low points on this record, twang-infused or not. “Maria’s Bed” may be the worst vocal across the Springsteen catalog.

#8 Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes (2005)

This was the only album in The White Stripes discography that Ken hadn’t heard. I, on the other hand, was obsessed with this record for a few weeks in college. I was a bit disappointed returning to it, though.

Get Behind Me Satan is a weird album for The White Stripes. Whereas most White Stripes albums are driven by searing guitar and pounding rhythms, Get Behind Me Satan is a piano record. I don’t think Meg White’s primal drumming suits the piano as well as it does distorted guitars.

There are still highlights, though. “Blue Orchid,” maybe the most guitar-focused track on the record, is a standout. “The Denial Twist” is two-and-a-half minutes of fun. “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” is also some of Jack White’s strongest writing to date.

#7 Pink Cadillac by John Prine (1979)

John Prine is one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the second half of the 20th century, yet on Pink Cadillac he spends half his time covering other people’s music. Most of these covers, especially with the loose, rocking arrangements used throughout Pink Cadillac, are a step below Prine’s original output.

But even his original work on this record isn’t that strong. “Chinatown,” for example, is filled with lyrics that are stereotypical at best and racist at worst (e.g., “Well, the moon is yellow and the people are too / They roll eggs on a bar-b-que”).

#6 The Ghost of Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen (1995)

On The Ghost of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen wrote spare, lyrically-dense songs about the working class, Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads updated for the late 20th century. But where Guthrie’s working class tales are often singable, Springsteen’s lack memorable melodies. That makes this cerebral album feel impenetrable. But if you’re willing to dig deep into Springsteen’s words, there is something rewarding to be found.

#5 Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash by The Replacements (1981)

My favorite thing about The Replacements is how they balance childish humor (e.g., “Gary’s Got a Boner”) with heart-on-your-sleeve honesty (e.g., “Sixteen Blue”). Their debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash leans much more heavily on the former than the latter. So, while Paul Westerberg is still developing as a songwriter, Sorry Ma delights because, for all their debauchery, The Replacements could play well from the beginning.

#4 Fist City and Coal Miner’s Daughter by Loretta Lynn (1968 & 1971)

These are technically two records, but they felt like two sides of the same coin. The arrangements are classic country, a pedal steel weeping throughout. The lyrics are direct but deft. And the songs sound like they were constructed on the Rock of Gibraltar.

My only criticism is that Lynn rehashes many of the same themes again and again. Considering that and how expansive her discography is, I think I’ll still turn to her greatest hits before these studio efforts.

#3 Parade by Prince (1986)

After the success of Purple Rain as both a movie and an album, Prince was determined to score another dual hit. His second try, Under the Cherry Moon, was a box office bomb, making $10 million on a $12 million budget and scoring multiple Razzies. The soundtrack album, Parade, fared much better, though. It spawned the number one hit “Kiss” on the way to selling over a million copies.

In a certain sense, “Kiss” is reminiscent of the sound of Parade generally. Whereas Purple Rain crossed pop and rock in novel ways and its follow-up, Around the World in a Day, leaned into psychedelia, Parade is a sparse funk record. And when I say “sparse” I mean it. “Kiss” doesn’t even have a bass.

Like other records in the Prince discography, especially those from the 1980s, Parade sounds a bit dated at times. Prince leaned heavily into synths and drum machines that were en vogue at the time. But the songwriting is tremendous. The albums closer, “Sometimes It Snows in April,” might be the best song in the entire Prince discography.

#2 Why Do Birds Sing? by Violent Femmes (1991)

Because my knowledge of Violent Femmes doesn’t go much beyond “Blister In the Sun,” I had zero expectations for this album. I ended up loving it. It’s 13 tracks of bouncy folk punk. “American Music” was particularly fun.

If you are a fan of the band but missed this record, you will also probably enjoy it. Ken loves the Violent Femmes and notes that despite being worried that this record was going to be disappointing, he was pleasantly surprised: “Their first two albums are elite. The third is whatever. So, I thought the fourth would be a weird departure. But I liked it.”

#1 Musicology by Prince (2004)

Because Prince was skilled on so many instruments, he sometimes has a problem where he can’t get out of his own way. It’s all Prince all the time. Great music tends to involve some sort of compromise between artists. Prince always had a singular vision.

Musicology is a great example of the singularness of Prince. Outside of the rocking “Cinnamon Girl,” it’s an album-length exploration of R&B where he plays almost any instrument. But had Prince involved others, I don’t think this record would have worked as well. “Illusion, Coma, Pimp & Circumstance,” for example, is built around three looping notes that would leave most producers scratching their heads. But Prince is willing to trust his instincts. And when it works, it works really well.

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• Was the Michael Jackson biopic any good?

• Who are the greatest living American songwriters?

• What’s the deal with hideous horns in the 1970s?

• Has the time between artists putting out albums shrunk?

• Who are some artists that completely changed their sound while remaining poopular?

If you enjoy this newsletter, consider ordering a copy of my debut book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music covering 1958 to 2025.

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Did you see the Michael Jackson biopic? If so, what did you think of it? - Marshall

I did see it. If you’re looking to spend two hours listening to some of the most famous songs of the 20th century, you’re in for a treat. If you want a deep look at a talented, troubled, strange, and (possibly) criminal entertainer, then you should save your money.

Why is that NY Times “30 Greatest Living American Songwriters” list so bad and why can’t they get better people to do these lists? Technically that’s two questions, sorry. - Bob

In case you missed it, The New York Times released a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. Like all musical rankings, this set off a firestorm of complaints online. I actually think that’s a good thing. Anything to get people talking about the craft of songwriting is good with me. Here’s the list in case you missed it:

Nile Rodgers. Lucinda Williams. Stevie Wonder. Jay-Z. Paul Simon. Taylor Swift. Brian & Eddie Holland. Missy Elliot. Lionel Richie. Dolly Parton. Young Thug. Diane Warren. Joshua Osborne, Brandy Clark, and Shane McAnally. Fiona Apple. Babyface. Stephen Merritt. Romeo Santos. Carole King. Outkast. Mariah Carey. Willie Nelson. Kendrick Lamar. Valerie Simpson. Bob Dylan. Lana Del Ray. The-Dream. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Bad Bunny. Bruce Springsteen. Smokey Robinson.

So, what’s the problem with lists like these? First, 30 songwriters is a short list and necessitates leaving someone off. Second, the methodology is opaque. The Times started by surveying hundreds of “critics, historians, industry executives, D.J.s, music supervisors, [and] choreographers,” but ultimately relied on their critics to winnow down the list.

We don’t know exactly how they went about this winnowing. Why, for example, are country songwriters Joshua Osborne, Brandy Clark, and Shane McAnally grouped together? They sometimes write together but aren’t a team in the same way that, say, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were. Their inclusion as a three-headed Nashville beast is likely to represent the contemporary country scene.

Additionally, why is Outkast thrown in among a list mostly focused on solo artists and career songwriters? I know they are a duo, but were musical groups in serious consideration? If so, where are groups like Aerosmith and R.E.M.? It’s unclear.

For those reasons, these lists are often doomed from the outset. But now let’s talk about the list more specifically. Before you start asking where Brian Wilson and Joni Mitchell are, remember that this list had rules. You had to be a living American songwriter. Brian Wilson is dead. Joni Mitchell, despite honing her craft in America, is Canadian.

Even so, questions still loom. Does it really make sense to count Valerie Simpson when she wrote her greatest work with her deceased husband Nickolas Ashford? Same goes for honoring brothers Brian and Eddie Holland despite the third piece of the Holland-Dozier-Holland triumvirate having passed to the next life. I don’t think this makes sense. The New York Times does.

Additionally, is what Paul Simon does really the same as what Jay-Z does? Are rapping and beatmaking the same as sitting with a guitar and setting lyrics to music? In Jay-Z’s case, I think so. This becomes especially clear when you listen to him talk about his creative process.

@nytimesWhen collaborating with other artists on songs like “Big Pimpin,’” Jay-Z’s ultimate focus is what’s good for the song itself. He told the New York Times Magazine about how the song’s verses, featuring U.G.K and Pimp C, came together to create a song that was “just beautiful.” Jay-Z is one of The New York Times Magazine’s 30 greatest living American songwriters. Interview by Jody Rosen. Video by @joshuacharow #nyt30greatest #AmericanSongwriters #JayZ

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Young Thug, on the other hand, doesn’t make as much sense to me. Young Thug undoubtedly reshaped how the voice is used in hip-hop. But I think his contributions are more related to production and performance than actual song craft.

All of these rules and regulations still leave us with the same question: Who are the greatest living American songwriters?

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AI Companies Can’t Stop Stealing Music

By Chris Dalla Riva

A few years ago, people noticed that if you asked the AI chatbot Claude for song lyrics, it would readily return them to you. This was a problem for the company behind Claude, Anthropic.

Nearly every popular song lyric you come across is copyrighted, meaning whoever wrote the words gets to choose if someone else can use those words and, if so, how they are compensated for that usage. To use the word “word” just once more: If you want to print some of the words from The Replacements’ “Color Me Impressed” in your book, you need to both get permission from and compensate songwriter Paul Westerberg.

Anthropic and many of their competitors, like OpenAI, were not doing this. To try to placate rightsholders, they stopped their respective chatbots from returning lyrics. Now, if you prompt Claude or ChatGPT for song lyrics, they will tell you that’s not allowed.

So, the problem has been solved, right? AI companies now respect copyright and compensate artists for the usage of their work? Not exactly.

First, despite some licensing agreements being signed, the music industry and AI companies are still at odds. Whether chatbots will display copyrighted material or not doesn’t negate the fact that copyright holders want to be compensated for the fact that their music and lyrics were used to train AI models.

Second, many chatbots are still displaying copyrighted material. If I, for example, ask ChatGPT for the lyrics to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, it lets me know that it “can’t provide the full lyrics to ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac due to copyright restrictions.” But if you ask it how to play “Landslide,” it’s happy to provide chords, tabs, and even lyrics.

This is copyright infringement. “Landslide” was written by Stevie Nicks. If you use “Landslide” in a movie, you need her permission. If you print sheet music for “Landslide,” you need her permission. And, yes, if you have your chatbot spit out the tabs for “Landslide,” you also need her permission.

While Claude is a bit more careful not to provide the music because “the arrangement is copyrighted,” Google’s Gemini will provide you with basically the same thing as ChatGPT.

Unless all of these companies have struck deals with music publishers, they shouldn’t be displaying the music or lyrics to songs in most contexts. Permission must be granted. Fully licensed music-learning sites have licenses and compensate artists. When they lose those licenses, the tabs, lyrics, and chord progressions disappear.

Patents = Good. Copyrights = Bad.

As AI companies argue that they should be able to hoover up every piece of copyrighted material in history without compensation because it is fair use, you might assume that they just don’t really believe in intellectual property in general. Oddly, that’s not the case.

OpenAI, for example, has filed scores of patents and trademarks. They also enforce those intellectual property rights. Just last year OpenAI won a lawsuit because they said a company named “Open Artificial Intelligence” was infringing on its trademark.

I understand the urge to only believe in intellectual property rights when they are convenient for you, especially when you think you are building a digital god. But it’s possible to lead a technological revolution while still compensating rightsholders accordingly.

Spotify proves a nice example of this. Despite all the criticisms levied against the Swedish streaming giant, they secured licenses before launching their service commercially. Was this slower than if they just pulled a Napster and paid no one? Of course. But they still were able to revolutionize how music is listened to while paying artists.

I don’t mean to suggest that Spotify is as complex a technology as ChatGPT. In fact, monitoring what chatbots output seems more akin to whack-a-mole than anything else. No matter how many safeguards you put in place, they’re probably going to still spit out copyrighted material.

I also don’t mean to suggest Spotify’s revolution in music listening will be as consequential as OpenAI’s revolution in artificial intelligence. But we can value the importance of human artistic output—both intellectually and financially—while still pushing technology forward.

When Pitchfork declared Smerz’s “You got the time and I got the money” the second-best song of 2025, I was confused. I’m pretty tapped into all things music. Who was Smerz? Then I clicked play. I was missing out. The Norwegian duo could entrance you with a single synth and simple couplet (e.g., “Baby, can I see you naked / Even though I love how you dress.”)

With a drum loop that sounds like it was lifted from Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” their latest track “Spring summer” sees them exploring similar territory. It’s mostly just a synth and a half-spoken vocal that don’t overstay their welcome. But as soon as it ends, you’ll be compelled to hit play again.

My friend Ken and I have been listening to an album every day this year. I recount the last week of listening each Tuesday in this newsletter. A few weeks ago, I detailed our journey listening to comeback albums. One of those comebacks was Tina Turner’s Private Dancer. Despite not being a fan of the production on the record, I was reminded of two things. First, few are more compelling on the microphone than Tina Turner. Second, Turner’s rendition of the Holly Knight co-write “Better Be Good To Me” still rips.

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This week’s theme is “switch-ups,” meaning an album where the artist dramatically changes their sound. To make the switch-up clear, we listened to one album before and after the sonic change. We then rated those two albums as a single entity rather than separately.

There were many people we could have chosen here. Taylor Swift. Fleetwood Mac. The Bee Gees. Jefferson Airplane. Post Malone. But we stuck to albums that we hadn’t heard before.

#7 Behind the Front (1998) and The E.N.D. (2009) by Black Eyed Peas (Alternative Rap → Electronic Pop)

Here’s a how a user on RateYourMusic described the Black Eyed Peas:

The Black Eyed Peas are a weird group for sure. They started out as a rap group similar to A Tribe Called Quest, then hired Fergie as a fourth member creating pop rap, threw electronic influences into the mix, went back to classic West Coast Hip Hop after Fergie’s departure, then switched to reggaeton in their more recent albums. Even if you don’t like their work, it’s always interesting to poke your head in and see what they have going on at the time.

This is a pretty apt (and humorous) description of the group. Their first album is clearly made in the style of alternative rap groups, like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Despite being a bit too long, it’s a quality record. If you’re only familiar with the Black Eyed Peas from their imperial era, you’ll be surprised to learn that every member of the group, including will.i.am, can rap.

But the Black Eyed Peas had loftier ambitions. With some huge singles, including “My Humps” and “Pump It,” under their belt, they went for world domination on The E.N.D. And they succeeded. The first five tracks on the record—“Boom Boom Pow,” “Rock That Body,” “Meet Me Halfway,” “Imma Be,” and “I Gotta Feeling”—were all massive singles.

Had you not listened to the Black Eyed Peas since the late 1990s, your jaw would be on the floor when you threw on The E.N.D. Memorable bars have been replaced by inane catchphrases (e.g., “Focus on this, the ear seductionists / More than lyricists in this rap metropolis / More like an activist, we give it to you all” → “Go out and smash it / Like oh my God / Jump off that sofa, let’s kick it off”). Bleeps and bloops have taken the place of rich instrumentals. (Of note, the Black Eyed Peas of the late 1990s toured with a live band.)

But the worst of it all might be that those first five tracks are the best The E.N.D. has to offer. “Ring-A-Ling” is truly unlistenable. “Electric City” is an affront to the Bo Diddley beat. “Now Generation” is a half-hearted attempted at an indie rock song, Fergie prattling about how “Myspace in your space / Facebook is that new place” and “Google is my professor / Wikipedia the checker” while fighting for her life to find a pitch.

#6 The Fourth World (1997) and Overexposed (2012) by Maroon 5 (Alternative Rock → Pop Rock)

Like the Black Eyed Peas, Maroon 5 started out as an interesting group with some talent but threw all of their taste to the wind for a chance at pop stardom. Also, like the Black Eyed Peas it worked.

This is somewhat inexplicable because Songs About Jane, Maroon 5’s breakthrough album, was a great record filled with great songs. We didn’t listen to that, though. We started with The Fourth World, the group’s record released while still under their original name, Kara’s Flowers.

The Fourth World does not have the songwriting of Songs About Jane, but the instrumentals are all there. In fact, along with his lead vocal duties, Adam Levine plays a mean guitar throughout.

By Overexposed, Maroon 5 had outsourced most of the songwriting to professionals (e.g., Max Martin, Benny Blanco, Shellback). Because of that, each track sounds like it’s aspiring for heavy rotation on your local pop stations. Sometimes it works (e.g., “Daylight”). Most of the time it doesn’t (e.g., “One More Night”).

#5 Lemonade and Brownies (1995) and 14:59 (1999) by Sugar Ray (Nu Metal → Alternative Rock)

You probably know Sugar Ray for their breezy late 1990s hits, like “Fly,” “Every Morning,” and “Someday.” But before they made their way to soft rock radio, they were an aspiring nu metal group.

I am not a nu metal guy, but I somehow enjoyed Lemonade and Brownies—their effort in that genre—more than the hit-spawning 14:59. The problem is that while the hits on 14:59 are fun, the rest is a bit forgettable (e.g., cover of Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra”). Lemonade and Brownies at least feels like a cohesive statement.

#4 Alanis (1991) and Jagged Little Pill (1995) by Alanis Morissette (Dance-pop → Alternative Rock)

Before she became an alt rock queen, a young Alanis Morissette tried her hand at dance-pop. The self-titled record sold well in Canada but was largely erased from distribution when Morissette decided to switch up her sound. That’s a shame. While I won’t be returning to Alanis, it’s a light, fun affair who didn’t deserve the fate of being erased from the world.

Jagged Little Pill, the massive hit that Morissette pretends is her debut, is better than her real debut. But there are many ways that this record could have gone wrong. The heart-on-your-sleeve lyrics could have come across as shallow. The vocal timbre could have come across as grating. Even the mid-1990s alt rock production could have come across as insincere.

None of these things are the case, though. Jagged Little Pill continues to work because Morissette and her collaborators (i.e., Glen Ballard, Dave Navarro, Flea, Benmont Tench) are fully committed. You believe every one of the giant choruses on this album because they do.

#3 New York Dolls (1973) and Buster Poindexter (1987) by New York Dolls/Buster Poindexter (Proto-Punk → Swing)

After David Johansen left the New York Dolls, he wanted to try something new without his old fans bothering him. So, he started performing old time swing and jump blues under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter. By the late 1980s, he even scored hits under this pseudonym, including “Hot Hot Hot.”

While I would choose to listen to the New York Dolls self-titled record over the Buster Poindexter record ten times out of ten, the latter does work. Johansen and his band are clearly having fun in this style.

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As always, if you enjoy this newsletter, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history.

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“Day Tripper - Live” by Otis Redding

“I think of Otis Redding covering ‘Day Tripper.’ In addition to being a great cover, there are the added elements that (1) the bass line in ‘Drive My Car’ reportedly borrowed from Redding’s ‘Respect.’ So the Beatles were aware of his music and (2) Otis Redding at age 25 performing his version live in London in 1967 feels like a clear statement of his own confidence in feeling like he could go toe-to-toe with The Beatles” -

“Strawberry Fields Forever’“ by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs

“Your list has a number of my favorite Beatles covers, but my personal favorite is by the Argentinian band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Their 1995 Rey Azúcar was produced by Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth, and they wrangled Debbie Harry to feature on this ska-flavored take on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’” -

“A Day in the Life” by Wes Montgomery

“Wes Montgomery’s version of ‘A Day In The Life’ is superb. Wes was widely disparaged by jazz classicist critics for covering 1960s pop and rock tunes produced by Creed Taylor, but I hear the signature tone and musicality in those records, and it fits together perfectly. The Creed Taylor arrangement of “Day In The Life” is faithful to the drama of the original.” -

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