All posts by J.A. Bartlett »
World’s Worst Songs: The Michael Bolton Lifetime Achievement Award
We probably shouldn’t even go here. We should probably listen to the small voice inside that keeps us from playing with matches, drinking and driving, and buying short shorts. But we will not. Twenty
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The #1 Albums: Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe”
Many of us have favorite stories we return to again and again. Even though we know the characters, the incidents, and how the whole thing turns out, there’s something about the telling that draws
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World’s Worst Songs: Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby”
A commenter on a recent post about Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” suggested that in the pantheon of the World’s Worst Songs, “the fruit doesn’t hang any lower.” I beg to differ, sir. Paul Anka’s “You’re
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The #1 Albums: “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
If you like music and you like to write, challenge yourself with this task: Say something fresh about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When the album’s 40th anniversary was celebrated in 2007, a new,
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World’s Worst Songs: “It’s a Sunshine Day” by the Brady Kids
There’s a volume of Time-Life’s AM Gold series called Teen Idols of the 70s, which features many of the usual suspects: the Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, the Osmonds, the Jackson Five—and the Brady Kids
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The #1 Albums: The Return of Herb Alpert and the Monkees
As the spring of ’67 turned into the Summer of Love, two of the top acts of 1966 returned to the top of the album chart as the world waited for the new release
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World’s Worst Songs: Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey”
The farther back we go in time, the harder it is to fairly judge what sucks, because tastes and styles change. Complicating matters is the post-modern ironic distance through which we look at almost
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The #1 Albums: Monkeemania Everywhere
The original Pre-Fab Four set chart marks the original Fabs never matched
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World’s Worst Songs: “I Can Only Imagine” by MercyMe
In an episode of King of the Hill called “Reborn to Be Wild,” Hank Hill says to a Christian rock singer, “Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity better? You’re just making rock ‘n’
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