In 1996, after a decade and a half of high but rapidly diminishing record sales and influence, Van Halen was suddenly a hot band again, and it was because of,…
Brian Boone
81 Articles
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Brian Boone
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Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” is the most indie rock indie rock song of all time. They’ve got all the checklist items covered: odd band name, maudlin lyrics about…
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Brian Boone
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The Beatles are kind of always in the not-distant background, as they are the goddamn Beatles. But every five years or so, there’s a major resurgence in Beatles interest, popularity,…
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Brian Boone
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The Slits’ cover of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” should have been that one song from the weird, still-breaking genre of punk that got some radio play and introduced…
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Brian Boone
2 Min Read
A Guns N’ Roses live album is probably never going to happen. Axl and Slash hate each other, and even if they say that there’s gonna be a Guns N’…
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Jason Hare
1 Min Read
Perfect for your soul-crushing trip to the mall on this Black Friday: A rundown of a classic Top 10 from November 1983. It’s the Popdose Podcast, Episode 22: CHART ATTACK! Edition!
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Brian Boone
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An unlikely song hit #1 on the U.S. in 1962: “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto. It’s the only song in Japanese to top the charts in America, and that’s especially surprising…
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Brian Boone
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Daft Punk is a household name for music nerds now, and all the kids on the playground wear helmets and robot suits and speak French. Their sophomore album Discovery was…
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Brian Boone
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“Friday” is the Song of the Year for 2011. Over the course of about two weeks, this thing went from pseudo-professional amateur project to hipster YouTube sensation to cultural phenomenon…
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Brian Boone
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Priory is indie band zeitgeist. They’re a combination of equal parts Portland (where they’re based) and Brooklyn scenes, with a dose of sleepy Swedish dream pop. But I think this…
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Brian Boone
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Ween is one of those fantastic, cult-beloved quirky bands too interesting to ever be extremely popular that should have been one of those fantastic, cult-beloved quirky bands that eventually scored…
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Brian Boone
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Ohio-based indie band the Big Sweet are very young, they’re teenagers even, but they rock a very sophisticated sound, which is that finely tuned, happily fussed about power pop sound…
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Brian Boone
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Live albums are hard. They’re rarely good, because they rarely deliver on what they aim to be: an encapsulation of an act’s live show experience. But they just can’t; a…
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Brian Boone
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I’m not going anywhere for the next couple of days. Because I have the complete run of The Monkees—32 episodes of season 1, and 26 episodes of season 2—spread across…
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Brian Boone
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Teen rock acts bridged the teen pop and Avril Lavigne eras. Despite a large corporate push, all-girl Canadian band Lillix failed to catch on.
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Brian Boone
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For the past five years or so, Brooklyn-based rich kids hipsters and indie rockers are two sides of the same coin, or at least that’s the public perception or cultural…
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Brian Boone
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You can be a T man, or an A man. You can’t be both, Sir Mix-A-Lot.
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Brian Boone
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“Holiday Road” was the theme song of National Lampoon’s Vacation, an insanely popular movie, the kind of ’80s comedy classic that gets run on cable and local stations with a…
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Brian Boone
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OMD’s dark electronic sounds were right in step with New Order and Depeche Mode, and yet “Electricity” couldn’t find an audience on either side of the pond over three releases.
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Brian Boone
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Fred Schneider of the B-52’s followed up the success of ”Love Shack” with a re-release of a 1984 solo album featuring the synth pop treasure ”Monster.” Despite the band’s newfound cultural relevance, the song was too weird or too dated to hit big.
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Brian Boone
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The sad tale of one more Canadian rock classic unjustly ignored in America.
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Brian Boone
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Certain songs are so well-known that we assume they were hits, but their popularity is actually retroactive. “I Want Candy,” by Bow Wow Wow, for example, is a definitive ’80s…
Brian Boone
1 Min Read
When pop stars turn 40, the palm flower crystal embedded in their hand turns black, indicating its time for them to go away forever. By and large, there’s little market…
Brian Boone
1 Min Read
In 1994, after more than 30 years largely intact and as one of the world’s best, most famous, popular, and hardworking bands, the Rolling Stones experienced a major shift. That…
Brian Boone
1 Min Read
Under its actual, original, Spanish-language title of “Asereje,” “The Ketchup Song” is one of the biggest pop hits everywhere in the world except America ever. It’s like the soccer of…
Brian Boone
1 Min Read
Despite the cool, vaguely exotic euro-discoy name, Meco was really a kind of nerdy dude from Pennsylvania (real name: Domenico Monardo). As such, Meco loved only two things in life:…
Brian Boone
1 Min Read
Grunge rock came out of the punk tradition, sidestepping the decade and a half of corporate rock that came in between punk’s prime of 1977 and grunge’s rise in 1991….
Brian Boone
1 Min Read
MTV started airing 20-year-old reruns of The Monkees in 1986, a perfect fit for the fledgling network—quick cuts, youth culture, wild and crazy attitude—such were the things MTV aimed to…
Brian Boone
2 Min Read
In one of the strangest and blandest fads of all time, Aussiemania hit hard in the 1980s. In that super-conservative decade, Australians were suddenly seen as exotic, but not too…