Stay tuned throughout the weekend as we continue our tribute to Michael Jackson, with reflections and remembrances from the Popdose staff.
Matthew Bolin
63 Articles
Matthew Bolin discovered popular music could be a good thing at age 13. During a field trip to a local college library, he found Rolling Stone's "100 Best Albums, 1967-1987" issue, and a great and glorious world opened up. In the years since, Rolling Stone has shrunk, but Matthew has moved up in the world, and will eventually claim his title as "America's Librarian" sometime in the next decade.
Matthew Bolin
1 Min Read
This week’s Popdose Flashback doubles as the return of a much-missed series — Matthew Bolin’s When Good Albums Happen to Bad People — and offers begrudging respect for the best solo release from notorious rock ‘n’ roll assclown Don Henley.
Matthew Bolin
1 Min Read
Our first installment of the new Popdose Lost Classics series is an album from earlier this decade by none other than our own Popmeister, Jeff Giles! What was supposed to…
Matthew Bolin
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As you may have heard by now, Rod Stewart confirmed last week that all the surviving members of his old band, the Faces (including current Rolling Stone Ron Wood and…
Matthew Bolin
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To me, Todd Rundgren’s 1972 Something/Anything? is kind of the white Sign ‘O’ the Times. Like Prince’s masterwork, Rundgren’s is a sprawling, two disc, self-contained epic, bouncing from style to…
Matthew Bolin
1 Min Read
Last week I talked about the Beatles’ 1968 masterpiece, The White Album; this week, I’m talking about the Rolling Stones’ masterpiece from the same year, Beggars Banquet. A good deal…
Matthew Bolin
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1968’s The Beatles, aka “The White Album,” is the Beatles at their most frightening: the sound of drugs, of implosion, of tension and competition. Added to that are the numerous…
Matthew Bolin
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I don’t think any other song scared me more as a child than “If You Could Read My Mind,” the moody ballad that became Gordon Lightfoot’s first self-sung hit in…
Matthew Bolin
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With summer moving towards fall, and the greatest and creepiest holiday of the year now less than two months away, I thought I’d take a break from flogging the careers…
Matthew Bolin
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This week’s chart is being covered by Popdose’s own Matthew Bolin. Boy, it seems like only yesterday he was giving Popdose readers too many Wham! songs or a reason to…
Matthew Bolin
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Normally, this series takes on an artist who’s a bad person and whose “badness” has tempered his or her ability to make quality albums with consistency — in other words,…
Matthew Bolin
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Many artists put on emotional masks, and there are a multiplicity of reasons they do so. Some simply wish to distance the “real them” from the audience, in order to…
Matthew Bolin
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At least in the mind of the man himself, Cat Scratch Fever is the work of the baddest mofo alive. A dude who will take your little ones crossbow hunting…
Matthew Bolin
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Robbie Robertson’s recorded output with his legendary band — that is, The Band — and his solo career would seem like different beasts on the surface. While The Band was…
Matthew Bolin
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You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that this has been the hardest post for me to write since Popdose started. I mean, it’s been a damn month:…
Matthew Bolin
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When thinking about Rick James nowadays, it seems easy to slip into one of two moods: One is the enjoyment of the way Dave Chappelle satirized his life so humorously,…
Matthew Bolin
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[Note: Tom Werman, the producer discussed in this post, has disputed several elements of the story. To read his response, click here. –Ed.] We’re not too far away from a…
Matthew Bolin
2 Min Read
It seems almost mind-blowing to think this now, but at the end of the 1980s there was no bigger star in the pop sky than Bobby Brown: Don’t Be Cruel…
Matthew Bolin
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Berry Gordy is a powerful man. Not only did he found Motown Records, building a musical empire that allowed blacks to crossover into what had pretty much been a white-controlled…
Matthew Bolin
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“That’s Leonard’s Jeep,” Robert said as we walked his dog past the monastery. My wife and I had driven north about ten miles, most of it curving two-thirds of the…
Matthew Bolin
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The theme to Moonlighting (1985-1989) was one of those great TV theme songs that was able to set the mood for the program that followed it. In just under a…
Matthew Bolin
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Rod Stewart’s 1991 cover of Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow” (download) is perhaps the biggest hit that I’ll cover in my series. The third single off of Rod’s Vagabond Heart album,…
Matthew Bolin
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It is an inescapable fact that while George Michael left Andrew Ridgeley far behind in his rearview mirror, and while the Faith album proved Michael was capable of being the…
Matthew Bolin
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When I was 17 years old, I had my first serious makeout session. When George Michael was 17, he wrote the song that has arguably led to more makeout and…
Matthew Bolin
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It’s Saturday night, and it’s time to get back out on the dance floor as the all Wham! weekend continues. This time around, I’ve got a batch of Wham!-related extended…
Matthew Bolin
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This part of the weekend covers…covers; both Wham! and George Michael covering other people, and a couple of acts covering Wham! and George Michael (and no, none will be the…
Matthew Bolin
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Backstory: About fifteen years ago, I was visiting my hometown outside of Los Angeles, tooling around with a couple of friends around the local colleges. I remember where we were…
Matthew Bolin
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The first single from Rod Stewart’s album A Spanner in the Works, the Tom Petty composition “Leave Virgina Alone,” could be considered his first single in a very long time…
Matthew Bolin
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In 1996, Rod Stewart released a collection of his ballads over the years, entitled If We Fall In Love Tonight. Or rather, Warner Brothers released this album, probably based partly…
Matthew Bolin
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Hollywood, 1986. Fade in. The scene is an executive’s office. Exec: So what’s the pitch? Producer: Okay, Martin Short is this bumbling dude, okay? And somehow, he gets stuck with…