The quintessential “little ditty” about two crazy kids in love, John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” introduces us to a pair of all-American teens with all-American dreams. “Jackie’s gonna be a football star” with Diane the pliant debutante at his side, forever willing to let him have his way with her behind…
For the past three years, The A.V. Club has devoted the month of December to reflecting on our favorite holiday entertainments, and this year is no different. It’s a feature so nice, it’s never had the same name twice, and this year it’s the 12 Days Of Non-Denominational Winter Holidays.
I’m generally in support of the vinyl renaissance, though ongoing trends in catalog releases give me pause. Basically, the recording industry has rediscovered a means of fleecing its customers, who didn’t need Forrest Gump: The Soundtrack when it was a two-disc CD set, let alone a three-LP reissue on red, white, and…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re highlighting the songs we’ve listened to the most this year from our iTunes or on our Spotifys, Rdios, or stereos.
My parents’ house has two Christmas trees. One is the show tree. It’s color coordinated and lit in white lights. It stands in the front window, and the presents that lay under it are meticulously matched to its color scheme. The other is kept in the family room. It’s a mishmash of colored lights and ornaments, some…
On October 22, The A.V. Club and Target welcomed Phantogram to Chicago’s Thalia Hall for the first installment of a concert and video series called “It’s All Around You.” For the videos, we didn’t just rely on our crack team of pros—we also called on our readers to film the show from the audience’s perspective. The…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re highlighting the songs we’ve listened to the most this year from our iTunes or on our Spotifys, Rdios, or stereos.
Nothing rides the pretentiousness line for rock bands quite like a spoken-word track, but Pearl Jam’s “I’m Open”—from 1996’s widely underloved No Code—falls mostly on the right side of it. Eddie Vedder, in his distinctive mumble, describes a man lying in bed, trying to regain his own sense of childhood wonder, and…
Welcome back to AVQ&A, where we throw out a question for discussion among the staff and readers. Consider this a prompt to compare notes on your interface with pop culture, to reveal your embarrassing tastes and experiences, and to ponder how our diverse lives all led us to convene here together. Got a question you’d…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re highlighting the songs we’ve listened to the most this year from our iTunes or on our Spotifys, Rdios, or stereos.
Nick Lowe is a towering figure in the history of British rock music. His biggest contribution is penning “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding,” which became a worldwide smash for Elvis Costello, but Lowe also has an impressive solo career of his own, and a lengthy list of important production…
On October 22, The A.V. Club and Target welcomed Phantogram to Chicago’s Thalia Hall for the first installment of a concert and video series called “It’s All Around You.” For the videos, we didn’t just rely on our crack team of pros—we also called on our readers to film the show from the audience’s perspective. The…
Welcome to the Music Roundtable, a blatant rip-off of TV Club’s TV Roundtable feature. Here, music writers and fans discuss recent reissues, hot new releases, or just records we like. For this installment, we’re talking about the Pixies’ 1989 album Doolittle, which recently received a three-disc reissue called Doolittl…
It’s such an awful feeling, walking into a shopping mall and being reminded via in-store music that there is no such thing as autumn. According to the retail industry, there are no more than a dozen days separating the summer wind-down from the onslaught of the holiday season, which is a pretty awful time of year…
Lineup instability is an integral part of Smashing Pumpkins’ mythology. While on some level this personnel upheaval is a moot point—after all, frontman Billy Corgan is in charge of the band’s vision and aesthetic—the revolving group of collaborators has made it difficult to find a sonic through-line in the group’s…
Here’s an idea: Take Ghostface Killah, pair him with a distinct producer or production team, assign him an album-length concept, then let him rip. That formula proved so winning on last year’s Twelve Reasons To Die, Ghostface’s collaboration with composer Adrian Younge, that nobody can fault his latest album 36 Seasons…
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re highlighting the songs we’ve listened to the most this year from our iTunes or on our Spotifys, Rdios, or stereos.
Our main list of the year’s best albums doesn’t just appear out of thin air. It’s tallied from ballots by a group of writers, each of whom list their top 15 in order, with their favorite getting 15 points, their next pick getting 14, and so on. Below are the individual ballots, plus some personal commentary on discs…
Every year, The A.V. Club invites our regular music writers and staff to pick their favorite albums of the past 12 months. This year, we asked writers to pick their 15 favorite albums, with no. 1 earning 15 points, no. 2 earning 14, and so on. We tallied up the results to arrive at our final best-of list. (In the…
Like most gimmick Twitter feeds, @GridironGrammer has one joke; like a great gimmick Twitter feed, @GridironGrammer tells its one joke well, and with remarkable versatility. Here’s that joke: One mundane observation about football, followed by a piece of “trivia” from Kelsey Grammer’s acting career. For example:
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