Every couple of years, along comes a mega-successful pop/rock band that has catchy tunes but no discernible identity at all…think Matchbox 20 before Rob Thomas developed a personality. The most recent example of this phenomenon would have to be The Fray. On the back of two mega-successful singles, the Denver-based quartet’s debut album, How to Save a Life, came out of nowhere to sell nearly three million copies. This happened despite the fact that the […]
“No my first name ain’t baby, it’s Janet. Miss Jackson if you’re nasty”.
That line has become legendary in the twenty-three years since it first was popularized, but a lot of folks forget how surprising it was to hear it coming out of Baby Jackson’s mouth at the time. After releasing two albums of sugary-sweet pop/soul, Janet traveled to Minneapolis to meet up with producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, changing the course of her career […]
If any one song summarizes why Run-DMC will be taking their rightful place as inductees in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, “Rock Box” is it. Even if you take away Eddie Martinez’s squealing guitar histrionics, “Rock Box” just oozes rock & roll attitude-moreso than any other hip-hop record that had been made up to that point, and more than many records that have been made since!!
In today’s super-consumerist musical world, where […]