2. Losing My Religion

Impeccable, untouchable, not a note out of place. Despite its acoustic nature it sounds as insistent and relentless to me as something off of …And Justice for All. Once you learn what the song’s about — I had no freaking clue back when it was a hit — it feels like Stipe pounding on your door, begging for help, using Buck as a battering ram.

I wrote about my five favorite R.E.M. songs for the great Luke O’Neil’s newsletter Welcome to Hell World along with tons of other cool writers and such. My relationship with R.E.M. doesn’t go that deep but the stuff I know and like I REALLY know and like, so I hope that’s an interesting perspective.

NB: I would name the core unit at the heart of both Parliament-Funkadelic and the JBs (and their many side projects) as the greatest American band, followed by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and then probably R.E.M. But that’s really neither here nor there.

9. Interview With the Vampire

“Home Is Where You’re Happy” by Charles Manson

“Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.” Controversial, Daniel Molloy! The conductor of this vampire drama’s titular interview, played by Eric Bogosian, has very little patience for the bloodsucker in question, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and even less for Louis’s psychotic, pubescent protégé, the teenage vampire Claudia. It’s her Molloy compares to Manson, the cult leader who defined the death of the Age of Aquarius … and much to my everlasting surprise, it’s Manson who soundtracks the end of this episode. Molloy is right: Manson could be a talented songwriter in very limited doses, as his buoyant ode to personal freedom, “Home Is Where You’re Happy,” makes clear. It’s just hard to hear that happiness when you recall the fate of Sharon Tate, which is what makes the song a strong choice for the soundtrack of a show about magnetic mass murderers, even when they’re of the supernatural variety.

I wrote about ten of the best uses of popular music on TV this year for Vulture.

‘Sesame Street’

PBS, 1969-Present; HBO, 2016-20; HBO Max, 2020-Present

He wasn’t a big yellow bird or a furry blue monster, but Joe Raposo was as integral to the success of the children’s educational institution Sesame Street as any Muppet. In addition to writing classic Sesame songs like “Bein’ Green,” “Sing,” and “C Is for Cookie” — that’s good enough for me — Raposo composed the jaunty, instantly recognizable theme song that helped lodge the show in the public consciousness. With lyrics by Raposo, Jon Stone, and Bruce Hart, “Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?” conjures up images of smiling kids running down the sidewalk on a sunny day — headed, in the words of Don Draper, to a place where they know they are loved. —S.T.C.

I contributed over a dozen entries to Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 100 TV Theme Songs of All Time, from Game of Thrones to Cheers to Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Go read and argue!

The 1990s albums reissued here, however, tell the story best. After a period in the pop-music wilderness, this is the decade during which Bowie reasserted his role as the godfather of alternative music, in pretty much any form it took. (The missing link between this box set and its 1980s equivalent Loving the Alien are the two records he recorded with his unjustly reviled rock band Tin Machine; I’ll just say “Justice for ‘You Belong in Rock n’ Roll’” and leave it at that.) Accusations of trend-hopping dogged Bowie at the time, for reasons that now feel increasingly silly—who wouldn’t want to hear him take a stab at industrial or jungle? This is the kind of genre play that paid dividends with his avant-jazz inflected swan song Blackstar, two decades later.

I reviewed the new David Bowie box set Brilliant Adventure—which features all his 1990s albums, including Black Tie White Noise, Buddha of Suburbia, 1. Outside, Earthling, ‘hours…,’ and the previously unreleased Toy—for Pitchfork.

The fourth and final installment of the Zeptember podcast series on Led Zeppelin from me and Matthew Perpetua is out! This one’s a Q&A episode. Go subscribe and enjoy!

Matthew Perpetua and I continue our discussion of Led Zeppelin with a look at their albums IV, Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti in the latest episode of ZEPTEMBER, now available through Matthew’s Patreon. Go subscribe!

I’m joining my pal Matthew Perpetua for a four-part podcast series on the work of Led Zeppelin, starting with the opening installment on Zeppelin I, II, and III. Go subscribe to his patreon so you can listen!

Two of Vol. 4’s ten tracks have found enduring second lives as storied covers by other acts. The rollicking, science-fictional “Supernaut”—like an inverse “Iron Man,” it’s about a voyager through space and time who’s actually enjoying the trip—received a thrashing industrial makeover at the hands of a dubiously named Ministry side project dubbed 1,000 Homo DJs by Jim Nash, the (gay) head of their record label WaxTrax!. (Hold out for the version with vocals by Trent Reznor, which wound up suppressed by his old record label for years.) On the other end of the sonic spectrum, the moving piano ballad “Changes” was converted into a gut-wrenching soul scorcher by singer Charles Bradley, who transmuted its lyrics about a dissolved romantic relationship into a lament for his late mother. Blessed with one of Iommi’s wickedest riffs and Osbourne’s most vulnerable vocal performances, respectively, the original versions of both songs can stand next to these excellent reinterpretations without being eclipsed; Ward’s carnival-like percussion breakdown in “Supernaut” in particular feels like finding a prize in the song’s otherwise thunderous Cracker Jack box.

I reviewed Black Sabbath Vol. 4 for Pitchfork.

The annual holiday tradition returns: I wrote about ten of the year’s best TV music cues for Vulture.

I’m back on Matthew Perpetua’s Fluxpod in a free-ranging discussion about rock’n’roll, covering Tears for Fears, Human League, Aerosmith, Guns n’ Roses, Nirvana, Lenny Kravitz and more. It’s a Patreon-exclusive episode, so go and subscribe already!

The fifth and sixth volumes of Ghosts (subtitled Together and Locusts respectively) return to the atmospheric terrain now familiar from Reznor and Ross’ soundtrack work: buzzy ambience, simple melodic hooks, an emotional palette that vacillates between peace and dread. But rather than soundtracking an on-screen drama, they arise from the very real COVID-19 pandemic and its society-wide remedy, social distancing. The musicians say that the current crisis was the reason they completed the two records in the first place, “as a means of staying somewhat sane.” As such, Ghosts V-VI—released for free less than two months after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency—are very likely the first major albums to have been inspired by the coronavirus crisis.

I reviewed the two new, free Nine Inch Nails albums Ghosts V: Together and Ghosts VI: Locusts for Pitchfork.

The horror-movie atmospherics of Quake are the closest reference point for Watchmen’s first and strongest track, “How the West Was Really Won.” The show’s unofficial theme music—it recurs repeatedly in the series’ most frightful moments, including the ripped-from-the-comic image of a gigantic alien squid in the ruins of Manhattan—it’s the sound of Reznor and Ross going full John Carpenter, with a simple synth hook that seems to swallow up more of the world around you with each repetition. Its melodic structure recurs throughout the score, in the gently acoustic “Watch Over This Boy” at the end of Volume 1, the jazz throwback “Nostalgia Blues” on Volume 2 (co-written and performed by John Beasley), and the major-key weightlessness of “The Waiting Sky” on Volume 3. The original song is resilient enough to mutate in this way, showing off the duo’s skill with leitmotif as well as their considerable range. It’s the theme music Nine Inch Nails fans have been waiting for them to deliver.

I reviewed Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s excellent three-volume Watchmen score for Pitchfork.

8. Mindhunter: “M.E.” by Gary Numan

After a shaky first season that was all over the map in terms of what we were supposed to feel about its main characters — remember the stiff Holden Ford romance subplot? — Mindhunter settled into a comfortably macabre groove in its second season, chronicling the drudgery involved in tracking down some of the world’s worst people. In the case of the musical montage set to “Cars” singer Gary Numan’s synth stomper “M.E.,” the drudgery is the whole point.

The sequence follows FBI Agents Holden Ford and Bill Tench as they stake out bridges where they hope to trap the perpetrator of the Atlanta Child Murders. It’s a joyless slog of bad sleep, shitty room service, buzzing mosquitoes, muggy weather, cigarette smoke, and ever-shortening patience. Numan’s song, sung from the perspective of a machine that survived the apocalypse alone, provides a surprisingly apt accompaniment to a routine that breaks Ford and Tench down until they feel unmoored from the very humanity they’re trying to protect.

In case you missed it—I know I did!—I wrote about the ten best TV music cues of the year for Vulture.

Michael Kamen is the sound of bombast. The go-to orchestral collaborator for a plethora of huge rock acts, including Metallica, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, and Queen, he also had a hand in emotionally soaring recordings by Eurythmics and Kate Bush. His work as a film composer was the accompaniment of choice for action and science-fiction filmmaking in the ’80s and ’90s, too, as he springboarded from his work on the film version of The Wall into The Dead Zone, Lifeforce, Brazil, Highlander, the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard franchises, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen AND Adventures in Babysitting…the list goes on and on. There’s a broad swathe of culture where if you have any fond memories of it at all, you have fond memories of Michael Kamen’s work.

Michael Kamen also contributed the original score for Road House, which is easy not to notice if you haven’t watched Road House several dozen times. In the trifecta of house band leader Jeff Healey and music supervisor Jimmy Iovine, Kamen is undoubtedly the lowest on the totem pole in terms of how you hear the film.

But you definitely hear him here.

When the time comes for Dalton to fight Jimmy Reno (that’s his canonical last name even though it’s never mentioned in the film; the same could be said for Emperor Palpatine in the original Star Wars trilogy, just for the record, and look how well that turned out), there’s no barroom boogie to be found. It’s Kamen’s frightened-sounding strings and call-for-help brass that define this fight. I’ve watched the movie with people who, for whatever reason, notice this right away, and their reaction is almost always incredulous: “What the hell is this music? When did this become Batman?” Incredulous, but delighted, since music this ostentatiously HOLLYWOOD EPIC is just about the only kind I can think of that’s appropriate for this savage escalation of hostilities.

From here on out, Kamen will be the dominant sound of the film. That should tell you something right there.

Variety is the spice of the Juan MacLean. Like label co-founder James Murphy, this core DFA act—comprising frontwoman and LCD Soundsystem alum Nancy Whang and Six Finger Satellite guitarist turned synth wizard John MacLean—has historically taken a magpie approach to dance and electronic sounds. That’s how a Heaven 17 pastiche like The Future Will Come’s 2009 title track can accompany a piano-house banger like “Happy Home,” or how the New Order-esque “Love Stops Here” can share real estate on 2014’s In a Dream with “Charlotte,” a song that sounds more like Beaucoup Fish–era Underworld than anything Underworld have recorded since. Derivative? Pshaw: Whang and MacLean are so proficient and so soulful in their craft that TJM always feels like its own life-affirming entity.

So what to make of The Brighter the Light, an album assembled with sameness in mind?

I reviewed the Juan MacLean’s new singles compilation The Brighter the Light for Pitchfork. (Don’t miss “Feel Like Movin'”!)

Type O Negative sounded how clove cigarettes smell, how crushed red velvet feels, how black hair dye looks when it stains your bathroom sink. Led by singer and bassist Peter Steele—a towering figure with bone structure to die for, best described as either Evil Thor or Dracula with a gym membership—these Brooklyn-based purveyors of goth metal spent their career exploring the genre’s inherent tension between seriousness and schtick. Originally released on Record Store Day in a limited run and now reissued (on gorgeous green vinyl), None More Negative packages nearly that entire career, featuring all six albums from their years on Roadrunner Records. (Their final effort, Dead Again, was released on another label and isn’t included here.) It’s a suitably massive set for a band best known for its eerie epics.

The best-known of these kick off 1993’s Bloody Kisses: “Christian Woman” explores its subject’s sublimation of sexuality into the crucified body of Christ with all the subtlety of “Ken Russell’s The Devils: The Musical.” It continues with “Black No. 1,” an affectionate send-up of a goth girl’s beauty regimen that launched the band into the public consciousness, via a striking black-and-white video that received heavy Beavis and Butthead rotation. Both songs showcase Steele’s distinctive, vampiric baritone, complete with theatrically rolled R’s and overemphasized consonants (“on her milk-white neck-kkh, the devil’s mark-k”). The man eroticized diction.

I reviewed Type O Negative’s box set None More Negative for Pitchfork. I should note that for me, any number grade above like 6.2 means “you should give this a listen, it’s worth spending some time with.” To the extent that the numbers are under my control (I never have the final say) I grade with that in mind, something that gets lost when people react to the numbers alone but which I believe is borne out in the text of the reviews. Which I hope people read!

This morning I appeared live of SiriusXM Volume‘s Feedback to talk about the Do’s and Don’ts of Needle-drops with hosts Lori Majewski and Jim Shearer. If I find a way to listen to it online I’ll let you know!

DO: Use well-known songs in unexpected ways that still resonate with the original intent.

Recorded pseudonymously under the Derek & the Dominos moniker, “Layla” is Eric Clapton’s finest moment as a songwriter — an admittedly low bar to clear, since nearly all his best stuff was written by Jack Bruce, George Harrison, or JJ Cale, and also Duane Allman’s contribution to the song should not be underestimated. But still! It’s an outpouring of unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend and frequent collaborator Harrison, a way for this guy to reforge his broken heart into a merciless series of interlocking riffs and shout-sung choruses. It concludes with a movement that’s as gentle as the body of the song is frenzied, though it’s no less desperate-sounding for that.

Naturally, Martin Scorsese used it to soundtrack the discovery of half a dozen dead bodies.

Why does it work in GoodFellas? Because it gets right at the heart of the mournful, elegiac feel of the original without simply rehashing its overt emotional content. No one is heartbroken over finding poor Frankie Carbone frozen solid inside a meat truck, except perhaps Mrs. Carbone. But there’s still a sense that something has been lost, that the promised happy ending will never arrive.

More than that, “Layla” plays the same role in Clapton’s career that the murders that result in this sequence play in the career of Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway. The song is Slowhand’s masterpiece, and the Lufthansa heist, literally the biggest robbery in American history at the time, was Jimmy the Gent’s. Both Jimmy and Eric were at the top of their very different games here.

Put it all together and it’s a complex, captivating song choice that elevates both the scene it accompanies and the song itself, without the former relying on the latter to do all the dirty work. Scorsese’s library is full of this kind of music cue —as is GoodFellas itself.

SEE ALSO:
• Fargo, “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath
• American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins

This one was months in the making: I wrote about how and how not to use music cues in TV and movies for Vulture.

Or rather, Dalton and Dr. Elizabeth Clay do not sell their collective soul to rock ‘n’ roll. As Dalton flips on the radio to find some mood music, they get as far as one complete recitation of the titular phrase from the song by German heavy metal band Bullet before wrinkling their noses, nodding “no,” and changing the channel. It’s 1989, and a quick listen of that high, multi-tracked vocal chorus reads “hair metal.” It reads inauthenticity, pretty boys, heshers, idiots, poseurs, L.A.—you could just as well say “40-year-old adolescents, felons, power drinkers, and trustees of modern chemistry.”

My pop-cultural awareness began in 1988, when my grandmother got me Appetite for Destruction for Easter. It blossomed fully, to the point where I consider it the dawn of my life as a thinking consumer of popular culture, the very summer Road House came out, in the form of Tim Burton’s Batman. In between there somewhere, I started watching MTV. As such I can assure you that didn’t need to have Nirvana in the zeitgeist to figure that there was something suspect about hair metal at the time. You didn’t even turn your nose up at metal entirely. Metallica were gigantic already, thanks to the video for “One.” Living Colour and Faith No More had absolutely massive alternative-inflected hits with “Cult of Personality” and “Epic,” emphasizing groove rather than shimmy and slink. And though no one appreciates this now, Guns n’ Roses’ oppositional relationship to the poodle-haired likes of Poison, Slaughter, Winger, and their close personal enemies Mötley Crüe genuinely made Axl Rose the John the Baptist to Kurt Cobain’s Jesus Christ. It was that distinct.

Of course I doubt any of this would be relevant to Dalton and Doc. When we first hop into his Benz as he departs the parking garage back in New York (the “what do I look like, a valet?” scene), the station on the radio is 102.7. That’s WNEW, New York’s storied home for classic rock. You weren’t getting anything flashier than “Rebel Rebel” or Thin Lizzy on that. As we see from his friendship with Cody, roots rock—white blues, blue-eyed soul, and most likely the original African-American article as well—are Dalton’s specialty. Sure enough, the moment he stumbles across the opening “These…arms…of…miiiiiiiiine” from Otis Redding’s torch song of the same name, Dalton does not touch that dial.

The interesting thing here is that Bullet are not hair metal, not really. Here, have a look and a listen:

Mustaches? In my hair metal act? Not bloody likely. This is just straight-up party metal, its fast-paced rockin’ boogie part of a transitional sound that combined the increased punk-inspired ripped-denim sneer of the genre as displayed by New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands with the sweaty good-time glam of Slade, the New York Dolls, Thin Lizzy to a certain extent, and the like. This was a popular move at the time—ask Quiet Riot or Twisted Sister, to say nothing of the Brits themselves—and there’s no reason Germans couldn’t do it too. (One look at the album cover will have you thinking of Spinal Tap’s faster-paced parodies, like “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight”; that movie also came out in 1984.)

But Road House needed something that signified all that bad shit I listed above, and whether because it was cheaper or because music supervisor and future Interscope head/Beats by Dre billionaire Jimmy Iovine didn’t want to alienate his Sunset Strip contacts, Bullet got the nod. And insofar as the song sounds like the soundtrack to a barfight, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad choice. Dalton just does to the song what he’d do to its physical equivalent: end it quick.

Klaus Nomi is an easy artist to eulogize. The German-born East Village fixture’s striking, self-made look and soaring operatic countertenor—in layman’s terms, he sang really, really high—brought him to the attention of culture vulture supreme David Bowie. Nomi famously performed with the Thin White Duke on “Saturday Night Live,” hoping for a full collaboration that never materialized. A deal with Bowie’s label RCA, however, enabled Nomi to release two albums abroad before his death, from complications due to AIDS, in 1983. From ANOHNI’s angelic warble to Janelle Monáe’s sci-fi tuxedos, it isn’t hard to find Nomi’s legacy in pop’s outer reaches.

Klaus Nomi, his 1981 debut album, affords us an entirely different opportunity: celebrating Nomi’s music rather than his myth. When an album’s repertoire goes from Man Parrish to Chubby Checker to Camille Saint-Saëns, it’s hard to look anywhere but the music. As beautiful as Nomi was, it’s worth peeling your eyes away from the ghost-white makeup, mountain-range hairstyle, and Tristan Tzara tux to see the truly gifted musician beneath.

I reviewed Klaus Nomi’s wonderful self-titled debut album for Pitchfork.