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But Mtv Relishes Its Vestigial Role As A Star Maker, So Every Year It Puts All Its Clout Into Making The Vmas The Biggest, Splashiest, Loudest Show-biz Extravaganza Of The Year, Honoring All This Music For Existing, After A Year Of Paying Barely Any Attention To It.

-Rob Sheffield

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But Mtv Relishes Its

Rob Sheffield

...

But Mtv Relishes Its Vestigial Role As A Star Maker, So Every Year It Puts All Its Clout Into Making The Vmas The Biggest, Splashiest, Loudest Show-biz Extravaganza Of The Year, Honoring All This Music For Existing, After A Year Of Paying Barely Any Attention To It.

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The Times You Lived Through, The People You Shared Those Times With — Nothing Brings It All To Life Like An Old Mix Tape. It Does A Better Job Of Storing Up Memories Than Actual Brain Tissue Can Do. Every Mix Tape Tells A Story. Put Them Together, And They Can Add Up To The Story Of A Life.

You Can Hear The Celtic Heartbeat All Over Europe And America, From Bing Crosby To Jack White, From The Smiths To My Bloody Valentine, From House Of Pain To Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch.

Somtimes You Lie In A Strange Room, In A Strange Person's Home, And You Feel Yourself Bending Out Of Shape. Melting, Touching Something Hot, Something That Warps You In Drastic And Probably Irreversible Ways You Won't Get To Take Stock Of Until Its Too Late

But The Rhythm Of The Mix Tape Is The Rhythm Of Romance, The Analog Hum Of A Physical Connection Between Two Sloppy, Human Bodies.

Monogamous Musicians Are Like Vegan Hockey Players.

But The Answer Is Simple. Love Is A Mix Tape.

I Get Sentimental Over The Music Of The ’90s. Deplorable, Really. But I Love It All. As Far As I’m Concerned The ’90s Was The Best Era For Music Ever, Even The Stuff That I Loathed At The Time, Even The Stuff That Gave Me Stomach Cramps.

It's Always That One Song That Gets To You. You Can Hide, But The Song Comes To Find You.

At An Incredibly Divisive Point In Pop History, Donna Summer Managed To Create An Undeniable Across-the-board Experience Of Mass Pleasure - After 'bad Girls,' Nobody Ever Tried Claiming Disco Sucked Again. It Set The Template For What Michael Jackson Would Do A Few Months Later With 'off The Wall.'

But Bringing People Together Is What Music Has Always Done Best.

I Had No Voice To Talk With Because She Was My Whole Language.

'the Queen Is Dead' Is Not Merely The Smiths' Best Album, But It Is One Of Those Timeless, Perfect, Inexhaustible Artifacts That Could Only Have Been Made By A Gang Of Sullen, Sun-deprived Rock & Roll Boys Fighting Off Adulthood Tooth And Nail.

She Was The First Person On Either Side Of Her Family To Go To College, And She Held Herself To Insanely High Standards. She Worried A Lot About Whether She Was Good Enough. It Was Surprising To See How Relieved She Seemed Whenever I Told Her How Amazing She Was. I Wanted Her To Feel Strong And Free. She Was Beautiful When She Was Free.

Seeing Taylor Swift Live In 2013 Is Seeing A Maestro At The Top Of Her Or Anyone's Game. No Other Pop Auteur Can Touch Her Right Now For Emotional Excess Or Musical Reach - Her Punk Is So Punk, Her Disco Is So Disco. The Red Sequins On Her Guitar Match The Ones On Her Microphone, Her Shoes And 80 Percent Of The Crowd.

If All Music Did Was Bring The Past Alive, That Would Be Fine. You Can Hide Away In Music And Let It Recapture Memories Of Things That Used To Be. But Music Is Greedy And It Wants More Of Your Heart Than That. It Demands The Future, Your Future. Music Wants The Rest Of Your Life. So You Can't Rest Easy. At Any Moment, A Song Can Come Out Of Nowhere To Shake You Up, Jump-start Your Emotions, Ruin Your Life.

One Of The Best Moments Of Any Liars Show Is Hearing The Crowd Squawk 'we're Doomed! We're Doomed!' On Cue During 'we Fenced Other Houses With The Bones Of Our Own.' Maybe Not The Most Uplifting Audience Sing-along In The Indie Rock World, But One Of The Most Reliably Entertaining.

There Are All Kinds Of Mix Tapes. There Is Always A Reason To Make One.

Every Moment Of My Life Has A Soundtrack, So I Never Know When Some Song Is Going To Jump Me By Surprise And Bring The Memory Alive.

When Ke$ha Tries To Rap Like L'trimm, She Sounds Like Any Ordinary Lonely Teenage Girl Stuck In A Nowhere Town, Singing Along To Her Radio And Dreaming Of A Party Where She's The Star. Ke$ha's Greatness Is That In Her Voice, You Can Hear Both The Loser Girl And The Star. All Hail The Queen Of Noi$e!

It’s The Same With People Who Say, ‘whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.’ Even People Who Say This Must Realize That The Exact Opposite Is True. What Doesn’t Kill You Maims You, Cripples You, Leaves You Weak, Makes You Whiny And Full Of Yourself At The Same Time. The More Pain, The More Pompous You Get. Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Incredibly Annoying.

I Didn't Know What I Was. I Didn't Have A Noun.

'so You Think You Can Dance' Comes On As A High-minded Leap Up The Evolutionary Ladder From Other Reality Shows - On This One, You're Supposed To Learn Something, And The Guest Judges Are Fellow Dance Professionals Rather Than Actual Celebrities.

When We Die, We Will Turn Into Songs, And We Will Hear Each Other And Remember Each Other.

Like Any Teenager Who Reads The Great Gatsby, Probably, I Was Madly In Love With The Teacher Who Had Opened It Up For Me.

'the Voice' Has Lots Of Singers Who Fit The 'idol' Mold Of Young, Innocent Ingenues With Psycho Stage Moms. But It Also Has Long-suffering Adult Pros, With A Whiff Of Thirtysomething Despair In Their Voices. That Adds An Edge Of Realness.

The Word 'repulse': I Hate This Word. I Believe 'repel' Is A Perfectly Good Word, And 'repulsion' Is The Noun, As Well As The Title Of An Excellent Dinosaur Jr. Song. A Compulsion Compels You; An Impulse Impels You. Nobody Ever Says 'compulse' Or 'impulse' As A Verb. So Why Would You Ever Say 'repulse'? This Word Haunts Me In My Sleep, Like A Silver Dagger Dancing Before My Eyes. Renee Looked It Up And I Was Wrong. But I Still Kind Of Think I'm Right.

The Dilemma Of The Eighth-grade Dance Is That Boys And Girls Use Music In Different Ways. Girls Enjoy Music They Can Dance To, Music With Strong Vocals And Catchy Melodies. Boys, On The Other Hand, Enjoy Music They Can Improve By Making Up Filthy New Lyrics.

Being A Pop Fan Is A Lot Like Catholic Devotion - Lots Of Ritual, Lots Of Ceremony... We Touch The Icon To Enter The Sacred Space, Genuflecting To Reliquaries And Ostentatoria That Make Something Splendid Of Our Most Secret Desires And Agonies.

'american Horror' Goes For A Very Specific Kind Of Seventies Suburban Downer Ambience - 'flowers In The Attic' Paperbacks, Black Sabbath Album Covers And Late-night Flicks Like 'let's Scare Jessica To Death.' It Even Has 'go Ask Alice'-era Urban Legends.

Sending Paris Hilton To Jail For Being The Most Loathed Celeprosy Lesion In The History Of The Species Seems Like A Happening Idea At First - Forty-five Days At Century Regional Detention Center Is So The New Thirty Days At Promises Malibu! But It Sets A Dangerous Precedent To Jail Celebs Just Because Someone Hates Them.

Thank You For The Music, Sleater-kinney. This Gang Of Three Was The Best American Punk Rock Band Ever. Ever.

You Can't Beat The Beehive For Glam Punkette Attitude.

Every American Wants A Clean Slate, But Nobody Wants To Lose What They've Got.

Tonight, I Feel Like My Whole Body Is Made Out Of Memories. I'm A Mix-tape, A Cassette That's Been Rewound So Many Times You Can Hear The Fingerprints Smudged On The Tape.

It Was Like Trying To Break Up With The Color Orange, Or Wednesday, Or Silent E. It Was The Most Passionate And Tumultuous Relationship I'd Ever Known.

Rock Stars Did Not Invent Burning Out. They Just Do It Louder.

We All Get As Miserable As Erika M. Andersen Sometimes, But We Rarely Approach Her Musical-ideas-per-miserable-minute Ratio.

I'd Shut The Whole World Down Just To Tell You.

Celebrity Despicability Is A Precious Thing.

Precious Things

Julia Louis-dreyfus Is Just Perfect In 'veep.' She Gets To Show Off The Spiky Claws Beneath Her Patrician Finesse. The Obvious Way To Play 'veep' Would Be To Make Louis-dreyfus A Folksy Heroine, One With More Common Sense Or Populist Heart Than Her Enemies. But She Isn't One.

It's Kind Of Amazing How Popular 'grey's Anatomy' Is. What Other Show Can Boast Such An Annoyingly Sincere Cast Of Doctors, Sniveling Through Such Perfunctory Love Triangles?

One Nice Thing About Growing Up Catholic Is It Makes You Open-minded About Other People's Religions, Since Ours Is Nuttier Than Yours.

Sometimes Great Tunes Happen To Bad Times, And When The Bad Time Is Over, Not All The Tunes Get To Move On With You.

Love Dies In Many Different Ways, And It's Natural For The Grass To Seem Greener On The Other Side. But It's Not A Competition; There's Plenty Of Pain To Go Around.

One Of The Billions Of Things I Love About Beyonce: The Harder She Tries To Come On Crazy, The Less Crazy She Sounds.

Rebecca Black Might Sing Like A Robot, But That's Just Proof She Has Evolved Beyond Us. Her Vocal Is Just A Slightly Exaggerated Version Of The Robot Glitch-twitch Stutter That's Been Mainstream Pop Vocalese For The Past 10 Years Or So.

It Was R.e.m. Who Showed Other Eighties Bands How To Get Away With Ignoring The Rules - They Lived In Some Weird Town Nobody Never Heard Of, They Didn't Play Power Chords, They Probably Couldn't Even Spell 'spandex.' All They Had Was Songs.

It Goes Without Saying That 'buncha Losers' Comedies Speak To Tough Times. The Massive Unemployment Of The Reagan Years Gave Us 'taxi,' 'cheers' And The Genre-defining 'night Court,' A Show You Could Never Admit To Watching Without Making People Feel Sorry For You.

If The Girls Keep Dancing, Everybody's Happy. If The Girls Don't Dance, Nobody's Happy.

...some People Aren't Worth The Trouble Of Being Kind To, Because They Have Neither The Brains Nor The Power To Make Something For Themselves Out Of Your Kindness.

I Was The Only Kid At Camp Don Bosco Who Would Admit He Was An Alter Boy Back Home, So I Served Two Masses A Day All Summer. But I Loved The Cassock And Surplice, Ringing The Bells, Lighting The Candles - It Was Like Being A Glamrock Roadie For God.

Not Being Able To Protect Her From Things Was The Most Frightening Thing I'd Ever Felt, And It Kicked In As Soon As We Got Together. With Every Year We Spent Together, I Became More Conscious That I Now Had An Infinitely Expanding Number Of Reasons To Be Afraid. I Had Something To Lose.

Girls Take Up A Lot Of Room. I Had A Lot Of Room For This One.

Thanks To The Greatest Invention Of Recent Years, The Mp3-playing Alarm Clock, I Can Now Choose The Song That Wakes Me Up In The Morning.

You'd Think If Anyone Could Charm America Into Caring About The Evening News, It Would Be Katie Couric, The Tri Delt From Virginia Who Became America's Sweetheart On The 'today' Show. But Her Ratings Have Been Dismal - She Comes In Last Place Every Week.

Our Amour Fou With 'the Sopranos' Is Headed For Long-term Parking, Like So Many Of Its Most Memorable Characters. We'll Never See A Show Like This Again.

Big Star Invented A Vision Of Bohemian Rock & Roll Cool That Had Nothing To Do With New York, Los Angeles Or London, Which Made Them Completely Out Of Style In The 1970s, But Also Made Them An Inspiration To Generations Of Weird Southern Kids.

That's The Secret Of 'true Blood' - All The Creatures That Roam Bon Temps Become A Metaphor For Our Insatiable Lusts And Inner Desires. Humans Craving What They Can't Have And Those Secret Appetites Transforming Them Into Beasts, Or Even Killers.

Anyone Watching '30 Rock' Always Knew Tina Fey Was Playing A Fictionalized Version Of Herself, A Workaholic Comedy Writer Who Also Plays One On Tv. She's The Boss; Liz Lemon Just Works Here.

Like Many Other Touchstones Of Twenty-first-century Pop Culture, 'the Sopranos' Was Hatched In The Late Nineties, Predicting A Future That Never Arrived. It Was Designed For A Decade That Would Be Just Like The Nineties, Except More So, In An America That Enjoyed Seeing Itself As Smarter And Braver And Freer Than Ever Before.

It Takes Only One Bad Amp To Turn Your Ears To Oatmeal: That's How Old Hippies Became Yanni Fans.

'revenge' Is A Shameless Soap In The Style Of Eighties Shoulder-pad Slap-offs Like 'dallas,' 'dynasty' And 'falcon Crest.' Yet There's No Wink-wink Camp.

Unlike Me, Renee Was Not Shy; She Was A Real People-pleaser. She Worried Way Too Much What People Thought Of Her, Wore Her Heart On Her Sleeve, Expected Too Much From People, And Got Hurt Too Easily. She Kept Other People's Secrets Like A Champ, But Told Her Own Too Fast. She Expected The World Not To Cheat Her And Was Always Surprised When It Did.

Our Lives Were Just Beginning, Our Favorite Moment Was Right Now, Our Favorite Songs Were Unwritten.

One Of Renee's Friends Asked Her, "does Your Boyfriend Wear Glasses?" She Said, "no, He Wears A Walkman.

Every Mix Tape Tells A Story. Put Them Together, And They Add Up To The Story Of Life.

In Their Heyday, The Pet Shop Boys Were The Interpol Of The Eighties, Dressing Up To Sing Really Weird Pop Songs About Lust And Loneliness In The Big City. They're Low-pro Now, Not Retro-worshipped In The Manner Of Depeche Mode, New Order, Or The Cure, But You Can Hear The Reason Why - These Guys Are Too Sad.

A Song Nobody Likes Is A Sad Thing. But A Love Song Nobody Likes Is Hardly A Thing At All.

God Bless America - What Other Civilization Would Give Patrick Dempsey Another Shot To Rule As A Sex Symbol, Twenty Years After 'meatballs Iii: Summer Job?' His Reign As Dr. Mcdreamy On 'grey's Anatomy' Is Proof That There's Nothing We Love More Than Giving Eighties Celebs A Heartwarming Second Stab At Life.

In The Old Days, When A Star Left A Still-thriving Hit Show, They'd Celebrate By Killing Him Or Her Off. But 'the Office' Dispatched Michael Scott In A Crueler And More Final Way: They Made Him Normal. Since We're Talking About Michael Scott, 'normal' Might Be Stretching It, Obviously.

Singing What's In Your Heart? Naming The Things You Love And Loathe? You Can Get Hurt That Way. Hell, You Will Get Hurt That Way. But You'll Get Hurt Trying To Hide Away In All That Silence And Leave Your Life Unsung. There's No Future Without Tears. Are You Really Setting Your Hopes On Not Getting Hurt At All? You Think That's An Option? You Clearly Aren't Listening To Enough Morrissey Songs.

Most Of An Award-show Host's Job Is Showing Up And Keeping A Cool Head And Soldiering Through It, Whether It's The Oscars Or The Hallmark Channel's 'hero Dog Awards.'

It Was Bewildering And Humbling To Keep Discovering How Many Brave Things People Can Fail To Talk Themselves Out Of Doing.

I've Built My Whole Life Around Loving Music. I'm A Writer For 'rolling Stone,' So I Am Constantly Searching For New Bands And Soaking Up New Sounds.

On 'idol,' Steven Tyler Will Be Sitting At A Table With Two Other Judges, And Part Of His Job Will Be Keeping His Yap Zipped While They Talk. This Makes No Sense At All, Since Tyler Has Zero Yap-zipping Skills.

I Was Totally Clueless About Social Interaction, And Completely Scared Of Girls. All I Knew Was That Music Was Going To Make Girls Fall In Love With Me.

Falling In Love

Ron Swanson Is More Than The Mvp Of The 'parks And Recreation' Squad, More Than Just The Funniest Character On Tv - He's The Perfect Depiction Of Aggrieved American Manhood At The Twilight Of The Empire.

Falling In Love With Renee Was Not The Kind Of Thing You Walk Away From In One Piece. I Had No Chance. She Put A Hitch In My Git-a-long.

Falling In Love

'the Sopranos' Gets Praised As Novelistic, But It Follows The Most Banal Of Life Patterns, Showing The Sheer Tedium Of Being A Mobster. It Has Dead Spots, Boring Plotlines, Weak Episodes. Characters Develop Slowly, Or Don't. Like Viewers, A Gangster Might Get Bored, Fade Out Of The Action, Then Come Back To Find None Of His Debts Forgotten.

In My Headphones, I Led A Life Of Romance And Incident And Intrigue, None Of Which Had Anything To Do With The World Outside My Walkman.

Just As Bowie, Zeppelin, Etc., Became Rock Stars By Remaking Themselves In The Image Of The California Girls, The Go-gos Became Rock Stars By Pretending To Be The Buzzcocks And The Sex Pistols. Jane Wiedlin Always Said Her Biggest Influence Was Growing Up In L.a. As A Bowie Girl.

Davy Jones Was The Grooviest Of The Monkees, Which Makes Him One Of The Grooviest Pop Stars Who Ever Existed. He Was The Best Dancer In The Monkees, The Cute One, The One With The Coy English Accent, The Bowl-cut Boy-child Who Shook Those Cherry-red Maracas And Always Got The Girl. He Was Also The Guy Who Stole David Bowie's Original Name.

Morrissey Was My Mrs. Garrett, The House Mother From The Facts Of Life, A Soothing Adult Figure Giving Me Words Of Wisdom.

The Hungry Feeling And The Lonely Feeling Merged Until It Was Hard To Tell Them Apart.

'american Horror' Is The Debasement Of The Suburban Family, The Way A Lonely Kid Would Have Imagined It In The Seventies.

Baseball's Opening Day Is Full Of Time-honored Traditions: The President Throws Out The First Ball, The Cubs' Starting Pitcher Walks Away With A 54.00 Era, The Royals Get Mathematically Eliminated From The Pennant Race.

The Way I Pictured It, All This Grief Would Be Like A Winter Night When You're Standing Outside. You'll Warm Up Once You Get Used To The Cold. Except After You've Been Out There For Awhile, You Feel The Warmth Draining Out Of You And You Realize The Opposite Is Happening; You're Getting Colder And Colder, As The Body Heat You Brought Outside With You Seeps Out Of Your Skin. Instead Of Getting Used To It, You Get Weaker The Longer You Endure It.

Donna Summer Would Be Remembered As A Ground-breaking Artist Today Even If She'd Retired The Day After She Recorded 'i Feel Love' In 1977.

The Sax Solo As We Know It Today Would Not Exist Without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 Soft-rock Classic 'baker Street' Has To Be The 'ulysses' Of Rock & Roll Saxophone, Giving The Entire Chorus Over To Raphael Ravenscroft's Sax Solo, Creating One Of The Seventies' Most Enduringly Creepy Sounds.

Madonna Was So Flamboyant In Terms Of Her Look, Her Style, Her Public Pronouncements, Her Religious Taboo-smashing.

'drive,' That's The One. I Love Dozens Of Songs By R.e.m., But That's The One, Even Though It Took Me 7 Or 8 Years To Start Liking It.

When I Was A Junior, My School Introduced Badminton, Which Was Clearly A P.e. Department Ploy To Get Me Away From The Wrestling Room, And It Worked, Since The First Time I Played Badminton Was Like The First Time I Tasted Sushi Or Heard The Beatles Or Read Wordsworth. This Was A Sport? This Counted For Gym Requirements?

The 2000s Were The Time When Bromance Became A Kind Of Love That Dared To Speak Its Name. As A High-water Mark Of Bro Culture, Nothing Can Ever Top The Mtv Series 'bromance,' With Brody Jenner And His Search For A New Bff.

When You Stick A Song On A Tape, You Set It Free.

I Realize That I Will Never Fully Understand The Millions Of Bizarre Ways That Music Brings People Together.

Like Most Fans Of 'so You Think You Can Dance,' I Wouldn't Know A Pasodoble If It Beat Me With A Rake.

I Will Always Love The Clash, Because I Loved Them So Much When I Was Fourteen, And I Love How You Can Start A Conversation With Almost Literally Any Dude About The Clash.

Ronnie Spector's Hair Was Taller And Meaner And Scarier Than All Four Shangri-la's Combined, Plus The Drummer From The Honeycombs. You Just Know Her Rat-tail Comb Was A Switchblade.

You Know The Prince Song Where The Girl's Phone Rings But She Tells Him, "whoever's Calling Couldn't Be As Cute As You?" I Long To Live Out This Moment In Real Life.

The First Season Of 'community' Stumbled A Bit Because The Plotlines Too Often Veered Into Realism, But That Is Not A Problem Anymore. Not When Prize Episodes Concern A Campuswide Blanket Fort, Or A Secret Garden With A Magic Trampoline.

Nothing Connects To The Moment Like Music. I Count The Music To Bring Me Back, Or More Precisely, To Bring Her Forward.

'i'll Tumble 4 Ya' Has To Be One Of The Most Ridiculous Hit Singles That Any International Superstars Have Given The World.

When I Started Out As A Music Journalist, At The End Of The 1980s, It Was Generally Assumed That We Were Living Through The Lamest Music Era The World Would Ever See. But Those Were Also The Years When Hip-hop Exploded, Beatbox Disco Soared, Indie Rock Took Off, And New Wave Invented A Language Of Teen Angst.

But Mtv Relishes Its Vestigial Role As A Star Maker, So Every Year It Puts All Its Clout Into Making The Vmas The Biggest, Splashiest, Loudest Show-biz Extravaganza Of The Year, Honoring All This Music For Existing, After A Year Of Paying Barely Any Attention To It.

Hometown Aerosmith Fans Are Different From Other Aerosmith Fans, And That Mainly Has To Do With Joe Perry. It's Tough To Overstate His Strange Grip On The Local Psyche. Tyler Is A Star Who Belongs To The Whole World, But Perry, That Dude Belongs To Boston.

The Stones Suggested That If You Dabble In Decadence, You Could Turn Into A Devil-worshipping Junkie. Paul Mccartney Suggested That If You Mess Around With Girl Worship, You Could Turn Into A Husband. So Paul Was A Lot Scarier.

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