Let’s say you wanted to direct an update of the 1967 film The Graduate, only this time Mrs. Robinson –– the bored housewife played by Anne Bancroft — would be a Gen-X indie rock star, and Benjamin Bradock, the directionless boomer played by a young Dustin Hoffman, would be a twentysomething millennial. To be honest, […]

If you were a teenager in the 2000s, you probably associate Rick James with one of three phrases, all first heard on the February 11, 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show: “Cocaine is a hell of a drug,” “Fuck yo’ couch!” and, most famously, “I’m Rick James, bitch!” If you were a teenager in […]

Hip-hop in the 1980s was a wonderfully weird scene. No one quite epitomized that creative weirdness as totally as the eyepatch-wearing, “truck jewelry”-festooned, British-sounding kid from the Bronx known as Slick Rick (a.k.a. Rick the Ruler, MC Ricky D). “Children’s Story,” the second single from Slick Rick’s classic debut album The Great Adventures of Slick […]

“Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Camper Van Beethoven was not the biggest modern rock hit of 1989, but it was one of the most significant. College rock was becoming something else as the decade drew to a close: it would be two years before it was clear what that new thing was, when Nirvana’s “Smells […]

“Somebody’s Watching Me” is NOT a Michael Jackson song. Michael Jackson’s voice is the most interesting thing about it, but the single is by a completely different artist: a guy named Rockwell. It’s important to keep this in mind, despite what your ears tell you every time you hear “Somebody’s Watching Me.” The history of […]

The first thing you think of is the video. That’s okay: everybody thinks of the video first. “Addicted to Love” has been viewed, referenced and imitated so many times that it’s familiar even to people who never had MTV — who weren’t even alive the last time the network played music videos. It represents Reagan-era […]