John Lennon | Imagine The Song Everyone Knows Wrong “Imagine” is the most-played peace anthem in history, and John Lennon openly called it a sugar-coated Communist Manifesto. Nobody seemed to notice, or maybe nobody wanted to. The most-played peace anthem in human history is, by its own creator’s cheerful admission, “virtually the Communist Manifesto.” John […]
The Contradictions John Lennon Built Into “Imagine” Read More »
Stephen Sanchez | Until I Found You A Song Out of Time A song that sounds like 1958 has two billion streams in 2024. It’s not retro cosplay. Stephen Sanchez grew up digging through his grandfather’s discarded vinyl in a barn in San Jose, and the fifties got into his bones before he knew what
The Barn Full of Vinyl That Built a Billion Streams Read More »
Sabrina Carpenter | Coachella 2026 Feature Woman of Her Word Sabrina Carpenter closed her 2024 Coachella set with a promise to come back as headliner. Two years later, she’s topping Friday’s poster, at a festival that badly needed her. April 19, 2024. Weekend 2 at Coachella. The sun is dipping behind the Empire Polo Club
Sabrina Carpenter Promised Coachella She’d Be Back Read More »
Adele | Rolling in the Deep The Take You Can’t Redo The biggest song of 2011 uses a vocal from a three-hour demo session, one that Rick Rubin and a stacked band at Shangri-La Studios couldn’t beat, no matter how hard they tried. The biggest song of 2011, Grammy Record of the Year, Song of
The Demo That Beat Rick Rubin Read More »
Phil Collins | In the Air Tonight The Wait The most famous drum moment in pop history works because of three and a half minutes of near-silence before it, a song built entirely out of what’s missing. You already know what’s coming. That’s the whole point. Put on “In the Air Tonight” right now, the
The Sound of Nothing: How Absence Built a Classic Read More »
ABBA | Arrival (album) Muzak to Masterpiece When Arrival came out in 1977, Rolling Stone called it Muzak and Christgau gave it a C. In 2024, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry alongside Biggie and Green Day. The public never needed convincing, the album outsold Dark Side of the Moon
ABBA’s Arrival Proved Every Critic Wrong Read More »
Britney Spears | Toxic Three Rejections and a Masterpiece Rolling Stone’s #9 song of the 21st century was turned down by Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue, and nearly killed by Britney’s own label, and yet it became the consensus greatest pop single of its generation. Rolling Stone’s ninth-greatest song of the twenty-first century was turned down
Nobody Wanted “Toxic” (Then It Won Everything) Read More »
Backstreet Boys | I Want It That Way The Riddle Everyone Knows Everyone knows the lyrics to “I Want It That Way.” Nobody knows what they mean, including the Backstreet Boys. Somehow that’s the whole point. Ed Sheeran put it best: “You can’t be in a bar, a couple of beers in, and ‘I Want
The Song That Makes No Sense Changed Everything Read More »
Taylor Swift | Love Story Twenty Minutes on a Bedroom Floor A 17-year-old Taylor Swift got sent to her room after her parents vetoed a boyfriend, grabbed a guitar, and came back with a song that rewrites the ending of Romeo and Juliet through a single key change. Here’s the scene. It’s sometime in early
Taylor Swift Rewrote Shakespeare with a Key Change Read More »
The Police | Every Breath You Take The Most Dangerous Love Song “Every Breath You Take” is the most-played song in radio history and one of the most misunderstood, a surveillance anthem routinely mistaken for a wedding ballad by the millions who love it most. Imagine telling Sting that you played his song at your
The Police Were Falling Apart. Then Came the Riff. Read More »
