Category: Pop

70s Classic Rock Pop Reggae soul
January 11, 2023

Remembering 1973… Sort of.

We are in one of those yearly interregnum periods with music. Starting in about October, there are fewer and fewer new releases. Unless you were Ryan Adams that is. He pushed out six albums in 2022, roughly 10 years output for most artists, with several coming at the end of the year. The upshot is that there have been too few new albums to choose […]

Blues Gospel New Music Pop soul Trip Hop
December 21, 2022

Join Me as I Ponder Some Of Us Are Brave

Back in the 1980s, there was a number of artists that fused blues and R&B, as well as gospel, soul, and smooth jazz, with rock, pop, and other genres. This was something of a golden age for the blues and R&B as traditional blues artists, such as Bonnie Raitt, broke into the mainstream. This was also the era when blues great Robert Cray emerged, flirting […]

70s 80s-music Dream Pop Indie New Music Pop retro
December 2, 2022

Weyes Blood Makes My Heart Glow

Weyes Blood (a.k.a. Natalie Mering) is hard to categorize. The closest I can come is 70s soft rock, like Bread, but without the schlock. Perhaps, she can be compared to 70s and 80s singer-songwriters. She certainly structures her songs like Aimee Man or Jenny Lewis might; Or is she more like Sandy Denny? I sit here listening to her latest album, And in The Darkness, […]

Alternative Dance Music Indie New Music Pop Punk
April 7, 2022

It’s Been Awhile

I know it’s been awhile since I last posted. Part of the reason was that I was traveling in warmer climes where time on the beach was more important than writing my blog (sorry but it’s true). The bigger inhibitor has been a lack of decent music to get excited about. Just this week I listened to the new ROSALIA album and The Regrettes EP. […]

Americana Country Modern Rock Pop Rockabilly Western
March 11, 2022

A Quick Trip Out West with Orville Peck

Unlike rock stars, most country artists have great voices. There are outliers whose voices were more unique than great, such as Johnny Cash, but the vast majority of country artists have control, tone, and timbre that rock stars often do not. Orville Peck’s voice stands out even among the country greats. He has a warm baritone with a big range that sounds somewhere between The […]

Dance Music Electronic New Music Pop
March 7, 2022

I Get A Kick From The New Foxes Album

Dance pop artist Louisa Rose Allen i.e., Foxes has always stood out from the pack of usually bland dance music. Her brand of pop music is both upbeat and up-tempo. Unlike a lot of dance pop, she has always avoided the worst tropes of pop (no vocoders!) and delivers a great singable, danceable melody on top of her synths and beats. Her new album The […]

New Music Pop St. Vincent
September 1, 2021

The Violence of CHVRCHES

I have to admit that CHVRCHES is a bit of a guilty pleasure. There is nothing that CHVRCHES does that seems special. It’s typically lightweight, often danceable pop. And yet, it’s compelling. Their music is, at times, sweet, but often urgent and overly emotional. Despite the genre and pretentious name, they don’t bore me like a lot of pop music. That might be because they […]

70s 80s-music Dance Music New Music Pop
June 22, 2021

Cola Boyy Premiers with an Unusual Album

The artist Cola Boyy (whose real name is Matthew Urango) has been described as a combination of disco and soft rock. After listening to his lead off album, Prosthetic Boombox, I find that description perplexing. It seems as if the critics (or marketing) people tasked with writing about Cola Boyy’s work have never experienced real disco. To use the term “disco” in the context of […]