pop music | The Smart Set

Me and Bobby Miller

Angela Townsend — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Everybody needs an oldies station. WKBJ was equal parts doo-wop and PG hijinks, faceless friend to commuters from Saugerties to Secaucus. It was the late ’90s, when Neil Diamond and the Beach Boys jostled for room in the nostalgia car. Bobby Miller was the manic maestro behind the wheel. Favored by parents and Earth Science […]

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Swift Transformation

Brian Kantorek — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 11:30:00 +0000

I’ve been on the fringes of music and pop culture for many decades now, immersed in an underground hardcore punk scene that often derides popular music’s influence. That’s not to say that I’ve always ignored or dismissed what’s popular. There are plenty of popular performers and bands I’ve found magnetic and genuinely enjoyed, despite all […]

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Curious Listening

Cameron Carr — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:30:00 +0000

There’s a familiar refrain from an older generation speaking to a younger one: Why isn’t there any good music these days? It’s often posed like that, as a question, and accompanied by an insincere request for the younger to show the older something good. I can expect to hear it every holiday when I hop […]

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Pretty Much Your Standard In Memoriam

Melinda Lewis — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 13:05:00 +0000

I was in the middle of a meeting on Friday when a text message popped up on my screen: “I’m sorry to be the bearer of this news” with a link to Rolling Stone’s announcement that The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith had died at the age of 78. My gut flopped. Months prior, a friend and […]

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Is it Cool that I Said All That?

Sarah Hansen — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 13:34:31 +0000

At midnight on February 12, 2021, I sat in the twin bed of my childhood bedroom with the lights turned off and my headphones on. Like so many twenty-somethings who became unemployed or underemployed due to the pandemic, I’d unexpectedly moved home with my parents. Suddenly, my life was pervaded with an eerie sense of déjà […]

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Beneath the Mask, a Veil

Randal Doane — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 13:52:14 +0000

Editor’s Note: This essay includes certain slurs to illustrate the prevalence of homophobia in America during the 1980s. Asterisks have been used within these words. At Lincoln High School, in Stockton, California, in the mid-1980s, a bevy of football players patrolled the boundaries of taste and pleasure and issued verbal sanctions for any behavior they […]

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Long Live the King of Pop

Greg Beato — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:12:43 +0000

For many performers, top billing at the county fair is as good as the comeback trail ever gets. Michael Jackson had bigger ambitions. Two years ago, London’s Daily Mail reported that the singer was not only planning to go a 250-date reunion tour with the Jackson 5, he was also going to build a Las […]

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No Exhibit for Old Men

Morgan Meis — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:12:43 +0000

Every once in a while you get an epiphany. Something you’ve been meaning to say for a long time jumps, crystal clear, to the front of your brain. You’ve always known it, but you’ve never been able to say it. This happened to me while reading an essay by Sasha Frere-Jones about Lady Gaga. […]

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The Death of the Monoculture

Ryan Bigge — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:12:43 +0000

The season of popcorn blockbusters, beach reads, summer girls, and boys of summer has arrived. And the only thing missing is the (un)official song of the summer — a ubiquitous pop smash that demands we shake our hands in the air and sing along as though we had not a care in the world. […]

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The Summer Jam

Morgan Meis — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:12:43 +0000

It is generally agreed but never specifically discussed that there is a thing called the “summer jam.” I suppose it bears some genetic resemblance to the “summer read.” But the “summer jam” is both a more fleeting and a more dominating sort of beast. There is typically only one summer jam per season and there […]

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