2. Sheena Easton, “Sugar Walls”
3. Judas Priest, “Eat Me Alive”
4. Vanity, “Strap On Robbie Baby”
5. Motley Crue, “Bastard”
6. AC/DC, “Let Me Put My Love Into You”
7. Twisted Sister, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
8. Madonna, “Dress You Up”
9. W.A.S.P., “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)”



10. Def Leppard, “High N’ Dry”
11. Mercyful Fate, “Into The Coven”
12. Black Sabbath, “Trashed”
13. The Mary Jane Girls, “In My House”



14. Venom, “Possessed”
15. Cyndi Lauper, “She-Bop”

Obviously, the rationales for including different songs on the list were different: “Possessed” got heat for having references to the occult; “High N’ Dry” for being an ode to drinking all day; “Bastard” for employing rape analogies in the context of bad business deals. (Although I still don’t understand why “Dress You Up” was the Madonna song singled out. Was the prospect of including the word “virgin” in a song title on the list just too much for the fan-waving mothers?) I guess it isn’t really “funny” how now, so many of these songs are in the pop-culture firmament; after all, people thought “My Ding-A-Ling” was once offensive on levels beyond its aesthetic inferiority to most other songs out there, too. But looking at this list provides a neat snapshot of just what worried parents the most 24 years ago; the list is pretty much devoid of New Wave, hip-hop, and punk, and focuses on metal a lot. I guess it was because out of all the popular genres at the time, they looked the most threatening to parents?

The Coolest PMRC Links On The Net [Freewebs]
Twisted Sister releases one of the PMRC’s Filthy 15: Stay Hungry [Sleaze Roxx]

80. Andrew W.K., “McLaughlin Groove”
79. Elvis Costello puts his trust in Fall Out Boy
78. Wye Oak, “I Want for Nothing”
77. Nine Inch Nails’ flood of digitally distributed music
76. TV on the Radio, “Golden Age”
75. Journey welcomes the Web 2.0 Era (and a new singer) with open arms
74. Jenny Lewis, “Acid Tongue”
73. Radiohead scores the year’s strangest Top 40 hit
72. The Music Tapes at Athens Popfest, August 2008
71. Kanye, Lily, Pete, and Courtney form their own blogger nation
70. French Kicks, Swimming
69. Soundscan: down for the recount
68. Make It Stop! The Most of Ross Johnson
67. Parry Gripp, “Hamster on a Piano (Eating Popcorn)”
66. Okay, Huggable Dust
65. Mariah Carey, “Touch My Body”
64. 360 deals make heads spin
63. Daniel Amos, Darn Floor Big Bite
62. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
61. Solange, Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams
60. The Numa Numa Dance revival
59. The Gaslight Anthem, The ‘59 Sound
58. ’90s alt-rock memoirs
57. Larry Norman and Sonseed
56. Sheryl Crow, “Shine Over Babylon”
55. DJ Koze
54. David Cook beats David Archuleta on American Idol
53. T-Pain, Thr33 Ringz
52. Perez Hilton Vs. Sony BMG: slapfight!
51. Justin Moore’s “Back That Thing Up” video
50. Optimo’s mix CDs
49. Extra Golden live at the Caledonia Lounge, Athens, GA, June 2008
48. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song
47. Daveigh Chase sings “The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA” on HBO’s Big Love
46. Gnarls Barkley and the Raconteurs race each other to the record store
45. Pete Wentz tries to save the music video with FNMTV
44. R&B’s breakbeat vogue
43. Jobromance!
42. Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue (Legacy Edition)
41. Miley Cyrus, “See You Again”
40. Max Martin and Dr. Luke infiltrate rock radio
39. Of Montreal get Skeletal
38. Poplife Presents Poplife Sucks
37. Alec Foege, Right of the Dial and Taylor Clark, Starbucked
36. Major labels fail to kill the single—again
35. Velvet Revolver brings the drama
34. Blake Leyh makes us listen closer to The Wire
33. Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, “Yahhh!”
32. The end of TRL
31. The old-skool rave revival
30. Ida Maria, “Oh My God”
29. Fred Schneider on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
28. CMT’s Can You Duet
27. ’90s reunion fever
26. Estelle makes her way across the ocean
25. John Darnielle’s Master of Reality and Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
24. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
23. Santogold, “Lights Out”
22. Summer festival glut
21. Monotonix live in Baltimore
20. James Sullivan, The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America
19. Be Your Own Pet, “Becky”
18. Kanye West’s aesthetics
17. “Vinyl is back!”
16. Global reissues bonanza
15. Beyoncé, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”
14. Rickrolling rolls on
13. M.I.A., “Paper Planes”
12. Alphabeat get “wonky”
11. The year of the remix
10. R. Kelly goes to court
9. Jarvis Cocker at Pitchfork Festival, Chicago, July 2008
8. The Ron Clark Academy, “You Can Vote However You Like”
7. Portishead, Third
6. Prince at Coachella Festival, April 2008
5. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
4. Guitar Hero / Rock Band
3. A very musical Presidential election
2. Lil Wayne: All things to all people
1. Ne-Yo, Year Of The Gentleman

HEARTBREAKS
1. Mamma Mia Misses The Essence Of ABBA (Kate Richardson)
2. The Death of Baltimore Club Music’s Queen, DJ K-Swift (Al Shipley)
3. The blogosphere as the new status quo (Lucas Jensen)
4. Britney Spears on the 2008 MTV VMAs (Molly McAleer)
5. Be Your Own Pet breaks up (Mike Barthel)
6. Everyone in the music business losing their freakin’ jobs (Michaelangelo Matos)
7. Guns N’ Roses, Chinese Democracy (Maura Johnston)
8. John Rich shills for the GOP (Chuck Eddy)

I should also point out that I am friendly with both John Darnielle, who turned Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality into a novella, and Carl Wilson, who spends his 33 1/3 investigating his and most of his friends’ disregard for Celine Dion through the lens of Let’s Talk About Love, i.e. the one with the Titanic song. But that’s not why I love these books. It’s because both were written keenly and with great generosity by writers who never place themselves above the material—even Wilson, who specifically proposed his topic because he had looked down on it for so long.

Darnielle, of course, is a longstanding metal guy—he’s written the back page of Decibel magazine since its inception—and Master of Reality is a testament to the raw, consuming, identity-statement sort of fandom that isn’t exclusive to metal but flourishes within it. Roger Painter is Darnielle’s narrator-hero; he’s 15 and in a ward receiving treatment following a suicide attempt, attended by people seem to think his music is part of the problem; the first half of the book is Roger’s attempt to persuade them to give him back his Walkman and his favorite Sabbath cassette.

In high school, I had a good friend who spent several weeks in the same kind of adolescent psychiatric center Roger is in; we talked a lot on the phone and I visited him a couple times. Darnielle’s book brought back everything—the feel, the smell, the tenuous sense of order—I had forgotten about the place, so much so I had to put the book down a few times to get my bearings again. Equally fine is the way the second half, narrated by the adult Roger, describes his job in a kitchen; Darnielle glosses over nothing, and he doesn’t treat the everyday as any more magical than it actually is (i.e. not very), but he gets at the sustaining aspects of small satisfactions in ways you don’t expect, that stay with you. Somewhere in heaven, Studs Terkel is smiling.

Wilson ponders other kinds of questions. He doesn’t simply hold Dion up to the light—among many things, he also holds up the mass audience, the idea of schmaltz (that chapter alone ought to be required reading for anyone who purports to write criticism, of pop music or anything else), and the effect of set and setting on an artist’s works. I’m thinking there of the amazing sequence when the author, coming off a bad breakup, is reduced to tears by seeing Dion in Vegas—the last time or place in the world he expects to be so deeply moved—as well as his fascinating explication of Dion’s essential Quebecois-ness.

Besides, how can we possibly argue with anything that gives us the excuse to post this January ‘08 masterpiece?

33 1/3 [33third.blogspot.com]
Celine Dion is amazing [Four Four]
80 ‘08 (and heartbreak)

7. Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance
In one sense, Way is a no-brainer; he’s the closest thing to a goth rock star we’ve got these days, someone who dresses in skeleton-themed outfits and writes rock operas about death. But he also comes off a bit too much like the wholesome kid from New Jersey he probably really is to have any real mystique. And when the British press denounced his band and the emo movement as a whole as a “death cult that encourages kids to self-harm,” Way vehemently disagreed with that assessment, which speaks well of him as a person, but kind of blows his P.O.D. credentials. Plus, the photo at left clearly states that he is a princess.

6. David Draiman of Disturbed
He’s got creepy facial piercings, makes sounds like a rabid monkey when he sings, and fronts a hugely successful metal band. And yet, I have to admit, he still kind of comes off like a schlubby dork.

5. Rihanna
Three years ago, Rihanna was an adorable little Caribbean pop princess, but as she’s gotten more successful, her image has unexpectedly evolved from long wavy hair to asymmetrical Aeon Flux bob, from summery booty shorts to leather dominatrix outfits. And you get the feeling that no one at Def Jam told her to look more androgynous or make videos like “Disturbia,”. She just really wanted to make a creepy video full of zombies.

4. No. 8 of Slipknot
Just kidding! We all know that under the mask your name is Corey and you look like this.

3. Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath
Let’s face it, even if Ozzy was the Prince of Darkness, it was Sabbath’s guitarist who always exuded a much darker aura. C’mon, the guy looks like a freakin’ supervillain.

2. Nick Cave
Sure, Cave is only moderately famous, and he has a bit less mystique now than he did in his Birthday Party days. But he’s been on a roll lately, career-wise, and is as committed as ever to looking totally creepy.

1. Lil Wayne
Whether or not he ever becomes the guitar-slinging rock star he seems to want to be lately, Lil Wayne is perhaps the most archetypally kooky, drug-addled superstar in the Ozzy mode on this list, a guy who has tattoos all over his face and says increasingly bizarre shit every time there’s a microphone in front of him. All he has to do to cement his title now is bite the head off of a bat. What is a goon to a goblin, anyway?

In May 2007 the British radio station BBC6 conducted a survey of the worst lyrics in pop.

BBC6’s Top 10 Worst Lyrics (listener poll):
1. Des’ree, “Life” (Sony, 1998): “I don’t want to see a ghost/It’s the sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast/Watch the evening news.”
2. Snap, “Rhythm Is a Dancer” (Logic/Arista, 1992): “I’m as serious as cancer/When I say rhythm is a dancer.”
3. Razorlight, “Somewhere Else” (Vertigo, 2005): “And I met a girl/She asked me my name/I told her what it was.”
4. ABC, “That Was Then But This Is Now” (Mercury, 1983): “More Sacrifices than an Aztec priest/Standing here straining at that leash/All fall down/Can’t complain, mustn’t grumble/Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble.”
5. U2, “Elevation” (Interscope, 2001): “I’ve got no self control/Been living like a mole now/Going down, excavation/High and high in the sky/You make me feel like I can fly/So high/Elevation.”
6. Toto, “Africa” (CBS, 1982): “The wild dogs cry out in the night/As they grow restless longing for some solitary company/I know that I must do what’s right/Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.”
7. Oasis, “Champagne Supernova” (Creation, 1995): “Slowly walking down the hall/Faster than a cannonball/Where were you when we were getting high?”
8. Duran Duran, “Is There Something I Should Know?” (EMI, 1983): “And fiery demons all dance when you walk through that door/Don’t say you’re easy on me/You’re about as easy as a nuclear war.”
9. Human League, “The Lebanon” (Virgin, 1984): “Before he leaves the camp he stops/He scans the world outside/And where there used to be some shops/Is where the snipers sometimes hide.”
10. Black Sabbath, “War Pigs” (Warner Bros., 1971): “Generals gathered in their masses/Just like witches at black masses.”

Let’s get the ugly part out of the way first: I am in full agreement with No. 10, and no, I do not love Sabbath enough to let them get away with it. I’m not a huge fan, though I certainly like a handful of songs, “War Pigs” being one of them. But I thought the line was stupid when I first heard it, and I’m glad there are still people who haven’t immunized themselves against it over the years thanks to the riff bypassing that particular area of the brain.

“War Pigs” is one of only three songs chosen here that I would have picked out any of those lines from in particular. The others are No. 7 (whose negative properties, inextricable in my mind from a lousy period of my life generally, I discussed in an earlier column about the Modern Rock Top 10 of 1996) and No. 8, which struck me as gauche even when I was in third grade. (Everyone knew nuclear war was easy–it was a matter of two men pushing buttons–that’s what was wrong with it.)

Three others, though, I knew but hadn’t really thought of in terms of lyrics, much less god-awful ones. What I mostly remember about “Rhythm Is a Dancer” is the title phrase, plus the odd “feel the passion” to give the singer more than two notes to sing. It’s not that I’m necessarily surprised the song contains the line, “I’m as serious as cancer/When I say rhythm is a dancer.” It just never jumped out at me. Likewise, the U2 line strikes me as bald description of banal euphoria: more wallpaper than painting, and not much to get worked up over. “Africa,” of course, is total dogshit, so much so I never parsed the verses (being seven when the song came out surely has something to do with this), but on paper, that is some serious D&D-playing loserdom coming out, all right. Good to know that in addition to being the top session cats of the era as well as winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for the album containing “Africa,” Toto’s members all aced world geography.

The rest I’d never even heard until I saw this list. I watched the videos for each, and the results were enlightening. Des’ree: she rides a car through the desert. I’d seen this list without the lyric attributions before watching the clip, but it didn’t take long to guess which one this had been nominated for: “ghost/most/toast” is pushing it even if you’re in the breeziest mood of your life. Razorlight: I didn’t know Richard Ashcroft had an understudy. Did England really miss the Verve that much? For god’s sakes, why? On paper, I must admit that, “And I met a girl/She asked me my name/I told her what it was,” is my kind of deadpan mannerist comedy, but hearing this schmoe declaim anything above all those forcefully strummed acoustic guitars buried the offending line for me.

Speaking of confessions, I’ve never heard all of The Lexicon of Love, so the follow-ups I’m even sketchier on. This lives up to Martin Fry’s explanation to Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again that he was trying to make the ugliest music he could in response to that album, because this is one sour little pastry. And the “apple crumble” line really is the song’s core, if you will. (I apologize.) Finally, “The Lebanon” not only gets points for those awesome lines fitting perfectly within an equally awesome, er, meditation on terrorism, Phil Oakey gets double points for blueprinting the look Dave Gahan would take to the bank once he stopped cutting his hair a while. They even have the same facial expressions!

Before I open it to the wolves by asking which lyric(s) BBC6’s listeners forgot to include in this Top 10, allow me to indulge yet again my personal all-time favorite bad lyric. It’s from a tune everybody knows: “Your Song,” by Elton John. Take a bow, Bernie Taupin, for this all-time clinker: “If I was a sculptor/But then again, no.” That’s what Taupin should have said! Haw! Anyway, I’ve had my fun: now you have yours. 100 posts by Monday! Let’s do it!