#real rock fm meme

[smak-annihilation]

*flutes playing*

THOU ARE LISTENING TO

*swords clashing*

104.5

*horse neighs*

REAL KNIGHTS OF VALOR FM

*peasant yells "hear ye! hear ye!"*

WHERE WE PLAY MUSIC NOT! LEST IT BE POEMS, POEMS, AND MORE POEMS

*cannon fires*

THIS BE NOT THOU FAIR MAIDENS STATION

*radioactive by Imagine Dragons starts playing*

[datharlequinoni]

*kohli ball rebound sound* YOU'RE NOW LISTENING TO *air speeder crash sound* 102.3 *Muakka roar sound* MATA NUI ROCK FM *explosion* WHERE WE PLAY NOTHING BUT ROCK, ROCK AND MORE ROCK *glass shattering sound* *vahki alarm* THIS AIN'T YOUR TURAGA'S STATION *Piraka Rap starts playing*

[ampersandthewiz]

I always liked the punchline of the REAL ROCK FM RADIO post being Radioactive - Imagine Dragons because it's hilarious to go from the station insisting that they're 'not like the OTHER stations' to playing a song that is. on every other radio station.

But then I saw a voiceover of an edit of the meme where it's instead REAL WIZARD FM RADIO where they used a medieval remix of Radioactive and I'm like "no! you're missing the point! it'd be funnier if it were just the regular song!"

anyway

[sagehaleyofficial]

HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED THIS WEEK (10.30-11.5.19):

NEW MUSIC:

·         Fresh off the release of their latest album NINE, Blink-182 joined Goody Grace as he bared his heart on his new song “Scumbag.” The release marks the second this year for Grace, who dropped “Wasting Time” in July.

·         Earlier last Wednesday, Tom DeLonge took to Instagram to share a short teaser video of some new Angels and Airwaves music. The band dropped their track “Kiss & Tell” back in the summer, and now fans received a new music video for the song.

·         To celebrate what was his favorite holiday, Lil Peep posthumously released his highly anticipated EP, Goth Angel Sinner. Originally announced in October 2017, the genre-bending EP is accompanied by the release of an official music video for the track “When I Lie.”

·         PUP’s latest music video endeavor involved the band bringing their song “See You at Your Funeral” to the afterlife. Directed by Joe Stakun, the music video features the band members as various spooky characters.

·         Alt singer-songwriter Skye unveiled his brand new track “Voices,” featuring late rapper XXXTentacion. The powerful new single also features an interpolation of the classic Blink-182 track, “I Miss You.”

·         YUNGBLUD’s “Die a Little” made its debut on the season 3 soundtrack of the hit show, 13 Reasons Why, which dropped earlier this summer on August 23rd. Previously, ahead of his debut full-length, he teamed up with Charlotte Lawrence on “Falling Skies” for season 2.

·         Rapper Blackbear announced the new song in a new interview with Capital FM, and says it will be out before the end of the year. The special track will feature a collaboration with YUNGBLUD and Marshmello.

·         Foo Fighters have been releasing EPs of live tracks, covers and demo songs for the past few months and returned with yet another. The latest and seventh overall EP, 02050525, saw the band covering Jawbreaker and the Passions, as well as three demo tracks.

·         Panic! at the Disco released their new song for the Frozen 2 soundtrack, “Into the Unknown.” While Elsa herself, Idina Menzel, performs the track in the movie, P!ATD recorded their own version for the end credits.

·         Billie Eilish said in an Instagram story video she posted over the weekend there will be two new tracks coming shortly, as well as a new music video for her track “Xanny.” The musician didn’t give a timeline for the new songs or video.

TOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS:

·         Twenty One Pilots were forced to postpone last week’s show in Salt Lake City due to unsafe conditions as a result of weather. Slated to perform at the Vivint Smart Home Arena, snowfall and slick roads made them unable to make it to the show on time.

·         Motionless in White and Beartooth announced a co-headlining tour last Tuesday. The Diseased and Disguised Tour, which is inspired by each band’s most recent release, will kick off in January, with support acts and additional dates to be revealed in the coming weeks.

·         Green Day played their third studio album, Dookie, in full during an intimate one-off show in Madrid last Wednesday. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough album, the band also added an additional 12 songs to the setlist.

·         Poppy performed two songs live on WWE‘s NXT last Wednesday. Rocking the house at Full Sail University, she opened the show with “I Disagree” and escorted wrestler Io Shirai out to the ring with “Scary Mask.”

·         Last week, Emo Night Phx celebrated Halloween with some incredible performances and resident DJs, including one from Jonny Craig, who took the stage to perform an Isles and Glaciers track. Prior to this, a rough demo of “Clush” was originally released in January 2009.

·         After much teasing from the band members, Creeper finally made their return to the stage one year after breaking up. The band performed an intimate gig at Club 229 in London, debuting their latest single “Born Cold.”

·         After a few days of speculation at a new tour, Sleeping With Sirens unveiled their next round of dates. Set It Off, Belmont and Point North will be joining the band on the Medicine Tour in January.

·         Poppy announced the I Disagree U.S. Tour, inspired by her upcoming album of the same name. Kicking off in late January in San Francisco, the dates run through February just prior to a previously announced U.K./Europe tour in March.

·         Grayscale revealed their Nella Vita North American Tour Part II 2020 tour dates. Hot Mulligan, WSTR, and LURK will join them on the run, which kicks off in January in Wilmington, Delaware.

OTHER NEWS:

·         SWMRS guitarist/vocalist Max Becker was sent to the intensive care unit and is now in a rehab clinic following an encounter with black ice in Denver. Two touring crew members, Natalie Somekh and Josh Berl, were also injured in the van accident.

·         Arizona-based alt act Halocene shared a 12-minute video outlining why they believe The Masked Singer Australia ripped their arrangement (which includes an original riff) of the Billie Eilish mega-hit “Bad Guy.” The band first shared their cover in April.

·         In the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Green Day vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong sat down with Billie Eilish for a special “Musicians on Musicians” issue. Eilish expressed her love of Green Day while Armstrong shared his admiration for the 17-year-old artist’s music.

·         Filmmaker/actor Kevin Smith recently joined Joe Rogan on his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” for episode #1372. While there, he helped confirm that Rogan is a cousin of My Chemical Romance’s frontman and bassist, Gerard and Mikey Way.

·         Taylor Swift recently joined scene royalty at the self-described “most emo dinner party” alongside Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie. Swift hit Beats 1 with Zane Lowe, where she discussed the event.

·         At 2 p.m. ET on Halloween, activity began on a new Instagram account for My Chemical Romance. An hour later, the band triumphantly marked their return to the scene by announcing a return show on their Instagram, which sold out instantly.

·         After almost a year’s worth a teasing and a six-episode series on YouTube, the Shane x Jeffree Conspiracy Collection officially launched. The long-awaited collab of the two YouTube megastars, the launch broke both Star and Morphe’s websites in the process.

·         Actress Kristen Stewart played host to this past weekend’s Saturday Night Live episode, donning iconic Hayley Williams hair and singing the pop-punk parody, “Corporate Nightmare.” The (real-life) Paramore frontwoman later saw the skit, and took to Instagram to create the perfect memes.

___

Check in next Tuesday for more “Posi Talk with Sage Haley,” only at @sagehaleyofficial!

[shaggyturtlestudiostotallyradbro]

Thanks. To @akiseyu for tagging me. I don’t normally participate in these chain things. But y’know what? Why not? It’s good to ge out of your comfort zone sometimes.

Rules: Answer 21 questions then tag 21 people you want to get to know better. However, I’m not gonna tag 21 people. Out of respect.

Nicknames: I go by a few. Quinn actually isn’t my real name. It’s a nickname. I also sometimes go by Q-Ball, Shaggy and Shags. And some of my real old online friends knew me as QX.

Zodiac:I think I’m a Virgo? I never put much stock in these things.

Height:I’m not sure. I’m taller then 5 feet. But that’s all I really know. Can’t measure myself right now.

Last movie I saw: Recently rewatched The Goonies with some of my siblings. Still one of my favorite films.

Last thing I googled: “Megazone 23 SIN”. So. Like, there’s this old Anime I like called Megazone 23. And supposedly there’s some sort of remake in the works. That’s what I was investigating. Didn’t find much info. And I ain’t holding my breath.

Favorite musician: I can’t pick one. But I can give a list of bands and artists I enjoy. Iron Maiden, Dokken, Queensryche, Lion, Alien, REO Speedwagon, Stan Bush, FM, Journey, The Midnight and last but certainly not least, Rick Astley. I listen to a lot of 80s Rock, Metal and Pop. And I’m also a huge fan of the Synthwave scene.

Song stuck in head: “Not Enough” by Starship. It’s been stuck in my head all day.

Other blogs: I run a few. My most popular one is @cyndaganda, a Pokémon fan page about Cyndaquil. I also run @raichu-propaganda, and @pokeoddities, a fan page about the weird stuff in Pokémon, which I run with two other admins, whom I’ll tag.

Do I get asks: not really. I’ve gotten a couple on Cyndaganda. But that’s it.

Following: 42.

Seems more then a few of them are porn bots. Funny. I thought the NSFW purge was supposed to take care for that. @staff, got an explanation, huh?

That said, my Pokémon pages have tons more followers. With Cyndaganda being over 600. I’m honestly and pleasantly shocked.

Amount of sleep: I have a weird schedule. Bedtime at 3:00 AM. Wake up at 12:00 PM. You do the math.

Lucky numbers: three is my lucky number....if you got that reference, awesome. But really, in my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.

What I'm wearing: I mean, what I usually wear. a variation on one of these.

Dream job: Tough Question. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a game developer. But now, I really just want to tell my stories in whatever format possible.

Dream trip: There’s a lot places I’d like to visit. Ireland is pretty far up the list. I have a friend in France I’d love to meet and of course, no weeb would deny the chance to visit Japan.

Favorite food:I’m supposed to have a favorite? XD Actually, there’s this Chinese restaurant near me that I absolutely love.

Play any instruments:Keyboard actually. I make Synthwave tracks occasionally. You can find a lot of my work here: https://soundcloud.com/user-768657140 (shameless plug)

Languages:only English currently. But I’m looking into learning Japanese and French.

Favorite song: I say this sincerely. Without a trace of irony or sarcasm. My favorite song is Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Most people only like it ironically because of the meme. But I legitimately think it’s an awesome song.

Random fact: if there’s one thing you’ve gotta know about me going in, it’s that I have a form of Autsim known as Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s lower on the spectrum. But still on the spectrum. Knowing this will probably go a long way towards explaining some of my weird behaviors.

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: a fountain (of useless knowledge.) A neon sign with some lights out.

Tagging: I usually don’t bother people. It’s a matter of respect. But if I had to tag a few people, it’ll be some of my fellow Pokéganda admins, (there’s so many of us now.) @sunshineandshitpostss @mala-sadas @thelonelyabsol @ellixtt and @leavanny-propaganda. There’s a lot more and anyone who wants to try this can feel free!

Like it or not, I’ll be back. Next time.

~Quinn.

[drumie]

Salutatory Speech.

So as Salutatorian, I was told I would have to write a speech focused on the history... I find that a bit challenging, but here it goes.

A very long time ago, the universe did not exist. There was infinite mass and density, and said universe couldn’t take it, so there was a boom. A big bang of sorts…

Then in the late 90’s and early 2000’s we were born. One of us, in fact, was born on this very day. I want to wish Alicia Hernandez a happy birthday. (sing alicia happy birthday)

So we were born. Our worries were few, but substantial. Two of my personal struggles included catching the next spongebob episode and drinking chocolate milk too fast.

We started pre-school. My only memory from there is getting sick on one too many pigs in a blanket. We met some of our first friends here. Simple times.

2004 - Facebook was created.

2005 - Youtube was created.

Then we started Elementary school. I was at east ridge. Our worries here included getting the last breakfast pizza that was left over because “adam wasn’t here and he would want me to have it.” They included  obsessively cramming for spelling tests, memorizing multiplication facts,  and taking our first TAKS test. TAKS test. Feel old yet?

2006 - Twitter was created

We moved onto 4th grade at SIS… The turf wars began. And for the folks that don’t know, there were two different elementary schools that brought up Kindergarten through 3rd grade. And then these two schools would feed into SIS, Sweetwater Intermediate School. This was our world now. Where we came from defined a person… were you from east ridge, or were you from south east? And I’m ending the beef now, East Ridge was the better of the two. Only kidding! It didn’t matter. There were good things from both schools. I’m just glad that hating and judging people from where they’re from is only something 4th and 5th graders do.

I digress. We’d rack up AR Points ca ching! We’d party like the year we were born… Flamingo fling. Not many worries, but we were still in a hurry, learning about history and Martin Luther King. And those days remained romanticized because again, our biggest concerns only included passing a TAKS test and… our first puberty class.

2010 - Instagram was created

Speaking of puberty, here came middle school. Oh my God. Puberty was like Everyone telling you to look both ways before crossing the street to watch for cars and then a falcon swoops down from the sky and attacks you. Folks I thought that was it for us. As soon as coach Huskey said “Let’s go hit that creek” I recall thinking to myself “yeah I’m going to die in the next few hours.” I found my passion: Band. I also found what I thought was my passion: Football. I remember one day Kiante hit me and I was like “I don’t think I like this very much.” Life got real. Technology took off. We all got phones, social media, iPads. Remember how cool we thought we looked with all of our decent selfies  camwow retro logo in the bottom left? Instagram, Snapchat, facebook, tumblr (lowkey though), Jokebox, iFunny, Youtube, and for the first time, We stopped going to older people for help and we got online and googled it. We were the pioneer generation that was raised by technology. Surrounded by information in the times of our lives when we needed it the most. We began to comprehend the different weights of life. As a middle schooler I pulled a few all-nighters to finish projects and homework… I may or may not have procrastinated on. Our priority list was fine tuned. School and extracurricular were up there now. But memes, relationships, and social media were among them as well.

2012 - Vine was created

Then came High School. lots of smells in high school have you noticed that? The big room smells like shredded tires and hard work and dedication with a hint of Trent tears scattered here and there. You could always tell when bunsen burners were on because the science hall always smelled unpleasant. And Mrs. Melendez’s room when she would burn those Orange Buttercream Scenses that smell like fruity pebbles oh my god.

Smells like the big room, bunsen burners, teen spirit, and those scense’s are the things I think I’ll remember the most.

I learned a few important things in my time in High school that I’d like to share with you.

Freshman year I learned that if you’re unhappy in your situation, you have the ability to change it. Whether it be relationships, extracurricular, or any aspect of life, you can change it. I also learned that social media can be a cruel blackhole, that can distort views, reputations, and relationships. Even more so today. Tread carefully.

Sophomore year, I learned the true value of hard work thanks to Mrs. Judith Brentz. She taught us many valuable lessons, the most important being “how to use our heads for something more than keeping your ears apart.” I also got my first B… Thanks Mrs. Mac. I also got my second B… Thanks Mrs. Brentz. I also learned how to rid my life of toxic people, and for the first time I began to see the world for what it really was. All the variables, and the factors that can play into what, when, why, and how we think the things we think.

Junior year was the toughest for me. Between band, Round 2 of Brentz for chem 2, Coach Mayes, Work, and family…. It taught me that you can’t do everything you want to, and at the same time get enough sleep. I also learned that it’s healthy to rock the boat every now and then. You’ll either get humbled, humble someone else, or if conditions are just right, a healthy mix of the two.

I also learned probably the most important lesson I’ve learned thus far. This applies to everyone listening, Teachers, families, current students, etc. If you don’t get anything about my longwinded speech, please hear this.

My junior year, I stopped worrying about grades, and I started doing the best I could to learn and retain everything that was being taught to me. Numbers are just Numbers. But what we should understand is that we have the world’s most powerful computer between our ears, and once we start using it, we become unstoppable. There are people that will disagree with what I’m about to say, but stop trying ace tests. Stop trying to do the bare minimum to get by. Learn and retain the information, and those good grades will come. I guarantee it. And class of 2018, it’s not too late to apply to your lives. Whether you’re going to college or not, this is a fundamental principle that can be applied across the board, and I encourage you to do so.

Alright back to jokes.

My senior year I learned lots. Like how you can overcook a TV Dinner and still get food poisoning, ruining your chance for perfect attendance that year. Once I started seeing colleges I started learning how a world that I thought was so big is about a whole lot bigger. I learned that if you fall asleep exactly 47 minutes before the first bell, you’ll wake up and be in a sour mood the entire day. I learned that once people figure out that you’re doing a speech at graduation, everyone wants a shout out. I also learned that you can market shoutouts and get a headstart on paying tuition by selling them for a dollar a piece. I also learned that I should've thought of that sooner and not just the night before I gave the speech. Nobody bought shoutouts. (this was what was originally written, but nick gomez bought a shoutout lol)

But our priority list is strict now. When we have to be where and with who? Some of us are paying bills, we have to worry about finances, college tuition, student loans, our next meal, car payments, gas money, textbooks, toothpaste, medical, dental, water, electrical, internet, phone bills. Oh my God I thought I wanted to be an adult but this isn’t what I meant. Of course, those are all things we should be concerned about.

I for one have my priorities just a little bit different

My biggest worries are still catching the latest episode of spongebob and drinking chocolate milk at the right speed.

So welcome. I hope you enjoy tonight's ceremonies. I’m going to wrap this up with a few thank yous, and we’ll get on with it.

Thank you God, for the many blessings you’ve laid upon my life as well as the blessings you’ve given my friends and family. I know I tick you off sometimes, so, I just ask that you’ll bear with me. I’m still learning

Thank you to my dad. You’ve taught me a lot. The most memorable being the wisdom you passed on from my grandmother in heaven… To never take life too seriously.

Thanks momma. You make me laugh like no one else can. And you get me the way no one else can. You can bet everything you say I’m gonna steal and make it my own. I love you.

Marlee, you’re the only one that gets me emotional anymore. I’m so proud of you. I once described you to a friend as a little packet of sunshine that grew arms, legs, and a face, and now you just walk around spreading happiness and joy. I’m glad you made your own path and didn’t follow in my footsteps. I know you’ll continue to make me proud with everything that you do.

Band - Thank you for giving me a place I belong. I’m odd, and yall were okay with it. Without you, I wouldn’t be standing up here.

Directors - Thanks for making me feel at home. I still cant wait to call yall by yall’s first names here in about an hour.

Teachers and Administrators - Thank you for bearing with me. I know I was a thorn in yall’s side from time to time with scandalous assignments and requests. And Mrs. Reyes and Mrs. Little… I made it.

(With the exception of what’s bolded, the other shoutouts made were ad-libbed and did not have a concrete order. I recall thanking other teachers, friends, and family, and shouting out nick gomez, lauren rodriguez, and trini and bell.)

And last but not least, I’d like to thank Jeff Stein and Richard Ferguson for keeping me on their staff after numerous hiccups on 96.7 FM, 1240 AM, KXOX. Good times, great country. For the job opportunity you’ve given me, you helped ease the financial stress that comes from being a poor high schooler, and a soon to be college student. I cant thank you enough.

And in closing. Heed this warning, everyone listening.

We are strong.

We are persistent.

We are mustangs.

We will go on.

We will succeed.

We will prosper.

We are coming.

We are graduating

We are the Class of 2018.

Thank you, and God Bless.

“Salutations” //Trent(on) Hicks. May 25, 2018

[thesinglesjukebox]

The Singles Jukebox Celebrates 30 Years of Rhythm Nation 1814 (a Janet Jackson retrospective)

Janet Jackson’s had one hell of a career. It’d be glittering even if you were to cut the album she released 30 years ago this week out of history. And historic is what Rhythm Nation 1814 is, not like a war, but like a discovery; it was groundbreaking and influential and so much pop released in its wake owes it a debt of gratitude. The album contained seven top 10 singles in the U.S., each with indelible melodies, state-of-the-art beats and vivid music videos. Janet was always on the radio, always on TV, and welcome everywhere she went. She endured the failure of two albums and the weight of family baggage before reinventing herself, seizing artistic control and having one of the longest and brightest imperial phases of any pop star. Sex positive, romantic, assertive and wise, she’s an icon whose brilliance comes as much from how her songs make us feel about ourselves as they do about her.

Her familial connections might help explain her, but they didn’t define or limit her. She’s a sympathetic performer, an innovator in the development of music video as an art form (someone in her camp needs to fix up her spotty presence on video streaming sites, people need to see these videos in HD) and a smart, underrated songwriter in her own right. There’s a lot of Jackson in Beyonce, in Rihanna, in Britney, and in any woman who makes us smile and makes us dance. Because she did all those things over and over again.

Here’s a bunch of songs by Miss Jackson that moved us, or just made us move:

Katherine St Asaph on “Nasty” [8.14]

Date the quote: “[His] dance cuts have a format-friendly, artificial sheen … but she seems more concerned with identity than playlists.” This is not from 2019, about a post-Spotify pop star (I cheated a bit, leaving out a reference to “Arthur Baker dance breaks”) but from the ’80s. Specifically, it’s from the Rolling Stone review of Janet Jackson’s’s Control, the first half of which is a review of a comparatively nothing Jermaine Jackson album. This was typical: if press didn’t dismiss her as an biographical afterthought who happened to still sing, they wrote about her alongside her family, and specifically her brother. (This continues to this day: Note the sustained attention given to her response to Leaving Neverland, which ultimately was to join her family in condemning it.) The line everyone quotes is “Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty,” but more pointed is one of the lines that precedes it: “my last name is Control.”

The lyric to “Nasty” is full of that sort of role-reversal, like a swordfight where one guy yoinks the other guy’s sword — the sword being the “nasty groove.” But said groove possibly illustrates the lyric even better. Made by producers/former The Time members/future creative partners Jam & Lewis out of big ’80s percussion, plus clanks and repurposed orchestral stabs from an Ensoniq Mirage, one of the earliest sampling keyboards, it doesn’t sound martial exactly, like some of Jackson’s later work, but certainly sounds stark. It sounds like a challenge, one Janet takes up: her past soubrette voice drops to a throatier register, then is stoked into roars. The beat’s not quite its own thing; “Nasty” resembles experiments like Herbie Hancock’s “Metal Beat,” and in turn much of New Jack Swing resembles it. But how Jam & Lewis described it was a rapper’s beat — now standard for pop or R&B singers, from Destiny’s Child to Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish, when they want a tougher image. Meanwhile, Britney took Janet’s soft spoken-word interlude “I could learn to like this” and extrapolated an entire career from it — and covered it, unusually early in her career — but simplified it, mostly collapsing the context of family ties and dignity and creative control onto one axis: sex. But what they’re all doing is asserting this kind of Control.

Part of appreciating songs from the ’80s and ’90s is prying them out of the clutches of the era’s pop-culture jokification– I do like MST3K, but their sort of snappy “Nasty” joke is kind of what I mean. More than one article/restaurant review/listicle attempts to identify, meme-ily, Janet’s idea of “nasty food” (Janet’s answer, dubiously, was whole squid). A certain comment by a certain head of state gave the song a late-breaking sales boost But put on some ’80s radio (or a contemporary playlist of people copying ’80s radio) and wait for “Nasty” to come on. The rest of the radio will flinch.

Kat Stevens on “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” [8.67]

“What Have You Done For Me Lately?” is a sparse, angry snap of a song, the overspill of weeks and months of gradually-building resentment. It’s taken a nudge from bezzie mate Paula Abdul for Janet to fully admit her relationship has gone sour: her once fun-loving, adoring beau has become complacent, content to put his feet up on the sofa and take Janet for granted. Should she leave? She loves him! Or does she? Should love really feel like a heavy weight, pressing down on you? Like your stomach won’t stop churning? Like letting the phone ring out unanswered rather than deal with his temper? Like maybe it’s your fault that he’s like this? “Who’s right? Who’s wrong?” Janet is determined to make a decision with a clear head, but the anxiety and hormones are bubbling underneath (“I never ask for more than I deserve…“). Thankfully Jam & Lewis are on hand with a clinical, whipcrack beat — snap out of it, Janet! The tension manifests itself in her zigzagging shoulders, hunched and strained and contorted, primed to lash out – just as he walks through the door! Janet is wary, but her dude is on his best behaviour, puppy-dog eyes, I’ll do better from now on, I swear. They dance perfectly in time together, remembering the good times: all is forgiven. Surely Janet hasn’t fallen for the same old lines, doomed to repeat the cycle? Paula is rolling her eyes: ugh, not this bullshit again… Then, as the happy couple laugh together over dinner, Janet glances back at us, and the smile falls from her face. The decision has been made. As soon as Mr ‘Not All Men’ leaves for work in the morning, she’s putting her passport in a safety deposit box and setting up a secret savings account to fund her getaway. The plan is in motion. You’ve got one life to life.

Thomas Inskeep on “Diamonds” (Herb Alpert ft. Janet Jackson) [6.80]

After “The Pleasure Principle,” this might actually be my favorite Janet Jackson single (even though she’s technically the featured artist on it). “Diamonds,” written and produced by Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis for Herb Alpert’s 1987 album Keep Your Eye on Me, is, in all but name, a Jam/Lewis/Janet record — with a few Alpert trumpet flourishes. The beats rock hard, and Janet delivers what may be (and certainly was at the time) her most IDGAF vocal: you’re gonna get Miss Jackson (because you’re clearly nasty) some diamonds, aren’t you?

Alfred Soto on “The Pleasure Principle” [8.43]

For all the banter over the years about the cold and steel of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ beats for Control, the coldest and steeliest they had no hand in creating. Songwriter Monte Moir, like Jam and Lewis also a The Time alum, stumbled on the title first: “I had to figure out what it was I was trying to say, I just stumbled into the title and realized it fit.” Sung by Jackson in her airiest, most insouciant coo, “The Pleasure Principle” starts with bass synth and cowbell before settling down into a matter-of-fact tale of a night of sin. To visualize the concept, choreographer Barry Lather put together one of Jackson’s most iconic videos, a masterpiece of athleticism involving chairs. Too cold and steely for the audience, or perhaps the hype cycle for a sixth single had exhausted itself: “The Pleasure Principle” missed the top ten in the summer of 1987, stopping at #14. So ignore the single mix and revel in Shep Pettibone’s Long Vocal Remix.

Kat Stevens on “Let’s Wait Awhile” [6.60]

Can you have an erection-section classic that’s primarily about abstinence? “Let’s Wait Awhile” has all the features of a late-night Magic FM request slot regular: soft electric piano, finger clicks instead of drums, lyrics about promises and feelings and stars shining bright. But this message is about trust, not lust. It takes courage to admit that you’re not ready, and it requires faith in the other person that they’re not going to be a dick about it. I remember the advice columns in Just 17 repeating over and over that as Informed Young Women we shouldn’t be pressured into sex, which was all well and good until it actually came to the act of Doing It, whereupon the fug of hormones and internalised misogyny meant that all rationality went out of the window. It’s the sign of how strong and confident Janet is in her relationship, that she can be ‘real honest’ and discuss her concerns freely with her partner, without worrying that he’s going to a) dump her b) tell his mates that she’s frigid or c) ‘persuade’ her round to his point of view (*shudder*). If he’s not willing to wait, maybe he’s not such an ideal person to be doing this sort of stuff with in the first place? I can hear the dude whining to his mate now: “I took her out for dinner and all I got was a perfectly vocalised key change!” Just 17 would be proud of you, Janet.

Jessica Doyle on “Miss You Much” [7.83]

A little context: in March 1989 Natalie Cole released “Miss You Like Crazy,” a ballad built for Cole to sing wide about longing. In June Paula Abdul released the third single off Forever Your Girl, “Cold Hearted,” whose video made a point of its group choreography. And then in late August came “Miss You Much,” the first single from Rhythm Nation 1814. Did Janet Jackson have beef with her ex-choreographer? Was that the kind of thing people talked about, in the pre-poptimist, pre-TMZ era? Because in retrospect “Miss You Much” looks like a dismissal of “Cold Hearted,” cool and upright where the latter was David-Fincher-directed sleazy. (By contrast, the director of “Miss You Much,” Dominic Sena, had already treated Jackson with respect in the video for “The Pleasure Principle.”) But also “Miss You Much” plays as a broader statement, a refusal of expectations. There’s nothing sad or ballad-like about it. There’s that opening high of “sho-o-ot,” and then Jackson’s on a roll: it’s all about her, the deliciousness of her feeling; she can barely bother to describe the “you” being missed so much besides the blanditries of smiling face and warm embrace. The power in “I’ll tell your mama/I’ll tell your friends/I’ll tell anyone whose heart can comprehend” isn’t in the longing; it’s in how much she relishes being the one who gets to do the telling. By 1989 she was in control enough to not have to utter the word once. “Miss You Much” isn’t a deep song, didn’t set out to accomplish as much as the title track or later songs like “That’s the Way Love Goes” or “Together Again” would. But thirty years later it still looks and sounds like (what we now call) a power move.

Katie Gill on “Rhythm Nation” [8.57]

How does one try to condense the reach and influence of “Rhythm Nation” in a single blurb? Entire articles have been written about this song and video (because really, you can’t talk about the song without talking about the video). It’s influenced singers, dancers, directors, choreographers. It won a Grammy as well as two MTV Music Video Awards when those awards actually mattered. The choreography is perfect. Jackson and her dancers move with military-like precision, flawlessly executing maneuvers and creating a dance that would almost instantly become part of the popular consciousness. The sound is amazing. That bass groove is so tight, adding a layer of funk which the guitar takes to further levels. The tune is an absolute earworm, the chorus is iconic, and Jackson’s vocals are at the best of their game. But I think the most important part of “Rhythm Nation” is that this absolute banger of a song, this masterclass in choreography, has remarkably idealistic lyrics. Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” yearns towards a racially and socially conscious utopia as it attempts to unite people to join together and create this utopia. In a lesser artist, these lyrics would be out and out corny. But when wrapped up in the final package, the lyrics go from corny to believable. Suddenly, the idea of the whole world helping each other or rising up in protest doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

Alfred Soto on “Escapade” [7.67]

With solo credits as common as hair metal solos in Janet Jackson music, I often listen to tracks like “Escapade” and wonder: what did Janet Jackson contribute? Lyrics? Sure. But she has to write them around a Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis melody, no? Or, as is no doubt the case, she comes up with her own vocal melody to accompany their chord progressions. According to Jam, the trio had “Nowhere to Run” in mind: first as a cover song, then as inspiration. “Escapade” hopscotches away from the sense of danger animating the Martha and the Vandellas chestnut; in 1989, into the eclipse of a grim decade for black lives, looking forward to Friday and drinks and friends would have to do. Over Jam and Lewis’ unrelenting thwack, Jackson sing-songs a valentine to a shy boy whom she hopes will join her in — what? The sheer euphoria of the bridge — a melody as bright as a returned smile — suggests worlds of possibilities when the check’s cashed and the night’s young. After all, MINNEAPOLIS!

Leah Isobel on “Alright” [7.14]

Rhythm Nation might have more banging singles, and it might have songs that more directly diagnose the ills of late capitalism, but no song on the record better encapsulates its utopian aims than “Alright.” Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis famously left the high end of Janet’s songs empty to provide space for her delicate soprano; here, they fill the low end with vocal samples, percussion, submerged synth blats, and tense bass licks. Instead of singing high for the whole track, however, Janet buries lyrical references to magic spells and the end of the world in her lower register, where they blend into the rest of the song. It’s only on the chorus, and particularly on her swooping vocal runs as she riffs on the phrase “you’re alright with me,” that she surfaces from the swirl. On a record where she spends so much time and thought discussing what’s wrong around her, here she takes the time to see and acknowledge what’s right. I don’t know that I’ve heard a better sonic analogue for finding relief from chaos: one voice against a wall of voices and sounds, getting lost and being found over and over to the comforting rhythm of a pop song.

Edward Okulicz on “Black Cat” [6.57]

“Black Cat” was never the huge stylistic U-turn it was perceived as. Janet’s brother had dabbled in rock guitars, and this is in that vein too, while still being of a piece with the other songs on the album. Where it succeeds is because it doesn’t just lean into rock, it’s as credible a rock song as it is a dance-pop song — the riff, which Jackson wrote herself, kicks ass, the drums shake a room as much as the cavernous thuds of her contemporaneous singles, and the song’s melody and the fierce vocal performance straddle both worlds. And if you don’t like the mix there’s like 900 different versions with 2000 different guitarists — only a slight exaggeration. Its overall success is testament to Janet’s persona, sure, because nothing she released could have failed at this point, but you can’t go to Number One with single number six off an album without your usual co-writers and producers unless you’ve written something that connects with listeners and performed it with power. The way she slams down on “don’t understand… why you… insist…” is a moment of perplexed, angry humanity in the middle of a song that tries to understand something tragic — the corrosion of drugs and gangs on young people’s lives — and while the soloing is a little hammy, the song escapes being embarrassingly corny. Because in fact the whole song kicks ass.

Pedro Joao Santos on “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” [8.71]

One of the greatest pleasures in getting into Janet is how deliriously bold all of her work is. A story, if you will: how Jimmy & Terry stepped in to support her emancipation and helped her invent new jack swing all within Control, before taking the formula apart in Rhythm Nation 1814, aiming for pop that was both a manifesto against bigotry and, between a balm and a corrective, a rush of love. It was designed for high impact, meaning it would’ve always been a pop juggernaut — the material was there, even if the marketing was oblique, which it was. Instead of a glamour shot in Technicolor and a flirtatious title, the 12 million copies sold feature a stark black and white portrait backed by a call-to-arms; the pop froth is smattered around the backbone of topical anthems.

From single to single, A&M skittered between the two sides and amassed consecutive top 10 singles, but it was the last calling card that proved career-defining. At first, “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”’s hard-edged beats scan identical to “Rhythm Nation”’s sonic matrix: belligerent and completed by Janet’s frontal vox, only in this instance driven through a more feminine marketing (the music video is a blueprint). That’s the first trick: she unexpectedly launches into the first verse in a tentative, lightly hostile lower register (“like a guy would,” said Jimmy Jam, as it was to be a duet) and keeps it until the chorus wraps up. It’s pop as friction. By the second verse, Janet goes up an octave and matches the now-bubbling passion at the forefront. The tiny synth countdown drives it into a perpetual unfolding, each time emerging to add more (vocal) layers to the cacophony and threaten to wrap it up, before coming back in force.

Janet’s head voice soars up to the grand finale, a pop cataclysm of an ending, one of the best in recorded history — which applies to the entirety of “Love Will Never Do,” a simultaneous pitch for chaotic head-over-heels energy and blockbuster status. It’s a bizarre ride and a joyous knockout: the honeymoon phase juiced into one relentless beast of a banger, one that changed pop for good.

Jackie Powell on “State of the World” [6.67]

“State of the World” deserved a music video. At its heart, this is a dance cut with a little bit less of the hard rock that roars in “Rhythm Nation.” In content and in sound, this track is a sequel and that’s not a criticism. It’s an expansion which encourages a foot tap by the listener and includes an absolutely integral bassline that drives this track through and through. While the song clocks in at under five minutes and could have been a bit shorter, its chorus, which crescendos in clarity and volume, makes up for it. In addition to Jackson’s delivery on the verses, which is rather understated, the sound effects which illustrate “State of the World”  aren’t too kitschy. The cries and crashes aren’t as apparent as in brother Michael’s “Earth Song” for instance, and that’s appropriate. The politics had to run as smooth as the bass on this track, and they did. They didn’t serve as a distraction, but rather as an asset. Janet was the master of New Jack Swing, and while folks look to her brother’s album Dangerous as the most successful of this genre, Janet experimented with it first.  The percussive repetition, serves a purpose for Jackson on the record. It maintains the same intensity throughout as it reflects exactly what she has to say. Lyrically, I wish that Jackson explained how her “Nation” would “weather the storm.” To this day, homelessness and poverty are issues that affect people continuously. Jackson states the cornerstone rather than the specifics, and maybe that’s okay. It’s something that in 2019 we need more than ever. While unity appears so far out of our reach, Janet attested as early as 1991 that we can’t stop and shan’t stop.

Thomas Inskeep on “The Best Things in Life Are Free” (with Luther Vandross, BBD and Ralph Tresvant) [7.60]

To soundtrack his 1992 film Mo’ Money, Damon Wayans (who wrote and starred in the critically-derided box office hit) called upon superproducers Jam & Lewis, and they did work, producing or co-producing 13 of the album’s 14 tracks and writing or co-writing 12 of them. The soundtrack’s lead single was very pointedly a “look at all the cool stars we got together” move, featuring superstars Vandross and Jackson duetting, along with a brief rap bridge from Bell Biv DeVoe (credited here as BBD) and their New Edition compadre Ralph Tresvant. Released as a single in May 1992, it’s a perfect summertime smash, simultaneously airy-light and slammin’, with Vandross and Jackson weaving in and out of each other’s vocals effortlessly. BBD and Tresvant pop in with a nothingburger of a rap (Tresvant gets a label credit for literally uttering one line, the song’s title) that at least serves to provide a modicum of grit to the proceedings, but no matter: Jackson especially sounds breezier than maybe ever, while Vandross seems to float above the record. The two are magical on a track perfectly suited for them (credit Jam & Lewis, of course), and the result is a minor classic.

Jonathan Bogart on “That’s the Way Love Goes” [7.86]

A little over a year ago I rather overshared in this space when discussing Madonna’s “Erotica,” released a year before this single. A year makes a lot of difference: by the time I was listening to Shadoe Stevens count this down on American Top 40, the summer it became the longest-running #1 hit any Jackson family member ever had, radio pop was no longer a dirty, soul-damning secret, just a daily companion, a window into a more colorful, adult, and interesting world than the ones I knew from books. I would probably have had a healthier relationship to romance and sexuality, in fact, if this had been my introduction to overtly sexual pop rather than “Erotica” — both songs share the technique of a sultry spoken-word refrain, but Janet’s is actually grown-up, with the confidence of a woman who knows what she wants and how to achieve it, with none of Madonna’s juvenile need to épater les bourgeois. As it happened I didn’t particularly connect to “That’s the Way Love Goes,” having reached the stage in my adolescence when getting a charge out of raspy-voiced men singing about political instability felt like the more gender-appropriate inevitability. It wouldn’t be until years later when I returned to re-examine the radio pop of my youth with maturer ears that the amazing miracle of this song fully dawned on me: those pillowy guitar samples plucked from songs where raspy-voiced men sang about political instability, but pressed into service of a loping, candlelit coo: equal parts seduction and vulnerability, Janet singing with the authority of someone who had already conquered the world about the grown-woman concerns that really matter: love, and sex, and the impossible beauty that results when they intertwine.

David Moore on “If” [8.33]

Janet Jackson sang explicitly about “nasty boys,” but I was, to use a term my son’s preschool teacher used to describe him, a timid boy, and I soaked up the privileges of maleness with a corresponding fear of performative masculinity. My love of women through childhood was paired with a deep-seated self-loathing that snuffed out friendships, made me uncomfortable in my body, and sparked intense, violent fantasies directed toward unnamed aggressors in my mind, all those “bad guys.” I wouldn’t be able to reflect on any of this until adulthood. But there was a point in preadolescence when the contours of the trap started to become discernible, and Janet Jackson’s “If” was both a cherished song — one I would listen to rapt in front of MTV or on the radio, legs haphazardly splayed behind me — and was also the uncanny soundtrack to my discomfort: a muscular, menacing, alien object that completely unnerved me, made me a supplicant to its rhythm, got into my head and into my guts, made me move, if only for a minute, in a world that glanced contemptuously toward — but stood defiantly outside of — that toxic timidity. I was the woman telling the man what I wanted, and I was also the man obeying; I was the dancer and I was the floor, too. On “If,” Janet Jackson and Jam & Lewis tamed the New Jack Squall that her brother unleashed on Dangerous with Teddy Riley, insisted upon its lockstep subservience to her mission and her groove, and pointed to an R&B futurism that was barely a twinkle in pop music’s eye in 1993. The result is simultaneously mechanistic and wild, rolling waves of noise that you quickly learn to surf or risk drowning in them. That same year, I also found inspiration in angry men, many of them likely nasty ones, the same men I would have assiduously avoided in person and fought off in my dreams. But Janet Jackson kept me honest, reminded me that my anger was a tell for my underlying cowardice and shame. There is never a hint in “If” that her hypothetical proposition — too strident for any coyness or the suggestion of flirting — could ever be satisfactorily answered. Not by you anyway. No boy, nasty or timid, could meet Janet Jackson’s challenge; she’s mocking the guy who would even try. By the time you hit that cacophony of a middle 8 break, defibrillation on an already racing heartbeat, you’re defeated, more thoroughly than any bad guy you might have dreamt up. You’re not ready for this world — you’re not, so you can’t, and you won’t. But what if…?

Jonathan Bradley on “Again” [5.67]

It sounds like a fairy tale: billowing keys, Janet’s tinkling voice, and no drums to earth the fantasy. “Again” was from John Singleton’s Poetic Justice, not a Disney picture, but it shimmers with its own magic anyway. The melody is gorgeous: listen to Janet measuring out the descending syllables in “suddenly the memories came back to me” like they’re sinking in as she sings the words. (She repeats the motif on “making love to you/oh it felt so good and so right” — this is a romance where the sex is as fondly remembered as the emotions.) Janet Jackson is such a versatile performer, and for all the bold strokes and blunt rhythmic force of her best known moments, “Again” is a treasure all of its own for being none of these: it is tiny and tender and sparkles with a real joy that is all the more wondrous for sounding like it could not exist outside of a storybook.

Scott Mildenhall on “Whoops Now” [4.83]

Even outside America, there’s a widespread tendency for people, in search of a lifetime’s grand narrative, to define everything that happened before The Day The World Changed – a coincidental proxy for their childhood, youth or adolescence – as a simpler time. It’s a convenient illusion for anyone in the world lucky enough to be able to believe it, whose formative years were insulated from war or suffering and can be instead defined by the most carefree scraps of pop culture. In that respect “Whoops Now” holds great temptation, it being the breeziest brush-off of burdens, with an all-over Teflon disposition. It’s therefore an almost fantastical ideal of ’90s radio (and still one of Janet’s most played in the UK); a warm and fuzzy-round-the-edges memory of which on closer inspection, the details are inscrutable. Janet, aloft in a proletarian reverie, relates a confusing tale of overnight shift work, a hindrance of a boss and the consequent curtailing of her plans for some fun in the sun this weekend with her friends (who, judging by her extended roll call, seem to mostly be record execs, producers and performers, as well as dogs). Narratively, it’s difficult to tease apart, but all you need to know is that hurrah – she somehow ends up on holiday anyway. A story that sounds more like something from an expletive-laden segment of Airline thus becomes the most casual celebration of the apparent inevitability of positive resolutions when you’re a globe-straddling megastar, or perhaps just a kid in the back of your parents’ car with the radio on. With that certainty of happiness and universal balance, and the belief that it ever was or could be, it’s fantasy upon fantasy upon fantasy. But no bother: Anguilla here we come.

Nortey Dowuona on “Throb” [6.86]

I started listening to Janet Jackson as a happy accident. Her songs were on Atlantic Radio, but nowhere else. I barely heard her music growing up and only knew of her massive career, and not the music that made it so huge.

So when I first pressed play on “Throb,” I was kinda scandalized.

Because it was so directly, overtly sexual, and confident about it. Janet was ready to get down and dirty, without all the mind games, patronization and bullpuddy packed all over it. The lyrics are pretty straightforward, and there are only ten lines of lyrics. Its pretty clear what Janet wants, and she’s gonna get it.

Plus, the bass was slamming, it slunk around my neck and just rested there while the air horn synths washed over my eyes, blinding me. The drums then stepped over me and plucked me up, with cooing and cascading moans and grunts swirled around my body, shredding me to pieces —

Then the song ended. And it was over.

I honestly, can’t really say why this is my favorite Janet song, but I can say that you should probably play it while having sex, and while thinking about having sex, and play this late night in the night if deciding to have sex. I know this’ll be the first thing I’ll play if I have sex with anyone.

Thomas Inskeep on “Throb”

In the summer of 1993, I’d just finished my second freshman year of college, in my hometown. (I’d gone to college straight out of high school in 1988, and dropped out without much to show for it, 16 months later.) One of my best girlfriends had herself just graduated from college and was back at her parents’ house, job-hunting. We were both past 21 and looking for a place to go dancing, and we found it in the nearest big city, Fort Wayne, Indiana, about 45 minutes away. It was a short-lived gay bar — so short-lived I don’t even recall its name, sadly — with a dance floor roughly the size of a postage stamp. I don’t remember meeting anyone there, ever. (I didn’t drive at the time, so Julie always had to, so it’s not like I could’ve gone home with someone anyway.) I don’t remember anything about the bar — except its dancefloor, and the fact that they had a decent DJ on the weekends, who mostly played house music, which I loved. And there were three songs that got played, in my memory at least, every single week. (And Julie and I really did go just about every weekend that summer.)

The first was Bizarre Inc.’s “I’m Gonna Get You,” an ebullient diva-house track which topped Billboard’s Dance Club/Play chart in January but was just peaking at pop radio in June. The second was, really, the gay club record of the year, RuPaul’s “Supermodel.” It peaked at #2 on the Dance Club/Play chart in March, but never left gay clubs at all through 1993. When that got played at the club, I would, week-in, week-out, “work the runway,” lip-syncing my ass off. (It’s just that kind of song.) And the third was an album track from a newly-released album (that would, in fact, eventually be promoted to dance clubs at peak at #2 on the Club/Play chart), Janet Jackson’s “Throb.” This song went where Jackson never had before, both musically (it’s a straight-up house jam) and lyrically (it’s a straight-up sex jam). Its lyrics are minimal but to the point: “I can feel your body/Pressed against my body/When you start to poundin’/Love to feel you throbbin’.” No subtleties there! Accordingly, Julie and I would spend the song grinding up against each other on a tiny riser at the back of the dance floor, because why not? And because it’s fun.

26 years later, ‘Throb” still kills. And throbs.

Maxwell Cavaseno on “Runaway” [6.50]

My childhood managed to dodge the oceanic nature of pop thanks to being struck between two extremes. My father usually kept the car full of rap, via cassettes of assorted rising stars of the moment (Big Pun, Nas, Various Wu-Tang Soloists) or whatever was playing via Hot 97. Meanwhile my mother typically wallowed in a realm of AOR pop a la Amy Grant or the likes who you could never remember anything about. If there was anything majorly important in the history of pop music from 89-98, lemme tell you, that shit didn’t happen anywhere near me. However, one of the few memories that did manage to linger on was “Runaway.” It was a record that managed to ethereally sneak up to me like some kind of weird creep that I just couldn’t understand with its weird foreign instrumentation simulating orientalist visions and Janet’s background vocals harmonizing like a bunch of Buddhist Cats sneering a la Randy Savage’s “nyeeeah.” Whenever I trailed along in supermarkets or tried to keep busy in waiting rooms, I could comprehend what happened on other songs I liked in the outer world like “Take a Bow” or “Kiss From A Rose.” But this? How did you rationalize all of these gliding vocals crooning and this swarm of glittery noises when you have barely any understanding of the world around you, let alone music? No matter how much further away and away I’d get from whenever it was meant to be a single, it could still disruptively appear in the wild and send the whole day into a state of disarray. It’s so alarming to know now as a grown adult that I can personally summon this ifrit of a single, rather than think of it as some sort of rare sighting of trickster energy (all the more bolstered by Janet’s ad libbed teasing of supposed imperfection and other-human excess) that isn’t meant to be heard more than once in a blue moon. To be honest, I may just forget altogether after the fact, the same way I never remembered the name of the song even when considering it for review. Just that “nyeeeah” hung around in my memory.

Danilo Bortoli on “Got ’til It’s Gone” [6.17]

In Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, a cut from her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon, she sang of impeding progress as a form of destruction (“They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot”). Often seen as as environmental anthem, actually, she was looking back at the sixties, and then seeing, right ahead, a decade that showcased no promising future, only aching skepticism. This resulted in one the purest, simplest lines she has ever written: “Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. Almost thirty years later, Janet Jackson conjured those same thoughts, conveying, instead, a different meaning. The Velvet Rope was her very own game of smoke and mirrors, and intimate and often misleading look at her private life. Lying at the center of that album, there is a delicate tribute. “Got ‘til It’s Gone” features a well-placed sample from that line culled from “Big Yellow Taxi.” The context is entirely different however. Here, the same words are uttered between confessions of love. It helps, then, that “Got ‘til It’s Gone” is, in reality, a talk. It’s the way Janet asks “What’s the next song?”. It’s the way Q-Tip responds “Like Joni says.” It’s also the way he asserts finally: “Joni Mitchell never lies.” The brilliance of a sample travelling three decades is that it is deliciously meta. The concept of truth, in Janet Jackson’s universe, is interchangeable. That way, she, too, can never lie.

Josh Love on “Together Again” [6.86]

Together Again was originally conceived as a ballad, and no wonder – it’s a deeply sentimental (borderline treacly, if I’m being uncharitable) song about death and angels and reuniting in the afterlife in heaven. Deciding to record it as a surging house jam instead was an absolute masterstroke, and the result is one of the most purely joyous, transcendent moments of Janet’s career. The idea of carrying a lost loved one in your heart and feeling their spirit in the goodness you encounter in the world, and even the thought of one day joining together with them again in the great beyond – “Together Again” makes you feel that joy rather than merely verbalizing it. So many of us say that when we die we want those we leave behind to celebrate our lives rather than mourn our passing, but Janet is one of the few artists to really bring that radical acceptance of impermanence to life.

Thomas Inskeep on “I Get Lonely” (TNT Remix) [7.43]

Allow me to be cynical for a moment: Janet Jackson, in 1998, is still a superstar. But in the past five years, she’s only had one R&B #1, ‘94’s sex-jam “Any Time, Any Place” (assisted greatly by its R. Kelly remix). So if you’re thinking “What do we do to get Janet back to the summit,” what do you do? Well, it’s 1998. How about calling in Teddy Riley? Better yet, how about he gets a helping hand from Timbaland? And the best: how about Teddy brings his merry men of BLACKstreet with him for a vocal assist? Ergo, “I Get Lonely (TNT Remix),” now label-credited to “Janet [she was just going by “Janet” at the time] featuring BLACKstreet.”

And you know what? It’s genius. The idea, brilliant. The execution, top-notch. Riley on the remix, with instrumental help from Timbo, with guest vocals from BLACKstreet: it’s more exciting than the original (which was already quite good), has a little more junk in its trunk (those should-be-patented instrumental tics that Timbaland is such a wizard with, ohmygod, much like Janet’s big brother’s vocal tics), and the duet vocals are superb (especially as it was so rare to hear Janet singing with others at the time, and every member of BLACKstreet save Riley was a great-to-marvelous singer). Presto! Two weeks atop the R&B chart in May 1998, along with a #3 Hot 100 peak. Mission accomplished — and fortunately, it works even better artistically than it did commercially. Everybody wins!

Pedro Joao Santos on “Go Deep” [7.14]

That The Velvet Rope’s party song is so heavy on gravitas and spine-tingling urgency speaks volumes. In an album so hellbent on carnal and psychological openness, the party of “Go Deep” goes deeper, and makes sense. It’s not just the top-20 banger it factually was, and it’s not just hedonism for the sake of it. That is, if you don’t divorce it from the wounds of longing, manipulation, abuse and distress being sliced fresh. Tension lies within this absolute romp, placed midway through the red-hot catharsis of Rope. It might be that the party acts as a salve for the trauma. Though it isn’t put into words, you can hear it subliminally: Janet’s hesitant vocal; the evocative, near-melancholy synth fluctuating about. You can even imagine the words as portals: making friends come together as support; the sexual come-ons not just because, but maybe as physical relief for the pain.

A bare-bones lyric sheet would give you nothing — but music as context goes a long way. And the music itself from “Go Deep” gets me in raptures after all these years, from that ridiculous boing (perhaps best known from “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis) to the bass driving it, all chunky and rubbery, and the dramatic string arpeggios in the middle-8. If there’s got to be a template for urgent, carnivorous Friday night anthems, let this be the one — and keep it in context.

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa on “You” [7.00]

The Velvet Rope carries a strong and fascinating legacy; It is rightly praised as a predecessor to both mainstream R&B’s exploration of the intimate (the body) and the spiritual (the soul) in the continuing decades, and to the experimental scope and atmospherics later adopted by today’s so-called “Alt-R&B,” and this extraordinary mixture of elements is never more efficient than in the album’s third track “You.” The song is, first and foremost, a triumph of production genius. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis’s use of space, and the dynamic at play between the then-cutting-edge electronica ingredients and neo-soul’s earnestness and sensual themes, should itself be a case study for aspiring producers, but it’s the way Janet’s vocals are performed and filtered through the track that take the song to unsuspected levels of greatness. There is something in the breathy, low-pitched verses that exudes unadulterated eroticism, and when the post-chorus harmonies kick in where things really become ecstatic. In several interviews, Janet herself defined this album as “baby-making music”, and I can safely bet that “You” is the song she was thinking about. And its echoes still reverberate today, not only in the sound of R&B to come, but in the fact that thousands of people were conceived to this very beat.

Edward Okulicz on “Free Xone” [6.83]

I remember it only vaguely; it was 1995, and for drama class we had to do a performance based on a social theme using a combination of media and methods. I was in a group with a big Janet fan, who decided to use her music as the basis of a combination spoken-word, mime and dance performance on racism. I only understanding the themes in the abstract because I was young, sheltered, and white. I knew racism was a thing I didn’t like, but it wasn’t an existential threat to me. Two years later, on “Free Xone,” Janet would speak directly to me and tell me of a bleak present with the promise of a better future.  Janet told it like it was, and still is for many: if you are gay, despite the fact that love is love, a lot of people are going to hate you or at least be uncomfortable around you. Homophobia isn’t just violence or hostility, it can be any kind of social rejection, and it can happen anywhere, as it does in the anecdote in the first part of the song, where a pleasant conversation with a person sitting next to you on an airplane sours because of it.

Janet Jackson is a dancer, but she didn’t dance around anything if she didn’t have to. She leaned into her status as a gay icon out of love, not necessity. But she made her social justice songs out of both love and necessity. Hating people is so not mellow. Love and sex are never wrong. Janet Jackson has never resiled from that belief, and never shied away from putting it in song. I’d grown up listening to Janet Jackson, but I’d never thought of her as an ally for myself, and it was intensely comforting to hear that she was on my side when nobody else seemed to be (Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Leviticus Faggot” the previous year had more or less convinced me I’d die in the closet).

In 2019, her funk here sounds a little dinky, the transitions between the soft groove and the raucous party bounce are kind of awkward, and the weird song structure sounds like it was cut and pasted together, but it’s a collage of compelling pieces. It got quite a lot of play on the alternative youth station here, the one whose listeners were at the time generally terrified of a) pop superstars, b) Black artists, and c) dancing. Someone thought the kids needed to hear this, and they were right. “Free Xone” helped my nascent consciousness come to grips with earlier songs that I’d just considered a good time before. Its story is less common in the Western world, now, but it’s still true as history for some, and as present for others.

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa on “Tonight’s the Night” [4.50]

I’m a sucker for good covers; we usually tend to give songwriting, the cult of the inspired author, and the concept of originality a certain mystique that grossly overshadows the importance of skilful creative interpretation and re-invention. But many of our most important singers are essentially covers artists — Joe Cocker, Tom Jones, Bettye Lavette, a huge number of blues and jazz singers, most of the 50s-60s Greenwich Village folk scene — because of course we need these musicians to give these tunes another dimension, whether stylistic, generational, or purely emotional. Also, a song’s perspective can change dramatically because of who is singing.  “Tonight’s The Night” works with Rod’s gravelly, rugged voice, and, although it can sound a bit creepy by today’s standards, the arrangements carry it beautifully, but in Janet’s sexually adventurous, musically exuberant The Velvet Rope, it acquires a new dimension, a far more interesting one, might I add. From Janet’s view, and the brilliant decision of not changing genders in the lyrics, her version alludes to bisexuality in a way that makes complete sense within’ the album’s core subject matters, and works wonders within’ its production philosophy. Stewart later presented his live renditions of the song by saying “This is an original by Janet Jackson”. No one will refute that. It’s her song now.

Alex Clifton on “All For You” [6.86]

“All For You” is the first Friday night you go out with your new college friends and that utter sense of freedom where you realize the night is yours without a curfew. It’s sparkling fairy lights in the background, a disco ball overhead, at a roller rink or at a club with a fancy light-up dancefloor, maybe a stolen swig of rum on your tongue. It’s the moment you see someone new and your heart falls into your stomach with no prior warning, and you suddenly know you’ll do anything to talk to them. You simply have to; it’s an animal urge, chemicals and hormones whizzing through you and making it hard to walk because you’re giddy. Maybe you’re braver than I am and you go talk to the person who’s snagged your attention, but maybe you hang back with your friends and pretend you’re not watching out for your crush while also dancing stupidly with your new friends. There’s a pure exhilaration in this song that many have tried to emulate but few match the ease with which Janet performs. She’s flirty and sexy like no other, but “All For You” also makes you, the listener, feel flirty and sexy too — something about it worms its way into you and becomes the shot of confidence you need. Lots of people can write songs about dancing at the club, but Janet turns it into a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Jibril Yassin on “Someone to Call My Lover” [7.00]

Does falling in love always feel the same every time? It’s one thing to keep pushing on in life but what’s striking about “Someone to Call My Lover” is how infectious Janet’s optimism is. Built on an Erik Satie riff by way of the band America, Janet recast herself as a woman excited to love again. Let it be on the record – long-term relationships are fucking terrifying. Moving on from the dissolution of a marriage is disorienting and the songs that use Janet’s divorce as inspiration on All For You share a tentative yet firm belief in renewal.

She uses “maybe” on “Someone to Call My Lover” the way one throws out a “lol” after shooting their shot – you don’t even have time to catch it amid her grocery store list of wishes for her future love. “Someone to Call My Lover” hits all the right places thanks to the careful and immaculate production but it’s Janet’s sincerity that marks it as her best twee performance.

Will Adams on “Son Of A Gun” [5.20]

Given All For You’s post-divorce setting, it was only appropriate that after the aural sunbeam of the title track and giddy optimism of “Someone to Call My Lover,” Janet would do a 180 and proceed to rip him a new one. The opening taunts — “Ha-ha, hoo-hoo, thought you’d get the money too” — against the throbbing kick bass set the scene, but the true genius of “Son of a Gun” comes from its sampling and modernization of ultimate kiss-off song “You’re So Vain.” The classic bass riff, once soft in Carly Simon’s original, is now razor-sharp. The cavernous drum beats sound like you’re trapped in an underground dungeon. All the while, Janet mutters burn after burn right into your ear (“I’d rather keep the trash and throw you out”) before Simon launches into the “I betcha think this song is about you” refrain, sounding like a Greek chorus confirming Jackson’s digs. The album version carries on until the six-minute mark, with Carly Simon waxing poetic about clouds in her coffee and apricot scarves in an extended outro. The video version wisely excises this in favor of guest verses from Missy Elliott, whose reliably grinning performance shoves the knife in deeper. In both versions, however, Janet’s menace is preserved. Forming a trinity with All For You’s preceding two singles, “Son of a Gun” showed just how versatile Jackson is, and how adept she is at encapsulating the messy, complex emotions of an ended relationship.

Will Adams on “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” [6.17]

I had been looking away from the television when it happened. By the time I’d heard the gasps from my parents and I glanced up at the screen, the cameras had cut to an aerial shot of the Reliant Stadium in Houston, where the 2004 Super Bowl was taking place. My 11 year old brain couldn’t process exactly what happened from my parents’ concerned murmurs, and having completely missed the incident (there was no YouTube back then, see), it would take years for me to understand the impact that the “wardrobe malfunction” had on culture and Jackson’s career. The greater impact was to be expected — the six-figure FCC fine on CBS (later dismissed by the Supreme Court) and conservative handwringing about the moral decline of the country — but Jackson in particular suffered unduly. There was the blacklist, ordered by Les Moonves, which kept her off CBS, MTV and Infinity Broadcasting. Jackson’s appearance at that year’s Grammy Awards was canceled. Late-night talk show hosts turned it into monologue fodder, usually grossly and usually at her expense. The controversy hampered her album cycles well into the Discipline era. Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake remained entirely unaffected. His career would skyrocket two years later with the release of FutureSex/LoveSounds; he became a Saturday Night Live darling; he performed solo at the Super Bowl’s halftime show in 2018. This alone puts Damita Jo and “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” in a more sympathetic light, but even then, pop radio missed out on a truly brilliant song here. Janet acts as the Dance Commander, taking the opening guitar lick from Herbie Hancock’s “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” and turning it into a lasso with which she throws you onto the dancefloor. The percussion percolates, each sound placed perfectly to create an undeniable groove. Because of the blacklist, it didn’t even break the Hot 100, and the video was also subject to its own asinine controversy — the few video channels that managed to avoid the blacklist edited out the sexual content, including a scene were two female dancers kiss. Even fifteen years later, it feels like we’re still reckoning with how Jackson was treated in the aftermath. But there’s an inspiring resilience in “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” reflected in the smile she bears on the Damita Jo cover; its unabashed sexuality in the face of all the backlash makes it an even better listen today.

Kat Stevens on “Strawberry Bounce” [7.17]

I like Janet best when she takes risks, whether that be controversial subject matter, a new image or a change of musical direction. Old faithfuls Jam & Lewis are still a solid presence on Damita Jo, but on “Strawberry Bounce” we see Janet plumping for a left field choice in the then-unknown Kanye West. The result is an intriguing Ryvita, all brittle handclaps and feathery faux-ingenue whispering, on the verge of crumbling into nothing. It’s so light that there’s no bassline, just a queasy glockenspiel tinkle and Janet’s butter-wouldn’t-melt sing-song. I keep wondering to myself: why have Janet and Kanye chosen to present a song about working a shift at a strip club in the style of an Aptimil Follow-On Milk advert? Is it a subtle reminder that sexy times may eventually lead to night feeds and dirty nappies? It doesn’t help that instead of a proper beat, we have Jay-Z muttering ‘BOUNCE!’ as if he’s grumpily shooing a dog off his lawn. It’s confusing and uncomfortable, yet compelling and convincing, and I’m still listening. The risk has paid off.

Will Adams on “Rock With U” [5.83]

“Just Dance” is often thought of as ground zero for the rise of dancepop and eventually EDM in the US, but it had been brewing for over a year before the Lady Gaga song topped the Hot 100 in early 2009. From 2007 onward, the increased interest in incorporating elements of disco via four-on-the-floor beats and faster tempos created some indelible hybrids, particularly in the R&B world: “Don’t Stop the Music”; “Forever”; “Closer”; “Spotlight”; and “Rock With U.” While most of those songs stuck to traditional verse-chorus pop structure, “Rock With U” proves that sometimes simplicity is best: A house arrangement of arpeggios and basic rhythms. A single verse, repeated three times and interspersed with wordless vocalizing with nearly no variation, save for Janet’s whispers. All this, combined with the glorious one-shot video, creates a hypnotic effect, like the song will go on forever. On a recent Song Exploder episode about “Honey,” Robyn said of dance music: “It’s about putting you in a place where you’re in your body dancing without thinking about when it’s gonna end. It’s more about the moment and how it makes you feel.” This is the heart of “Rock With U”: an invitation to get lost in the music, forget about the outside world, and just rock.

Maxwell Cavaseno on “So Much Betta” [5.67]

The beginning of the 2010s was way too challenging in retrospect and I regret every minute of it. “So Much Betta” was a song I first heard in a mix by Robin Carolan, now best known for founding and guiding Tri-Angle Records, but for a brief period operated a side-blog called “SO BONES” where he’d pontificate about random gems of pop, R&B and rap but in a way that made records feel gross and sinister. Suddenly Cassie’s “My House” was a ghost story, Vanessa Hudgens’s “Don’t Talk” would be compared to Takashi Miike’s Audition, and so on. In retrospect I think of the Capital P Pop songs of the decade that I’ve responded to enthusiastically like “TT,” “Cheyenne,” “Strangers,” “Somebody Else,” “Backseat,” “Lac Troi” or the dozens of others there is at least usually a despair or gloom I can at minimum project onto the record even where it might not be obvious. And that comes from hearing Janet Jackson whisper over a record that sounded like some toxic goo from out of the dregs of the Rinse.FM swamps I’d often thought to be “the coolest” sounds, before cutting through over glistening synths that felt like a phantom of not Janet per se but her brother’s past. It was a song that felt v. strange in 2010 well after MJ had died with the listless echo of the Pop Monarch feeling less like a dream-like invocation and more like a degraded copy of a copy in its grotesquery. Enough can be said about how cool and timeless and bright and powerful Janet at her best can feel. But it deserves an acknowledgement that she could also make a song that was so evocative in all the most unpleasant of ways.

William John on “Unbreakable” [6.67]

“Unbreakable” as an adjective is applicable to those rare, unending, strong relationships between people, whether they be romantic, platonic, familial, or, as has been intimated in relation to her song of the same name, between performer and audience. But it’s also a word that can be used to describe oneself, and one’s ability to traverse adversity with stoicism. The first song on Jackson’s most recent album doesn’t sound defiant – more “stroll to the supermarket on a warm summer’s evening” than an escapade to Rhythm Nation. But courage manifests in different ways. Jackson’s breezy delivery, which takes on an ecstatic form in the song’s chorus, is indicative of her self-assurance at her status; she’s embracing the languor allowed to her as a legend. She may have been removed of her clothes in front of the whole world a decade prior; she may have spent her whole life in the shadow of her infamous relative – but she hasn’t faltered. She’s still here. As she greets her listeners in her inviting whisper at the song’s conclusion, she notes that it’s “been a while” since her last missive, and that there is “lots to talk about”. But her listeners aren’t impatient; there’s always time for Janet. Her story has always been one of control, of poise, of excellence. Long may it continue.

Pedro Joao Santos on “Dream Maker/Euphoria” [5.17]

When I get to delve deep into a legend, as with Janet, I tend to hit the ground running and have them release a new, great album a few months later. Not having heard 20 Y.O. and Discipline, I was shielded from the Janet-isms from the ’00s and viewed Unbreakable as a proper continuation to her legacy, instead of the grand comeback it actually was — hackneyed artwork, halted tour and all. Janet got the upper hand, finding her reunited with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, in a steadfast gaze in a steadfast gaze over airtight, pensive and giddy R&B. An exemplary return to form, incidentally devoid of all the raunch, bathroom breaks and Kioko.

One older Janet-ism survived in a marginal capacity: the penchant for interludes, continued here in only two moments (aside from endearing sneezes and spoken-word outros): one was the bizarre preview for a Target-exclusive full track; the other was “Dream Maker/Euphoria”. A precise inflection point scribed upon the passage from “side 1” to “2” — even if things threaten to get a bit pedestrian and humdrum in the last half. The track itself is a dual mood, yet a continual trek through the glow of a renaissance. A seemingly old groove recalling the Jackson 5 gets dusted from the vaults for the first part. That’s ear candy for ages in itself, a web of vox so intensely feverish and melodically preternatural. It gets looped tantalisingly, then it transcends onto the next level. Full-on rapid eye movement: keyboards and ambience make up the sound of eyelids opening to meet a purple, unreal sky — suspended between worlds, a dream dimension of utopia and the reality where those ideas must coalesce. “I guess the dreamer must be awake,” Janet concludes after envisioning a “perfect place” exempt from “jealousy, abuse or hate,” “war, hunger or hate.”

Janet’s  four peak-era albums alone prove she’s been excelling at world-building where and when the world was far from ready. In “Dream Maker/Euphoria,” it isn’t so much the stark condemnations of Rhythm Nation 1814, but its more hopeful fantasies, articulated through the confident tone of Control, set to the type of innovative musical reverie The Velvet Rope predated, softened through janet.’s sensuous filter. But more than the touchpoints of yesteryear, the essence of “Dream Maker/Euphoria” lives in its manifestation of the future: how tangible and expansive it might just become, if given a chance.

[kirishwima]

Get to know me tag!

Tagged by @teakoii​

1. What is your full name? Don’t really want to give out my full name on tumblr lol, but I’m Sophia (and if we’re going for embarrassing details, I got a middle name, Marina lol)

2. What is your nickname? A lot of people call me babushka? Or just shortened versions of my name like Soph and stuff 

3. What is your zodiac sign?   Cancer 

4. What is your favorite book series?  Hmmm this is hard lol. The only series I can honestly admit to have read entirely is the Hunger Games :p

5. Do you believe in aliens or ghosts?

Aliens are 10010% real and probably want nothing to do with earth, LOL. Ghosts...it’d be so cool if they’re real. Highly doubt it though

6. Who is your favorite author? Neil Gaiman!! He’s amazing!

7. What is your favorite radio station?  Mix fm...any cypriot reading this will know lol

8. What is your favorite flavor of anything?  Of anything...probably coffee taste lol. Or mint? One of the two

9. What word would you use often to describe something great or wonderful? Hmm, amazing? Awesome? idk lol

10. What is your current favorite song?  Current favourite is probably Andromeda by the Gorillaz :p 

11. What is your favorite word?  in english?? no clue hahah :p 

12. What was the last song you listened to?  Despacito ;u; 

13. What TV show would you recommend for everybody to watch?  Voltron obviously hahah, um, maybe American Horror story? But only season 2 lol, or Black Mirror bc it’s amAZING

14. What is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down?  Ghibli films! Especially Howl’s moving castle or Spirited Away! c:

15. Do you play video games?  I do but not as much lately bc of uni

16. What is your biggest fear?  Uhhh if we’re going for deep dark fears, probably the entire concept of eternity? Like the thought of something having no real start or end just freaks me out lol

17. What is your best quality, in your opinion?  I honestly can’t think of one hahah, i’ve been thinking for a couple of minutes and can’t think of anything :p maybe that i’m an easy person to get along with

18. What is your worst quality, in your opinion?  I can make a list tbh lol, absolute worst would probably be that i’m way too sensitive & care too much about what other people think

19. Do you like cats or dogs better?  NO DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE I LOVE THEM BOTH I LOVE ALL ANIMALS ;-;

20. What is your favorite season?  Summer!! :D 

21. Are you in a relationship?  Nope

22. What is something you miss from your childhood?  I don’t miss much. Maybe not having this much of a workload if anything lol

23. Who is your best friend?  Why have one when you can have 3? :D @faded-r0ses @now-this-is-wtf @ibreathestucky <3 <3

24. What is your eye color?  Brow

25. What is your hair color?  I change it every few months lol, it’s currently black!

26. Who is someone you love?  So many people :p Friends, family, a lot of people! c:

27. Who is someone you trust?  The squad obviously, but p. much all of my friends?? Like if we’re buddies then that’s it, i trust u lol

28. Who is someone you think about often?  Like i think about my dog a lot bc i haven’t seen his fluffiness in like four moths now but i think about a lot of people often? not one set person 

29. Are you currently excited about/for something?  I’m excited for an eternal slumber tbh, or like, vacation. I need a break TuT

30. What is your biggest obsession?  Voltron probably, and also random but history?? i love. history lol

31. What was your favorite TV show as a child?  POKEMON! It was a Sunday morning ritual to watch pokemon :D

32. Who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone?  Anything? Probably no one :p

33. Are you superstitious?  Not really? 

34. Do you have any unusual phobias?  Like, I’m afraid of small white rooms with no windows. Random? Yes. Unusual? Idk?? :p 

35. Do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it? I’m insecure af but like photography so behind it lol

36. What is your favorite hobby?  Writing! :D 

37. What was the last book you read?  I mean i read a shitton of anatomy and physiology books throughout this year, do those count? Ah and The anatomy of being by Shinj Moon, though it’s a poetry book

38. What was the last movie you watched? Avengers Age of Ultron probably

39. What musical instruments do you play, if any? Nothing, sadly TuT

40. What is your favorite animal? 

I can’t. ChoOOSEE I LOVE SO MANY. If i can have like a top 3?? It’d probably be dogs & cats (in one place bc i can’t choose), foxes, and lizards? or i think they’re called newts in english? ya. 

41. What are your top 5 favorite Tumblr blogs that you follow? 

Definitely @teakoii they’re they’re the literal cutest & amazing artist, definitely 2/3 the squad: @ibreathestucky (she’s a fandom goddess ok <3), @faded-r0ses (aesthetic ho right there), (((our remaining 1/3 @now-this-is-wtf not included bc she nEVER LOGS IN)) Also @wipengineer <-the queen of angst 

and @maristine :D Quality voltron content right there~ 

and also a LOT of other blogs, some that i interact with and some not but i’m too shy to mention/tag  >.< 

42. What superpower do you wish you had? 

Being able to breathe/survive underwater. Bye bye humans. I’m a fish now. You’ll never catch me. Also shapeshifting would b awesome bc. Cmon. You could become a dragon. Take that responsibilities. 

43. When and where do you feel most at peace?

The beach, definitely. Or anywhere near large bodies of water? Give me a lake or river any day and I’ll probably never leave lol

44. What makes you smile? 

A good ol’ meme never failed me so far, also good music? And coffee, and cuddly animals or just hugs in general i love hugs

45. What sports do you play, if any? 

I do some swimming and begrudgingly go to the gym when my roommate drags me along but that’s pretty much it lol

46. What is your favorite drink?

CoFFEE. I swear my blood has been replaced with caffeine by now

47. When was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody?

I wrote a post-it note to my roommate to let her know i’m out does that count? 

48. Are you afraid of heights? 

Nope! I love looking down when standing somewhere v high or in a plane and stuff lol

49. What is your biggest pet peeve? 

I had to google what a pet peeve is TuT

Hm, i can’t really think of anything? Not a lot of things bug me tbh, except for big things like you know, like rudeness or belittling someone else e.t.c

50. Have you ever been to a concert? 

Yup!

51. Are you vegan/vegetarian? 

Vegetarian!^^

52. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

Define how little. I had a big phase of wanting to become a Power Ranger so.

According to my family i was always between vet or doctor though lol

53. What fictional world would you like to live in? 

Ohh boy, i can’t just choose one!! :p Something magic-related definitely

54. What is something you worry about? 

Something? Something? More like everything. TuT

55. Are you scared of the dark? 

Nope!

56. Do you like to sing? 

No unless I'm either drunk enough or blasting the radio loud enough for no one to hear me hahah

57. Have you ever skipped school? 

I was way too much of an ‘example student’ in high school so no lol. As for lectures in uni though..well. ;u;

58. What is your favorite place on the planet? 

The bEACH. ANY BEACH. IS THERE WATER AND SAND? THEN I LIKE IT. :D

59. Where would you like to live? 

Italy! My dream is to move to Italy after i graduate! 

60. Do you have any pets? 

Yes, a cute lil’ bean of a doggo~ (or as my friends very...politely say, the chubbiest, clingiest chihuahua they’ve ever met lol)

61. Are you more of an early bird or a night owl?

Both? It depends lol

62. Do you like sunrises or sunsets better?

BOTH I CAN’T CHOOSE TuT

63. Do you know how to drive? 

Yup! Although parking is an entire different story LOL

64. Do you prefer earbuds or headphones? 

Headphones, earbuds are annoying ;-;

65. Have you ever had braces? 

Yes. I pretend that that time period never happened ;u;

66. What is your favorite genre of music? 

Hmmmmmm. Hmmm??? I can’t choose? Probably either indie/chill music or punk rock but i listen to so so many genres

67. Who is your hero? 

I can’t really think of any celebrities, but if we’re talking people, probably my grandma? She was a badass woman that was raising two kids in her twenties whilst studying & graduating med school, then moved on to become the first woman gynaecologist in her country. Hats off to her really.

68. Do you read comic books?

A bit! 

69. What makes you the most angry? 

Honestly people that just. Can’t. Respect. Others.

So racist/homophobic/transphobic/sexist people, people who can’t respect someone else, people that think they’re superior to anyone, and also people that hurt/abuse animals- it’s like hey buddy. Find the nearest trash can and shove yourself in it, it’s not nice to litter.

70. Do you prefer to read on an electronic device or with a real book? 

Real books. I understand that electronics are more convenient but there’s nothing better than actually holding a book in your hands and flipping the pages ;u;

71. What is your favorite subject in school? 

History and english lit! And greek literature! All theoretical subjects really, lol

If we’re talking currently, then it’s embryology, definitely. I love it!!

72. Do you have any siblings? 

An older sister and two older brothers 

73. What was the last thing you bought? 

Bananas and vegetables, lol

74. How tall are you?

165cm. I think it’s 5′5″

75. Can you cook? 

I mean i nearly burn the kitchen down every time but i try

76. What are three things that you love? 

Animals, good books, coffee

77. What are three things that you hate? 

Rude/mean people (aka every single person with a Trump-like mindset, the dude himself included ofc), that’s pretty much it? it takes a lot for me to hate something 

78. Do you have more female friends or more male friends? 

Female

79. What is your sexual orientation? 

Pan! Still figuring out if that’s Panromantic or Pansexual :p 

80. Where do you currently live? 

Czech Republic

81. Who was the last person you texted? 

My roommate

82. When was the last time you cried? 

Like, 2 days ago i think? I was stressed, tired and sick lol

83. Who is your favorite YouTuber? 

Markiplier! Also a lot of creepy pasta narrators, Lazy Masquerade being my fave probably :p

84. Do you like to take selfies? 

Sometimes? it really really depends on my mood lol

85. What is your favorite app? 

Instagram probably

86. What is your relationship with your parent(s) like?

Ehh. I get along great with my dad although we don’t talk much, and i get along as well with my mom, just wish she’d realise i’m not a kid still lol. 

The older i get the better we get along i guess, although there’s some things we’ll never agree on

87. What is your favorite foreign accent? 

I like Spanish accents a lot? I have a lot of Spanish & Portuguese friends and love their accent when they speak english :p Also Russian accents?? Don’t ask me why. I just really like them lol

88. What is a place that you’ve never been to, but you want to visit? 

Japan! I really want to go to Japan. And USA? And Canada? Like, big-city places because I’ve never been to one ;u;

89. What is your favorite number? 

2

90. Can you juggle? 

I got the balance of a tomato on an acid trip, so that’s a no hahah

91. Are you religious? 

Not...really? I was raised in a very religious house and the more i learned about church the more i disliked it. I still like some aspects of it though so...I’m figuring it out still

92. Do you find outer space of the deep ocean to be more interesting? 

I CAN’T CHOOSE THEY’RE BOTH SO FASCINATING I WANNA FLING MYSELF INTO SPACE AND DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE OCEAN IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK

93. Do you consider yourself to be a daredevil? 

With enough alcohol in my system and good friends, ya. As it is? Nope, I'm that one friend in horror movies that says ‘hey guys, this is probably a bad idea’ and promptly dies lol

94. Are you allergic to anything? 

A bit allergic to dust but that’s pretty much it i think

95. Can you curl your tongue? 

No ;-;

96. Can you wiggle your ears? 

How do people dO THAT no i can’t

97. How often do you admit that you were wrong about something?

If i know I'm in the wrong i always admit it & apologise, or so i hope :p

98. Do you prefer the forest or the beach?

The forest is fun too but...the beach. Definitely. ((Plus there’s no bugs at the beach! ;u;))

99. What is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you? 

If you try your best and work hard, the result won't matter because you gave it your all and that’s what counts.

100. Are you a good liar?

Not at all, you can immediately tell if I’m lying because I start to giggle lol

101. What is your Hogwarts House? 

Hufflepuff! 

102. Do you talk to yourself? 

Yes. It’s actually funny bc i keep switching between languages when i do

103. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?  

Introvert ;;

104. Do you keep a journal/diary? 

Not exactly. I try to keep a journal but it usually ends up with doodles and scribbles from class lol

105. Do you believe in second chances? 

Most of the time, yes.

106. If you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do? 

Honestly? I’d probably leave it, OR if there’s any shops nearby, I’d take it to a store clerk, since the person that lost it is more likely to go into a nearby shop and ask if they’ve seen their wallet than to a police department, I think? idk

107. Do you believe that people are capable of change? 

Yes, definitely!

108. Are you ticklish? 

Ridiculously ticklish. @now-this-is-wtf  and @faded-r0ses have a field trip with this fact T-T

109. Have you ever been on a plane? 

Yup!

110. Do you have any piercings? 

I got a lot of piercings on my ears and had nose ring but I think it’s healed now? Will be getting a septum piercing in July though~

111. What fictional character do you wish was real? 

Lance. Lanceeeeeee. How could i not want my fave ever to be real lol

112. Do you have any tattoos? Not...yet. Soon though!

113. What is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far? 

It wasn’t exactly my decision, but switching schools back in middle school. Would have never met my tiny best friend otherwise, or met some other amazing people & teachers

114. Do you believe in karma?

Not really

115. Do you wear glasses or contacts? 

Glasses, can’t put on contacts to save my life

116. Do you want children? 

I don’t really like kids so. Ehh.

117. Who is the smartest person you know? 

Hmm, people are smart in different ways and aspects. So I don’t know one person who’s the absolute smartest!

118. What is your most embarrassing memory? 

Probably that one time at Comic con when i had a skirt-too-short problem (bless my backpack and the random leggings i had shoved in there for some reason lol), or that one time i got asked for an ID when i tried to buy a beer. At a supermarket. And they still wouldn’t believe me until I showed them my university card as well. (Sad thing is it wasn’t even for me lol)

119. Have you ever pulled an all-nighter? 

yup, way too often lol

120. What color are most of you clothes? 

Black. So many black clothes lol. At least that makes laundry much easier :D

121. Do you like adventures? 

Yes! 

122. Have you ever been on TV? 

Only for some small interview clips when I was in high school lol

123. How old are you? 

19

124. What is your favorite quote? 

“Sometimes, I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living” 

125. Do you prefer sweet or savory foods? 

I don’t like sweet stuff much so savoury! OK, NOW, WHO TO TAG~

Squad, do it if you’re up for it @ibreathestucky @faded-r0ses @now-this-is-wtf (esp. you Guac I know you’re a free potato now with exams over~), and my tumblr buddies @maristine, @wipengineer (and yes i know u got the google doc but hey! :D), @the-blood-in-your-bruise and honestly, whoever else wants to do it, that’s it, you’re tagged by me hahah ^^

[ramblingqueenfangirl]

Signs I’m becoming obsessed with Freddie Mercury

1.) the first time I’m alone in my office I dance to Queen songs from Google play and there is nothing else on my playlist

2.) I’ve forgotten or stopped caring about current popular music because all I listen to is Queen.

3.) as soon as I leave work I have Queen playing in my car on the commute home.

4.) every social media account I have Center’s around Freddie Mercury.

5.) I will be listening to a song by the band and can picture EXACTLY what Freddie is doing if it’s live.

6.) while listening to a Queen song I randomly start thinking how much I miss that man and almost cry out of absolutely nowhere.

7.) tries to find every single word written about Freddie

8.) knows all the words to Queen songs and feels a little uncomfortable when listening to one Freddie doesn’t sing.

9.) Still not over Freddie and Jim and have read Mercury and Me at least a dozen times and still cry like a baby.

10.) my desktop at work is Freddie memes and pics that rotate while I work

11.) Can watch the Rock Montreal DVD without commentary but still knows word for word what Roger and Brian said.

12.) Have to consciously make effort to try not to stay up all night on all social media looking for new Freddie or Queen material.

13.) Can almost tell from the beginning of a song what concert it’s from when it’s live.

14.) Can tell the difference between versions of songs from different live shows.

15.) purposely songs low in the car so as not to drown out Freddie.

16.) knows all the commentary and quips on all the live versions of songs on the cds.

17.) Don’t even need the side by side of the movie version and the real version of Love Aid because I know every single move or gesture Freddie makes by heart.

18.) Had to hide the LEVEL of my obsession because it’s becoming so bad it’s embarrassing.

19.) Have plotted the murder of Lesley-Ann Jones more than once.

20.) If presses could probably name most of the songs on every album in order and know some that even Queen fans overlook.

21.) Have multiple live versions of same song because I like how Freddie sings it in that concert as opposed to another and knows every little change he will add.

22.) everyday when I wake up the first thing I do is open Spotify and start my Queen playlist and seriously haven’t listened to ANYTHING else but Queen for more than half a year.

23.) talk about FM more than anyone else.

24.) could recreate every single outfit Freddie ever wore if there has ever been a picture.

25.) Gets excited over new pics of Freddie just to find them and already have seen them.

26.) counting down the days until his birthday

27.) will stop a Queen song I’ve heard a hundred times because something is distracting me from the words and will most of the time start the song over to make sure I catch them.

28.) would probably without a doubt kill anyone who hates on him or any song he ever sang

29.) knows all the words to Mr.Bad Guy album and Barcelona albums.

30.) wants to know what Freddie was thinking when he wrote or helped produce every Queen song.

31.) Knows why You don’t fool me is the most heart breaking song of all on the Made in Heaven album.

32.) Have spent hours making memes of an article that talks about the awesomeness of his Tribute Concert.

33.) Actively try to turn everyone I know into Queen fans everyday. Doesn’t understand why they don’t love Freddie as much as me.

34.) Knows basically everything published about him including all the answers to the Ask Phoebe blog.

35.) seriously no joke planning to go to Montreaux Switzerland before I die and Garden Lodge

36.) has restored faith in heaven and all things religious because there is no way Freddie Mercury is not in Heaven and no one can tell me differently or I legit want to murder them.

37.) know I’d be ok in jail for any murder of Freddie hater if I get MP3 player with Queen songs on it.

38.) my autocorrect when typing capital F automatically brings up Freddie for choice and then after Freddie is picked brings up Mercury too

39.) Can name all of Freddie’s significant relationships in order and for how many years and number of years they dated.

40.) Hates Adam Lambert so much and always have but am contemplating spending a small fortune to go to Queen+ AL concert just to see Freddie on the big screen.

41.) Knows if I do go I would be arrested for booing Adam because fuck him he’s not my Freddie.

42.) calls him MY FREDDIE

43.) any criticism of Freddie in any magazine including tabloids makes me want to hunt down said reporter and murder them.

44.) Wonders who the little girl is who screams Daddy on the intro to the live rendition of One Vision from Wembley night 2.

45.) can tell what night of Wembley songs come from no matter how similar

[trenthix]

Salutatory Speech.

Salutatory Speech.

So as Salutatorian, I was told I would have to write a speech focused on the history… I find that a bit challenging, but here it goes.

A very long time ago, the universe did not exist. There was infinite mass and density, and said universe couldn’t take it, so there was a boom. A big bang of sorts…

Then in the late 90’s and early 2000’s we were born. One of us, in fact, was born on this very day. I want to wish Alicia Hernandez a happy birthday. (sing alicia happy birthday)

So we were born. Our worries were few, but substantial. Two of my personal struggles included catching the next spongebob episode and drinking chocolate milk too fast.

We started pre-school. My only memory from there is getting sick on one too many pigs in a blanket. We met some of our first friends here. Simple times.

2004 - Facebook was created.

2005 - Youtube was created.

Then we started Elementary school. I was at east ridge. Our worries here included getting the last breakfast pizza that was left over because “adam wasn’t here and he would want me to have it.” They included  obsessively cramming for spelling tests, memorizing multiplication facts,  and taking our first TAKS test. TAKS test. Feel old yet?

2006 - Twitter was created

We moved onto 4th grade at SIS… The turf wars began. And for the folks that don’t know, there were two different elementary schools that brought up Kindergarten through 3rd grade. And then these two schools would feed into SIS, Sweetwater Intermediate School. This was our world now. Where we came from defined a person… were you from east ridge, or were you from south east? And I’m ending the beef now, East Ridge was the better of the two. Only kidding! It didn’t matter. There were good things from both schools. I’m just glad that hating and judging people from where they’re from is only something 4th and 5th graders do.

I digress. We’d rack up AR Points ca ching! We’d party like the year we were born… Flamingo fling. Not many worries, but we were still in a hurry, learning about history and Martin Luther King. And those days remained romanticized because again, our biggest concerns only included passing a TAKS test and… our first puberty class.

2010 - Instagram was created

Speaking of puberty, here came middle school. Oh my God. Puberty was like Everyone telling you to look both ways before crossing the street to watch for cars and then a falcon swoops down from the sky and attacks you. Folks I thought that was it for us. As soon as coach Huskey said “Let’s go hit that creek” I recall thinking to myself “yeah I’m going to die in the next few hours.” I found my passion: Band. I also found what I thought was my passion: Football. I remember one day Kiante hit me and I was like “I don’t think I like this very much.” Life got real. Technology took off. We all got phones, social media, iPads. Remember how cool we thought we looked with all of our decent selfies  camwow retro logo in the bottom left? Instagram, Snapchat, facebook, tumblr (lowkey though), Jokebox, iFunny, Youtube, and for the first time, We stopped going to older people for help and we got online and googled it. We were the pioneer generation that was raised by technology. Surrounded by information in the times of our lives when we needed it the most. We began to comprehend the different weights of life. As a middle schooler I pulled a few all-nighters to finish projects and homework… I may or may not have procrastinated on. Our priority list was fine tuned. School and extracurricular were up there now. But memes, relationships, and social media were among them as well.

2012 - Vine was created

Then came High School. lots of smells in high school have you noticed that? The big room smells like shredded tires and hard work and dedication with a hint of Trent tears scattered here and there. You could always tell when bunsen burners were on because the science hall always smelled unpleasant. And Mrs. Melendez’s room when she would burn those Orange Buttercream Scenses that smell like fruity pebbles oh my god.

Smells like the big room, bunsen burners, teen spirit, and those scense’s are the things I think I’ll remember the most.

I learned a few important things in my time in High school that I’d like to share with you.

Freshman year I learned that if you’re unhappy in your situation, you have the ability to change it. Whether it be relationships, extracurricular, or any aspect of life, you can change it. I also learned that social media can be a cruel blackhole, that can distort views, reputations, and relationships. Even more so today. Tread carefully.

Sophomore year, I learned the true value of hard work thanks to Mrs. Judith Brentz. She taught us many valuable lessons, the most important being “how to use our heads for something more than keeping your ears apart.” I also got my first B… Thanks Mrs. Mac. I also got my second B… Thanks Mrs. Brentz. I also learned how to rid my life of toxic people, and for the first time I began to see the world for what it really was. All the variables, and the factors that can play into what, when, why, and how we think the things we think.

Junior year was the toughest for me. Between band, Round 2 of Brentz for chem 2, Coach Mayes, Work, and family…. It taught me that you can’t do everything you want to, and at the same time get enough sleep. I also learned that it’s healthy to rock the boat every now and then. You’ll either get humbled, humble someone else, or if conditions are just right, a healthy mix of the two.

I also learned probably the most important lesson I’ve learned thus far. This applies to everyone listening, Teachers, families, current students, etc. If you don’t get anything about my longwinded speech, please hear this.

My junior year, I stopped worrying about grades, and I started doing the best I could to learn and retain everything that was being taught to me. Numbers are just Numbers. But what we should understand is that we have the world’s most powerful computer between our ears, and once we start using it, we become unstoppable. There are people that will disagree with what I’m about to say, but stop trying ace tests. Stop trying to do the bare minimum to get by. Learn and retain the information, and those good grades will come. I guarantee it. And class of 2018, it’s not too late to apply to your lives. Whether you’re going to college or not, this is a fundamental principle that can be applied across the board, and I encourage you to do so.

Alright back to jokes.

My senior year I learned lots. Like how you can overcook a TV Dinner and still get food poisoning, ruining your chance for perfect attendance that year. Once I started seeing colleges I started learning how a world that I thought was so big is about a whole lot bigger. I learned that if you fall asleep exactly 47 minutes before the first bell, you’ll wake up and be in a sour mood the entire day. I learned that once people figure out that you’re doing a speech at graduation, everyone wants a shout out. I also learned that you can market shoutouts and get a headstart on paying tuition by selling them for a dollar a piece. I also learned that I should’ve thought of that sooner and not just the night before I gave the speech. Nobody bought shoutouts. (this was what was originally written, but nick gomez bought a shoutout lol)

But our priority list is strict now. When we have to be where and with who? Some of us are paying bills, we have to worry about finances, college tuition, student loans, our next meal, car payments, gas money, textbooks, toothpaste, medical, dental, water, electrical, internet, phone bills. Oh my God I thought I wanted to be an adult but this isn’t what I meant. Of course, those are all things we should be concerned about.

I for one have my priorities just a little bit different

My biggest worries are still catching the latest episode of spongebob and drinking chocolate milk at the right speed.

So welcome. I hope you enjoy tonight’s ceremonies. I’m going to wrap this up with a few thank yous, and we’ll get on with it.

Thank you God, for the many blessings you’ve laid upon my life as well as the blessings you’ve given my friends and family. I know I tick you off sometimes, so, I just ask that you’ll bear with me. I’m still learning

Thank you to my dad. You’ve taught me a lot. The most memorable being the wisdom you passed on from my grandmother in heaven… To never take life too seriously.

Thanks momma. You make me laugh like no one else can. And you get me the way no one else can. You can bet everything you say I’m gonna steal and make it my own. I love you.

Marlee, you’re the only one that gets me emotional anymore. I’m so proud of you. I once described you to a friend as a little packet of sunshine that grew arms, legs, and a face, and now you just walk around spreading happiness and joy. I’m glad you made your own path and didn’t follow in my footsteps. I know you’ll continue to make me proud with everything that you do.

Band - Thank you for giving me a place I belong. I’m odd, and yall were okay with it. Without you, I wouldn’t be standing up here.

Directors - Thanks for making me feel at home. I still cant wait to call yall by yall’s first names here in about an hour.

Teachers and Administrators - Thank you for bearing with me. I know I was a thorn in yall’s side from time to time with scandalous assignments and requests. And Mrs. Reyes and Mrs. Little… I made it.

(With the exception of what’s bolded, the other shoutouts made were ad-libbed and did not have a concrete order. I recall thanking other teachers, friends, and family, and shouting out nick gomez, lauren rodriguez, and trini and bell.)

And last but not least, I’d like to thank Jeff Stein and Richard Ferguson for keeping me on their staff after numerous hiccups on 96.7 FM, 1240 AM, KXOX. Good times, great country. For the job opportunity you’ve given me, you helped ease the financial stress that comes from being a poor high schooler, and a soon to be college student. I cant thank you enough.

And in closing. Heed this warning, everyone listening.

We are strong.

We are persistent.

We are mustangs.

We will go on.

We will succeed.

We will prosper.

We are coming.

We are graduating

We are the Class of 2018.

Thank you, and God Bless.

“Salutations” //Trent(on) Hicks. May 25, 2018

[seashellsoldier]

“The Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal” by Ian Christie, 2004.

For those who may not know, Ian Christie is a mainstay DJ on SiriusXM’s Liquid Metal channel, and he hosts a riveting show called Bloody Roots where he tackles some thematic issue each time, be it Folk Metal from the UK, the origins of Black Metal in Scandinavia; he even did an ode to children and childhood through heavy metal music. Needless to say, this dude’s a sage on the subject and a kindred spirit of alliteration meshed with a heroic writing style. As one of the back cover plugs by the Library Journal says: “Christie might as well drop the ‘e’ from his name because he has just delivered the gospel of heavy metal.”

This book is over a decade old, and even though history is what it is, some of the more “modern sections” (read: Internet age) lose their luster simply because cable TV, Headbangers Ball, Rock Video Monthly, and the web allowed much easier access to underground music that could never make it to FM radio. As a side note, I know there is an interesting, if not somewhat silly, academic base in Northern Europe focused on “heavy metal studies,” which is (abstractly) a sub-set blending of sociology and musicology, linked by the psychology between leaders (bands) and followers (fans). If you have access to academic databases, check it out. Free college for all allows for odd subject-matter specialization, I guess.

Now most critics, and Christie, say Black Sabbath was the true point of origin for every single facet of heavy metal, in 1970. However, Hazlit recently published an interesting feminist critique alluding otherwise ( http://hazlitt.net/blog/heavy-metal-feminism ), and really no one can now remember what was going on in basements and garages, dive bars, and pubs in backwater venues. Of course, no one pops out of the womb with an electric guitar and a song: everyone is influenced by someone else. Sabbath was influenced by the Stones, the Stones were heavy into southern blues music, the Deep South Blues were influenced by centuries of slavery and slave songs …

I suspect lots of young bands trying new things out of the 60s never made it into the spotlight, but for all intents and purposes, the Brits did it first in the 70s (Sabbath, Motörhead, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden), and the U.S. took it harder, faster, and darker in the 80s (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Pantera). Now, it’s pure, beautiful bedlam aching almost every corner of this dark world. Of course I’m generalizing here. The social-psychology of how heavy metal came to be through fan-reaction is very meme-like in the classic sense of the term. Word-of-mouth, tape sharing, fanzines, mom & pop music shops, and concert-going were the only real way kids could get hooked, before cable TV, radio stations, and the Internet embraced it in the early-mid 90s. Nowadays the spectrum of sub-genres in metal is staggering, and Christie himself has made a more-or-less formal taxonomy of it all, which is brilliant as much as it is limiting by the oppressive power of labels. Christie goes into more depth with his radio show, and his publishing company (http://www.bazillionpoints.com) churns out titles regularly, all focused on metal music. That said, this book does a nice job of sometimes looking at the social and political contexts of the metal music scene across the timeline, and across the planet, at least up until 2003. The final section is him putting his finger on the pulse of metal and making predictions in the post-9/11 world, which of course Time makes such things moot.

I think the best comparison I can make is that heavy metal and all its sub-genres are very much akin to postmodern fine art when looked at along its timeline. No other type of music can be defined by its ever-pushing of boundaries, challenging, twisting, shocking, transforming, self-destroying, turning inward, exploding outward, mocking, writhing, screaming, searing … and at times, being witch-hunted by Neocons, slandered by the media, feared by the ignorant, and, sadly, selling out (i.e., Metallica). To me, metal is also the most topical, often digging deep into the human condition with life and death, mortality and demise, war and religion, hypocrisy and oppression. Again, look at Sabbath. It starts, more or less, with them.

For me, this book was a nostalgic odyssey, seeing the forces at play upon our young minds that we were all mostly oblivious to back then. We connected to the music because it was underground, riotous, unpopular, not on the radio. It was communing with a fringe group, often without knowledge of, or dialogue with, one another, because the music spoke for us. We were, and may forever be, the outcasts of popular society. Having grown up in the 80s, and being at the far eastern edge of Chicagoland, with luck and clear skies, we could bend the rabbit ears antennae on the TV and pick up Channel 50 on the UHF dial. This was the obscure channel that showed Godzilla movies, hosted Samurai Sundays filled with B-style Kung-fu flicks, and during the summer months played music videos, one of which was Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” This was probably in 1985-6; I was 12-13 years old. Taking paper route money, I bought a compilation cassette tape titled “Heavy Metal Thunder.” Anyone remember this one? Twisted Sister, Dio, Judas Priest, Scorpions, etc. Blew the doors off my mind and I was hooked forevermore. First live concert was Megadeth (Rust in Peace) opening for Judas Priest (Painkiller), while my second was the mighty Milwaukee Metal Fest to see Nuclear Assault, amongst so many others, riding with a friend through Chicago in a beat-up Jeep Gladiator pickup. My prized Global Annihilation Tour shirt was worn until it was tatters. This was 1989.

The fact that both Motörhead and Iron Maiden just released great new albums is a true testament to the longevity of the genre at its purest roots. Spotify analytics determined that although rap is the genre most globally ubiquitous, metal listeners are the most loyal. I’m proud of that. It might just say it all.

This book is a terrific resource for further reading, and a great general guide to the big picture of a music genre over its first thirty years. Kids, expand your musical minds, and know your roots!!!

Photos, clearly biased by me, and leaving out hundreds of bands that influenced one another … 1) Black Sabbath 2) Motörhead 3) Iron Maiden 4) Twisted Sister 5) W.A.S.P. 6) Metallica 7) Slayer 8) Pantera 9) Slipknot