Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

What are the best album-opening lyrics ever? — Andrew from Chicago

Great question, Andrew! And I appreciate your pithiness. We might not have much time, so let’s get right to the point.

I’ve actually given this one a lot of thought over the years. What is it exactly that makes an album-opening lyric great? I feel like it comes down to the following criteria:

1) It must be implanted permanently on your brain. This is a given.

2) It must exist on a classic album. This is also a given. (Well, maybe this one is less of a given. But I think it will make more sense after I tell you the other criteria.)

3) It must be an actual good lyric. Many great albums have classic opening lines that aren’t actually very good. This is true of pretty much every Led Zeppelin LP, for instance. (The exception is “Immigrant Song” from Led Zeppelin III, which qualifies as stupid good: “We come from the land of the ice and snow / From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow / The hammer of the gods.”)

4) It must set the tone from what is to come, and immediately make it clear that what you’re about to hear is a masterpiece. A mission statement, in other words.

With those four points in mind, here are my top five best album-opening lyrics.

5. “I’m a street walking cheetah / with a heart full of napalm” — The Stooges, “Search And Destroy,” Raw Power.
Probably the most Iggy Pop lyric of all-time, from the Stooges’ best album. It’s impossible to stop listening after hearing that line.

4. “I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue” — Wilco, “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
What does it mean? I have no clue. Is it evocative? Absolutely! Also, it appears that I have an affinity for album-opening lyrics that start with “I am.”

3. “Lights out tonight, trouble in the heartland / got a head-on collision, smashing in my guts, man” – Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands,” Darkness On The Edge Of Town.
You remember the album before this, where Bruce was singing epic, fanciful songs where kids flash guitars like switchblades? Well, dreamtime is over. Welcome to Bruce’s nightmare. With this lyric, you’re in the middle of it immediately.

2. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine” — Patti Smith, “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo,” Horses.
This isn’t just a brilliant album opener, it reads like the first line of a classic novel. An ideal tone-setter for perhaps the defining “literary” rock album.

1. “Teenage angst has paid off well / now I’m bored and old” — Nirvana, “Serve The Servants,” In Utero.
Funny, sad, self-referential, self-mocking, autobiographical, media-baiting, mythical, anti-mythical. For me, no other album-opening lyric comes close.

Let’s say that a long-running, famous artist has been in a pronounced skid. Their last album definitely wasn’t great or well-received, and maybe that’s one of a few in a row that trended worryingly downward. It’s now possible for this artist to make a Competence Album. Not quite the Late-Era Classic, but proof that the artist can still sound like themselves. It’s enjoyable but usually kind of a second or third tier album. Examples include Pearl Jam’s self-titled, Interpol’s El Pintor, Weezer’s Everything Will Be Alright In The End, Oceania by The Smashing Pumpkins, and R.E.M.’s Accelerate. What are some other examples? — Blake from Cincinnati

My goodness, Blake. I feel like another music critic just hijacked this column. Maybe I should be the one asking you questions. Here’s my first one: Can I steal this idea for myself?

You have correctly identified a common phenomenon for legacy acts. We’re all familiar with the Good-Bad Album, which is the post-peak effort that is deeply flawed in a profoundly interesting way, illuminating how and why that act’s classic work is great by offering a less-than-great contrast. And then there’s the rare but oft-discussed Late Career Masterpiece, the unicorn release that only a precious few legacy acts ever achieve.

Meanwhile a Competence Album is a far more common occurrence. Like you said, this is where you do that thing you do in a way that displays to your fanbase that you “still have it,” though let’s be real you don’t still have it that much. Most legacy bands ride out the rest of their careers making albums like this. U2, for instance, has been doing it for 20 years, since 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

Along with the examples you already mentioned, I feel like special mention must be made of Steel Wheels by The Rolling Stones, which is among the earliest instances of a Competence Album. Steel Wheels was accompanied by a massive tour in 1989, the Stones’ first such campaign in several years, and was generally regarded as their “pretty good and solidly professional” comeback after two misfires, 1983’s Undercover and 1986’s Dirty Work. (Though, in retrospect, those two albums are more fun to revisit than Steel Wheels.) That same year, Neil Young put out Freedom, his first album since the ’70s that seemed most reminiscent of his ’70s albums after an odd and misspent period in the ’80s. Actually, Freedom might be slightly too good for a Competence Album, given that it includes one of his most famous songs, “Rockin’ In The Free World.” Though I’m not sure it quite deserves to be considered a Late Career Masterpiece. (Neil made two of those, Ragged Glory and Harvest Moon, soon after Freedom.)

Do we need to make up another archetype here? Perhaps a “Rolling Stone 4-star Semi-Classic”? Give me another idea I can steal, Blake.

What’s the best album by a band that had been together at least 25 years at the point of release? — Tom from Minneapolis

Wow, lots of questions about oldsters this column. I get it — we’re all worried about our elders in these trying times.

It’s interesting that you specified band here, because I think it’s much harder for a band to put out something really great later in their career than it is for a solo artist. Just keeping a band together for more than 25 years is an accomplishment. As we just discussed, merely receiving competence from our aging bands seems like the best we can expect. However, there are examples of bands putting out really excellent LPs well into their advanced years. In fact, more than I expected before I started brainstorming.

The most recent to pull it off is Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, who might very well be the grand champions of late-career masterworks. In 2019, they put out the luminous Ghosteen, which arrived 35 years after the band’s 1984 debut, From Her To Eternity. (You could also count two other Nick Cave albums from the 2010s, 2013’s Push The Sky Away and 2016’s Skeleton Tree.) Another band that performed strong in their later years was Rush, which delivered two later-career gems, 2007’s Snakes And Arrows and 2012’s Clockwork Angels, 33 and 38 years respectively after the band’s 1974 self-titled debut. And then there’s Yo La Tengo, who put out the strangely beautiful There’s A Riot Goin’ On in 2018, 32 years after the release of their 1986 debut, Ride The Tiger.

If I had to pick the best record out of that bunch, I’d probably go with one of the Nick Cave albums. But in terms of my favorite, I’m going with something totally disreputable: Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, released 27 years after their debut. Yes, I know Roger Waters was long gone by then. And, sure, that album is more remembered for the massive tour that followed. But as a sucker for David Gilmour guitar tones, I can’t resist “High Hopes.” This album is underrated, I’m telling you! Brilliant competence!

This seems fairly prescient with The Last Dance — there is a huge discrepancy between what musicians can recall and what athletes can about their shows and games, respectively. Michael Jordan is able to essentially give play-by-play of fairly obscure games from early in his career and then of course continues to do this throughout the documentary. I’ve seen this with baseball players and football players, too. Yet I’ve read about musicians saying that shows blend together and they can’t recall set lists and shows. Why does this disconnect exist? — Andrew from Milwaukee

Drugs.

Woody Harrelson’s got a bit of a reputation… as a stoner. He loves weed, and although he did quit the stuff in 2017, the Venom: Let Their Be Carnage star admitted to having a difficult time telling Willie Nelson the bad news. By 2019, Harrelson was back to smoking weed after he ran into Nelson, which was probably meant to be. Harrelson’s played a stoner in multiple projects (including alongside Matthew McConaughey in the far-too literally titled Stoner, Dude) and on SNL, where (in a different sketch) he played a football coach to Pete Davidson. Now these two will play stoners together.

At least, they’re both voicing stoner characters in an adult animated series called The Freak Brothers, also co-starring Tiffany Haddish and John Goodman. The project (without casting details) was actually announced during San Diego Comic-Con 2019 as an (updated) adaptation of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers underground comic (created by Gilbert Shelton) that first surfaced in 1968. Three stoner brothers, obviously, are the “freaks,” and Haddish will voice their ornery cat as they barrel through San Francisco, looking for their next high.

As one can imagine, these roles seem tailor made for both Harrelson and Davidson (who plays a weed-loving character with a history much like his own in Judd Apatow’s upcoming VOD release, The King Of Staten Island). And John Goodman isn’t exactly a stranger to that vibe either, as The Big Lebowski fans know. However, Harrelson’s the co-star who’s shouting this news from the Instagram rooftops.

“I’m really psyched to be a part of this legendary comic @TheFreakBrothers,” the True Detective actor wrote. “I don’t know why, but this humor seems to be right up my alley.” The series doesn’t have a TV home yet, but it does have a sneak peak already, and oh boy, this is definitely tweaked for 2020. The brothers and their cat apparently crashed out for 50 years after smoking a genetically-enhanced supply. This looks nuts (not only is there the weed factor, but the brothers have infiltrated the Oval Office), but a streaming service just might pick it up soon.

With no basketball going on right now, fans of the sport are all-in on The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part docuseries on the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls that doubles as a look back on Michael Jordan’s tenure with the franchise. One day after that wraps up, hoops fans will get the chance to dive into a new series revolving around the end of Donald Sterling’s tenure as the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Blackballed makes its debut on May 18. Directed by Michael Jacobs and centered on a five-day stretch that featured the unearthing of racist comments from Sterling and the response by Clippers’ players and coaches, it will be the latest program on mobile streaming medium Quibi.

A new trailer for the program — one that highlights those who will appear on Blackballed in some form or fashion — debuted on Thursday morning. You can watch it right here.

The Sterling saga has been the source of intrigue in recent months as ESPN debuted a 30 for 30 podcast called The Sterling Affair last August. As a refresher, following TMZ’s reveal of the aforementioned comments and Clippers players expressing their disgust with Sterling, NBA commissioner Adam Silver levied the harshest punishment against an owner in league history, banning Sterling for life and fining him $2.5 million. Soon after, Sterling sold the Clippers to Steve Ballmer, who still owns the franchise to this day.

The Seinfeld series finale was seen by 76 million viewers, meaning roughly 41 percent of all households with television sets in the United States at the time tuned in to watch Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer get thrown in jail. That series-capping plot point was a huge secret, so much so that Jason Alexander was offered a bribe to leak the finale.

By his own publicist.

“My own publicist — I don’t know if this came for you, too — my publicist was asking me if I was willing to leak out some secrets for money,” the actor told Julia Louis-Dreyfus during a virtual reunion this week. “And I went, ‘They’ll kill us!’ How can you do that?” When the Emmy-winning Veep actress said she hoped the publicist was fired, Alexander replied, “No, I gave him a raise.” This probably says more about me than anything, but I’m imagining Alexander’s publicist as Dunston, the titular star of orangutan-comedy Dunston Checks In (was the bribe in dollars or bananas, who’s to say?). Or maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to re-watch Dunston Checks In? Probably that.

Louis-Dreyfus and Alexander reunited to raise money for Direct Relief, which helps healthcare workers on the front lines. You can watch the video below, and donate here.

(Via Variety)

In March, Demi Lovato shared “I Love Me,” an anthemic pop single in which she practices self-love. It’s an emotional track, but musically speaking, that iteration of it is the furthest thing from emo. That changes now, though: Lovato has teamed up with legendary drummer Travis Barker for an “emo version” of the song.

On the new rendition of the track, Lovato hearkens back to her Camp Rock days, as the pop instrumentation has been replaced with aggressive guitars and — of course, given Barker’s involvement — prominent drums. The song’s lyric video is a real time capsule of emo’s heyday as well: It opens with a black-haired, lip-pierced gentleman whipping his head to the side to get his hair out of his face before checking Lovato’s Myspace page, on which the song’s lyrics are displayed.

When the original version of the song was released, Lovato wrote of it, “I can’t put into words just yet what this past year for me has been… but this song focuses on a lot of what’s been going on in my head. We have good days, and we have bad days. The best we can do is be the best version of ourselves and celebrate that with those closest to us.”

Watch the “I Love Me (Emo Version)” lyric video above.

The art of the cliffhanger is a tricky thing. A TV show must trust its audience (and vice versa) to embrace these moments rather than recoil like their chain’s being yanked. Netflix‘s Dead To Me accepted that challenge and burst out of the gate with a debut season that reveled in a series of mini-cliffhangers — with pitch-black humor that rivaled Russian Doll and harnessed the melodrama, preventing it from tumbling into Big Little Lies territory — that felt exciting, despite occasionally predictable developments. Huge-reveal-after-huge-reveal reverberated in such a way that not only did viewers quickly come to expect these scenes, but they (or, at least, I) implicitly craved them. They’re not simply part of the show’s formula but part of the integral charm, while the two leading ladies (Christina Applegate as Jen and Linda Cardellini as Judy) cannot stop fueling the fire with increasingly bad life decisions. The major question when it comes to a second season is whether the show can keep toeing that precarious line.

Fortunately, Dead To Me maintains great chaos (even more, this time around, but it’s a tolerable level) and is still a blast. Dare I say, this show even feels “real,” despite all the inconceivable happenings. When I say real, I’m not talking about the show’s very human exploration of grief, or the morbid, darkly comic events that flesh-out that structure. Nope, I’m talking about the realistic portrayal of friendship between these two unlikely best friends, who are like a new-style Thelma and Louise, even though (let’s face it) there’s no possible way that a real-life grieving widow would invite a stranger into her home-family life, repeatedly overlook sketchy behavior, and, somehow, forgive the fact that this person killed her husband. Yet the raging contradiction of this show’s framework finds support in an emotional foundation that feels unshakeable.

This season, that relationship further strengthens and remains the central focus, but plenty of offshoot developments are at work because the grief-theme (although it’s still somewhat unresolved) must also give way to other emotions, like guilt, fury, and romance, and plenty of other “feels” that send both women scrambling to clean up messes — both figurative and literal, for this show is still plenty gruesome — which are handled deftly enough that the series still feels fresh. Again, the key to that objective would be how to keep the show’s favorite gimmick going strong.

On that subject: are the cliffhangers still holding up well this season? If you’re reading this, you know that last year’s finale ended in a bloody way, with James Marsden’s Skeevy Steve maybe dead, or not, with Jen standing over his body; and the show picks up where it left off without missing a beat or an opportunity for sliding into panic mode. Obviously, I won’t spill what Steve’s actual fate ended up being, other than to say that there are flashbacks to satisfy the Marsden lovers among us. And no matter happens to Steve, the audience will expect that Jen and Judy’s situations (together and apart) will become progressively more difficult to manage. That’s where creator Liz Feldman excels with this second batch of episodes. She inherently realizes how to keep raising the cliffhanger stakes without actually sending the show over a cliff. She and the rest of the writers pull that feat off, impressively so.

Another challenge, with such a tightly-written show, is how to add ingredients without everything feeling overstuffed. Dead To Me is one of those series where revealing much can spoil everything, but I will say that people who loved the first season will not be underwhelmed by the followup. The writing (Feldman won a Writer’s Guild award for the pilot) and performances continue to be top-notch — which is amazing, considering the relatively pulpy subject matter — and the supporting performances also deserve nods. Sam McCarthy should go plenty of places after playing “oldest teen son” to Jen, given that Sam’s perhaps the character who’s most genuinely conflicted during this season. He’s lost his father, his mom’s losing her mind, and he’s simply trying to navigate life amid all the fallout. Likewise, Brandon Scott, Diana Maria Riva, and Jere Burns’ eyebrows serve up fine performances on the law enforcement front, and Natalie Morales is irresistible in a role that would best be left as a mystery here.

As always, though, the most compelling dynamic on this show comes down to Applegate (Golden Globe-nominated for her performance as Jen) and Cardellini (robbed without the same), who are marvelous, with the former trying and failing to take a stiff-upper-lip stance and the latter wearing hearts all over her sleeves. A lip-quiver from one leads to an almost immediate softening of the other, and they’re such implausible teammates that one cannot help but enjoy their chemistry. Their solidarity and adherence to always doing right by each other is comforting, despite their world crashing down around them. Dark comedy isn’t easy to sustain, but there’s enough nuance from the actors and the way these ladies are written to (hopefully) keep this show going for a while.

Dead To Me‘s appeal is as undeniable as the relationship that blossomed between Jen and Judy. Their strange bond speaks to the ways that finding one’s “person” cannot be predictable, and once you find that person — whether it’s through bonding over trauma or not — you’d better cherish them. They won’t be easily replaced, and no amount of “orange wine” can delude anyone into believing otherwise. Chaos might follow, as in the case of Judy (with Steve’s voice ever-echoing, “Everywhere Judy goes, chaos follows”), but as Jen finds out, she’s not exactly free of that vibe herself. Whatever set of dire circumstances threw these two women together doesn’t really matter because their friendship is a pleasure to behold. And so, Netflix settled in for a new round of tragicomedy with perhaps the largest cliffhanger yet to finish the season. I gasped and have no clue where the show goes for a third season, but I already can’t wait to watch it.

Netflix’s ‘Dead To Me’ returns on May 8.

Earlier this week, X Æ A-12 Musk, the son of Grimes and Elon Musk, was born. Given the atypical nature of the boy’s name, it quickly took over the internet, even more so after Grimes explained the meaning behind it. What the name may not be able to take over, though, is the kid’s birth certificate, as it might not actually be a legally viable name.

TMZ reports that according to a supervisor at the Department Of Public Health Vital Records Office in Los Angeles (where the child is believed to have been born), legally acceptable names can only use the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Family law attorney David Glass, meanwhile, told People that while the name “isn’t technically illegal,” it “won’t be accepted as valid by the state.”

Glass said:

“In California, you can only use the ’26 characters’ of the English language in your baby name. Thus, you can’t have numbers, Roman numerals, accents, umlauts, or other symbols or emojis. Although an apostrophe, for a name like ‘O’Connor,’ is acceptable. [If the birth certificate is filled out] with the odd numbers, dashes and symbols, it will be submitted and then rejected, and they’ll be asked to submit it again. They have an opportunity to appeal the rejection of the birth certificate application, but it’s unlikely that it will be granted because, again, California […] has been struggling with using symbols. […]

Anything that has to be filed with the state, they have a handbook that includes this particular sentence that says the birth certificate must be filled out ‘using the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language.’ I don’t think you can say it’s illegal — it just won’t be accepted. So your child won’t have an official name and won’t have a birth certificate and you can’t get a social security number until you have a birth certificate and on down the line.”

The name is apparently pronounced “X Ash Archangel,” so something like that could be a legally acceptable alternative to “X Æ A-12” should Grimes and Musk run into issues. The most important news, though, as Musk noted, is that the baby is “happy, healthy & cute as a button.”

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