Writing about popular music is lousy with obnoxious words. Indeed, there are so many—jangly, crunchy, seminal—that there is a whole book of them (and shamefully, I have used my share). Making things more complicated, much of this language is also subject to a generational divide—words coined by the young are understood to be off-limits to [...] Read more

A pop singer, living out the old maxim to “write what you know,” records a song about heartbreak and the spiteful feelings it engenders. Rumors abound that the raw lyric is directed at a high-profile former paramour. (The singer denies it, not entirely believably.) The singer has been around a while and even topped the [...] Read more

Why “Sicko Mode” sits atop the Hot 100. In early 1984—as Michael Jackson’s Thriller was nearing the end of its epic run at No. 1, about 15 months after its release—a non-album single appeared on the radio that sounded like a Jackson bonus track. It was clearly Michael’s voice, singing the chorus, sounding paranoid about [...] Read more

The single’s chart-topping success is the culmination of years of resilience in the face of tragedy and heartbreak. As if Saturday Night Live hadn’t already been sucking up enough oxygen since President Donald Trump took office, 2018 may go down as the year the NBC institution set the agenda for the pop charts, too. For [...] Read more

The band’s new No. 1 is only their latest collaboration with the song factory. The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. The Clash. Talking Heads. The Police. Nirvana. All of these hit-making, Hall of Fame–level rock bands recorded together for fewer years than Maroon 5, who have now been releasing hit albums and, especially, hit singles for 16 [...] Read more

“In My Feelings” is an accidental smash. It could become Drake’s biggest hit. Sixteen years ago, in July 2002, singsongy rapper Nelly commanded the Hot 100 with his salacious sultry-weather hit “Hot in Herre,” the leadoff single from his monster Nellyville album. The only question was how he would follow it up. “Hot” was about halfway [...] Read more

Last year’s undisputed Song of Summer, “Despacito,” was a lilting, thumping, Latin-Anglo hybrid by a pair of Puerto Ricans, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, sung mostly in Spanish with a brief English-language assist from Justin Bieber. This year, the race for Song of Summer has, to date, mostly been a faceoff between streaming gods Drake [...] Read more

Though he’s far from the first troubled victim of gun violence to go to No. 1. Serial killer Charles Manson’s only studio album was released while Manson was being held on charges for the two-night series of 1969 killings he instigated via his “family” cult, known as the Tate–LaBianca murders. Morbid curiosity couldn’t, however, make [...] Read more

With “Psycho,” the “rapper” behind “Rockstar” confirms he’s this generation’s Everlast. With sincere apologies to Maya Angelou, I’m starting to think when white “rapper” Post Malone showed us who he was, we should have believed him the first time. I place “rapper” in scare quotes, because Malone has been running away from hip-hop for the [...] Read more