In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

Stereogum is in Vegas (baby) for Best Friends Forever festival. We’ll be chatting with a bunch of the bands in video interviews so if you have any pressing questions about second wave emo lmk.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

In 2022, we got a taste of Neneh Cherry’s eventful life in our career-spanning interview with the Swedish musician. She’s best known for her eclectic 1989 debut Raw Like Sushi, which earned her a Grammy nomination, but she also clocked time in the beloved punk group the Slits and gave an performance on the UK’s Top Of The Pops while pregnant.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

This week we published interviews with LL Cool J, the Blood Brothers, Blood Incantation, Alan Sparhawk, Raphael Saadiq, Balance And Composure, Geordie Greep, and Yasmin Williams. Read them, there will be a quiz.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Every posthumous album carries the burden of being a career retrospective, a summation of a body of work that can no longer develop. Sometimes these records are like that on purpose, as an artist’s estate curates their unreleased work into a eulogy. Other times, it’s unintentional: The artist left a fully-formed concept behind, and collaborators must somehow make the most of an unhappy accident. Sophie, the first and likely only posthumous album by the late Scottish producer (though future individual singles or even longer EPs are basically guaranteed), is very much the latter sort of record. That probably explains why it’s been so divisive among critics and fans – understandably so, but also undeservingly.

Is zeuhl finally making meaningful inroads into metal? There are signs. In an interview with Machine Music’s Ron Ben-Tovim, Ὁπλίτης’s J.L. discussed the cultishly adored music genre’s impact on his solo band, particularly the project’s new and possibly final album, Π​α​ρ​α​μ​α​ι​ν​ο​μ​έ​ν​η. For J.L., the prime takeaway was to be “free and innovative musically.”

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

This week we saw beefs between Journey and Avenged Sevenfold and between Peter Frampton and Megadeth. I wish I had a third example right now but we may have to wait until some band picks a fight with Grand Funk Railroad at ACL. Your final best comments of September are below!

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Nubya Garcia’s moment seems to have come at last. And it’s weird to say “at last” about someone who’s only in her early thirties, but I’ve been listening to her music for the better part of a decade.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

This week’s #6/#5 arrangement is 🤌. Great work from you all heading into Moo Deng Autumn.

I saw Pageninetynine a couple of times back in the day. The first time was probably 1998, and I was still in high school. I had some friends in a noisy metallic hardcore band called the Clancy Six, and a bunch of us would go see them whenever they played, which was usually in basements or church halls. This night, they played Johns Hopkins, opening for Enemy Soil and Daybreak, two powerviolence who I think shared members with Pig Destroyer. Those two bands seemed old and scary, but right in between the Clancy Six and those bands, there was Pageninetynine, who all looked like they were about our age. The one thing I remember from their set is that they ended with this big extended feedback squeal and with all the band members freezing in place. One by one, they all collapsed to the floor, as if dead. You could do hilariously dramatic stuff like that at shows back then, and maybe only half of the audience would make fun of you.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

Have a great Purge everyone.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Has there ever been an album so widely remembered without a single track most people would recognize?

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

New Linkin Park singer got milkshake ducked real fast. Hope you have a better weekend than them.

Sergio Pizzorno bounces around in a half-ruffled/half-tassled all-denim getup that makes him look like he escaped from a Scissor Man attack at a Primark factory. Whenever he’s not bouncing, he’s kneeling or leaning, peacocking with a ceaseless desire to see mosh pits erupt in front of him. The crowd, spilling far out of the packed Woodsey Tent at Glastonbury, are all too happy to oblige, a sea of hopping loons oftentimes obscured by flare smoke shouting back almost every single word of the 13-song surprise set like it’s Kasabian’s 2014 headline slot all over again.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

There was a lot of teasing of reunion announcements this week. After clues at Reading and Leeds festivals, on Tuesday morning Oasis confirmed news of their first shows in 16 years, and they might even include Bonehead. The big reunion led to a lot of memes and Noel Gallagher’s unplanned first interview about it when a fan’s kids interrogated him in a Stone Island store.

Hello, longtime readers and people who accidentally clicked on this post, i.e., most of you. Here we are, once more, knighting the Metal Song Of The Summer. Last year, we asked you if metal could even have a song of the summer. Most of you said no. Naturally, we’re, uh, back for round two to tap a song’s shoulders with our poseur-smiting sword. Kneel as a song, rise as our canicular champion. Again, most of you said this was a waste of time! Ugh. So, what a great idea — exactly what everyone wants. Let’s do the column with no fanfare again. With that kind of insight into your wants and needs, The Black Market is truly the middle management of metal columns. Enjoy this pizza party, disgruntled workforce. Please don’t mutiny.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Sabrina Carpenter is funny – funny on purpose. A lot of people have suddenly realized this at the same time. This isn’t news, though, to people who saw her steal scenes as a snarky tween in Disney’s sitcom Girl Meets World. (The character-actor-to-pop-girlie pipeline is real!) Nor is it news to people who’ve attended Carpenter’s shows recently, where she’s been cranking out raunchy city-themed outros to her single “Nonsense” for almost two years. My sense of humor is juvenile enough to appreciate bars like “Only use my mouth, that’s a cappella” or “Then he made me come to Brazil,” but my favorite of the lot isn’t sexual at all: “Calgary, you do not rhyme with jack shit!”

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

The 2024 DNC had Jason Isbell and Lil Jon, but not Beyoncé. Rare miss, TMZ.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Moon Unit Zappa is ready to share her story. The daughter of Frank Zappa, who appeared on his 1982 hit “Valley Girl,” has lived an eventful life from the very beginning. The weirdness is detailed in her new memoir, EARTH TO MOON, which is out Tuesday and follows her unconventional upbringing in 1970s Los Angeles all the way up to the death of her parents.

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

There was no new music this week. Here are politicians talking about Bob Seger.

This summer, the city of Paris put on a show for the world. The obvious highlight of last month’s Olympic opening ceremony was the ecstatic vision of beloved prog-metal titans Gojira, all perched on scattered castle ledges like gargoyles, duetting with Marie Antoinette’s severed head and with an opera soprano singing from a passing boat. Two weeks later, blog-rock overlords Phoenix headlined the closing ceremony in the center of the Stade De France, doing a 2009 Will Never Die Bonnaroo Superjam with Air and Ezra Koenig and that one song from Drive. Throughout the two ceremonies, other French and French-enough musicians made their presence felt: Aya Nakamura, Juliette Armanet, Céline Dion, the Minions, that guy with the angel wings and the accordion. It was a lovely spectacle, but at least one strain of vital French music was sorely absent.

In The Alternative Number Ones, I’m reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it’s for members only. Thank you to everyone who’s helping to keep Stereogum afloat.