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Dan Moore

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The Five Types of '90s Pop Songs

By Dan Moore
Jan 31, 2014

I should begin here: During the actual '90s, I was much too busy listening to Japanese videogame soundtracks (educate yourself) to actually enjoy '90s pop music. My first-hand memories of most of it are hearing it in a car, at a skating rink, on somebody else's Discman, and shaking my...
Spotify Gift Cards are Stupid: What to Give to The Music Fan Who Already Has Nothing

By Dan Moore
Dec 20, 2013

Deep inside Spotify headquarters, at this very moment, some poor marketing team is tasked with the idea of making Spotify gift accounts sound like a good idea for a Christmas present. I know this because I am too cheap to pay to make the Spotify ads go away. So far...
The NSYNC Reunion Will Probably Happen, Even Though No One Cares About the Music

By Dan Moore
Aug 22, 2013

NSYNC reunion talk has dominated music news this week, because everybody in America really, really misses the '90s, and despite a non-denial from Lance Bass it seems like there's still a good chance it actually happens, even if nobody at the VMAs was planning on it originally. (How could they...
Phil Ramone Made Crappy Music the Right Way

By Dan Moore
Apr 1, 2013

Phil Ramone, who died Saturday following an aneurysm, produced an astonishing number of albums it's not cool to enjoy. Wikipedia helpfully provides a category full of them. He was in on Rod Stewart's first pop standards album; he did the Sinead O'Connor album after the one Sinead O'Connor album; he...
Now Michelle Shocked Is On Yahoo! News, Because That's What Internet Outrage Does

By Dan Moore
Mar 29, 2013

The internet is a perfectly efficient outrage generator. People need things to be super-pissed about, so that they can express their social positions to their friends; they burn through that outrage in an orgy of vague, well-intentioned social media protest; they look for something else to be super-pissed about, having...
Rock Band DLC Shuts Down: How A Geek Sport Briefly Became A Party Phenomenon

By Dan Moore
Mar 25, 2013

Rock Band is over. Well--kind of over. It's been "over" in the people-who-wouldn't-otherwise-touch-a-Playstation-caring-about-it sense since a few months after Beatles Rock Band came out, but now it's "over" inasmuch as after April 2, when "American Pie" will be released (nice timing), developer Harmonix will shut down the downloadable content pipeline...
Okay, Illegal Downloads Probably Are Hurting The Music Industry

By Dan Moore
Mar 22, 2013

This would have surprised me no matter who had turned it up, but there was a special irony in learning that illegal music downloads "aren't hurting the music industry" from a beleaguered print magazine's free-news arm: Illegal downloads aren't hurting the music industry, new study claims | ti.me/10371Ow (via @timeculture)—...
Pixies Reunion Rumors: Should You Be Worried Or Excited?

By Dan Moore
Mar 18, 2013

The Pixies' first reunion produced one song--Kim Deal's "Bam Thwok"--and a bunch of chances for people who were born between Surfer Rosa and Tromp le Monde to see them live for the first time, and was thus low-risk-enough to be almost universally popular. Now a possible Pixies re-reunion is on...
Three Things The 2013 mtvU Woodie Awards Results Can Tell Us About Pop Music Right Now

By Dan Moore
Mar 15, 2013

The 2013 mtvU Woodie Awards were handed out on Thursday, March 13, and though it was happening right in Austin I'll forgive you for not noticing. In any case I'm not sure how you can have an awards show at SXSW without handing out a prize for Least Essential Social...
Justin Timberlake and Kanye West's Feud And Avoiding Famous-Guy Backlash

By Dan Moore
Mar 11, 2013

The foundation of Justin Timberlake's fame--broad-based and consistent and weirdly resistant to automatic internet backlash--is that it came, originally, from looking this ridiculous, and he seems to accept that. That's the only thing I can come up with to explain just how many people I heard talking about his appearance...
Kenny Loggins Has Gone Country, Because That's All That's Left For People Like Kenny Loggins

By Dan Moore
Mar 8, 2013

Kenny Loggins is in a country band. If you don't believe me, watch the Today Show until they've cycled through all the other people who are promoting big 30th-anniversary tours and new country albums on the Today Show. It's called the Blue Sky Riders, and they're playing SXSW on March...
Stone Temple Pilots Fires Scott Weiland: Here's Three Ways A Touring Band Can Confuse Or Mislead Its Audience

By Dan Moore
Mar 4, 2013

Last week, with no apparent malice intended, the Stone Temple Pilots forced us to confront the fact that there was more than one Stone Temple Pilot out there, firing Scott Weiland for--I'm just speculating here--being Scott Weiland, or writing something called "Sex Type Thing," or (and this is just Scott...
Morrissey feuds with Paul McCartney, Jimmy Kimmel, Staples Center, et al, But it's a Great Career Move

By Dan Moore
Mar 1, 2013

Like most Smiths fans under 30, I think I heard about Morrissey being pissed off for some reason or another before I'd heard him croon over a single perfect Johnny Marr riff. He's a self-consciously difficult figure to ignore once he's wedged himself into the news, a stout British guy...
Madonna and Bruce Springsteen are 2012's Richest Musicians: All the Money's in Touring

By Dan Moore
Feb 25, 2013

I don't know how much else Madonna and Silvio Berlusconi have in common--her extremely visible fight against aging is going much better than his--but here's one connection: This weekend Italy voted in an election that's serving as a referendum on a decade of economic stagnation caused by, among other things,...
Billboard Now Counts YouTube Plays, so "Harlem Shake" is Number One

By Dan Moore
Feb 22, 2013

"Harlem Shake" is the No. 1 song in the United States of America this week, which means that now is your chance to listen to more than fifteen seconds of it. Baauer's meme soundtrack is the beneficiary of a Billboard rule change--YouTube views have been added to the Hot 100...
Chubby Checker Sues HP For Penis-Measuring App, The Right To Appear In This Blog Entry

By Dan Moore
Feb 18, 2013

Look, I told my editor, over the weekend: This Chubby Checker penis-measuring story is the blog post I was born to write. (This is not something I was excited to learn about myself.) I own and until recently used an HP Pre 3, which is a Palm WebOS phone that...
Does the Harlem Shake Mean We'll Never Escape Viral Dance Memes?

By Dan Moore
Feb 15, 2013

I don't mean to get too weepy here, so soon after Valentine's Day, but I think this is true, and important: You never forget your first viral-video dance meme. I'm sorry, "Harlem Shake" partisans, but it's true. Whether it was "Call Me Maybe," all the way back in 2012, or...
The Grammys: In 2013, They're Just a Means to Antagonize Twitter

By Dan Moore
Feb 11, 2013

Against all odds, the 2013 Grammys are not irrelevant--or, if you believe they've always been irrelevant, they've not become more irrelevant. They haven't become more relevant, either, to be sure; their recent attempt to rationalize the increasingly abstruse and parochial categories was worthwhile--I suppose we can do without Best Rock...
House of Cards' Netflix Bow is Just Another Way for Pop Culture to Pretend it Unnerves Us

By Dan Moore
Feb 8, 2013

It's been nice to watch TV--fresh off House of Cards's Netflix premier--deal with the same questions people have been addressing about music since Napster or iTunes or Spotify, depending on which iteration of the issue you remember best. Specifically: Now that Netflix can create programming based on the programming we...
My Bloody Valentine's Website Crash Shows What it Means to Be Indie in 2013

By Dan Moore
Feb 4, 2013

My Bloody Valentine released a new album over the weekend, and by all accounts it's very good. There are a lot of thick, quavering guitars on it, you can't really hear the vocals, and nothing goes much like you expect it to, which is to say that if you enjoy...
How the Super Bowl Halftime Show is Exactly like the Andrews Sisters (Kind Of)

By Dan Moore
Feb 1, 2013

Let me enter these facts into evidence: I enjoy the Super Bowl Halftime Show well enough, and I love the Andrews Sisters. One more: I think the 2013 Super Bowl Halftime Show, featuring the indestructible Beyonce, is liable to be the strongest show in--well, since your favorite of the aging...
The Strokes' new Single: Is it Better to Stay the Same, or Try the Wrong new Things?

By Dan Moore
Jan 28, 2013

Some bands never stop trying to solve the first problem critics point out. 10 years ago, now, the Strokes were accused of not having enough ideas--of going back to the well for a follow-up, Room on Fire, almost exactly as streamlined and deadpan as their debut. The similarities were exaggerated,...