GRAMMY SLAP-UP... The Grammy Awards are supposed to celebrate the year's most creative music, not just the year's most popular. But of course the ceremony...
LASGO LIVE!… “Follow You,” a song on Some Things (Robbins) sounds remarkably similar to Sonique's “Sky” of a few years ago. Lasgo's version has none...
LIFE IN PLASTIC... Maybe you remember the warning label affixed to Aqua's 1997 debut album Aquarium (MCA), noting that the Danish quartet's biggest hit, ''Barbie...
Freedman's piano and voice sound like soulmates in duet -- as long as you can overlook the cliché-imprisoned lyrics. If an album's quality could be...
RUSSIAN GIRLS IN LOVE... It might be, as every music critic writing about them has skeptically suggested, just a gimmick that the Russian teenagers in...
A gorgeous mix of jaunty ballads and emotive instrumentals, Feast of Wire is the polar opposite of a shampoo commercial Country music's insurrection into pop...
Taking Stock: Ani DiFranco The annual Queerstock music festival is predicated on a radical idea -- that the fight for liberation is useless if you...
DISCO INFERNO… Can you believe it's been thirty years since disco first boogie-oogie-oogied? Well it has, and ABC has come to the rescue to commemorate...
Electro Nouveau Various Artists Moonshine Soul Sessions 2 Various Artists Giant Step Records Has this happened to you? A friend asks you to recommend your...
''Whatever happened to class?'' Just like the delicious duet ''Class'' sung by prison matron Mama Morton and celebrity double-murderer Velma Kelly, that's a question a...
There was plenty of good music in danceland in 2002, but it just wasn't selling. So record labels large and small cut back on dance...
Trey Anastasio Millions of people heard -- and continue to hear -- the worst album of the year. Very few heard the best. Maybe this...
Mad'House Absolutely Mad Radikal Records Puretone Stuck in a Groove V2/BMG Picture Jennifer Love Hewitt making a tribute album to Madonna: It's not at all...
It was only a matter of time before Dot Allison succumbed to 21st century cynicism. 1999's hyperemotional Afterglow was almost quaint in its sincerity, proving...
Damon Gough's determination to be too awkward for fame has finally turned him into a celebrity. Even hiding behind the cryptic pseudonym Badly Drawn Boy...