A Slow, Dumb Show

Via Youtube user Euphemism for Magic Programming Note: Because my time and internet access was relatively scarce last week, I decided to skip last week's album, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynold's Live at Radio City. I didn't have a ton to say about it anyway. I was going to do some bonus content that week by reviewing some Top Alternative Songs along with the Dave Matthews album, but it just didn't work out. So I've decided to skip ahead a week in the charts to a topic with plenty of material. In only a handful of columns, I've already reviewed some absolutely rough albums. I've covered perhaps the lowest points of Sum 41, The Smashing Pumpkins and KoRn's careers. But none of those artists are as universally hated as the monster of a band that is being reviewed this week. This band is such a punching bag that it's almost hard to remember just how popular they were in the early-mid 2000's. So let's just do it. Let's talk about Nickelbac...

Thanks for clearing that up, Barry (via RollingStone.com) Programming Note: I already wasn't sure what to do with next week's album, a live album by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds. I didn't know if I should count it as part of the Dave Matthews Band discography since they do both DMB and solo Dave material. I also don't really know how to approach reviewing a live album, and since I'll be in Florida for a week I don't have much time to do a deep dive into Matthews' catalog. So next week I will briefly touch on Live at Radio City , but the meat of the article will likely be something completely different that doesn't take as much depth. I haven't fully decided on what that might be, but we'll all find out in a few days! Also, apologies for the slight delay in releasing this, for anybody who might have been looking out for me to drop the article on Wednesday. This week's topic might be interesting because I think we're on the verge ...

Via Sum 41's "Fat Lip" video, Island Records Before we get into this week's topic, I'd like to note that I've launched a music podcast called Aux Words. You can find it here. This week we're tackling a genre that was a major part of the 2000s alternative scene. It might be the biggest rock subgenre of the decade, honestly (nu metal might be its closest competition but the genre mostly died down by the second half of the 00s). 2007 was an huge time for pop punk music. Emo's third wave was in full effect. Fall Out Boy's huge Infinity on High dominated the charts in the first half of the year. My Chemical Romance's epic The Black Parade  blew up just before that. Panic! at the Disco broke out a few years earlier. Meanwhile, one of the genre's more established acts were trying to figure out how to stand out as the new guard dominated the airwaves.... Sum 41 - Underclass Hero (Island Records, 2007) Genres: pop punk, alternative ro...

This has nothing to do with the Caillat album covered here but I added it here for being one of the more notable bad songs I've heard recently The term "alternative music" basically has no meaning at this point, especially since in the 1990s the "alternative" became the mainstream. The term is as meaningless in music circles as "indie" and "hipster." So we'll find out that there are a lot of things considered "alternative" while going on this journey through the Top Alternative Albums chart. I mentioned this in last week's column, but we'll see everything from folk and indie rock acts to punk and even straight-up metal (according to these charts Metallica is classified as "alternative," which, sure).  This week's topic is something that doesn't necessarily stand out as an especially "alternative" record. It really stands out compared to the albums around it. The Smashing Pumpkins? Y...

Welcome. I've wanted to do a regular column, focused on album reviewing, for a while. A few ideas came and went through my head, but one didn't stick in my head until now. Then I started reading Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" series, in which he reviews #1 songs from the Billboard starting at the chart's inception every day ("The Number Ones" is a self-proclaimed rip-off of Tom Ewing's "Popular" series). I decided I'd do my own riff on that kind of series, focusing on albums instead of songs and going weekly instead of daily. I decided I would focus on Billboard's Alternative Albums chart, which began in the summer of 2007. This chart was perfect for two reasons. One, there's a good amount of variety in the history of the chart. It's not just "alternative rock," but there's plenty of stuff from the realms of metal, punk, folk, and there's even some hip-hop and straight up pop thrown in ther...