Earworm of the Day: Yoko Onon - Walking On Thin Ice

Earworm of the Day: Throwing Muses - Manic Depression

Earworm of the Day: Tallulah Gosh - BeatnikBoy

I'm reading a book about fashion and 80s British indie rock called A Scene In Between . It's a pretty good look and a forgotten (for US-ians, anyway) period in indie music, and I like it's focus on fashion or its influence on fashion, since indie rock in general likes to pretend it's fashion-averse. This is Tallulah Gosh, one of the bands featured, and one of the relatively few female-lead underground bands  of that era.

Earworm of the Day: Ladies First - Queen Latifah feat. Monie Love

Earworm of the Day: The Stranglers - Golden Brown

Earworm of the Day: Garbage - Candy Says

Earworm of the Day: The Monkees - Listen to the Band

This video is a veritable carnival of bad 60s fashion, but I'm s sucker for a Mike Nesmith song.

Earworm of the Day: Husker Du - Books About UFOs

Earworm of the Day: Against Me! - FuckMyLife666

I'm not usually a fan of lyric videos, but this is one of the best I've seen in a while.  As for the album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, there isn't much to say that hasn't already been throughout its universally excellent reviews. I hate to toss around words like "groundbreaking," which sound cheap and hackneyed, but it truly is an ur-example. This is not to silence the many trans musicians and performers out there (Jayne County, Antony Hegarty, and Wendy Carlos to name three), but I can't imagine, even a few years ago, a trans frontwoman of a mainstream rock band writing an album explicitly about being a trans woman, so yeah, it's a pretty big deal.

Earworm of the Day: Vampire Weekend - I'm Goin' Down

I've written here before about my love/hate relationship with Bruce Springsteen. I came of age as a music fan during the fist-in-the-air, arena rock age of Springsteen. Even as a ten or eleven-year-old, I thought Born in the U.S.A. was daft, even though I was just old enough to grok its irony. I was well on my way to being that punk rock snot who took pride in a distain for mainstream rock, something that stayed with me well into my thirties. Yeesh. And it took listening to another album, Nebraska, in its entirety in the backseat of a car during a thunderstorm (which seems oddly fitting), to appreciate him as a songwriter.

This is my favorite song from Born in the U.S.A., however, the lone track that got seemingly little airplay. Vampire Weekend's interpretation of it is nice, too, though I supposed the eleven-year-old me would have probably hated them too.

Earworm of the Day: Sleater-Kinney - You're No Rock n' Roll Fun

I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I posted this video, but every once and while, this song comes on and I remember how much great music slipped through the cracks during the latter half of the nineties and the first few years of the 00s. This one got a fair amount of play, though, back when MTV2 was called MTV2 (I think it's just called M2 now) and my basic cable provider dared to carry it. Plus Carrie looks a little like Dave Davies here, which is a cool thing.

Earworm of the Day: Klaus Nomi - You Don't Own Me

According to World of Wonder , Klaus Nomi would have turned 70 this week:

Earworm of the Day: Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright - Careless Whisper

Why didn't I know this existed until now? Huh?

Seriously though, this cover (of a song I loved as a child, hated as a snotty punk wannabe teenager) really showcases Rufus's range. (I found this clip at a forum for singers, by the way.) Not that Ben Folds is a slouch, but he really has to strain to hit those notes. It's kind of unfair.

Earworm of the Day: Lucy Wainwright Roche - Call Your Girlfriend

Earworm of the Day: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Earworm of the Day: The Replacements - Bundle Up

One of the few seasonal songs I can tolerate.

Earworm of the Day: REM - Pretty Persuasion

Earworm of the Day" Best Coast - The Only Place

It's very cold where I am and this song sounds like summer.

Earworm of the Day: The Runaways - Wasted

Earworm of the Day: Against Me! - White Crosses

"I wrote the majority of the record in St Augustine, in Florida where I recently moved to and just around the corner from my house there's this church and the front lawn is covered in these little white crosses, and behind them there's a piece of text saying each of the crosses is there to represent how many abortions occur in America every day. So the song is in essence a pro-choice song, and seeing those crosses everyday, I fantasised about smashing them down, or driving my car through them. I think there's something to be said for acts like that - it'd be very gratifying, but instead I play music and write about this stuff. That's why I say in the lyric, 'I wanna smash them all'" -- Laura Jane Grace