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.

Welcome back, pop fans! While the American music industry is waking up from holiday hibernation, the rest of the music industry is doing no such thing. This month, we’re going to take a look at the state of K-Pop — the good, bad, and the prolific — and its increasing enmeshment with the US pop world.

We’ve got new items at the Stereogum merch booth for the holidays, including a pint glass and our two most popular t-shirts now on Comfort Comforts. ICYMI in the Discord, there’s a Member-exclusive discount code you can use for 25% off any order before Tuesday. Enter GNX at checkout!

What sticks with Doug Moore about his time at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves, Colin Marston’s old studio located in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, is the laughter. “Recording an extreme metal album can be a tense, exhausting process, but Colin is such a steadying presence that we rarely felt stressed while working there,” Moore, the vocalist/multi-instrumentalist and former head honcho of this column, writes. “He’s a hilarious person and a keen observer of music culture who’s quick to remind clients of the subjective nature of the art in question. This approach resulted in a lot more levity and even joy during the recordings I participated in than the usual struggle-session vibe of getting a metal album on tape. When things went wrong, we found reasons to laugh together; we did the same when things went smoothly. I also have many amusing memories of consuming vast quantities of grub from Mr. Wonton, Colin’s preferred local Chinese spot, while laughing at YouTube nonsense at the end of tracking days.”

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.

On Sunday, November 24, 1974, Nick Drake went to bed at 10:30 p.m., earlier than usual. It was a dreary day at Far Leys, the Drake family estate in Tanworth-in-Arden, England, a village in the Warwickshire countryside. Nick, who had suffered a mental breakdown in April 1972, mostly spent the day in silence, a familiar pattern, ambling in and out of the family music room.

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.

It’s noise. It’s all noise. You can get lost in it. When you tune in, you might catch a few quick shards of something familiar and comforting. You might be like: “Oh, huh, Blonde Redhead, that’s cool. Did one of their songs blow up on TikTok or something?” Most of the time, though, it’s sheer roiling alien chaos. It’s here to overwhelm you. It’s here to fuck up your day.

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.

Being the saxophonist in a Miles Davis band was never the easiest job in the world. Even if he liked you, he often led by challenging his musicians, giving them enigmatic or even contradictory instructions. Once, when saxophonist Gary Bartz complained that he didn’t like what Keith Jarrett was playing behind him, and asked Davis to rein the keyboardist in, the trumpeter instead told Jarrett that Bartz loved was he was playing and wanted to hear more of it. When John Coltrane earnestly explained to Davis that he was having trouble figuring out how to end his solos, Davis replied, “Try taking the horn out of your mouth.” Dave Liebman, Davis’ saxophonist for a period in the early ’70s, felt lost within the band’s stormy sound (two electric guitars, deep funk bass, multiple percussionists, Davis’s own piercing one-finger synth stabs) and asked what his role was; the trumpeter replied that audiences liked to watch a saxophonist’s fingers move while he played.

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.

Happy 50th birthday to God-fearing patriot Chad Kroeger.

It’s so late. I’m so tired. So is Graham Sayle. The High Vis singer is happy to tell us about it: “I’m fucked. My voice is fucked.” (In his thick-ass accent, it’s more like: “Ah’m fooked. Mah vyce uz fooked.”) It’s Wednesday night. Technically, it’s been Halloween for an hour. Before High Vis came onstage, I sat in my car for a few minutes, internally debating over whether I should wait around or start the 90-minute drive back home. After this show, I’ll go home, sleep for three hours, and then wake up to take my kids to school. High Vis have a drive coming up, too; they play Baltimore tomorrow. Most of the people in this room will have to work tomorrow. There’s an election coming up next week, and it will not go well — not that “well” was ever even an option. We’re all stressed and worn out, but we’re here because we’re looking for something transcendent. High Vis will deliver.

In the history of annoying journalism clichés, no one’s ever embodied a “rapper’s rapper” as much as Freddie Gibbs. When he’s not sharing vivid D-Boy recollections or laughing at fallen enemies, he’ll make time to own it. Otherwise, critics like me will prescribe it for him, noting a gravelly baritone that emits intensity and the way his omni-directional flow agility is a perfect conduit for bars that can be as quippy as they are poignant. By my count, he’s dropped at least three fringe classics — Piñata (2014), Bandana (2019), and Alfredo (2020). A sequel to 2017’s You Only Live 2wice, the new You Only Live 1nce isn’t one of his best, but it’s still Freddie Gibbs, so it’s great almost by default.

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.

Before they had much output to their name, CCL was one of the buzziest up-and-comers in clubland. From the mid 2010s and onward, the Berlin-based selector, producer, and event programmer has gigged heavily in a respected corner of the party circuit. They have orbited crews including Planet Euphorique and T4T LUV NRG and become a fixture at lauded festivals such as Dekmantel and Sustain-Release. CCL flaunts a meticulous approach to DJing, pulling from a bag of chunky deep cuts unearthed from dusty dollar crates and obscure recesses of the internet. For evidence, look no further than their Resident Advisor guide to expansive digging with Discogs, which encouraged one fan to develop an impromptu app.

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.

It’s been a week. Feel free to discuss the election, the Grammys, or neither in the comments.

When people ask me why I decided to become a therapist, my canned response is: “Well, I was turning 40 and I realized that it might no longer be feasible to write about Simple Plan professionally for the rest of my life.” This is not the full answer, but it is partially true. (No offense to Simple Plan, I just had to pick an early ’00s pop-punk band to put in that slot and they seemed to be the most inoffensive.)

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.

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 Mk.gee got an SNL booking, Wishy got a Sims sync, Alvvays got sampled by Lil Uzi Vert, and Magdalena Bay got a TV debut and a Grimes remix and Rosalia’s Halloween costume. You love to see it.

If Halsey’s The Great Impersonator project comes off as defensive, it’s because they’ve earned it. Their debut album, Badlands, came out almost 10 years ago, but Halsey has yet to be fully received with the kind of gravitas one might reasonably expect after a decade-long career. This goes back to the start. Early single “New Americana,” an earnest (for better or worse) song about a particular kind of millennial experience, was received as Girls-esque parody. A claim went around that Halsey identified their sexuality and neurodivergence with the flippant label “tri-bi,” a rumor Halsey called “the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.” And scads of early press profiles likened them to “a millennial grown in a lab” and “a superstar you can own” – dismissive, boomeresque takes that have nevertheless stuck to Halsey ever since. Even their creative breakthrough, the 2021 Trent Reznor collaboration If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, had a nagging undercurrent of reality: coincidentally or not, their music was never fully taken seriously until a male auteur got involved.

The monster emerged from the mists of the moshpit. “Recently, we played a show in Cleveland, and some guy in a Godzilla costume showed up and started going nuts in the pit,” Lord Kaiju, the singer and guitarist for the death metal band Oxygen Destroyer, writes in an email. “I nearly laughed my ass off during one of our songs because I couldn’t believe how awesome it was.”

I recently found myself in one of those “What’s the strangest thing you did for entertainment during early quarantine?” conversations that somehow, almost half a decade later, people still aren’t sick of having. The usual suspects popped up — sourdough starters and Tiger King and whatnot. When it was my turn to respond to the icebreaker, I shared that during one week towards the end of April 2020, I listened to every Car Seat Headrest album in chronological order — from the esoteric, near-indecipherable sandpapery pop-rock of the numbered albums, all the way up to the 2018 reimagining of Will Toledo’s tangled teen angst rock opera, Twin Fantasy. All of it was in preparation for the group’s most recent and in some ways most confusing LP to date, Making A Door Less Open, which dropped just days after I finished my mission of lockdown-induced Car Seat Headrest completism.

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.

This week Halsey made her The Number Ones debut and today she releases the new album The Great Impersonator.

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 2018, I met up with Tyshawn Sorey at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for an interview that involved me playing a series of records for him and soliciting his thoughts. We listened to everything from Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, and Eric Dolphy to Metallica, Redman, and Autechre. And at one point, after listening to a recording of Eric Dolphy’s “Jim Crow,” a piece that was more 20th century classical than “jazz,” we discussed something that has plagued jazz musicians for almost a century: the respective roles of composition and improvisation.

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.

Does Sabrina Carpenter wear a wig onstage? Even Sabrina Carpenter doesn’t know…

I had to see it. I didn’t want to pay to see it, wasn’t even sure that I wanted to be inside, but I had to at least look at it with my own eyes. Last year, NOFX frontman Fat Mike opened the Punk Rock Museum, an institution dedicated to the one form of music and culture that, at least theoretically, should resist the entire idea of museums in the first place. It’s in Las Vegas, and its logo is rendered in bright pink, in the Black Flag font. The weekend that your Stereogum staff got together in Vegas, you could pay $100 for guided tours from the Jesus Lizard’s David Yow or Operation Ivy’s Jesse Michaels. The Michaels tours were all sold out, but you could still get the Yow package in the morning.

It would be easy to call out GloRilla’s Kirk Franklin feature as the moment she got back to her church choir girl roots. But that would be ignoring her core function as a minister for disaffected baddies. Since breaking out with “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” a little over two years ago, Gloria Hallelujah Woods has wielded repetition and hard-earned life lessons to preach the word of GloRilla, a rowdy ’round the way girl who knows too well the virtues of getting money, ratchet ass friends and, above all else, staying “fuck nigga free.” It’s a gospel that’s made her a fringe superstar, and it’s as potent as ever on GLORIOUS, a propulsive debut album that mostly lives up to its name.

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.

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.