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" I've built my whole life around loving music. I'm a writer for 'Rolling Stone,' so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds. "
Rob Sheffield
Life
Stone
I Am
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" In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad. "
Rob Sheffield
Weird
Loneliness
Pet
" You'd think if anyone could charm America into caring about the evening news, it would be Katie Couric, the Tri Delt from Virginia who became America's sweetheart on the 'Today' show. But her ratings have been dismal - she comes in last place every week. "
Rob Sheffield
You
America
Caring
" Ah, the bond between English boys and California girls. For those of us who aren't either, it's a bond that fascinates and mystifies. So much of the world's favorite music comes out of that relationship. "
Rob Sheffield
Us
Relationship
Music
" That's the secret of 'True Blood' - all the creatures that roam Bon Temps become a metaphor for our insatiable lusts and inner desires. Humans craving what they can't have and those secret appetites transforming them into beasts, or even killers. "
Rob Sheffield
Blood
True
Secret
" The main job requirement for a network-news anchor is thinking it's the only important job in the world. This is a field where solemn gravitas isn't a drawback; it's the whole point. "
Rob Sheffield
Anchor
Job
Important
" Lots of people like Seth MacFarlane. Many other people like watching the Oscars. But nobody likes both, not even Seth MacFarlane, who has no idea what the Oscars are. "
Rob Sheffield
Watching
People
Nobody
" 'Drive,' that's the one. I love dozens of songs by R.E.M., but that's the one, even though it took me 7 or 8 years to start liking it. "
Rob Sheffield
Songs
Years
Start
" One of the best moments of any Liars show is hearing the crowd squawk 'We're doomed! We're doomed!' on cue during 'We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own.' Maybe not the most uplifting audience sing-along in the indie rock world, but one of the most reliably entertaining. "
Rob Sheffield
Audience
World
Rock
" Every now and then, Prince decides to try being a normal rock star. You know, the kind who does a professional arena tour where he plays the hits. But part of what makes him such an eternally fascinating star is that he lives in his own private purple world, even when he sets out to make the house quake. "
Rob Sheffield
World
Know
Professional
" The key thing about LCD Soundsystem is that people always wanted this band to exist. For years, it was glaringly obvious that a band like this should exist, and people were impatiently waiting for them to show up. "
Rob Sheffield
People
Always
Band
" Why are Franz Ferdinand the perfect live band? They just are. "
Rob Sheffield
Perfect
Just
Band
" One of the things that make Liars so fascinating after five albums, each one so completely different from the others, is that even though they play around with all the classic tropes of art-damaged angst-noise perv-rock, they exude a totally cheery and boyish enthusiasm onstage, goofing around with their keyboards and beatboxes. "
Rob Sheffield
Liars
Play
Others
" It was R.E.M. who showed other Eighties bands how to get away with ignoring the rules - they lived in some weird town nobody never heard of, they didn't play power chords, they probably couldn't even spell 'spandex.' All they had was songs. "
Rob Sheffield
Nobody
Play
Power
" The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the Seventies' most enduringly creepy sounds. "
Rob Sheffield
Street
Rock
Over
" Madonna was so flamboyant in terms of her look, her style, her public pronouncements, her religious taboo-smashing. "
Rob Sheffield
Her
Style
Look
" Like many other touchstones of twenty-first-century pop culture, 'The Sopranos' was hatched in the late Nineties, predicting a future that never arrived. It was designed for a decade that would be just like the Nineties, except more so, in an America that enjoyed seeing itself as smarter and braver and freer than ever before. "
Rob Sheffield
Future
Culture
Seeing
" 'Buncha Losers' comedy is one of those homegrown American art forms, up there with infomercials and Elvis-shaped soap carvings. No other civilization could have invented it. The French took a stab with Sartre's 'No Exit,' but then they had to ruin it with a lesson at the end. "
Rob Sheffield
American
Lesson
Exit
" Big Star invented a vision of bohemian rock & roll cool that had nothing to do with New York, Los Angeles or London, which made them completely out of style in the 1970s, but also made them an inspiration to generations of weird Southern kids. "
Rob Sheffield
Weird
Style
New York
" Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone's game. No other pop auteur can touch her right now for emotional excess or musical reach - her punk is so punk, her disco is so disco. The red sequins on her guitar match the ones on her microphone, her shoes and 80 percent of the crowd. "
Rob Sheffield
Reach
Live
Guitar
" Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion - lots of ritual, lots of ceremony... We touch the icon to enter the sacred space, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies. "
Rob Sheffield
Touch
Space
Devotion
" Ron Swanson is more than the MVP of the 'Parks and Recreation' squad, more than just the funniest character on TV - he's the perfect depiction of aggrieved American manhood at the twilight of the empire. "
Rob Sheffield
American
Perfect
Squad
" It's easy to see why 'American Horror' is freaking people out. The ultraviolent hallucinations never pause long enough to make sense. In terms of coherence, it makes your average David Lynch movie look like 'Burn Notice.' "
Rob Sheffield
People
Enough
American
" Baseball's Opening Day is full of time-honored traditions: the President throws out the first ball, the Cubs' starting pitcher walks away with a 54.00 ERA, the Royals get mathematically eliminated from the pennant race. "
Rob Sheffield
Opening
Day
Baseball
" Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning. "
Rob Sheffield
I Can
Song
Morning
" Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever. "
Rob Sheffield
Rock
Music
Best
" 'So You Think You Can Dance' comes on as a high-minded leap up the evolutionary ladder from other reality shows - on this one, you're supposed to learn something, and the guest judges are fellow dance professionals rather than actual celebrities. "
Rob Sheffield
Think
Judges
Leap
" Watching the evening news in 2011 is a strange time-travel experience. 'The CBS Evening News,' 'ABC World News' and 'NBC Nightly News' haven't changed their style over the decades, still going for that old-fashioned mix of voice-of-authority pomp and feel-good fluff. The difference is that people aren't watching. "
Rob Sheffield
News
Style
People
" Anyone watching '30 Rock' always knew Tina Fey was playing a fictionalized version of herself, a workaholic comedy writer who also plays one on TV. She's the boss; Liz Lemon just works here. "
Rob Sheffield
Rock
She
Here
" The 2000s were the time when bromance became a kind of love that dared to speak its name. As a high-water mark of bro culture, nothing can ever top the MTV series 'Bromance,' with Brody Jenner and his search for a new BFF. "
Rob Sheffield
Culture
Search
Time
" The hottest trash-disco star in the world: Ke$ha! She has a lot in common with Kiss, actually, even spelling her name with a dollar sign the way Gene Simmons probably always wanted to. "
Rob Sheffield
Kiss
World
Way