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Marvin Gaye

Music, Pop Culture

Forget Miley: How to Talk to Your Children About Their Shitty Taste in Music

Miley Cyrus Robin Thicke

There has been an abundance of articles circulating the web on how to talk to your daughters about Miley Cyrus or how to talk to your sons about Robin Thicke after their shocking performance of Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” at MTV’s VMAs, but the greater conversation still appears unspoken: have you talked to your children about their shitty, shitty taste in music yet? Or more importantly, have you talked to yourself about how you could let you children have such shitty taste in music?

While everyone is ranting and raving about Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke’s best impression of LeeLoo and Beetlejuice doing softcore porn, we should really be asking ourselves as a society how we’ve let such incredibly bad music seep into our homes.

Why do your children listen to knock-offs of Marvin Gaye? Why don’t they just listen to Marvin Gaye? Don’t you have Marvin Gaye records lying around, for crying out loud? Marvin Gaye sang about sex, but in a sexy way. Not in a rapey way. For example: while (more…)

Music, Pop Culture

Kanye Ain’t Got Shit On Otis: The Epic Lives and Deaths of Soul Singers

I wasn’t able to write a new post for today, but I wanted to revisit a post I wrote last year about the deaths of famous soul singers. I’ve been thinking a lot about Otis Redding lately after I discovered that Kayne West and Jay-Z sampled the singer on his new album, Watch the Throne. Buzz is circulating around the to-be-released-this-evening music video of the song “Otis“. Which as I’m reading right now actually as no mention of Otis Redding in the lyrics, but rather talks about cigars, champagne, private jets, and supermodels.

Yesterday, I got all up in Kanye’s junk after declaring that Otis is an untouchable and upstarts like Kanye should not mess with his shit. This statement was mostly met with agreement, but a few people defended Kanye. They suggested that sampling is an art form and should be respected. Though I’m an appreciator of all arts- and I will include sampling as an art form, albeit one that I have mixed feelings on- I still think Otis Redding is the sort of musician (more…)