Music In Other Music Section News
posted by January 17 at 18:00 PM
onWe have a new music editor!
His name is Jonathan Zwickel, and his job history includes having driven a semi in Sacramento, picked apples in New Zealand, ski bummed in Lake Tahoe, and sold Christmas trees in New York. He also has experience, you know, writing about music. He’s coming to The Stranger from San Francisco, where he’s currently Pop and Rock Editor at Rhapsody.com. Before that, he was Music Editor at New Times Broward-Palm Beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He’s written about music for Pitchfork, XLR8R, Harp, Urb, Village Voice, and a lot of other places.
Here are the 25 best songs from 2006, according to him. Let the fighting begin.
He starts in February. We can’t wait.
Comments
I think he thinks I'm weird already.
Just wait- he'll find out what the real story is shortly.
Yay! a Flaming Lips fan!
15. Paris Hilton
16. "Weird Al" Yankovic
17. Christina Aguilera
I pray for your souls.
Where the fuck is R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet?" hmm?
Weird Al, Paris Hilton? If I were a music writer, I don't think I would add my guilty pleasures to a top 25 list.
Why, because people might question your hipster cred? Because pop music can't be good? Weird Al's parody of "Trapped in the Closet" was almost as incredible as "Trapped in the Closet" itself.
People, people.
Throwing in a few top-40 or crassly commercial songs with a straight face insulates the list-maker against charges of indie snobbery or other elitism.
This is a well-crafted, defensive list. Any negative conclusion one might draw, any subcultural pigeonholing one might attempt, is deftly parried by at least one item in the collection.
The list shows us that Zwickel is well aware of the current musico-political climate. The list shows us that he is a deft veteran player in the inordinately competitive game of getting paid actual money to write about music.
What the list does not give us, of course, is any hint at all as to what the man might actually like in a song, but that is not the purpose of the list.
OK, I'm going to go perform a Charles Mudede exorcism now, wish me luck.
I don't know about any of that but it's about damn time someone shot some love to Solid Gold. Anyone see the music video for it on the Eagles of Death Metal DVD? Leaves me speechless everytime.
"Any negative conclusion one might draw, any subcultural pigeonholing one might attempt, is deftly parried by at least one item in the collection."
Nice reveal-a-magician's-tricks, but money on Robotslave being Zwickel doing his own Top 25 pop psychology.
congrats to zwickel. i'm curious to see what he does with the section.
based on that list of favorites and his background, zwickel seems better suited for seattle weekly. is this really better than segal? hmm.
Oh, good. A sense of humour.
I've been steadily losing faith in the Strange for quite some time now. This doesn't help at all. Now we get to look forward to even more "indie-pop" drivel.
Big darkness, soon come.
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