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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

In Other Music Section News

posted by on January 17 at 18:00 PM

We 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.

RSS icon Comments

1

I think he thinks I'm weird already.

Just wait- he'll find out what the real story is shortly.

Posted by Ari Spool | January 17, 2007 6:08 PM
2

Yay! a Flaming Lips fan!

Posted by brad | January 17, 2007 6:43 PM
3

15. Paris Hilton
16. "Weird Al" Yankovic
17. Christina Aguilera

I pray for your souls.

Posted by Joshua H | January 17, 2007 6:45 PM
4

Where the fuck is R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet?" hmm?

Posted by Noel Black | January 17, 2007 7:24 PM
5

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.

Posted by Bosco | January 17, 2007 8:02 PM
6

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.

Posted by Noel Black | January 17, 2007 8:14 PM
7

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.

Posted by robotslave | January 17, 2007 9:32 PM
8

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.

Posted by lettuce | January 17, 2007 11:17 PM
9

"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.

Posted by Fawkes | January 18, 2007 12:37 AM
10

congrats to zwickel. i'm curious to see what he does with the section.

Posted by donte | January 18, 2007 12:59 PM
11

based on that list of favorites and his background, zwickel seems better suited for seattle weekly. is this really better than segal? hmm.

Posted by interesting | January 18, 2007 2:02 PM
12

Oh, good. A sense of humour.

Posted by Tamara | January 18, 2007 2:58 PM
13

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.

Posted by Roland Burnham | January 18, 2007 7:13 PM

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