On Barbara Stanwyck

About six months ago I caught There’s Always Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, and watching it for me felt like Bruce Springsteen chancing on the chords to “Dancing in the Dark.” This 1951 melodrama, one of Douglas Sirk’s obscurer entries, concerns a toy manufacturer (Fred MacMurray) who meets an employee he loved in his youth

Ranking Bubbling Under Singles, Oct-December 1984

I learned Mavis Staples covered “Slippery People” when I saw her perform at the Pitchfork Music Festival several years ago, which goes to show that music critics can remain ignorant on the most elementary matters. With songwriter David Byrne on guitar and its central bass hook in place, “Slippery People” stays faithful to the original

Ranking #74 singles, U.S. edition: 1971-1976

You don’t have to work hard to hear how Karen Carpenter could’ve sung “Top of the World”: her precision and that preternatural, rather terrifying ready warmth. Lynn Anderson took her version to #2 on the country charts, and if Marvin Gaye’s follow-up to “I Want You” hadn’t competed, I would’ve put it atop this list.

The best songs about animals

Comparing themselves to animals, comparing lovers to animals, writing literally about animals, these artists have used God’s other creatures to write feral songs.

‘These characters and themes cannot exist’

So Ron DeSantis and his state minions meant what they said.

Is the muddle the point? On The Replacements’ ‘Tim’

I listened to Tim the way I thought at the time it should’ve been listened to: on a cassette version bought at my college bookstore’s Nice Price section.

‘Cassandro’ fouls up chance to explore queerness in wrestling

With a nose larger than the rest of his face, blue eyes, pug-like physique, and the hint of a harelip, Gael García Bernal fits no conventional notions of beauty, but this fact has liberated him to become among the most physical, concentrated, and daring actors — a favorite of Pedro Almodóvar and Pablo Larraín. Cassandro

Ranking #2 singles, U.S. edition: 2005-2007

Few lists come as loaded as this: Kelly Clarkson realizing what the bands cited in Meet Me in the Bathroom needed several tons of coke to achieve liftoff; Mariah Carey whisper-whiskering a midtempo victory run; Rihanna bringing dance hall overtones into the top two; and Ne-Yo riding a dulcet melody over a skittering Stargate beat

Being Cate Blanchett

Marked for greatness from the second she appeared with her opaque eyes and diamond-hewn jaw opposite Ralph Fiennes in Oscar and Lucinda, Cate Blanchett became like Meryl Streep an institution before she became a star and perhaps an actress. In her breakout role as Queen Elizabeth, the script’s dedication to a well-trod schema in which

Ranking #31 singles, U.S. edition: 1972-1977

Identifying with an observed object whose world-weariness he (already!) feels in his bones, Neil Young put over “Old Man.” Displacing space and time for the sake of depicting a love affair whose capacity to stun hasn’t disappeared, Bob Dylan made “Tangled Up in Blue” one of his standards, up for perpetual live revision. These days

Ranking #41 singles — 1990-1999

The decade began with Winger and a fourth-rate teen act missing the top 40 and ended with hip-hop ascendant as pop music and fourth-rate teen acts triumphing in the top 40. Until this morning I hadn’t heard Eazy-E and Lil Kim’s shoulda-beens, but, my god, how did they reach the same position as The Farm’s

Ranking #14 singles, U.S. edition: 1970-1973

The best and worst by generational touchstones appear on this list. Better the crude “Ohio” than the clean-cut hippy jive of “Love the One You’re With,” an injunction which not even Luther Vandross couldn’t humanize, though both pale beside that aerodynamic marvel “Free Ride” and to be honest “It’s a Shame, one of those Stevie