What’s it like listening to music at the start of any given year? 

A sort of “Where are we now?” moment. Unlikely to inspire any real self-reflection beyond mere listening life (like, don’t I have more important shit to worry about?) but it’s an aimlessness, an anticipatory state, an audio purgatory desperate for disruption—because God knows it’s boring. And whereas last year started with last.fm leading me to Liquid Mike by way of DAZY (a fuzz-buzz power-pop connect-the-dots that leaves the whole family smiling), this year all I had to work with was a handful of new Benjamin Booker singles (all beyond excellent, by the way) and a back catalog of every 2024 release I hadn’t listened to yet, for whatever stupid reason.

So yeah—I often start my listening year behind schedule and burnt out on discovery. Didn’t help that I’ve been playing too much of this new Pokemon ROM hack my friend put me onto. But something had to be done. With my tune-scouting begun anew, I sought a spark of sonic inspiration. But where to find it?

Timbaland – Shock Value

GENRE	Rap; Pop; EDM; Pop-Punk
YEAR	2007
RIYL*	Hyperpop; Misdemeanor’s greatest hits; (sigh) Justin Timberlake features.

*”Recommended If You Like”

One surefire way to shake up one’s own stagnating soundscape is to throw said sonic experience off the algorithmically calculated cliffs of fate—and by that, I mean raiding some secondhand store’s CD section, vowing to listen to whatever you find. And right toward the very tail end of 2024, at an “antique” vendor in Bakersfield, California, I got my hands on a CD copy of Timbaland Presents: Shock Value (2007). It’s a chaotic masterpiece that Pitchfork once called a rare artistic fuckup, masterminded by one of the three, maybe four guys whose production work most shaped the pop sound of the early 2000s.

Shock Value wasn’t the only disc I picked up—even the cashier at the antique store commented that my choices were “all over the place.” This was accurate. But we’ll get there. Look, this ain’t a recipe blog—you don’t get to just scroll past the heartwarming flavor text to find the infographic with the steps at the bottom of the page. You can’t rush this shit. Be patient. Stay a while. Fucking learn something.

Shock Value has a lot of features. But it’s not that the number of features is the problem, exactly. It’s just that some of these songs are just bad—and some of these featured rock bands are to blame. What the fuck is Fall Out Boy doing here? She Wants Revenge? These genre-mashed songs unavoidably feel forced. They’re studio-mandated cash-grab hellspawns, and they’re one million percent unnecessary. They’re just bad. They just are. They have to be—and yet, they sound exactly like the best of all those hyperpop meme-music acts from the last eight years. 100 Gecs, anyone? Seriously—listen to “One And Only” from Shock Value right now and tell me the verse that starts at 2:20 doesn’t fucking slap. Why can I not stop replaying these songs? It’s amazing to me that making an album like this in 2007 got Timbaland critically bashed, but doing it in 2018 was somehow infinitely better because it was a couple of allegedly self-aware white kids wearing wizard hats and singing into pool noodles.

Certain songs on Shock Value suffer from an overdose of Justin Timberlake, but are otherwise largely passable—even decent. I can appreciate Missy Elliott and Dr. Dre’s appearances on “Bounce” enough to subdue the profoundly discomforting vibe that J.T. gives me when he sings “like yo’ ass had the hiccups” on the chorus. 50 Cent puts in a respectable day at the office on “Come And Get Me.” And it’s ultimately not Howlin’ Pelle’s fault that he gets seemingly stuffed into a closet and told to perform among the custodial supplies for the Hives’ feature on “Throw It On Me,” barely audible and utterly boxed out of delivering the charisma they paid him for.

So on the whole, I’m left confused—I can’t figure out whether I love or hate this thing. Which means it’s probably time to move on to something way dumber.

Mötley Crüe – Girls, Girls, Girls

GENRE	Hair Metal
YEAR	1987
RIYL	Poison; Skid Row; Buying a Harley before learning to ride one; Reaganomics.

Here’s the thing about Mötley Crüe: I had to look up how to get those little dots to appear above the letters when I type “Mötley Crüe.” In doing so, I also learned that they are called umlauts. See? I told you that if you were patient and stuck around, you’d learn something. Quality reading. You’re welcome. Asshole.

Any band that can this easily irritate aging music journalists (or just anyone unfamiliar with keyboard commands), not only with their sound, but with their name alone, is worth a spin. Also, I gave someone a book about the history of L.A. hair metal as a Christmas gift last year, because it looked funny and easy enough to read. Fodder for a long flight or a beach somewhere. And while that book sat wrapped and ready for gifting underneath the tree, I hilariously encountered a Girls, Girls, Girls CD reissue alongside Timbaland at the antique store. The timing was too perfect—I had to buy it. 

I enjoy this album way too much. Good fucking lord, is this shit gloriously, righteously idiotic. It’s about as cartoonishly “1987” (the year appearing here in its adjective form) as possible. Mick Mars’ guitar tone is barfight bluesy by way of Walmart-brand Van Halen, and Vince Neil sings like he invented his own frontman subclass—like he was the first guy to pronounce it “woo-mawn” instead of “woman,” or something. Also, they name-drop so many strip clubs from around the world in the title track, and it’s brilliant because strip club names happen to work really well independently as rock song lyrics. But even beyond that, this album’s lyrics are so “hair metal” (the genre appearing here in its adjective form) that they may as well have been genetically engineered in whatever lab built Bret Michaels— “long legs and burgundy lips,” on top of “kickin’ ass on the wild side,” and “fuel-injected dreams.” And as if that’s not on-the-nose enough, there’s even an underrated behemoth of a “Jailhouse Rock” cover to close side two. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

But stupid or not, this album went quadruple platinum, and it wasn’t The Crüe’s first album to do so. In many ways, this is the definitive 80s rock band from the United States of America. This is what happens when boneheaded American “Bad Dudes” pandering goes musically and artistically unchecked, gets a Queer Eye makeover, then gets offered a major label deal and runs for the hills with it. I think I could argue pretty convincingly that Mötley Crüe was the 80s version of “male influencer music.” And if you disagree, consider this: Joe Rogan was 20 years old when Girls, Girls, Girls was released. This album christened his dude-bro halcyon days. So, welcome to 2025—given the social climate, we’ll see if we get a hair metal resurgence. Or maybe there’s already some equivalent—if so, I don’t really give a shit. Meanwhile, I’m taking a break from this one. I could probably use some feminine energy in my listening rotation.

P!nk – Funhouse

GENRE	Pop
YEAR	2008
RIYL	Jessie J; Demi Lovato; Single working moms.

I’ve noticed that P!nk catches unspoken shit for some reason. Or maybe I’m just imagining that, and in reality I’ve just failed to give P!nk enough credit over the years. Maybe it’s a regional thing—she’s an American artist, but it seems like the bulk of P!nk’s fanbase is located in the UK and Australia. Meanwhile, back in the States, I grew up alongside P!nk’s recording career—mostly apathetic to it. I have some vague memory of her performing or winning something for “Stupid Girls” at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, introduced by Tom Kenny—the voice of Spongebob. But until very recently, I had no idea that she co-wrote “Trouble,” the Grammy-winning lead single from her 2003 album Try This, with Tim Armstrong—yeah, the Hellcat Records helmsman from East Bay punk stalwarts Rancid and Operation Ivy. Before that though, the only other real association I ever had with P!nk’s music was noticing that I heard it blasting from a lot of tiny car stereos on the streets of Redding, California as a kid.

It’s weird to think that a pop star with genuine rock cred, international appeal, and relative artistic consistency gets written off in her home country as commuter sedan-core for white women with tattoo sleeves of koi fish and shit. Or, again—maybe that’s just me. But is it necessarily P!nk’s fault that her music appeals to a certain demographic that (for some reason) still listens to FM Top 40? I mean, come on—it’s not like she’s Katy fucking Perry, or anywhere near as cheesy as that—right? Right?

Look, I’m not saying her music’s immune to allegations of maize ethanol poisoning. The tracklist for Funhouse, from 2008, illustrates: Its intro is the above-excellent “So What,” which I remembered mostly for that sassy little electric guitar riff, the stomp-clap mud-wrestling beat, and the delightfully unhinged music video, where P!nk takes a chainsaw to a tree and rides a lawnmower to the liquor store. It’s a ballsy, charming divorce anthem that backhandedly cusses out Jessica Simpson for kicks, and it went to number 24 on the Billboard year-end chart for 2008. Album’s off to a roaring start; everything’s going great.

…until “Sober” comes on immediately after “So What.” And it’s a bummer. And as the tracks fly by, a bummer pattern emerges: Themes of inner strength, resilience, and self-affirmation when the world’s trying to bring you down, down, down—you are still beautiful and you are strong. But the message gets a little monochromatic and melodramatic, and the continuity’s occasionally jarringly disrupted by songs about, y’know, just fucking partying. 

These aren’t bad songs as far as pop construction or vocal performance. They’re dated in various ways, but they’re not worse than their competition from 2008—a year whose Top 100 year-end hits included offerings by Leona Lewis, Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown, and Natasha Bedingfield. Admittedly, it’s hard to pin down what, if anything, is P!nk’s “signature sound.” By 2008, she’d softened her more obvious rock influences with new wave, funk, hip-pop’n’b, and piano balladeering aplenty. Arguably, the only consistent sonic component from record to record is P!nk’s powerhouse voice—which sells a lot of these songs, at least for me. And other pop stars get heaps of credit and praise for switching up their sound across albums. Why not P!nk?

So, I’m coming around. More power to P!nk. More power to the Koi fish-armed chicks (or whoever they are), who deserve solid drive-time fodder to blast illegally loud from their tiny sedan stereos. And more power to Tim Armstrong, who you know’s just gotta be basking in those “Trouble” royalties.

Klaus Badelt – Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

GENRE	Film score; orchestral composition.
YEAR	2003
RIYL	Brigands; Disney adventures; Hans Zimmer unduly claiming credit.

I trace my masculine fondness for murderous musket-wielding women in tricorn hats to a childhood crush on Keira Knightley’s character in the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (the Gore Verbinski ones). The fact that [SPOILER] Elizabeth Swann, the literal Queen of the Pirates, ends At World’s End by settling for that scrub Will Turner is the greatest tragedy of those films. Seriously—she gives up her career as the literal Queen of the Pirates to raise Turner’s kid on an island alone, while he cavorts off into the sunset on his dude-bro ghost ship to sling grog with his own deadbeat dad. There’s probably a nuanced conversation to be had here about cycles of neglect and toxic masculinity, but if they bothered addressing that shit, it wouldn’t be a very good Disney flick, now would it?

Oh, right—the score by Klaus Badelt, for which Hans Zimmer claims (a possibly inordinate amount of) credit. About as traditionally epic as I remember. Are movie scores supposed to flow seamlessly like this? One “song” transitioning into the next with no “hard” endings? Just banger after early 18th Century banger, connected by horns and/or undead Gregorian moaning? Or am I just describing motifs, and is my knowledge of orchestral music disastrously lacking? 

Obviously, the title track (is it appropriate to call it that?), “The Black Pearl” shines brightest (darkest?). I seem to remember this being the one that plays when Jack Sparrow saves Elizabeth from nearly drowning, and ends up in jail for his efforts. Although, I could be mixing it up with “Will and Elizabeth,” which comes next in the tracklist. I don’t know. But shit gets brooding around track five, “Swords Crossed,” and we’re watching the cursed ship approach the harbor. Never underestimate a well-timed church bell’s ability to convey foreboding. Halfway through, the big percussion sounds the brigands’ raid. Time to pillage, boys. Now it’s all frantic string stabs and military chanting. Y’know, pirate shit. It sounds great.

But what can I say? By the time we end the movie—sorry, the album—with “He’s a Pirate,” it’s still just background music for me. I know that’s dismissive, but anything else would be dishonest. I like pop shit. I put stuff like this on while I work. I’m sorry, Klaus. Fuck you, Hans.