Michael's Top 40

I never like when things end. That's human nature, I suppose. But you don't think like that when you're 16 years old. When my parents...

DATE WEEKS October 26, 2002 4 I don't remember where I was when I learned Kurt Cobain had died. Actually, I don't even remember being aware of the news when it happened. I was in second grade at the time, and was just beginning to dip my toes in the pop music world. Artists like Gin Blossoms, Counting Crows, and the Cranberries were who I was starting to obsess over. I don't think I had heard Nirvana's music when it was current, and I'm not sure what 7-year-old me would'v

I don't need to tell you how polarizing Coldplay have become in the 20-plus years they've been in the public eye. It wasn't always this...

DATE WEEKS October 5, 2002 2 Eurodance enjoyed a serious moment with me in the early 2000s. It was starting to break through overall in...

If you looked at the music charts at the beginning of the 21st century, it was a rather apolitical landscape. Then came the September 11...

One thing I find interesting when I look back on my old personal charts is how they don't always fall in line with what the rest of the...

What if the Beatles didn't break up? What if Kurt Cobain didn't commit suicide? What if Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, or Jim Morrison...

The nerds usually have the last laugh. By the time you get to junior high school, that notion can seem hard to imagine. You're entering...

I knew this girl in my Spanish class in high school who liked to wear tank tops and neckties. She looked like a punk rocker, which meant...

DATE WEEKS May 11, 2002 2 The feeling of riding in a car and singing the hell out of a favorite song is an exhilarating one. Even better when friends are in the front or back seats. Driving songs are fun when they come on the radio because they put you in the moment and make it feel like you can just keep going forever. It doesn't matter if you're on a cross-country road trip, or taking a 15-minute drive to the mall. You want that feeling to last forever simply because yo

There's something to be said for being bored in school. During my first two years in high school, I was basically checked out mentally. ...

DATE WEEKS March 16, 2002 1 I feel like nu metal has always occupied an uneasy place in the pop music landscape. There was too much...

DATE WEEKS January 19, 2002 8 Being an American sounds great on paper, but there's always trade-offs. I could go on a political rant...

Sometimes there's an imbalance between how much you love an artist versus how much the public loves them. After the massive success of...

DATE WEEKS November 17, 2001 5 It's inevitable that as time passes some of the artists we liked in a particular moment can become punchlines to jokes about that time period. A band like A Flock of Seagulls, for example, who had some really excellent songs in the early 80s, at some point became shorthand for new wave weirdness, due in no small part to the haircut the lead singer sported in their video. But then their run lasted just a couple of years. Then there's Nickelback

It's easy to look down on people who listen to pop music because the impression, sometimes fair, sometimes not, is that the music is a...

I guess when you're around 15 years old, you have to go through a phase of angst. How long that phase lasts probably depends on your...

The late 90s and 2000s were a weird time for alternative radio. The artists that got airplay were mostly male and almost exclusively...

I suppose anyone can write an essay or column about a massive hit song. Rest assured, a fair amount of the songs coming up will have...

We never feel like we have enough time with our parents. If we're lucky, we'll get 50-60 years where we have them in our lives to make us...