Michael's Top 40

DATE WEEKS March 12, 2005 7 The relevance of American Idiot over the last 20 years is that the idea of the United States as a global...

DATE WEEKS January 22, 2005 1 The idea of a punk band performing a ballad should be incongruous. It doesn't make sense. Punk is...

George Orwell is not a guy I feel like writing about right now. Considering we're just months away from an election that feels incredibly...

DATE WEEKS April 17, 2004 3 I think it was around 2001 when I realized most Adam Sandler movies were the same. Sure, there were different plots and characters, but you weren't going to an Adam Sandler movie for a complex or moving plot. You went because you wanted to see Adam Sandler act like a wise-ass with his buddies. Now I'm not counting the exceptions to this rule, namely 2002's Punch-Drunk Love, and 2019's Uncut Gems. And it's not a knock on the quality of some of t

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

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

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...

DATE WEEKS February 10, 2001 1 By 2001, Aerosmith really had nothing left to prove. They had been a cautionary tale about the excesses of rock and roll, until an unlikely comeback brought them to even greater success. They got their only #1 on the Hot 100 with an out-of-character ballad that's one of my least favorite songs of the 90s. When they released their 13th studio album Just Push Play in 2001, they were taking a victory lap around the music industry, as they playe