The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Rob Sheffield

In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They’re low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why – these guys are too sad.

Sad, Loneliness, City

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

Music, Language, World

Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion – lots of ritual, lots of ceremony… We touch the icon to enter the sacred space, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies.

Like, Secret, Sacred

You can’t beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude.

You, Beat, Glam

I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language. Without her to talk to, there was nothing to say.

….For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming, “Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll! Jeremy’s SPO-ken! But he’s still al-LIIIIIVE!

humor, music, nostalgia, pearl-jam

Something I really enjoy about older couples is that they really have given up on getting everything right. They don’t sweat the imperfections.

I had never been so extravagantly proud of having blood that clotted.

kindlehighlight

When I was a junior, my school introduced badminton, which was clearly a P.E. department ploy to get me away from the wrestling room, and it worked, since the first time I played badminton was like the first time I tasted sushi or heard the Beatles or read Wordsworth. This was a sport? This counted for gym requirements?

kindlehighlight

But bringing people together is what music has always done best.

kindlehighlight

The bassist — always the bassist.

humor, memoir, musicians, rock-music

It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.