Shamon! "Bad" kicks off my new "RE:3" series

Welcome to my first in what will be a new feature on my upcoming pop culture website, a joint venture with my good friend, the ridiculously talented Melissa. When we first spoke about creating a site, I knew quickly that this was a feature I wanted to do.

Have you ever pulled out an old record, CD or tape you used to love and listened to it straight through after years to see if it still sounded as good as it did back then? I do it all the time. And after hitting rock bottom in an attempt to reclaim my childhood by duking it out in a high-stakes Ebay auction for a copy of Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True" on CD (I only own the cassette, you see) to relive the memories and decide if I liked the songs now as much as I did then (all scandals as to whose vocal cords were vibrating on said record aside), I knew that it would be a worthwhile regular project to go back to the music that meant so much to me in my formative years to either reaffirm what I felt back then and dip my pinkie in the fountain of sonic youth (see what I did there?) or otherwise have a "what the hell was I thinking?" moment as a mature adult with a wise and well-developed musical palate.

For lack of a better name, I'm currently calling my new feature "RE:3," as in "records" or "recordings," "revisited" and "reviewed" (or "re-reviewed").  

It makes sense to begin my musical journey with Michael Jackson's "Bad," as the CD was just re-released this week as a 25th Anniversary remaster with lots of bonus stuff. And although I will touch on some of that bonus material briefly, my goal is to concentrate on the original work. We know that "Bad" was so good back in 1987, breaking records for number of single releases from an album (nine of the 11 tracks were singles!) and setting a benchmark for five consecutive number one singles that held up until Katy Perry managed it this past year. And we know that Michael Jackson was possessed with trying to top the success of "Thriller," and "Bad" came the closest.

But now that "Bad" is 25, I'm hearing some critics speak the words of a heretic in daring to posit that perhaps, pound-for-pound, "Bad" is Jackson's greatest album. It's a thought that's crossed my mind for years, though I dared not speak those words aloud. And it was time to analyze that claim.

What I know for sure is that "Bad" was MJ's final album created under the principle of economy. His adult breakthrough, "Off the Wall," had 10 tracks on it, and its follow-up, "Thriller," had only nine. This is shocking considering how substantial both albums - particularly "Thriller" - feel. "Bad" has 11 tracks, and I seem to recall its final cut, "Leave Me Alone" being a cassette-only bonus track, so you could argue that it also had 10. Regardless, Jackson would follow four years later with "Dangerous," which was still brilliant song craft but bloated by comparison at 14 tracks and, maybe for the first time, starting to show that the great one was capable of misjudging a production and including a clunker or two. Jackson would never again give his fans a tight disc of audible perfection; he would begin to show his humanity and have some whiffs to go along with his home runs. And he would never again employ a producer with the force of Quincy Jones to tell him no.

In this feature, I decided to challenge myself by ranking tracks on each album I revisit from favorite to least-favorite, a task that was mind-blowingly stupid and difficult with a record like "Bad" that contained 80 percent released singles (50 percent of them number one singles). With that in mind, I can preface this run-down by mentioning that there's only one track of the 11 that I truly don't care for (though none I hate), and the songs I ranked at 1-8 are up there with any of my favorite Michael Jackson songs from any album.

So here goes. My track-by-track revisit of "Bad," in the order I currently feel reflects what I like the best:

1. Smooth Criminal (track 10)

MJ in a gangsta lean. NOW who's bad?

It's interesting that three of my four favorite songs on "Bad" are the only ones that did not hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Somewhat shocking to me even today, "Smooth Criminal" peaked at #7. Still, it was my favorite Michael Jackson song, period, when I was a kid, and whether or not that title still holds for me today (and it probably does), repeat listenings have reminded me that "Smooth Criminal" is still far-and-away my favorite track from "Bad."

Some of it has to be because of the music video, which was also always my favorite. Yes, the video for "Thriller" was the most iconic, and yes, the introduction of the moonwalk during the Motown 25th anniversary special gave us his most breathtaking dance move, but who doesn't still freak out when Michael, dressed his best in a white suit with an electric blue shirt and black tie, fedora precariously perched on his head, leans forward at what appears to be a full 45 degree angle, both feet inexplicably planted on the ground, both legs improbably straight? Jackson never looked cooler than this. It wasn't long before his clothes were punctuated with enough buckles to tighten the pants of the entire Von Trapp family and his fetish for military wear-by-way-of-a-drag-queen began to permanently cloud his fashion judgment.

Only "Billie Jean" can challenge "Smooth Criminal" as MJ's greatest story song. And they're always about women. Here, Annie is clearly not okay...the victim of an attack in her apartment at the hands of a mysterious and paradoxically debonair assailant. I always thought the lyrics were cool because they were so different, and because of them, I never made it through CPR re-certification without flippantly exploding into the song's catchy question of a refrain.

But the greatest triumph of "Smooth Criminal" is its mood. The song's sonic palate is staccato, disturbed. It's a little faster than a typical MJ beat. And it's punctuated with explosive screams of "Dowwww!!!" in just the right spots to keep the listener locked into an inescapable intensity. Layer onto this Michael's vocal, a choppy delivery that sounds like bullets being fired from a gun, just as its video would later illustrate.

Even 25 years later, "Smooth Criminal" feels, sounds and looks as good to me as it did back then. 


2. Man in the Mirror (track 7)

I remember when one's confession of love for "Man in the Mirror" was ammunition for a playground beatdown, so cheesy was its synth line and its self-help lyrics. But then, when Michael died, the song lost every existing drop of irony. It has become to Michael what "I Will Always Love You" has become in the wake of the death of Whitney Houston. It is the track for remembering Michael's heart, humanity and mission statement as an artist.

Perhaps I masked my appreciation for "Man in the Mirror" a bit as a 14-year-old, but even if I did, I always loved the song if for no other reason than the fact that I'm a sucker for a well-used choir. And "Man in the Mirror" is nothing if not a powerful showcase for half of the Winans family and Andre Crouch's choir to swoop in and convince me to "make that change."

I think "Man in the Mirror" is Michael's most important song because it stripped away his lunacy and eccentricities and, with raw emotion and direct, bare lyrics (courtesy of Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard, as this was the only single from "Bad" that Michael did not write himself), Michael could, for five minutes, push away our memories of whatever it was about him that made his less than a truly caring human being.

Now that I'm older, I love the song more than I ever did. Few things in life make me smile as easily as overhearing one of my own children singing along to the song when it comes on. And if Michael had to be remembered for only five songs (what a cruel concept, huh?), who would argue that this track would have to be one of them?

3. Another Part of Me (track 6)
I guess "Another Part of Me" was "Bad"'s first clunker as a single, stalling just outside the top 10 at #11 after the first five singles on the album had all reached #1. Yes, stalling at #11 was the very definition of failure when you were Michael Jackson. But to me, it was the song that took MJ to a whole different level.

I could never talk about "Another Part of Me" without talking about a girl named Camille Graham with whom I shared many classes in high school. This was Camille's favorite MJ song, and she was so vocal about her love for it that we couldn't help but love it too. At the time, I had dropped my "Bad" cassette in its wooden slot in my wall-mounted cassette case in favor of sister Janet's "Control," which had just been released and had, for me, overshadowed "Bad" as my favorite of the two albums.

But Camille and I nurtured a mutual respect for Janet's "The Pleasure Principle" and Michael's "Another Part of Me" built on our shared love of all things Jackson. And while all these later I don't remember that much about Camille, I remember how easily a song can become someone's signature, or at least become my memory of a person.

As for the song itself, it's classic Michael: a propulsive and steady groove lifting positive lyrics about "brighter days." My enjoyment of the song has held up over time.

4. Liberian Girl (track 4)
I've read a lot lately about how underrated "Human Nature" is as an exquisitely-written and produced pop track, and only in my advancing age have I come to understand that "Liberian Girl" is "Bad"'s "Human Nature," its musical restraint and sonic beauty a gem for Michael's more adult listeners.

No track on "Bad" that I can think of has gone up in stock as I've gotten older as much as this song has for me. I can remember not caring much about it, and now I find it to be one Jackson's greatest moments on record. A softly-delivered female vocal part whispers in Swahili, assisted by a double downbeat-driven groove that's part Caribbean island, part African. And there's no question that the song's greatest feature is thanks to Michael's infamous studio wizardry, and that's his use of layering his own vocals until he's created a choir out of his own voice. MJ did that a lot, but I'm not sure if it ever sounded better than it does here.

5. Leave Me Alone (track 11)
By the time Michael got to his "HIStory" album, the songs he was writing about how difficult it was to be him were growing a little tiresome to listeners because of all that Jackson seemed to have brought upon himself, making "Leave Me Alone" perhaps his best self-defense track, the best song he'd written about himself. This is likely because although some very bizarre tabloid stories had circulated about the star, he was still endlessly likeable and the public had yet to discover that he was capable of making any decisions that would challenge his moral character.

Once again, the success of "Leave Me Alone" as a song is largely inseparable from its music video, a "Gullivers Travels"-inspired piece of genius in which Michael embraces - and mocks - every famous rumor about him. Only Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" video contained so much whimsy and computer-generated wizardry.

When I hear the song now, I'm sobered. We didn't, after all, leave him alone. It's a somber listen today because he sings it as a humble request with a vocal largely free of vitriol. And we walked all over him for it.

6. The Way You Make Me Feel (track 2)
I bet many would pick "The Way You Make Me Feel" as their favorite Michael Jackson song from this album, but I remember this song as being the most overplayed from the album on the radio, and I think I got a little tired of it. And besides, one of the song's greatest moments never appears on record, but instead, happens in the music video, where a pop star on the prowl circles a beautiful woman on a street corner, snaps his fingers, and delivers an a cappella "You knock me off of my feet now bay-bay...HOOOOOO!" that, thanks to its naked exposure, stands as one of the greatest vocal moments of Jackson's entire career.

"The Way You Make Me Feel" is feel-good Michael at its pinnacle,and one of his best examples of a perfect-tempoed groove. He delivered the track long before we questioned whether or not the expression of such joyful feelings about a woman was a genuine sentiment. And even after all these years, the song is as ready-made for singing behind the wheel as anything I can think of.

7. Bad (track 1)
How in the hell did Martin Scorese come to direct one of Michael Jackson's most MTV-exploting and uber-choreographed music videos? How heavy was that outfit with all of that metal hanging off of it? And how could the authentically-tough-looking gang members of "Beat It" suddenly look so effeminate? I had many questions about "Bad" back then, and some linger. (I'm hoping Spike Lee's forthcoming documentary on the anniversary of the album will provide me with some closure.)

One thing I never questioned was the four ascending synth chords that usher in "Bad"'s opening and title track. It's true that we were never convinced for even a second that Jackson was as tough as he sang he was in the song, so I think we spent a good amount of time laughing at it. But make no mistake, we were grooving to one of his catchiest bass lines while we were doing it. And then, when Jackson himself expressed enjoyment over Weird Al Yankovic's second food-related parody of one of his songs, we enjoyed "Bad" all the more.

It might seem like a gesture of dislike on my part to have placed "Bad" this low on my list, but I have to be honest and say that while I've always enjoyed the song, I've also always thought of it as a bit of a novelty track for Jackson, and listening to it afresh in 2012 confirms for me that while I've made some egregious errors in judgment when it comes to my musical tastes, this was not one of them. It's a fun song, but it's also bad....in a good way.

8. Dirty Diana (track 9)
Perhaps the biggest problem I had with "Dirty Diana" was that my mom's name is Diana and while any parallels between her and the Diana Michael sings about here were absolute impossibilities, the song at least put those thoughts in my head. So I distanced myself from it a little bit.

I also didn't know what to do with Jackson's rock side yet, though I was smart enough to understand how, as he had with Eddie Van Halen on "Thriler," Jackson could please fans of almost every genre short of skiffle on one individual album. Here again is a song that opens with a crazy electronic chord, a recurring sonic theme on the album. And then a crowd comes in. This was Jackson fighting off the women, his crazy female fans. And at the chorus, in comes hair-sprayed-to-hell metal god Steve Stevens with a crisp, bracing guitar solo. And we knew there was nothing that Michael couldn't do.

Listening to "Dirty Diana" now, I can almost see it as "Billie Jean 2.0," at least thematically. It's a great rock vocal from an R&B/pop star. And it's certainly the most dramatic track on "Bad," with only "Smooth Criminal" in competition for that title.

9. Just Good Friends (track 5)
Okay, I'll admit that I skipped "Just Good Friends" as a kid on my cassette. The song was kind of a throw-away. And it still is, but it has appreciated dramatically in value by simple virtue of the fact that it's a duet between Jackson and Stevie Wonder. No matter how you look at it, the song has everlasting value for that reason alone.

The track is filled with Stevie's Moog-banging keyboard groove, a sound that dominated his own 80s output, and I'm fascinated when I listen to it now because it truly feels like a collaboration between the two, something I might not have deduced - much less appreciated - when I was in junior high.  Upon revisiting the track, I'm surprised by how much I enjoy what I otherwise know is a throwaway track if the lean "Bad" has one. But it's also a track with two of my all-time favorite artists on it, so I've had fun rediscovering it.

10. Speed Demon (track 3)
Was Michael sneezing at the end of each groove line on the intro to "Speed Demon"? "Choo!" For me, this was always the most Michael-sounding track on "Bad" that never fully clicked for me. It's incredibly mechanical, particularly in its use of a repetitive ascending-then-decending keyboard run that happens so quickly, and it's overused.  The car noises felt like gimmicks, distractions. Only a Prince-style guitar part saves the track from being completely inorganic, and that feature of the song has too low of a profile in the mix.

11. I Just Can't Stop Loving You (track 8)
"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" has always been my least favorite Michael Jackson single. I'm not sure if I still feel that way today, but if I did a full reassessment, I don't think my feelings will have changed much. This is no slight on Siedah Garrett, who's genius on "Bad" was more successfully used as the co-writer of "Man in the Mirror." But for me, "I Just Can't Stop Loving You" was always soaking wet with syrup. Not even an emotional softie like me could stand how ready-made the song was for airplay in Hallmark stores around the country.

The way the vocal enters in from that softly sustained chord is high drama, and before the end of the first verse, I've had about enough. Yes, it's a good vocal. A damn good one, in fact. And there's no doubt that there's true emotion behind it. And yes, the song builds successfully to its climax. But for me, it was too much then and it's even more too much now. 

A fresh listen to "Bad," summarized:
My revisit to bad found me feeling surprisingly the same toward most of its cuts today as I felt about it in 1987, the key exception being my new found excitement for "Liberian Girl." And though I listened to it repeatedly in recent days to write this review, I'm still not certain I can say whether or not this is the best Michael Jackson album. (It's amazing how important sentiment and memory is to determining something like this, and I have a deeper affection for "Bad"'s follow-up, "Dangerous," knowing full well that this is a much tighter album.)

I would recommend picking up at least the two-disc version of the anniversary reissue of "Bad," because you've got to hear many of the bonus tracks pulled from the era's recording sessions and included here without further production work (thank you, MJ's estate!). "Don't Be Messin' Round" is slight but light, fun and funky. "Song Groove (aka Abortion Papers)" hints at Michael's interest in tackling controversial topics with compassion. It's an extension of "Billie Jean," and it's also clear why he decided to abandon it, probably not confident enough that it would be taken in the spirit in which he intended it. And "Price of Fame" is a cousin to "Leave Me Alone," a prophetic early look at the ills that were already starting to befall the king of pop.

My favorite of the unreleased tracks is the transcendent "I'm So Blue," with its melody line and hook so catchy that it instantly becomes as memorable as anything that made the album's final cut. It would have done well on "Bad." I absolutely adore it. And I'm also a fan of "Al Capone," Jackson's first incarnation of what would later become "Smooth Criminal." It's simply fascinating to here what Jackson originally did with his ideas and listen for the pieces he kept and what he discarded. "Capone"'s groove stood on its own just fine, though "Smooth Criminal" further improved upon it.

Jackson's estate handed "Bad" and "Speed Demon" over to some contemporary EDM remixers, with results worthy of forgetting. Infusing a Pitbull rap in the Afrojack remix of "Bad" is what the song finally needed for it to live up to its title in the literal sense. Yes, the groove is freshened up for contemporary audiences, but how necessary is that for a song that is already perfectly funky? And while the Nero remix of "Speed Demon" is the less annoying of the two, it feels equally unnecessary, as if Skrillex jumped into the driver's seat of the car we keep hearing in the original and bumped MJ to the back.Why mess with a good thing? Especially when it's so "Bad."

That's what HE said: The soundtrack for Summer 2012

Summer music, when it's good, makes me feel like I've
been here. In truth, I went NOWHERE this summer...

I have been making lists – and filling cassette tapes, then CDs, then iTunes playlists – of my favorite songs since the days when I would position my boom box in the best spot near a bedroom window in my house for good-as-it-will-get FM broadcast clarity, my fingers hovering millimeters above the silver metal buttons on the dual-deck cassette player like a candy-bar-juiced child with the mallet at Chuck-E-Cheese waiting to whack a mole, poised to depress both the play and record buttons simultaneously at the first downbeat of The Jets’ “Make It Real” to add to my “Top Tunes: Summer 1988” collection. My New Year’s Eve rituals back then were decidedly lame, as I would record, on a series of blank cassettes, each year’s top 40 songs of the year, just in case I’d have missed any during the previous months. This ritual made me anti-social but for the 2 minutes and 45 seconds or so in between the start and finish of these pop treasures, time that I was forced to share with peeing or throwing some more French onion dip on my paper plate. And oh, how I hated when the DJ’s on Z95 would talk over intros and outros to songs! I’m taping here, dammit!

All these years later, I have yet to outgrow my fascination with making lists, and am even further away from the day when I’ll no longer find sheer, life-giving joy in finding the perfect pop song to brighten up the most mundane moments in life, or the hottest of summer days. I have and will continue to love music in virtually every genre, and rarely discriminate in my annual search for the best ear worms of the season. And yes, I maintain to this day a fully-functioning tape deck component to my home stereo so that I can listen to “Mercedes Boy” whenever I feel like it.

By the time the summer of 2012 began, I had already grown tired of a number of songs that would have otherwise made a list of the most catchy summer tunes, including Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake,” Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” Nicki Minaj’s “Starships” and Maroon 5’s self-parody, “Payphone.” And since I spent most of my summer behind my steering wheel as dad chauffeur, I experienced on a daily basis the sonic waterboarding of “Turn on Radio Disney!,” slowly eroding my defenses until I’d formed a Stockholm syndrome-like fondness for “Chasing the Sun” by The Wanted, “One Thing” by One Direction, and “All Around the World” by Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris.

In an expanded playlist of 20 songs – which you know damn well I have already created in iTunes and am listening to right now – those child-chosen tracks are included. But in an effort to show some adult-like discipline and personal choice, here is my list of my favorite dozen tracks of the summer of 2012. Or baker’s dozen. Because you have to include “Call Me Maybe,” right?

1) Ed Sheeran – “The A Team”

Now for an A-team stylist...

Some red-headed British folk-soul goofball makes a wonderfully melodic acoustic ditty about a drug-addicted prostitute who’s complaining about how cold it is outside and even my 10-year-old daughter can’t help but sing along. The repetitive melody line and unrelated reference to one of my favorite TV shows of the 1980s aside, this song has a refreshing lyrical complexity (and a half-dozen end-rhymes with “pastries”!) and a compelling storytelling quality. I love it so much that I pirated the whole CD. Turns out this is the best track, and some of the songs I downright disliked, thus justifying the means by which I acquired the music. At least that’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.

2) The Killers – “Runaways”

If there’s a list of rock front men I love so much that I occasionally grow confused about my…ahem…leanings, then Brandon Flowers is one of them. I am eight years older than him and I think want to be him (except for the Mormon part…happy Lutheran here, no offense). And I love The Killers so much that they could have released a cover of an Outfield song and I would have foamed over it, but “Runaways” is better than that. (Make no mistake…I loves me some Outfield!) I actually waited in the kitchen for the world-premiere spin on the radio of their first new material since 2008’s “Day and Age” (not including Flowers’ under-appreciated 2010 solo debut, “Flamingo,” one of my favorite albums of that year). The track was solid, classic Killers upon first listen, but no “All These Things That I’ve Done” or “Read My Mind.” But then came the Vegas magic of the repeat listen. It just gets better every time I hear it. See you in line at Best Buy on September 18 for “Battle Born.” And while I’m waiting, I think I’m going to take a late summer trip back to “Sam’s Town.”

3) George Michael – “White Light”

Don't let the lady eyebrows fool you.

George’s remake of New Order’s “True Faith” was his career near-death experience, which he followed up with a real-life brush with the other side, so after he recovered from severe pneumonia in the hospital, he recovered from over auto-tuning in the studio, learning how to use it to complement his still-wonderful voice instead of masking it. The result is this “comeback” track released on the 30th anniversary-to-the-day of Wham’s debut single, a somewhat generically clubby but lyrically literal homage to the adage “not dead yet.” There were few songs I waited less patiently to hear upon release, and what hits as little more than a solid track upon first listen builds in quality upon repeat listens. For a guy who’s been doing a lot of downbeat material in recent years, it might be one of his strongest dance tracks since “Fastlove.”

4) Adam Lambert – “Trespassing”

Don't let the lady eyebrows fool you.

Adam Lambert goes Queen. (I’ll wait…) But seriously, although Lambert is indeed the closest we currently have to Freddie Incarnate and is actually on the road with what remains of that band at this minute, this opening album cut to his sophomore pop disc of the same name knocks lead single “Never Close Our Eyes” – a killer cut in its own right – on its ass. With the fattest, slinkiest bass line since John Deacon’s “Another One Bites the Dust” funk fest and handclaps lifted from “We Will Rock You,” “Trespassing” sounds like it was originally recorded by an early-to-mid-80s Queen or a late-80s, Nile Rodgers-produced Duran Duran. Imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, and there are few songs this summer that made driving my car as much fun, never mind the punishment done to the stereo speakers. I simply dare you to resist it.

5) fun. – “Some Nights”

The vocal spirit of Freddie Mercury then leapt from Adam Lambert and into the larynx of fun. frontman Nate Ruess, thus compelling me to list this track immediately after “Tresspassing.” When Ruess starts the first verse lyric, “this is it boys, this is war” after the opening a cappella vocal stack and marching band percussion intro, tell me that you don’t hear Freddie. It’s uncanny. Yes, “We Are Young” featuring Janelle Monae was the smash hit single by the band, but I’m not including it here because it was already big enough in the spring to spawn YouTube cover parodies, months before the same thing happened to “Call Me Maybe.” And, for as anthemic as that song is, I was always drawn to this one, the album’s title track, which is far more bizarre and disjointed, but also more playful. Every summer needs a “what the hell are they singing about?” song, and for 2012, this is it. I have no idea what the hell is going on or how one lyric connects to the next, and I love it.

6) Eric Hutchinson – “Watching You Watch Him”

I have a known weakness for twenty-to-thirty-something, white singer-songwriter-poppy-guitar-strumming or piano-banging solo artists who fly under the radar. If you have never heard of Dave Barnes, Matt Nathanson or Jon McLaughlan, you might not know my type. So along comes a new name to add to my list, Eric Hutchinson, with the most sunny and upbeat song of relationship paranoia of the summer. Jealousy never sounded so breezy. In fact, this could possibly be the catchiest pop song on my entire list. And thank you, satellite radio, for turning me on to this one. How FM could be so stupid as to pass this up, I’ll never know. “I love you from the bottom of my heart,” Hutchinson sings in echo-bathed denial. Eric, I feel the same way about you.

7) Demi Lovato – “Give Your Heart a Break”

Thinking I was being nice to my daughter, I bought her the new Demi Lovato CD one day in Target after having heard “Skyscraper,” the most lovely, inspirational ballad by a Disney starlet since Miley Cyrus and “The Climb.” But just as Disney rejected Lovato for being too complex, independent and rough around the edges, so too did my daughter reject the CD, saying that she wasn’t interested in Demi any more, that fallen, self-injuring harlot of “Camp Rock” fame. So I took the CD for myself. And then this second single hit the radio and now my daughter wants it back. Sitting among a lot of Katy Perry and Rihanna and a bunch of new pop girls on the radio this summer (Kimbra? Sounds like something I made from a cigar box and popsicle sticks in fourth grade music class…), I thought this was the best straight-up pop song by a young female singer this season. Yup, even better than the inescapable you-know-what, though this list wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of that track, too.

8) Glen Hansard – “Love Don’t Leave Me Waiting”

Yes, this looks like a Charles Schwab ad.

The summer began with the Broadway musical “Once” virtually sweeping the Tony Awards and then Glen Hansard, the male main character of that story and half of the Irish band of busking origins, The Swell Season, released his debut solo album, and it’s probably the album I’ve listened to the most as a whole work this summer (as opposed to listening to individual songs). It’s a stunner, filled with beautiful, contemplative lyrics and passionate vocal deliveries. And it provided my summer with the needed respite of music with adult-level maturity. I chose this track because it’s the first single and the one getting radio airplay, at least on WXRT, the only non-satellite station I’ll even listen to anymore if my kids aren’t in the car. It’s just a fantastic, slow-churning adult-rock track, and it’s arguably not even the best song on “Rhythm and Repose,” which you should pick up the next time you’re at Starbucks. It costs the same as that venti non-fat sugar-free vanilla light foam triple-shot latte you’ll order and will stick to your ribs a lot longer.

9) Green Day – “Oh Love”

Oh, Green Day. Welcome back. You are just as good when you’re writing about love as you are when you’re writing about politics. Probably even better. Please accept my apology for not adding tracks from “Dookie” to our playlist when I was the music director of my college radio station and said that your album lived up to its title. Your crunchy guitars and raw, plaintive Billy Joe vocals have shown me the error of my ways. This song is perfect in every Green Day-sort-of-way possible. I won’t be an American idiot ever again.

10) Passion Pit – “Take a Walk (The M Machine Remix)”

He said - take a WALK!

You can find this remix to the lead single from Passion Pit’s sophomore disc, “Gossamer,” on iTunes. I slightly prefer it to radio version; it’s got a much heavier bass groove, its beats so fresh and summery that only on repeat listens do you stop and ask yourself – “Hey, are these lyrics about the plight of an illegal immigrant? Are they intelligently dissecting the debt and investment crises over sunshine-y synths and a click-pop beat? ” I thought my love for Passion Pit’s first radio single, “Little Secrets,” was a fluke. Now I’m falling in love with them. Who knew that a song could make the reality of our economic debacle so palatable?

11) Mayer Hawthorne – “The Walk”

Talk about a summer breeze! One of the hot trends in music right now is this white-boys-doing-retro-soul thing, and I’m digging it. This summer featured other tracks in the genre by the likes of J.D. McPherson and Nick Waterhouse, but at the moment, my favorite is this track from Michigan-born Andrew Mayer Cohen, a DJ/producer/performer who goes by Mayer Hawthorne, possibly the only performer I can think of who truly took to heart the idea of taking your middle name and the name of the street you grew up on to create his…oh, that’s your porn star name…well, anyway… Combining the “woops” of the Temptations in between absolutely modern kiss-off lyrics, Hawthorne juxtaposes 70s soul with a current sensibility that keeps the track from being just an old-school soul copycat track. “The Walk” is the breakup song of the summer, from the guy’s point of view: “so long, you did me wrong.” Best lyric? “You’re shaped like an hourglass, but I think you’re time’s up.”

12) Per Gessle – “Dream On”

America forgot to visit Charm School the first time.

I struggled to pick the final track in my dozen, even putting this list aside for two days to think about it. I originally went with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street-meets-Dropkick Murphys Gaelic-stomping sequel to “My Hometown,” called “Death to My Hometown” from his brilliant “Wrecking Ball” disc. It’s been on constant rotation as I’ve prepped myself for the upcoming September concert which, I think, will provide me with my last act of preparation for the rapture. Then I went with “Guardian,” Alanis Morissette’s return to shimmering-verse, hammering-chorus form. But I finally settled on this track, though you have to admire how I snuck in the other two and, technically, expanded my list to 15, huh?

Per Gessle is the male half of Roxette, probably one of my top five all-time favorite pop bands. They’re a band that just sounds like summer, and one I never, ever gave up on even after their stateside popularity inexplicably waned following their “Pretty Woman” soundtrack superstardom and smash “Joyride” CD. I cannot figure out why Roxette didn’t maintain its popularity in the U.S., but they lost their American record deal, forcing me to pay in the mid $20s for imports of their last four studio albums and three hits collections, each of which contained at least a few songs as good as “Dressed for Success” and “Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave).” What’s interesting here is that although Roxette just released a new CD a few months ago and is even returning to perform their first live dates in the U.S. in over a decade (though no Chicago stop…BOOO!!!!) this fall, the song that’s been lighting up a few of my favorite Sirius-XM stations is this track from their previous disc, 2011’s “Charm School.” Even more interesting, it’s not the fully-produced version of the track “Dream On,” co-vocaled in classic Roxette style by Marie Fredriksson, but the solo demo of the song recorded by Per and an acoustic guitar. I think I ultimately prefer the more Beatle-y, fully-produced version, but this stripped-down demo shines in its own right. I am praying that some sort of U.S. resurgence for Roxette is afoot. But mostly, this track truly connects my youth to my current self, a reminder that the songs of summer are forever.

13) Baker’s Dozen Bonus: Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe”

How can I not? What would you argue was a catchier song this year? This ubiquitous, omni-present, cross-cultural juggernaut is so infectious that I’m almost ready to stop trying to figure out how she missed him so bad before he came into her life. And whenever I think I’m sick of it, I look in the rearview mirror and find renewed joy in watching my children bopping in perfect rhythmic unison, not missing one word of the lyrics, never falling off pitch. If it’s good enough for Colin Powell, the U.S. swim team, and a host of others, it’s good enough for me.

Now that you've seen my list, head over to Uncomfortably Numb to find out what SHE said...

Something's coming...

I'm excited about a new writing opportunity that's about to happen, so if I've misappropriated that excitement by posting this tangentially-related clip of one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals, please forgive me.

Suburban Acrobat started out as a blog for an audience of one, something I created for myself because I knew that if I was going to allow myself to be a writer I had to require myself to write. I never thought when I created it that I'd ever have much of an audience, and indeed so far, I've had little of one.

If you look through the past postings, you'll see stretches of years when I ignored this blog, as well as times when it's shifted from being a place where I could ponder the deeper moral concerns and fragile observations of life. Lately, for example, it's been the only place I could think of to post reviews of the comic books I've been reading a lot of lately; certainly these posts have been of little interest to the person who has visited here to see what I have to say about teaching students or raising children.

Perhaps this new opportunity will allow Suburban Acrobat the chance it's been waiting for to more clearly establish its identity. Because my jonesin' for all things pop culture is about to find a new - and I hope permanent - home. This is thanks in no small part to a collaboration I'm excited to tell you about.

I met Melissa Elliott-Lowell a few years back when we worked together at the high school where I still teach. We weren't particularly good friends at that time but whenever our paths would cross, they'd metaphorically generate these knowing yet exciting sparks. When it came to music, movies, books, television, hell - most anything culturally related - whenever Melissa would open her mouth to express her own opinion, a voice in the back of my head would say: "get out of my brain."

Circumstances are nutty, and the story of what happened next in our fledgling friendship is not meant to be told in this moment and in this posting. But from a distance, it was Melissa's writings and worldviews I most closely found myself aligned with. It was her disappointment in herself for not living up to her promises to herself to be a writer that I most identified with. And it was her turns of phrase that I found myself laughing the hardest over.

So I pulled the trigger and asked Melissa to start a site with me. And she agreed. And I can't wait to share that site with you, a place where two Midwestern, suburban parents who love to soak up popular culture and love language will write, reflect, and hopefully most importantly, entertain readers like yourselves. This place is currently being developed. Names are being bandied about. Site features are being discussed. Options for the site's location on the web are being explored.

But I couldn't wait until we were ready to introduce you to Melissa's work. No writer has as many witty asides in their writing this side of Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy" scripts. And no one but me is as shameless about holding up a lighter at a Barry Manilow concert on one night and being totally hipster the next. So before we unveil our first posts together, click on this link and go to Melissa's blog, entitled Uncomfortably Numb.

And trust me. Something's coming. Something good...if I can wait.