16 January 2026 - The Art of Noise with Max Headroom - Paranoimia

This may be one of the weirdest collaborations of all time.

Max Headroom was a digital character played by Matt Frewer, meant to be some sort of a digital presenter or talk show host or something.  He's hard to explain.  However, he was everywhere at a certain point of the 1980s.He had a British talk show.  He sold New Coke after the return of Coke Classic.

Art of Noise was an avant-garde noise experimentation electronic group that got a little bit of attention from MTV and finally hit the US top 40 with this weird collaboration with a digital talk show host. 

The song, written by Art of Noise with a title that is a mashup of "paranoia" and "insomnia",  is weird early electronica.... and somehow, it just worked.   

The song was remixed in 1989 by Ben Liebrand for a greatest hits album for the band.   It lacks the Max, but doesn't leave out the electronica.

Despite being a very electronic group, they did perform live, like this performance from Tokyo in 1986. I personally find it interesting how they could create future beats live on instruments like they did. 

15 January 2026 - Sinead O'Connor - The Emperor's New Clothes

It's mid-January and I'm still struggling to write 2026 on my posts.

Anyway, I felt like going with an underappreciated follow-up single.  You see, Sinead O'Connor was best known for "Nothing Compares 2 U", her megahit Prince cover.

However, she didn't stop releasing singles.  This one, the single that followed, was not a cover at all, but rather, written and produced by Sinead O'Connor herself.  Outside of the US, this was a huge pop hit - and in the US, it made a splash on modern rock radio and made a ripple at pop radio.

It should have been a bigger hit here. It wasn't, because it was an angry song, odd for its both acoustic and electric guitar backing tracks. The song is a harder-edged pop-rock song trying to appeal to an audience who wanted another Prince ballad.

Which is a shame.   Because this song is straight fire. 

And when this song was released as a single, she was 23 and singing THIS hard. 

You can see her performing the song with an acoustic guitar with a similar hard edge in 1990.  

She's arguably coming off even angrier live.  

If you want my PERSONAL favorite performance of this song, it's this much quieter but just as angry one from 2010.

You can hear every single lyric.  I want you to listen to this one and feel every single word.

That doesn't mean she lost her edge.  In this Parkpop performance from 2013, she's back to louder and harder - and angry.

But also, happier.  And the crowd loves her.

This show is from 2020, and was one of her very last shows, as her tour would be shut down less than a week later thanks to the pandemic. She would literally only perform this song four more times before the abrupt end of the tour.

She still had every last bit of emotion and left it all on that stage. 

14 January 2026 - Sunny Sweeney - Diamonds & Divorce Decrees

You know, it's been a hot minute since I posted about Sunny Sweeney.

Well, she released a pretty fantastic album called Rhinestone Requiem in 2025, her first in three years. It's fun and POSSIBLY my favorite country album of 2025 (that Tyler Childers album was next level great but so was this one).  

Anyway, I also just find Sunny Sweeney to be delightful, so I figured I'd post this very strange song about marriage, written by Sweeney, Buddy Owens and Galen Griffin. 

Of COURSE I found a live performance of this song.  OF COURSE I did.   And like I said, I think she's delightful!

Stick around for the whole performance. 

13 January 2026 - Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life

It's really not all that common for a band's first song to be their biggest hit.  

Unless they're a one hit wonder.  

Third Eye Blind is NOT a one hit wonder.   

No, their lead vocalist - Stephan Jenkins - wrote a hell of a killer hook that was easy to remember as an homage to "Walk On The Wild Side". 

What materialized was a pretty solid pop-rock hit that grew out of modern rock radio and straight to pop radio. It was one that Jenkins didn't initially want to release as the band's debut single - he felt other songs were more representative.

I think it worked out OK for them. 

So what made me think about Third Eye Blind after literally thirty years?

They played the Orange Bowl on January 1st.  

They didn't sound terrible. 

12 January 2026 - Clipse ft. Kendrick Lamar - Chains & Whips

This is culturally inappropriate. 

But really, no. It isn't. 

Let God Sort Em Out, the 2025 comeback release by a reunited Clipse, was hailed as one of the best albums of the year - and rightly so. It's lyrically deep and has fantastic flow. Produced by Pharrell Williams, this is likely to be a big Grammy winner this year. 

This was the first song written for the album, and they got Kendrick to send 'em a verse while he was working on GNX.  Lenny Kravitz plays guitar on the track, and of course, Pusha T and Malice are spittin' rhymes with Kendrick.

The title refers to chains - as in jewelry - and whips - as in fast automobiles - but they know what they're doing when it comes to double entendre.  And they're quite biting when it comes to criticizing others for chasing dollars. 

By the way, Kendrick's verse is about Drake, not Donald Trump - but that should surprise no one.  Pusha T's, in fact, is directed towards Jim Jones - no, not the Jonestown guy! - for taking Drake's side in that feud.  

It didn't take long for the fans to learn every word.... and when Kendrick came out with them live to perform the song, it was far from culturally inappropriate.  

When they perform it without Kendrick, it still is not culturally inappropriate. 

11 January 2026 (Special Edition) - Grateful Dead - Throwing Stones

A lot of people thought Jerry Garcia was the heart of the Grateful Dead, and he was.  Bob Weir was a huge part of the Grateful Dead's success, and a lot of their better known songs, like this one from their hit In The Dark album, were sung and composed by Weir.  This one, loosely based on "Ring Around The Rosie", featured lyrics by John Perry Barlow.

After Garcia's death, Weir kept a lot of the heart and music of the Dead alive, with several Dead-adjacent projects, like The Other Ones, The Dead and Dead and Co.  

Weir was diagnosed with cancer in 2025, and he beat it.  Unfortunately, the underlying lung issues were too much, and his family announced his passing on Saturday,  

While the Dead were still touring, this song - which was from the mid-1980s - quickly became a favorite.  Here they are performing it in Oakland, near their home base. 

And here is Weir, with Dead and Company, keeping the legacy and this song alive.

Weir's voice and passion will be missed. 

9 January 2026 - Geese - Au Pays du Cocaine

OK.  

Let's talk about Geese.

Their 2025 album Getting Killed is topping a lot of year-end best-of lists. 

I listened to it. It's good.  

It did not make my Wicked 25 or even the honorable mentions.  I just.... it was good.  I liked it.

A lot of the attention on Geese's album was driven by Cameron Winter's 2024 solo album, Heavy Metal, which did better than expected (and appeared on a few 2025 lists because it came out in December 2024, too late for a lot of those lists).  I have not listened to that one yet.  

But, I *did* like Getting Killed.   One of the highlights of the album for me is this song, which is post-punk crooning perfection - about a guy trying to convince a reluctant partner.  With lyrics by Winter and music by the whole band, it really does tell a story all inside itself.

Live, the melancholy song sounds even sadder, with Winter's baritone selling the emotion.