This is the first in a series of pieces ranking the best albums of every year. This installment starts with the entire 1940s, the decade that began yielding the format we now expect music to be released in. As opposed to film, which is my foremost discipline of study and…

The music of Beyoncé, Bey, Queen B, Sasha Fierce, etc., looms large. From her days in Destiny’s Child (who I’ve written about before) to early solo success to Jay-Z marriage to childbirth and many, many more iconic and extensively covered career and life changes, Beyoncé has reigned as one of…

Rising from an already great comic career, from MADTV (1995–2016) to KEY & PEELE (2012–2015), Jordan Peele has, in the five short years since 2017 and across just three films, made a name for himself as one of the most exciting working American directors. Focused so far on the horror…

Shortly after the dissolution of The Alan Parsons Project in 1990, the titular producer and songwriter went “solo.” Releasing under his name sans Project, Alan Parsons has essentially recreated the work he did in the 1970s and ’80s, both in sound and collaboration structure. The prog/pop/soft rock aesthetic the Project…

Coming out of a post-hardcore scene and embracing a millennial sound of progressive rock, the concept-focused band Coheed and Cambria have made ten albums in the 20 years since 2002, all but one telling the story of the sci-fi epic The Amory Wars. The brainchild of frontman Claudio Sanchez, the…

In some ways, it’s surprising that there haven’t been more than six Jurassic Park (or, yes, World) movies in the 29 years since 1993 and the release of Steven Spielberg’s iconic film. Oh sure, there have been tie-in games, TV shows, toys, and more that have indicated the franchise’s intense…

Wilco is one of those bands that has been in my awareness since I started exploring music on my own. So imagine my surprise, after a few years into this awareness, to learn that their predecessor group Uncle Tupelo was also some kind of legendary act in its time. The…

Liam Gallagher is one of the most insufferable celebrities on the planet. The huge success of Oasis and his constant feuds with former bandmate and brother Noel Gallagher brought Liam into a national British hyper-spotlight and just plain ol’ tabloid and news coverage elsewhere around the globe. I can’t stand…

With his feature directorial debut EX MACHINA, British novelist, screenwriter, and game writer Alex Garland exploded even further onto a scene in which he had been participating since the 1990s with his first novel THE BEACH (1996). Indeed, since 2014, Garland has seemed to focus on his writing-directing film work…