Adele is set to release her long-awaited third album, 25, and her timing could not be better. Our current situation, I’m afraid to say, is rather dire. We have existed in a pop-music-as-uniting-force dead zone for too long now. 2015 has been, when surveyed from this late-in-the-year vantage point, disturbingly…

Climb to the top of the pops and dive deep down into the depths with the flops in our new, improved edition of Pop Power Ranking (now called Pop Stars and Flop Stars). Welcome back to Pop Stars and Flop Stars, which, as I explained earlier, is a revitalized (and…

The road to Glory is paved with gold. Over the weekend, Britney Spears’ ninth studio album, set to officially release this Friday (Aug. 26, 2016), leaked. It was the latest unfortunate event in a string of unfortunate events that, together, become The (Mildly-Disastrous) Glory Album Rollout Campaign. So it was…

Is it 2010 again? Because it feels like 2010 again. A few years ago, shortly after the release of Lady Gaga’s fourth album, ARTPOP, I was walking down the street, headed to some bar somewhere in Williamsburg with a couple of friends, when the conversation turned, as it often does…