Email Author Mikael Wood

2005 Stories by Mikael Wood

• Super-Prolific Song Kings From Previous Century Emerge From Rocking Thrones

  published December 27, 2005

  These fucking old people today, they're never satisfied. Do Burt Bacharach and Neil Diamond, two of 20th-century pop's most prolific and... More >>

• Punch Rock

  published December 20, 2005

  When Avril Lavigne donned a skimpy Hooters costume at a 2004 Halloween gig in Philadelphia, the pint-sized punk princess put the scare into fans... More >>

• Captain Crunch

  published December 13, 2005

  A year ago I had a conversation with Ray LaMontagne, the popular folk-soul crooner who's from Maine and wears a beard that proves it. He told me... More >>

• Tending to Yuletide Tradition When Rufus, Martha, and Emmylou Drop In

  published December 6, 2005

  Perhaps the lasting legacy of the McGarrigle/Wainwright family—mother and aunt Kate and Anna, father Loudon, kids Rufus and Martha—will... More >>

• A Business, Man

  published November 29, 2005

  Deep inside himself, quick-tongued singer-songwriter Jason Mraz harbors a desire to be a kiddiepop hip-hop hero. In "Wordplay," the likably... More >>

• Cooleyhighharmony

  published November 15, 2005

  "I'm grown," 18-year-old Shad Gregory Moss announces two times in a row in "Do What It Do," a cut from Wanted, his fourth album as Bow Wow.... More >>

• 'Just Friends'

  published November 15, 2005

  A refreshingly mean-spirited breeze through both the holiday movie and romantic-comedy checklists (including the third-act heart of gold), ... More >>

• Environmental Studies: Hip-Hop Star Pens Lucid Autobio

  published September 13, 2005

  If what parents and congresspeople fear about gangsta rap is how it sells misanthropy, misogyny, and even the occasional case of full-on psychosis... More >>

• Mercury Positioning

  published September 6, 2005

  Each year when the organization responsible for handing out the U.K.'s annual Mercury Prize... More >>

• Dumber Breeze

  published August 30, 2005

  At the moment, Jack Johnson is the dumbest genius in pop. On his impossibly mellow records, which he told the Associated Press last month he tries... More >>

• Not Just Bluegrass

  published August 23, 2005

  A friend remembers working as an extra on the set of a Nickel Creek... More >>

• Chewing Wild Oats on the Farm

  published August 16, 2005

  Now that his old VH1 compatriot Rob Thomas has traded the namby-pamby roots-pop with which he once conquered every sports bar in America for a... More >>

• 'We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen'

  published August 16, 2005

  Earlier this month Green Day sent a tidal wave of change through the offices of Lookout Records, the Berkeley-based indie that released the... More >>

• Old Emo Original

  published August 2, 2005

  I can't count the number of young emo bands who've told me in interviews lately that, though they used to find satisfaction in writing good parts,... More >>

• Books

  published July 26, 2005

  Chuck Klosterman is the enemy of people who complain about cultural critics inserting themselves into their analyses of others' work. In his... More >>

• Starbucks's Favorite Ladies Ride the Road to Hack-Rock Glory

  published July 12, 2005

  These long-tressed Long Island folk-rock ladies call their touring vehicle Vanna White. It's a van, see, and it's white. So: Vanna White. This is... More >>

• Be Your Own Potter

  published July 12, 2005

  While I admit that I wasn't clocking folks for their copies of Flowers for Algernon or that new Sue Grafton joint, the most popular... More >>

• Music

  published June 28, 2005

  Each member of the haunted country-rock outfit Blanche looks like the sort of person whom the phrase "It's always the quiet ones" was invented to... More >>

• Canadian crooner opens up some not-quite-idiot-proof cans of creamed corn

  published June 28, 2005

  Twenty-nine-year-old Michael Bublé doesn't fuck up the important stuff on It's Time, the Canadian throwback crooner's second studio... More >>

• Emo guys insult selves, discover porpoise in life

  published June 21, 2005

  Conscious of the demands increasingly put upon young emo fans' attention spans, suburban-Chicago pretty boys Fall Out Boy have made even the liner... More >>

• Teen TV Star No Stranger to Beautiful Celebrity Music

  published June 14, 2005

  Until today, I was reasonably sure that no one but Interscope publicist Greg Miller and I had listened to all of A Beautiful World, the... More >>

• Keep Your Self Alive

  published June 7, 2005

  Rob Thomas and Rivers Cuomo are gangsters of self-love. During the mid '90s, when a booming peacetime economy meant we could all listen to white... More >>

• Go Ape

  published May 31, 2005

  How does a two-dimensional cartoon band promote its album in a three-dimensional world? If the cartoon band is in the employ of Virgin Records,... More >>

• Strings on Wing

  published May 17, 2005

  During the mid 1990s 31-year-old Andrew Bird played violin with North Carolina hot-jazz oddballs the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Today, on his family's... More >>

• Brits Not Quite as Silly as Their Moniker Suggests, For Once

  published April 19, 2005

  This Manchester trio had the misfortune of queuing up between the Music and the Kaiser Chiefs at the Wack-Ass U.K. Band Name Factory a couple of... More >>