Hall & Oates

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: The Complete List

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

The Top 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: 20 - 11

Any list of the Greatest New York Rap Albums of All Time is, essentially, a list of simply the Greatest Rap Albums of All Time. The genre was invented here, after all, and over the years -- from early days to Golden Age and onward-- the city's hip-hop history has been an embarrassment of riches. Fas ... More >>

How a Scientologist Loses Faith in His Church: A Case Study

One of the reasons Debbie Cook's infamous New Year's Eve e-mail had such a huge effect was that it provided a look from inside at what was tearing apart the Church of Scientology. Cook's e-mail spelled out in high relief what ex-Scientologists had been telling us were the issues causing so many lo ... More >>

Live: The Great GoogaMooga Tries To Break New York's Festival Curse

The Great GoogaMooga Prospect Park Sunday, May 20 Better than: Eating anything in my fridge. Vineland. Field Day. All Points West. New York is littered with the acrid corpses of past festivals, a perpetual tease giving hope to the most jaded music fan that maybe this year, someone will get it righ ... More >>

GoogaMooga: The Recap

There is no denying that Saturday's GoogaMooga was a mess. Lines poured into one another and waits topped over an hour. Beer cards were sold and then couldn't be redeemed. Food and drink ran out. All in all, it was not a good scene. But did you really expect anything different? This was a first run ... More >>

Matzo Balls And Disco Balls: Pairing Great GoogaMooga's Food And Music Offerings

This weekend Prospect Park will host Great GoogaMooga, a festival that brings together some of New York's best restaurants and musicians from New York (disco technicians Escort; bouncy Brooklyn rockers Fort Lean) and outside the city (Saturday's headlined by the hip-hop polyglots The Roots, while Su ... More >>

A Brief Overview Of The Seven (!) Music Festivals Happening In The New York Area This Weekend

Summer might not semi-officially start until next weekend, but our fair city is getting a head start on jamming the schedule with as much music as possible. This weekend there are at least seven multi-musician extravaganzas happening in New York and New Jersey. Which one is most right for you? Our h ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2012 Grammys: Tributes, Tribulations, Skrillex, And The Return Of Adele

via Cats Who Look Like SkrillexWill this cat win Best New Artist?​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 54th Annual Grammys, coming to you live from a couch in Astoria. There are quite a few questions lurking around tonight's ceremony. Will Adele sweep the three major categories in wh ... More >>

100 & Single: Adele's Focus-Grouped Chart-Topper And The Demise Of The "Deep Cut"

Remember the album cut—the track deep on a disc that fans knew best, that only cool radio stations would play? Like so many cherished things from before the iTunes era, it's essentially extinct. My evidence for this bold and seemingly facile statement isn't the steady, well-chronicled disappe ... More >>

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 7: Maroon 5 Featuring Christina Aguilera, "Moves Like Jagger"

​The Song: Maroon 5 feat. Christina Aguilera, "Moves Like Jagger" The Crimes: Profligate whistling, misplaced sass, wholly unsexy instruction to "take [Levine] by the tongue." Earlier this year, both Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera were coming off what might be called "soft landings"—th ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2011 American Music Awards: We Could Have Had It All (But Then Adele Had To Go Have A Vocal Cord Hemorrhage)

Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 2011 American Music Awards, the annual salute to the most popular popular music that exists in the American wild this year. While Lady Gaga and Adele and Beyoncé are absent, this year's show apparently has one performance that will cost $500,000 to pul ... More >>

Ralph McDaniels Keeps Hip-Hop Culture Moving Forward

Fall Arts: Music Picks

100 & Single: The Dawning Of The MTV Era And How It Rocket-Fueled The Hot 100

​What was the first rock and roll song? Ask music historians and you'll get a range of '40s and early '50 candidates, from "Good Rockin' Tonight" to "Rocket 88." Ah, but when did the Rock Era begin? That's easier. Everybody knows that Bill Haley and His Comets' rendition of "Rock Around the C ... More >>

"Take Me By The Tongue" As A Come-On: Sexy Or Kinda Gross?

​Well, "Moves Like Jagger," the Voice-synergizing duet between Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera that raises the sexual specter of the Rolling Stones frontman while, some hope, making people forget about Aguilera's overall pretty terrible 2010, has landed. It's an uptempo track with a riff that ... More >>

Karaoke Underground's No. 1 Hit Songs

Giving indie-rock fans a chance to sing along with their favorites

Coming To The Local Sheds This Summer: Lots Of "Heritage Acts" And Country Stars (And Yeasayer)

Yeasayer. Here's hoping things are a bit warmer than this for their shows this summer. ​Today Live Nation announced a slew of shows at Long Island's Nikon at Jones Beach Theater and New Jersey's PNC Bank Arts Center, and in addition to the many classic rock acts (with "classic rock" now being ... More >>

Donald Glover Is More Talented Than You

The comedian/writer/rapper is on a collision course with stardom

John Oates

Week In Review: Stop Looking At My Moms

​In the week we continued counting down the worst songs of 2010, noting atrocities from Susan Boyle, Liz Phair, Christina Aguilera, Jackyl, and NeverShoutNever, and Die Antwoord, we also began our overall year in review, listing the 10 biggest music stories of 2010, our 10 favorite concerts, t ... More >>

Warpaint Wallow Exuberantly

Plus: Hall & Oates do the hits and redeem 'Jingle Bell Rock'

This Week's Voice: Warpaint, Hall & Oates, Soulja Boy, Buke & Gass, and More

Warpaint, pulling you off the floor. Photo by Santiago Felipe​In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla's Down in Front column makes its triumphant return, checking out shows from Warpaint and Hall & Oates, while Drew Hinshaw demands that you let Soulja Boy be great and Mike Ayers does arts a ... More >>

Live: Hall & Oates Do The Hits (And A Few Christmas Songs!) At Beacon Theatre

Gas up the yacht. Pics by Rob, more below.​Hall & Oates Beacon Theatre Sunday, December 5 Better Than: That part in (500) Days of Summer. Yeah, that's right. Chortle all you want, but this show started with "Maneater" (featuring a lengthy sax solo from an older, bespectacled gentleman in a p ... More >>

Five Takeaways From The 2010 Grammy Nominations

Behold, the future of music.​The Grammy Awards are a bit of a punchline in music nerd circles, a place where, say, MGMT battles Hall & Oates for a trophy that will inevitably be won, and then dropped on the ground, by the more telegenic and industry-saving Taylor Swift. The Grammy voters hate ... More >>

Winter Guide: Iron & Wine Hop on Pop

Your fake name is good enough for him--Sam Beam chats about his new album

Hall & Oates

The Brotherly Love of Sisters

More sloppy-savory shards of noise pop from deceptively friendly Brooklynites

Jake Zavracky of Lowlands Talks Happy Hour, Booze in Beer & the Allure of Miller Lite

zavracky.comJake Zavracky​Jake Zavracky is living the dream: tending bar by day and making music by night. Or is it the other way around? In any case, when he's behind the bar at Lowlands, the beer garden that opened in Gowanus earlier this year, he aims to please. What's on tap that's season ... More >>

American Idol Season 9, Finale Results

Vince Bucci/FOX Alice Cooper and the Idols​ 8:01pm. It's a sad night, and not because we're saying goodbye to another season of Idol, not because we're saying goodbye to Simon Cowell, but because they managed to drag this out to a two-hour production of group sings and product placements. 8: ... More >>

Summer Guide: Pulitzer Winner Jonathan Weiner Follows the Search for Immortality

Long for This World examines the scientific battle against aging

LL Cool J, satanist: Studies in Crap presents Dancing With Demons

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.​ Dancing With Demons: The Music's Real Master Author: Jeff Godwin Date: 1988 ... More >>

Video: Definitive Version of "She's Pretty" by Hall & Oates

Someone told us about a Hall & Oates song called "She's Pretty." We'd never heard of it, and it doesn't turn up in their discography, so being big fans we rushed to seek this rarity online. This is the only thing we could find. We assume the slightly out-of-key singers are not Daryl and John, an ... More >>

Week in Review: Humming and Ready to Take Us On a Golden Ride Way Out Somewhere in the Yonder

​In the week we learned to our deep and lasting dismay what a Gummibar is, we counted down the worst songs of the '00s with the newly relocated F2K crew--peruse if you dare but do not blame us when you come in contact with something like "I Am Your Gummy Bear (The Gummy Bear Song)," or are ina ... More >>

We Live In A World Where MGMT Could Lose A Grammy To Hall & Oates

​Hey the Grammy nominations were announced. Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, Maxwell (!!), etc. Best Male Solo Rock Performance is staggeringly old (Dylan, Young, Springsteen, Fogerty, Prince). Best Metal Performance ain't so youthful neither (Slayer, Megadeth, Judas Priest, ... More >>

Ghostland Observatory

The Internet Broke. Go Outside Maybe.

​Behind the sad cascading scrawl of ones and zeros that have slowed to a infant crawl today is the tepid and glassy reflection of all of us, watching the great silent dove migration of people away from their desks and gradually realizing that we all may have to go see Daryl Hall & John Oates p ... More >>

Studies in Crap and Teen Beat Magazine Kill the Video Star (Willie Aames!)

Your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power. Teen Beat Video Rock Stars Magazine Author: Probably whoever it was who first used the words "monetize" and " ... More >>

In Defense of Cassie

Where's the Party?

The Girls Get Ready to Turn It Out for Pride

Arty Electro White Boys Redefine "Safe Sex"

Nelly Furtado: Mutating Like Avian Flu

Eyelash kisses in the Canuck electro-soulboy dreamhouse

Finning Off the Viet Cong; They're Still Here, One's All Gone

Outdoor Concerts & Music Festivals

Music

Outdoor Concerts & Music Festivals

Music

Turkey Shoot 2001

Re-rewind the Clock

One EP Forward, Two-Step’s Back

Fight for Your Right To Artie