By Brittany Spanos

At what point did teen girls suddenly just become wrong? "Serious" music fans seem to have universally accepted a critique of quality that befalls any artist who willingly sells to the rabid teen girl market and stigmatized the fans who dare to sometimes be male or at least above the age of 18. It's why we only divulge our love for Justin Bieber with a laugh and overdose of self-awareness that lets the world know we don't feel he or the boys in One Direction are legitimate artists.

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By Mary Carreon

Big news! There's an album called 50 Shades of Dubstep. It's got -- you guessed it -- 50 songs of goddamn dubstep. Amazon says it came out in August, but it just arrived in our mailbox this month. And so, we did what any logical person would do: We listened to all four hours of it.

Except, that wasn't X-treme enough for us. We got to thinking about the erotic novel that "inspired" the album, Fifty Shades of Grey, and wondered whether the two might be related somehow. You know, like what happens when you listen to Dark Side of the Moon and watch The Wizard of Oz at the same time. Surely the bass and somebody's panties will drop simultaneously, right?

So, we did it. We read the book while listening to the album's three discs. Fuck our life!

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Burn, baby, burn, it's a "check out this literal representation of the way we're discarding out past glories" inferno.

For the excitable Generation Y character in all of us 20-somethings: Fall Out Boy has returned. With their 2005 mega-album From Under the Cork Tree, the Chicago-based four-piece put a poetically self-aware spin on the theme of pop-punk. They laced the album with ironic and lengthy song titles, true pop hooks and melodies, and it was with From Under the Cork Tree that Fall Out Boy worked its way into the collective hearts of the after-school MTV crowd by appealing to suburban angst while still being funny and self-deprecating about it.

With 2007's platinum-selling Infinity on High, the overall grandiosity of From Under the Cork Tree was elevated. When you've got Jay-Z calling you into the staccato breakdown of your album's opening track, as he did on Infinity on High's "Thriller," listeners could truly say that Fall Out Boy had hit their stride. Vocalist Patrick Stump utilized his full and impressive vocal range, even leaning toward theatrics on the piano-driven "Golden," and working with R&B producer/singer Babyface on two of the tracks.

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Editor's note: Last November Daniel Johnston missed a flight and was forced to reschedule his stop at Crescent Ballroom. But time flies, and this weekend, on Sunday, February 3, he's slated to make up his date with a special performance. We ran this piece from New Times contributor Chris Parker in November, but wanted to share it again for those getting pumped for a performance from the legendary outsider artist. Enjoy.

There's no better illustration of the fine line between brilliance and madness than Daniel Johnston. Indeed, the childlike simplicity and directness of his lyrics suggests the two are inseparable at times. A talented cult fave who spent years and years listening to and dissecting the Beatles, Johnston has a gift for melody that even the rudimentary nature of his early-'80s lo-fi tape recordings can't hide. But it's the vulnerability and honesty of the lyrics that are most striking.

See also:

-Axe Finally Uses a Daniel Johnston Song About Loneliness For a Sexist Commercial
-Way Down in the Hole: Can Daniel Johnston Keep the Devil at Bay Long Enough to be Successful?

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The classic Who lineup mean-mugs for the camera.

Among all the reigning veteran British rock bands, The Who is the world champ of releasing greatest hits compilations. These days you can buy the studio version of "My Generation" on 12 officially sanctioned best-of-The Who albums and live versions across 10 concert albums.

Yet there are some songs even The Who organization has shown some restraint in reissuing, so maybe another compilation is due. Why should you own so many copies of "My Generation" but only one copy of "Shout and Shimmy," its UK B-side? We've done the work for Universal Music. All they have to do is go in to the vault once again. I'm sure they know the way.

See also:

-Stop Hating on the 2013 Coachella Lineup
-Maynard James Keenan Discusses Donkey Punch the Night
-We Found a 36-Year-Old KDKB Local Compilation -- Here's What We Thought Of It

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Six years is a long time for a musician to be absent from the field.

Unless you've reach "legendary" status, making a comeback after such a long period of dormancy is nearly impossible. With that said, Justin Timberlake's last album, FutureSex/ LoveSounds, is one of the greatest R&B albums of the last generation. Perhaps the now married, 31-year-old crooner-turned-actor felt that he didn't need to release any new music after putting out such an incredible album.

See also:

-Six Ridonkulous Holy Ship!! Dance Move GIFs
-David Bowie Releases First Song in a Decade-- And It's Great
-Download Frank Ocean's Django Unchained Outtake

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Is it possible to have a New Years Resolution for a whole city? Not sure, but I have one. One for Phoenicians one and all, myself included. So here goes: Let's take some musical risks, Phoenix. Let's look for opportunities to try new things. No sticking to known quantities.

We want to help. There is a lot we try to accomplish with our pieces. We want to criticize intelligently, we want to give context. But a lot of the time, we want to introduce. If any piece I write on a band I believe in earns them even one new listener, I consider it a success. But you don't have to depend on us, or other music journalism outlets for that matter, to find out about new things. There are pitfalls to that.

See also:

-13 Phoenix Bands You Need to Know in 2013
-10 Favorite Local Hip-Hop Tracks of 2012
-12 Favorite Local EDM Mixes of 2012
-The Top 10 Phoenix Albums of 2012
-Top 10 Reissues and Compilations of 2012
-Jason P. Woodbury's 10 Best Things I Heard in 2012

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By Dan Moore

Psy's Gangnam Style is now the most-viewed YouTube video ever, and as we go to press Monday morning that means it's been watched coming up on 830 million times. That means that the single biggest pop culture event of 2012--the video you're most likely to talk about with your grandma at Christmas--was, as I predicted back in 2011, an LMFAO-soundalike dance-pop track performed entirely in Korean and wrapped around a novelty horse-dance. The particulars of every cultural phenomenon are different; Psy's as good an example of that as we're likely to get. But behind his success there has to be something that can be dissected, generalized, and exploited, or at least that's what I'm going to tell you if you send a message to my "Web 2.0 New Media Social Trend Analysis Analyst" LinkedIn profile. So what makes a billion-view video? What's the formula? So far as I can tell, there are two options: The Gangnam and the Bieber.

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By Alex Jarson

Okay, we know you just love the Velvet Underground--you're sporting the latest fall calendar Urban Outfitters top, your mom took you to get the Warhol Banana tattooed on your bicep, and you think they're the greatest, most provocative band to have ever graced this earth. You even play Nico's Chelsea Girl from time to time and swear to god you know who Lou Reed is. (Didn't he do some stuff with Metallica or something?) It's okay, we get it. You're cool. You don't have to prove it to us. But who is Nico?

Nico is the soul behind the monotone voice you love in Velvet songs like "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "There She Goes Again." She is proud, prominent, and very hard to ignore. As her musical career progressed away from the Velvet Underground, she continued to serve as a beacon of truth. Despite whatever sorrows come your way, history will pay tribute to the character you made of yourself.

See also:

Five Great Lost Albums
Metallica & Lou Reed's Lulu: Music for Gas-Huffing, Denim-Clad Arizona Teenagers?
Lou Reed and Metallica's "The View:" The 10 Best Comments on the Song's Soundcloud Player

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My original aim in this blog was to document what kind of non-Rush shirts were worn by Rush fans at the band's concert Sunday night.

However, the results were fundamentally uninteresting. Kiss, Iron Maiden on the old guard, and on younger fans, modern proggy acts like Primus and Tool. There also was a young man wearing a Mumford and Sons shirt, but he was the only real anomaly. There should be nothing peculiar about people wearing shirts for other arena rock bands at a concert by an arena rock band, but the case for Rush is different.

See also:

Rush @ US Airways Center (Concert Review)
Rush @ US Airways Center (Slideshow)
Rush Recording Upcoming Phoenix Show for DVD Release in 2013

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