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OK, FREEPERS, LET'S START THIS CONTEST FOR THE GREATEST SONG OF THE '80S. The baseline for the contest is the top 7 hits of each year of the '80s, as compiled by BILLBOARD. This is not based on personal preferences, biases, prejudices, or counter-culture reactivity. The rules in general will be to vote for everything shown. No equivocating, ties, or omissions. Votes will only be counted if the "ballot" is complete. ROUND 1 We begin by using the #7 songs of each year and paring them from 10 songs to 4 (to set up brackets for the rest of the...

What does everyone think of a music play-off bracket-type poll for best songs of the '80s?

The success of any great piece of art is determined by a few key factors. Does it accomplish what it sets out to achieve? Does it illuminate some essential aspect of the human condition? Does it change those who are exposed to it — rewire the circuitry, add new ideas that disturb the status quo? Does it build on the art of others, in the process crafting something profoundly new? Most important, does it advocate for the enduring relevance of tinfoil? Under these guidelines, Weird Al Yankovic's new "Mandatory Fun" is a stone cold masterpiece. Its goal remains the same...

11 Popular Songs the CIA Used to Torture Prisoners in the War on Terror Imagine you are chained with your hands between your legs, crouching. You're isolated in a small, dark room with earphones you can't take off. Queen's "We Are the Champions" has been playing on repeat for 30 hours now at full volume, and you've lost your ability to think. It could go on for months. Music torture has been common practice for the CIA ever since it began its "enhanced interrogation program" in the early 2000s. The process is designed to "create fear, disorient … and prolong...

Rashida Jones bristles at the suggestion that she’s a prude. “I love sex,” the 37-year-old actress and writer declared recently in Glamour magazine. “Hell, I’ve even posed in my underwear.” But Jones also bristles at an instinct so common among young female pop stars to showcase their private parts, à la Miley Cyrus gyrating on stage in latex scanties. Last October, Jones created a mini-furor when she tweeted, “This week’s celeb news takeaway: she who comes closest to showing the actual inside of her vagina is most popular #stopactinglikewhores.” That seemingly innocuous dig at Cyrus, Rihanna, and other hypersexualized stars...

The eccentric pop singer stepped out of her hotel sporting a possessed stare with her arms aloft The eccentric pop singer stepped out of her hotel sporting a possessed stare with her arms aloft wearing a ragged see-through costume as she walked barefoot on the pavement. Lady Gaga, 27, who was in the country to perform on The X Factor tonight on ITV, put celebrities attending a Hallowe’en party at a house in Beverly Hills in her native US to shame with her outfit. Supermodel Cindy Crawford, 47, went to the showbusiness bash, accompanied by husband Rande Gerber, dressed...

I’m not a rap fan. But I know who Jay-Z is. He’s sold 50 million CDs. He’s won 17 Grammy Awards. He has a net worth of $500 million, according to Forbes magazine. And, oh yes, he’s married to Beyoncé, Billboard’s top female artist of the 2000s. So, Jay Z just “dropped” his latest CD, “Magna Carta…Holy Grail.” Magna Carta is a play on the rapper’s real name, Shawn Carter. Holy Grail? Well, that’s where Jay Z offends this Christ follower’s sensibilities. A review of the rap star’s 12th studio album appears in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. I...

Hey, girls (on film), he’s not just a pretty face! Duran Duran’s John Taylor seems to agree with many on Twitter, including Tawny Kitaen, who called Joe Biden an “embarrassing jackass.” The consensus is that Joe Biden’s debate performance was disgraceful, from the creepy smirk to the cranky old man attitude, capped off by his shameful laughing at the issues.

The lights went down, and we were in Troyes Cathedral, or perhaps Fordham University. A gigantic glowing crucifix, several stories high, hung over the stage. It was the centerpiece of a handsome Old World church built of light and shadow on the tall video screens at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. Monks in heavy robes chanted as a huge smoking censer swung over the sold-out crowd. And suspended at midstage, Madonna knelt in a hovering confession booth, delivering an Act of Contrition of her own devising. Then the walls of the booth collapsed, and the star dropped to the floor...

It’s not just our imagination – pop music really has been getting worse and worse. And now we have a scientific study that proves it.

LONDON (AP) — Former Bee Gee Robin Gibb is gravely ill with pneumonia in a London hospital, British media reported Saturday. The Sun newspaper reported that 62-year-old Gibb is in a coma, citing a family friend.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Dobie Gray, who hit the top of the music charts in 1973 with “Drift Away,” has died in Nashville. He was 69.

Pop music is on 'a slow but unmistakable descent into pornography', according to hit songwriter Mike Stock. Stock, who was responsible for dozens of hits as part of Stock, Aitken and Waterman and helped launch Kylie Minogue's pop career, put some of the blame on the rise of stars including Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. He said they were among a wave of performers who 'have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency'.

Singer / songwriter Andrew Gold has died at the age of 59 from a heart attack. Gold was best known for his 1977 hit ‘Lonely Boy’ and 1978’s ‘Thank You For Being A Friend’, the later became the theme for the hit TV series The Golden Girls that ran from 1985-1992. Gold continued in TV writing the theme song for ‘Mad About You’ known as ‘Final Frontier’. Andrew Gold was born in Burbank. His mother Marni Nixon was the singing voice for many Hollywood actresses. She was the real singer for Natalie Wood in ‘West Side Story’, Deborah Karr in...

Is Adele the bravest, craziest, most downright wonderful star in the history of pop? After what she has just told Q magazine on the subject of tax, I think she might well be. Here’s what she said: “I’m mortified to have to pay 50 per cent! [While] I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are ––––, and I’ve gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [her album] 19, I was ready to go and buy...

With the release of Kid Rock’s terrific pro-freedom and pro-American anthem “Born Free,” and the latest installment of John Ondrasik’s "For the Troops" compilation, I got to thinking about songs that go against the so-called liberal grain of pop culture and espouse either a pro-military, pro-American, or just pro-liberty theme.Some are overtly topical to the political or cultural situation in their time or even battle cries. Others are merely personal anthems that project an American sense of independence, self-reliance or willingness to fight for what is right. They are alike in their timeless appeal. Here are my Top 10, with...

A founding member of ELO has been killed following a freak accident involving a giant bale of hay.Mike Edwards, 62, who played cello for the band for three years, died when the giant bale weighing 50 stone crashed down on top of his van.Mr Edwards died instantly in the accident after the bale careered down the hill, and flipped over a hedge.             Eccentric: Mike Edwards's bizarre costumes and ability to play his cello with fruit were a major part of ELO's appeal     Bowing out: Mike Edwards, on the far right, played...

George David Weiss, a songwriter who had a hand in some of the biggest hits of midcentury pop music, recorded by some of the biggest stars, died on Monday at his home in Oldwick, N.J. He was 89... Among his most famous numbers were “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” recorded by Elvis Presley; “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” recorded by the Tokens; and “What a Wonderful World,” recorded by Louis Armstrong...

...No one in recent pop memory has been a greater enemy to the authentic than Lady Gaga... Not long ago she was playing confessional piano music in tiny New York rooms... Lady Gaga has become successful by adhering to the belief that there’s no inner truth to be advertised, or salvaged: all one can do is invent anew. It wasn’t that long ago when artifice appeared to be on its last leg. In the mid-to-late-1990s female performers especially were in a confessional place, a movement captured and branded by Lilith Fair... ...About one-third of the original dates have been canceled,...

When Sally's mother learned her daughter was to be temporarily suspended from her church school, she was shattered. Her... 12-year-old daughter had never been in trouble before. ... The school had discovered an obscene, pornographic poem Sally had written with a classmate - and then posted... on the school intranet.... 'Sally's teacher... said it suggested such inappropriate sexual knowledge that the headmistress was considering calling in Social Services to investigate whether [the] daughter had been sexually abused.... But the subsequent school investigation uncovered that the poem... was, in fact, Sally's attempt to write a pop song, and every word had...