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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i love the image of george going through the trouble of adding a deliberately shitty percussion track to a recording he'd made years earlier solely to fuck with phil collins

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

this little bit from phil collins' wikipedia page is so funny

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If you think POINT BREAK is a "good-bad movie" you should not be allowed to watch movies let alone write about them

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

the NYT ranking the US Office ahead of the UK Office is a Judith Miller level disgrace

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

the move to one nap a day might be the most underrated baby/toddler achievement. it's not unusual for both my kids to sleep for 2.5 hours at the same time on a saturday or sunday afternoon and it is glorious

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

"scooby-doo: origins" www.netflix.com/tudum/articl...

netflix.com

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Reposted by Jack Hamilton

Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 01/09/2026

Belatedly: From "The Heart of Rock & Soul." Among the best 800 words of pop music criticism ever written.

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SOLDIER BOY, The Shirelles
Produced by Luther Dixon; Written by Luther Dixon and
Florence Green
Scepter 1228
1962
Billboard: #1 (3 weeks)
Down at the bus stop you'd see them every morning, books clutched to their car coats, high-rise bouffants frosted in the early chill, wearing too much makeup and already, at fifteen or sixteen, a few too many pounds. I did not know their names and you can be certain they didn't

know mine. These weren't girls who paid attention to guys their own age; they'd given up on scoring with the jocks or any of the inside crowd and the rest of us were, well, not worth so much as a glance.
Not because they were snobs; because they teared the names that
"smart kids" would call them, which began and ended in the catchall designation, "slut."
So I'll never know for certain if the scraps of conversation you'd pick up from sitting near them told the whole story, or whether i's really fair to fill in many details. But if you watched and listened, you heard stories that implied an experience no guy of my acquaintance could have boasted, a matter-of-fact knowingness about sex and men and the world at large that the college-bound among us didn't yet suspect. These girls might as well already have been women, because their lives were already laid out for them around a narrow set of alternatives: hasty postgraduation marriage and too many pregnancies too soon or else a job at Kroger's or wherever else they needed a checkout clerk, some job you might be able to get without even a diploma.
Or getting knocked up and having the guy ditch her. Or getting knocked up and deciding to have a still-illegal abortion with the risk of being ruined or killed

Living in those mid-America tank towns back then, you knew all sorts of stories like those, just like you knew the stories of their boy-friends, including the one summed up in that line that goes zipping by in "Born in the U.S.A.": "Got in a little hometown jam, so they put a rifle in my hand." Off they went, and after a while, you began to notice that not all of them came back. But mostly they did, and while it would be obscene to argue that that was worse, it would be unfair to exaggerate how much.
By the time they were juniors, maybe a little earlier, certainly before they graduated, a lot of those bouffant girls at the bus stop would have boyfriends serving somewhere overseas, most likely in Germany or a quiescent Korea, where bullets did not fly but nights were long and temptations many. Because the barriers between us were huge, Im guessing again, but maybe they were just devoted pen pals, not doing so well in the high school social scene and so transferring their need to be needed to more distant objects. A lot of these same girls were the first to catch on to the Beatles, and the first to go really mad for one or another of the guys, the ultimate sexual unobtainables. Some of them had already figured that game out before the British Invasion, and they were the most loyal fans of local rock groups, often better ones than the style-setters at school listened to.
But sometimes, I suspect, those girls had real relationships with guys "in the service," not just paper ones, and their lonely nights must

have been especially bereft because it was hard enough to land a guy, let alone worry about his existence a continent and an ocean away.
Reputations are easy to come by and hard to get rid of, especially in your own mind. And so (I'm guessing again) they fretted.
I mention all this because everything I've ever read about "Soldier Boy" treats its enormous popularity as a mystery. Written on the spot in the studio and recorded in the final few minutes of a session, it strikes other critics and historians as perfunctory and tossed off, its unison harmonies and the unison instrumental break shared by organ and guitar insufficiently elaborated.
But whenever I've heard "Soldier Boy," it's made me think of those girls and their boyfriends, each of them lost and confused in a world that they not only didn't understand very well but which manifestly did not like them. And so they found each other, and so they were dragged apart, and so they wondered and pledged and pleaded: "In this whole world, you can love but one girl / Let me be that one girl / For I'll be true to you."
Somehow, in a barracks or a bedroom, those sweetly voiced lines must have helped a few million heads lay more comfortably upon their pillows. And so there's no mystery at all, really, except how so many people can stand right before our eyes and not be seen. Or heard.

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

trying to think of who the funniest person would be to do a deranged nepo-baby take about. currently landed on nas

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Thinking right now about Lester Bangs' "Where Were You When Elvis Died?" one of my favorite things he ever wrote. We will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Dolly

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Stevie Wonder in this category too. Possibly Paul now too, feels like time has (finally) healed all the old wounds

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

just this morning (before i'd heard of his passing) "you've lost that lovin' feelin'" came on and I instantly thought of dave's incredible essay on it from THE HEART OF ROCK AND SOUL, as I do every time I hear that song. they essay isn't online but trust me, go buy the damn book

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

at every academic conference panel Q&A there's someone who raises their hand with "more a comment than a question" that ends up just being a ramble-y complaint that the paper would be better if it was more like their own work. anyways glad I haven't been at a conference panel with emily wilson

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

season 8 sometimes gets overlooked but lance scorpio, kirk van houten's divorce, poochie and frank grimes all within the span of a few months is one of the craziest heaters in all of american art

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

obama's music lists are always so bizarre and all over the place that I often think they are actually real? as opposed to his book lists which are clearly put together by some comms person while barack listens to the latest hoop collective

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

this email subject line really got me

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

"longtime fiancée" would be a killer band name

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

yeah the original is unable to be improved upon but not in a good way

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

keep going past the alcott house

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

i hate reading reviews of newer stones albums that act smugly affronted that they're still putting new stuff out in their 80s. I think that's cool as hell

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

saying the odyssey is "non-fiction" because there's archeological evidence that troy was a real place is a little like saying that star wars is non-fiction because someone went to the moon once

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I think my favorite thing about bluesky is that the new york times pitchbot account isn't here

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

can't remember if coldplay was on the "do-not-play" list that we gave our dj, which IIRC was nearly as long as the playlist that we gave him

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

this week is Spielberg Week at @slate, the cinematic corollary to 2016's Wonder Week. my contribution is this essay on spielberg's colossal 1993, which was fun to write slate.com/culture/2026...

slate.com

He’s One of History’s Greatest Filmmakers. For a Long Time, He Was a Punching Bag. Then One Year Changed Everything.

It was the most astonishing one-two punch in the history of cinema. It still is.

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Reposted by Jack Hamilton

Alex Elizabeth Byrne McMillan @undeniablyalex.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

6095404016209

Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

some personal news, i just released *three* full albums of original material toda--

static.klipy.com

Amadeus Mozart

ALT: Amadeus Mozart

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

RIP clarence carter. this is one of the most astonishing recordings ever made imo www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTSB...

youtube.com

Making Love (At the Dark End of the Street)

YouTube video by Clarence Carter - Topic

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

there are actually a lot of notable exceptions!!! so many that I would argue that the first part of this sentence is simply wrong

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Reposted by Jack Hamilton

Jody Avirgan @jodyavirgan.com · 30/04/2026

Narrated two great articles on @theatlantic.com this week + @jackhamilton.bsky.social on Heartland Rock + Hua Hsu on the photos of Lee Friedlander www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... Shoutout to @harkaudio.com and The Atlantic for prioritizing human narrators!

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

the real list is smokey robinson, everyone else is playing for second

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

greatest dead american songwriters list would be a true banger

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

yeah i wrote a negative piece about the show that teaches us how to be good people that prompted several of its superfans to write me at my work email & tell me to kill myself

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

media always talking about disaffected young men... what about affected young men

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

the social media era is such a weird cycle of things being discovered and then known and then forgotten and then (re) discovered and then known and then forgotten and this just repeating endlessly

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Yeah this feels like that classic category confusion of “songs that I remember hearing a lot” with “songs that were good”

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

replying to every political email I get from Steve Kerr with a 3-1 lead meme

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Jack Hamilton @jackhamilton.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

the best led zeppelin lyric is the bit about the church in "hey hey what can I do." the second best is rhyming "breakdown" with "breakdown" on "communication breakdown"

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