Blog Posts by John Kordosh

It's country music time again in Framed! Regular readers know that we love all types of music, but there's always been a special place in our heart for country. And our featured artist, Gretchen Wilson, is bringin' it with her 2006 song, "California Girls."

Unlike the more famous Beach Boys' song of yore, Gretchen's "California Girls" aren't something to emulate--instead, they're "skinny little girls with no meat on their bones" who wear phony smiles and are afraid to eat fried chicken. Why, we oughtta! Humorously enough, it all takes place on a suspiciously Californian-looking beach, too.

Well, leave it to Gretchen to tell it like she thinks it is. She's nothing if not the real thing: her mom was only 16 when she had Gretchen, and Gretchen grew up without a dad, living with her mom in trailer parks in rural southern Illinois. We think she's walked enough of the walk to entitle her to her Bible-and-flags patriotism and down-home values. So please enjoy this great country artist and let

Let's talk about hip music makers this week. You'd have to put North Carolina's Ben Folds Five near the top of the list, if for no other reason than they were a trio. But there's more.

The Five, who got together back in 1993, were fronted by Ben Folds, a jazzy indie pianist who has a flair for exploring the woes of everyday folks. Ben speaks directly to guys who can't get the girl and are lucky if they can even get her phone number. And, although they broke up in 2000, Ben has continued as a solo artist whose most recent album, Way To Normal, was released in a few months ago. The BFF did reunite for a charity gig in Chapel Hill, NC, back in September.

This week's video, "Song For The Dumped," is from their 1997 album, Whatever And Ever, Amen. Cleverly, it cuts between shots of the band singing the very, very straightforward tune--"Give me my money back, you bitch"--with a little girl playing with her dolls. Aw. That the little girl's dolls are playing in an extremely violent way only

Well, it's election week, and everyone at Framed is super excited! Some of us will be voting for the slim, articulate black guy. Others are diehard fans of the cranky old white guy who makes the weird faces. What a battle it's been! And, in deference to the historic nature of this week's election, we're pulling out all the stops with J Xavier's "Go Tell Your Mama to Vote for Obama."

In the interest of fairness, we wanted to do a second video this week showing a hip-hop artist endorsing Sen. McCain, but there were simply too many to choose from! Who's got all that time?

J Xavier, if you don't know, is a hip-hop wunderkind out of Houston, Texas, a 16-year-old ball of rap fury who's poised to remake all of music. He is, after all, the young man who's given us "Yao Ming Wants The Dunk."

And he does! Yao Ming so wants the dunk! Word!

Please keep in mind that neither Y! Music nor Framed actually endorses one candidate over another. To do so would be wrong and a misuse of our vast internet

Longtime readers of the rock press may recall that this blog met Metallica way back in the day, long before they became peevish and crotchety. They were opening a Detroit-area show for W.A.S.P., a hair metal band whose very existence has since been wiped from human memory. We don't really remember very well because we got drunk with Blackie Lawless, but we're sure they were outstanding.

That was over 20 years ago, and no one's happier than Framed that Metallica now has the #1 album in the United States. Their astonishing Death Magnetic--certainly the finest record released in the last five or six weeks!--grabbed America's imagination and actually made its chart debut at #1. Mister, that's a low number!

To help celebrate, this week's Framed is all about their last album, St. Anger, a much-overlooked disc that...are we missing something here?...also debuted at #1. Well, we'll look into it.

This week's vid, the title track off St. Anger, was shot at California's San Quentin State Prison,

We love the guys over at Cash Money Records--awhile back we welcomed Birdman into Framed and, this week, we're happy to have Lil Wayne in our blog. Cash Money just keeps on giving!

Wayne--Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.--has been a monstrously successful artist, and our video this week, "Got Money," is from his monstrous 2008 LP, Tha Carter III. The wry storyline has Wayne and the ubiquitous T-Pain ushering us through a bank heist in which the guys play Robin Hood, distributing money to the masses. Delightful.

Lil Wayne, you've made us laugh, you've made us cry. Is "Got Money" party music at its absolute finest? It may well be. We'll let our readers, the most astute people who have ever accessed the Internet, be the judges. We'll be back next week with even more topical fun!

1 - "And here I was worried the President didn't know how to delegate. Thank you, Jesus."

2 - "The bank across the street is offering toaster ovens?!"

3 - As occasionally noted in Framed, we can stop the

Are they the hottest group in groupdom? We'd have to say so... New Jersey's Jonas Brothers hit #1 on the Billboard chart with their new album, A Little Bit Longer, and were the first group to ever sell more than 100,000 digital downloads for three consecutive singles.

Wow! We are in uncharted territory here, readers.

The Jonas guys--heck, let's meet 'em!--are Nick (he'll be 16 in September), Kevin (real first name is Paul, he's 20), and Joe (just turned 19.) Little brother Frankie (almost eight, and humorously dubbed the Bonus Jonus) is said to be the next Jonas boy ready to enter show biz. 

This week we feature their video for "Burning Up," one of the aforementioned hot singles from their new LP. You're sure to like it, as it features the guys in a number of action movie clichés, which is always fun. But, as we like to say here at Framed, what do you guys think? Should we have the Jonas Brothers back in our blog right away, or should we decide they're mere flashes-in-the-pan and not

Hello again, readers, and welcome to this week's very special Framed. For the first time in the history of our award-winning blog, we would actually prefer that you watch this week's video over reading this week's captions.

Yeah, it's the best video we've ever had. Seriously. 

Don't get us wrong, we'd like you to read the captions, too. But if your time is limited, watch the video first.

This week we honor Europe, a mid-'80s hair metal band that--to our mind--recorded the definitive metal song and video with "The Final Countdown," a stupendous, some would say bombastic, song/keyboard riff that should be your ring tone right now! The lyrics, ostensibly inspired by David Bowie's "Space Oddity," combine a certain astronomical naïveté ("We're heading for Venus and still we stand tall / 'Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all") with... well, little else, really. But Europe was from Sweden, which is almost like another planet, so let's cut 'em some slack.

We're keenly interested in

New Wave music--a movement that breathed life into the moribund late 1970s and early 1980s--produced any number of ingenious, talented musicians, including Elvis Costello, the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads... really, the list is a long one. 

This week's featured artists, Men Without Hats, a Canadian group with an ever-changing lineup, belonged to a different group of New Wavers... what can best be described as the heavily-synthesized side of New Wave. Bands like A Flock Of Seagulls, the Thompson Twins, and everyone's favorites, A-Ha, were not only into synthesizers, they also liked bizarrely unthreatening and uninteresting names.

It was quite a time to be alive!

Like many of the synth bands, Men Without Hats had one big, big hit--in their case, "The Safety Dance," which hit #3 in Billboard in 1983. This week's video, "Pop Goes The World," was their highest-charting follow-up,  getting to #20 in 1987. 

We're keenly interested in what modern viewers make of Men Without Hats and