Rob Sheffield Quotes

Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.

God bless America – what other civilization would give Patrick Dempsey another shot to rule as a sex symbol, twenty years after ‘Meatballs III: Summer Job?’ His reign as Dr. McDreamy on ‘Grey‘s Anatomy‘ is proof that there’s nothing we love more than giving Eighties celebs a heartwarming second stab at life.

Madonna was so flamboyant in terms of her look, her style, her public pronouncements, her religious taboo-smashing.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just perfect in ‘Veep.’ She gets to show off the spiky claws beneath her patrician finesse. The obvious way to play ‘Veep’ would be to make Louis-Dreyfus a folksy heroine, one with more common sense or populist heart than her enemies. But she isn’t one.

That’s the secret of ‘True Blood‘ – all the creatures that roam Bon Temps become a metaphor for our insatiable lusts and inner desires. Humans craving what they can’t have and those secret appetites transforming them into beasts, or even killers.

Thanks for existing, R.E.M. It’s hard to overstate how much these guys changed everything, creating an entire rock audience in their own image.

It goes without saying that ‘Buncha Losers‘ comedies speak to tough times. The massive unemployment of the Reagan years gave us ‘Taxi,’ ‘Cheers‘ and the genre-defining ‘Night Court,’ a show you could never admit to watching without making people feel sorry for you.

The main job requirement for a network-news anchor is thinking it’s the only important job in the world. This is a field where solemn gravitas isn’t a drawback; it’s the whole point.

Most of an award-show host‘s job is showing up and keeping a cool head and soldiering through it, whether it’s the Oscars or the Hallmark Channel‘s ‘Hero Dog Awards.’

One of the best moments of any Liars show is hearing the crowd squawk ‘We’re doomed! We’re doomed!’ on cue during ‘We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own.’ Maybe not the most uplifting audience sing-along in the indie rock world, but one of the most reliably entertaining.

It takes only one bad amp to turn your ears to oatmeal: That’s how old hippies became Yanni fans.

I will always love the Clash, because I loved them so much when I was fourteen, and I love how you can start a conversation with almost literally any dude about the Clash.

Anyone watching ’30 Rock’ always knew Tina Fey was playing a fictionalized version of herself, a workaholic comedy writer who also plays one on TV. She’s the boss; Liz Lemon just works here.

Every now and then, Prince decides to try being a normal rock star. You know, the kind who does a professional arena tour where he plays the hits. But part of what makes him such an eternally fascinating star is that he lives in his own private purple world, even when he sets out to make the house quake.

I’ve built my whole life around loving music. I’m a writer for ‘Rolling Stone,’ so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds.

That’s the rub about ‘Community‘ – for all the high-concept cleverness, it really comes down to vulgar humanism, the dumbest kind of sentimental identification. We watch it because we like these people and we miss them when they don’t show up. They become part of the stories we tell ourselves.

Every moment of my life has a soundtrack, so I never know when some song is going to jump me by surprise and bring the memory alive.

Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever.

One nice thing about growing up Catholic is it makes you open-minded about other people’s religions, since ours is nuttier than yours.

It’s kind of amazing how popular ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is. What other show can boast such an annoyingly sincere cast of doctors, sniveling through such perfunctory love triangles?

‘I’ll Tumble 4 Ya’ has to be one of the most ridiculous hit singles that any international superstars have given the world.

‘So You Think You Can Dance’ comes on as a high-minded leap up the evolutionary ladder from other reality shows – on this one, you’re supposed to learn something, and the guest judges are fellow dance professionals rather than actual celebrities.

It was R.E.M. who showed other Eighties bands how to get away with ignoring the rules – they lived in some weird town nobody never heard of, they didn’t play power chords, they probably couldn’t even spell ‘spandex.’ All they had was songs.

Celebrity despicability is a precious thing.

The hottest trash-disco star in the world: Ke$ha! She has a lot in common with Kiss, actually, even spelling her name with a dollar sign the way Gene Simmons probably always wanted to.

Watching the evening news in 2011 is a strange time-travel experience. ‘The CBS Evening News,’ ‘ABC World News’ and ‘NBC Nightly News’ haven‘t changed their style over the decades, still going for that old-fashioned mix of voice-of-authority pomp and feel-good fluff. The difference is that people aren’t watching.

Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion – lots of ritual, lots of ceremony… We touch the icon to enter the sacred space, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies.

The key thing about LCD Soundsystem is that people always wanted this band to exist. For years, it was glaringly obvious that a band like this should exist, and people were impatiently waiting for them to show up.

Every American wants a clean slate, but nobody wants to lose what they’ve got.

One of the billions of things I love about Beyonce: The harder she tries to come on crazy, the less crazy she sounds.

In the old days, when a star left a still-thriving hit show, they’d celebrate by killing him or her off. But ‘The Office‘ dispatched Michael Scott in a crueler and more final way: they made him normal. Since we’re talking about Michael Scott, ‘normal’ might be stretching it, obviously.

Ah, the bond between English boys and California girls. For those of us who aren’t either, it’s a bond that fascinates and mystifies. So much of the world’s favorite music comes out of that relationship.

Like most fans of ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ I wouldn’t know a pasodoble if it beat me with a rake.

You’d think if anyone could charm America into caring about the evening news, it would be Katie Couric, the Tri Delt from Virginia who became America’s sweetheart on the ‘Today‘ show. But her ratings have been dismal – she comes in last place every week.

Ronnie Spector’s hair was taller and meaner and scarier than all four Shangri-La’s combined, plus the drummer from the Honeycombs. You just know her rat-tail comb was a switchblade.