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Jonah Weiner: Jody, I don't think I ever told you about my ill-fated winter fling with Alicia Keys. The place was Copenhagen, the time was early 2008, and the occasion was a magazine profile. She was enchanting and sweet (she even offered me a pair of designer women's sunglasses she'd been sent as swag—unfortunately, not quite my style), and she ...

In my Slate piece on the forgotten vaudeville great Eva Tanguay (''Vanishing Act: In search of Eva Tanguay, the first rock star''), I argue that ''today's pop feels more than ever like one big reiteration of Tanguay's career,'' and that the divas who dominate the 2009 Billboard charts are Tanguay's spiritual heirs. But it had somehow escaped my ...

Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times editorial board member and author of the paper's ''Rural Life'' column, spends most of his time on his upstate New York farm, gazing across meadows and musing on The Splendor of the Goldenrod, The Wisdom of the Barn Mouse, and The Majesty of Henry the Pig's Feed Bag. But occasionally the philosopher-rube ...

Several weeks ago in this space, I noted a curiosity of National Public Radio's musical coverage: that NPR has ''a strict preference for music that few actual living African-Americans listen to.'' NPR's taste in black music, I wrote, can be described by the acronym DORF—it prefers black musicians who are Dead, Old, Retro, and Foreign. I asked ...

On June 12, 1970, the Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter in a game against the San Diego Padres. In an interview 14 years later, Ellis stated that he had dropped acid before the game and was tripping the entire time. The claim might have seemed farfetched coming from another player. But Ellis, who died last year of ...

Jonah Weiner: Hi, Jody. I'll start this week's chat with a confession. Or maybe it's a brag about my advanced teenage tastes. Sixteen-year-old Jonah loved him some Jamie Foxx Show, the WB sitcom that ran from 1996 to 2001. Before he was an Oscar winner and R & B superstar, after all, Foxx was a B-list comedian. Okay, my love was fleeting, ...

Jonah Weiner: Hi Jody. In 2004, Norah Jones released her second album, Feels Like Home. It sold 1.02 million copies in its first week, putting her in the rarefied company of 50 Cent, Usher, and Lil Wayne—artists likely to go down in history as the last ones to ever muster seven-figure CD sales in seven days. Which one of these four is not like ...

Mommy, Santa's scaring me! Just in time for Halloween, Bob Dylan's Christmas album is here, its arrival harkened by the 68-year-old legend's fearsome wheeze—a sound more Beelzebub than Jolly Old Elf. Christmas in the Heart is being called a goof, the latest of Dylan's many efforts to épater la bourgeoisie, confound his worshipful fans and ...

Jody Rosen: Hello, Jonah. Today we'll be discussing the new Bruce Springsteen song ''Wrecking Ball,'' which the Boss debuted during his recent five-night stand at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The Springsteen shows were the last concerts scheduled to take place at the big colosseum in the Meadowlands prior to its demolition. (They're ...

In August, National Public Radio's flagship music program All Songs Considered published ''The Best Music of 2009 (So Far),'' a rundown of the top 30 songs and albums of the year-to-date as voted by the show's listeners. The results of the survey suggest that the All Songs Considered audience has a fuzzy understanding of the word ''all.'' ''The ...