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.

'The Sopranos' gets praised as novelistic, but it follows the most banal of life patterns, showing the sheer tedium of being a mobster. It has dead spots, boring plotlines, weak episodes. Characters develop slowly, or don't. Like viewers, a gangster might get bored, fade out of the action, then come back to find none of his debts forgotten.

Monogamous musicians are like vegan hockey players.

But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies.

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.

At an incredibly divisive point in pop history, Donna Summer managed to create an undeniable across-the-board experience of mass pleasure - after 'Bad Girls,' nobody ever tried claiming disco sucked again. It set the template for what Michael Jackson would do a few months later with 'Off The Wall.'

'The Voice' has lots of singers who fit the 'Idol' mold of young, innocent ingenues with psycho stage moms. But it also has long-suffering adult pros, with a whiff of thirtysomething despair in their voices. That adds an edge of realness.