Rob Sheffield Quotes

Powerful Rob Sheffield for Daily Growth

'American Horror' goes for a very specific kind of Seventies suburban downer ambience - 'Flowers in the Attic' paperbacks, Black Sabbath album covers and late-night flicks like 'Let's Scare Jessica to Death.' It even has 'Go Ask Alice'-era urban legends.

- Rob Sheffield

Death, Very, Sabbath, Album

You can hear the Celtic heartbeat all over Europe and America, from Bing Crosby to Jack White, from the Smiths to My Bloody Valentine, from House of Pain to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

- Rob Sheffield

Pain, Over, Crosby, Heartbeat

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Love, Other, Symbol, Dr

Our amour fou with 'The Sopranos' is headed for long-term parking, like so many of its most memorable characters. We'll never see a show like this again.

- Rob Sheffield

Parking, Like, Again, Sopranos

'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.

- Rob Sheffield

Dead, Back, None, Sopranos

Like many other touchstones of twenty-first-century pop culture, 'The Sopranos' was hatched in the late Nineties, predicting a future that never arrived. It was designed for a decade that would be just like the Nineties, except more so, in an America that enjoyed seeing itself as smarter and braver and freer than ever before.

- Rob Sheffield

Decade, Other, Hatched, Sopranos

Rebecca Black might sing like a robot, but that's just proof she has evolved beyond us. Her vocal is just a slightly exaggerated version of the robot glitch-twitch stutter that's been mainstream pop vocalese for the past 10 years or so.

- Rob Sheffield

Been, Slightly, Evolved, Exaggerated

Hometown Aerosmith fans are different from other Aerosmith fans, and that mainly has to do with Joe Perry. It's tough to overstate his strange grip on the local psyche. Tyler is a star who belongs to the whole world, but Perry, that dude belongs to Boston.

- Rob Sheffield

Boston, Other, Joe, Psyche

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

- Rob Sheffield

Disco, Through, Indie, Angst

But MTV relishes its vestigial role as a star maker, so every year it puts all its clout into making the VMAs the biggest, splashiest, loudest show-biz extravaganza of the year, honoring all this music for existing, after a year of paying barely any attention to it.

- Rob Sheffield

Music, Year, Role, Honoring

Davy Jones was the grooviest of the Monkees, which makes him one of the grooviest pop stars who ever existed. He was the best dancer in the Monkees, the Cute One, the one with the coy English accent, the bowl-cut boy-child who shook those cherry-red maracas and always got the girl. He was also the guy who stole David Bowie's original name.

- Rob Sheffield

Best, Him, Guy, Pop Stars

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Tell, Part, About, Dumbest

Both of my books, 'Love Is a Mix Tape' and 'Talking to Girls About Duran Duran,' are about how music gets tangled up with all our other emotional memories. Since I'm an obsessive music fan, I'm always seeking out new sonic thrills.

- Rob Sheffield

Love, Other, About, Sonic

'Revenge' is a shameless soap in the style of Eighties shoulder-pad slap-offs like 'Dallas,' 'Dynasty' and 'Falcon Crest.' Yet there's no wink-wink camp.

- Rob Sheffield

Revenge, Dallas, Like, Shameless

One of the things that make Liars so fascinating after five albums, each one so completely different from the others, is that even though they play around with all the classic tropes of art-damaged angst-noise perv-rock, they exude a totally cheery and boyish enthusiasm onstage, goofing around with their keyboards and beatboxes.

- Rob Sheffield

Play, Each One, Albums, Keyboards

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

- Rob Sheffield

Bad, Became, Amp, Oatmeal

'Buncha Losers' comedy is one of those homegrown American art forms, up there with infomercials and Elvis-shaped soap carvings. No other civilization could have invented it. The French took a stab with Sartre's 'No Exit,' but then they had to ruin it with a lesson at the end.

- Rob Sheffield

Civilization, Other, Sartre, Art Forms

Movies for adults sucked in the 1980s, and music for adults sucked even worse; whether we're talking about Kathleen Turner flicks or Sting albums, the decade's non-teen culture has no staying power at all.

- Rob Sheffield

Decade, Even Worse, Albums, Turner

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Boss, Here, TV, Tina

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Audience, Own, Image, Overstate

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Taller, Plus, Meaner, Ronnie

In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad.

- Rob Sheffield

Reason, Big, Shop, Lust

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Secret, The Secret Of, Our, Insatiable

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Waiting, Always, Like, Key

Baseball's Opening Day is full of time-honored traditions: the President throws out the first ball, the Cubs' starting pitcher walks away with a 54.00 ERA, the Royals get mathematically eliminated from the pennant race.

- Rob Sheffield

Out, Ball, Away, Pennant

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.

- Rob Sheffield

Love, Will, Always, Dude

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.'

- Rob Sheffield

Through, Hallmark, Keeping, Showing Up

You can't beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude.

- Rob Sheffield

You, Beat, Glam, Beehive

Sending Paris Hilton to jail for being the most loathed celeprosy lesion in the history of the species seems like a happening idea at first - forty-five days at Century Regional Detention Center is so the new thirty days at Promises Malibu! But it sets a dangerous precedent to jail celebs just because someone hates them.

- Rob Sheffield

Dangerous, Idea, Regional, Malibu

Just as Bowie, Zeppelin, etc., became rock stars by remaking themselves in the image of the California girls, the Go-Gos became rock stars by pretending to be the Buzzcocks and the Sex Pistols. Jane Wiedlin always said her biggest influence was growing up in L.A. as a Bowie girl.

- Rob Sheffield

Pretending, Became, Rock Stars

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