Quote

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.

Rob Sheffield

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Rob Sheffield
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: February 2
Journalist
Music Critic
Writer
the United States of America
Robert James Sheffield
Play
Band
Bands
Spandex
Even
Nobody
Town
Eighties
Never
Probably
Weird
Ignoring
Heard
Towns
Spell
Song
Rules
Chords
Away
Lived
Eighty
Didn
Songs
Spells
Power
Couldn
Showed

More quotes by Rob Sheffield

Image
Unlike me, Renee was not shy she was a real people-pleaser. She worried way too much what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept other people's secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did.
Rob Sheffield
Image
The first season of 'Community' stumbled a bit because the plotlines too often veered into realism, but that is not a problem anymore. Not when prize episodes concern a campuswide blanket fort, or a secret garden with a magic trampoline.
Rob Sheffield
Image
'American Horror' is the debasement of the suburban family, the way a lonely kid would have imagined it in the Seventies.
Rob Sheffield
Image
You can't beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude.
Rob Sheffield
Image
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
Image
The hungry feeling and the lonely feeling merged until it was hard to tell them apart.
Rob Sheffield
Image
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
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.
Rob Sheffield
Image
The dilemma of the eighth-grade dance is that boys and girls use music in different ways. Girls enjoy music they can dance to, music with strong vocals and catchy melodies. Boys, on the other hand, enjoy music they can improve by making up filthy new lyrics.
Rob Sheffield
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone's game. No other pop auteur can touch her right now for emotional excess or musical reach - her punk is so punk, her disco is so disco. The red sequins on her guitar match the ones on her microphone, her shoes and 80 percent of the crowd.
Rob Sheffield
Image
One of the billions of things I love about Beyonce: The harder she tries to come on crazy, the less crazy she sounds.
Rob Sheffield
Image
On 'Idol,' Steven Tyler will be sitting at a table with two other judges, and part of his job will be keeping his yap zipped while they talk. This makes no sense at all, since Tyler has zero yap-zipping skills.
Rob Sheffield
Image
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?
Rob Sheffield
Image
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.
Rob Sheffield
Image
'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
Image
One of Renee's friends asked her, Does your boyfriend wear glasses? She said, No, he wears a Walkman.
Rob Sheffield
Image
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