Opinion & Commentary

In boxing and mixed martial arts, it’s common to hear the term “best pound-for-pound fighter” when someone is discussing the merits of a dominant fighter who is in one of the smaller weight classes. Such a clarifying term is necessary because it’s doubtful that Manny Pacquiao, as lethal as he…

There was a time, long, long ago, when Blake Shelton was not the most obnoxious man in country music. 15 years ago, Shelton was a baby faced, curly mullet-wearing crooner just becoming famous for “Austin,” his vaguely creepy love song about a man who so thoroughly can’t get over his…

When people say they hate KISS, I often wonder if they also detest fart jokes. Because to me, that’s what KISS is: a fart joke in band form. Think about it. Like farts, KISS are crass, and as a band, they totally stink. But now and again, they are surprisingly…

At the Drive-In couldn’t have reunited to record an album at a more perfect time. Years after the El Paso band’s messy breakup and soul-searching with various legacy bands — De Facto, the Mars Volta, poor Sparta — post-hardcore’s favorite sons buried the hatchet (for a second time) and regrouped…

Last week Oak Cliff native Lil Twist released the long-delayed mixtape The Golden Child 2. If anyone, it made Twist really happy. For nearly a decade now the 23-year-old has been signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment record label but he has released very little music in that time…

There are a lot of things you associate with Steven Tyler. Silk scarves, scraggly mustaches and halcyon days gone by aside, Tyler isn’t exactly the kind of guy you expect to record a country album. More than 40 years after the bad boys from Boston first made their mark on…

White people don’t like to talk about race. White people especially don’t like to talk about white privilege – that is, if they even acknowledge it  exists in the first place. But white people really love Macklemore, the radio-friendly white rapper most famous for his Grammy-winning “Thrift Shop,” which has sold over 10…

El Paso quintet At the Drive-In have returned. Again. Four years ago, they played a short Texas tour (including a memorable stop at Trees) and then played Coachella. Now they’re touring the US and Europe between March and June (no Texas dates have been announced), and they have teased new…

If there is one thing to love about country music, it is its effortless ability to be low-brow. Trailer parks, cheap beer and (of course) trucks all combine to create a deeply lovable genre that has, in years past, been the champion of the working man. The biggest critics of…

For the past few years, it seemed that popular country music was totally unstoppable. By 2014, it was the most popular genre in the land, scooping up thousands of new fans by the day as it appealed to an entirely new, much younger audience than ever before. However you feel…

In 2015, country fans finally saw a dramatic shift in what Nashville had to offer. We certainly haven’t heard the last of the fake-tan crooners and the bizarre hip-hop influences that artists like Sam Hunt bring to country, but the real news last year was that traditional country was making…

Tonya Couch nears her eagerly awaited homecoming here in North Texas, and we continue to learn way more than we ever wanted to know about her relationship with her son Ethan, including the $2,000 Mexican strip-club tab she had to pay for him, and the bedroom they shared at home…

This is about the price of dogs. Mary (not her real name) inherited Barcelona (not her real name) from her daughter Anna (not her real name). Mary and Anna are friends of mine. Barcelona is the dog. Barcelona had been Anna’s dog at college, but Anna was moving far away…

Yesterday, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem set dance-punk world aflame when he wrote a letter to fans explaining the band’s return. Five years ago, Murphy announced the band’s amicable break-up to the woe of their loyal fanbase, and they ended it with the biggest bang by performing a sold-out show at…

Pets lost or terrified in a tornado are way down the list of urgent concerns when multiple human deaths and casualties occur, but pets are still somewhere on that list. The fact is that animals run, hide, get injured and often get lost in a severe weather event. Sooner or…

Last week XXL announced on Twitter they are beginning the hunt for their 2016 Freshmen Class and, as they intended, the tweet spawned a laundry list of hundreds of unknown rappers being plugged by their fans. This is typically how it goes for the publication’s annual list of the top…

To some, the battle over the sanctity of country music had been fought and lost before many of the people arguing about it today were even born. Maybe it was back when Glen Campbell hit No. 1 on the pop charts. Perhaps it was when Shania Twain or Garth Brooks…

2015 was, to say the least, not great for country. This exact sentiment was true in 2014, and the year before that, and so on. In reality, it’s been true for the last 15 years. As the genre has continued to move ever closer to the “pop” in “pop-country,” the…

For country fans — and fans of most genres, let’s be real — the annual release of the Grammy nominations is just confirmation of what you already knew. By the time these nods roll out in December, the hype over the year’s best songs, artists and videos is stale. These…

Like the vampire who lies dead in the crypt, then awakens, the concept of a “Crosstown Expressway” in Dallas — a new highway to run east and west across the northern half of city — has never been truly dead, as in dead-dead. Stephen Young observed here presciently that the…