Last April, I started a series on inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, highlighting songs from the 2019 honorees. I later jumped back a year and featured the 2018 class, with plans to work backward through the years and eventually cover every Rock Hall member.
Before I continue the trip back through time, though, I have a new class to cover. The 2020 inductees were announced a couple of weeks ago, and this week I will dedicate a post to each of the six recognized artists.
Here’s a great track from Eminem’s 2013 album The Marshall Mathers LP 2, a sequel to his breakthrough 2000 The Marshall Mathers LP.
I don’t know if it’s on me or Eminem, but this is the last album of his I really responded to. He followed it with Revival in 2017, an album I listened to twice and immediately forgot. Then came the surprise 2018 drop of Kamikaze, which I gave just one listen before tuning out.
‘Acuff-Rose’ is the second track on Uncle Tupelo’s seminal 1993 alt-country album Anodyne. This was the band’s fourth and final release, before its members went on to form Wilco and Sun Volt.
This track’s title refers to Nashville’s first country publishing house, formed in 1942 by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose. The two men vowed to start a company that would not take advantage of its artists, as so many labels at the time did.
My final musical movie moment of 2019 comes from one of my favorite films of the year, writer-director Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story.
The movie chronicles the acrimonious divorce of Charlie and Nicole, a theater director and actress played (in my pick for the best lead performances of the year) by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. In a just world, they would each win an Oscar this Sunday. Instead, Laura Dern (who is quite good in a limited role) will likely be the only actor in this film recognized by the Academy. You can almost always count on these guys to get it wrong.
In a shameful move by the Academy, Lupita Nyong’o was snubbed in this year’s Best Actress race for her mesmerizing double turn in Jordan Peele’s Us. Less noticed, but equally unfortunate, was the absence of Nyong’O’s Us co-star Elisabeth Moss for her work as alt-rocker Becky Something in the film Her Smell.
Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry, Her Smell is told in five real-time segments over the course of several years in the life of the horribly self-destructive Becky. The first three scenes make Uncut Gems look like My Dinner With Andre, as a drug-fueled Becky rages at her bandmates, support team, and anybody else who gets in her way.
Meet Me In Montauk 