It’s only natural for parents to want to keep up on their children’s lives through daily scanning of social media. What better way to reassure yourself that your precious loved ones are doing alright (without having to actually call them) than by clicking “like” on a shot of them at Arby’s, or whatever? Especially if…

While it can be fun to watch Senator Al Franken publicly expose unqualified Cabinet nominees or stump for the interests of his constituents in the great state of Minnesota, it can be equally fun to go back and revisit some moments from his storied career in comedy, from his work in the late-’70s on Saturday Night Live…

It could happen to any of us, really: One moment you’re the internationally recognized superstar singer for one of the biggest rock bands in history, the next you don’t remember cranking out an entire autobiography you somehow wrote in between dance rehearsals and practicing sexy pouting in front of the mirror. Oh,…

If you are a successful pop star, conquering the movies appears to be the next logical step. After all, it worked (kind of) for Elvis. And Justin Timberlake! But it turns out that Elvis and JT are the rare exceptions. Most times, when movies are crafted around a particular pop star who’s new to film, the results are…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Amanda And Jack Palmer’s covers album, we’re picking some of our favorite cover songs.

First, the good news: It looks like Vinyl’s correcting some of its missteps. Richie’s clean and sober (for now), and the first-season finale stays concerned with transitioning American Century into its new incarnation, Alibi Records. The recently axed Terence Winter, who wrote the episode, also gets to plant the seeds…

When Zak beats the shit out of Richie in an elevator at the end of ”Rock And Roll Queen,” he may as well be a stand-in for the audience. For almost an entire season, we’ve watched Richie lie, cheat, steal, and kill in a way that, in TV Land, hasn’t made him a unique asshole as much as just a plain old asshole. Is…

Am I right in assuming that most of you figured out Ernst was dead (or at least imaginary) from the moment Richie started talking to him? I say that not to flaunt any kind of intellectual superiority—I’m a very gullible viewer—but to point out how tired a device it is: the concept of a mentally unstable character with…

As TV-critic godfather Alan Sepinwall pointed out in his book The Revolution Was Televised, so many great television shows of the late 20th/early 21st century have focused on tortured male protagonists—men whose actions aren’t always loved by the audience, but are at least understood thanks to the deep sense of pathos…

Over the first few episodes, Vinyl has wanted the viewer to know that, for all of its power, rock music in the 1970s was a dirty business, delivered in mass quantities to the world by backstabbing, coke-snorting, payola-peddling, Andrew Dice Clay-murdering scumbags whose thirst for power rivaled that of an organized…

Like Vinyl, Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire regularly featured its fictional characters rubbing elbows with historical figures, so much that gangsters Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky were all part of the main cast. And that’s to say nothing of Bugsy Siegel, J. Edgar Hoover, and politicians such as Harry…

When Richie Finestra returns to the American Century offices after the events in the first episode of Vinyl, his rock ‘n’ roll rebirth extends far beyond a renewed cocaine habit. First, he abruptly cancels the buyout with Polygram. When his partners protest, he draws inspiration from the Bruce Lee films he’s spent all…

One of the most accurate points made by HBO’s Show Me A Hero is that historical figures don’t always recognize how important their actions are in the moment. They just do what they think is best, whether for political, instinctual, or self-involved reasons, and if they’re lucky, they end up on the right side of…

As it stands, The Leftovers is the most spiritual show on HBO’s schedule. But if it holds that God is in the details, Vinyl makes The Leftovers look earthbound by comparison. Vinyl, HBO’s drama set in New York City’s orgiastic 1970s rock scene, is crammed full of granular details and precise nuances that go beyond the…

For more than 40 years, the identity of the egomaniac who inspired Carly Simon to write and record her 1972 hit single “You’re So Vain” has remained one of the most enigmatic mysteries in pop music. Throughout the years she’s dropped hints, such as the fact that the person’s name contains the letters A, E, and R, and…

According to Deadline, HBO has confirmed that Vinyl, the new series from Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, and Boardwalk Empire’s Terence Winter about the ’70s New York music scene, will launch its 10-episode first season on Sunday, February 14 at 9 PM. The premiere will be a two-hour episode directed by Scorsese, which…

HBO has announced that Martin Scorsese’s long-in-the-works collaboration with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, a rock ‘n’ roll drama series about the gritty, behind-the-scenes world of the music industry in the 1970s, now has a name: Vinyl. To accompany the announcement, HBO released a quick teaser trailer onto…

In We’re No. 1, The A.V. Club examines a song that went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts to get to the heart of what it means to be popular in pop music, and how that has changed over the years. In this installment, we cover The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” which spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100…

In what has become something of a tradition for “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band,” the Rolling Stones previewed their latest major North American tour with a surprise theater gig in Los Angeles last night. If it weren’t enough to catch one of the biggest acts in the world do their thing in such an intimate…