Spent the evening with Strangeways, Here We Come, The Smiths’ grand exit, released in 1987 just as the band imploded. It’s dark, dramatic, and strangely elegant. An album that proved they had one more classic in them before Morrissey and Marr finally went their separate ways. Even without the baggage that followed, this record feels like a goodbye, with Johnny Marr’s guitar work shimmering one last time before slamming the door shut. At its core is “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me,” the band’s late-career masterpiece. It opens with the sound of miners on strike, setting a bleak stage, before unfurling into one of the most devastating ballads of the decade. Morrissey’s voice is full of bitter yearning, but it’s Marr’s orchestral sweep and layered guitar textures that make it timeless. It’s the kind of song that makes you sit still and feel the weight of being human—proof that The Smiths weren’t just a great band, they were the band for alienation. Of course, revisiting The Smiths now means confronting Morrissey’s post-Smiths spiral into nationalism, narcissism, and outright bigotry. That’s the hard truth: the voice that once gave solace to outsiders now often reads like a parody of reactionary outrage. But here’s the dilemma—Strangeways is still brilliant, because Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce were brilliant. Maybe the only way forward is to hold both truths at once: acknowledging Morrissey’s downfall while preserving the power of the music they made together. After all, “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” doesn’t belong to him anymore. It belongs to anyone who’s ever needed it.

Spent the evening with Strangeways, Here We Come, The Smiths’ grand exit, released in 1987 just as the band imploded. It’s dark, dramatic, and strangely elegant. An album that proved they had one more classic in them before Morrissey and Marr finally went their separate ways. Even without the baggage that followed, this record feels like a goodbye, with Johnny Marr’s guitar work shimmering one last time before slamming the door shut. At its core is “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me,” the band’s late-career masterpiece. It opens with the sound of miners on strike, setting a bleak stage, before unfurling into one of the most devastating ballads of the decade. Morrissey’s voice is full of bitter yearning, but it’s Marr’s orchestral sweep and layered guitar textures that make it timeless. It’s the kind of song that makes you sit still and feel the weight of being human—proof that The Smiths weren’t just a great band, they were the band for alienation. Of course, revisiting The Smiths now means confronting Morrissey’s post-Smiths spiral into nationalism, narcissism, and outright bigotry. That’s the hard truth: the voice that once gave solace to outsiders now often reads like a parody of reactionary outrage. But here’s the dilemma—Strangeways is still brilliant, because Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce were brilliant. Maybe the only way forward is to hold both truths at once: acknowledging Morrissey’s downfall while preserving the power of the music they made together. After all, “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” doesn’t belong to him anymore. It belongs to anyone who’s ever needed it.

My musical wish this year is for someone to write a new song that has the feel and depth of “Red Rain.” That opener from Peter Gabriel’s So still hits with it's moody, cinematic, heaviness that takes me back to a decade of soft lightning coming through window shades. The guy was building a universe. And yeah, everyone knows “Sledgehammer” was the monster single, with the claymation video and the horn section making MTV history. But So is bigger than one song. “In Your Eyes” became a generation’s love letter. “Don’t Give Up” with Kate Bush is one of the most empathetic duets ever recorded. Even the deep cuts sound like they were carved out of stone. Listening back, what gets me is how modern it still feels. The textures, the way Gabriel leaned into technology without losing the humanity. It’s been nearly 40 years and So still sounds like the future. Makes you wonder why nobody’s chasing that kind of ambition anymore.

Pass.

Beatles harmonies. Bar room piano. The loss of one of our greatest songwriters. Elliott Smith’s Figure 8 was the last studio album he’d release in his lifetime, and while it’s not my favorite of his (that’s XO), it’s undeniable in its importance. It’s sprawling, ambitious, and stacked with classics. Sure, you’ve got the obvious ones—“Son of Sam,” “Somebody That I Used to Know.” But dig deeper and you’ll find “Stupidity Ties,” which for Elliott is practically an epic, stretching out his melancholy into something widescreen. Figure 8 wasn’t the quiet confessional anymore. It was Smith seeing how far he could push himself. And that makes it just as haunting today as when it first landed. Wouldn't mama be proud?

Pink Floyd’s The Wall is one of those rare double albums where almost every track matters. A full-on rock opera about isolation, paranoia, and self-destruction, it’s big, theatrical, and somehow both claustrophobic and massive. The songs themselves are ridiculous in their range. “Mother” is tender and suffocating at once. “Goodbye Blue Sky” turns a lullaby into a nightmare. “Young Lust” gives you the sleaze and swagger before dropping you into the emptiness of “Hey You.” “Comfortably Numb” is one of the greatest things they ever did—arguably one of the greatest things anyone ever did. And “In the Flesh” and “Run Like Hell” are pure menace, the sound of power tipping over into something darker. But here’s the rub—Roger Waters, the architect of this grand vision, has since turned into… well, let’s just say not the kind of person you want to spend two and a half hours at dinner with. Like Morrissey and The Smiths, that makes returning to The Wall complicated. The saving grace is that it’s not just Waters. Gilmour’s guitar still cuts like a razor, Wright’s keys give it atmosphere, and Mason anchors it all. They pull it back from being just Waters’ indulgence and make it timeless Pink Floyd. In the end, The Wall survives not just as Waters’ concept, but as Pink Floyd’s collective masterpiece—a strange, sprawling monument that still towers, even if its creator casts a long shadow. When you make it to those final notes, you really felt like you've gone through something. How rare is that. How great is that.