It’s the holiday party season. Show up prepared. — Softballs. Icebreakers. No matter what you call them, easy questions are great conversation starters and a great way to get to know someone. And sometimes, quick queries can tell you a lot about a person. Having some questions tucked up your sleeve can be valuable if you find yourself at…

Great articles just waiting for you to write them — If you’re like me, you likely have a pot of ideas known as your Drafts Folder. Some of those rise to the top and become great stories. Some become a great story, but for whatever reason, never really take off the way you’d hoped. …

Elon Musk restores former president's account after posting Twitter poll — The roller coaster at Twitter continued Saturday when Elon Musk resorted Donald Trump’s Twitter account. The former president had been suspended from the platform in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. The people have spoken ~Elon Musk The account was restored after Elon Musk posted a poll on the…

If sharing music is wrong, I don’t wanna be right — In today’s edition of rate-a-record, were taking the law into our own hands. Or rather, listening to and rating songs that are at least tangentially tied to the law. Or lawyers. Or guns. Or love. But not the theme from this movie:

Medium’s latest music writing challenge — One is the loneliest number, or at least it can be when it comes to listening to music. For something so communal, we’ve sure done a good job of making it a solitary pursuit. We listen in the car alone or in public with headphones on. There isn’t a transit…

Join us! — Hey! Do you like music? Do you like talking about it with other cool people? Of course, you do! And you’re in luck because: It’s that time again; time for our monthly album discussion. Read on: One of the core tenets of this page is sharing music. That obviously involves…

A tense song from a tense era for the band. — Some bizarre fads took American culture by storm in the 80s. We ate up Rubik’s cubes, fought in the aisles over Cabbage Patch kids, and loved everything Australian (even Yahoo Serious. Seriously). We were also captivated by cocaine. More specifically, the narco culture and chaos unfolding in South America. …

A quick look back at the duo’s 2nd record as it turns 49. — You can’t listen to any “hot hits of the 80s, 90s, and today!” station for more than an hour without hearing a song by Hall & Oates. Inescapable during their heyday, they’re perhaps even more so now. There’s a huge appetite for their brand of upbeat but anodyne music. It’ll always have a home in dentist offices and workplaces (at mine, we often joke about which song of theirs we’ll hear first.).

So far, that is. — I love a good music challenge. Either that, or I’m a glutton for punishment. Probably both. Either way, I can't help but jump in when I see them. I’d been thinking a lot about what my “Best Of” list for 2022 might look like when I saw this one. Call…