The Fairly KickAss Podcast

Ah yes. Sugar Ray. Every Morning! Fly! Someday and When It's Over, which you may be surprised to learn are two different songs! Were these songs great? Nah, not really... if they were, we wouldn't be doing this sort of episode for them. But the biggest surprise of all is that, throughout the majority of their first two albums, this band was NOT the same as that which did all those songs I mentione...

Hi there. Zack here, Fairly KickAss Podcast host. You know me. y0Oo. So here's the thing: typically every year, there's only one podcast write-up I dread doing, and that's for our May reviews. It's a problem of my own doing: I wrote myself into a bit corner that I can't get out of. Rules is rules, after all. This might be the only non-May-reviews episode where I have felt the same. Mainly because....

Were you listening to music in the 1990s? What about the 2000s? (Technically 2010s and 2020s, but not like... I mean, you'll see.) If you were, then you know exactly who this band is. Not only that, but the moment I mention the name of the band, you will have a song in your head. WHICH song? Well, that's kinda the whole thing that we're doing. This is the latest episode in our patient-not-pending...

Hello! Welcome to the Fairly KickAss Podcast. In this episode, we're doing a rerank of the Billboard Hot 100 End-of-Year chart for the year 1989. With that said: What was that, you ask? That right up there? That chunk of emptiness slightly above where your eyeline is on this page? That's a blank space. Yep. It sure is. Stupid pun? Sure. Regrets? None. It's just my style. I hope it doesn't cause an...

Hi there! September here. (It's our podcast description, months can talk, get over it.) I had a LOT going on this... me... musically. Wow! So many great albums! So many great charting singles! So many not-great charting singles! But the important thing is everyone tried, and I love that for me. I had all kinds of music too. Pop, rock, R&B, country, and lots of other smaller kinds that fit into...

We... uhhh... yeah. I don't know how to describe this one, so I'm gonna try. It's one of our patented Vibes episodes, in which we take a topic and we... vibe. We just chat. We talk, and we discuss, and we meander and mosey along a very loose agenda. And this episode's agenda was perhaps one of the loosest that we've done. The topic, at the root, is signature sounds. That can mean a lot of things,...

Was this the classiest episode of the Fairly KickAss Podcast ever? Indubitably. Which is why there were no jokes, no gags, no puns. We kept the culture high, for a topic that deserves it: jazz. Smooth, unless it's chaotic. No lyrics, unless there are some. A small outfit in some cases; in others, an enormous orchestra. And everything in between. All that was in past-tense, because this is one of o...

Welcome to The Last Episode Before You Start Hearing Exclusively Halloween and/or Christmas Music In Stores. Enjoy it while you can. Not that there's anything wrong with either holiday! But if you don't like the music, you may need earplugs for the next few months. Luckily, we got you, as do several artists that are still pumping out new tunes every month, up until... well, until Decemeber, to be...

Listeners, let's start this description off with a thought exercise, shall we? This one's easy: think about Nirvana. It's that easy, no tricks no bits. Now what's the first thing that came to your mind? It was probably either Kurt Cobain or Smells Like Teen Spirit, right? Maybe it was All Apologies, or Heart-Shaped Box. Or perhaps it was Dave Grohl even! Fascinatingly, I can almost guarantee that...

Can you think of three more different years than 1986, 2007, and 2022? I mean, of course there are. Name any year in BC, and then like something in the middle ages I guess, and this year. Whichever year you're listening to this. Whatever. I don't even care about the analogy anymore. Instead, let's refocus on the topic at hand: SomeOnes. Same drill as always: each of us three yahoos gets a random y...

So as I was typing out the title of this here episode, instead of "Greatest Sh**s: Will Smith", my fingers accidentally typed "Greatest Sh**s: Will ASS" - including the caps. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not so sure that was accidental. Because... woof. This was one of the toughest episodes we've done, because this catalog is a cataSLOG. (that one was deliberate) Lemme set the scene for you:...

OH GOD WE FORGOT TO DO THE MAY 5/12THS BIT Now, logically, we could just, like, not do it. Ezpz. But, it’s like, a thing! And things are meant to be done! And, as fate would have it, this episode is for July reviews. The usual: top three albums for J, top three albums for Zack, and any number of newly-charting Billboard 100 singles for Dan. I can’t tell the Future, but I think there have been bett...

[DEEP INHALE] The title of the episode is unwieldy, but you get the gist. What album makes you want to jump out of your chair, grab a guitar or a microphone, call up your agent, and get tf after it? We talk about our top 5 of that exact thing. Perhaps this time, more than any other time, we all went off the rails. Three hosts, three distinctly different approaches. It was all over the map, and it...

[DEEP INHALE] The title of the episode is unwieldy, but you get the gist. What album makes you want to jump out of your chair, grab a guitar or a microphone, call up your agent, and get tf after it? We talk about our top 5 of that exact thing. Perhaps this time, more than any other time, we all went off the rails. Three hosts, three distinctly different approaches. It was all over the map, and it...

So, yeah, maybe we're doing a thing where the very top answer of said thing is a thing that we're not gonna talk about. That's cool, right? This episode of the Fairly KickAss Podcast is a Rush episode, short for "Mt. Rushmore". Top four, in any order. Got it? Good. The topic? Artists that defined the 1960s. Now you see why we had to disqualify one out of hand. Because, truthfully, there is one sin...

This is the part where we talk about what the episode is about. But what if we... can't ? What if we have no earthly idea what to even say about it? Not because it's bad (which it isn't), or because it goes in a hundred different directions (which it... okay yeah it totally does that). But moreso that it's so meta in nature that to describe the thing would be to transcribe the whole episode. And w...

Sometimes, it just goes like that. We have a very short period between monthly releases. I mean, what actually IS the "calendar", anyway? This grid of squares gets to just control our lives and what we do and when we do it?? NO!! DOWN WITH CALENDARS!! DOWN WITH CALENDARS!! Down with calendars. All that is to say, monthly reviews for June are here. Newly-charting singles, new album releases. There'...

You don't wanna close your eyes for this episode! (Or your ears , I guess, since podcasting isn't a visual medium LOOK I'M TRYING TO WRITE AN INTRO OKAY DEAL WITH IT) In this episode, we talk about our top 5 blockbuster movie jams! What constitutes a "blockbuster"? I dunno, you'll have to ask Dan, J or me (Zack, yo0O). And I ain't tellin'. But we break it all down in the episode, as well as pickin...

Ayyyyyyyyyyyy! Wait, no that's not it... what I meant to say was Mayyyyyyyyyyyy!! We're cashing in those floral chips from the deluge of April, and planting the seeds of May's musical bouquet. That made no sense, and that's fine! Because it ALSO makes no sense for two (but actually four, but really only two) albums to enter the Toppest 40 charts in May. Safe to say it was an interesting month on t...

Holy crap, Ass-Kickers - 2002 was a very formative year for the four of us, which makes it even worse that it was such an AWFUL year for popular music. But, because the RNG Gods dictate so much of what we do on this here podcast, we must relent. From Ja Rule to Jewel, from Creed to Eve, from Ludacris to Elliott, Miss...y. (Did I mention Ja Rule? He's here a LOT.) We do what we always do: we take t...

It's Ones all the way down. SomeOnes last week, One Song this week. The topic: one of the most transcendent, prolific artists of our generation. Some would add the qualifier of "hip-hop" or "rap", and while that would be accurate, it's far from necessary. To wit: compile the list of all seven humans with 27+ Grammy awards. Take out conductors and producers (John Williams, Quincy Jones, and Sir Geo...

Hey! So, yeah, it's SomeOnes time. A recap of the rules: each of us are given a random year from 1975-2025. Each of us then has to pick a song that was #1 on the chart. On a chart. On any chart. On several charts? We'll allow it! As long as it's one chart. It can be the Billboard Hot 100, of course. Or it can be a different Billboard chart. Or a different chart in another country. Who knows what w...

Since we're talking about April, here's a very quick shout-out to a very little-known pop outfit called Fooled by April. They're what Maroon 5 would be if Maroon 5 were good... so basically Kara's Flowers with more polish. They had one full-length in 2005, and... that's actually about it. But it was rad! Go check it out AFTER you check out this episode... of the Fairly KickAss Podcast. ... ... ......

[ZACK'S NOTE]Yo! Zack here. This is a little... punch in, I guess? What's it called if I punch in a podcast description? No matter. It's that thing. What you're about to read is the very first description of the very first Deep Dive episode we ever did, from back in February 2021. We mentioned it, we promised it, and we delivered it: it's the Divinyls! It's a bit rough around the edges, both in te...

I admit: this is one of those episodes you have to hear to really understand what's going on. But I'm gonna try to describe it anyway, because that's kinda what this whole thing is for! So, as we've gone along with this podcast - six freakin' years, give or take! - we've had artists that have factored into things more than others. For you long-timers, you'll know one of these artists immediately,...