The Fairly KickAss Podcast

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,...

We've exhausted the entirety of the "First Quarter" category on the Wikipedia "List of 2026 Albums" page, and we've gone through the same amount of charting singles. (That's 25%, if you're a NERD who does NUMBERS.) So... yeah! This thing. This thing is our monthly reviews thing, where we review the monthly stuff. I mean, I just don't know how else we can say it after all this time! J and Zack rank...

(updates in bold ) It's Part 2 of the Hall, y'all! The Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio, is open to the public, but that doesn't mean you can just waltz in and be enshrined. No, you must be voted in by a group of industry experts with over a thousand members, and one of those members are representative of everyone who is NOT a member of that group of industry experts. Got all...

It's the Hall, y'all! The Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio, is open to the public, but that doesn't mean you can just waltz in and be enshrined. No, you must be voted in by a group of industry experts with over a thousand members, and one of those members are representative of everyone who is NOT a member of that group of industry experts. Got all that? Good. The 2026 Hall of...

What has 100 songs, and two different Justin Biebers at the top of it? If you guessed "the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 Singles of 2016 chart?", then, um, that's oddly-specific (which could be an FKA spin-off one day). But yeah, that is this. We correct the rankings of the oft-misguided year-end charts, because, I'm sorry, it's just wrong. We've done a bunch of these, and they're never right. They'r...

Took this long before almost typing "2025". Pretty good run if you ask me. February 2026 reviews are here! We did them, and now you can hear them. From our mouths to your ears, that's the KickAss slogan that we all know and love. Yep, this bad boy keeps on hummin' along. [Picture us firmly patting the podcast as if it were a very sturdy car. You know the way. We would call it ol' something-or-othe...

Short write-up for this one to get it out the door, because we are in episode arrears like a mug. (SIDE NOTE: can we bring back "like a mug"? It was the best. I digress, in what was supposed to be a "short write-up".) Life happened, and work happened, and A WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHER STUFF HAPPENED THAT WE DON'T HAVE NEARLY ENOUGH TIME TO SCRATCH THE SURFACE OF. If you exist in the world at large, then...

The 68th Grammys (almost nice). They happened! They sure did happen. Lots of them - 95, to be exact. We should talk about them, being a music podcast and all. And we do! All 95 of them, minus 85. (To be faiiiiiiiiir, the actual broadcast only showed 9 awards, and we talk about 10. Yes, we have already referenced this. Yes, we will probably reference this again. Eat it, Recording Academy.) We hit t...

The ceremonial first Monthly Reviews ep of the year! It's like a first pitch in baseball, only there's no baseball... or home plate... or field you know what, I miscalculated, that was on me . But a Monthly Reviews ep by any other name would smell as sweet, as the great William Shakespeare said, or - if you're tight with him like I am - Willy Shakes. He likes that name. Give it a try next time you...

Ugh. We listened to a LOT of Maroon 5 for this episode. We listened to TOO MUCH Maroon 5 for this episode. We made it out the other end, but definitely worse for wear. And yet, these are the lengths that we will go to for all of you, dear listeners. It's our second-ever Greatest Sh**s episode, where we take an oft-panned band and put together a sort of "greatest hits" release, consisting of one so...

On today's episode, we're gonna talk about a band that has went through several bad band names (shout-out Tom McGovern) in their early years, including Sigma 6, The Meggadeaths, The Abdabs, The Screaming Abdabs, The Spectrum Five, Tea Set, and Leonard's Lodgers (the band lived in a flat owned by Mike Leonard in their early years). Thank goodness founding member and initial frontman Syd Barrett had...

Remember when Henry is doing all the intros in Goodfellas, and he comes across Jimmy Two-Times? The guy who says "I'm gonna get the papers, get the papers"? That guy. This episode is basically that guy. Lemme explain. To kick off the year properly, we're taking a time-honored theme - one-hit wonders - and adding MOAR. One MOAR, to be exact, to bring the number of hits to two (ahh-ahh-ahhhh). There...

That's it for 2025. Anotehr year of Kicking Ass in the books. This episode gives it a nice little bow on top, as we cover our favorite albums and songs from the entire year. And then we wipe the slate clean and do it all over again! It was a fantastic year in music, and a fantastic year to be a steward of this Good Ship KickAss. All of you make this awesome, every single year, and we want to say t...

Happy Holidays, Ass-Kickers! This is an episode that we originally released in December of 2022... over three years ago, sheesh. We gave you our work-up on holiday standards last week (go check it out if you haven't yet), and this week we're going more modern. These are ones that you probably won't find playing at your local department store, or on the tinny speakers at the family get-together tha...

There's no place like KickAss for the holidays - and that's exactly what we're gonna be talking about here. Specifically, those standards that you hear - on the radio, in the supermarket, walking down the street in some cases. How did those songs come to be "standards", anyway? Which ones were written in the 19th century - or earlier - and which are less than 100 years old? And what does the futur...

Hi! KickAss here. This is our Billboard Rerank/Rerack/Reorder episode type... call it any/all of the above, or anything else that you'd like! The premise is simple: we take the Billboard Year-End chart for a given year - this episode was 2003, which was admittedly less than ideal - and we update the ranking to what is correct. And by "correct", we mean each of our three hosts' versions of correct....