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Chuck Eddy

Chuck Eddy

Chuck Eddy was born in Detroit in 1960. After starting his journalism career with The Village Voice and Creem, where he published one of the first national interviews with the Beastie Boys[1] in the mid-1980s, Eddy then wrote for Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly and other national and local publications. He is also the author of Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, and The Accidental Evolution of Rock and Roll.

In 1999 he was hired as the music editor at The Village Voice, where he served for seven years. After leaving the Voice in 2006, he briefly wrote a thrice-weekly heavy metal blog for MTV's URGE and a monthly page of capsule CD reviews in Harp magazine called "The Last Roundup". From 2006 to 2007, he worked as a senior editor for Billboard magazine.

Eddy currently freelances from Austin, Texas. He contributes a regular "Essentials" column to Spin; blog entries and several reviews every week, and occasional video interviews, to Rhapsody.com; and frequent pieces to The Village Voice, eMusic, and other outlets. He has also programmed several artist-specific web radio stations for Clear Channel.

He has published book chapters in several anthologies, including: The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (Random House, 1992); Spin Alternative Record Guide (Vintage, 1995); Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music And Myth (NYU Press, 1999); Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth (Feral House, 2001); Creem: America’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll Magazine (Collins, 2007); and 1000 Songs To Change Your Life (Time Out, 2008.)

His anthology Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism, was published by Duke University Press in 2011.

List of articles in the library by artist

Aerosmith

Profile and Interview by Chuck Eddy, Creem, October 1987

"WHAT IF BEINGS from another dimension telepathically force us to change our moral overview? What then??" ...

A Tribe Called Quest: People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm ***

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, April 1990

INASMUCH AS THE arch and arty New York hip-hop foursome A Tribe Called Quest exudes any enthusiasm at all on its debut album, that enthusiasm ...

Beastie Boys, The: The Beastie Boys: Lay it Down, Clowns!

Profile and Interview by Chuck Eddy, Creem, May 1987

"They took the doors off their hinges and moved them around. They flooded two floors with the fire hoses. They plugged up the toilets and ...

Depeche Mode: Violator **

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, June 1990

AS EDISON MIGHT have put it, most great disco is one-percent inspiration, ninety-nine-percent perspiration. Its unguarded vulgarity is what puts it over – "I'm not ...

Michael Jackson: Sound of Breaking Glass: Michael Jackson's Dangerous

Review by Chuck Eddy, Village Voice, December 1991

HEY, SO HOW COME nobody's compared the fucker to There's a Riot Goin' On? Well, maybe Riot without the cocaine. Or okay, okay, Fresh then, ...

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

Film/DVD Review by Chuck Eddy, Village Voice, July 2004

LAST FALL, a hilarious 3,000-word review of Metallica's unlistenable St. Anger by some guy named Colin Tappe circulated over the Internet. ...

New Kids On The Block: A Secret History of New Kids On The Block

Special Feature by Chuck Eddy, Throat Culture, 1992

"Rap is a toilet, not a design for a toilet, or a better toilet...It is the first toilet. It is a toilet for sitting on, ...

Offspring: Ixnay On The Hombre

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, January 1997

IN PURE IQ-test terms – singer Dexter Holland is just inches away from his microbiology Ph.D., for Christ's sake – the Offspring might rank as ...

Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin: Robert Plant, Technobilly

Interview by Chuck Eddy, Creem, June 1988

A FEW MONTHS back, Robert Plant walked into Atlantic Records' London offices and played 'Scream', by Ralph Nielsen & The Chancellors. Now, I dunno if ...

Pop Will Eat Itself, Malcolm McLaren: Pop Will Eat Itself: Cure for Sanity; Malcolm McLaren: Round the Outside! Round the Outside!

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, April 1991

EVER SINCE the Who and the Stones, if not the Revolutionary War, uppity British ironists have made a habit of "elevating" vulgar American pop crazes ...

Roxanne Shanté: Bad Sister ****

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, February 1990

RECORDED BETWEEN laundry loads in 1985 when she was fourteen years old, Roxanne Shanté's first single, 'Roxanne's Revenge', was a spontaneous storm of sassy rap ...

Shania Twain: Come On Over***

Review by Chuck Eddy, Rolling Stone, December 1997

THE FIRST thing you notice about Shania Twain's Come On Over, once you get past her pretty pictures on the cover, is how the titles ...

List of genre pieces

The Hard Stuff: Almost a Dozen Reasons to Like Metal Again

Review by Chuck Eddy, Boston Phoenix, July 1998

A FEW YEARS AGO, bored by grunge and late speedmetal and still lamenting the loss of pretty glam in prettier haircuts, I thought loud guitar ...

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