Tell The Boys: Music Journalism Peaked 10 Years Ago Today

Welcome to Open Up and Read, the newsletter from music journalist Jason Brow.

March 23, 2015. It’s a musically historic date, one that I’d dare say stands shoulder-to-shoulder to the night The Beatles played Ed Sullivan in ‘64, Queen’s Live Aid set in ‘85, and how in 2014, Apple brought upon word piece by way of U2’s Song of Innocence.

What happened, you might ask? It’s the day Noisey published “I Played ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ on a Bar Jukebox Until I Got Kicked Out.”

I know I existed before March 23, 2015. There’s photographic evidence. My parents, both still with us, can testify to that. But I don’t believe it. I don’t remember nor do I recognize a time when I didn’t know about Timothy Faust's brilliant essay, this stunning firsthand account where he boldly played Track 6 of Thin Lizzy's 1976 album, Jailbreak, on a metal bar’s jukebox to the point of no return. 

I am absolutely sincere when I say that “I Played ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ on a Bar Jukebox Until I Got Kicked Out” is a perfect specimen of music journalism. It should be taught in schools.^[1] Toss out Tom Wolfe’s “King of the Status Dropouts” and give the crown to Faust. His essay is a two-step of fandom and frivolity, baila La Bamba 'tween sincerity and irony with toda la gracia necesaria.

After a short preface—a line from Enrique Iglesias’s “Bailamos” about how “nothing is forbidden”—Faust dives into his main thesis: whenever he feels miserable, he “scrounge(s) a few dollars out of my jacket pockets,” heads to the metal bar he doesn’t like, and lets his fingers do the rest.

As we learn later in the essay (spoiler alert!), his loyalty is not to Phil Lynott, Scott Gorham, Brian Robertson and Brian Downey’s work. His commitment is to the process. Sometimes, 69^[2] on the jukebox is Annie Lenox’s “Walking on Broken Glass.” Other times, it's Soft Cell’s underrated “Sex Dwarf.” Faust is just a walking shadow in Fate’s play, a fistful of dollars to tell a tale full of sound and fury—usually leaving more of the latter when he goes back to ol’ reliable No. 69.

In the case of this essay, it’s 1976's Jailbreak, which Faust claims is a “nonseminal” album. Here, a point of contention: if you are an American born before 2000, you probably only know one Thin Lizzy song, and it’s from this album. It’s been used in movie trailers and commercials. It’s the group’s highest charting song in the U.S., reaching No. 12 on the Hot 100 (it went to No. 1 in their native Ireland and No. 8 on the UK Singles chart). How is it not seminal?

Faust’s comment may have been a flippant dismissal of the song at the center of his essay, but he may have a point: what impact did Thin Lizzy have in the States? “The Boys Are Back In Town” didn’t crack the top half of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time^[3]. Does anyone know “Jailbreak,” the other major single from the album? Do you know any other Thin Lizzy songs?^[4]

Faust writes from 2015, a year before the song received a Know Your Meme entry. Two Minutes to Late Night covered it in their season (series?) finale, but that was four years after the article’s publication.^[5] One could argue the most significant impact that “The Boys Are Back In Town” had in the last decade might be this essay itself.

However, again, Faust’s essay isn’t about singing the song’s praises. He loves it, make no mistake about that (“My heart beats bwaa-da, bwaa-dadada DAAH dah to match Scott Gorham’s guitar riff, and this leaves my physician furious and unable to speak”). But the essay is really about nothing. Specifically, that undefinable but unmistakable human experience of feeling empty and what we do to fill that nothing.

I’m in Albany, working in the mailroom of MetLife’s accounts payable department; my Discman plays Aphex Twin’s “IZ-US” on a loop as I sort documents. I’m in Connecticut, listening to Liars’ “Houseclouds” for the sixth consecutive time while on my way to a droll temp job where I program computers to sell fruit shaped like flower bouquets. It’s dark out as I walk to the Bryant Park subway stop, and I keep pressing BACK to restart Mall Grab’s remix of Turnstile’s “The Real Thing.”

These incidents don’t so much dot my life but light up the sky as constellations that navigate my journey. I’m told that everyone has these moments. I think the stereotype is that after a breakup, you listen to your favorite song a dozen times to block out the outside world until you eventually feel better. But I can say that none of the songs above are my all-time favorite. They may have been my favorite at that moment, sure. But all time?

And I wasn’t always an emotional wreck during these repeat sessions.^[6] Nor was I trying to blot out the noise of the outside world. But with these occurrences, I was feeling a certain way. I needed an alternative to silence, a more meaningful nothingness around me.

This reflection is more lachrymose than Faust’s original essay, which is why it’s so good. Making good music journalism is hard^[7]. If you like the artist, it’s easy to fawn and forgive any faults. If you hate it, you spend hours inventing elaborate and delicate ways to say, “It sucks." " ^[8]

Writing about music requires a firm hand on sentimentality’s leash because writing about music is inherently embarrassing. Oh, someone wrote a song that made you FEEL something and now you’re sharing a page in your diary? Keep it to yourself, Jimmy.

But you need to let the beast run free at the park, lest you get too fuckin’ stuck up about shit and forget why music made you happy in the first place. Something about this art made you give a fuck, so go ahead and justify that fuck.

Faust keeps sentimentality at Goldilocks levels. He loves “The Boys Are Back In Town” but is also slightly detached. He demonstrates an unspoken (and seemingly untaught) rule of music journalism: you should have a little contempt for the subject.

Not in a gatekeeping way, where you deride and nitpick their artistic expression for not achieving an arbitrary standard (Wrong! Guess again!).

But to have a grain of disdain for the music that makes us feel something is healthy, and that should be present when you write about it.

What happens when we hear a song that gives us goosebumps? Or changes our mood We’re exposed as faulty machines that are not fully assembled. Fragmented. Incomplete. We’re animals who require external components—music, literature, movies, art, beauty—in order to be human.

When a performer makes us feel complete with their music, it’s because we weren’t whole in the first place.

How dare they.

When you experience that euphoria, embrace all its splendor. But when you write about it later? That disdain of being unmasked should be present, if just off to the side.

Faust’s detachment is key because this is a stunt piece, which we need more in rock journalism. Music is art, and art is subjective, but experiencing music is universal. We listen, and we feel. But everyone who reads about music listens to music.

Jaan Uhelski's’ 1975 article for CREEM, “I Dreamed I Was Onstage With KISS In My Maidenform Bra,” remains the gold standard of these stunt articles. These pieces remind us that 1) music is best experienced in an uncontrolled environment where shit can go wrong and 2) music journalism needs more than just music.

I can write a 33 1/3-length article about why the Butthole Surfers’ Rembrandt Pussyhorse is more important to punk rock than Black Flag’s My War.

Or, would you instead read an article about Gibby Haynes and Henry Rollins^[9] shooting the shit about these albums while the three of us go bowling (you can listen to both albums and decide for yourself, slacker).

But a stunt without purpose is Jackass journalism; Woodward and Bernstein by way of Logan Paul and Mr. Beast. Faust’s essay is not without thought. He ties his habit to late-stage capitalism, how “biggest is always necessarily better, without exception,” and that for “the true doom disciple, to listen to a song more times is to enjoy the song more deeply.”

But he doesn’t solder the piece to this point. He leaves plenty of room for you to get what you want out of it and go about your day. This is also why “I Played ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ on a Bar Jukebox Until I Got Kicked Out” is great. It’s got layers.

You can read it as a comical piece in the twilight of hipster irony.^[10] Or you can also read it as a dude using music to cope with pain. After all, Faust opens the piece by saying he does this repeat song-and-dance when he feels miserable.

The main scene takes place at 3 AM, rarely an hour when good things happen. He describes himself as “a terrible, ecstatic, self-ruinous [creature] greedy for and undeserving of love.” In the end, when he’s “with the ashen pallor and anxious charisma of a new and fresh heartbreak,” he goes to repeat the process.

Is this a scene report from a bar's jukebox? An ode to “The Boys Are Back In Town?” Heartbreak E/N navel gazing? It’s D) All of the Above. This piece reaches that perfect equilibrium that all music journalism should strive for. There’s a personal narrative. There’s a unique experience. There’s some damn fine writing (“Thirst will never leave you completely. The body demands water until it drowns.” Fuck, Timothy. Warn me next time).

The best part is that Faust fucking sticks the landing. The ending is fantastic. Goddamn.

The article resonated with me, clearly. When I first read it, I had just started at the publication where I would work for eight years. It was a full-time staff writer role, a step up from my sporadic freelancing work. It was with a notoriously critical EIC^[11]  and 45-minute article deadlines. Those initial weeks stripped away any pretense I had about being a good writer. Every typo was a moral failing, every buried lede another piece of evidence that I suck and shouldn’t be there.

I spent many mornings with a song on repeat to psyche myself up before work. And a lot of evenings ended with another track on loop, quieting any lingering insecurities at the end of my shift.^12] 

I don’t remember the day I read Faust’s piece, but I also don’t remember the day I was born. I might have even hated the article at first out of barely contained jealousy at how good it is.

But I was living it. I wasn’t at a jukebox, and it wasn’t Thin Lizzy, but I was alongside Timothy, pumping in dollars to hear the same song play again.

If I hated the article at first, I’m strong enough to admit I was wrong. Faust’s piece is one of the few I bring up in casual conversation. It deserves to be celebrated. It should be studied. And certainly not forgotten. ^[13]

Timothy Faust stopped writing about music (he never really did. His other Vice article is about the Fast and Furious movies). He now writes about America’s broken healthcare system. He published a book in 109, Health Justice Now. He now writes Error: A Newsletter About Healthcare.

Sometime in the last ten years, Timothy Faust followed me on Twitter.^[14] I messaged him about today’s anniversary.

“The article happened because my roommate was a culture editor for Vice and thought my Twitter thread about getting fucked up and messing around with the jukebox would be funny,” says Faust. When asked about writing for Noisey, he says, “I’m very happy I got to debut my first real piece of writing there.”

And what are his plans for today, the tenth anniversary of this landmark article?

“I will be doing a Medicaid defense road trip,” he says, “but [Sunday’s] my day off, so you know I' ’ gonna find some crummy bar in podunk western Wisconsin and let it rip.”

That jukebox in the corner blastin' out my favorite song / The nights are getting warmer, it won't be long / Won't be long 'til the summer comes / Now that the boys are here again.

^[1] Assuming any are left after Republican goon squads and compliant chickenshit universities get done with their respective demo work.

^[2] Nice.

^[3] Between Roberta’s Flack “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (273) and Procol Harum’s “A White Shade of Pale” (271)

^[4] Metallica covered “Whisky in the Jar.” The video features the band Candy Ass trashing a house, which was their biggest brush with fame outside of stripping for Howard Stern and touring with Pink. Also, the friend I had proofread this pointed out they first heard “Dancing in the Moonlight” from 1977’s Bad Reputation. It reached No. 4 in Ireland and No. 14 in the UK. It did not chart in the U.S.

^[5] After doing “Cowboy Song,” also from Jailbreak.

^[6] I’ve been dumped a lot, but not THAT much.

^[7]Case in point, this newsletter you’re reading and my entire fucking career. I’ve written half a million words to be anywhere as poignant as Faust’s 1,475-word essay.

^[8] Gotta justify that expensive college degree.

^[9] I don’t think Henry would go for it. He might have too much fun. Gregg Ginn doesn’t strike me as a bowler. Maybe Bill Stevenson?

^[10] Do we have an exact date when millennial hipsterdom died? 2011 is a good candidate. It’s when Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs won the Grammy for Album of the Year, right before LCD Soundsystem’s breakup show at MSG. My vote is for 2014 when Vice (owner of Noisey, publisher of the article I’m prattling on about) closed down Death By Audio by taking over the building housing the music venue.

^[11] She had her own tag on both Gawker and Jezebel. I haven’t seen her in nearly two years. She sold to a media company financed by a Vegas time-share mogul. The new owners bungled operating the site so badly that they sold it to another company five months later.

^[12] RKL’s “Think Positive” was one. “Shake It Off” was the other. If I knew I’d write a lot about Taylor Swift’s drama in the following decade, I would probably have chosen another motivational pop song. In my defense, it’s a bop. It just needs more of an edge. Charli XCX unlocked the song’s potential a month before I started working at the site, covering it for the BBC with her rock group.

^[13] Vice went bankrupt in 2023. They stopped maintaining Noisey. The archives are also broken, and they only go back to 2017. The only way you can find Faust’s article is by searching for it through Google or some shit. It’s a fuckin’ shame.

^[14] He still needs to follow me on Bluesky. C’mon, Timmy Heartbeats.

(Also, can you tell I’ve read Sam McPheeters’ Mutations recently with all these footnotes? You should go read that, along with Faust’s newsletter).

I first heard "Oscillation” by The Men when someone assembled a series of video game characters’ idle animations. I think it was called “Waiting…” but I can’t find it now. “Oscillation made me a fan of The Men, and they should be bigger. They recently released a new album. You should listen to it.

I did the tourist thing and went to The Beetle House here in NYC. In between seeing Lydia Deetz sing My Chemical Romance’s “Helena” and Edward Scissorhands do a Beatles song (which, I just now realized, was also a subtle pun. Beatles. Beetles), they played some interesting music.

There were the usual Tim Burton-related songs (Danny Elfman’s oeuvre, Prince’s Batman soundtrack), but some unusual things like Sponge’s “Plowed” and more Red Hot Chili Peppers than expected. But they played Grauzone, a Swiss post-punk band I’d never heard of before. Pretty neat.

(Lydia Deetz did a really good job, as did Jack Skellington and Edward Scissorhands. However, the Beetle House needs a weekly drag night.)

I’ve recently begun contributing to Screen Rant by writing about rock and metal. My first two pieces were about Green Day burning out on their Insomniac tour and how Ben Eller played with Mastodon for their first gig since founding member Brent Hinds exited the band.

Some really good writers are writing fascinating pieces for SR. I would recommend checking them out so you can say you read them before they became famous.

I will post something about Deafheaven’s new album, Lonely People With Power, later in the week. Keep an eye out for that. 

If all goes well, I'll have some words in the upcoming issues of Creem and Antics. I’ll let you know when those drop so you can pick up a copy. You can go ahead and subscribe ahead of time, just in case.

And yeah: Error: A Newsletter About Healthcare.

Open Up and Read is the newsletter from music journalist Jason Brow. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends to subscribe at OpenUpAndRead.com. You can also toss a few dollars his way via Ko-Fi. Be kind to cats. Music is the best.