About Me
Charles Olney, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law and Judicial Politics at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (academic website). This is a blog about music, politics, and the law. I also write about women’s soccer at Backline Soccer and Stars and Stripes FC.
Twitter: @dr_olney
Soundcloud: olneyce
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Recent Posts
Greatest Hits
- Beatles from worst to first
- Top 25 albums of the decade
- Top 50 songs of the decade
- Top 10 Bruce Springsteen songs
- Top 10 Modest Mouse songs
- Top 10 Tom Petty songs
- Top 10 Carissa's Wierd songs
- Top 10 Paul Simon songs
- Top 10 Bob Dylan songs
- Top 10 breakup songs
- Top 20 albums of 2005
- Top 30 albums of 2006
- Top 40 songs of 2006
- Top 25 albums of 2007
- Top 40 songs of 2007
- Top 25 albums of 2008
- Top 40 songs of 2008
- Top 30 albums of 2009
- Top 40 songs of 2009
- Top 25 albums of 2010
- Top 40 songs of 2010
- Top 15 albums of 2011
- Top 40 songs of 2011
- Top 20 albums of 2012
- Top 40 songs of 2012
- Top 30 albums of 2013
- Top 50 songs of 2013
- Top 25 albums of 2014
- Top 50 songs of 2014
- Top 30 albums of 2015
- Top 50 songs of 2015
- Top 15 albums of 2016
- Top 40 songs of 2016
- Top 25 albums of 2017
- Top 50 songs of 2017
- Top 30 albums of 2018
- Top 50 songs of 2018
Music links
- Hype Machine
- elbo.ws
- Music for Kids Who Can't Read Good
- Can you see the sunset from the southside?
- Hits in the Car
- A Certain Romance
- Herohill
- Speed of Dark
- Lost in your Inbox
- Vague Space
- Skatterbrain
- I Guess I'm Floating
- Largehearted Boy
- Neon Gold
- Another Form of Relief
- Cover Lay Down
- The Monsters Under the Bed Are Not Real
- Yellow Stereo
- Quick Before It Melts
- Knox Road
- Sand is Overrated
- Shake Your Fist
Recent Comments
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Author Archives: olneyce
Top 15 albums of 2022
It’s the biggest cliche, but it turns out to be true: when you have a kid, it gets a lot harder to listen to new music. Part of it is simple math. There are just a finite number of hours … Continue reading
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Top 15 albums of 2021
I’ve been writing up my lists of favorite albums here for fifteen years now. This is the first year in all that time that I don’t have full writeups on all the albums that I’d like to cover. I tried … Continue reading
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Top 40 Songs of 2021
These lists are always a sort of personal soundtrack. They remind me of where I was and what I was doing each year. More than anything this year, ‘where I was and what I was doing’ was very simple: at … Continue reading
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Vaccine optimism
I want to offer some vaccine optimism. I see a lot of negative feelings out there, and I understand them. This has been a terrible year, and it sometimes feels like even the good news is drowned by the never-ending … Continue reading
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Top 15 albums of 2020
Music has been so important this year, given how we have lost so many of the intimate connections of friends and family that bring us peace and stability. Music can’t replace those things, but it’s something. A warm fire on a … Continue reading
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Top 50 songs of 2020
For me, the last few years have often felt like a process of constant motion. Travel has taken me all around the US, all around the world. I’ve spent countless hours on airplanes, on trains, in cars, on subways. So much … Continue reading
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I was planting flowers in the spring
These last few months have been difficult to say the least. The whole world came face to face with a crisis beyond our capacity to ignore. And, somewhat amazingly, billions of people accepted the responsibility and radically changed their behavior. … Continue reading
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50 songs for 50 states: Virginia
For sheer emotional weight, my heart lies with Rosanne Cash, whose “When the Master Calls the Roll” might just be the best song ever written about the Civil War. But I feel like Virginia demands something broader. Beautiful as that … Continue reading
50 songs for 50 states: Vermont
It’s the unofficial state song, and has been covered by Frank Sinatra and Linda Ronstadt, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, and Willie Nelson. There was never any way I … Continue reading
50 songs for 50 states: Utah
It only references Utah once, in the opening line (“On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert”), but the song was based on an actual road trip taken by Springsteen, Stevie Van Zandt, and photographer Eric Meola in 1977. Most … Continue reading