The Lizard Review

Gilmore Girls is one of the most beloved and evergreen shows that came out of the early 2000's - it's also long been considered to be one of the most progressive and even feminist shows of its time period....but there is one MAJOR issue that the writers did not always handle well : the issue of virginity.

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RED is famously one of Taylor Swift's greatest fall records - to some, it is one of the greatest fall records OF ALL TIME. In the spirit of season, here's a lyric analysis of the bookends of that album, State of Grace and Begin Again.

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In 2010, there was perhaps no one more famous on planet earth than Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the stars of the Twilight series. After trying to keep their relationship a secret in spite of the magnifying glass on their lives for nearly a year, the truth finally came out...and ruined everything.

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One of my absolute favorite kinds of videos to watch on YouTube are ASMR videos - they're how I relax, unwind, calm down, and fall asleep. In celebration of the announcement that the Lizard Review will begin posting on YouTube this next week, I decided to pay tribute to my favorite YouTube videos by doing a little bit of pop girl ASMR for you all.

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Since the launch of Nielsen Soundscan in 1991, A LOT has changed about the way we consume music, which means that a lot has changed about the way music consumption is reflected on the Billboard chart which has purported itself to be a fair aggregate of the music that MOST people are generally listening to and the music that MOST people like since its inception.

With the influx of digital music downloads, streaming, TikTok virality, and the massive sociopolitical divides that seep into every corner of culture....do the Billboard charts REALLY represent the "most popular" or "most liked" songs or artists in music anymore? Does it matter?

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With the influx of reality television, the media's obsession with female celebrities reaching a fever pitch, and the digital era all converging at once....there were some pretty interesting public weddings that took place in the y2k era. Before we had celebrities like Tom Holland and Zendaya wisely choosing to keep their nuptials private, we had people like Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson turning their weddings into reality television and tabloid spectacles.

Here are FOUR of my favorite messiest celebrity marriages from the archives, each more bizarre and shocking than the last.

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In November 2003, on the precipice of a brand new chapter of her life and career, Britney Spears sat down with Diane Sawyer for a Primetime interview to discuss everything from her so-called "new edgier image", to her new album, her family, life in the public eye, and her highly publicized breakup with NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Even 23 years later, this interview is compelling, shocking, and most importantly, very indicative of the way we thought about and treated our female celebrities in the 2000's.

In this episode, I go through it moment by moment, and word for word - reflecting on purity culture, mid-riffs, and y2k fashion, while also comparing the interview and its contents to the way we talk about female celebrities today.

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Every season has its own set of albums that make it special - here's summer's very own list of the most free, hot, angry, fun, and sunny albums that I spin every single year without fail.

Playlist on Spotify/ Apple Music

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Love and relationships are something Taylor Swift has loved to explore in her lyrics from day one - and part and parcel with that exploration, she has spent a fair amount of time in her catalog even from her youngest years ruminating on marriage. Through her lyrics she’s expressed a lot about what she thinks a marriage should be, when marriage should come, the kinds of men she thought she would marry, and on this potential day of her real wedding, I thought it would be a sort of homage both to her writing AND her journey to finding “THE ONE” to go through and revisit these songs and track her shifting attitudes - if they ever did shift - towards marriage.

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This episode dares to ask some of the boldest questions ever asked....questions like...what if Beyonce' were a Taylor Swift album? What if Dua Lipa were a Taylor Swift album? What if Avril Lavigne were a Taylor Swift album? If we could sort some of the most famous women in music into Taylor Swift albums as if they were personality types, where would we place them? Come along with me for a very long kiki as I decide which pop stars are most like which albums from the beginning of Taylor's catalog to her most recent entries.

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Continuing on with my series of revisiting the ghosts of magazine articles' past, today we reflect upon yet another ICONIC moment of Taylore : the moment that Taylor got bangs for her Vogue cover shoot and discovered the look she perhaps was always meant to have...

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For the first time EVEERRRR, I attempt (and succeed at) ranking all eighteen songs from Sunday (1994.) I made the TierMaker myself! Feel free to use it at your own leisure to create your own rankings.

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I am the supreme overlord of what music gets played in this household and when...but my husband DOES have his own playlists and he does on occasion listen to his own music. These playlists NEVER get played aloud in the house, but they exist, and today, we go through them to excavate some truly mystifying hidden treasures....

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The streaming era of music is still unfolding before our very eyes, but one thing is beyond for certain - streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music have changed the way we engage with, enjoy, and find music. Streaming has opened up the entire world (or at least, those with a spare 11.99 to spend a month) to the whole confection of music, all the way from the 1940's to today. There's plenty good and plenty bad with the way streaming services operate and how they've affected how music operates in our lives, but in today's episode, we focus on one question about streaming in particular - what have been the 100 most important songs to the streaming era so far?

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Once upon a time in a land not so dissimilar to our own, there was a band that made all the wrong choices at all the right times...this is a story about the 2000's, the scene, the girls who loved it, and the men who hated it.

Panic! At The Disco was a group of teenaged boys who wound up thrust into the center of a brand new genre and a brand new scene that was only just beginning to take shape, and that would ultimately wind up dissipating into nothing just as quickly as it appeared. Two albums, countless band members, twenty years, and hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction later, we're finally asking the question : when did Panic! At The Disco really stop being Panic! At The Disco?

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In 2014, Taylor was reinventing herself - new hair, new city, new midriff, new genre. The Rolling Stone interview that came out just a month before her record-breaking release of 1989 was our first real peek as fans into what this era truly held in store for us, and revisiting this article now 12 years later is like a time capsule to what I never ever would have imagined in a million years would be "the simpler days."

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://thelizardreview.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://thelizardreview.substack.com/subscribe

Here in the top FIVE of the most important pop culture moments of my lifetime, we get down into the instances that I've carried with me for almost my entire life - including the single greatest televised pop performance ever, Justin Timberlake being an enemy to women, a frantic hoedown in an attempt to save face, and MORE....

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What do Paris Hilton going to jail, Beyonce surprise releasing her self titled record in 2013, and the Jonas Brothers' purity rings all have in common...? They were all representative of moments in pop culture that helped define both the zeitgeist and the way that I engaged with pop culture and the world at large going forward. As a millennial woman, y2k and early 2000's pop culture and the things that happened during that time period, particularly to female celebrities, were more formative to my worldview and my relationship with pop culture than anything else.

Here are numbers 10 through 6 of some of the most important pop culture moments of my entire lifetime - from y2k, to the mid 2000's, all the way up to the 2010's.

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The 2026 Grammy's are almost right on top of us, and as such, it's time to do one of my most favorite things in the entire world....BE WRONG FOR AN HOUR!!! 🎉 Although my predictions usually don't come to pass (2025 notwithstanding - I had an oddly good sense of who would win last year but that is NOT the norm) it's still fun to go through all the nominees one more time before the big show and put in my final words on them all. PLUS : we go through some of my LEAST favorite things in the world - blind ballots.

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