brendan halpin

I was an early adopter of Sirius XM Radio, back when you had to buy a special little box to play through the FM radio in your car. I discovered a lot of cool music in the early 2000s by listening to it, and I’ve subscribed a few times since then.

But, like seemingly everything, Sirius XM Radio has been getting worse and worse. There’s a channel called Soul Town which plays soul hits of the 60’s. It became Smokey’s Soul Town and remained Smokey’s Soul Town even after four former employees sued him for sexual harassment and sexual assault. The allegations haven’t been proven and likely can’t be, but whether you choose to have someone represent your brand is not a legal proceeding and doesn’t require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Apparently for Sirius XM management, being associated with someone accused of sexual assault is not a dealbreaker. Which is their choice, of course, but my subscription is also a choice.

On a less serious note, Marky Ramone’s Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, a channel that played classic punk interspersed with Marky’s thoughts and/or reminiscences about the bands, was replaced by Classic Punk, a DJ-less channel with occasional station IDs voiced by what sounds like a 22-year-old from a 90’s Mountain Dew commercial. I really keep expecting him to say it’s “totally extreme.” Again, it’s a choice.

But today really sent me over the edge. My favorite channel has always been Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the channel through which I discovered a lot of cool music in the early 2000s. They have mostly stopped playing new music,(more on this in a bit), but they still play a great mix of rock and soul songs and have a number of charismatic DJs who often drop cool knowledge about the songs and artists they play. I miss the new music, but I can live with this situation.

But then I started noticing that the few new songs they add to the rotation almost always involve Little Steven getting paid. So either they’re artists who record for his label, Wicked Cool Records (so he gets paid on both ends of the deal as both the guy who runs the channel and the guy who gets royalty payments for the label), or they’re artists who work behind the scenes at the Underground Garage, or they’re artists who are going to appear on the annual Underground Garage cruise. In short, the new music that this channel plays almost always involves Little Steven getting paid. On the public airwaves, this would be illegal as hell, but because it’s not on the public airwaves, they can be as openly corrupt as the Trump administration.

But even that wasn’t what finally made me pull the trigger on canceling. What made me pull the trigger was when Little Steven just announced this week’s Coolest Song in the World (a weekly designation granted to songs both old and new) is a song by New York band The Cyns— a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully.” For those unfamiliar, “Neighborhood Bully” is from Dylan’s 1983 Infidels album and is a song that asserts that Israel is always in the right when committing acts of violence and shouldn’t adhere to the rules other countries abide by. (You can check the lyrics if you don’t believe me.)

There is no way to interpret covering this song in 2026 except as a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Now, Jem Records is free to include this song on their upcoming Dylan tribute album (because the world simply doesn’t have enough Dylan covers), and the Cynz are free to record it, and Little Steven is free to play it, but I am not coming along for the genocide cheerleading ride.

Fuck the Cynz, fuck Jem Records, fuck Little Steven and fuck Sirius XM.