Tasseled topper / FRI 3-13-15 / Japanese zithers / 2008 crossover hit for country duo Sugarland / Holiday cakes with swirls / Fa

Constructor: Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Tedium

THEME: no

Word of the Day: TARBOOSH (15A: Tasseled topper) —

noun

a man's cap similar to a fez, typically of red felt with a tassel at the top. (google)

As Charlie Brown would say, *sigh*. There's nothing here. I don't get how something this dull gets accepted. I'll give you OUT OF THE BLUE (27A: Unexpectedly) and LOOSE LIPS (12D: Tendency to be indiscreet), which are fine. Not dazzling, not fascinating, not eye-popping, but totally respectable. But then what? What else is there? REAR AREA? HAS A SHOT? IMAGED? This is sauce of an astonishingly weak vintage. It's more tedious than terrible. Nothing's gonna make you angry, but the cumulative mediocrity should make you angry. Or at least mildly disappointed. ITALO BREST DOD KOTOS ELI ARAG (!?) APSES IPO DEEDEE ASSAY ESA AMASS YLEM INASENSE ETRADE ONSALE AREOLA. I don't really hate any of that, but it's a serious onslaught of boring and/or undesirable fill. The cluing kept things reasonably tough, respectively Fridayish, difficulty-wise, but the content … I don't know whose idea of a good time this is, but it isn't mine.

What is a "Sugarland"? "ALL I WANT TO DO" was easy enough to get, but hardly seems famous enough to be a marquee Friday entry. In 2015. It hit #18. In 2008. You know what was big: "ALL I WANNA DO" by Sheryl Crow. That hit #1. In 1994. It's so much more popular than "ALL I WANT TO DO" that when you type in "ALL I WANT TO DO…" this is what google suggests:

That first suggestion isn't even how the Sheryl Crow song is spelled, and google *still* wants the Sheryl Crow song (that first result is the first line of the chorus of the Crow song, in case you didn't know). If you're gonna go with a pop culture blast across the bow of a Friday, make it singular, interesting, definitive … not some #18 song that sounds like a much more famous song. Hell, "OUT OF THE BLUE" is a more famous song than "ALL I (queen's English) WANT TO DO"

(#3 in 1988!)
The end.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld