Scarborough - Mystified (2017)

Known best as a politician, pundit, and talk show host, Joe Scarborough had a side career as a musician under the stage name Scarborough. Joe Scarborough dabbled in music for years -- he played it in college and released an Americana single called "Reason to Believe" in 2011 -- but he didn't commit to a full-fledged project until 2017, when he released the nervy, new wave-inspired Mystified EP in the summer. When Mystified appeared in June 2017, Scarborough's profile may have been at a pinnacle, thanks in part to his romance with his on-air co-host, Mika Brzezinski, and the pair's public feud with the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Despite this flurry of attention, Scarborough had been in the public eye for over 20 years at that point, first arriving on the national scene as a representative for the First District of Florida in 1995.

Scarborough was raised in Pensacola, Florida, attending college at the University of Alabama in the early '80s and earning a law degree from the University of Florida in 1990. As a college student, Scarborough moonlighted as a musician, performing original material as part of a group called Dixon Mills, but music was put on a back burner after he was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1991. He worked as a defense attorney for four years before running as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. He won this race and three subsequent elections before resigning to spend more time with his family in 2001. Over the next two years, he was part of the Levin Papantonio Law Firm and the Beggs & Lane firm, along with sitting on the President's Council on the 21st Century Workforce in 2002, but in 2003 he found his calling as a media star. That year, he was hired by MSNBC to host Scarborough Country, which aired until 2007 when it morphed into the show that made Scarborough famous, Morning Joe.

Morning Joe became MSBNC's morning show in 2007 and Scarborough co-hosted it with Brzezinski and Willie Geist. Soon, Joe and Mika became the show's stars and their on-air chemistry translated off camera as well; early in 2017, they announced their engagement. A few months later, Scarborough -- who had been a vocal music geek on Twitter -- released Mystified. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine.