In what’s shaking up to be a battle of the butterfles, the bean-counters at industry rag Hits are claiming that brand new eyes from the Hayley Williams-led Tennessee outfit Paramore is, after its first day of official availability, on pace to outsell Mariah Carey’s Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel this week by a margin of about 20,000 copies; Paramore’s projected sales are in the 180k-190k range, while Mariah’s are around 160-170k. And as if that wasn’t enough to rile up the chart-obsessed lambs, turns out that Barbra Streisand’s Love Is The Answer is projected to sell between 150,000 and 160,000 copies! Hits‘ one-day projections for this week’s biggest debuts after the jump. More »
Motivational partier / nascent meteorologist Andrew WK just embarked on a short tour with the contemporary classicists the Calder Quartet, and he’s moved two of the shows (in Washington, D.C., and Toronto) from churches to other venues. Any other artist out there would just have moved the shows and been done with it, but Andrew explained his decision to move the shows in his inimitable way: More »
If you want to have the man who recorded Nevermind help you out with your own musical efforts, and you have some money that you’d like to donate to charity, then this is for you: Butch Vig, the man behind the board for albums by the likes of Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, and L7 (not to mention the drummer for Garbage!) is putting up 10 hours of his production services for bidding. Proceeds from the auction go to pediatric cancer research; also on the charity block is a poster signed by Vig’s Garbage-mate Shirley Manson. [eBay via AP] More »
Repentant R & B singer Chris Brown Tweeted earlier that the follow-up single to his new track “I Can Transform Ya”—from his forthcoming album Graffiti—would be “a ballet called crawl.” Alas, those of you who like me got excited that he would try to apologize to his ex-girlfriend Rihanna and the American public at large while engaging in some sort of jetée-filled antics will be disappointed; turns out he meant “ballad.” Still holding out hope for Jazz Hands Of Sorrow, then. [@MechanicalDummy / Twitter] More »
Yesterday was a long day for the Tennessee rock outfit Paramore, who celebrated the release of their new album brand new eyes with an early-morning gig at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, a signing in Chino, and a show at the Fox Theater in Pomona, Calif. That last bit of celebrating proved to be too much for the pipes of lead singer Hayley Williams, who left the stage 11 songs into the band’s set; after about five minutes passed, guitarist Josh Farro came out and told the crowd, “We have a slight issue. Hayley’s voice is shot, completely gone. She’s upset — she feels like she let you guys down. But we’re gonna play some music for you and you guys can sing.” The band then burst into its breakthrough hit “Misery Business” without Williams at the helm—and the crowd filled in ably, if a bit chaotically. Clip after the jump. More »
The title single from How I Got Over, the forthcoming album from Jimmy Fallon’s house band The Roots, is a fantastic little slice of soul that’s dragged along by a nimble organ part. The attendant video—in which we get to see the seedy side of urban life, courtesy some gorgeously shot street scenes in deep Brooklyn—is pretty simple and effective, allowing the song to fully shine as it should. [OnSMASH via Nah Right] More »
Former Ash/current Bat For Lashes guitarist Charlotte Hatherley‘s third full-length, New Worlds, comes out in the UK next month, and it is such a great album, trading in the post-punk leanings of her previous (outstanding) effort The Deep Blue for something a little proggier. “Alexander,” which starts off as a delicate, finger-picked ballad before growing into a frenzied plea to a lover, is the new single from the album, and I hope the release of the track’s attendant video means that the record will see the light of day in the States sometime soon. Clip after the jump. More »
The Korean girl-group Girls’ Generation brings together 8-bit games, delicious noodle soup, and flouncy skirts in the above commercial for a Korean ramen brand, whose ad agency had the genius idea to use the music from the addictive video game Bubble Bobble as its bed. I have listened to this commercial multiple times since it first crossed my transom, and it’s making me think about how I think someone should just put out a CD of the Wii’s weather music, which is some of the best music to doze by ever. More »
Let’s say you’re an R & B singer who has a new album coming out soon, and your greatest claim to fame is that you’ve worked with a chronically beleaguered pop star in the past. How to get people to know that you have an album coming out? How about getting your “pal” into a studio to record a pronunciation-challenged freestyle, making sure there’s a video camera nearby, and releasing it online with your own URL superimposed over the entirety of the clip? God, it would be genius if it didn’t seem icky, what with its inspiring classy comments like “somebody please fire this crack whore from celebrity status.” [YouTube / Zalon] More »
