My favorite musical moment from the Saturday Night Live that aired 36-ish hours ago: A re-imagining of the 1992 chart-topper “A Whole New World” in which Aladdin and Jasmine, married 10 years, sing about how the thrill in their love life has gone away thanks to time, age, and the damn Genie wayyyy overstaying his welcome. Clip after the jump.
Over the holidays, Billboard‘s song charts were, at least on the surface, pretty sleepy. On the Hot 100, most of the songs that were hot late last fall—Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and “If I Were a Boy,” T.I. and Rihanna’s “Live Your Life,” Kanye’s “Love Lockdown” and “Heartless,” Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” the unkillable Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold”—continued bumping around the Top 10 like lazy molecules.
But below the surface, a ton of music was being consumed. In particular, one song benefited massively from the annual iPod-filling digital megasale that hits iTunes every Christmas—and that song, Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance,” reaches No. 1 the very week Apple’s music store removes digital-rights management restrictions on all of its songs, making them freely copyable.
Does this mean we’re in for even more Lady GaGa than we’re enduring now, as kids trade their iTunes purchases like baseball cards? Unlikely: those who “share” music probably figured out their DRM workarounds years ago.
But the official start of the post-DRM era—and, more important, the changes to song pricing—could have some interesting effects on digital song sales, and the charts that track them.
This weekend’s Saturday Night Live was full of… More »
Saturday’s episode of Saturday Night Live was pretty weaksauce overall, so one of the relative high points came with the above skit, which placed Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, and SNL‘s new guy in a scenario where they, clad in leotards and heels, were B’s newer, spazzier, more penis-enabled dancers for her “Single Ladies” video. I guess someone in the writers’ room saw the Google numbers for “single man dances to single ladies” and acted accordingly. But I have a very important question: Where is Beyoncé’s Sasha Kruegerhand? I understand its absence during last night’s medley, but if there’s one thing I learned from years of comedy, it’s that lack of verisimilitude can make even the funniest joke deflate a little bit.
It’s been almost two years since Justin Timberlake donned a pair of Color Me Badd pants and sang about giving his ladyfriend a Very Special Christmas Box, which I guess means that enough time has passed for “Dick In A Box” to become source material for a song about Very Important Things. Above, Timberlake (with girlfriend Jessica Biel) turns his ode to giving the best present of all into… a song about sticking your ballot into that hole in that box. Unfortunately, pretty Christmas wrapping, Andy Samberg, and the concept of “being funny through something besides extreme awkwardness on Timberlake’s part” are nowhere to be seen, so why not clear your brain out with the original, which we’ve placed after the jump.
Was Andy Samberg making kissyfaces at harp-wielding critical darling Joanna Newsom at a Rangers game a few months ago, or is the SNL star just really adept at making stupid faces for amateur paparazzi? More »
Was Andy Samberg making kissyfaces at harp-wielding critical darling Joanna Newsom at a Rangers game a few months ago, or is the SNL star just really adept at making stupid faces for amateur paparazzi? More »
It’s kind of strange this New York Times story on the YouTube semi-popularity of “Iran So Far,” the love song to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that aired on last week’s Saturday Night Live, didn’t mention the fact that NBC had to pull the clip from its YouTube channel–and its site–because… More »
It’s kind of strange this New York Times story on the YouTube semi-popularity of “Iran So Far,” the love song to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that aired on last week’s Saturday Night Live, didn’t mention the fact that NBC had to pull the clip from its YouTube channel–and its site–because… More »
Ed. note: Today, we introduce “VHS Or Beta?”, a new column in which Andy Beta looks at the music behind the movies–from preserved-by-Criterion classics to completely inane summer blockbusters. In his opening column, he takes on the soundtrack to the Andy Samberg comedy Hot Rod, which, alas, is “Dick In A Box”-free.
