Perhaps realizing that a good chunk of the people who still care about its brand wouldn’t know a 3OH!3 from a GaGa, MTV has added a new, retro-tastic category to this year’s Video Music Awards: Best Video That Should Have Won A Moonman, in which an overlooked clip from years gone by gets its space-statue due. (I do wonder if the presentation of said award will be shown on VH1, if only because it can then be blown out into an hour-long special about Loving The Videos That Lost At The Video Music Awards or somesuch.) There are 10 clips up for this honor, and they hail from eras as long-ago as MTV’s earliest days and as recent as the YouTube Age. My biases in this category are probably given away by the above screen grab, but you might think* differently! More »
Holy wow: Looks like Dave Grohl and Josh Homme are doing something together in Chicago next Sunday, at midnight, at the not-all-that-large Metro. Tickets go on sale this Thursday at 10 a.m. CT. Is there any way to camp out on the Internet? Because I would recommend doing so, if you want to get a ticket to this particular performance. [eTix via Metro] More »
Congratulations to Dave Grohl and wife Jordyn on the birth of their second child! Daughter Harper Willow Grohl showed up sometime on Friday… but leave it to a drummer to be late in telling everyone the news. Harper is named after Dave’s great-uncle Harper Bonebrake and not the snooty magazine. We wish Dave and his family THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST [Important Dave Grohl Link] More »
The release today of Billboard’s tallies for the year’s biggest U.S. singles and albums produce few jaw-dropping surprises. The top eight songs of the year, according to the Hot 100, come directly from the list of 10 songs in my predictions post last week.
So what about those two songs I called wrong? I’ll get to my bad calls later, but let’s focus for a moment on the act who surprised me by bum-rushing the year-end winner’s circle and taking Nos. 9 and 10.
That would be Chris Brown, who quietly dominates the year-end Hot 100, even though his name doesn’t appear any higher than No. 6 (with a featured-artist credit). In all, the 19-year-old’s name appears four times in the Top 20, three of them as a lead act.
That kind of dominance isn’t totally unheard of—just last year, Fergie appeared thrice in the year-end Top 20—but it’s still pretty remarkable. Combining all of his appearances on both the song and album charts, Billboard names Brown the top pop artist of the year, beating out such ubiquitous-in-2008 acts as Lil Wayne, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Taylor Swift.
Throw in his supporting performance on another top 100–ranked song by David Banner; his six appearances on the year-end R&B/Hip-Hop list; his co-writing credit on one of Rihanna’s biggest hits; and the fact that one of his top-ranked hits doubled as a jingle for chewing gum, and Brown—more than Wayne, more than T-Pain—comes off as 2008’s true pop utilityman.
Welcome to Idolator’s live-blogging of the inaugural Grammy Nominations Concert, which apparently kicks off the countdown to “music’s biggest night.” (Wait, I thought music’s biggest night was going to be the Presidential inauguration next year?) Anyway, join me, the Foo Fighters, Celine Dion, Taylor Swift, and John Mayer and B.B. King (oh boy that is going to bring out the crankypantses) after the jump.
Thanksgiving only seems like a dowdy holiday. Turkey, football, family, autumn leaves buried beneath incipient slush–all wonderful, none especially flamboyant. (Well, maybe the football is–I don’t know.) However, TV this Thanksgiving week is teeming with an array of musicians who’ve either been regulars in Vegas, Branson, and/or Broadway, or are on their way there. (You just know the Foo Fighters are going to headline some ’00s stage once the casino owners have merged into three factions.) Americans, celebrate your country by celebrating its glitz:
Whatever you think of the man, it’s fair to say that John McCain has not been able to catch a break in this election. I’m not talking about the self-inflicted wounds, but about all the things over which he genuinely had no control, like the economy tanking, a hurricane hitting New Orleans on the first day of the Republican convention, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki agreeing with Obama’s pullout plan. The campaign has been a sort of running joke of failure for McCain, and one of the best was how musicians kept objecting to his campaigns’ use of particular songs. Heart, Bon Jovi, the Foo Fighters, Survivor, John Mellencamp, and half of Van Halen were among the musicians who objected, and the campaign has largely given in to their terroristy demands. This would seem to be another strategic (tactical?) blunder, but the results of a study done by my partner Rachel Arnold and me suggests, rather, that politicians aren’t just uninformed about music–they don’t care about music. And as long as that’s true, these sort of musical gaffes are going to continue.
There are two weeks left to go in the Presidential campaign, and that means one thing: More time for musicians to get annoyed when a politician whose views don’t jibe with theirs to get annoyed about what they see as “misuse” of their songs! In anticipation of this happening at least three more times before Nov. 4, we asked our official house counsel, John P. Strohm, for his legally considered opinion on the subject. After the jump, he talks about the nitty-gritty of song licenses, and whether Dave Grohl should have even bothered coming out of retirement to complain about John McCain’s use of the Foo Fighters’ “My Hero.”
It’s hard being a Republican Presidential candidate sometimes, what with most people who are in the business of writing populist anthems frowning on your usage of their songs at political events. The McCain-Palin camp has had a particularly rough go of it lately, what with Nancy Wilson tossing them a cease-and-desist after their abuse of “Barracuda” and Van Halen reigniting their old tensions after “Right Now” was played at a rally.. Now the Foo Fighters have come out of hiatus just to issue a strongly worded press release regarding the campaign’s use of “My Hero.”
