When do you know that people have become kinda tired of music "journalism"'s seemingly endless debates about DRM and free music and new paradigms and MySpace being the future and blah blah blah? When a story about Justin Timberlake not putting out a record anytime soon is worthy of multiple paragraphs in USA Today. (He is playing golf, though! That's exciting, right?) [USA Today]
Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, and Spin are given a once-over by a writer who's contributed to many of those magazines, as well as a few others! In this installment, he looks at the Condé Nast-produced, music-centric one-off Fashion Rocks:
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The cover for Conde Nast's annual Fashion Rocks supplement has been revealed, and its tacit admission that few of the people who will have multiple copies of the thing cluttering up their houses have been paying attention to pop music much is, at the very least, impressive in its brazenness: People haven't really paid attention to music over the past two years, it seems to be saying, so why not just serve up the alternate cover we were going to run before Jennifer Lopez muscled her way onto Page One last year? Well played. And budget-conscious, too! (The asterisk next to the Kills' coverline is probably my favorite part of the whole thing. "Wait, before you run away, here's a celebrity-related reason to care about this band!") [E!]
Imported gossip rag OK! is "revealing exclusively" (has a more noxious phrase ever been coined?) the rumor that Britney Spears is going to let her ex-beau Justin Timberlake guest on her forthcoming album, which is being worked on now for a December release. Why you'd want someone who dissed you in public whose most recent collaboration was a semi-dud Madonna song to be on your "comeback" record is beyond me, but I guess I'm writing about it, so we all know where the joke's landed, no? [OK! / Photo of happier times: Getty]
A Federal appeals court has thrown out the FCC's $550,000 fine against CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show four and a half years ago. The court pointed out that Jackson's breast was exposed on television for 9/16 of a second, and thought that the FCC's $977,777.78 per-second rate for bared cleavage was the result of the agency acting "arbitrarily and capriciously" and that since the image was fleeting, it wasn't worthy of being fined. [AP]
Usher has weighed in one of the great debates of our time: Do you take your sex with music or without? I'm not entirely surprised Usher is pro-musical accompaniment—nor that said music has to be his own. "I made love to a few songs. 'Love You Gently' is one of my favorites. Make her call you 'Daddy' when you put that one on," he told Britain's version of Marie Claire. But in the interest of starting a scrap, the Daily Record has pointed out that Justin Timberlake has, in the past, begged to differ—because his musical genius ends up getting unnecessarily distracted by any mood music. "I have trouble having sex to music because I start picking out the chords," he told the British magazine Dazed & Confused around the release of FutureSex/LoveSounds. Maybe now that he isn't so distracted by making a record, he too can enjoy Usher's mountain-moving songs while in flagrante? [Glasgow Daily Record]
Madonna, Justin Timberlake and "Verizon Mobile Producer In Residence" Timbaland have teamed up to make a remix of "4 Minutes" by... Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. Evidently the trio went into Verizon Wireless' mobile recording studio after the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony and created this "Underground Remix" of their Top 10 hit for the mobile-phone company. If you take the effort to buy this remix, you'll also get footage of the trio holding hands and dancing around a mic while chanting "Can you hear me now?"
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Madonna's video for "Four Minutes"—featuring Justin Timberlake and Timbaland, and bearing a title that's been chopped down from "Four Minutes To Save The World," presumably for national-security reasons—debuted on the Internet this morning, and its extended JT-and-Madge mating dance not only squicked me out at a way-too-early hour, it had even more indications that Hard Candy will be Madonna's "I'm out of ideas because the whole idea of 'subculture' has bubbled away in the social-networking era" album. The video, and five conclusions to take away from it, after the jump.
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Justin Timberlake is spittin' mad that the barbecue is not up to snuff at his NYC restaurant, but he's apparently psyched for the new "Jack Daniels sweet potato pie," which I guess makes T.G.I. Fridays' Jack Daniels menu the "Usher" here? [NY Mag]
Vitamin B12 aficionado Justin Timberlake will be hosting the ESPY Awards on July 20. "I'll do my best to deliver a great show, as I do not want to be roughed up backstage by these athletes who are bigger, faster and stronger than me," said Justin. Rrrrrright. [AP]
ARTIST: Madonna (ft. Timbaland and Justin Timberlake)
TITLE: "Four Minutes To Save The World"
WEB DEBUT: Feb. 29, 2008
Pervy boy-band impresario Lou Pearlman, whose trial on federal bank fraud charges is set for April, has told friends that he's thinking about copping a plea on those charges that would result in him going to the federal pen for up to 25 years. But that doesn't mean he'll be free from jail after that; charges related to the huge investment scheme that he ran through his company Trans Continental Airlines have yet to be filed, and that'll probably add to his sentence if he's found guilty. What's more interesting: The "friend" who told the St. Petersburg Times this little bit of news is now reselling Pearlman's possessions—which he bought at Pearlman's two bankruptcy auctions—on eBay, under the username a-v sales. Among the items on offer are an actual MTV Moonman (bidding currently at $560); other highlights—including an award bestowed upon Pearlman by Mikhail Gorbachev—after the jump.
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Hey, the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame inductions are happening in a week and a half! Can't you feel the excitement oozing from the Waldorf-Astoria in New York? Well, get ready to get even more psyched—they're going to double as a promotional stunt for Madonna's new album, which features Justin Timberlake, because Justin is going to present her to the crowd! Yay, music industry! Don't fall over from reaching too far to pat yourself on the back there, now! [In Touch Weekly]
Sure, British tabloids exist to exaggerate, but even accounting for a purple-tipped editing pen being used to punch up these rumors straight from the London set of Madonna's next video, we're already a little wary about the premiere of the final product. But maybe you've long harbored secret fantasies about engaging in S&M with bodybuilding pop superproducers?
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I was all set to write a story about Pepsi's latest "buy a lot of soda and we'll give you something of much lesser value for the bottlecaps" promotion, which is going to allow users to swap their tops for MP3s at Amazon's digital-music store and be advertised via a Super Bowl commercial featuring Justin Timberlake (what, no Janet Jackson?), and how maybe using Timberlake to promote this when he hasn't put out an album in nearly a year and a half isn't exactly the best way to get people excited about expanding their digital-music libraries. But flogging nearly dead horses is the least of the music industry's problems, as evidenced by this quote hidden deep in this Times story on the Amazon-Pepsi alliance:
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