Vanity Fair is celebrating its 25th anniversary at present, and as is custom in 2008, they’ve decided to honor their legacy by foisting a bunch of arbitrary “best of” lists onto the public. Instead of the Top 25 Songs Listing Reasons That Graydon Carter Is The Most Important Man In New York, VF throws a curveball and brings us 25 “best” songs hand-picked by the magazine’s editors. Said songs are supposedly the defining tracks of… well, of the Vanity Fair demographic, who must only consume culture that was made between the Berlin Olympics and the introduction of the compact disc. The most recent entry, sole song from the ’80s, and lone hip-hop candidate is Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” (1982); Elvises Costello and Presley are represented, as are the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Stones, and Sinatra. (Not even VF fave Madonna made it in there.) Pretty much if you thought about any song you’d ever heard in a commercial for airlines, baby-boomer retirement plans, or expensive cars, you could cobble together the list, or an approximation of it.
Theoretically, Alex Pappademas’ GQ piece on Journey is about the new lead singer, Arnel Pineda, and his rise to stardom, but hands down, the best parts are courtesy Mr. Neal Schon.
ARTIST: Journey
TITLE: “Never Walk Away”
DEBUT: April 24, 2008
Straight from melodicrock.com–Maura: “A.K.A. ‘where I go to find out about the DANGER DANGER REUNION'”–we learn that “the man in the middle [of this photo] is Philippine vocalist Arnel Pineda (of Asian rock band The Zoo). If you believe the word out there, the deal is done and an announcement will follow in due course.” The “deal” being that Pineda has supposedly been tapped to replace forgettable yarler/warm body Jeff Scott Soto as the lead singer of Journey. How snugly does Pineda fit into Perry’s mullet and jean jacket? Decide for yourself after the jump:
Late yesterday, Journey announced that lead singer Jeff Scott Soto was leaving the band, after serving barely a year as the replacement for the last Journey singer, Steve Augeri. More »
– Steven Tyler has allegedly been telling people he wants to leave Aerosmith; his upper lip, however, still has a three-album deal with Columbia. That one’s all yours, David Spade! More »
