Track Marks: How The Robert Smith/Ashlee Simpson Team-Up Became This Week’s Biggest Rumor In The World
Welcome to another edition of Track Marks, in which your Idolators perform an autopsy on the latest band burning up the MP3-blogger charts. Today, however, we’ll take a look at one of the week’s most blogged-about rumors:
Artists: Robert Smith, Ashlee Simpson Project: A rumored collaboration on Simpson’s upcoming album. First mention: A March 22, 2007 story on Entertainment Weekly‘s website. The Build-Up: For whatever reason, NME randomly picked it up this morning–a full week after EW ran it. The Dam-Break: A few hours later, ripple reports appeared on Stereogum and Pitchfork, the latter of which called the news “perplexing at best, disheartening at worst.” And, of course, it’s now on every other blog in the world. Unfortunately, none of them picked up on the fact that even EW‘s Cure-Simpson news-break is merely “reportedly” happening. In summary: No one knows what the hell is going on–or if anything is going on at all.
