As we approach the end of a summer in which some (including including our esteemed editor) claim that there was no one Song of Summer thanks to Michael Jackson looming large in the afterlife, we are a few weeks away from a rare act of chart dominance: Total Hot 100 ownership by a single act for every week of a calendar season.
The Black Eyed Peas have held the top spot on Billboard’s flagship chart for 21 weeks, so long that they’ve already set a new record for consecutive dominance by a single act (beating Usher). Billboard has celebrated that feat with copious coverage.
But for cultural critics who care less about raw chart statistics and more about how said numbers reflect the Zeitgeist, owning an entire summer lock, stock and barrel is a more interesting accomplishment. Depending on whether you define “summer” as going from Memorial Day to Labor Day or from June 21 to Sept. 22, the Peas either have this feat locked up or are just a few weeks away from it.
If they actually make it all the way to mid-September, the Peas will be the first credited artist (not just writer or featured act) to dominate for a full American summer. But several other acts have come pretty close. More »
The folks at industry rag Hits have a handy chart of the albums coming out in the last months of the year, which, who knows, may be the last one in which a chart like this is even necessary! But even though we’re a long way from the days of 50 Cent and Kanye West squaring off on the anniversary of 9/11, it’s still sort of fun to see what CDs will be landing at America’s retailers on the same day. After the jump, five of the best battles that could arise from the coming release-date schedule. (Marketing departments, get your beef stew recipes ready!) More »
A public service announcement to those of you who felt scarred by the 3OH!3/Katy Perry atrocity in the previous post: The new single by Danish popsters Alphabeat premiered on Radio 1 earlier today, and while I have yet to find an embeddable stream of the radio rip, Mediafire links are “out there.” (Although as expected for the August premiere of a single that isn’t out until October, said streams are getting pulled down pretty quickly.) The song’s a fun little bit of retro-pastiche called “The Spell”; by some chance of iTunes coincidence my first spin of it segued into Jody Watley’s “Don’t You Want Me,” and it sounded perfect. Needless to say that’s an endorsement from these quarters! (Popjustice has a snippet here.) [MySpace; thanks Candice!] More »
Dig if you will this picture: Weeks-rancid margarine that’s been stuck in the microwave for 30 seconds, then left to reconstitute itself on whatever plate it’s been placed on, creating a shapeless, smelly mess that would need to be soaked in Dawn for at least three hours in order to be ridden from your kitchen. What would a song based on that image sound like, do you think? Lucky for us, two pop forces of now have decided to figure it out! More »
A trailer for Madonna’s video for “Celebration.” That’s preceded by a video ad. Which actually runs four seconds longer than the clip itself. And did I mention that it’s streaming from Perez Freaking Hilton’s site? I’d take this as a sign that I should go outside… but it’s pouring, and will be for at least the next 36 hours. Curse you, Madonna! At least you could have thrown some blatant Catholic imagery in with your over-remixed dancing! [Music Is The Heart Of Our Soul] More »
How not to react after you get tossed from a concert, courtesy a 28-year-old man who got the boot from a Def Leppard show in Utah after being drunk (but who apparently wasn’t smashed enough to successfully sneak back into the show before being caught by the venue’s security guards one more time): More »
The first clip of Kylie Minogue’s appearance in the A.R. Rahman-directed film Blue—which, according to the trailer, will be “India’s biggest underwater thriller”—has come out. “Chiggy Wiggy,” from what I can tell from this all-too-brief clip, is very very catchy, the sort of song that I can see inspiring multiple YouTube bedroom-dance tributes. To round out this post, and in the spirit of an August Friday, here is a Tweet in which Kylie posts a picture with her dog. [YouTube via We Are Pop Slags; HT Job] More »
Do any of you out there watch Bridezillas? I think it’s a telling commentary on the current moment that so many of the crazyperson weddings featured within are pretty low-budget affairs—hell, there was even one woman on the show who catered her own reception as a way of cutting costs. But really, who has money to throw around anymore in an era where Vh1’s “Fabulous Life Of…” specials are more interesting for the aftermath of their feature-ees, many of whom are currently broke and/or in jail and/or definitely not as “fabulous” as they were back in the day? Which is why this just-released list of “the most expensive wedding bands” (topped, of course, by the Rolling Stones) seems so oddly timed. I know August is a tough time for the music-news feature well, but in the post-Madoff era is there anyone with $8.176 million to blow on just the band? At least with that sort of food budget, you can get, like, an ice sculpture of the married couple. Anyway, the list of the big-money artists—which somehow includes Jennifer Lopez?!—after the jump. More »
Fall Out Boy’s “Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet” now has a video, a clip that was apparently shot in the space of four hours and that fuses Weekend At Bernie’s with a rollercoaster-filled trip to the amusement park. (Yes, the brief Absolute Punk-referencing clip featuring Wentz’s body being discovered by Spencer Smith and Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco that leaked last week was a trailer for the video.) Clip after the jump. More »
ARTIST: Mariah Carey
TITLE: “I Want To Know What Love Is”
WEB DEBUT: Aug. 27, 2009 More »
