A New Order-biting track from an ever-fameballing pop starlet that will make you get down on your knees and pray… that she decides to make a career change. More »
Creed continued its promotional jaunt for its just-out album Full Circle today with a stop at Live With Regis And Kelly; the band performed its new single “Rain,” and, uh, well. Let’s just say that for a once-pummeled band that’s inching toward a full-on “hey, they weren’t that bad” critical reappraisal, frontman Scott Stapp sure did sound like he’d ingested some Magical Stay Out Of Tune With The Rest Of The Band beans right before going onstage. Clip after the jump. More »
Chris Brown’s “I Can Transform Ya” video takes the lessons of this summer’s Michael Bay blockbuster to heart, with people in the video changing into fire trucks (an unintentional homage to the semi-iconic video for “Cherry Pie”?), motorcycles, and sleek cars right before your eyes. (You’re supposed to say “ooh” there.) It’s not a groundbreaking clip by any means, but at least this video flagrantly abuses CGI to come up with something that doesn’t look like bad hotel-room art, right? Progress! Clip after the jump. More »
The Detroit Free Press takes a look at the entrepreneurship of the Insane Clown Posse, the Motor City duo who head up an empire that brings in—please take a second to finish whatever beverage you’re drinking—upwards of $10 million a year. They have the Gathering, of course, as well as tie-in DVDs and action figures and T-shirts and a forthcoming sequel to their 2001 film Big Money Hustlas. The combination of capitalist force and music-business longevity has even garnered them something that’s more priceless—respect! More »
Our resident chart guru Chris Molanphy was on WNYC’s On The Media this weekend, where he shared his thoughts on the meaning of the pop charts in an age where music is so atomized. The transcript isn’t up yet, but you can listen to his package—and the rest of the show, which is all about Where Music Is Now—at the link. [On The Media] More »
File this under quotes that I wish had more detail about their inflection: Jarvis Cocker gave the following soundbite to the UK celebrity rag People: “Glastonbury means an awful lot to me, I would love to play there again. We’ve talked about it, there we go, there’ll be a band reunion.” Now, uh, not to rain on parades here, but I have many questions about this quote! For starters, who is the “we” that had this conversation? Is Jarvis referring to the members of the band, or himself and the reporter? And as a follow-up, is that “there we go, there’ll be a band reunion” a revelation that the Glastonbury organizers have already done their cash-waving in the general direction of the split-up Britpop superstars, or a cheeky acknowledgement of how the UK’s gossip-page sausage gets made? I know what side my suspicions reside on… and hey, the NME‘s lede reworks Jarvis’ quote into “Jarvis Cocker has said that Pulp are ‘coming back,’ ” even though those two words appear nowhere in the 26 words quoted by People. Oh well, at least now I have an excuse to post a video, right? Let’s all meet up in the year 2000 (and ten), after the jump! More »
Thanks, Major League Baseball musical-talent bookers, for balancing your first aesthetically semi-decent decision in years with some liberal fanning of those “Why do Fox and MLB and Bud Selig and the world hate Philly??” conspiracy flames that continue to persist among fans of your league’s current World Champs: More »
At least when Limp Bizkit made rap-metal, they had a vague understanding of what “rap” was. More »
A follow-up on some commentariat curiosity from a few weeks back: Pitchfork’s review of the indie-pandering soundtrack to the forthcoming vampire flick Twilight: New Moon, penned by Marc Hogan. The grade: 5.4. The crux of the issue: “The New Moon OST has all the touchstones of what is considered, by many who consider themselves cognoscenti, “good” music… but it uses its tastefulness to solidify the borders of what is acceptable, not to broaden them.” (Ahem.) The best probably unintentional pun, since the word “sparkle” wasn’t used once: “Like the rest of the tracks here, [the Lykke Li contribution] pales in comparison to the work on her own records.” [Pitchfork] More »
