The musically omnivorous site Popdose reviewed High School Musical-spawned starlet Ashley Tisdale’s Guilty Pleasure, and the report, despite having the subtitle “How Bad Can It Be?”, is actually not all that bad: Writer Jack Feerick has fun playing what he calls “Spot The Influence” with the album and marveling at its unhingedness, although he hates that the act of listening to it has unwittingly dragged him into the Loudness Wars that previously trapped people who committed the crime of wanting to listen to Metallica’s Death Magnetic: More »
Our look at the closing lines of the week’s biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Guilty Pleasure, the second solo effort from High School Musical alum Ashley Tisdale: More »
In the latest mission of his quest to milk the nostalgia of any group that has disposable income, Barry Manilow is releasing an all-covers album of songs from the 1980s next month. Manilow will take on “Careless Whisper,” “Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now),” “Islands In The Stream” (with Reba McEntire), and… “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Yes, that’s right: We’ve evolved as a society in such a way that even Barry Freakin’ Manilow has to pander to those people on the Internet who still think the phenomenon of “Rickrolling”–in which you make yourself laugh by surprising whoever you’re engaged in instant-messenger chatter with a link to a clip of Rick Astley singing his 1987 hit–is funny. You’d think that the man who sang on many a McDonald’s ad would deserve a break today, but I guess this is the time we live in. Anyway, it’s time to figure out how Manilow will fare against other people who have tried to hop on the Rickrolling bandwagon! I’ve placed five other covers of Astley’s signature track after the jump.
In two weeks, the soundtrack to Disney’s High School Musical 3 will land in stores, the final album in the trilogy of records that helped make adults who didn’t have children realize that the Mouse was still a force to be reckoned with in terms of delivering squeaky-clean pop music to the next generation. But will 3 give a boost to the album chart similar to those bestowed upon it by its two predecessors, which sold four million and 3.3 million copies, respectively?
When I heard that one of the songs on the soundtrack for High School Musical 3, which is bypassing the Disney Channel for a theatrical release this fall, was going to be called “I Want It All,” I was hoping it would be an updated version of the song by the electro-twee act Bis, with maybe a… More »
Ashley Tisdale’s cover of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” has finally hit the web in its entirety. Naturally, some YouTube yuksters are rickrolling Tisdale fans, claiming to have the new track while offering the old, but we’re looking out for our Degree Girls out there. More »
