Look, I know Idolator used to be owned by Gawker. But if we really were the Gawker of the music industry, you would have seen so much coverage of Clive Davis‘ Grammy party. You would hear where it was, who was playing, who was invited, who wasn’t invited, who sat next to who, and how you could crash it. You would have gotten gossip from inside, pictures of the food, and a big wrapup post. This would be justified because Clive’s party is the music biz equivalent of the Vanity Fair Oscar party. The VF party gets a lot of attention and coverage from a wide variety of media outlets, and that’s somewhat understandable from a practical if not a moral standpoint: our interest in Hollywood and the star system is always to some degree about power, and by watching what happens at the VF party, we can make conclusions about what’s going on behind the scenes, where people stand, who’s in and who’s out, and so forth and so on. So why wouldn’t we care about Clive Davis’ party, if we’re supposed to be covering the music biz? Well, because the biggest music-related item to come from the party was the news that Whitney Fucking Houston performed.
Welcome to Idolator’s liveblog of the 2009 Grammy Awards, a year in which there will be more spectacle and less award-doling than ever. Well, at least it seems that way: The 3 1/2-hour telecast will have no more than 10 brass gramophones handed out during its running time, presumably because the music industry decided that what it really needed to give it a shot in the arm was a slightly more pretentious version of the Video Music Awards. (And yes, that is Paul McCartney being That Guy—or rather, the Bret Michaels-pioneered variation on That Guy who wears a shirt advertising his own projects—above.) Full minute-by-minute coverage after the jump!
After all the speculation regarding Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” word from my tipsters—as well as the folks at Popjustice—is that it sounds pretty much exactly like “Since U Been Gone,” only minus anything resembling a bridge. In further “let’s stick with what works” news, MJ’s Big Blog is hinting that the above Katy Perry track, “Long Shot,” might be one of the songs on the album. There is one good thing about this little piece of news—which is way too reminiscent of the whole “rejected Avril Lavigne songs” flap that surfaced around the release of My December— and it is the fact that Perry’s vocals on the verses remind me of a way mannered take on the far superior “Go” by the British band Kaito. A clip of that is after the jump.
ARTIST: Whitney Houston
TITLE: “Like I Never Left (ft. Akon)”
WEB DEBUT: July 26, 2008
Rod Stewart will undoubtedly start writing “slave” on his cheek and checking into “this whole Internet thing” now that J Records won’t let him record an album of country standards. What did you expect, Rod? Did you think you’d be able to luck into some “one for you, one for me” trade-off in this economy? Or even a “four for you, one for me” deal? It’s been 15 years since Unplugged…and Seated upended your pop career, and over five since you sold what was left of your career for a Great American Songbook. While I’d love to see you do something more daring (I’m not a big Black Keys fan, but I’d be curious to hear the musical outcome of your bromance), you’ll probably have to shut up and make that Christmas album.
The “song contest” portion of American Idol, in which hopefuls around the country pen the coronation song for one of the Davids whoever winds up winning this season, is enough of a laughingstock that even Simon Cowell’s mocking it: “You can guarantee either the word ‘proud’ or ‘moment’ will be in the song. How about ‘I’m Proud to Be in this Moment Now’?” Ho snap! Well, if it’s that much of a laugh, then there’s no reason I can’t offer my own lyric for next year. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy “There But For The Grace Of Clive.”
Repeatedly cheering “I love you, Trinidad!” when you’re performing in Tobago is an understandable mistake for Whitney Houston to make, but not being able to pull off the end of “I Will Always Love You?” That sounds like trouble. Reports on her thirty minute performance at the Plymouth Jazz Festival must not have pleased Clive Davis or anyone else still invested in her career.
Yesterday, the always-quick-on-the-uptake Fox News writer Roger Friedman posted a story about David Cook having an album out prior to his American Idol appearance, a fact which Friedman presumably noticed because said album, Analog Heart, topped the Amazon MP3 store’s charts this past weekend. (It’s since been pulled.) Friedman even got a little outraged about Cook being a “ringer,” which is pretty funny given that every other singer left in the competition this year has either put out an album (Carly, Brooke) or been on some sort of TV show (Syesha was on The One, Jason was on Cheyenne, and David Archuleta was on Star Search). But the fact that Friedman is just now getting peevish about the sanctity of American Idol‘s contestant pool makes me wonder if one of the record-biz bigwigs he pals around with has put a bee in his bonnet about the possibility of the grunge revivalist Cook beating out the lip-licky Archuleta, who’s seemed to be this season’s chosen one from the start.
The news that Clive Davis is being reassigned to a different, less important post at Sony BMG was a little surprising; after all, his latest prize signing, Leona Lewis, debuted at No. 1 on this week’s album charts, despite her Muzak presence ruining my trip to a bookstore recently. His loss of power is another sign that the era of the mega-act is being read its corporate last rites.
