This week Billboard published its final charts dated in the 2011 calendar year. All in all, there were 31 LPs that rose to #1 on the Top 200 in 2011, several of which we highlighted in both our Summer and Fall Music Previews. We dissected the 13 chart-toppers from the first half of the year back in late June. (Adele’s 21 still ruled when all was said and done, with over 5 million copies sold by the end of December.) Now flip through the gallery of the 18 albums that triumphed from July on! More »
Hooray, I qualified to get a free MP3 of “Bury Me Alive,” the first single from the Carly Smithson/Evanescence dudes project The Fallen! And it sounds… like a big, vaguely gothy, mooky rock song, complete with chorus that’s a bit of a Xerox of that from that band’s 2003 track “Going Under.” This is not a complaint–“Going Under” was actually one of my favorite tracks the year it came out, and it was way superior to their big hit with that vestigial tail of a “rap” verse”–but I figured it was worthy of mention. Smithson’s voice sounds in fine form, if a bit studio-massaged, and the band sounds, you know, like a band trying to get on modern-rock radio. I hope it works, because as has been mentioned before, that format is way bereft of ladies. More »
The gates have been opened at the official site for The Fallen, the band featuring former American Idol Carly Smithson and a smattering of dudes who were booted from Evanescence. And the site’s even giving away a free MP3–although you have to sign up with an e-mail address and a mobile number, and then wait to see if you were one of the first 100,000 people to sign up and qualify for one of the free downloads. Dum de dum. More »
Yesterday’s news that former American Idol contestant Carly Smithson would be joining up with a bunch of ex-members of nu-goth outfit Evanescence to form a band called The Fallen apparently got Amy Lee, Evanescence’s figurehead / Billy Corgan character, in a snit. So she released a statement on her band’s Web site letting everyone know that hey, she is still around and making music under the Evanescence name, and she would like some of that press attention that all of the people she once collaborated with to go in her direction! More »
