As you might have noticed, this is a bittersweet week around here; because of budget cuts, we’ve had to say goodbye to pretty much all the Idolator contributing writers, from columnists to daily bloggers. The site is going to go on as a solo project of sorts, although the news cycle might run at a slightly slower pace. I just wanted to take a moment on this crappy day to thank everyone who’s contributed to the site during my tenure, from the people who helped me sift through the news cycle every day to the columnists, each of whom expanded the focus of the site. More »
ARTISTS: will.i.am, David Foster, Faith Hill, Seal, Bono, and Mary J. Blige
TITLE: “America’s Song”
WEB DEBUT: Jan. 19, 2009
When trying to figure out how how important, or unimportant, pop music has become, one of the problems you run into is differentiating between music being discussed as art and entertainment, and music being discussed as a sort of hobby for celebrities. A creepy article about Madonna on Tina Brown’s new blog thing is a good working definition of the latter, and the audio clip accompanying it is just plain odd.
If, like Jess, you enjoyed Andrew WK’s song about the McLaughlin Group from radio show Fair Game, you will love Scott Bateman’s cartoon adaptation of it, since it features a dancing cat, an astronaut, the grim reaper, and Pat Buchanan. (Pat is the one without the hood.) More »
Blender, the mag where you come for the reviews and leave quickly before you see how bad the features are, has a list of the “20 biggest record company screw-ups of all time.” Some are obvious, like the industry’s inability to deal with the internet (No. More »
Surely I can’t have been the only person a little disappointed that the song chosen to pay tribute to Leonard Cohen when inducting him into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame was “Hallelujah.” It’s a great song, certainly, but it’s most strongly associated with Jeff Buckley, to such a degree that some people don’t even know Cohen wrote it. Worse, the version performed by Damien Rice is the Buckley version, with its ascending melody line in the final chorus and persistent falsetto. It’d be like playing a rock version of “All Along the Watchtower” at Bob Dylan’s induction–a fine song, but not really the best choice. So what would’ve been better, and who should’ve sung it? Well, just pick any two of the following:
Bruce Dickinson, of Iron Maiden, has co-written a horror film. Sadly, it is not an adaptation of Dante’s Inferno with Maiden mascot Eddie as Dante, Lemmy from Motorhead as Virgil, and members of other metal bands as the denizens of hell. It is just something or other about Aleister Crowley. More »
Given that she’s attempting a return to normalcy, it makes a kind of cosmic sense that Britney Spears is guest-starring on How I Met Your Mother. Back in the glory years of the sitcom, nothing was more normal than a past-their-prime popstar dropping lame zingers in front of a live studio audience. More »
No matter what you think of Timbo, if you want to get a good idea of what the new music industry model might look like, the following clip of Tim at work on his new bus is a good roadmap. It’s also pretty awesome.
On the one hand, having a contest co-sponsored by Pitchfork and Guitar Center lends support to Jim DeRogatis’ “they’re the new Rolling Stone!” argument. On the other hand, if you win, you get a lesson in sampler use from the RZA. (You also get a contact high at no additional charge.) More »
