The long-rumored Rolling Stone cover story in which American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert comes clean about being gay, a fact that anyone who met him in Los Angeles over the past years was probably well aware of, has finally made its way to the Internet. And oh boy is the money quote that USA Today–which went with the very simple “Adam Lambert is gay.” lede in its piece on the story–picked out going to get all the Kradam fanfictioneers excited: More »
The Hot Issue of Rolling Stone is generally an excuse for the magazine to cram as many pulse-raising pictures of scantily clad young women into the magazine’s pages as possible. But the occasional dude gets props, too, and in this issue, the two guys who wrote what is probably the jingle of the year–“Gimme Back That Filet-O-Fish”–are singled out as “Hot Jingle Writers.” (They also get to wear pants in their photo. Lucky them!) Did you know that Joey Auch and Josh Peck’s vocal inspiration for the peeved Big-Mouth Billy Bass in the ad was David Byrne? I didn’t hear it at first, but now it’s all I can focus on. And hey, the two also make music when they aren’t working for the ad man, and it’s actually pretty OK! More »
New York Times, May 15: “Video Game Sales Continue to Fall.” Variety, May 18: “Rolling Stone takes stab at gaming.” Well, any port in a storm, I guess… [Image via Amazon] More »
Boy, who did the Bob Dylan cheese off over at Rolling Stone HQ to lose his Most Favored Artist status? His new album Together Through Life only received four stars from Jann Wenner’s ostensibly rock-and-roll magazine. Usually, they hand out five-star raves to Dylan records like weird versions of Mountain Dew at college radio conventions. Heck, isn’t the “give superstars good ratings even if their records are terrible” rule called “The Dylan Rule”? Did Rolling Stone suddenly grow a conscience about the five stars they gave that Mick Jagger record a few years back and decide to start rating things on a semi-reasonable level? Perhaps, but what does a four-star review from RS even mean? More »
Aside from holidays where major news events happen, thus disrupting one’s chance to actually get away from her laptop and have a life, April Fool’s Day is probably the most annoying 24-hour stretch on the professional blogger’s calendar, thanks to everyone on the Internet thinking they’re funny. Despite that not really being true! After the jump, a running tally of pranks from various music-related entities; it’ll be updated throughout the day, because Lord knows I need to do something with all the “comedy” clogging up my RSS reader right now.
Ad Age reports that hip-hop magazine Vibe will reduce its frequency from 12 issues a year to 10, merge its print and digital operations, and institute a four-day workweek (and pay cuts) for employees as a way to deal with the recession. The magazine is also introducing a twice-yearly tabloid that will focus more on celebrity than music, upping its subscription rates, and slashing its paid circulation by 25%.
