Monday on Idolator: “On the comeback trail and underappreciated? Well. Expect a Slate piece on how [Creed has] always been underrated any day now!” Wednesday on Slate: “It’s time to give Scott Stapp’s nu-grunge foursome another listen. Seriously.” I can’t tell if I’m a clairvoyant genius, or if someone in the Slate editorial matrix decided to just take the bait. Either way, I guess it’s officially time to Let The Healing Begin. Get ready for some critical darling to do a drugged-up cover of “Higher” as a blog-baiting MP3! [Slate] MORE »
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Comebacks
Comebacks
“New York Times” Spearheads Creed Rehabilitation Project
It’s often fun to play the contrarian in arts journalism, to champion the artist who might have been lost to the discount bin or the unfair corporate machination. So it was probably inevitable—hey, tickets to their concerts are going for less than a dollar with service charges—that someone would try to paint recently reunited post-grungers Creed in a sympathetic light. But would you have put money on the possibility that said rehab project would result in a full-page feature in the New York Times‘ Sunday Arts section? MORE »
Comebacks
Garth Brooks’ Thunder Will Roll Once More
Mega-selling country singer Garth Brooks announced this morning that he was ending his eight-year retirement, and that he’d be embarking on an extended run at the Wynn Las Vegas casino and hotel. And apparently Brooks hasn’t let the recent woes of the record industry dampen his enthusiasm for the grand gesture: Reuters reports that immediately following his announcement, he transported reporters to an “undisclosed location” via private jet. Whoa. MORE »
Comebacks
Amy Winehouse Has Another Day Like This
Perpetually troubled singer Amy Winehouse returned to performing on TV over the weekend on the UK show Strictly Come Dancing, where she was a backup singer for her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield’s performance of the Shirelles classic “Mama Said.” Bromfield’s performance sort of gave me the eerie feeling that I’d get when I watched Winehouse sing live before her well-documented troubles—technically she sounded pretty spot-on, but the 13-year-old singer’s performance was somewhat lifeless. (You couldn’t really tell if the “days like this” of which she sang were truly dark, or just, like, days when she’d burned her toast.) As for Amy, well, she started off strong but then faltered, flailing out of sync with the two backup singers flanking her; there were many points during the performance when I was wondering if her microphone had even been turned on. Clip after the jump. MORE »
Comebacks
Scott Storch Distances Himself From His Recent Past
Superproducer-in-foreclosure Scott Storch is apparently gearing up for the “redemption” arc of his career, what with this Details profile in which he talks about his cocaine habit (which was sparked by a friend sharing a line with him in 2005), his favorite hangover cure during the flush days (buying an expensive car), and all the sex he’s had. While he doesn’t explain his often awful taste in eyewear, he does disavow pretty much all the music he made during his binge-and-sniff period, which includes decade-of-decadence curios like the Paris Hilton solo album and Brooke Hogan’s first singing effort: MORE »
Comebacks
Britney Spears Prepares To Cut It Out
On Saturday, Britney Spears debuted the newest addition to her current tour’s set list: A cover of “You Oughta Know,” the Alanis Morrissette post-breakup anthem that scorched radios with its tales of movie-theater blowjobs and back-raking sex when it debuted in 1995. Why Britney added this song to her set at this late stage of her tour is beyond me, but I’m hoping it has more to do with solidarity among former kiddie stars than it does any personal-life trauma (or, god help me, latent obsessions with Dave Coulier). After the jump, a clip courtesy of a very excited attendee: MORE »
Comebacks
Music Biz Hoping That Whitney Houston’s New Album Will Restore At Least A Little Honor To Its Doings
Whitney Houston’s I Look To You comes out on Monday, and a lengthy piece in Variety analyzes the potential for it to shake up what’s been a pretty dreadful year for the music marketplace. That it’ll be No. 1 on the charts in its debut week is something of a given; the only artists who have albums coming out next week and anything resembling similar commercial potential are Pitbull and They Might Be Giants. But will Whitney’s first week put up monster numbers like Eminem (whose Relapse had a first-week sales total of 608,000, the biggest in ‘09), or will her bow be more similar to Reba McEntire’s 96,000-sold No. 1 debut? MORE »
Comebacks
Limp Bizkit Are Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’ (What?) Back Into The Studio
Are you feeling sad that there won’t be a Woodstock ‘99 tribute concert? Well, have no fear: Limp Bizkit is heading back in the studio in the next few weeks! I guess the country’s mood got just angry enough for the Red Baseball Cap Of Disadvantaged White Male Rage to be brandished again—and now there are even strange dinosaur-related metaphors involved! MORE »
Comebacks
Resurgent LFO Now Trying To Bring Back The Other Bad Parts Of The ’90s
Earlier this afternoon I was absently listening to my iTunes library, and a song came on that made me wonder at first if someone had decided to play a trick on me by adding pieces of the Offspring’s back catalog to my playlist. Given that this scenario is pretty much logistically impossible at present, I was forced to check out what song I was hearing. As it turned out, the song was by a band that made its bones in the ’90s, albeit at the very tail end of the decade! MORE »
Comebacks
Aqua Curiously Rebrands Itself As An Eighties Nostalgia Act
So, after months of working it out in front of live audiences, the Danish-Norwegian dance collective Aqua has finally released “Back To The ’80s,” in which they not only nostalgize the decade, they try to revise history and insert their decidedly ’90s hit “Barbie Girl” into it. One might think that this is merely a case of Aqua thinking that the last decade wasn’t good in a monolithic-touchstone sort of way, but they’re actually entering into a long tradition of artists who have paid nostalgic tribute to the constantly misunderstood decade via the power of song. After the jump, a few other tracks that tried to get a handle on the most-nostalgized decade since the ’50s. (Or maybe the ’60s?) MORE »
