Yesterday we brought you the Top 5 Pop Stars Who Should Never Act Again, where, miraculously, Mariah Carey was kept off the list because of her work in Precious. (Okay, her part only lasts two scenes and she sat at a desk the whole time, but progress is progress.) Unfortunately, she’s still not quite skilled enough to make today’s list of pop singers who have proven they’ve actually got some acting chops. MORE »
Mariah Carey managed to validate her acting career by dressing down and taking a humble, supporting part in depress-o-rama indie flick Precious, which opened this past weekend. We can’t believe the reigning champion of Pop Stars Pretending to Be Actresses has done on-screen work people can actually enjoy non-ironically. Brava, Mariah. Our little hoochy-dressed girl’s all grown up.
Mariah’s earned our respect, but there are tons of other pop acts who, to paraphrase Mean Girls, keep trying to make this “acting” thing happen. It’s not going to happen!
After the jump, our Top 5 picks for pop stars who seriously need to leave acting to the professionals: MORE »
Pitchfork’s “P2K” project completed its first installment today, with its countdown of the best singles released between 2000 and “sometime in mid-2009″ revealing its top 20. The site bequeathed its “No. 1 single of the decade” title on OutKast’s “B.O.B.”—which, as it turns out, was also No. 1 for the site’s best of 2000-2004 list from a few years back. I actually don’t have a problem with either the pick or the implied classic-rock consistency; the messy chaos of “B.O.B.,” which splatted all over the genre map when it came out at the beginning of this decade, was and remains, as the ‘Fork’s Stuart Berman writes, “a future-shocked ferocity… that just cannot be duplicated.” But it made me wonder about how well the songs from the first part of the decade had aged in the minds of writers—and, by extension, the minds of people who love arguing over every proclamation Pitchfork makes. Let’s get counting down! MORE »
While I am fully aware that the NPR music-centric program All Songs Considered has its name because of the public-radio network’s news block All Things Considered, it still pained me to see the results of their reader poll for The Best Music Of 2009 So Far (Because The Music-News Well Is Dry And We Need Some Pageviews, Now, Don’t We). If Camera Obscura’s brilliant “French Navy” showing up way too low on the best-songs list was the only issue I had with it, I probably wouldn’t be posting. But two Decemberists songs in the top 10? A Lily Allen track that isn’t the unnerving “Everyone’s At It”? No Micachu/Ida Maria/Dinosaur Jr.? Not even a token No. 30 mention for Kelly Clarkson? Sigh. So, perhaps we can spend a chunk of this hazy, news-free afternoon coming up with our own rebuttal list of their rundown of best songs? And then we can all have a little blog contretemps, or at least a mix-CD exchange. The NPR list after the jump. MORE »
It’s almost the end of June in a year that ends in a nine! What that means: The runup to crafting “Best Records Of The Decade” lists by those people who are still holding on to the music-writer dream despite all evidence to the contrary is going to begin very soon, and get pretty heated as the days get shorter and the temperatures begin dropping. (Although you know what’s going to be even worse? Doing it all over again next year for those people who sniff that “since there was no year zero, a decade runs from 01-10, piker.”) MORE »
Last night, TRL said goodbye, and while doing so, it listed the ten most influential videos that hit it big on the program. Normally, a TRL list wouldn’t be worth the oaktag its cue cards were printed on, but surprisingly, whoever made the picks for this list pretty much nailed it; the ten songs truly did define the five-year span during which pop was ruled by MTV’s afternoon countdown show. You rarely see an era officially ending, and you almost never get the era to sum itself up so accurately, so now that we’re five years past TRL’s hegemony, let’s try and figure out what it was like–and figure out what era we’re in now. MORE »
