Kelly Clarkson had her turn in the New York Times‘ “Playlist” chair yesterday, and the results were, well, mixed. Weezer’s red album got a shoutout, as did the Irish band The Script, who Clarkson described as–eek!–”OneRepublic meets rap.” Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. Aw, Kelly. Listen. In honor of you being my favorite American Idol (and having one of my favorite albums of the year) (well, except for all those songs by the OneRepublic guy, which are just plodding and terrible and tuneless and ugh), I decided to craft a mix CD for you. Because girl, there is there is so much music out there that you would love–and that would probably love you back! MORE »
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pointless listmaking
A Very Special Mix CD: Ten Songs That Kelly Clarkson Should Listen To That Aren’t “Pork & Beans”
the nimbus of their fame
Dear Lady GaGa: Sorry, But You Do “Look Like The Other Perfect Pop Singers”
Look, I know that your whole schtick is that you’re “in on the joke” regarding the dubious honor that is “celebrity” in this degraded age–the videos featuring reality-show castoffs that leave recreations of the crash that killed Princess Diana on the cutting room floor, the palling around with the noxious-yet-known Perez Hilton, the whole thing, the extensive library of quotes about not wearing pants. But dressing up in bubbles, lipstick, and not much else for the freaking cover of Rolling Stone and then blathering about how you don’t look like a pop star? You’re just doing this to get peoples’ noses out of joint, aren’t you? MORE »
web 2.no
Why Tech Pundits Should Just Shut Up About The Music Business, Continued: Mourn Not The Precious, Money-Losing Startups
I am no fan of the major labels or their business practices by any stretch, but more and more these days, when I come across a tech-blog post that has as its thesis something like “Is [Evil Record Company X] Killing [Innocent And Pure Digital-Music Startup Y]?” I want to go out and buy a truckload of Pussycat Dolls CDs–at full price!–just for the purposes of throwing them at the clueless “evangelists” who pen them, over and over again, while blithely ignoring the fact that music may actually have a cost, and as such, may be worth something. MORE »
noon as the news
Christina Aguilera’s New Role Is Going To Be Quite A Stretch
In today’s lunchtime headlines: Christina Aguilera goes go-go, Jeff Tweedy gets served, and Rihanna cancels a gig in the Middle East. MORE »
bad
Nicole Scherzinger’s Solo Career Will Happen By Hook Or By Crook
The Pussycat Dolls’ new single is the throwbacky, “I Will Survive”-biting track “Hush Hush,” and one thing sort of flies out at you from the single’s cover: The “featuring Nicole Scherzinger” that denotes that only one of the Dolls is providing the lead vocals on the track. Which isn’t much of a secret; indeed, commenters here have noted that the Dolls’ debut album PCD had some fine print pointing out that La Scherz provided “all lead and backing vocals,” and the tales of her solo debut’s woes were this site’s bread and butter for quite a while. But one of the other Dolls has had more than enough of playing second fiddle in a group that she’s allegedly a member of! MORE »
pointless listmaking
Twitter’s Most-Chatted-About Artists List: It’s Not As Trent Reznor-Heavy As You Might Think
The microblogging service Twitter has really taken off this week, thanks in large part to its ability to both refract the narcissistic impulses of the famous and allow anyone with an e-mail address to act Just Like The Stars. Sometimes, though, it is actually sort of useful! The music-chatter-charting site We Are Hunted released what it’s saying is a list of yesterday’s 85 most-mentioned artists on the 140-character-limited service, and what’s probably most surprising is its middle-of-the-roadness–Taylor Swift, who’s an avid Tweeter herself, tops the chart, and mainstreamy artists like Lady GaGa, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears are all in the top 10 while Nine Inch Nails (No. 19) and Radiohead (No. 17) have to do with only making the top 20. Oh no, the not-cool people are taking over the Web! Guess it’s time to go back to BBSes. Full list after the jump. MORE »
100 and single
Fergie Power: How the Spun-Off Diva Dragged Her Homeboys to No. 1
Let’s imagine that in 1992, just after Nevermind peaked, Dave Grohl took a break from Nirvana to form Foo Fighters. I mean, why not? Grohl was a gun for hire, at least the sixth drummer to sit in with the band before they finally broke big. And let’s say he scored some of those juicy Foos radio hits right away: “This Is a Call,” “Big Me,” maybe “Monkey Wrench” too.
And then imagine he came back in ’93 to Nirvana in time for In Utero, making them even bigger than they already were—not just reliable album-sellers but the kind of band able to score regular Top 40 radio hits. Grohl would be transformed, from Kurt Cobain’s potent-but-silent sidekick, to coequal band focal point.
It’s a little hard to imagine for all sorts of reasons, not least the fact that Grohl was too respectful of Cobain to form his own project until both Kurt and the band were dead and gone. But the scheduling is also fanciful—who has that kind of time, to get a successful solo career going while keeping up with a best-selling group?
The fact is, it’s exceedingly rare for a successful side project to not only coexist with the original group but bring that stalwart act to new pop-chart heights. In fact, in chart history, it’s only happened three times (really, more like two and a half).
The third of these three acts is this week sitting atop Billboard’s Hot 100, in the form of the Black Eyed Peas*. “Boom Boom Pow” is, oddly, the act’s first No. 1—but it’s gun-for-hire Fergie’s fourth. MORE »
the biz
Does The Dearth Of One-Hit Wonders Mean We’ve Hit Rock Bottom?
Yesterday I was half-watching VH1’s countdown of ’80s one-hit wonders (because there is nothing on TV on Sunday afternoons except America’s Next Top Model marathons and you can only watch those so many weekends in a row), and it got me thinking. Are there less one-hit wonders than there used to be? Certainly they’re still around, as there always are and always will be: neither Mims nor the Shop Boyz went anywhere after their massive hits (”This Is Why I’m Hot” and “Party Like a Rockstar,” in case you forgot, like I did). But a lot of acts that seem like one-hit wonders have had successful follow-ups. Soulja Boy, seemingly the one-hittiest of wonders, is doing real well with “Kiss Me Thru The Phone,” Flo Rida managed to squeeze out a follow-up hit, and the Pussycat Dolls seem to have an actual career. All anecdotal evidence, of course, but compared to the avalanche of choreographers, celebrity siblings, soundtrack composers, and English cabaret singers who managed to get a hit in the ’80s, it seems positively healthy. But why is it happening? MORE »
possibly upcoming releases
Universal Music Group Still Pouring Money Into Nicole Scherzinger’s “Solo” Career
And no, this isn’t an April Fool: The Pussycat Dolls‘ underperforming Doll Domination (it’s shifted 314,000 units as of this writing) is being re-released later this month in (sigh) “2.0″ form, which basically means that the girl group’s cash-in tracks from The City and Slumdog Millionaire will be tacked on to the album, and the whole package will be re-presented to Americans in the hopes that they might actually care. (Cough.) Of course, lead Doll Nicole Scherzinger took the opportunity presented by the album’s reissue and ran with it in an even more self-promotional way: MORE »
The Paradiso Girls Have Been Suspended In Amber For The Past Four Years
“Patron Tequila” is the debut single from the Paradiso Girls, a girl group masterminded by Pussycat Dolls creator Robin Antin whose most famous member was a runner-up in the short-lived CW singing/ass-shaking competitive reality show Fetch Me A Skank The Search For The Next Doll. According to various bits of Internet lore, the track was supposed to be on Keri Hilson’s long-delayed In A Perfect World…, but it was pulled from the track listing at the last minute. Which is probably not a bad thing, given that there are four big reasons it sounds like the perfectly wrong song for the current national mood. MORE »
