The Black Eyed Peas hit up Saturday Night Live this past weekend, and also hit (and bludgeoned and pounced on repeatedly) Kathie Lee Gifford. The big letdown was that a.) it was just a SNL skit mocking the Today Show, and not some spontaneous act of rage brought about by rogue, anti-Kathie Lee BEP members, and b.) it wasn’t even the real Kathie Lee, but rather Kristen Wiig’s boozy take on her. 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 »
Today came the announcement from Lady Gaga’s website that The Fame Monster will be released on November 23. It kinda feels this information already made the rounds weeks ago, but apparently it hasn’t been official till now.
Another bit of news: “Telephone,” Gaga’s duet with Beyonce, will follow “Bad Romance” as the second single off the new album. This isn’t to be confused with the remix of “Video Phone,” the other Beyonce/Lady Gaga duet that will appear on the deluxe edition re-release of B’s I Am… Sasha Fierce (also out November 23). MORE »
Britney’s coming to her own defense, releasing a statement regarding the controversy of her lip-synching during her Australian shows. The question is, did she lip-synch the statement? MORE »
Thanks for all of your comments, including the really colorful and nasty ones. By now it’s clear that we’ve made some changes to Idolator. MORE »
How many spins do you give a record before you decide whether it’s a winner or not? We’re the first to admit, there’ve been times when we fully appreciated a song or album only years after it hit (or missed) the charts. But there’s still something to be said for that first time a new piece of music reaches your eardrums, and that’s what this feature is all about. Every so often we’ll be registering our initial thoughts on a new album in real time (ooh, fancy!) and posting the verdict.
First up: Today we’re geared up to listen to Kris Allen’s debut album (posted on AOL’s listening party), and post our song-by-song thoughts while we listen from start to finish. Let’s get to it! MORE »
“Shorty, you ain’t gotta take your panties off… just move ‘em to the side.” Never let it be said that Curtis Jackson isn’t a romantic! MORE »
The video for Robbie Williams’ throwbacky “You Know Me” conceptually flips around the title of the crooning 9/11 conspiracy theorist’s new album, Reality Killed The Video Star. Only here it’s the video that’s killing anything resembling reality, with Williams using an extended dream sequence as an excuse to dress up in a bunny suit and flit around like he’s late for a very important date with a choreographer and a batallion of backup dancers. The video, and five of my favorite things about its way-too-short three minutes, after the jump. MORE »
So much for this being it: Tomorrow night, the British cable channel Sky 1 will broadcast a séance in which psychic Derek Acorah attempts to contact Michael Jackson from the great beyond. The interdimensional chat, which will apparently be held “on an island… in a secret location familiar to Jackson” for the purposes of extra paranormal gobbledygook clogging up the transmissions, will be broadcast live. Acorah is a TV pro, hosting TV shows and embarking on tours in the UK, so I’m sure that something will happen during the telecast even if nothing really does, you know? After the jump, the Vaseline-smeared promo for the telefestivities. MORE »
Twangy spitfire Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone was selected by Amazon.com’s editors as the best of 2009, while U2’s No Line On The Horizon was the online retailer’s best-selling album this year. That’s according to a just-released year-end package that jumps the “happy new year” gun by quite a few days. Sure, boosting these albums now will probably be great for the holiday sales, but it’s too bad that publishing the list now means that the likes of R. Kelly’s Untitled and Shakira’s She Wolf didn’t get their critical due. Oh wait, there are no pop-as-pop albums on the editors’ list anyway. Silly me! Top 25s for both lists after the jump.
THE GOOD: It sure is fascinating to see the sales demographics of Amazon out themselves via the Bestsellers list—U2, Susan Boyle, Diana Krall, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan make up the top five, while younger-skewing top-selling 2009 releases like the Hannah Montana soundtrack, Eminem’s Relapse, and the Black Eyed Peas’ The E.N.D. land at Nos. 16, 24, and 25, respectively. At least all generations can agree on Green Day (No. 6)! And it’s nice to see Case’s editorially beloved album performing well on the sales side, too (No. 11).
THE BAD: In addition to Boyle’s pre-order mania landing her at No. 2; two albums on the bestsellers list have been released in the past few weeks: Michael Bublé’s Crazy Love (release date 10/9, No. 9) and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Night Castle (release date 10/26, No. 12). That sort of implies a low bar for high sales, methinks.
THE WHAAAA? This might be a wild and crazy question to pose, but is Steve Martin’s banjo album really the best of its breed to come out this year? MORE »
