No Doubt has filed suit against the video-game company Activision over the use of its band member’s avatars in the just-released Guitar Hero variant Band Hero, thanks to the ability for players to put Gwen Stefani through the paces of the hooker-glorifying “Honky Tonk Women.” Also, bassist Tony Kamal can be cross-dressed into singing “Just A Girl.” This usage of Stefani’s and Kamal’s likenesses, the suit claims, “transformed No Doubt band members into a virtual karaoke circus act.” Uh, hang on a second, I thought the utterly superfluous Talk Talk cover accomplished that task way back in 2003? [AP] MORE »
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Lawsuits
No Doubt Are Not Feeling Hella Good About Their “Band Hero” Cameos
f2k
No. 47: Akon, “Sorry, Blame It On Me”
You’d think that someone would have told Akon, the go-to hook man of the mid-’00s, that starting his apologia “Sorry, Blame It On Me” by saying that he intended “to apologize for things I have done, and things that haven’t occurred yet, and things they don’t want to take responsibility for” probably wasn’t the best way to come off as a sincere guy. Then again, you’d think that someone would have told him the old “the dog ate my Internet while I was on tour with Gwen Stefani” excuse wasn’t really going to fly, either. MORE »
videodrone
Paramore Gets Trapped In The Closet
Paramore’s video for “Ignorance,” the punchy first single from their forthcoming album Brand New Eyes, is a pretty straightforward affair with an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia; the band’s stuck in a closet with only a lightbulb brandished by lead singer Hayley Williams to guide them, while in other shots Williams sports some very Gwen Stefani-esque bondage gear while being confined by what looks like a giant test-tube. The song is a bit darker than most of the fare from the band’s previous full-length Riot!, and I’m pretty amped to hear where the group will do with its unbridled energy and Williams’ unabashed love for the Twilight-sanitized version of this world’s “dark side.” Clip after the jump. MORE »
idolator's american idolatry
Five Female Pop Stars Who Should Definitely Not Fill Paula Abdul’s “American Idol” Chair
Fox today outlined its plans for replacing Paula Abdul at the American Idol judges’ table, and somewhat unfortunately, they involve retaining the four-judge panel that was instituted on the show last year. The show is going to bring in guest judges! “Our intention is to have guest judges be female pop stars, female performers,” Fox Entertainment chair Peter Rice said. Signed for next season so far: A & R expert Katy Perry and tabloid fixture Victoria Beckham. Even though Beckham is more known for her stick-thin figure and the clothes she hangs on it these days, she was a Spice Girl, right? Uh, sure. Any Idol watcher knows that Fox will likely make some sort of misstep in selecting other people to round out the panel; as a sort of pre-emptive strike against that, we offer up five female pop stars whose presence would make the new-look Idol judges’ table even more farcical than it already is. MORE »
the biz
Katy Perry Hates How The Music Industry Runs Hot And Cold With New Artists
“@katyperry tweeted some pretty universal ideas re: artist development last night… or the lack thereof today,” Dave Navarro noted on Twitter this morning, adding that in his not-so-humble opinion, any Pink Floyd of today would have probably been dropped before they had the chance to make their own Dark Side Of The Moon. (Your mileage may vary on the fallout from that particular scenario, of course.) What did Perry—who, despite not yet being 25, has been in the music business for what could be seen as a long time—have to say? A slightly edited-for-clarity version of her Tweets after the jump. MORE »
official statements
Hayley Williams Wants Everyone To Know That Paramore Is Still A Band
Hayley Williams’ solo contribution to the soundtrack for Jennifer’s Body has led some outlets to engage in a bit of speculation over whether the Paramore singer would be embarking on a solo career anytime soon. But in a post to the band’s Livejournal, she’s pretty adamant over the fact that her solo track is a one-off, and that even though she admires her tourmate Gwen Stefani, she won’t be following in Stefani’s uncomfortably shod solo-career footsteps anytime soon: MORE »
the biz
Will “Vinyl Saturday” Drag People Back To The Record Stores?
The people behind the one-day indie-music-retail blowout Record Store Day are hoping so; they’ve declared the third Saturday of every month Vinyl Saturday, on which limited-edition vinyl releases will be available at participating indie shops. The first installment is Saturday, June 20, and there will be four special releases on shelves that day: 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 »
Idolator Goes To Mexico
La Búsqueda De La Música Mexicana: Part 1
Recently the New York Times ran a feature about working-class Mexican immigrants using their cell phones rather than iTunes to buy and listen to music, which, as you can imagine, has sent both music and telecommunications types into a tizzy. The poster children of this new era of regional Mexican cell phone music are the members of Los Pikadientes de Caborca, a ragtag group of musicians from rural Sonora whose song “La Cumbia del Río” went viral via cell phones and eventually landed them a record deal with Sony. The song is fun and bouncy and exactly the kind of thing that one should play through a cell phone, but Mexico is a huge country of almost 110 million people and it’s, you know, right next door. So I figured it was high time that coverage of Mexican music delved a little deeper than business models built on novelty songs. MORE »
listening station
No Doubt Is Sick Of Easy Fashion
Gwen Stefani and No Doubt are getting back together for a tour this summer, and in preparation for that they’ve decided to cover another song from the 1980s. Adam and the Ants‘ olde-tyme ode to highway robbery “Stand And Deliver” gets the honors, in a cover that makes the “band” part of No Doubt kind of irrelevant; really, this song could have slid into a platinum edition of Love. Angel. Music. Baby. pretty easily. Original after the jump. MORE »
