Loading ...Judging by the reactions from my living room, my instant-messenger conversations, and the comments section on our Grammy liveblog, people were more than a little surprised when the Album Of The Year winner was announced… and said winner wasn’t Kanye West or Amy Winehouse, but Herbie Hancock, whose Joni Mitchell homage River: The Joni Letters took home the night’s final prize. I actually wasn’t too surprised by Hancock’s victory–to quote myself, “if you didn’t at least think that Herbie Hancock paying tribute to Joni Mitchell would sway at least half the people who voted for Steely Dan over Eminem a few years back you haven’t been paying attention”–but apparently a lot of people were! (Perhaps they forgot that Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae and Tina Turner and Leonard Cohen were also on the album.) So let’s put it to all of you: If you had a vote in the Grammy balloting, what would you have chosen as this Grammy year’s Album Of The Year? Poll after the jump.
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Idolator Live-Blogs The 2008 Grammys: Please Join Us Along The Long Road To Ruin
Welcome to Idolator’s liveblog of the 2008 Grammys, a night that will have many generation-spanning performances and a few that might even span the divide between living and dead. We’re on the last 30 minutes of the dueling preshows between E! and the TV Guide Channel, where we basically get to see people get asked the same questions about who they’re wearing and why they’re on our TVs. Also: Debbie Matenopolous! I guess when you get banished from The View you get to comment on Rihanna’s nail polish for money. Which could be considered as “failing up,” maybe. Our coverage begins after the jump.
iTunes Proves People Really Are As Tasteless As You Think They Are
“I hope you guys do one of these [Year-End Analysis] posts for iTunes’ most downloaded artists, that list is insane.” And having just spent a half-hour typing out* iTunes’ Top 20 best-selling songs, Top 20 best-selling albums, and Top 10 best-selling videos, I can vouch for the insanity. Want a 2007 list based not on the personal aesthetic whims of a couple of bloggers or an editorial staff trying to look hip or a publisher second-guessing what its audience wants/expects to appear on a year-end list, but a democratically chosen list based around raw commerce, a list voted for by the public, comprised entirely of what they were most willing to spend their .99 on during the last 12 months? Well here it is. And the public sucks. The full lists are after the jump, but for now my shell-shocked first thoughts.
THE GOOD: Maroon 5’s louche dude funk gets a bad rap (though you’d have a hard time holding us to that sentiment when one of their ballads is playing) but even after following the numbers during the year, we’re still a little surprised to see them topping the albums list ahead of Kanye. A few decent long-players stud the rest of the list, and a “Weird Al” appearance (in the Top Videos category) always brings a smile. But more than any single artist, people really plunked down for some Timbaland this year, no matter who he was featuring and/or producing. And with the exception of “Apologize,” we’re more than OK with hearing any of Tim’s 2007 hits for the billionth time compared to…
THE BAD: Colbie Caillat! Daughtry! Akon! “Party Like A Rock Star”! A squeaky Stefani (who’s at least not yodelling)! Nickelback mugging with half of America! Fergie at No. 1! When I die and go to blogger hell, this Top 20 playlist will be looped for all eternity, broken up only by the occasional airing of the complete works of Sufjan Stevens, as the editors of Stereogum beat me around the neck with rolled-up press releases.
THE WHAAAA? Some basic figures for you to contemplate and/or shudder over. Within the Top 100 best-selling singles of 2007 we have: Four Akon songs, four Avril Lavigne songs (including one remix), three Daughtry songs, two Fall Out Boy songs, three Fergie songs, five Justin Timberlake songs, two Kanye songs, two Maroon 5 songs, two My Chemical Romance songs, two Nickelback songs, two Pink songs (?!), three Rihanna songs, two Sean Kingston songs, two T-Pain songs (not counting collabos), and three Timbaland songs (not counting productions). That’s nearly half of the Top 100 controlled by 15 artists, or a quarter of it controlled by seven if we only count the ones that scored three or more slots. Plus Feist was in the Top 20 albums, but download sensation “1-2-3-4″ doesn’t even show up until No. 80! So much for the new model.
[EDIT: The full list of the Top 100 best-selling singles is now posted after the jump thanks to the Excel skillz of commenter extraordinaire therichgirlsareweeping, and looking at it has cooled my ire a little, as many more decent-to-great songs start appearing the further down you go. However that Top 20 is, with a few exceptions, still awful awful awful.]
“New York Post” Presents The Classiest (And Ass-iest) Music-Related Gift Guide Of 2007
The Grammy Nominations: Let The Vague Sense Of Anticipation Begin!
Tomorrow morning–at 11:30 a.m. ET, to be exact–music’s biggest stars, including Akon, Fergie, the two lead dudes from Linkin Park, and George Lopez (?), will hold court in Los Angeles and announce the nominees for the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, which take place on Feb. 10, 2008. Anyway, with the announcement of the nomination ceremony comes the speculation over which artist will walk away with the most nods. Will the voters go crazy for Feist’s Apple-sanctioned tastefulness, or the Boss’ stature? Will Amy Winehouse be forced to make the first trainwreck award-show appearance of 2008 after racking up a slew of nominations? Our take comes after the jump.
“Paste” Gives The National A Gold Star
Paste came out of the gate with its Top 100 Albums Of 2007 list, and it’s topped by The National’s Boxer, with the Arcade Fire (hey, remember them?) and Bruce Springsteen right behind it. (For those of you who were wondering, Radiohead’s In Rainbows came in at No. 11.) The full list is after the jump, but here are a few impressions:
THE GOOD: The top 20 is pretty much full of the usual triple-A suspects (White Stripes, Wilco, Modest Mouse, Band Of Horses, Iron & Wine), but it’s awful nice to see Miranda Lambert’s genuinely thrilling Crazy Ex-Girlfriend get some love at No. 18.
THE BAD: The clustering of Internet-loved darlings near the list’s bottom–particularly the Menomena-Liars-Deerhunter-Dan Deacon-Art Brut run that makes up Nos. 85-81–makes one wonder if this list really needed to be 100 albums long. 2007 wasn’t that good, folks!
THE WHAAA? Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ 100 Days, 100 Nights (No. 45) being bested by the safe-as-milk Norah Jones (No. 44) and the Grey’s Anatomy-approved caterwauler Brandi Carlile (No. 41)? C’mon, Paste–we know you have a target demo, but challenging people can sometimes be fun.
Idolator Live-Blogs The American Music Awards: You Don’t Have To Be Good, You Just Have To Be Popular
Or, in the case of this guy, you just have to have your Sunday night open. Anyway, welcome to Idolator’s second liveblog of the American Music Awards, the Dick Clark-helmed celebration of musical “favorites” that inspired this site’s first live blog almost exactly one year ago. Back then, I was cranky about Rascal Flatts and Nicole Scherzinger’s Pussycat Dolls and Jimmy Kimmel, all of whom are back to make my zingers flow once again. (I actually read an AMA preview that used as its hook the fact that the AMAs are Kimmel’s first post-writers’-strike TV appearance, which should tell you about the caliber of talent on tonight’s show.) After the jump, we find out just which musicians will inspire the people of America to get clicking on a Web site.
Nickelback: As Popular Now As Limp Bizkit Was In 2000
Despite critical disdain and claims of self-plagiarizing hovering over their heads, Nickelback’s All The Right Reasons crossed the six-million-copies sold mark last week, the 15th album of the 21st century to do so and the first since Usher’s Confessions, which came out in April 2004. (Reasons was released all the way back in October 2005.)
American Music Awards Nominations Try To Prove That Popular Music Is Still Somewhat Popular
Nominees for this year’s American Music Awards–the annual Dick Clark-produced awards ceremony where the idea of the “best” is thrown out the window–were announced today, and Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, Linkin Park, and Daughtry led the field of nominees with four each. This year’s AMAs will be even more subject to the sway of street teams and crazed computer-attached teenagers, as voting has shifted from a poll of 20,000 music buyers to an online survey (presumably tracking down 20,000 people who actually buy music and know of all the nominated artists and albums, which span categories including contemporary inspirational, soundtracks, and the still-kicking “alternative,” proved too difficult of a task for the production company).
“Paste” Knows Its Audience A Bit Too Well
Once again, we present Rock-Critically Correct, a feature in which the most recent issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe and Spin are given a once-over by an anonymous writer who’s contributed to several of those titles–or maybe even all of them! After the click-through, he switches things up a bit and gives the latest issue of Paste a once-over:
