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official statements
The First Denial Of That Original-Sugababes-Reunion Rumor Comes Out
Warner Music Group is putting the kibosh on those OG Sugababe-reunion rumors that floated out of the UK this morning. (The gossip site that “broke” the story fingered WMG as the eventual home for Mutya, Keisha, and Siobhán, both collectively and as solo artists.) But I still believe!! Even though, yeah, Siobhán isn’t exactly a fan of Keisha’s… [Guardian / Earlier / Dailymotion] MORE »
decade-end analysis
“Paste” Makes A Very Tasteful Illinoise
Yesterday, Paste released its list of the 50 Best Albums Of The 2000s, and the list was topped by none other than Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise, which honestly seems like it was released way longer ago, so established has he become in the indie-rock firmament. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Radiohead’s Kid A, and Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning rounded out the top five. Full rundown after the jump, but first, a few reactions.
THE GOOD: Hey, look, Stankonia! At No. 8! Three places beneath… Bright Eyes. Sigh.
THE BAD: Instead of noting the male-white–breadiness of the list—because that is, after all, the way of Paste, and you can’t expect them to change their stripes just for the sake of a mid-autumn pageview-generation ploy—I’m going to zero in on one totally questionable choice. Namely, the selection of M.I.A. albums on the list. Arular (No. 10) and not Kala? Really? I mean, Arular is fine, but Kala is kinda next-level. Is it because of the (admittedly unfortunate) Timbaland track?
THE WHAAAA? Dear Paste fact-checkers: Not for nothing, but Radiohead’s In Rainbows was not entirely “self-released,” as you claim. I know that would screw up the “it changed everything with its revolutionary pricing methods” that serves as the angle for your gushing write-up of the record. Pity that you muffed the opportunity to write about something so (yawn) groundbreaking by regurgitating a tired, half-true spiel. MORE »
disasters
Cancel The Celebration: You Maybe Should Just Buy All The Old Madonna Singles Piecemeal And Ignore That New Hits Collection
Apparently the new Madonna greatest-hits collection Celebration is full of botched mastering jobs and bad segues, so those of you looking to spend money on a CD in 2009 should be warned. (Example: “A bad edit jumps the track from the end of the chorus to the repeat of the bridge which kills the structure of the track. This version is unlistenable.”) Good thing Warner Music Group fired all those people at its reissue-specialty arm Rhino last week, right? [Requiem 4 A Dream; HT perfectomix] MORE »
the biz
Our long national nightmare of not being able to find a sanctioned, high-quality copy of the video for “Dress You Up” on YouTube is almost over: Warner Music Group has apparently inked a deal with Google to stream its videos from the site once again. You may remember WMG’s snit at the end of last year—over money, natch—that resulted in all of its official content being pulled from the site. [Epicenter] MORE »
Corrections
Don’t Go Calling Roxanne Shanté A Doctor Yet
File under things that are a bummer for multiple reasons: The New York Daily News story about Roxanne Shanté exploiting a clause in her contract with Warner Music Group and getting the company to fork over $217,000 toward her education—which went all the way to Ph.D. level–from a few weeks ago? Well, it’s apparently not based in anything resembling fact, according to an exhaustive investigation by Slate. Shanté—neé Lolita Gooden—admitted to Slate freelancer Ben Sheffner with an acknowledgement that she didn’t have a Ph.D, so anyone calling her a “doctor” is off the mark. (She still claims to have a master’s degree from Cornell, but Sheffner couldn’t even find evidence that she’d earned a bachelor’s degree.) And now the author of the Daily News‘ original story is nowhere to be found! Ugh. The full list of findings: MORE »
Things that are awesome
Roxanne Shanté Knows That Living Smart Is The Best Revenge
Roxanne Shanté is very, very, very smart, and I’m not just saying that because of her advanced degrees. The MC—who burst on the scene in 1984 with “Roxanne’s Revenge,” an answer song to the UTFO classic “Roxanne, Roxanne”, which in turn sparked its own flurry of answer records—used her street smarts to help polish her academic bona fides; after a thorough read of her record contract with Warner Music Group, which she signed long ago, she realized that there had been a clause in there where WMG said that it would foot the bill for any and all educational pursuits she decided to embark upon. Score! MORE »
100 and single
What About Their Friends: Top 10 Debutantes Have Famous Pals to Thank
The charts are in a bit of a Dog Days slumber, so let’s try a little trivia: What’s the most oft-recurring word on Billboard’s Hot 100 over the last decade? I’m thinking of a word that appeared virtually never prior to, say, 1990 and eventually became ubiquitous. “Remix”? “Tha”/“Da”? “Dre”? “T-Pain”?
No, the most common word on the chart, pretty much every week, is “Featuring.”
This week, for example, 16 songs with “featuring” credits are on the Hot 100—17 if you count a “duet with” credit on Keyshia Cole’s latest single with Monica. (But then it goes back down to 16 if you exclude the craven Pussycat Dolls single “featuring” existing lead singer Nicole Scherzinger, a la Diana Ross in ’67 or George Michael in ’85.)
A dozen of these tracks, unsurprisingly, come from the worlds of R&B and hip-hop – genres where the team-up is standard operating procedure for both emerging acts (Drake, Kid Cudi) and veterans (T.I., Mary J. Blige). On this week’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, “featuring” appears no less than 37 times.
Back on the Hot 100, three of this week’s “featurers” are in the Top 10, and two are brand-new to the winners’ circle. Examining just these three tracks, you get a sense of the power of the featured-artist credit. Simply put, in pop music, there are friends, and there are friends. All three of these singles benefit to some degree from the name(s) to the right of the magic word. MORE »
ON THE SCENE
Jay-Z, Kanye, Fact, And Fiction Collide At Webster Hall
Last night’s Diesel : U : Music show at Webster Hall was a hot ticket, thanks to a bill stocked with highly bloggable acts like Clipse and the Roots, and rumors swirling all week that Jay-Z—in the tri-state area for his All Points West appearance this evening—was going to surprise the crowd by bringing the house down. We sent Jeff Rosenthal of ItsTheReal.com to suss out the rumors and scope out the scene; as it turned out, Jay didn’t show up, but one of his town-running cohorts did. MORE »
Deals
Perez Hilton Is So Sliimy
Grammar-challenged crybaby Internet gossip Perez Hilton has revealed the name of the first artist signed to his attempt to set some of Warner Music Group’s money on fire WMG-financed vanity label: He’s a French singer with the improbably appropriate name of Sliimy. (Oh, sure, thanks to his Frenchyness it’s pronounced Slee-mee, but come on.) Perez claims that Sliimy’s music is “good, adult, quirky pop,” which translates to “sounding like a cross between Mika and one of those super-wordy cutesy singers who get one song on Grey’s Anatomy before fading into I Love The ’00s-worthy obscurity” to these ears. A few songs after the jump. MORE »
