Deep breaths, everyone – Adele’s 21 is no longer the #1 album in the country. After 23 nonconsecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200, the Brit singer’s hit album finally conceded to Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball. What do we do with our lives now?!

In all seriousness, though, it was a squeaker — Springsteen’s seventeenth studio album tallied 196,000 in sales, while Adele’s 21 nabbed 195,000. So it’s a victory for The Boss, but just barely.

Of course, Springsteen is used to netting #1 albums — Wrecking Ball marks his tenth chart-topping LP. He ties Elvis Presley for the third-most #1 albums for an artist in history, with only Jay-Z (12) and The Beatles (19) surpassing them.

Had Adele continued her chart-topping dominance this week, she would have been at #1 for 24 weeks, and tied with Prince’s Purple Rain soundtrack. But hey, there’s always next week!

Billboard notes that the albums that appear on this week’s list may had a bit of help earning their chart position due to the deep discounting promotion done by the Google Play service (which was matched by AmazonMP3).

The Top 10 Of Billboard’s Top 200 Chart

1. Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball *new
2. Adele, 21
3. Various, Now 41
4. Lady Antebellum, Own The Night
5. Whitney Houston, The Bodyguard
6. Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto
7. Drake, Take Care
8. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter IV
9. Luke Bryan, Spring Break 4 — Suntan City *new
10. Andrew Bird, Break It Yourself *new

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Last night wrapped up Bruce Springsteen week on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which of course means Boss fans finally got the cover they’ve been waiting for — Bruce Springsteen on LMFAO’s “Sexy And I Know It.” Following Fallon’s hilarious Neil Young impersonation (complete with harmonica), Springsteen joins in midway through, just in time to deliver the “wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.” (There’s no Speedo action or pelvic thrusting, though we will say the Boss is looking pretty fit for his age — must be all that dancing in the dark.) Head below to watch the magic happen.

Bruce Springsteen & Jimmy Fallon — “Sexy And I Know It”

Did you get a kick out of Springsteen taking on LMFAO? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or in the comments.

The 54th Grammy Awards, a night overshadowed by the death of Whitney Houston, kicked off with a performance by Bruce Springsteen. Right after, LL Cool J — the annual event’s first host in eight years — walked on stage and reminded us of just what a powerful, iconic force Houston was by introducing a clip of her performing “I Will Always Love You” back in 1994. Of course, the show must go on — and indeed it did. Head below to watch the night’s performances, from artists such as Adele, Bruno Mars, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry and Chris Brown.

See other highlights (Adele’s acceptance speech), lowlights (Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon at the microphone) and more on our Grammy Awards 2012 page.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band — ”We Take Care of Our Own”

Bruno Mars — ”Runaway Baby”

Alicia Keys & Bonnie Raitt — “A Sunday Kind of Love” (Etta James tribute)

Chris Brown — ”Beautiful People”

Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarkson — ”Don’t You Wanna Stay”

Foo Fighters — ”Walk”

Rihanna & Coldplay — ”We Found Love / Princess Of China / Paradise”

The Beach Boys, Foster the People & Maroon 5 — “Surfer Girl / Wouldn’t It Be Nice / Good Vibrations”

Paul McCartney — ”My Valentine”

Taylor Swift — ”Mean”

Katy Perry — “E.T. / Part Of Me”

Adele — “Rolling In The Deep”

The Band Perry, Blake Shelton & Glen Campbell — “Gentle on My Mind / Southern Nights/ Rhinestone Cowboy”

Jennifer Hudson — ”I Will Always Love You” (Whitney Houston tribute)

David Guetta, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Foo Fighters, Deadmau5 – “I Can Only Imagine / Rope / Raise Your Weapon”

21221222542 by YardieGoals

Nicki Minaj — ”Roman Holiday”

Paul McCartney — “”Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End”

Who stole the show? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter or in the comments.

When the pop history book is finally written about this era of music, upcoming SNL host Katy Perry will have at least one more achievement to look back on, following her record five Hot 100 chart-topping singles from Teenage Dream — she’s now only fifth artist to land six Top 10 hits on the Hot 100 from one album in the chart’s 53-year history. She’s also the first to do so since Janet Jackson’s 1993 LP janet. also produced six.

Perry’s “The One That Got Away” has moved up six positions to #10 on the new Hot 100 chart that will be officially published tomorrow. In addition to radio play, the song no doubt got an added boost following the premiere of its music video two weeks ago.

Following this achievement, Billboard has highlighted the five artists — Katy and Janet being the only females — and seven albums that have pulled off the impressive chart trick. They include the following:

1. Michael Jackson, Thriller (released in 1982, seven Top 10 singles)

2. Bruce Springsteen, Born In The USA (1984, seven)

3. Michael Jackson, Bad (1987, six)

4. George Michael, Faith (1987, six)

5. Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989, seven)

6. Janet Jackson, janet. (1993, six)

7. Katy Perry, Teenage Dream (2010, six)

Now the question remains: can Katy surpass Michael Jackson (who she’s currently tied with) by becoming the artist with the absolute most #1 singles on the Hot 100 from one album?

Let us know your thoughts below!

Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” video was a straight-up performance clip of The Boss grooving on stage with a short-haired woman who would eventually become Courteney Cox. (She was probably still Courteney Cox back then, but now she’s The Courteney Cox.) As it turns out, that wasn’t the first treatment of the video — found footage of Springsteen literally dancing in the dark on set of the first attempt of his video surfaced today, and it’s well worth the 27 years it took to come to our attention.

Even better than seeing The Boss at his prime dancing like Carlton Banks in a pair of suspenders? Having a zoot-suited Clarence Clemons appear next to him, wailing on his sax! (Performing next to an artist dancing up a storm in a no-frills music video was apparently a theme of the late musician’s career.)

Despite 80s-era Springsteen’s silly dancing, I think I’m not stretching when I say each and every member of the Idolator team would totally hit that.

[Via PopDust]

Taylor Swift knows there’s more to New Jersey than a bunch of over-tanned, under-educated party monsters. While in the Garden State for a stop on her Speak Now tour, the “Wonderstruck”-scented singer performed an acoustic medley of songs from NJ-born artists Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. (Earlier this week in Toronto, the country star performed tunes by Canadian pop acts, so this city-specific tribute appears to be turning into a regular part of Swift’s show.) Watch below.

“Are you guys aware of the brilliant music that’s been created in New Jersey?”, Taylor asks the screaming crowd before launching into Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer”. The Boss’ 1984 single is pretty much unrecognizable here (sorry, Tay), but “Livin’ On A Prayer” is a crowd-pleaser no matter what. But hey, no My Chemical Romance? They’re from New Jersey, too! Plus we just really want to hear Taylor’s version of “I’m Not Okay.”

[Via PopCrush]

Lady Gaga was among the performers at Sting’s 21st annual Rainforest Fund concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall last night. Other singers included Elton John (who teamed with Gaga to reprise their duet of “Speechless” and “Your Song”), Mary J. Blige, Bruce Springsteen, Dame Shirley Bassey and Debbie Harry. Decked out in a white hoop skirt, Gaga sat at the piano and banged out a cover of “Stand By Me,” with Sting joining her on the second verse and a full string section accompanying them. The night was capped off by the entire group of performers taking the stage together for a rousing rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Watch after the jump!

Lady Gaga and Sting — “Stand By Me” Sting leans down and gives his young piano-playing duet partner a kiss at the end. Awwww.

Lady Gaga and Elton John — “Speechless/Your Song”

Lady Gaga, Sting, Elton John, Shirley Bassey, Debbie Harry, Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige — “Don’t Stop Believin’”

With their Madonna fantasies now fully expressed, Glee‘s producers seem more than open to the idea of honoring the other ambitious blondes of pop (and we have a few candidates of our own). Tonight they’ll pay tribute to one of the best: Bionic woman Christina Aguilera, who should take a few minutes out of her busy fetish wear modeling schedule to tune in. If she does, she’ll see her towering “Beautiful” performed as a centerpiece of this week’s ep, which also features yet another of our favorite blondes, Kristin Chenoweth. Tonight’s show centers on themes of home, so check the cast’s covers below and raise the roof before tuning in:

Also on tap tonight: covers of Burt Bacharach’s seminal ballad “A House Is Not a Home” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire”.

“One Less Bell To Answer / A House Is Not A Home:
Glee Cast - One Less Bell To Answer / A House Is Not A Home

“A House Is Not A Home”:
Glee Cast - A House Is Not A Home

“Home”:
Glee Cast - Home

“Fire”
Glee Cast - Fire

“Beautiful”
Glee Cast - Beautiful

Bruce Springsteen announced that his five homeland shows at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium over the next two weeks—the final concerts to take place at the Meadowlands’ football stadium, which will be torn down at the end of the 2009-10 football season—would each be devoted to classic albums from his back catalog: Two shows each will be devoted to Born To Run and Born In The USA, while one will be given over to the Boss’ 1978 album Darkness On The Edge Of Town.


Springsteen’s Sept. 20 show at Chicago’s United Center was devoted to the eight-track album Born To Run, but the 28-song set list had chestnuts from the rest of his catalog, as well as a cover of “Da Doo Ron Ron.” Still, I do wonder if some of the people who like the Boss, but dislike the albums being spotlighted—like one pal of mine—are going to be turned off from going to the shows outright because of the overwhelming leans toward certain parts of his catalog. (A stadium show in the early-October Jersey chill is a commitment!) Is this a bait-and-switch? And why the heck isn’t The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle on the docket?

Springsteen Set to Rock Full Albums at Jersey’s Giants Stadium [RS]
Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band performs ‘Born to Run’ album at United Center [Turn It Up]
Bruce Springsteen – Rosalita [Dailymotion]
[HT: Caryn Rose]

Creation Records founder/Guardian music scribe Alan McGee thinks that Bon Jovi should be among New Jersey’s musical/cultural ambassadors to the world. Well, Bon Jovi is better than The Sopranos, by which I mean Bon Jovi has given us more emotional/historical signposts to cling to than Tony et al. But Bon Jovi is hardly the emblematic New Jersey band of the ’80s, let alone the one that should continue to represent the state into the new millennium. Because the greatest New Jersey bands of the last few decades have worked in an idiom laid down by the quartet that made art from the Garden State’s late 20th-century ability to turn anything into junk food: the Misfits.


The greatest evisceration of New Jersey came in the form of Luc Sante’s essay “In A Garden State,” reprinted in his essential collection Kill All Your Darlings. But while Sante nailed every one of New Jersey’s faults — a low-com-denom black hole that compresses all culture into easy-to-swallow baubles, a theme-park-cum-sitcom vision of suburbia that hides its urban poor behind a screen of faux-wood picket fences, et cetera — he did so without much sympathy for those born there without options. The idea, seemingly, being that anyone with any artistic drive or something to contribute to the melting pot needs to escape, like, yesterday.


Unfortunately, for a good number of my neighbors and similar families across the state, that’s not an option. And that’s why the Misfits are the ultimate New Jersey band. Because they discovered that if you’re living in an inescapable situation, and if the pop-cultural detritus of previous decades is ineradicable, if it’s the air you breathe and your only own potential building block, you better find ways to make it sing anew. And if you can’t do that, at least make it loud and unavoidable.


New Jersey is a state where “cultural heritage” is architecture out of a Sherwood Schwartz sitcom surviving another wave of strip malls. Its neighbors, Philadelphia and New York, are built around artifacts from pre-colonial times. “History” in New Jersey begins with the chrome-plated modernism of the 1950s, seemingly the last time the state received a much-needed infusion of The Future. Nowhere else in the country has so thoroughly paved its untamed past. Judging by the flat, two-story topography that’s indistinguishable from town to town, New Jersey was never wilderness. It was a parking lot in waiting.


There are four Dunkin’ Donuts within walking distance of my house, and no bookstores. This is freedom of choice in New Jersey. Even before the economy was wheeled into the terminal ward, the newspapers here dangled only a handful of classified-section carrots in front of a growing number of unemployed. Taxes make home ownership a game of self-strangulation in monthly installments, even for the middle class. (Whatever that means now.) Burlington, where my checks are currently addressed, has to be one of the most segregated cities I’ve ever known; it’s literally split down the middle, with the moderately privileged warily eyeing the working poor corralled on the east side.


Bruce Springsteen wants to aggrandize this statewide, neon-ringed cage into something befitting Oscar-worthy drama. (Or even the kitchen-sink, Mike Leigh sort of affair on his better albums.) Bon Jovi is happy to render it as straight-faced soap opera, Tommy and Gina united in futile love against a system that views them as so many ants. The Misfits, crawling like Mad Max villains over the state’s plastic and plaster scrap heap, say fuck that. If the ship is going down, then drink up as the waters consume you. If all you’ve got is schlock, then make shlock so fierce it shuts up the naysayers and gives fist-pumping succor to the likeminded.


The subjects of the best Misfit songs are pure New Jersey. Is there a better ambivalent celebration of the state’s chosen anesthetic than “TV Casualty”? In “Mommy Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” alone, there’s an entire adolescence spent reading about frustrated factory boys recently laid off and straight-A students with no future save middle management. So they ice their whole family. Or someone else’s. Because they couldn’t find a hangar-sized liquor store to sell them Cisco.


Of course if the tunes were delivered as dryly as that, they’d be “message songs” of the most deadening sort. The Misfits’ genius is rooting their shock horror material in lives lived in the most ersatz state of the union. You suspect the John F. Kennedy assassination was pulp fiction in New Jersey only hours after it happened, another exploitation bloodbath for the drive-in. The bargain-basement horror vibe is years spent in front of UHF stations where middle-aged managers in pancake makeup introduced Vincent Price films on Sunday mornings. The zombies in Misfits songs are horrific brain eaters, sure, but they’re also dudes who might be distracted enough by something shiny in a convenience story so that you could make your escape. The Misfits recognize the thrilling ridiculousness of a movie monster panacea when day-to-day living is horror enough.


And there’s the sound of the band. Cheap and harassing, as if they were in a race with every other regional punk act to devise the world’s most obnoxious hi-hat sound. The classic Misfits records are not well-produced in any sense of the word. They’d leave audiophiles clinging to their 24 karat Dire Straits reissues. You never forget it’s a sound born from necessity rather than invention. (As the higher-fidelity but utterly bloodless recordings the band made in the ’90s attest.) But the rusty guitar tone and scrap yard drumming do their best approximation of old-school rock’n'roll, sped up ’til near incomprehensible. And it’s perfect.


Listening to the Misfits, you suspect the ’60s never took root in New Jersey. That there was no psychedelic vanguard or folkie underground, whatever the truth might be. (Perhaps Newark had the biggest beatnik enclave this side of wherever Dobie Gillis took place.) Listening to the Misfits, you’d think there were sock-hop soundtracks and then the most intractable garage bands this side of Detroit and then stoned sludge ignited by Sabbath and then punk giving voice to the alienated in the state already claimed by the dispossessed. The Misfits including those whoa-oh-a-oh harmonies may be proof that New Jersey just smooshed the Ronettes into the Stooges because they were both release valves for the disenfranchised, that they were both replicable sounds for the marginally competent living between the Delaware River and the Lincoln Tunnel with something to express.


Maybe it’s not healthy to celebrate the geographic/cultural/economic conditions that limit you. But the truth is that the dead zone of the modern suburb is all quite a few Americans will know in their lifetime. Should we just roll over and accept that the cities to our north and south are the real deal, the artistic hot zones, and we might as well learn how to master that deep-fat fryer in lieu of making an impact? Or should we chip away at the stagnant awfulness until we uncover something worth celebrating, and remold those limitations into a vocabulary that might shame any band operating in a more artistically fecund environment?


When you listen to the Misfits, you might hear energetic old-school punk with a kitschy veneer, and nothing more. When I listen to the Misfits, I hear a band born into the well-mapped constraints of post-World War II America, a land of easily reproduced z-grade entertainment designed to distract you from that bone-rattling feeling of no hope, a country that we still live in and that’s just getting worse as people gorge on sugar-coated garbage that says shut up, swallow, and ask no questions.


Here is where I risk finger pointing and guffaws. Because it’s not as if I think the Misfits are anything more than entertainment. Maybe even shoddy entertainment when judged by a generation that’s grown up with ProTools pruning and a diamondique spritz of hyper-compression. I’m not saying that a band, whose debut album is 31 years old, has any chance of getting us through a collapse that’s likely to leave us hoarding canned goods and fearing warheads from countries who would have left us rolling our eyes two decades ago. I’m far past the point of think music can affect change except on an individual to individual level whose effect is nearly impossible to gauge.


All I’m saying is that New Jersey is emblematic of a culture that’s given up on progression. Historical or cultural or technological. We’re cannibalizing the 20th century, the last time it looked like we might mean shit. Meanwhile, all around us, despite our president’s best intentions to finally usher us into that hoary old multicultural marketplace of ideas, where we’re no more clever than anyone who surrounds us at the U.N., we are reinforcing our isolation by reaffirming ideals passe by the Gulf of Tonkin, as the kids chafe and strain for a future that’s already here but denied them.


So, you know, fuck it. If we’re being lapped by the world, then yes, let’s reassemble our broken-down culture Rauschenberg/Kieholz style. Let’s do it with flair, a certain punch and howl, that makes the necrotic atmosphere something like tolerable. Let’s hug the junk like planks from a sunken ship. Protest may be impossible, but let’s pretend the garbage is liberating. That we’ll keep on eating the junk you’ve left for us until it’s nutritious. That America may be dead in the water but we’ve got one thing to say: It doesn’t matter much to us as long as it’s dead.


The problem, as always, is what to do once the last rites are administered and the funeral home is called.


McGee on music: Why Bon Jovi are mythic New Jersey artists [Guardian]
[Pic via Last Days of Man On Earth]

It’s been 25 years since The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame began enshrining rock stars, and inspiring many arguments from people who are just as conflicted about their favorite bands being snubbed by the museum’s higher-ups as they are about the idea of a museum honoring an allegedly still-vital artform. So clearly it’s time for a party! The party won’t take place in Cleveland, where the actual physical museum is located, but at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. And because the Rock Hall is devoted to embodying the idea of rock at its fullest, the American Express-sponsored shows will even have “once-in-a-lifetime VIP Benefit Packages priced from $25,000 to $100,000″! (Those funds are going toward creating a permanent endowment for the museum—or at least the cash for a move out of Cleveland.) Who could be on a bill that’s worthy of a six-figure ticket price? The full lineups after the jump.


Oct. 29:
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
Stevie Wonder
Simon & Garfunkel
Paul Simon
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Friends


Oct. 30:
U2
Aretha Franklin
Eric Clapton
Metallica


Ah, rock canon. In this ever-shifting world, it’s nice to know that you are reliable enough to make Metallica seem “edgy” by comparison.


Rock Hall 25 [Official site; HT Marah]

A few months ago, Bruce Springsteen and his fans were in a tizzy when the best seats for a slew of hometown shows at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J., showed up on ticket brokers’ sites before they were even available to the public. “Scandal!” cried the fans. “Say you’re sorry!” blogged The Boss. But months later, after the hue and cry died down, the Newark Star-Ledger got to the bottom of just how tickets for the show were disbursed… and as it turned out, most of the asses in the Izod Center’s cushiest seats had been put there by the promoters, Springsteen’s record company, and Bruce and his band. Are you shocked? (I’m not, honestly. But all those years of going to journalist/blogger/flack/employee-packed shows in the greater NYC area have probably jaded me.) The Star-Ledger breaks down the numbers after the jump.

The best seats in the house that night were the 1,126 seats in the four sections closest to the stage, but only 108 of those tickets were ever for sale to the public, according to new ticket data obtained through the Open Public Records Act.


In all, 2,262 seats were held back from public sale, for the band, its record company and agent and the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, the public agency that operates the arena and acted as promoter for the concerts, according to the ticket sale records. That number represents about 12 percent of the total. That violates state law, say some legislators, including lawmakers who have sponsored bills to regulate ticket sales.


“They are allowed to hold back 5 percent for family, fan clubs, friends, sponsors, for the band, for the producer, for everyone involved,” said Assemblyman Peter Biondi (R-Somerset), who questioned Attorney General Anne Milgram on the issue when she appeared before lawmakers earlier this month.

I had no idea the five percent cap was an actual law (I am going to guess that it isn’t the case in New York–if it were, it might very well cripple every one of the city’s club where up-and-coming bands play). And it seems kind of odd, given that the fan club presales that so many bands like to engage in wind up selling a lot more than five percent of the house’s seats! Anyway, more numbers:

For the first of the two sold-out concerts, May 21, the sports authority kept 812 tickets for itself, the arena’s sponsors and the media. Springsteen, his record company and agent and the band kept 1,450 more. Hundreds of the general admission floor seats were kept back, and about 60 percent of the 10 best sections were held from public sale.


None of the more than 9,800 seats in the upper level — the worst seats — was kept back for the artists and promoters.

And that scarcity at the top, brokers noted, drove up all the prices. Springsteen was unavailable for comment, presumably because he was too busy pretending that he and Phish were remaking The Commitments in Tennessee. (Priorities!) Although his manager Jon Landau gave a spiel to The Wall Street Journal about fairness and all that:

“It is true that we hold a significant number of tickets for our friends and family, as does virtually every artist during concert appearances,” Landau said. “The location of those tickets are blended into the seating chart, so that there’s always a mix between the ability of fans to buy tickets and tickets being held for the stated purpose. No tickets held by the artist in our case are ever authorized for resale. And to the best of our knowledge, this practice is common to all artists who have to deal with close friends, business associates who work year-round for them, their parents, their wives, their nieces, and so forth.”

Indeed, it is a common business practice. But shouldn’t there have been a bit more transparency about just where all those really good seats were going when regular Joes who didn’t want to shell out lots of cash were all in a lather about not being able to get good seats? Not that Ticketmaster’s legalized-scalping subsidiary TicketsNow–where the disputed tickets showed up all those months ago–isn’t a noxious side business that basically opens up big wormholes in the company’s credibility, but this just seems like another example of the music business being a lot shadier than it really has to be in the name of staying “cool.”


Springsteen withheld best tickets from the public at NJ concert, records show [Newark Star-Ledger via Speakeasy]

A brief list of musical artists who Creigh Deeds, the surprising victor in yesterday’s Democratic primary for the Virginia governor’s race, rode to victory according to his Twitter account:


Bruce Springsteen!
Cat Power!
Old Crow Medicine Show!
Gram Parsons!
Merle Haggard!
Neil Young!
Pete Townshend! (Not as awkward as it would have been a few years back!)
Van Morrison!
Willie Nelson!


Somehow this roster of artists didn’t garner him an endorsement from Paste, but perhaps the fact that he triumphed despite being up against it money-wise–thanks in part to some well-timed “Springsteen binges,” no doubt!–will inspire them to write a testimonial for him in time for Nov. 3.


Virginia Politics [Washington Post]
Creigh Deeds [Twitter; HT Lucas]

Thanks to a glitch, Ticketmaster’s “secondary ticketing” site TicketsNow–which allows those people who have bought tickets to events to resell them at a premium–oversold certain seating sections for this coming Monday’s Bruce Springsteen show in Washington, D.C. As it turned out, the tickets that were oversold were in the good areas of the Verizon Center, and not the nosebleed seats. So basically, a bunch of E Street fans who paid as much as three times face value for a seat close to the stage at the city’s Verizon Center were actually buying the illusion of getting to see the Boss up close. Nice work, guys!


TicketsNow and its shady policies have attracted the ire of Springsteen and his fans before, and while Ticketmaster’s trying to rectify the problem by giving affected people refunds in addition to free (if crappier) seats, something tells me that we’re about to see another annoyed missive from Bruce pretty soon.


Springsteen concert overbooked; thousands given refunds [WTOP]
[HT Jimmy A.]

In an effort to perhaps show the world that it is Really For Real Serious About Bringing Music Back To Its Programming This Time Around, MTV has revived the Movie Awards category that honors the Best Song From A Movie. The category–last seen in 1999, and perhaps retired because Aerosmith’s wretched foray into Diane Warren territory “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” was the winner–has four nominees this year, including one who’s way out of MTV’s target demo. The envelope before the envelope, please:

* “Jai Ho” – AR Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight)
* “The Wrestler” – Bruce Springsteen, The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight)
* “The Climb” – Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana: The Movie (Walt Disney Pictures)
* “Decode” – Paramore, Twilight (Summit Entertainment)

Given that the MTV Movie Awards are decided by the always-democratic process of Internet and dial-in voting, there is no way that the Twilight-affiliated Paramore song does not walk away with this “honor.”

2009 MTV Movie Awards Announced [ComingSoon.net]

Bruce Springsteen

and Co. just completed two hometown rehearsal shows, and some superfans are grumbling about setlist selection. It’s not that the shows are bad; it’s that the setlists are rather stale. The Boss has a huge catalog with tons of deep cuts, and he’s been sticking to the same jams for a while now. As Bruce aficionado Ben Lazar tells Bruce via blog post: “You’ve just added some new songs to a pre-existing framework.” Lazar has come up with his dream setlist, including notes about what key in which Springsteen should sing certain songs. I thought I was a pretty serious fan, but it turns out I have a lot to learn. Lazar’s dream playlist and detailed set notes after the jump.

1. Cover Me (It rocks, it’s about hard times, and it’ll be a cooking opener – just no prolonged intros, ok? Count it off in the pitch black, and then when Max’s drums kick in, have the stage lights explode. They’ll love it – even your core fans that say they hate it will be like, “Yeah, that’s a pretty great opener.”)
2. Roulette (Uh, can we say financial crisis, anyone?)
3. Outlaw Pete (I’m not a big fan of this one, but I know it’s important to you to play it.)
4. My Lucky Day
5. Spirit In The Night
6. Working On A Dream (Bruce, I heard the rehearsal version – you brought the song a whole step higher. Bad move. Bring it back down to the original key.)
7. Seeds/Spare Parts
8. This Life (Sounded gorgeous in the rehearsal, but please drop the crowd participation part – too cheesy. Having the background vocalists is a great move though.)
9. What Love Can Do/Good Eye/Queen Of The Supermarket
10. Candy’s Room
11. Cadillac Ranch/I’m Goin’ Down
12. Leap Of Faith
13. Girls In Their Summer Clothes (Do it in the same key as the recorded version, ok Bruce? It’s one of your greatest songs ever, and you bringing the key up on the Magic tour just didn’t work – it killed the melancholy at the heart of the song which makes it so wonderful.)
14. Kingdom Of Days
15. The Last Carnival
16. Backstreets/The Price You Pay/Long Walk Home
17. Born To Run (It needs a new context to freshen it up, but you can’t not play it.)
18. Born In The U.S.A.

Encores

19. How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live? (Says it all, right?)
20. Open All Night (Rock it, baby)
21. Pink Cadillac (A little humor is nice.)
22. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
23. Land Of Hope And Dreams/Raise Your Hand (Totally different songs, I know, but in a way, they’re very similar. Use em depending on your mood.)
24. Eyes On The Prize (You’ll have em weeping and raising their fist – perfect way to close it out.)

I agree about “Cover Me”, and I like the topicality of the choices here. Plus, any setlist with “Candy’s Room” on it is okay in my book. But if you’ve gotta play “Born To Run” then I think you have to play “Thunder Road,” right? Maybe take it back to the just-Bruce version of the ’70s. If it were up to me, they’d be playing “Adam Raised A Cain” and “Jungleland”. Lazar offers up further suggestions, including nixing “Mary’s Place” for good, which I wholly support. That might be my least favorite Springsteen song ever, and that includes “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On).”

What about you, Idolator fans of the Boss? I know I asked this around the Super Bowl, but instead of 15 minutes you’ve got more than two hours. Are you with me on “Adam Raised A Cain”? What about “Dancing In The Dark”? Am I only the only one who thinks that song is the Eternal Jam?

Some Advice To Mr. Springsteen [Deeper Shade of Soul; HT: Don't Forget The Coffee]

Setlists: 2009 [Backstreets]

The Glastonbury Festival, Britain’s annual mud-covered extravaganza, has announced its first headliner for its already-sold-out 2009 edition, and it is… Bruce Springsteen. The Boss, who headlined the Super Bowl and is also going to be atop the bill at Bonnaroo, is going to headline the second day of the three-day festival, with fellow elder statesmen Blur and Neil Young rumored to headline the other two days. Glasto organizer Emily Eavis said that the Springsteen booking was “the icing on the cake of this year’s bill, which I’m sure will take everyone’s breath away when we announce the full details.” Hey, don’t put the icing before the cake, OK?

Anyway, this latest announcement makes me wonder if Bruce is going to be the No. 1 fixture on this year’s festival circuit. So far he’s only down to headline one weekend-long musical clusterfuck here, but that number may expand soon—and may even extend to Coachella, given the way attendees who are unhappy with the Killers’ Saturday-night headlining slot are throwing his name around. (His only real competition: The one-two punch of Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction, who are right now heading up the Sasquatch! lineup and who obviously have a fair amount of shared festival experience.)

In a lot of ways, booking Bruce makes sense; his live shows deserve the praise for being legendary, and thanks to his long-standing career and its high quality, he’s one of the few performers out there who can captivate (and bring in money from) a wide-ranging crowd. But part of me can’t help but wonder if this latest booking announcement—and, indeed, the rumors that Glastonbury is going to be headlined entirely by what we can call “heritage acts”—is yet another sign that the clock is ticking on the festival model, although said clock will probably run out much faster on this side of the pond.

Bruce Springsteen to Headline Glastonbury 2009 [Glastonbury]

Bruce Springsteen

published a journal (oh, c’mon, Bruce, just call it a blog) about his Super Bowl experience on his official Web site, and it wasn’t just a “thanks to all the fans we love you!!1one” post (although there was certainly some fan appreciation within)—it was a pretty great you-are-in-Bruce’s-mind tale, one full of digressions and backstory even a little bit of doubt. A few choice bits after the jump.

On the evening’s footwear choice:

I better go with the combat boots I always carry. The round toes will give me better braking power than the pointy-toed cowboy boots when I hit the deck. I stuff my boots with two innersoles to make them as fitted as possible, zip them up snuggly around my ankles, stomp around in my trailer a bit and feel pretty grounded.

On the completely mind-bending nature of playing to a bazillion people, and having that be your job:

I was worried that I would find myself ‘out’ of myself and not in the moment. My old friend Peter Wolf once said ‘the strangest thing you can do on stage is think about what you’re doing.” This is true. To observe oneself from afar while struggling to bring the moment to life is an unpleasant experience. I’ve had it more than once. It’s an existential problem. Unfortunately, right in my wheel house. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be a bad show. It may be a great one. It just means it might take time, something we don’t have much of tonight. When that happens, I do anything to break it. Tear up the set list, call an audible, make a mistake, anything to get “IN.” That’s what you get paid for, TO BE HERE NOW! The power, potential and volume of your present-ness is a basic rock and roll promise. It’s the essential element that holds the attention of your audience, that gives force, shape and authority to the evening’s events. And however you get there on any given night, that’s the road you take. “IS THERE ANYBODY ALIVE IN HERE?!”…there better be.

On the class lines being shattered by the Super Bowl performance (well, at least the telecast of it, cough cough):

Since the inception of our band it was our ambition to play for everyone. We’ve achieved a lot but we haven’t achieved that. Our audience remains tribal…that is predominantly white. On occasion, the Inaugural Concert, during a political campaign, touring through Africa in ’88, particularly in Cleveland with President Obama, I looked out and sang “Promised Land” to the audience I intended it for, young people, old people, black, white, brown, cutting across religious and class lines. That’s who I’m singing to today. Today we play for everyone.

And, finally, on the comedown after the show:

The theory of relativity holds. On stage your exhilaration is in direct proportion to the void you’re dancing over. A gig I always looked a little askance at and was a little wary of turned out to have surprising emotional power and resonance for me and my band. It was a high point, a marker of some sort and went up with the biggest shows of our work life.

Super Bowl Journal [BruceSpringsteen.Net via Vulture]

Welcome to Idolator’s liveblog of the 2009 Grammy Awards, a year in which there will be more spectacle and less award-doling than ever. Well, at least it seems that way: The 3 1/2-hour telecast will have no more than 10 brass gramophones handed out during its running time, presumably because the music industry decided that what it really needed to give it a shot in the arm was a slightly more pretentious version of the Video Music Awards. (And yes, that is Paul McCartney being That Guy—or rather, the Bret Michaels-pioneered variation on That Guy who wears a shirt advertising his own projects—above.) Full minute-by-minute coverage after the jump!

7:30 p.m. So, before we begin, a few winners of note:
Best Rock Song: Bruce Springsteen, “”Girls in Their Summer Clothes” (sadly, no Stephin Merritt shout-out in the thank yous)
Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals: Coldplay, “Viva La Vida” (sadly, no Joe Satriani run-in during the thank yous)
Best Alternative Music Album: Radiohead, In Rainbows
Best Classical Contemporary Composition: John Corigliano (JoAnn Falletta), Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (yes, really)
Best Short-Form Music Video: Weezer, “Pork & Beans” (because the academy gets the Internet, everybody! no, really!)

There were others, many of them echoing a theme: The nominees for the big categories are really, really awesome. Lil Wayne, Ne-Yo, Adele—all great! You may even see one of them say “thank you” on live TV. But only for about 45 seconds.

7:43 p.m. So, Chris Brown won’t be performing tonight because of “an alleged domestic violence felony battery report,” according to the Associated Press. The woman involved in the incident is unidentified…

7:51 p.m. I watched a little bit of the pre-show, where Ryan Seacrest stood in Jordin Sparks’ shadow, then basically insinuated that Carrie Underwood was the type of girl who liked to hook up with lots of jocks. (Talk about sublimating your rage at the Idol producers!) Then I shut it off because Katy Perry was looking kind of crazed and talking about carrying around locks of Miley Cyrus‘ and Taylor Swift‘s hair in her relatively restrained purse and how she was going to descend to the stage from something phallic and full of potassium. She actually said this. She cannot be banished to Dancing With The Stars D-listdom enough.

7:59 p.m. In New York City, we’re being led into the Grammys with a J & R Music World ad featuring three dudes headbanging. Something that there will not be much of tonight.

8:00 p.m. Whoops, Chris Brown & Rihanna not edited out of the intro. Someone’s getting fi-red!

8:00 p.m. At least that person will be able to sing along with Bono (and his really dumb lyrics) thanks to the giant screen behind them.

8:02 p.m. OK, who is mixing this performance? Is it the same person who sliced TV On The Radio’s performance to ribbons on Saturday Night Live 20 hours ago?

8:02 p.m. YEEEAH!!!

8:03 p.m. Bono’s T-shirt has Beethoven on it. One more “musical legend tee” and we’ve got a mini-trend!

8:04 p.m. “Thank you, Walter. Can we get Whitney Houston on the show?”

8:04 p.m. Oh, I guess we can! Bono is so powerful.

8:05 p.m. She’s looking good. Oh wait, she just spoke.

8:06 p.m. 1/10th of tonight’s awards are going to be given ou—wait, no, Whitney is going to take some time out to… talk about how awesome Clive Davis is.

8:07 p.m. Jennifer Hudson beats Al Green and Raphael Saadiq out for Best R & B Album. Yes, indeed: Thank you, Clive Davis.

8:07 p.m. Oh, Jennifer, I know you’ve been through a rough time, but you already won an Oscar. You don’t need to be surprised by being offered a trophy.

8:08 p.m. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is making up Grammy acronyms. The thing about Dwayne is that when he cuts a promo, he’s pretty believeable and so you could almost really think that he thinks the Grammys are important and he’s actually spent time backstage during Smackdown! tapings in the past figuring out whether or not the Best New Artist curse was real.

8:09 p.m. But he’s announcing every performer. Does this mean he’s the host?

8:10 p.m. Neil Diamond and Lil Wayne together? That would have been great.

8:11 p.m. And now, here’s Justin Timberlake, wearing Lurex.

8:11 p.m. Al Green, Boyz II Men, and Keith Urban. Does that mean that we’re in Motozphillyphis?

8:12 p.m. As long as Pulp Fiction is in the libraries of cable stations around the globe, Al Green will have to sing “Let’s Stay Together.” (Not that it’s not awesome.)

8:14 p.m. Justin singing a verse. Why do I have a feeling he’s going to be doing this a lot tonight?

8:14 p.m. Justin taking over. This, right here, is the beginning of the post-Timbaland rebranding of Timberlake, everybody.

8:17 p.m. So, who’s advertising on the Grammys this year? A skin cream, a car company, and… well, we know Pepsi will be here eventually, too, thanks to everyone’s favorite Obama supporter.

8:19 p.m. Who needs an application to figure out where they parked their car? Unless they’re trying to write another expository essay on whether or not the Internet has made us all much stupider, that is.

8:21 p.m Please welcome our token British bit of intra-network promotion as a way to introduce a British band.

8:22 p.m. Chris Martin responds to Brandon Flowers’ epaulets with a piece of a costume from a dancing school’s spring recital circa 1992.

8:23 p.m. Jay-Z drops in to give everyone a taste of Funk Flex’s show on Hot 97.

8:24 p.m. Ditch the piano, it’s time to party! With Joe Satriani! No, wait, he’s not there.

8:25 p.m. I love when people wearing too-short pants do jigs. Nothing like a good sock shot.

8:27 p.m. THIS JUST IN: WAS COLDPLAY LIPSYNCING ITS CHOIR BIT? EXCLUSIVE MUST CREDIT IDOLATOR!!

8:27 p.m. (I’m kinda kidding, but hey, someone will probably take the bait.)

8:27 p.m. And here’s Keith Urban again, linking Gene Autry to Carrie Underwood in a very awkward way. Someone’s manager greased some palms!

8:28 p.m. Here is Carrie, performing “My Attempt To Replicate The Crossover Success Of ‘Before He Cheats’ In A Really Obvious Way” while wearing a dress patterned after a glittery tree that’s been TP’d.

8:30 p.m. OK, what is happening to the sound on this performance? It’s music’s biggest night, but the sound keeps maxing out and peaking. Maybe the message that NARAS is trying to send is “Please pay for music so we can afford to make it sound halfway decent”?

8:32 p.m. Sheryl Crow and LeAnn Rimes… and the sound is screwy again.

8:33 p.m. It would appear that periwinkle and various neutrals are the colors of the evening. Are they somber?

8:33 p.m. AWARD PRESENTATION NUMBER TWO: Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Voters… goes to Sugarland’s “Stay.” I have no problem with this award.

8:34 p.m. Adele, sitting behind Sugarland, looks very bored. And is chewing gum.

8:34 p.m. Jennifer Nettles wants to be cool because Coldplay is in the crowd. Jennifer. Really, you don’t need to worry.

8:35 p.m. Ah, the My Grammy Moment winner has been demoted to “an announcement on The Early Show” status. Anyone want to put down odds on whether it’ll be around next year?

8:37 p.m. The Cat Power ad for Lincoln is making me wonder if she’ll ever come up big on one of these shows. Maybe she should do an album of blues songs with Ringo Starr! No, actually, that would be awful.

8:41 p.m. Duffy and Al Green. And a nation of Idolator commenters just sucked their breath in hard.

8:41 p.m. They are dueting, now. Um…

8:42 p.m. Holy crap, another award!

8:42 p.m. Song Of The Year: Coldplay, “Viva La Vida.” Aw, Estelle was robbed.

8:43 p.m. Coldplay’s look is “Ramshackle Sgt. Pepper!” It’s officially a trend.

8:44 p.m. Oh no, Kid Rock singing His Serious Song. With appropriately heart-jerking pictures backing him up. Whoever made that crack about him getting community-service points for his performance tonight wasn’t kidding, I guess.

8:45 p.m. And from “Amen” into “All Summer Long.” You have to admit, dude knows how to pander better than pretty much anyone else out there.

8:46 p.m. For those of you confused as to what he’s singing now: It’s the title track from Rock N Roll Jesus! It will not be available on iTunes tomorrow.

8:50 p.m. The Wrigley Company: Not happy with their ad for Doublemint airing right now. They couldn’t have swapped in the Ne-Yo ad for Big Red last minute?

8:53 p.m. It’s Miley! (And Taylor Swift!)

8:53 p.m. Miley: Waving at people while Taylor sings. Rude!

8:54 p.m. Miley: Not as good a singer as Taylor. Unsurprising!

8:55 p.m. No, really, her voice is like that of Fran Drescher at a “the South sure is funny” party. All drawl and fake smiles.

8:56 p.m. Taylor kind of looks pissed that Miley is ruining her song.

8:56 p.m. (I like this song a lot.)

8:57 p.m. Is Miley yarling???

8:57 p.m. “My best friend, Taylor.” Shut up Miley. Shut up!

8:57 p.m. And now, Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals! That’s Award No. 4, for those of you who care about those sorts of things.

8:58 p.m. Thanks, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, for allowing the Grammys to avoid the possibility of having Rihanna or Chris Brown not accept their awards.

9:00 p.m. I guess Alison’s acceptance speech will come with their next award.

9:00 p.m. Jennifer Hudson.

9:01 p.m. Girl can sing. (When she’s not being swallowed up by the Staples Center.)

9:03 p.m. She almost doesn’t finish the song. Ah Jennifer.

9:05 p.m. For a second when the “Old Time Rock N’ Roll” music started, I was hoping that the Guitar Hero ad in question would be the scandalicious one with Michael Phelps and A-Rod. Alas, it was only Heidi Klum. (I’d have taken the one where David Cook looks hot even.)

9:07 p.m. CBS is really playing up all its musical tie-ins—the NCIS soundtrack, the Diddy CSI cameo. Wherefore Pete & Ashlee, though?

9:09 p.m. CBS-Sanctioned Cameo Number Two has linked arms with a totally dorky-looking Jason Mraz… to introduce… the Jonas Brothers and Stevie Wonder????

9:10 p.m. On vocoder????????

9:11 p.m. T-Pain must be so pissed. And Adam Levine too.

9:11 p.m. This arrangement of “Burnin’ Up” is so old-industry. You know? Like with the 8,000 backing musicians and super-huge “bamp-ba-bamp” bits?

9:12 p.m. Haha I wonder how Rolling Stone‘s commenters are taking the segue into “Superstition.”

9:13 p.m. Am I going to get in trouble if I comment on the nature of the Jonases’ guitar faces? Probably yes, yes? OK then.

9:14 p.m. The only way to follow that up: The reunited Blink-182!

9:15 p.m. Kid Rock’s “hi, camera” face is the slyest of them all.

9:16 p.m. They’re making Travis open the envelope with his working hand. Inside, it says that Coldplay have won the fifth award of the evening, for best rock album.

9:17 p.m. “We’re not the heaviest of rock bands… we’re a limestone sort of rock.” Oh Chris Martin, you’re so British, BBC America would probably closed-caption you right now.

9:17 p.m. “Follow the Grammys on Facebook and Twitter. Coming up, Katy Perry!” Sigh.

9:21 p.m. My much-hoped outcome of Confessions Of A Shopaholic completely flopping is so not going to happen, is it.

9:23 p.m. Here’s Katy Perry, who is “beautifully bi-curious.” And yet, not any of those things!

9:23 p.m. Those giant fruits are making me feel a lot less bad about the music industry tanking. Also, her “dancing” is like, Britney-at-VMA levels. Sure, she knows how to make the stupid eyes, but her “steps” aren’t really distracting from her awful voice enough.

9:25 p.m. KATY PERRY’S RULES FOR A SUCCESSFUL PERFORMANCE:
1. Bend over a lot.
2. ????
3. Profit!

9:26 p.m. Look! YouTube! See, in the back, all teeny? Yeah, this is totally the last year for any “user-generated” portion of the Grammys.

9:26 p.m. Thanks for scarring the Jonas Brothers for life, Katy.

9:27 p.m. Yay, “American Boy”!

9:28 p.m. Estelle’s getup is reminding me of a sparklier version of a Domo-kun dress:

9:29 p.m. Estelle claps for Bob Newhart during the Best New Artist intro; Kanye gets peevish about never having won. It’s better this way, dude. Trust me.

9:30 p.m. Adele wins. And someone‘s hoping to pull the Jonas Brothers with her trophy…

9:34 p.m. Hey everyone, you know what? The show isn’t even half-over yet!

9:37 p.m. Morgan Freeman almost calls Kenny Chesney a “private” instead of a “pirate.” Hard times for Easy Reader.

9:39 p.m. I am going to hazard a guess that it isn’t songs like this sleepy ballad that are the reason behind Kenny Chesney’s crazy ability to sell concert tickets.

9:40 p.m. And now it’s the controversial… Herbie Hancock! And Diddy and Natalie Cole. Presenting Record Of The Year. (That’s Award No. 6 for the night.)

9:41 p.m. A maternity-dress-draped M.I.A. just made the best face backstage, but it was not enough to stop the Plant/Krauss Old People Juggernaut.

9:44 p.m. Os Mutantes bring us the Happiest Meal Ever.

9:48 p.m. Queen Latifah in elder stateswoman role, discussing Dean Martin… and trying to make some sort of awkward Rat Pack analogy? About “Swagger Like Us”?

9:49 p.m. Oh gosh, she used the term “Rap Pack.” Oh, woof.

9:49 p.m. Yay M.I.A.!!!!!

9:50 p.m. It’s in black and white?

9:51 p.m. This is kind of like… a hot mess.

9:52 p.m. It’s in color! Sense is sort of restored! Lil Wayne is about to tie his shoe!

9:54 p.m. Chris Martin is clapping very politely and saying “woo.”

9:54 p.m. Kate Beckinsale, introducing Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl, has a brain fart.

9:55 p.m. Dave Grohl is your Ringo Starr on “I Saw Her Standing There.” And Ringo lost the Best Surround Sound Album award, too. Someone’s having a bummer night.

9:58 p.m. Do you think they’ll segue into a Very Special Cover Of “In Bloom”?

10:02 p.m. So, four awards and 88 minutes to go. And with no Chris Brown or Rihanna performances, there’s going to be some sort of filler injected into those 88 minutes, and with the economy being as crappy as it is, ads sure aren’t going to be it. Any ideas, commenter braintrust? (And yes, your comments are there, they’re just taking forever to show up thanks to our “legacy system.” Which will be fixed soon. Trust.)

10:04 p.m. Jack Black looks like he is seven.

10:05 p.m. Award No. 7: Best Male Pop Vocal. Ne-Yo’s big smile can flip on and off, like a lightswitch. And yet he loses to noted blogger John Mayer….

10:06 p.m. Which causes the feed to go out for a minute! I thought James Taylor, who wasn’t in the audience, was going to hijack the signal in protest for a second.

10:07 p.m. Sugarland and Adele collaboration. Which would be a crazy idea if it sort of wasn’t, really.

10:12 p.m. Whoa, nodded off there… Um, these performances are nice, if Adele’s got off to something of a slow start. But really, cellists in short skirts? I hope you’re all wearing lollipops.

10:15 p.m. A music awards show makes one notice the music being used in ads a lot more. (See also all those American Idol episodes that are devoted to songs of particular eras.) Which allowed me to learn that Friend Of Braff Amos Lee sings the “sweet pea, apple of my eye” track used in the Cingular ad. I thought the song was much older, actually.

10:17 p.m. “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” in a Target ad. Only a few days until pitchers and catchers, everyone. (Surely someone out there watched the MLB Network as much as I did this weekend?)

10:18 p.m. Well, maybe the “more ads” solution is part of CBS’ plan to make up for the Brown/Rihanna void.

10:19 p.m. Gwyneth Paltrow, looking like a LastNight’sParty extra, presents Radiohead, winks at her hubby when calling them “brilliant.”

10:20 p.m. It’s kind of annoying that the Southern California bias means that the USC marching band always gets gigs like this one.

10:20 p.m. No one on the corner has swagger like Thom, apparently. (Check out those high-tops, and his hair!)

10:21 p.m. OK so this is totally great. (I like how all the marchers are wearing In Rainbows shirts like the ones the Virgin Megastore employees wore in the run-up to the album’s official release.)

10:23 p.m. Meanwhile, Chris Brown has turned himself in, and MediaTakeOut is claiming that the JT/Al Green collaboration was a result of the Grammy producers’ “oh shit, we need to fill extra time” scramble.

10:25 p.m. Um, to happier topics: the Olivia Broadfield song in the Lincoln ad is pretty nice.

10:27 p.m. The KT Tunstall song in the Chase ad, however? Not so much. Although I have seen televised versions of her concerts, and her music is sharper, less corporate-rock-arranged.

10:28 p.m. Here is where I offer a shout out to my friend / trivia impresario / chili competition svengali Matt Timms, who is the nerdy-ish guy in the Optimum ad that just aired in the NYC area (and maybe other places?).

10:29 p.m. Um, this is not the first time T.I. and Justin Timberlake have performed at the Grammys together, Samuel L. Jackson. Perhaps you weren’t invited two years ago, but they were on this very same stage.

10:30 p.m. Feedback and the sound dropping out. Oy. Friends, won’t you support the music industry with a purchase today?

10:33 p.m. “Adversity builds character,” T.I. declares. Everyone is getting a lot of sonic “character” tonight.

10:34 p.m. Hello, Academy President Neil Portnow! Yes, he can… tie the Presidential election into the Grammys, because Barack Obama is “one of us”—you know, an artist.

10:35 p.m. Oh, a whole speech based around “yes, we can.” Guess this means the will.i.am bit is coming up soon!

10:36 p.m. “Bail out the music industry! Please?”

10:38 p.m. The Four Tops tribute with Duke Fakir, Ne-Yo, Jamie Foxx, and Smokey Robinson.

10:39 p.m. Ne-Yo’s voice is nothing like Levi Stubbs’, but I still will stand in his shadows of love any day.

10:41 p.m. That was totally fine. Jamie Foxx got growly, Ne-Yo stayed classy, Smokey and Duke held it down. More like that please.

10:42 p.m. Hey everyone, remember that Christina Aguilera greatest-hits album that came out all those months ago?

10:47 p.m. Josh Groban introducing Neil Diamond. Did you know that the new Josh Groban album is being produced by Rick Rubin?

10:47 p.m. Oh no, NOT “SWEET CAROLINE.” I mean… Neil, you are a legend. But “Cherry Cherry,” or “I Am, I Said,” or even “I’m A Believer”? The whole crowd is going to do that “ba ba ba” thing, I know it.

10:49 p.m. Yep.

10:50 p.m. People are doing the “so good, so good, so good” thing, too! Ugh.

10:51 p.m. That needed a song change or Lil Wayne.

10:51 p.m. And now: The dead people montage. Because nothing brings down a good old singalong high like being reminded that about 1,485 really amazing musicians passed away over the past 12 months.

10:54 p.m. And to close out the memoriam montage… the Bo Diddley tribute, and Keith Urban’s third appearance of the night.

10:55 p.m. Is there a statute of limitations for the memoriam montage? Seems odd to not have Ron Asheton or Lux Interior in there…

11:01 p.m. Twenty-nine minutes to go! We can do it, everybody!

11:02 p.m. Gary Sinise is your latest CBS cross-promotion. He is introducing Lil Wayne by way of Louis Armstrong and Katrina.

11:03 p.m. Lil Wayne and Allen Toussaint. Wow. (And Robin Thicke, as a sort of afterthought. Not that he isn’t old friends with Weezy, but Gary Sinise sort of choked out his name.)

11:03 p.m. As a bonus, this means Weezy probably won’t be performing “Prom Queen.”

11:05 p.m. Robin Thicke’s last album sort of got ignored by everyone, although it was quite good.

11:06 p.m. And now… the Dirty Dozen Brass Band! And dancers! And Terence Blanchard!

11:07 p.m. This, this is the good kind of chaos.

11:08 p.m. Made even better by the utter absence of “Prom Queen.”

11:09 p.m. will.i.am takes time out to congratulate Barack Obama.

11:10 p.m. T-Pain makes a funny about being on only one of the Best Rap Album nominees. He is another person who is funnier every time I see an interview with him.

11:10 p.m. Lil Wayne wins! And does a little space-hop! And brings about fifteen people on stage.

11:11 p.m. We are all thanked. Hooray for us!

11:11 p.m. Wait, I mean hooray for will.i.am, and Obama, for making him relevant again.

11:18 p.m. One performance left! One award left! Zooey Deschanel introducing another she and him in an absolutely wretched dress! Is there any way that Plant & Krauss don’t take home the biggest award of the night? (Or that Google Trends is going to spike for “She & Him Deschanel”?)

11:20 p.m. I mean, there are still 10 minutes left in the show’s running time… They could run through the whole album at this point. Would be quite the setup for Viva La Vida‘s win! Ha ha, just kidding.

11:22 p.m. “And now you’ve seen why the idea of touring with Led Zeppelin just doesn’t appeal to me.”

11:23 p.m. Meanwhile, the new Green Day record is called 21st Century Breakdown. Hmmmm.

11:24 p.m. Raising Sand wins. I mean, there was no way that anything else would, right? The audience doesn’t seem very excited, or surprised.

11:25 p.m. But here’s something surprising: Alison Krauss gets to speak!

11:25 p.m. Robert Plant is bewildered? Talking about how even deigning to appear at the Grammys would have been “selling out” in the old days? Oh dude. Spare me, and go count your money somewhere.

11:26 p.m. The producers are daring to play them off! Even though there are four minutes left in the telecast!

11:27 p.m. Stevie Wonder closing out the show with a song from a Barack Obama tribute album. This song’s vapid nature + Billie Joe Armstrong’s haphazard introduction: A sign this performance was a bit “unexpected” as well.

11:30 p.m. The musical director for this show? American Idol bandleader Rickey Minor! Which explains a lot about the punishing middlebrowishness of the last-minute replacements, really.

11:31 p.m. Another year, another Grammy telecast—complete with ridiculous performances, questionable sound quality, and re-rewarding of the biggest names of thirty-plus years ago. (Yes, the album in question is quite good, as a matter of fact, but its pedigree is also so… Grammy, you know?) We’ll have more of a postmortem tomorrow, but for now, my five favorite bits:

• Lil Wayne leading the New Orleans parade.
• The look on Adele’s face after she admitted her crush on the Jonas Brothers.
• Radiohead and the marching band.
• Estelle helping make everything OK after the overamplified trainwreck that was Katy Perry.
• M.I.A. M.I.A.!!!

And you know, it’s kind of crummy that Ne-Yo was the only Album Of The Year nominee to not get a performance of his own. Was Rickey Minor afraid that he’d blow too many other people off the stage?

So, people are really upset about the idea that backing tapes were used during Jennifer Hudson’s and the E Street Band’s (separate) performances at the Super Bowl on Sunday, huh? I guess the idea that the biggest annual event in America is a heavily planned event that leaves very little to chance is still something that outrages Americans who need to be mad about something between election seasons. Anyway, yesterday I was trying to find a professional to weigh in on why these live performances might need a little enhancement—honestly, who here hasn’t bitched about the crappy sound quality of, say, a Saturday Night Live musical performance this year?—and I was alerted to a post by Fall Out Boy‘s Patrick Stump on the subject:

I’m hearing a lot of flack going the way of Jennifer Hudson, Faith Hill, and now Bruce Springsteen‘s legendary band for not performing live but miming their performances to pre-recorded music. And while I myself have made it a point never to lip-synch for any reason I have to say that, like the Christian Bale/Director of Photography debacle, uneducated people should mind their own business. Why is this trivia? Cause I’m gonna get vaguely technical:

Stadiums are built in large ovals or in circles and in some cases are built with the express purpose fo amplifying the crowd to dangerous volumes (this is said to “Inspire” sports players). Indeed, American football players have a high instance of hearing loss due to daily exposure to loud noise. Now add into that the shape and location of the speakers for stadiums. The problem is that in the case of music, any performer is going to be contending with the “Slapback,” or natural delay of the sound.

Think of sound like a distance runner. Now imagine that you’re playing music in a small club and the little runner has to sprint from your guitar to your amplifier to the mixing board to the PA speakers to the walls of the club and then run back to you. Sound travels very fast so in a small club this happens almost instantaneously and isn’t noticed by the human ear. But think of how big a stadium is. Now imagine that same runner having to perform that same sprint on the scale of a football field. The runner will be arriving later than they would if they were in the small club i.e. the sound is getting back to you well after you make it. As I’ve said before, this is called delay. Now, in some stadiums delays can be whole seconds which can seriously throw off a musician’s rhythm. Plus pitches can arrive late as well, making it hard to hear what key you’re in or even what note you’re singing. Plus you may be hearing two sounds at ones, the note you’re playing and the note you played. That can be confusing. Of course you could use “in-ear monitors,” like headphones that pipe in your mix to you. But even then, the isolation you’re getting isn’t enough to counteract the dangerous volumes bouncing from the crowds. The plain truth is that stadiums aren’t built for musical performance and are not suited for it…ever.

At any rate, these artists were asked by the Superbowl to “Perform,” for something they’re probably support (what were the Nielsen ratings for the Superbowl? Yeah there’s a good chance they’re football fans) and they wanted to give a good performance. Having heard the horror stories in the past of stadium shows going terribly wrong, they probably opted to be pre-recorded or partially pre-recorded. It was likely a tough decision to make but they decided to pros outweighed the cons and they went for it. And they are not alone. Most half-time shows performed by pop artists are pre-recorded whether or not attention is drawn to it. To blame Bruce Springsteen and his pit perfect band for the acoustically feeble architecture of a stadium is unfair and childish. The internet would be just as mean if they performed it off track, couldn’t hear themselves, and sounded bad. Springsteen is a legend and deserves a little respect. I know the internet was only invented so you can talk about how much you hate things in a disconnected attempt at scene points, but lighten up.

Not that this will necessarily put this particular nontroversy to bed, and I’m sure a just-as-technical counter-counterpoint to this counterpoint will come up soon (whee, arguing on the Internet)—but you have to admit, he does have a point about the whole “someone out there would steer the narrative about Bruce’s performance toward some sort of complaint, because being negative on the Internet always equals pageviews” argument.

Patrick Vaughn Stump [Official site; HT icecreamhdaches]