Music News, Reviews, and Gossip on Idolator.com » Bruce Springsteen

Katy Perry Only The Fifth Artist To Land Six Top 10 Hot 100 Hits From One Album

Robbie Daw — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:45:08 +0000

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!

Watch Found Footage Of Bruce Springsteen Literally “Dancing In The Dark”

Becky Bain — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:30:10 +0000

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 Covers Bruce Springsteen And Bon Jovi During New Jersey Tour Stop

Becky Bain — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:12:40 +0000

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 Joins Bruce And Elton On Stage, Performs “Stand By Me” With Sting

Robbie Daw — Fri, 14 May 2010 15:49:41 +0000

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’”

‘Glee’ Brings Christina Aguilera “Home”

Idolator Staff — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:45:54 +0000

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 Is Now Born To Run Through His Albums

Maura — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:30:00 +0000

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]

Why The Misfits Are The Most Mythic Of All New Jersey Artists

Jess Harvell — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:00:44 +0000

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]

Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame To Give Itself The Reach-Around In New York This Fall

Maura — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:00:48 +0000

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]

Bruce Springsteen May Have To Apologize To Ticketmaster

Maura — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:30:22 +0000

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]

Virginia’s Democratic Gubernatorial Nominee Was Born To Run

Maura — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:30:54 +0000

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]