Music News, Reviews, and Gossip on Idolator.com » Clips

New Kids On The Block Suffer Fools Gladly (But They Still Love Their Fans)

Maura — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0000

The problem with reunion tours: Before you hit the road, you have to deal with the kinda-dim interviewers who weren’t prepped on your current activities, a lack of planning that only serves to accentuate how socially awkward they are when they have to go off-script. Exhibit A being New Kids On The Block’s appearance on Today, during which the dippy interviewer asked them what they’d been up to, then demanded that they dance in the rain for her, in such a way that it was abundantly clear that she was on the Guns N’ Roses side of the great late-’80s middle school debate back in the day. (My favorite part of the clip, of course, is when two of my current interests–Jon Knight and the popping housing bubble–come together when he talks about how his fame isn’t really helping move inventory in his real-estate business.) [Video HT to Jezebel]

“America’s Next Top Model” Makes Music Fierce Again

anthonyjmiccio — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:00:20 +0000

Last night, Tyra Banks commanded the stringbean drones populating this season of America’s Next Top Model (seriously, when they run to Tyra’s glaring portrait to read their new assignment off the ticker–out loud, in unison, shrieking–I half expect it to read “DRINK THIS KOOL-AID”) to become the living embodiments of America’s most memorable music genres: R&B, metal, emo, pop, country, folk, punk, house and… grunge! I normally would leave all ANTM analysis to animated-GIF maestro Rich Juzwiak, but when am I ever going to get to riff on glamorous trash like this again. Click the photos to see how each model represented her assigned genre. [Photos via The CW]

Breaking: Vampire Weekend’s Mothers Dress Them Funny

Christopher R. Weingarten — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:30:54 +0000

This weekend, Vampire Weekend cemented their superstar status, joining the ranks of such timeless acts as 3-D, the Tragically Hip, the Bus Boys, Timbuk3, and the Hothouse Flowers as musical guests on Saturday Night Live! There’s been a lot of talk about whether these guys are really Columbia douchebags or just playing up an image of Columbia douchebags and while there’ve been some salient points about the precarious position of class and race, we… wait a minute, what the fuck is that guy wearing? Really? A scarf the size of a tent? Indoors? He looks like Stuart Little after he curls up for a nap inside a shirt sleeve.

Well, to be totally honest, this guy is smarter, better-looking, richer, more successful and more fun than I’ll ever be. So maybe this is what well-educated, skinny, popular kids wear when they’re somehow fooling the world that they deserve to be much more than our generation’s Camper Van Beethoven. But something doesn’t sit right with me. I’d ask one of my friends that go to Columbia, but if I had a ton of friends who went to Columbia, I probably wouldn’t be trying to pay my rent by writing 400-word blurbs on Hydra Head bands. I feel lost, confused,,,,,,,[sic--that's how little I care about an Oxford comma] and really old.

Seriously, do people wear this shit? Is there some uptown hipster keffiyeh community I’ve somehow missed? Is this some kind of Seinfeld-ian puffy shirt fiasco? Or is he trying to protect his neck from real vampires?!

RIAA: Murderers, Terrorists, And Other Criminal Minds May Be Graduating To Pirating Music

Maura — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:40:08 +0000

Yesterday the RIAA-produced video In Trial, which covers the societal dangers of music piracy, made its way out to torrent sites, and among its contents are instructions on how to get RIAA investigators qualified as expert witnesses, a guide to identifying pirated CDs, and the above bit, about the links between people who profit from pirated music and people who deal weapons, populate terror cells, and murder their fellow man for sport. Surely I’m not the only person who thinks that this particular bit on the “kill ‘em all” impulses of miscreants dealing in fifth-generation copies of Graduation would hit home a little more effectively if it were accompanied by a bangin’ soundtrack? [Listening Post / Gizmodo]

Carly Smithson Explains Herself (Sort Of)

Maura — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:45:30 +0000

During last night’s episode of American Idol, Carly Smithson (née Hennessy) came sorta-clean about her major-label past, talking about how her label “imploded” after her album came out–although said label, MCA, didn’t so much “implode” as “get absorbed by Geffen a few months after that Wall Street Journal piece about the piles and piles of money they spent on her came out.” And Carly’s mention of her current job highlighted another interesting detail about that story that has nothing to do with major-label excess: It reports, in its closing, Carly getting her first tattoo (”an intricate cross on the small of her back that she hopes will impress her fans”)–and now she owns a whole parlor! Crazy, right?

Art Brut Can Handle Its Own Licensing, Thank You Very Much

Maura — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:00:16 +0000

Art Brut is the latest band to be taken under the wing of T-Mobile’s advertising department with the above ad, which debuted during the Grammys last night and which is, I guess, supposed to serve as a testament to the band’s canniness as far as its ability to market itself. While I do think that your average non-blog-reader will be able to figure out that the Brit collective is a real band–and not just some ad exec’s caffeine-fueled “inspiration”–more easily than she was with Of Montreal’s T-Mobile spot from a few months back, part of me wonders why Art Brut’s reps didn’t fight to have the band’s name chyroned on the screen for maximum Google potential. You just know that Teyana Taylor would have her lawyers write a “my name must be on screen for at least four seconds” clause in her contract. [MySpace; warning, embedded remix of OneRepublic's "Apologize" inexplicably within^*]

^*Side note to Art Brut: You may want to defriend that dude.

The Plain White T’s Muse Speaks: What She Really Wants To Do Is Run

Maura — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:15:56 +0000

This morning, Today sat down for a chat with Delilah DiCrescenzo, the young Olympic hopeful who inspired the Plain White T’s “Hey There Delilah” and who’ll be attending the Grammys next month as lead singer Tom Higginson’s date. Even though she has a boyfriend! Who, she claims in her delay-plagued chat with Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer, is actually completely fine with her going on said date, although one wonders how much he was gritting his teeth when he reiterated that fact. DiCrescenzo is, bless her heart, saying that her Grammy appearance will be a good opportunity for her to humanize track and field before this summer’s Olympics in Beijing, although one does wonder if her definition of “humanize” means, in part, “getting a sweet correspondent’s gig if the whole running thing doesn’t work out come Olympic Trials time.”

We Take The “Best Albums Of ‘07″ Listmaking To The Streets

Maura — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:30:52 +0000

On a drizzly night this week, Idolator videographer Alex Goldberg headed out to the corner of Bedford Ave. and N. 7th St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to find out what the people–that is, people who weren’t too busy fiddling with the placement of their year-end lists to actually leaved the house–enjoyed listening to in 2007. What was the most popular album among the people he surveyed? Kala. What came in second as far as responses go? “I don’t really listen to music”/”I didn’t really pay attention this year.” And this is from people who are standing mere blocks away from an actual store where recorded music is sold. Perhaps we should send him to a station outside the soon-to-be-former Virgin Megastore next.

Idolator Meets Paramore’s Frozen Faithful

Maura — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:00:24 +0000

As part of their trip to New York, the spitfire chick-fronted emo outfit Paramore played a “first come, first served” acoustic set at the Helio store in SoHo yesterday. Idolator videographer Alex Goldberg hit up the line outside to see how long the band’s fans would wait in the not-really-all-that-warm November weather for the chance to see an unplugged performance by the band, find the one person in line with a Y chromosome, and deduce whether or not the mobile carrier would be able to say that this bit of cross-promotion had actually resulted in people abandoning their Sidekicks and Blackberries.

The Road To Crazy Town Is Apparently Paved With Crack

Maura — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:51:21 +0000

Chalk this up to my naivete, but when I found out yesterday that Rock Of Love’s neck-tattooed runner-up Heather would be touring with a Poison tribute band, I thought to myself, “Oh, well, it’s nice that we’ve finally hit rock bottom.” But then the above video–an outtake from VH1’s upcoming show Celebrity Rehab–crossed my transom, and I had to recalibrate my definition of “basement level.” In the above clip, former Crazy Town guy Seth “Shifty Shellshock” Binzer showily fires up a crack pipe for the camera, berating his addiction the whole time. The saddest part? Right now, he’s probably more bummed out that this FoxNews.com story on the “leaked” videos didn’t even remember his name than anything.

Celebrity Rehab Outtakes: Seth Binzer Smokes Crack [LiveLeak; HT Defamer]