NEW YORK, 10:54 PM, FRI JUL 18 | 16 POSTS IN THE LAST 24 HOURS | tips@idolator.com | SUBMIT A TIP | RSS

Posts Tagged “Entertainment Weekly”

somethin 4 the weekend

"Entertainment Weekly" Best-Albums List Reveals Every Problem With (And Advantage Of) General-Interest Listicles

Despite sagging page counts, general print-media malaise, and the fact that they're still saddled with that Diablo Cody column, Entertainment Weekly found reason to celebrate this week: It's the magazine's 1,000th issue, and in honor of that milestone the editorial team there put together a buttload of lists of "New Classics," arbitrary best-of rundowns that supposedly quantify the best pieces of pop culture of the past 25 years. The list-craziness is apparently the latest step in EW's plan to turn itself into a printed-and-stapled blog, which has resulted in more meandering first-person front-of-book pieces and, well, Cody's occasional game of "Spot The Reference." The centerpiece of the issue's music-related offerings is a 100-album list that's supposedly meant to count down the best albums that came out between 1983 and now—it's bookended by the soundtrack to Purple Rain and George Michael's Faith—and because I needed something to do, I organized it by year. More »

7:30 PM on Fri Jun 20 2008
By Maura Johnston
2,356 views, 28 comments

Latest by MrStarhead: Life's Rich Pageant is the sole REM entry. Not Automatic for the People or Murmur, Life's Rich Pageant, an album that the band freely admits was slapped together out of old rejected songs, covers, and about an EP's worth of more »

Have you ever wondered if Kanye West was the type of kid who, during his school years, would get pissed off when he "only" scored a B+ on an exam? OK, it's probably obvious that he was, and still is. But signing off his response to Entertainment Weekly's pretty-decent-overall review of his tour-opening show in Seattle with "Never come 2 one of my shows ever again, you're not invited and if you see me... BOW!!! This is not pop, it's pop art! Chris Willman, kill yourself!" makes me wonder if he's going to respond to every review that pops up along his tour in this fashion, and if he's stocking up on antacids in order to soothe the ulcers that are an obvious byproduct of said vitriol. [kanYe West: Blog]

9 comments

everybody's a winner

"NME" Attempts To Establish Its Brand In US By Piggybacking Off Other Brands

The NME—which has taken to branding itself as "The World's Fastest Music News Service," which I guess is their way of sidestepping allegations about its accuracy—will hold the American version of its Shockwaves Awards on April 23 in Los Angeles, and you aren't invited. But don't worry! You can stream the whole thing on MySpace, thanks to one of those partnership deals that press releases trumpet as "exclusive" and jaded eyes read as "last-ditch attempts to make people on this side of the pond care about a brand that doesn't really mean much to them unless they're really into overly breathless prose and/or Billy Childish." More »

11:30 AM on Tue Mar 25 2008
By Maura Johnston
260 views, 1 comment

Latest by CarsmileSteve: hurray for linking to 8 year old FT pieces ;) unfortunately the link from there doesn't work, will have a dig round see if i can find an update... more »

pointless listmaking

"Entertainment Weekly" Makes A Grab For Those Indie Rock Pageviews

Well-versed in the knowledge that nothing gets people clicking around Web sites like a photo gallery, nothing gets people arguing on the Internet like a slightly specious list, and no demographic has more work-hours time to click on said photo galleries and argue over said lists than the knowledge workers who proclaim themselves lovers of the nebulously defined genre "indie rock," Entertainment Weekly has put together a photo gallery/list called "The Indie Rock 25," which assigns one album to each of the 25 years since 1984, a year that was apparently defined by the Replacements' Let It Be. There are some arbitrary rules (no solo acts, albums that came out on an indie overseas but a major in the U.S. are OK), some arbitrary picks (see: Bright Eyes in 2005), lots of white dudes (cf. 1993: Ultimate Alternative Wavers over Pussy Whipped? Really?), and an obligatory mention of Radiohead, whose stature in "indie" probably wouldn't exist were it not for the major-label machine of 15 years ago but I'll probably be stuck arguing that until I'm blue in the face. Full list after the jump. More »

4:45 PM on Thu Mar 20 2008
By Maura Johnston
901 views, 25 comments

Latest by tigerpop: @graeffufighting: Srsly. The Hot Rock is good, but wasn't nearly as defining as The Woods or Dig Me Out. @kisskisskiss: They had to mention BTS, but There's Nothing Wrong With Love came out in 1994, and they had to pick a more »

cover me

"EW" Still Does Not Find Music All That Entertaining On A Weekly Basis

Last week, Jezebel invoked People editor Dick Stolley's "Law Of Covers," which proclaimed in part "Movies are better than music. Music is better than television. Television is better than sports... And anything is better than politics." But in this era where "popular music" is having something of a crisis, is television really less newsstand-worthy than music? To test this hypothesis, I looked at the 2007 cover roster of pop-culture generalist bible Entertainment Weekly, which this week boasted a two-page music section (sure, it was a slow week for new releases, but that's smaller than the space it devoted to books!). As my former colleague noticed back in November 2006, the magazine's covers devoted to music-related topics had become few and far between. Would 2007's roster of covers show that Stolley's maxim was still in effect, or had the boob tube finally won out over the tube amp? More »

10:35 AM on Tue Jan 8 2008
By mjohnston
2,144 views, 5 comments

Latest by Michaelangelo Matos: @Gregoire: The point isn't how well the magazine covers music, it's that music covers generally don't sell as well as other kinds. They could have the best music coverage in America and it wouldn't matter. more »

year-end analysis

"Entertainment Weekly" Votes Bruce For Album Man Of The Year Decade

Entertainment Weekly becomes one of the last of the major print media outlets to weigh in on 2007 with its lists of the 10 best and five worst albums of the year as the Boss Supermans Soulja Boy, Paul McCartney unexpectedly pops up like a Whack-A-Mole among Radiocade Firehousesystem (betcha can't guess which list), and 50 Cent gets sandwiched between OneRepublic and Good Charlotte. (Worst fanfic ever.)

THE GOOD: Thanks, EW, for pointing out the following Soulja Boy line that had somehow escaped me until this afternoon: ''Booty meat in my face, even when I be talkin'." Booty meat! That's so awesomely gross. It might turn me off asses* even more effectively than that Bangers And Cash cover.
THE BAD:"Now infamously troubled, Amy Winehouse risks a total eclipse of the art." Can't decide if that deserves boos or kudos, really.
THE WHAAAA? Did Jennifer Lopez really "[bomb] by playing the hottie card with dance-pop tunes even Ashley Tisdale would've dismissed as too shallow" because Brave didn't offer "the kind of album people want to hear from a celeb of her stature... at least a smallish window into her soul"? Something makes me think that if she'd gotten the hooks right on those shallow dance-pop tunes the buying public wouldn't have really given a shit about being denied a peek into her inner life.

More »

12:30 PM on Fri Dec 21 2007
By jharv
965 views, 12 comments

get me rewrite

Popping The "Pop Of King"

Ed. note: Once again, Stephen King has contributed his keenly observed cultural criticism to the pages of Entertainment Weekly; and once again, in their rush to put out the umpteenth speculative article about Lindsay Lohan's career, the magazine's editors were unable to edit King's essay in time for publication. Brian Raftery's helpful annotations follow. More »

3:00 PM on Tue Aug 7 2007
By Brian Raftery
1,226 views, 10 comments

the bullshit god

"EW" Writer Knows Famous, Influential People, Thinks Kid Rock "Rocks"

Writing about music these days can be hard. When the public's knowledge of musicians is as celebrities rather than artists, how should a careful scribe treat them? Should we pooh-pooh the public's philistinism and treat musicians with the seriousness they are accustomed to? Or should we use the same breathless, publicist-friendly voice you might find in Us Weekly (which is, lest we forget, the sister publication to bastion of taking-musicians-seriously Rolling Stone)? Well, EW's Shirley Halperin has seen the future of music writing, and it sounds an awful lot like Cindy Adams. More »

11:08 AM on Tue Jul 31 2007
By Dick Malone
1,692 views, 21 comments

Latest by Beach: Criticizing the content, style, and what it says about the state of the biz is all fine and good but, ummm, linking to the writer's wedding announcement? Lame. LAMENESS IN THE EXTREME! more »

magazines

Popping The "Pop Of King"

In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, columnist Stephen King compiles his list of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time. However, due to what must have been a production error, the column was evidently published completely unedited. After the click-through, we provide the editorial notes that EW no doubt intended to provide before publication: More »

2:50 PM on Mon May 21 2007
By Brian Raftery
3,184 views, 20 comments

entertainment weekly

50 Cent Cancels His "Entertainment Weekly" Subscription

For those of you who thought those major-label record-listening sessions couldn't possibly get any more awkward: More »

4:00 PM on Wed May 2 2007
By Brian Raftery
2,083 views, 18 comments

american idol

The "EW" "Idol" Cover: Let The Conspiracy Theories Fly!

This week's issue of Entertainment Weekly has a big package on American Idol, and its cover layout is causing some chatter among Idol conspiracy theorists who are getting bored by Sanjaya-stamina stories. Take this comment on the Brady Bunch-style layout from MJ's American Idol blog: More »

6:01 PM on Mon Apr 16 2007
By mjohnston
1,009 views, 5 comments

year-end analysis

Year-End Analysis, Part 452: "Entertainment Weekly" Is Surprisingly Non-Surprising

More "Best of 2006" lists popped up over the weekend, including this round-up from Entertainment Weekly, the magazine that makes you squint to see its tiny little JPEG cover (and that doesn't put its music selections online): More »

11:45 AM on Tue Dec 26 2006
By Brian Raftery
72 views, 1 comment

magazines

"EW" Editors No Longer Find Music Entertaining On A Weekly Basis

Conflicts galore in this post, but what the hell: Is it just us, or has Entertainment Weekly considerably downsized its music coverage this year? A few months ago, they shuttered the four-year-old Listen2This music supplement, and this week's Gwen Stefani cover is only the third music cover of 2006; unless the Clipse are named Entertainers Of The Year in the year-end issue, this is looking to be one of the magazine's least music-intensive runs in years* (compare it to 2003, when Bruce Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, 50 Cent, Dave Matthews, Clay Aiken and Britney Spears all landed on the cover). And while their reviews section still commands a decent-sized piece of real estate in the back of the mag, they've yet to find a full-time music-critic to replace David Browne, who left in April. More »

1:43 PM on Tue Nov 28 2006
By Brian Raftery
456 views, 6 comments

Latest by faraways0close: EW is great for Television news. They would always have an article or blurb about Arrested Development at it's peak and now they mention The Office every chance they get. And then they have Stephen King giving his more »

amerigasm

Toby Keith's "Amerigasm": The Word Is Getting Round

Yesterday, we put out a call to arms directed at our fellow writers: Now that Toby Keith seems to be OK with using the Jalopnik-coined word Amerigasm to describe his more stridently patriotic work, shouldn't the world of music writers follow suit? We're happy to report that Whitney Pastorek of Entertainment Weekly has risen to our challenge, dropping the term and its sister word, "patri-erotic," into her round-up of Fox's crappy World Series coverage:
(Perhaps the one bright spot in Mellencamp's patri-erotic ubiquity? We have yet to see a Toby Keith Amerigasm Ford commercial.)

We are so proud. Whitney—thank you so much. And to everyone else: Let this be the beginning of "Amerigasm" spreading far and wide throughout our great, patri-erotic nation. (See how we did that? Smooth, no?) More »

4:30 PM on Tue Oct 24 2006
By mjohnston
59 views, Comment

music writing

Listen2This Silenced By 'Entertainment Weekly'

Another Friday, another music publication on its way out the door: Listen2This, the Entertainment Weekly music supplement that launched in May 2002, has been discontinued. According to an EW flack, Listen2This content will be folded into EW's music section and the magazine's Web site. (Perhaps they can start by freshening the content on the Listen2This page—remember when The Hives were the next big thing? Aw.) More »

5:40 PM on Fri Sep 15 2006
By mjohnston
90 views, 2 comments