Yesterday we brought you the Top 5 Pop Stars Who Should Never Act Again, where, miraculously, Mariah Carey was kept off the list because of her work in Precious. (Okay, her part only lasts two scenes and she sat at a desk the whole time, but progress is progress.) Unfortunately, she’s still not quite skilled enough to make today’s list of pop singers who have proven they’ve actually got some acting chops. MORE »
Tomorrow night, Vh1 continues this month’s run of MTV Networks self-cross-promotional bonanzas with the Paula Abdul-hosted special Vh1 Divas, in which current female inhabitants of the pop charts get tagged with the d-word whether it’s apt or not while singing in front of an adoring audience. This year’s lineup offers up a sort of diminishing diva returns; you’ve got Kelly Clarkson (hell yes), Adele (eh, ok), Jennifer Hudson (sure), Leona Lewis (Simon Cowell thinks so but the Idolator jury’s still out), Jordin Sparks (uh), and Miley Cyrus (oh hell no). And now all those singers have been assigned duet partners for the evening, in an effort to pass some torches and I guess reel in the demographic of people who prefer “Achy Breaky Heart” to “Party In The U.S.A.” Buddy up after the jump! MORE »
I’ve long wondered if an “Oprah’s Music Club”—an analogue to her beloved-by-publishers Book Club, in which the talk-show host gives a tome her blessing, causing it to actually be stocked in stores in anticipation of sales going sky-high—would be a boon for the music business, particularly in this time of faltering sales and eternally delayed projects. Well, the new season of her signature show bows next week, and its first few episodes will certainly be a test of whether or not she can make her audience feel like buying music once again. MORE »
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! MORE »
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: MORE »
Sure, this weekend saw reigning American Idol… MORE »
We knew last week that Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy” was poised to make a big leap on Billboard’s Hot 100. The only question was, how big?
Just a year ago, a 65-space jump to No. 3 would have been enough to make our eyes pop. When Britney Spears did it in early October 2007 with “Gimme More,” it was considered something of a triumph—especially as she was at the height of her meltdown phase and coming off a tragic performance at the 2007 Video Music Awards.
Now, we’re a little harder to impress. In its third week on the charts, “Boy” makes the exact same move from No. 68 to No. 3–and chart geeks yawn. That’s because the last two months have brought three straight leaps all the way to No. 1 from below No. 70. (The most recent was by Spears herself, whose “Womanizer” bested “Gimme More” by shooting from No. 96 to the penthouse.)
Still, Beyoncé’s got nothing to be ashamed of: her gender-flip of Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend” (well, I like to think of it that way) is her ninth career Top 10 single and sold almost 190,000 digital downloads. And it brings her one hit away from matching the career chart record of the group she ditched four years ago. MORE »
Ten years ago this month—Oct. 23, 1998, to be exact—Jive Records released a savvy, Max Martin–produced pop trifle called “…Baby One More Time.” It went on to top Billboard’s Hot 100 in the winter of 1999 and kick off teen-pop’s headiest, craziest and silliest year of cultural dominance.
It was also the last time former Mouseketeer, aspiring starlet and pop fetish object Britney Spears would top the premier U.S. singles chart—until this week, when Spears (as predicted) shoots from the chart’s bottom rungs to the penthouse with “Womanizer.” In the process, she ousts rap king T.I. and duet partner Rihanna; defeats a record he set twice in the last two months for the biggest leap to the top in Billboard history; beats Mariah Carey’s record for one-week digital sales by a female act; and consummates a year-long effort to rehabilitate her career.
When I speak about Britney’s rehabilitation, I’m not just referring to her well-publicized efforts to turn around a half-decade of tabloid-level personal breakdown. I’m also referring to her surprisingly checkered U.S. chart history. Indeed, the first question some of you might be asking yourselves is, How is this only her second No. 1 hit?
The short answer: she’s arguably gotten screwed by the refs. To a chart geek like me, Spears comes off as a victim of a decade of erratic industry practices and radical shifts in Hot 100 chart rules. MORE »
Frustrated by a boyfriend who won’t let her breathe, Jennifer Hudson puts on a form-flattering ensemble and hits the club, where the camera, previously devoted to the Dreamgirls star, is quickly distracted by a bottle of Campari. MORE »
Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson duets with Ne-Yo on the five-minute soap opera “Leaving Tonight,” which fits an entire season’s worth of plot twists into its seams–you have the accusations of cheating, the discovery of another woman’s number (complete with ringtone) in the man’s cell phone, the… MORE »
