And so today brings the final nominees list for the People’s Choice Awards, a roundup of the some of the less-challenging artists and material from the past year or so. And—yippee!—this was the first year that “we, the people” were allowed to have somewhat of a say in the nominees. But despite this privilege, snubs still abound in the music categories. MORE »
Well, that was fast. (Thank God.) [NME] MORE »
Lily Allen has had something of a busy Internet week, starting a blog-clearinghouse for artists’ views on file sharing and getting into rows with “Everything Must Be Free For Me” types as a result of her saying that she kind of was not into the idea of people not paying for her record. Yesterday she put up a post on the site and had a throwaway line that piqued some curiosity: “Just so you know, I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record (applause).” What? MORE »
While trawling my RSS feed for interesting things to post on this lovely September morning, I came across another one of those dreaded late-summer listicles counting down “hot” women in pop, this one coming from a site purporting to contain “Gossip For Grown-Ups.” Its hook? “Female pop stars are not all talentless bints who clutter up newspapers and snarky entertainment sites (thanks for that) with their inane chatter and their lady bits.” Well… thanks? Although, uh, all the “writing” in said listicle consists of asides like “Do you think we are so easily won over by her releasing a song about her kissing a girl? Probably.” and “Just turn down the sound and watch the video instead.” It also refers to Madonna as “old vinegar tits.” Just so I’m straight here—is it only OK when men engage in “inane chatter” over pop stars’ “lady bits,” or is it only kosher when said tongue-wagging is couched in a pathetic grab for traffic? MORE »
Now that the British music establishment has declared its favorite home-grown albums of the year with the Mercury Prize nominations, the cheeky British pop site Popjustice has seen fit to announce its shortlist for The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize, which honors the best British single of the year. The artist behind the winning song gets twenty pounds, and the voting is decided by you! (And me, and anyone else.) So all you commenters who want to avenge Lily Allen’s being left off the Mercury Prize list can. Other nominees include the Pet Shop Boys’ “Love Etc” and Saint Etienne’s “Method Of Modern Love”; I’m probably going to throw my weight behind Girls Aloud’s “The Promise,” what with it being completely overplayed (yet not played enough) by my assortment of digital-music players in recent months. All the nominees, after the jump! MORE »
As promised: The state of my “2009 awesomeness” playlist, in which I collect the songs that catch my ear as the year progresses in order to not make my best-of list a last-minute-of-December clusterfuck sort of thing. (It inevitably winds up being like that, but you know, I have noble intentions.) It’s after the jump, and has some contextual links added in. Feel free to make your own and share it here! MORE »
The video for Lily Allen’s musing on whether women of her generation have been stamped with an expiration date, “22,” chronicles those moments that members of the fairer sex spend in the bathroom during late nights at clubs—scrutinizing themselves in the mirror, intoxicated on both the offerings served up by the establishments’ bartenders and the peacocking they’ll have to go through once they escape through the doors marked WOMEN. Clip after the jump. MORE »
VH1 is rebooting its “Divas” franchise, a ladycentric spectacular that has been on the shelf since 2005. (Perhaps the channel has run out of rappers willing to show up for its Hip Hop Honors telecasts–after all, once you’ve acknowledged the deep influence of Naughty by Nature, who else can you turn to?) The network ran a “Divas” special every year from 1998-2005, and it apparently needed to wait for the world’s supply of divas to recharge. While the network floated names like Lily Allen and Adele to fill out the new show, I’d like to think we could help stuff the suggestion box with some even better choices. MORE »
Lily Allen was profiled by The New York Times‘ Milena Ryzik earlier this month, and while some people found the piece a bit problematic, the pop singer herself thought it was “great, a really nice piece with a picture of me sat on my sofa,” according to the latest post on her blog. So why, then, is the entry in question called “The New York Time [sic] are cheap skanks”? That would be because the photographs that the paper didn’t use—which were shots of Allen at home—were licensed to the very downmarket tabloid OK!, which plastered a “World Exclusive: At Home With Lily Allen” banner over them. And she didn’t even get a cut of the profits from the photos! MORE »
