Hey folks, just a quick note to let you know we’ll be liveblogging the American Music Awards this Sunday night (ABC, 8/7central — we’ll be here for the Pacific time zone broadcast) so please come by as we bow down to/bitch about who won what, who blew whom off the stage and who ripped off Lady Gaga’s look most blatantly. A few things we should all reasonably expect to see: MORE »
UPDATE: Alicia Keys Tweeted that the ethereal, Bodyguard-y album cover of her new album Element of Freedom going around the net is bogus, and posted the real deal on her Facebook and MySpace. Check out the similarly bird-adoring cover above, and after the jump, remind yourself what could have been: MORE »
Much more egregious than the snapped strap on Whitney Houston’s dress during her performance on this weekend’s X Factor, which inexplicably lit up the Internet today: The realization that her upcoming tour is going to rely a lot on her backup singers and dancers to carry along the proceedings. Which is kind of sad, actually, because there’s a lot to like about her comeback effort I Look To You. I do like the callback to “How Will I Know?” into this arrangement of the the Alicia Keys-penned song’, but I can’t help but think that if girlfriend went on the British talent search as a contestant with that performance, she would not have been put through by Simon Cowell to any next round at all. [YouTube] MORE »
Sales of Whitney Houston’s comeback album I Look To You boomeranged by 77%—to 156,000 copies—after her two-part interview on last week’s Oprah, which was full of juicy details about her drug use and marriage to Bobby Brown and lots of great opportunities to make amazing animated GIFs. The album’s sold 548,000 copies in its three weeks on shelves, which is not a shabby number for this age in which the Adult Contemporary charts that Whitney tailored her product to are almost as impenetrable as the nation’s mass consciousness about the fact that, yes, there is still new music being released these days, and some of it’s even for sale. After the jump, Whitney’s performance of the album’s Diane Warren-penned redemption song “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” MORE »
Unsurprisingly, Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 debuted atop today’s Billboard 200, thanks to sales of 476,000 copies in the time that elapsed between its release last Tuesday and Sunday night. But how did Jay’s first-week numbers fare in the more rarefied arena of No. 1 debuts? I crunched a few numbers to figure out just how all of the albums that topped the charts in their first week of sales fared, and came away slightly surprised! MORE »
Today at 2 p.m. ET I will be appearing on WNYC’s Soundcheck talking about the impact that television has on pop music, and whether or not exposure on shows like Oprah can help fill the void left by the ever-more-music-averse MTV. (Today is part one of Whitney Houston’s big Oprah appearance!) [WNYC] MORE »
We complain often around here about the mainstream media’s tendency to oversimplify music stories in their quest for an easy headline. This week, Billboard’s Hot 100 and Billboard 200 suggest splashy headlines that practically write themselves: Return of the Big-Voiced Divas!
Topping the album chart is Whitney Houston’s much-dissected comeback effort I Look to You, her first No. 1 disc in more than 16 years. And breaking into the Top 10 on the songs chart is her onetime rival and duet partner, Mariah Carey, with the beleaguered pre-album track “Obsessed” — the single that might bring her one step closer to tying the Beatles’ all-time record for Hot 100 chart-toppers.
So: mission accomplished, right? We can pretend pegged jeans and Bill Clinton are back in style, because Diva Era Redux is on? (Why not: Melrose Place is on the tube again!)
Sure, let’s let the two aging pop queens enjoy their week of glory; in Houston’s case especially, it’s earned (and all the intense press Carey’s been getting lately almost makes me feel for her). But a close look at the numbers that brought them back to the winners’ circle suggests that we might not be talking much about these two come Christmas. MORE »
Not much to say about the video for Whitney Houston’s “I Look To You”; it’s basically Whitney, wearing a billowing gown, mouthing along with the R. Kelly-penned, gospel-tinged lyrics in such a way that it seems like she’s saying a particularly determined prayer. But I just wanted to take a moment to say that I’ve really warmed to the album from which this track is taken since acquiring it early last week. 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 »
“Susan Boyle tops US charts before her album even released. Whitney Houston probably less than thrilled,” screeched the UK gossip site 3am today, causing many credulous observers to fall in line. As it turns out, that “chart” is the Amazon albums chart, where the Britain’s Got Talent-bred singing star’s I Dreamed A Dream—which doesn’t come out until Nov. 24—is in fact No. 1. But overall? Said statistic is actually pretty meaningless, and certainly no indication that Whitney Houston’s just-released I Look To You isn’t selling well, as the Brits’ headline indicates. The reasons why, after the jump. MORE »
