Idolator, All About the Music... If Only It Were

Last night's Grammy nomination concert came in fourth out of five shows airing in its time slot, behind ABC's Private Practice, NBC's Life, and a show on Fox called Secret Millionaire, which apparently sends the richest Americans undercover for the purposes of living in poverty. Hands up if you, like me, think next year's nomination special should ditch the stale covers and steal that plotline! It could even end with everyone covering Crystal Waters! [Zap2it]

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idolator's american idolatry

"American Idol" Is Playing Ringer Toss Again

In preparation for giving my weeknights over to yet another season of American Idol, I've been reading up on the rumored contestants for the coming season, and how many of their names will be vaguely familiar. Rumor has it that we'll be seeing a Castro (Jason's brother), an Osmond (Donny & Marie's nephew), and a former Miss New York crossing our TVs during the early episodes of Season Eight. But one name that probably won't stick out to a lot of people is Joanna—as in Joanna Pacitti, a singer who was outed by The New York Post as a formerly frustrated Annie who had an ill-fated dalliance with Geffen not even two years ago. More »

3:00 PM on Thu Dec 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
92 views, 1 comment

Latest by Jerkwheat: Yo hair is everywhere, dawg more »

videodrone

Lily Allen's Frosted Trailer Park Dreams

Sure, lyrically, Lily Allen's "The Fear" is a bit precious with its musings on fame and fakeness. But the song's a lovely synth-pop confection, and happily the video takes more of an aesthetic cue from the music; it's got an old-school musical vibe (complete with aerial shots of cupcakes and choreography) mixed with a bit of fever-dream craziness (dancing pressents, people made out of balloons). It's totally giddy, and its surreal vibe does tie into the song's overall theme in a way that avoids the "being famous is hard" pitfalls that it easily could have succumbed to. [YouTube; HT PopBytes]

1:45 PM on Thu Dec 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
119 views, 9 comments

Latest by Audif Jackson Winters III: She seems a little bit happier now. Which is good, because she appeared to be fucking miserable on her last U.S. tour, which made it kind of a drag to watch her perform. more »

sketches

Kanye West To Take On Something That May Be A Volcano, Or It May Be An Amusement Park Ride, Or... Yeah, I Dunno Either

synergies

The Arcade Fire Allow Their Music To Be Licensed In A Super-Literal Way

Pairing "My Body Is A Cage" with clips from The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, the forthcoming David Fincher-directed film in which Brad Pitt plays a man who ages in reverse, was something of a genius idea, if a little bit overly spoilerish as far as giving away the plot of the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald the flick's based on. How this will cause the film to fare among the all-important Arcade Fire Diehard Demographic is, of course, up in the air until Christmas Day's bells toll, but at the very least it should get Brad Pitt some Hype Machine love, which you just know he waas really jonesing for. [YouTube via The Playlist]

11:30 AM on Thu Dec 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
94 views, 2 comments

Latest by brasstax: (and one more "mind" for good measure, I guess) more »

Former Idolator head honcho Brian Raftery's book on karaoke, Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered The World And Changed My Life, is available now—and if you'd like to sample before you buy, the first chapter is online thanks to the scanning elves at Google Books. [brianraftery.com / Google Books]

2 comments

Viacom, the parent company of MTV, BET, and VH1, is laying off 850 people worldwide today. According to a memo from MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath, MTVN's Stateside division will be "consolidating some groups, centralizing functions and outsourcing others, and aligning our resources across brands and platforms." Also as part of the cuts, the New York office of Rhapsody is closing, resulting in about 25 jobs being chopped. [MediaMemo / Gawker]

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year-end analysis

Last.fm May Want To Recalibrate Their "Popular Tracks" List Next Year

The social-music site Last.fm—which allows users to track the music they listen to on their computers via a process called "scrobbling," and also has full-song streaming capabilities for certain tracks—released its "most listened to" list earlier this week. The artists list was topped by MGMT; the most-listened-to album was Coldplay's Viva La Vida; and perhaps owing directly to the previous two factors, the "best tracks" list had one surprise on it, and that was the fact that Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" snuck in between repeated spins of "Electric Feel," "Viva La Vida," and other MGMT and Coldplay songs.

THE GOOD: I forgot that Foals (No. 7 on artists) existed. I liked that album!
THE BAD: Raise your hands if you thought Does It Offend You, Yeah? would wind up on any year-end lists, even ones that probably overweigh albums that came out early in the year.
THE WHAAA? So yeah, it's kind of hilarious that last.fm chose to do an unweighted track list, because the repeated listens to both Viva and MGMT's Oracular Spectacular were so intense, the top 10 tracks list looks like this: Coldplay-Coldplay-MGMT-MGMT-Coldplay-Coldplay-Katy Perry-Coldplay-Coldplay-MGMT. (Actually, you could probably write some sort of song based around that structure, where "Coldplay" = a verse, "MGMT" = a chorus, and "Katy Perry" = a shrilly annoying bridge.) So how does a writer do up a kinda-boring list in a punchy enough way to make people continually click through its attached gallsticle? After the jump, we put Last.fm's writeups through the text-matrix site Wordle to see just what words stuck in writers' and editors' minds. ("WTF can't people just listen to something else" not included.)

10:00 AM on Thu Dec 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
455 views, 10 comments

Latest by mackro: I'm not that surprised, especially this year, that Does It Offend You, Yeah? charted. I loved that album for two months. Now I kinda like it. Does It Offend You, Yeah? are good at making donuts. Excellent in the short term, more »

listening station

Jazmine Sullivan Will Not Be Wronged By You

I'd been meaning to post about Jazmine Sullivan's sinewy breakup lament "Bust Your Windows" since I saw its destructoporn clip on some of MTV's digital-cable outlets a few weeks back; now I have an excuse, thanks to her nabbing five Grammy nominations last night. She was nominated for Best New Artist, and "Bust" got a nod for Best R & B Song; she also got nods for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (for the Missy Elliott-produced "Need U Bad"), Best Contemporary R & B Album, and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance. (Generation-spanning!) The 21-year-old Philly native's Fearless came out back in September, and I especially dig "Bust" because of its simultaneous reveling in breaking stuff and admission that said destruction isn't as cathartic as one might think when one first picks up that crowbar. I know, honey. I know. [MTV / YouTube / MySpace]

9:30 AM on Thu Dec 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
78 views, 6 comments

Latest by Rock You Like An Iracane: Am I the only one who's never heard of Lady Antebellum? more »

videodrone

The Best Fusion Of A Muppet And A Critically Acclaimed Album From 2007 You Will See All Day

Just make sure you watch it all the way to the end. (Trust me on this.) [simonowens.com via betelnut]

8:53 AM on Thu Dec 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
840 views, 8 comments

Latest by Cos: I was hoping for Miss Piggy to emerge. more »

everybody's a winner

Live-Blogging The 2009 Grammy Nomination Special

Welcome to Idolator's live-blogging of the inaugural Grammy Nominations Concert, which apparently kicks off the countdown to "music's biggest night." (Wait, I thought music's biggest night was going to be the Presidential inauguration next year?) Anyway, join me, the Foo Fighters, Celine Dion, Taylor Swift, and John Mayer and B.B. King (oh boy that is going to bring out the crankypantses) after the jump. More »

8:55 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Maura Johnston
3,097 views, 37 comments

everybody's a winner

The 2009 Grammy Nominees

Nominees for the 2009 Grammy Awards, announced Wednesday, Dec. 3: More »

videodrone

Britney Spears Fashions Her Own Spectacle

Was it a conscious decision to make "Circus," the title track from Britney Spears' new album, eerily recall "Gimme More" from her blackout-period opus Blackout? Either way, the song's video has enough meta to choke even the most semiotics-loving grad student. There's the "Britney leading a dance troupe down a hall" bit that recalls "...Baby One More Time"; a glittery nude bodysuit not unlike the one she stripped down to during the 2000 Video Music Awards; a shot of her self-branded perfume. Not to mention that the elephant's trunk reminds me of that snake from the next year's VMAs. (I guess she has enough metaphoric snakes plaguing her past few years for that little allusion to be left as not-so-literal.) [YouTube via stopwhispering]

5:45 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Maura Johnston
192 views, 4 comments

Latest by bess marvin, girl detective: please do an analysis on the new girls aloud video "the loving kind". as for britney, like the womanizer video, she is not hitting her dance marks. the spark is still gone. she needs to go back to kentwood more »

they write letters

Dr Pepper Continuing To Operate In "All Publicity Is Good Publicity" Mode

So, after all the advance hype which led to disappointing sales numbers which led to people pointing their fingers toward Axl Rose for not promoting Chinese Democracy at all, the blame game surrounding the long-delayed Guns N' Roses album has finally focused in on... Dr Pepper! Yes, the soft-drink pushers, which offered the world a (coupon for a) free sample of its beverage in honor of Chinese Democracy's release date, got into a bit of (uncarbonated) hot water when the Web site it created for the promotion crashed under the stress of all those people who weren't buying Axl's album trying to wring their free soda out of it. Axl's lawyers whipped off a letter saying that the stunt was "a complete fiasco." (I'd think that in the grand scheme of things, the decision to go with the clowns at Best Buy for the exclusive distribution of a piece of recorded music, and not, say, a flat-screen TV, was the biggest fiasco of all, but who asked me, right?) What does Dr Pepper have to say about it? More »

4:00 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Maura Johnston
373 views, 2 comments

Latest by brasstax: @Marth: Hey, I can only drink about TWO Dr. Peppers a week. more »

I brought my pencil

David Lee Roth, Unadorned And Still Waiting For Something To Write On

A few months back, a vocal-only take of Van Halen's "Runnin' With The Devil" made the Internet rounds, and as you might imagine, listening to David Lee Roth's exclamations and interjections without the counterpoint of Eddie Van Halen's guitar was a surreal experience, one that made you wonder just what sort of karate moves he was contorting himself into in order to hit the perfect "WAUUU!" Well, some nice person has decided to gift the Internet with another vocal-only Roth track—and this time it's "Hot For Teacher," which means that if you ever felt the urge to try and make out the mumbly conversation underneath Roth's between-verses jeering, today is your lucky day. Oh, and if you missed "Runnin'" when it was all the rage, it's after the jump. (Hell, even if you didn't miss it, it's still worth listening to again.) More »

3:30 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Maura Johnston
4,136 views, 11 comments

Latest by D.R. Mosby: Silly me. When you mentioned 'a vocal-only take of Van Halen's "Runnin' With The Devil" (that) made the Internet rounds', I thought you were talking about: + Watch video more »

year-end analysis

Gang Gang Dance's Album Of The Year, As A Matter Of "Fact"

London's Fact Magazine—which runs one of the sharpest-witted, up-to-the-minute music blogs around—has been doling out year-end lists for a few weeks now, the newest of which is its Top 20 albums, preceded in recent weeks by Top 20s of reissues and DJ mixes. These lists are thankfully different than the ones you'll find in the big U.K. mags, which we're thankful for even when their logic escapes us. The albums, reissues, and mixes lists are after the jump, but first, a few impressions.

THE GOOD: Sorry, Fleet Foxes: Fact's got other priorities. The Top 20 albums is the strongest publication list so far this year—nearly all of the titles I've heard on it (Gang Gang Dance, No Age, Zomby, Portishead, Jay Reatard, Flying Lotus, H&LA, 2563, Vampire Weekend, the Bug, Claro Intelecto) are good-to-great by my ears.
THE BAD: That Kelley Polar album (No. 17) is pretty weak sauce, guys.
THE WHAAA? Surely 2008's giant pile-up of African vault finds deserves a heftier representation in the reissues Top 20 than Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo de Cotonou at No. 18? (At the very least, the majordomos at the mag need to give Franco's Francophonic Vol. 1, just out on Sterns, a spin.) And grateful as I am to Fact to linking to that Prins Thomas Resident Advisor podcast (I'd tried to find it to no avail earlier in the year), surely the fact that it was posted October 15, 2007, counts against it as a 2008 mix, shouldn't it?

3:00 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Michaelangelo Matos
668 views, 14 comments

Latest by JZ13: The albums list strikes me as the "albums I feel I should like more than I actually do" list. The top two albums are definitely that way for me, as is the High Places record. more »

closings

Three Pieces Of Not-So-Great News

• The UK-based independent distributor Pinnacle Entertainment, whose distributed labels had a 4.3% market share in 2007 and included One Little Indian and Jeepster, is going into "administration," which is similar to Chapter 11 reorganization on these shores. AIM, the UK's trade body for independent labels, has called an emergency meeting to discuss this development. [Billboard]
• Australian label and distributor Creative Vibes, which was founded in 1994, is closing up shop "because of the recent, drastic drop in the value of the Australian dollar, combined with the spiralling demand for discounts and deals." [Billboard]
• The German vinyl distributor Neuton, which worked with labels like Bpitch Control and Playhouse, reportedly announced that it was insolvent earlier this week. [side-line via TDS]

2:45 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Maura Johnston
107 views, Comment

a who charted special report

The Top Five Albums That Are Going To Be Given As Holiday Gifts This Year: An Unscientific Survey

Sure, Black Friday was a disappointing day for artists who had new releases out, but a little bit of digging into SoundScan shows that the numbers weren't all bad. Taylor Swift, for example, had quite the banner week; her new album Fearless experienced a rare third-week upswing, one that was so dramatic, she nabbed the No. 2 spot on the chart, ahead of Chinese Democracy—and her old album surged back into the Top 30, too. There were many other artists whose albums' sales tallies improved from the prior week, no doubt thanks to some people out there still being OK with the prospect of holiday shopping. (Not too many, but a few.) After the jump, a look at which albums actually performed well on the first-gift-giving-week's chart, and the family members for whom they're likely being snagged. More »

2:00 PM on Wed Dec 3 2008
By Maura Johnston
551 views, 4 comments

Latest by T'Challa: All I can say is that the Jonas Bros kind of charmed me when they performed the half-time show during the Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving. But seeing how Joe's voice was crapping out by the end of the performance, I more »