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Archive: January 2010 (101-109 of 109)

Jan 5 2010 02:41 PM ET

Michael Cera takes drugs and feels super weird in new Islands video

I had rashly assumed the strangest Michael-Cera-featuring, Canadian-indie-rock-oriented footage of 2010 would be found in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the forthcoming music-and-martial-arts superhero movie from Shaun of the the Dead director Edgar Wright.

And that might still prove the case (I visited the Toronto set last summer, and the whole shebang certainly whiffed of engaging, genre-splicing, oddball-osity). But there’s no denying the trippiness of the new video for a little grower of a synth-infused track called “No You Don’t” by Montreal outfit Islands (a.k.a. the excellently monikered Nick Diamonds).

In the video, the Superbad star swallows a bunch of glowing pills and is soon hallucinating his derriere off. The message? Just say no—at least to pharmaceuticals manufactured in Chernobyl!

Check out the video below and tell us what you think.

(Follow the Music Mix on Twitter: @EWMusicMix.)

Jan 5 2010 01:10 PM ET

Legendary producer Willie Mitchell dies at age 81

by Clark Collis

Categories: In Memoriam, Soul

Producer, musician, songwriter, trumpeter, and record label chief Willie Mitchell passed away this morning in Memphis at the age of 81. Mitchell was best known for being one of the principal architects of the so-called “Memphis sound,” and for his collaborations with soul legend Al Green.

Mitchell was born in Ashland, Miss., and in the ’50s and ’60s had a successful career as a soul band leader. In 1970 he took charge of the Memphis-based Hi Records label and signed Al Green.

For the next six years Mitchell produced a string of hits for the singer including “Let’s Stay Together,” “Tired of Being Alone,” and “I’m Still In Love With You.” He also oversaw albums for Ann Peebles and Syl Johnson and, more recently, collaborated with John Mayer.

Mitchell was a tireless booster of Memphis musicians. “The players here can do anything,” he declared in 2007. “I don’t give a damn if it’s opera or R&B, pop or country. They do it all.” Hear Green work his Mitchell-helmed magic on a true classic, below:

Photo credit: GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images

Jan 5 2010 09:08 AM ET

Butch Walker, 'Trash Day' : An EW exclusive stream

by Leah Greenblatt

Categories: Downloads and Streams, EW Exclusives, Indie Rock, Misc.

Georgia-bred songwriter and producer Butch Walker is perhaps best known for his work with the likes of Pink, Weezer, and Avril Lavigne—as well as a recent cheeky cover of the Taylor Swift smash “You Belong With Me,” wildly approved by T-Swiff herself.

Now the onetime Marvelous 3 frontman’s seventh full-length, I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart, is due February 23; lead track “Trash Day,” he tells EW, is about “Society in America [being] based on things like success, self-importance, and maintaining it without ever going soft or complacent. Seeing it happen a little bit with myself and people all around me, I feel like it’s hard to avoid.”

“But,” he continues, “we all have trash and we all have to get rid of it, no matter who you are.” Or recycle it, Butch! That’s what the blue bins are for! Anyway, stream the rollicking, country-tinged “Trash Day” below, and see if you agree:

Jan 4 2010 03:23 PM ET

Michael Jackson: Lenny Kravitz confirms leaked 'collaboration' is genuine

by Clark Collis

Categories: Lenny Kravitz, Michael Jackson

Lenny Kravitz has just released a video statement confirming that the leaked track “Another Day” is indeed a collaboration between himself and Michael Jackson. “The version that’s out is…not mixed, but it is the track,” says the singer in the video. “The song was recorded by Michael and myself. I produced it for him, I wrote the song, and I played all the instruments on the track. It was one of the most amazing musical experiences that I’ve ever had. It was done by two people who had respect for each other and who loved music.” Kravitz also says he has no knowledge as to the identity of the DJ who can be heard on the song.

A portion of “Another Day” leaked to the net over the weekend, and it was widely reported that the track was a collaboration between Jackson and Kravitz. Following Jackson’s death, Kravitz told an interviewer that he “got to work with Michael on a track that has not been released.”

So what happens to the song now? TMZ is reporting the track was “never meant to see the light of day” and that Jackson’s label Sony wants to have the song pulled from the Internet. In Kravitz’s video statement, meanwhile, the rocker says that he would “like to see this thing straightened out as soon as possible” so that fans can “hear the track in its entirety, the way it was meant to be.” You can see the video in full below.

What do you think of Kravitz’s statement and of “Another Day” itself? Is it deserving of a proper release?

(Follow the Music Mix on Twitter: @EWMusicMix.)

Photo credit: Jackson: Kevin Mazur; Kravitz: Radim Rotek/PR Photos

Jan 4 2010 02:53 PM ET

Nick Jonas' 'Who I Am' official video: Will it make the JoBro a solo star?

by Leah Greenblatt

Categories: Jonas Brothers, Misc., Music, Video Gaga

We warned you last month that the youngest of the Jonii (excepting, of course, nine-year-old “bonus Jonas” Frankie—still unsigned!) was going solo. Now, post-Grammy-nominations-broadcast bow, 17-year-old Nick has released the official video for “Who I Am,” the first single from the debut album from his new side project Nick Jonas and the Administration, due February 2.

Watch the clip below; its cancer survivors, military moms, and gothy honor students are a do-good lesson in defying stereotypes—and incidentally, sort of an altruistic take on INXS’s my-cue-cards-tell-the-tale “Mediate” video circa 1987:

(Follow the Music Mix on Twitter: @EWMusicMix.)

Jan 4 2010 02:37 PM ET

Happy 50th Birthday, Michael Stipe! The R.E.M. frontman celebrates the half-century mark

by Leah Greenblatt

Categories: Happy Birthday!, Indie Rock, Music, R.E.M., YouTube Delights

Life (or should we say, its Rich Pageant) made an internationally recognized rock star out of a scrappy little military brat born January 4, 1960, in Decatur, Georgia; today, it also makes him one of the first of 2010 to celebrate his semi-centennial.

To follow this year: Bono (May 10), Chuck D (August 1), Aimee Mann (Sept. 8), Husker Du’s Bob Mould (Oct. 16) and the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg (Dec. 31). Also? Sean Penn, Hugh Grant, Jean Claud Van Damme and Jennifer Grey (nobody puts Baby in the AARP!)

Now 27 years into a career that began with R.E.M.’s college-rock watermark Murmur in 1983, Stipe has been an activist, a multi-Grammy winner, a misplacer of religion, a maestro of Mary Kay, and, as of 2007, an official Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

Watch him and the band performing “Moon River” and “Pretty Persuasion” on England’s Old Grey Whistle Test in 1984. Youth! Hair! Wonderment! Mr. Stipe, we salute you:

Jan 4 2010 01:20 PM ET

Kanye West is back in the studio and getting inspired by...Maya Angelou?

by Clark Collis

Categories: Kanye West

It’s a shame there isn’t an award for First Celebrity Blog Post Of 2010 To Namecheck Maya Angelou. Because if there were, then the trophy-loving Kanye West would probably have just won it. In a new blog entry, the rapper announces that he is “back in the studio making music” and then proceeds to explain that his new role models are poets. “IT’S FUNNY HOW SO MANY RAPPERS GET WORSE AS THEIR CAREERS STRETCH OUT BUT TRUE POETS GET BETTER,” he writes, “WE WILL FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MAYA ANGELOU, GIL SCOTT HERRON (sic) AND NINA SIMONE.”

As creative role models go, Mr. West could do worse than those three. And, certainly, I don’t recall Maya Angelou ever interrupting a Taylor Swift acceptance speech (though, of course, there was that unpleasant incident involving her and Ugly Kid Joe at the 1993 Kids’ Choice Awards. Don’t bother trying to YouTube it. I’m joking).

Anyone unfamiliar with the work of Gil Scott Heron, meanwhile, should definitely check out his classic track “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” below.

Are you glad Kanye is back recording again? And what do you think of his new role models?

(Follow the Music Mix on Twitter: @EWMusicMix.)

Jan 4 2010 12:39 PM ET

RIP Lhasa: the Canadian-Mexican-American singer succumbs to breast cancer at age 37

by Joseph Brannigan Lynch

Categories: In Memoriam

Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter Lhasa de Sela lost her 21-month battle with breast cancer on January 1, 2010. She was 37 years old.

Over the last ten years, Lhasa’s globally minded gypsy folk earned her critical praise, and her Billie Holiday-esque command over her smoky, uncompromising voice earned her a small but devoted group of admirers. Here’s a taste of her strange, sophisticated brew:

Lhasa de Sela was born in upstate New York to an American actress and Mexican professor. Throughout her childhood, her parents loaded Lhasa and her nine siblings into a converted school bus and took them on nomadic road trips around Mexico and the U.S., home-schooling and imbuing their children with a love for the arts.

Lhasa eventually settled in Montreal and released her debut album La Llorona, which won her the Juno Award for Best World Music Artist in 1998. Instead of capitalizing on the success of her first record, the idiosyncratic Lhasa moved to Europe to join her family in a roving theatrical circus—as you might have noticed, she wasn’t your typical singer-songwriter.

She returned to the studio a few years later to release 2003’s The Living Road, which was met with even more critical reverence than her debut. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until this year that she released her self-titled final album. Her reputation as a strangely alluring live performer kept growing with each album, so even though she didn’t release music at a breakneck pace, it seems possible Lhasa de Sela would have been a more recognizable name had her life not been claimed so soon. You can find out more about Lhasa at her official website.

Jan 4 2010 11:39 AM ET

New Jay-Z video, 'On to the Next One': What's black and white and fierce all over?

by Leah Greenblatt

Categories: Jay-Z, Misc., Video Gaga, YouTube Delights

How the Hova says “Happy New Year”: with flaming basketballs, crystal skulls, chocolate syrup, and Swizz Beatz. Also—lactating high-tops, a dance we’ll call the Louis Vuitton Luggage Bounce, and a lipsticked, ambisexual man-boy who looks like Scott Weiland and Velvet Goldmine‘s Jack Fairy had a baby.

Watch the black-and-white clip for The Blueprint 3‘s “On to the Next One” below and tell us, high art, or just gratuitous weirdiosity? Me, I’m sold: