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News from the left-field of awesome: lo-fi folk singer Iron and Wine (a.k.a. Sam Beam) covers an ’80s his from dance-pop icon George Michael.
Beam swung by the Chicago offices of The Onion’s A.V. Club to perform a lovely, subdued version of Michael’s chart-topper “One More Try.”
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Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury are two musical icons who left the world far too soon. The “King of Pop” and the eccentric leader of Queen, one of Britain’s most acclaimed bands, collaborated several times in the midst of their chart-topping ascents in the ’80s.
And though they were not officially released as songs featuring the twosome together, what they did do was lay the blueprint for what became Jackson’s smash with Rolling Stones star Mick Jagger, “State of Shock.” But today 411 Mania reports that “Shock” and other unfinished songs may be dropping soon.
According to a post on the official website for acclaimed Brooklyn rockers TV on the Radio, bassist and keyboardist Gerard Smith has been diagnosed with lung cancer, but is already being treated—and is responding well. Says the band, in their statement:
Upon the completion of Nine Types of Light, Gerard was diagnosed with lung cancer. As a result, he has been undergoing treatment and will be unable to participate in the upcoming tour. Gerard is fortunate enough to have health insurance and is receiving excellent medical care. Already we have seen dramatic results. Combine that with Gerard’s legendarily willful disposition and it might just be cancer that has the problem. We appreciate your concern and support for Gerard and his family.
The tour to support the group’s upcoming Nine Types, out April 12, will begin unofficially with three appearances at this week’s SXSW festival in Austin, before launching April 8 in Philadelphia. (For full dates, click here.) It isn’t known yet who will be replacing Smith on the tour, and reps did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment.
More on EW.com:
The Strokes’ ‘Angles’ now streaming online: Read our review here
Kanye West, Cee-Lo, TV on the Radio and more to perform this week at SXSW
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A full week in advance of its planned March 22 release date, The Strokes have released a full official stream of their fifth album, Angles, on their website. (Click here to listen.)
Below, find Amanda Petrusich’s review, also running in this week’s print edition: READ FULL STORY »
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Shot through the heart, and Steve Jobs is to blame.
That is Jon Bon Jovi’s assessment of the current state of the music industry. Bon Jovi (of the iconic rock group “Jon”) had some uncharacteristically harsh words for Apple and its turtlenecked benevolent dictator Steve Jobs in an interview with the London-based Sunday Times Magazine.
Sounding a bit like an older man protective of his lawn — the quote literally starts with “kids today” — Bon Jovi bemoaned the fact that the young’uns no longer have “the experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album, and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it.” READ FULL STORY »
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Alice Cooper and Tom Waits were among the five performers inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday night at the official ceremony held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. Cooper, whose horror-inspired shock rock first went mainstream in 1971 with his hit “I’m Eighteen,” was inducted by fellow horror-rocker Rob Zombie. He showed up for the event wearing a (presumably fake) blood-splattered shirt and had a giant albino snake wrapped around his neck. “We’ve always been a hard-rock band,” the AP reports Cooper said. “We just wanted to decorate it a little differently.” READ FULL STORY »
Out magazine’s Ladies We Love issue, which featured pop chanteuse Britney Spears on its first cover that came out last week, just keeps delivering the gay goods: The issue’s second and final cover has hit, and it’s another lady they (and we) love from the world of music: Madonna.
But they didn’t put together just another profile of Madge. Instead, they’ve constructed a pretty cool (and never-before-seen!) photo portfolio from one of Madonna’s earliest photo shoots, just before she was about to hit it big. The gritty photos— hot in and around the apartment building that Madonna lived in in New York City’s East Village—were taken by now-famed photographer Richard Corman, who contributes a short essay about this experience with the diva to the package, in the summer of 1982. A preview of the cover is here, but you can find the entire set of photographs on Out.com. Love the name of the package: “I Shot Madonna.” Tee hee hee.
In this era of anonymous Internet ridicule, are we really the kind of culture that shares the music video of an aspiring teenage singer just to laugh at it? When the object in question is as bizarre as Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” the online community’s answer seems to be a resounding “YES.”
Coming from the L.A.-based Ark Music Factory (which is apparently pop music’s answer to Uwe Boll), Rebecca Black is the first teen singer to successfully marry the vocal stylings of Miley Cyrus and HAL 9000. While the video to Black’s debut single “Friday” had less than 4,000 views on Friday, in the last three days it’s racked up 2 million YouTube hits [UPDATE: It has soared past 5 million views as of Tuesday morning] and shows no signs of stopping. Watch it here:
Wax, the Maryland-bred rapper who’s become an internet star with videos that are funnier than most SNL digital shorts, is a man of no small ambition—he describes his own sound “as a mix of Johnny Cash and Jay-Z.”
Tomorrow, he debuts his new mixtape, Scrublife, on his website, but today he’s exclusively given EW.com the new (warning: NSFW) video for his lead single, “Dispensary Girl.” Check it out…and, please, watch your step. (Or, skip ahead to 1:16 if you’re squeamish): READ FULL STORY »
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If you think Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest festival is only a showcase for new talent, think again.
This year’s music portion, beginning Wednesday, March 16, features several heavyweights, including TV on the Radio, the Strokes, Cee-Lo Green, emerging hip-hop collective Odd Future, Erykah Badu, and Lupe Fiasco. But one star on the week’s lineup is being touted as the can’t miss act: Kanye West. The polarizing rhymer is set to hit the Vevo PowerStation, Saturday March 19. This won’t be the first time West performs there; in 2009, he and his G.O.O.D. Music acts Mr. Hudson and Big Sean rocked the Fader Fort.
Check out the video promo for West’s show this Saturday after the jump.
