Archive: September 2011 (121-130 of 132)

Sep 6 2011 11:25 AM ET

Madonna back in the studio, aiming for new album in spring 2012

by
Categories: Madonna, Pop
Madonna

Image Credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com

It’s been more than three years since Madonna dropped new music.

But the Material Girl recently confirmed that once she’s through with her current promo run for her movie W.E., she’d be hitting the studio to record.

According to Reuters, Madonna’s only done “a little bit of work” on the new project so far, spending time in the studio with Ray of Light producer William Orbit and French DJ Martin Solveig (a.k.a. Monsieur “Hello”). She hopes to release a first single by the end of the winter, with an album out by spring.

Her last release, 2008’s Hard Candy, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart on the back of her Timbaland-produced hit single “4 Minutes.”

What do you think Madge’s next album will sound like? What are you hoping for? Let us know in the comments below.

More on EW.com:
Here kitty, kitty: Watch a cat recreate Madonna’s infamous 1984 MTV VMAs performance here — EXCLUSIVE VIDEO
Lady Gaga calls Madonna comparisons ‘completely ridiculous’ in NME interview
Michael Jackson tribute tour to be launched by David Gest, Tito Jackson, and more

Sep 6 2011 11:15 AM ET

Michael Jackson tribute tour to be launched by David Gest, Tito Jackson, and more

by
Categories: Michael Jackson, Things That Make Us Go Hmm, Tributes
Michael-Jacson-This-movie

Image Credit: Kevin Mazur

David Gest—a concert promoter and longtime Jackson family friend perhaps best known as the short-term spouse of Liza Minnelli—is spearheading a tribute to the late King of Pop entitled “A Jackson Named Michael: Remembering a Legend.”

Reuters reports that Gest has recruited Michael’s brother Tito and sister Rebbie, singer Deneice Williams, and others to sing songs and tell stories from the late icon’s life, and participate in a question-and-answer session with audience members at a series of dates throughout Europe and the U.K.

“The majority of the show will be reminiscences and stories about Michael that the public has never heard,” he said in a statement.

The tour is scheduled to kick off  in the U.K. in March of 2012; a controversial one-night tribute to Michael is still scheduled for this Oct. 8 in Cardiff, Wales.

More on EW.com:
T.I. boards a party bus to a halfway house, ends up back in federal penitentiary
What’s the best song for a first dance at a wedding? Tell us!
‘Community’ star Danny Pudi is suddenly everybody’s music video muse: Watch him here

Sep 6 2011 10:55 AM ET

My Chemical Romance drummer fired after allegedly being caught in 'red-handed' theft

by
Categories: Legal Troubles, Rock, Tours
my-chemical-romance

Michael Pedicone has unjoined the Black Parade.

The drummer for New Jersey rock lords My Chemical Romance—the band’s third since their 2001 inception—was summarily fired following an incident of alleged theft following a concert in Washington state.

The story, according to a blog entry posted by guitarist Frank Iero Sept. 2 on the band’s official website:

Some s– happened last night and before the blogosphere gets all crazy with false statements and ridiculous opinions we want the true story to come from us… But please listen close because this is the only time we are ever going to talk about this. The relationship between My Chemical Romance and Michael Pedicone is over. He was caught red handed stealing from the band and confessed to police after our show last night in Auburn, Washington. We are heartbroken and sick to our stomachs over this entire situation. The band has no intention of pressing charges or taking this matter any further than we have to. We just want him out of our lives. The people who play in this band are a family, and family should not take advantage of each other like he did. We are currently moving forward, and hope to have a new drummer in place for our show in Salt Lake City, Utah. The show must go on.

XOMCR

Pedicone, who replaced longtime drummer Bob Bryar last year (Bryar, in turn, replaced original drummer Matt Pelissier), came to MCR from Arizona hardcore outfit The Bled.

He tweeted his own response to the incident, saying somewhat cryptically: “What happened is more complicated than it sounds but I did make a mistake. It was never my intention to hurt this band or all of you. … It was an error in judgment based on a whole other situation that’s way deeper but this does not define me.”

MCR quickly carried on, playing a show Saturday night in Utah with replacement drummer Jarrod Alexander.

More on EW.com:
Spotify stalking: Everything I never wanted to know about my Facebook friends’ taste in music
Kristen Stewart makes her music video debut in Marcus Foster’s ‘I Was Broke’: Watch it here
‘Moves Like Jagger’ hits number one on Billboard, continues tradition of singles you can only get on deluxe albums

Sep 2 2011 01:26 PM ET

Spotify stalking: Everything I never wanted to know about my Facebook friends' taste in music

by
Categories: Current Listening, Indie Rock, Let's Argue!, Listmania!, Pop, Things On The Internet
ipod-inspection

Image Credit: Imagezoo/Getty Images

There are many, many good reasons to fall in love with Spotify. It’s user-friendly; it lets me share music on Facebook; it’s got that sleek, sexy lime-green-and-black getup that looks like iTunes in a little black dress.

But here’s the number-one reason I’ve become obsessed with this European social-media-meets-digital-music phenomenon ever since it landed in the US: It gives me access to the published Spotify playlists of my Facebook friends. All my friends’ music collections and listening habits are just waiting there, nakedly exposed in the public domain—and that can only mean one thing.

Yep. Bam: Spotify stalking. It’s like Facebook stalking—except more revealing, more voyeuristic, and so much more addictive. For the first time in internet history, we can check out pics of our childhood best friend’s beach honeymoon and nose around on her iTunes catalog for the other nine finalists that didn’t make the cut as her first-dance song. What’s not to love?! READ FULL STORY »

Sep 2 2011 12:56 PM ET

T.I. boards a party bus to a halfway house, ends up back in federal penitentiary

by
Categories: Hip-Hop/Rap, Legal Troubles, T.I., Things That Are Frustrating
Clifford-Harris

Image Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

If T.I. isn’t careful, his entire life is going to be like The Godfather Part III, both in the sense that just when he thinks he’s out, he gets pulled back in, but also in the sense that it’s becoming a terrible series of borderline-ridiculous contrivances that end in sadness.

The Atlanta rapper, born Clifford Harris, was released from the Forrest City Correctional Facility in Arkansas on Wednesday, where he was supposed to be transferred to a halfway house to serve the remainder of his sentence for probation violation (which stems from the weapons charge that put him behind bars the first time). After exiting the prison, he hopped aboard a party bus with his entourage and took off for his home city.

Apparently that didn’t sit well with prison authorities, who sent him to a different federal prison in Georgia, where he currently resides (officials didn’t specify where). It’s unclear whether or not he would be finishing his sentence there or moved to another halfway house. The rapper has one month remaining on his sentence. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 2 2011 10:49 AM ET

Taylor Swift talks social media, touring, cats in lengthy YouTube interview: Watch it here

by
Categories: Country, Y'all!, Taylor Swift, Things On The Internet, YouTube Delights
CMT-Taylor-Swift

Image Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

In the current generation of socially aware, hyper-connected pop stars, Taylor Swift stands above all others. She has nearly eight million Twitter followers, and her YouTube videos have been watched over half a billion times. (That’s billion, just to drive that point home.)

Of course, she has also sold millions of albums and probably needs a few extra rooms in her house for all of her awards. All of that was driven home during a 40 minute interview posted yesterday as part of the “YouTube Presents” series. According to the moderator, fans submitted 30,000 questions to Swift, though they only had time to ask a handful.

Over the course of the conversation, Swift talked a lot about her songwriting process (she doesn’t know a song is finished until she writes a line that makes her go “Ooh ooh ooh ooh!”), her wackiest fans (a lot of people have been showing up to concerts wearing costumes, including one girl who recently dressed as a chicken), her TV watching habits (she loves Lockup Raw, the MSNBC prison documentary series), and what might be on her next album (she has been writing since she finished writing for Speak Now, though it’ll be at least another year before she attempts to record anything).

It’s a long watch, but Swift is charming enough to hold your attention. And really, do you have anything better to do on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend? Watch the interview after the jump. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 2 2011 09:23 AM ET

What's the best song for a first dance at a wedding? Tell us!

by
Categories:
first-dance

Image Credit: Imagezoo/Getty Images

I got married back in July, and though I had always sort of dreaded planning a wedding (mostly because my mind had been poisoned by celebrity affairs and awful pop culture clichés), the whole experience was incredible.

My wife and I carefully curated every aspect, from the venue (we staged everything in a bookstore run by an AIDS charity) to our clothes (I wore these shoes). It turned out to be the most fun night of my life.

When it came to music, we skipped the idea of having a band or a DJ and went with modern technology (which involved me plugging my iTunes into the store’s sound system). We spent many hours carefully curating the playlist, balancing the fast songs with the slow songs and slipping in a healthy combination of stuff people wanted to hear with songs that were particularly meaningful to us—categories that often met in the middle, especially in the case of Ginuwine’s “Pony”.

There was one song that got more discussion than any other one, and that was the tune that would score our first dance. As dyed-in-the-wool music geeks, we ran through a number of different ideas, trying to find something that would not only have the appropriate lyrical content but also would sound cool and be danceable.

We also didn’t want to have something typical that gets played at every wedding. “At Last” is pretty song, but it’s been used so many times that it couldn’t possibly feel like our own. As for the rest of this list of popular first dance songs, they’re all either schlocky (anything by Shania Twain), confusing (we can’t think of anything but animated lion cubs snuggling when we hear Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”), or just plain wrong (“If I Loved You,” from Carousel, is a fantasy about how the character isn’t in love; later in that play, he smacks around his wife and she’s sort of OK with it).

Luckily, we each have large record collections, and had a good time weighing ideas. We very nearly went with “This Is the Day” by The The (both because it’s an awesomely ’80s faux-goth synth tune and because it plays over the final scene of Empire Records), but ultimately, we went with Matthew Sweet’s “We’re the Same” (because it’s a pretty song we both love and because we both cited Sweet as a favorite artist on our online dating profiles, which brought us together for the first time five years ago). READ FULL STORY »

Sep 1 2011 05:06 PM ET

Kristen Stewart makes her music video debut in Marcus Foster's 'I Was Broke': Watch it here!

by
Categories: Indie Rock, Music Videos, New Stuff, Twilight

Apparently, today is the day that everybody gets involved in music videos.

There’s a pair out there that feature Community star Danny Pudi, and Shia LaBoeuf just unveiled the Marilyn Manson video that he directed (be warned the latter is NSFW, nor should it really be viewed by anybody, ever).

This one could trump them all. Making her music video debut—well, as long as you don’t count videos that include footage from Twilight—Kristen Stewart stars in Marcus Foster’s clip for “I Was Broken.”

Really, Foster himself does most of the starring (three-quarters of the clip is a static shot of his face), but Stewart does lend her visage (and those deep, dark eyes) to the lush black-and-white clip. Watch the whole thing after the jump, and don’t worry: there are no vampires present. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 1 2011 04:44 PM ET

'Community' star Danny Pudi is suddenly everybody's music video muse: Watch him here

by
Categories: Indie Rock, Music Biz, Music Videos, New Stuff, Television
entertainment_weekly_party_2

Image Credit: WireImage.com

Perhaps Community star Danny Pudi is jealous of the attention that co-star Donald Glover (a.k.a. Childish Gambino) has received in the music world, because all of a sudden he’s the music video star du jour (think of him as a more indie-centric Tawny Kitaen or Alicia Silverstone).

In Raphael Saadiq’s clip for “Day Dreams,” Pudi stands in for the artist and goes on a fantasy shopping spree buying things for his girlfriend that he cannot afford. It’s a fun, frothy clip that shows off Pudi’s lip-syncing skills (which appear formidable) and relies on the same sort of goofy charisma that fuels his performance as Abed Nadir.

In the video for Jones Street Station’s “The Understanding,” Pudi pulls off some more dramatic moves. The plot follows Pudi as he wanders around the streets of New York, buys the world’s smallest camera to take a series of photos of strangers, seduces a woman in Central Park, and then finally ends up in a recording studio with the band (along with said woman, who is revealed to be a producer).

In a frustrating missed opportunity, Pudi literally plays out the lyric “survive on tea and toast” (he’s actually drinking tea and eating toast in a diner) but doesn’t play out the lyric right after that, which is “shake your fist at an angry ghost.” Come on, Pudi! Shake that fist at, say, this ghost.

Though the clips show two different sides of the actor’s personality, they also have a handful of parallels. Each one has Pudi shopping, and they both find him engaging with strangers. He only passes bad checks in the Saadiq clip, though it would have been amusing had that somehow gotten worked into Jones Street clip, too.

Check out both videos below, and let us know which side of Pudi you prefer in your music videos in the comments below. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 1 2011 02:36 PM ET

Justin Bieber to celebrate Christmas in song with Taylor Swift, new original holiday tunes

by
Categories: Happy Holidays, In the Studio, Justin Bieber, Pop, Twitter
Bieber-Teen-Choice

Image Credit: Tina Gill/PR Photos

What does Justin Bieber want for Christmas? Perhaps a new paint job for his Ferrari.

In any event, we know exactly what he is getting us this holiday season. The 17-year-old singer will be dropping a Christmas album this year, and not only will he be bringing you tidings of musical yuletide cheer, but he’s also going to do it with a crop of entirely original tunes.

“This Christmas album is amazing. Might be the best album yet,” Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun wrote on Twitter in a conversation with his client. “All originals … soon 2 b classics. every1 i play it 4 is blown away. #excited.”

According to other Bieber tweets (Bweets?), he has recently been in the studio with Sean Kingston (who previously worked with Bieber on “Eenie Meenie”), producer J.R. Rotem (knob twiddler on Jason DeRülo’s “In My Head”), producer Kuk Harrell (the man behind Bieber’s “Never Say Never” single), and Taylor Swift.

It’s unclear which collaborations are going on the Christmas album, though the idea of Bieber doing a Christmas duet with Swift (who, we’ll remind you, grew up on a Christmas tree farm) is the sort of thing that would excite record executives the same way cheese made Monterey Jack go cuckoo-bananas.

Anyway, Bieber’s Christmas album is one of a handful of high-profile holiday delights hitting store shelves this season. READ FULL STORY »

Advertisement

TV Recaps

Powered by WordPress.com VIP