Probably not, but there are a lot of people hoping that Taylor Swift’s third studio album turns out to be a blockbuster. “Fearless”, the young singer’s sophomore effort, was a certified phenomenon, selling over 6 million copies (“Thriller” numbers in today’s environment) and making Taylor the first country artist to win an MTV Video Music Award. It also won her an Album of the Year Grammy. This means that expectations are sky-high. Those sky-high expectations probably won’t be met, but […]
Posts tagged "music"
Hump Day Flashback: Of Time, Clocks and Hearts
Reading my friend Mike’s Back Tracks column on Culture Club on his website The Second Disc got me thinking about how it’s a shame that Boy George will probably be remembered more for his outrageous image, general bitchassness and criminal behavior than for his beautiful voice. Although that voice has grown a bit of a rough edge over the years (see his recent turn on Mark Ronson’s album for proof, in his heyday, he was one of the smoothest pop/soul singers around, with a voice that […]
Jigga What? “Hits” Track Listing is Kind of a Head Scratcher
Jay-Z’s long overdue for a greatest hits collection. Actually, he’s one of those artists whose hitmaking proficiency has been so prolific that one disc isn’t gonna be able to contain all of his worthwhile material. Well, the track listing for Jigga’s long-overdue “The Hits Collection Vol. 1” surfaced on amazon.com yesterday, and as a Jay-Z fan, I’m kinda nonplussed. If you think about it, though, the track listing kinda makes sense from a “truth in advertising” perspective. Let’s split hairs-this […]
Gil Scott-Heron’s Haunting “New York is Killing Me” Video
I’ve been looking for this video for ages! There was quite the big to-do about “New York is Killing Me”, the latest video from Gil Scott-Heron’s [amazon-product text=”I’m New Here”” tracking_id=”popblerdcom-20″ type=”text”]B002ZBT84G[/amazon-product](my favorite album of 2010 so far, BTW), receiving it’s premiere at a special event at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But as quickly as the news hit the interwebs, the video vanished. And I mean VANISHED. So it took a little bit of sleuthing for me to […]
Albums That Time Forgot: Dag’s “Righteous”
The live funk band died (at least commercially) back in the mid Eighties, after Prince proved that you could replicate the sound of 8 men with a synthesizer. This coincided with a decline in fortunes for many of the large funk bands that had been popular in the previous decade. Even the funk bands that stuck around, like Cameo, underwent a drastic reduction in personnel. The days of TV variety shows having to build extra stage to fit the members […]
Chart Chat 10/14/10: His Name Was Toby
Country Music / hip-hop / Lists! / music / New Releases / news / Pop Music / rock music / soul music
Country music continues it’s stronghold on the Billboard album charts this week. For the third consecutive week, the genre scores a chart-topping debut. This week’s chart-topper is the latest record from Toby Keith. Everyone’s favorite Dixie Chick-basher scores the #1 album with “Bullets in the Gun”. Unfortunately, it also starts with what’s probably the lowest total for a chart-topper in October EVER, scanning just under 71,000 units. Nevertheless, Toby follows Kenny Chesney (now #2) and Zac Brown Band (#5) to […]
Heading Down to “Georgia” with Band of Horses
Band of Horses just might be my favorite discovery of 2010. The Seattle band’s latest album, “Infinite Arms”, fuses Southern rock with sweeping orchestration and harmonies so tight they make the hair on my (not-exactly-infinite) arms stand up. I got the chance to catch them at an intimate record store performance two days before “Arms”, and I was blown away. BoH and Cee-Lo have been doing the Mutual Admiration Society thing for a couple of months now. The former Gnarls […]
The People Speak: Eminem & Antebellum Lead the American Music Awards
Well, folks, we’re in the thick of music award show season. The MTV Video Music awards kicked things off at the beginning of September, and the season concludes at the end of January with the Grammy Award ceremony. Smack dab in the middle, we have Dick Clark’s American Music Awards: an almost 40-year old institution that prides itself on being the people’s choice. Unlike the Grammy nominees, which are chosen by a “blue-ribbon” panel of music industry professionals, AMA nominees […]
