Tag: "taylor swift"

On the latest cut released from her upcoming Red album, Taylor Swift continues her journey from idiosyncratic country songstress to sanitized pop megastar. While her twangy accent and southern charm have reappeared in small glimpses in other recent preview tracks, such as “Begin Again,” and “Red,” they are nowhere to be found on this most recent album cut. Instead, Swift dishes out generic pop phrases about a failed relationship over a track that sounds like an unholy mixture of “Hey Soul Sister” and a Skrillex B-side that didn’t have enough “whomp” to make it onto the album. Though we love Taylor, and this track is sure to be a smash, it sounds like Max Martin should have given her a bit more control over the faders on this one.

Taylor Swift fans should check out OurStage’s own Devin Belle!

More like this:

• The Internet Unites To Make Taylor Swift Perform At School For The Deaf
• Taylor Swift Premieres New Song “Red”

Sweet November is about to spawn another monster. Not a beast like the ugly, twisted child Morrissey warbled on about in 1990, but three beauties in the monster diva throwdown of the year. It will be the month in which three of pop’s biggest female players–Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, and Alicia Keys—all release new albums. Who’ll emerge “triumphant”—to quote the title of top diva Mariah Carey’s new single, from an album that won’t be released until March of 2013, long after the diva dust settles? Read on… Continue reading ‘Sound And Vision: Rihanna Vs. Christina Aguilera Vs. Alicia Keys: Who Will Win November’s Battle of the Divas?’

• Obama’s really going to miss Scott Stapp’s nomination…
• Mumford & Sons soar into the Spotify stratosphere.
• Taylor Swift really is surprised!
• Billy Corgan now smashes trees.
• Come on, really?
• Andrew WK and the Bronies.

Ever since her breakthrough album, Fearless in 2008, Taylor Swift has been churning out hits one right after another, capturing pop fans, country fanatics and generations across the board. Let me join in by saying that Swift’s latest release, the title track off her upcoming album Red, is bound to be another chart topper.

Following “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Begin Again”, “Red” takes a familiar Swift approach with heartfelt lyrics and tales of romantic mishaps. Once again, Swift has mastered the art of taking a country tune and spinning it with just the amount of kick needed to make it a pop success.

You can check out “Red” for yourself here, and keep an eye out for the album which drops Oct. 22.

More like this:

• The Internet Unites To Make Taylor Swift Perform At School For The Deaf
  
• Clear Channel Is Paying Radio Royalties To Artists! (If You’re On The Right Label)

Clear Channel looks its taking it upon itself to change how royalties are paid to artists played on the radio. On Thursday the media conglomerate announced that it had struck a deal with Glassnote Entertainment Group that would provide income to the label and their roster of artists for broadcasts of their music through terrestrial and online streaming Clear Channel stations.

While many of the nitty gritty details of the deal remain undisclosed, there are two big takeaways. First, Clear Channel would payout a percentage of their revenue to Glassnote, home of top selling folk-rock act Mumford & Sons and indie darlings including Phoenix and Two Door Cinema Club, for over the air broadcasts of their artist’s music. This stands in stark contrast to the history of radio royalties in the United States.

Continue reading ‘Clear Channel Is Paying Radio Royalties To Artists! (If You’re On The Right Label)’

No. 1 with a bullet: Ah, that once-relatively elusive and exclusive room at the top. The holy grail for the pop single, it used to be as high an honor and as highly desirable as gold and platinum albums. But what does it mean when a star as marginally talented as Katy Perry can hit No. 1 five times on Billboard’s Hot 100 in the space of one album (six times in one and a half albums, if you count Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection)? Or when Rihanna, who still hasn’t scored a chart-topping album in six tries, can do in less than six years what took Madonna a dozen (hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 one time short of a dozen)?

Does Teenage Dream have, well, a dream of ever being as iconic as Michael Jackson’s Bad (which spawned five No. 1 hits and thus shares the record for most No. 1 singles from one album with Teenage Dream), George Michael’s Faith (which produced four) or even Adele’s 21 (a contemporary that launched three), none of which had to be re-released as a special expanded edition in order to pad its hit list and sales tally? For all her No. 1 singles, will any Rihanna album thus far ever be considered as landmark as Madonna’s 1983 self-titled debut through 1989′s Like a Prayer, which covered a comparable career time frame? Rihanna’s yet to even break through the double-platinum glass ceiling.

Then there’s Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe,” which just spent nine weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, making it the biggest song of the summer, if not 2012. It also makes her a surefire nominee for Best New Artist at the 2013 GRAMMY Awards ceremony. She’ll face stiff-ish competition from Gotye and fun., who spent eight and six weeks at No. 1, respectively, with their respective singles, “Somebody That I Used to Know” and “We Are Young.” Continue reading ‘Sound And Vision: The Diminishing Returns of the No. 1 Single’

• Oh, Tay, don’t be sad!
• LMFAO will not be outdone.
• Good looking out, Sonic Youth fans.
• Not cool.
• Breezy can’t catch a break.
• Congrats, Leslie!

The ’90s are about to face a crucial test, one that might determine if the Clintonian era even has a shot at matching the staying power of the Reagan ’80s, a decade that continues to resonate more than 20 years after it ended. Welcome back, ’90s stars Soundgarden, SWV, Garbage, Brandy, Matchbox Twenty, Green Day, the Wallflowers, Blur, Aaliyah (via creepy interloper Drake) and No Doubt.

A decade is a long time in life, and an eternity in pop music, especially when you’ve spent one in a state of virtual inactivity, as did No Doubt, the band that will release its comeback album, Push and Shove, on September 25 (the same day Green Day returns with Uno!, the first of a trilogy of albums that the rock trio will release in the coming months). When No Doubt put out its last studio album, Rock Steady, in December of 2001, George W. Bush was less than one year into his first term as President of the United States, Friends was the No. 1 show on TV, and dated acts like Shaggy, Crazy Town and Ja Rule were scoring No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Hot 100.

The world, still reeling from September 11 exactly three months earlier, had yet to hear of Barack Obama, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, iPads, iPhones and American Idol. Britney Spears was the biggest female pop star on the planet, and she was in love with Justin Timberlake, best known as heartthrob No. 1 in ’N Sync, the world’s biggest boy band. In this post-millennial world, Rock Steady went double-platinum in the U.S. and produced three hit singles, including the Top 5 hits “Hey Baby” and “Underneath It All.” Continue reading ‘Sound And Vision: No Doubt Rides Again–But Can Gwen Stefani & Co. Rise Again?’

“John Mayer Gets a Haircut After Katy Perry Split!”

As breaking news of the day goes, it’s not exactly groundbreaking. Still, there it was, in multiple variations, splattered across the online pages of E!, Us Weekly, Entertainment Weekly (which called it a “hair break-over”), People magazine and so many other websites devoted, in large and small part, to such trivialities. You’d think Samson had risen from the dead and taken up guitar.

But wait! Shouldn’t Delilah — I mean, Katy Perry — have been the star of this life (and a new ‘do)-after-love story? Traditionally, the celebrity tabloids and gossip websites pursue female celebrities about whom they date, whom they marry, whom they divorce, to search for baby bumps, and fashion dos and don’ts. Guys generally get in only when they’re dating one of them. (Why do you think Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger, who once went from long to short without causing so much as a media ripple and is now engaged to Avril Lavigne, is suddenly “newsworthy”?)

By those standards, John Mayer must be some kind of publicity-baiting genius. In the last several years, he’s made himself as much of a tabloid fixture as an A-list starlet by dating a succession of them: Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, Taylor Swift, and most recently, Katy Perry, his pop-star paramour of a few months. Continue reading ‘Sound And Vision: Why Hasn’t Tabloid Notoriety Turned John Mayer into a Total Joke?’

• Color us excited.
• Cranky ol’ Lupe.
• This is an interesting genre combination.
• Now just wait until she watches the actual video.
• The story just keeps getting crazier.
• Some scientific breakup advice from T. Swift.