as long as the black eyed peas don't win....
ok so we're hours away from grammy time. i wanted to throw out my predictions beforehand just to see how i do. and to reinforce to myself that i have way better taste in music than everyone else in this country. haha just kidding....sort of....
Record of the Year:
who i hope wins: pokerface - lady gaga
who i think will win: you belong with me - taylor swift
Album of the Year:
who i hope wins: fearless - taylor swift
who i think will win: fearless - taylor swift
Song of the Year:
who i hope wins: use somebody - kings of leon
who i think will win: single ladies - beyonce
Best New Artist:
who i hope wins: MGMT
who i think will win: MGMT
Best Female Pop Vocal:
who i hope wins: sober - pink
who i think will win: halo - beyonce
Best Male Pop Vocal:
who i hope wins: little wings - maxwell
who i think will win: this time - john legend
Best Pop Performance Duo:
who i hope wins - kids - MGMT
who i think will win: i got a feeling - black eyed peas
Best Dance Recording:
who i hope wins: when love takes over - david guetta and kelly rowland
who i think will win: womanizer - britney spears
Best Electronic or Dance Album:
who i hope wins: the fame - lady gaga
who i think will win: the fame - lady gaga
Best Rock Performance Duo:
who i hope wins: use somebody - kings of leon
who i think will win: 21 guns - green day
Best Alternative Album:
who i hope wins: wolfgang amadeaus phoenix - phoenix
who i think will win: sounds of the universe - depeche mode
Best Rap Solo Performance:
who i hope wins: beautiful - eminem
who i think will win: DOA - jay-z
Best Rap Song:
who i hope wins: dead and gone - ti and jt
who i think will win: run this town - jay-z, kanye, rihanna
Best Rap Album:
who i hope will win: ROOTS - flo rida
who i think will win: relapse - eminem
Female Country Vocal:
who i hope will win: white horse - taylor swift
who i think will win: white horse - taylor swift
Best Country Performance Duo:
who i hope will win: i run to you - lady antebellum
who i think will win: here comes goodbye - rascal flatts
on to the next [bizarro idea]....
So.....the release of Jay-Z newest music video "On To The Next One" has the over-analyzing, YouTube-evangelists out for blood.
seriously people....
......if Jay-Z is the antichrist, well he better stop retiring.....and get going on that whole apocalypse thing. maybe that's what all these Blueprints are for? if the antichrist turns out to be one of the highest grossing rap artists of the past 2 decades, then i will be a little bummed. thats way too easy.
what surprises me the most is that it's Jay-frickin-Z.
of all the people in the world?
now if they were saying that tyra banks wants everyone to worship her instead of Jesus...i'd understand it a bit more. or that One Tree Hill has subliminal messaging to worship the devil...i would accept it....there is no other explanation as to why that show is still on.
Jay-Z is one of the tamest rappers out there. and while he may not identify with the Christian religion....he is hardly the antichrist.
ok heres the awesome, beyond awesome....beautiful video that they are claiming is an offering to Satan
yep. well.....can anyone say "treatment"? the entire plotline of this video is suppose to be haunting and evil....he's talking about the ways of making money....thats evil. he's an entertainer. an actor. maybe he's a mason. who's cares? he makes art. and art is defined by the viewer. it can only ever be...what it is that the viewer wants it to be.
ok here is the crazy analysis...
and a BETTER one. hahah
yep....on to the next one....
Cherry Cherry Boom Boom....GaGa
I'm sitting here watching Fuse's "On The Record with Lady Gaga" and found myself with the urge to (yet again) tweet about how much I adore Lady Gaga. As i went to go write my 140 characters or less post, i struggled with what to say....i realized that trying to put how i FEEL about Lady Gaga into 140 characters or less would never work. Trying to DESCRIBE Lady Gaga in 140 characters or less would never happen on its own.
When i go to say something about how amazing Lady Gaga is....I can't help but feel like all i'm doing is jumping on the bandwagon late. To be quite honest...up until about a month ago i really didn't know much about her or care. Her songs were good, i liked them, she was like every other radio star. Then Bad Romance came out and i found myself mesmerized by this being. Her video was a gift from the visionary gods. I have not respected a pop star this much since....probably Michael Jackson. The people that put her down are obviously not listening or maybe they just don't speak her language. Lady Gaga talks to us in a hypnotizing beat of metaphors. It is not for the shallow....it is for the pained.
The Fame Monster is easily my favorite album to be released this year. It is a work of musical genius.
As i sit here listening to Lady Gaga voice these powerful opinions...in the gentlest voice since Janet Jackson, i find myself even more enthralled. She has a beautiful mind. i will right now say that Lady Gaga is my hero...not only as a musician, but as a human being. While there is no doubt there is a tortured soul deep within her....she is full of forgiveness for this cruel world. She outwardly displays a poise and maturity that makes me respect her even more.
Some may says she's crazy.....i say she is misunderstood. like everyone else...but we don't have to be publicly judged for it.
indie rocker?...check. famous actress?....check.
ok....so theres this new "what to do next" formula out there for indie rockers...
step 1.) go get your acoustic guitar
step 2.) start writing up-tempo folky songs about love gone wrong
step 3.) grab a high profile and famous actress to sing with you
step 4.) pretend you're singing for a different generation
mix all of this together with a plaid shirt and it somehow equasl a fairly decent album.
Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson released their album "The Break Up" on September 8th. It has already split the critics. (like any good album should) Some reviewers are praising the album, while others seem dissapointed.
But i have nothing bad to say about this album. this is the music i crave. truthful, unperfection - at it's finest. while it may not be the best display of musical "genius"....its enjoyable to listen to with meaningful lyrics that get you thinking. it sounds like the music you would sit around and listen to your friends play in your bedroom on cool fall day. the catchy beats bring a nostalgic feeling that is hard to surpress. i give scarlette johasson a high five for her effort on this project. she is not a professional singer and while it shows....it is also very clear that she has real talent, raw talent and that is sometimes the hardest thing to come by these days in the music industry.
This duo's release seems to be a follow up to widely succesful and critically aclaimed, M. Ward and Zooey Deschannel release last year. Their album Volume 1 was release under the band name of She & Him. The main difference here is that Zooey Deschannel has one of the most haungtingly beautiful voices of our generation and M.Ward is not lacking in talent either. They are well practiced and well trained - which means they have the ability to focus less on getting the songs right and focus more on putting all their emotions behind their performances.
Pete and Scarlett may be catching a lot of backlash for seeming less original, but to me this should not be the point. if a formula works, why not use....These are 2 albums i can't get enough of. I say this formula is working.
Pete Yorn & Scarlette Johansson - The Break Up 4/5
She & Him - Volume 1 4.5/5
the video for "the relator" is fabulous. it helps to have a beautiful actress to play your love interest.
my totally cliche remembrance...
today is my 23rd birthday. yesterday marked the deaths of 2 pop culture icons. iran is in uproar. and north korea is suppose to destroy hawaii in the coming week.
23 is one of those weird years in your life where you finally define the person that you were and also who you're becoming. its a pivotal moment where everything you thought you knew about life suddenly comes shattering down.
i just finished the book "Killing Yourself to Live" by Chuck Klosterman. it's about his road trip journey across america where he went to all of these places famous rock musicians died. he spent 2 and half weeks trying to find the meaning of death and what it means to the music industry. basically....is there some kind of relationship between fame and tragedy?
now being in the middle of this kind of read - the death of michael jackson came as a sort of ironic, surreal experience to me. here i am reading this book about all of these famous icons of music who died....and i get a text message telling me that the king of pop just died too. this is the start of my 23 year on this earth. maybe by 24 i will understand...
i was 8 years old when kurt cobain died. and i had no idea who tupak or christopher wallace were when they were killed. aaliyah was unfortunate, but this is the first [definitive] death of a music legend that i have lived coherently through. it really makes you wonder about fame and whether or not it is some kind of horrible curse.
michael jackson's death is something i do have emotions about. to say i grew up on michael jackson would be like saying that i was an american at some point in the past 40 years....so i don't want to do that, but his influence on my life was more than a collection of catchy songs.
my father is and will always be a motown fan. to him anything made by anyone white and after the 1960's doesn't even exist. so i had a healthy dose of jackson 5 growing up. i could sing all the songs by the time i was probably 10. throughout my teen years (i think i though it was still the 80s) the solo works of michael jackson became permanent fixtures in the back of my brain. i think i was one of the few people in the world to buy Invincible and love it. I taped his 30th anniversary special for him and not usher.....i promise.
His death is sad to me. not because he won't ever make music again....because his music will live forever. and not because he died before his time....even though he did. but his death is proof that i am getting old. and what the most disturbing thing i'm seeing is...how the older we get the more immune to death we become. as long as it's not us - it becomes just another event on a person's timeline. we will all become history eventually.
much love to farrah fawcett too who was a truly remarkable person too...both professionally and personally.
R.O.O.T.S
i just wanted to take a few minutes to promote 2 awesome albums....they are on completely different sides of the music spectrum BUT both reflect the talent of the hardworking musicians that made them. Normally I wouldn't dare group Mandy Moore with Flo Rida, but in this case it seems fitting. Each of these albums are the newest from each of these well-known artists, but as I listen to them more and more i know that they are also the most important. Important because they are representing the roots of where each of their [respective] hearts in music really lie....
Mandy Moore stepped up to the alter with Ryan Adams this year and not only married him, but also married some of his musical tastes. She dropped her label and is now opting for a smaller, more "indie focused" label called Storefront. I was skeptical after her less-than-impressive 2007 folk switch entitled "Wild Hope", but as she continues proves to be the smartest and most well-adjusted out of her pop princess peers.....her new album "Amanda Leigh" is soild. While "Wild Hope" felt more like an uneasy attempt to hide her past, this album is all her. She's back to her pop roots without sugarcoating the music to the point where radio with eat it up with milk. It's folk-y and wonderful.
SONG HIGHLIGHTS: Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week, Pocket Phliospher, Fern Dell
Flo Rida.....i like to still call him Flo Rider, but whatever......is probably not the person you'd expect me to promote...the fact is...its a rare day when i can listen to a rap or hip/hop album through in its entirety (unless its eminem or wyclef). This one has been on constant rotation.
While i enjoy "Right Round" and "Sugar" as much as the next girl at the club - musically they were nothing special. He sampled the perfect songs no doubt, but it wasn't anything T-Pain couldn't do. I downloaded the whole cd....well....just because i could. Then thanks to the shuffle setting on my iPod the song "Rewind" came on. It's a slower song with a solid beat and a killer chorus by Wyclef (ha of course), but i immediatley listened to this song 3 times before i moved on. It was amazing. Then i listened to the whole album and found that [in fact] about 80 percent of the album was amazing and the other 20 percent was forgivable because it had suffered the death of mainstream radio. We have all come to know Flo Rida as just another rapper who sings about dancing with girls and being the best, but he is much more than that as his album R.O.O.T.S. will show.
Song Highlights: Mind On My Money, Rewind, Roots
Let the Beat Build...
This is a crazy amazing student video....it is all one take AND the audio was recorded live as the crew was filming. I'm totally impressed.
Nyle "Let The Beat Build" from Nyle on Vimeo.
We Are Hunted...
So heres an awesome music website.
What is it: We Are Hunted is the music chart for the digital generation. It listens to online discussion, sentiment and sharing to chart the 99 most popular songs online each day.
How it works: We Are Hunted aggregates music based on semantic elements like positive sentiment, expression, and advocacy across social networks, forums, music blogs, torrents, P2P networks, and — yes of course — Twitter
. The end result is 99 songs that the social web has proclaimed worthy of listening to.
...basically this is the sweetest thing ever and a great way to find out about new music. you can preview the song and read bio about the artists. I'm off to go download some new music....
