For all intents and purposes, the U.K. duo the Ting Tings has now made it. And the peppy dance-rock act hasn't even sold an album in the U.S.
Its "Shut Up and Let Me Go" is in heavy rotation nightly, thanks to its placement in the latest iPod commercials for Apple. It's one of three songs from the act's debut album for Columbia Records, "We Started Nothing," that can be freely and legally heard in the U.S. (out digitally on May 20, and in ye olde CD format on June 3).
While the band seems relatively pleased by the placement, adorably writing on its website that the ad resulted in a "very big week for the Tings," is this cause for worry?
Certainly Apple's iPod is deemed a "cooler" product than Bud Lime, but these things have a tendency to be a bit ubiquitous. After all, there's no reason for Feist to ever again perform "1234," as the song no longer belongs to her. It's more or less Steve Jobs' property now.
And the same goes for Yael Naim's precious "New Soul." But even worse, if the Ting Tings don't follow in the footsteps of Feist and find themselves performing at the 2009 Grammys, they could go the way of the Fratellis, heretofore known as one of the many bands who "had one of those iPod songs."
On the plus side, Apple had the decency to pick one of the Ting Tings' lesser songs, thereby preserving the integrity, thus far, of the act's superior tunes. While the disco groove and punky guitar spikes of "Shut Up," coupled with Katie White's insistence that she ain't "freaking" or "faking," pack plenty of spunk, it's also a bit thinner -- and sillier -- than "Great DJ," or the terrific "That's Not My Name."
The latter is the current single in the U.K., and a video has been out for weeks. But Columbia hasn't made it available to buy in the U.S. Note to major labels: The right to complain about file-sharing is hereby forfeited if a song cannot be purchased once the band has posted it on its MySpace page.
But for now, the song -- one of the strongest singles of 2008 -- remains free of any corporate endorsements. It's got a hip-hop brashness, a slinky beat and a booming grand finale (self-plagiarism alert), resulting in a smashing singalong number. But see for yourself. And let it play -- the fuzzy guitar pickup at about the 3-minute mark is the kind of pop perfection that's spine chilling.
Even when Coldplay tries to rock out, the song ends up sounding like a ballad.
One of the world's biggest rock bands gave away its new single on Tuesday, inviting visitors to itsofficial website to download the cut. The song, "Violet Hill," was hotly anticipated not only due to Coldplay's stature, but because it unveiled the sound of Coldplay's pairing with famed ambient musician/producer Brian Eno, the artist who has manned the production boards on such albums as U2's "Achtung Baby" and the Talking Heads' "Fear of Music," among many, many others.
From the forthcoming "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," due June 17, "Violet Hill" brings some spiky new flashes to Coldplay's sound, but still comfortably fits with the band's back catalog.
Those more familiar with Coldplay via its sparkling Grammy-winning songs "Clocks" and "In My Place," may hear a rougher, tougher Coldplay in "Violet Hill." Yet whenever the song seems ready to veer into a more forceful, arena-rock territory, Coldplay reigns in the aggression, and ultimately brings the song to an end with puppy-dog-like charm -- Chris Martin's soft vocals leading a trickling, mournful piano.
But there are moments where "Violet Hill" ranks as some of the more exciting music Coldplay has recorded. The first guitar crush arrives after a lengthy ambient intro, and brings an electrifying jolt to the striking piano melody. And Martin brings a booming confidence to his vocals that has been more evident in Coldplay's live shows than on record, his dip into a falsetto in the chorus more matter-of-fact than sorrowful.
It's all over much faster than it's 3:50 running time lets on, with its more thundering center framed by its quieter moments. While it doesn't rewrite Coldplay's sound, it bodes well for the upcoming album, showcasing Coldplay's ability to write giant, mainstream melodies, all the while gradually introducing some new flourishes to the mix.
Listen below, or download it for free on the band's official website.
"Hard Candy" is expected to debut at No. 1 next week, and should supply continued good news for the music biz this April. But while Mariah Carey just scored the biggest first-week sales total of the year -- with her "E=MC2" selling 463,000 copies last week, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- the RIAA's 2007 year-end stats arrive to remind us all just what an aberration that was. Overall CD shipments in the U.S. dipped 17.5%, after a 12.1% decline from 2005 to 2006.
There was, however, some good news. Vinyl shipments were up 36%, rebounding from a 7% dip from 2005 to 2006. Distribution of digital albums was up 54%, and digital music videos also saw a huge jump, climbing 43%. Subscription services, however, don't seem to be taking with consumers, as they were up just a tiny 7%.
Overall, though, digital sales accounted for 23% of the industry's revenue, compared to just 9% in 2005. Mobile sales, which includes ringtones, downloads and ringbacks, among other new media tchotchkes , experienced a 14% increase.
The strength of the mobile market, in fact, is illustrated this week by none other than Madonna herself. She'll be broadcasting four songs live via Verizon from her New York club gig Wednesday evening. Billboard notes this is the first live mobile simulcast. But those who miss it -- or have to take a call once Madonna takes the stage -- can access the content for up to 30 days.
...And it plays out like a DVD outtake of Scarlett behind the scenes.
While it's cute to see Johansson become Hollywood-ready by having her forearm tattoo painted over, it's a surprisingly direct video for "Falling Down," a song focused so heavily on muddled-up production, courtesy of TV On the Radio's Dave Sitek.
Widely distributed by Yahoo first thing Tuesday morning, the clip likely won't change anyone's mind on the song. While the slow-and-heavy production begs for headphone listening, Johansson takes a rather direct and uniform approach to the vocals in the cut, which seem to needlessly ground the atmospherics.
Ultimately, it's the background instrumentation -- a plucky banjo here, or a smattering of xylophone-like chimes over there -- that cuts through the swirl, and pulls the emphasis away from the star vocalist.
"Falling Down" is the first single from Johansson's May 20 album -- largely composed of of Tom Waits covers -- "Anywhere I Lay My Head."
When pigs fly, it apparently comes with a hefty price tag.
Early Monday morning, the folks over on The Guide's Soundboard blog noted that Roger Waters' Coachella-ending set came complete with a giant inflatable pig, one that had been "cut loose" and soared over the crowd.
While this reporter wasn't in Indio, Calif., to witness the pig fly across the desert festival, Wired noted that the Obama-endorsing pig had been dressed up by graffiti artist Slick. And it's one work of art that may not have been meant to be set free.
Monday evening, Coachella's PR team sent out a press release asking for the safe return of the inflatable pig, offering a reward of $10,000, and four festival tickets "for life," or least until the U.S. festival market implodes and bands can go back to their regularly scheduled summer tours.
"The pig escaped and floated into the desert sky just prior to the intermission between Roger Waters' back-to-back sets," states the press release.
Whether by total accident or a clever bit of alternative marketing, the pig has apparently not yet been found.
Those with information are asked to email lostpig@coachella.com
Amy Winehouse, finally making news for her music again, is tipped to be composing the theme song for the upcoming James Bond film, "Quantum of Solace." Winehouse's, who's retro-dipped soul lyrics have already referenced Bond actors, is said to be working on the tune with producer/collaborator Mark Ronson, according to the BBC News.
Nothing official at this point, and Ronson tells the BBC that Winehouse's Bond theme is far from a done deal. "They asked Amy, and I think Amy said that if she did it, she'd want to do it with me. So hopefully something will come of it," Ronson is quoted as saying. "The demo sounds like a James Bond theme, hopefully. But I don't know if it'll get used."
In fact, much of Winehouse's Grammy-adored breakthrough "Back to Black" sounds like a Bond theme. The artist should be right at home writing a tune for "Quantum of Solace," her music unapologetically striving for the familiar vintage feel of the best of the Bond films.
Indeed, though she was born and raised during the Timothy Dalton/Pierce Bronson-era Bond films, Winehouse found inspiration in the Bond of the '70s, singing, "You tear men down like Roger Moore" in "You Know I'm No Good."
Few pop stars, if any, have been able to pull off career makeovers like Madonna. Whether working with underground heroes or superstar producers, Madonna has had an uncanny ability to predict trends and react to mainstream hits.
With her new album “Hard Candy” due out on Tuesday, Madonna has returned with a new sound again. She’s jettisoned the Euro-dance that marked much of her recent works. Instead she turned to hit-makers such as Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. But is Madonna really doing anything all that new and different for her?
A little help from former teen idols? Before singing with Justin, Madonna smooched Britney. Urban producers? Before Timbaland, Madonna worked with Babyface. “Hard Candy” might be this year’s model, but it follows the same old Madonna formula.
Here, we take a look at some of Madonna’s key albums, launching with “Hard Candy” and ending with “Like a Prayer” in 1989, and examine the five or six hallmarks of a Madonna release. Hot collaborators? Check. Explosive branding? Check. And usually a controversy or two.
Part rehearsal for a reunited Jane's Addiction, and part international branding effort for a British magazine, the first United States edition of the NME Awards was a low-key, often disjointed affair. Yet it was one that offered as much self-congratulatory hype as the most professional of productions. Models introduced bands, Kelly Osbourne made some crotch jokes and the Brits handed out more awards to dancey rockers the Klaxons at the two-hour event Wednesday night in Los Angeles.
Only the Clash's Mick Jones seemed to survive the event without some level of embarrassment. A total of 15 awards were handed out at the small El Rey Theatre, and Jones took home a trophy dubbed the "inspiration award" before performing two songs with his current outfit, Carbon/Silicon.
But it was Jane's Addiction, who received the night's "Godlike genius" award, that was the night's main draw. The act closed the event with a mini four-song set that included "Stop," "Mountain Song" and a light, steel drum-enhanced "Jane Says."
The group's first pairing in more than a decade with original bassist Eric Avery went down without a hitch, especially the groovy undercurrents that swarm under the trashy riffs of "Ocean Size." But due to the act's habitual on-again/off-again status, a Jane's Addiction performance hardly qualifies as an event these days, and one couldn't help but feel that the NME gig was little more than a run-through for a bigger show down the road.
But the NME Awards weren't really about the performances, nor were they about the awards. It wasn't a huge draw for artists, which was illustrated by the fact that "best new band" winners Vampire Weekend had a date about five miles up the street with "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Instead, this was an event centered on establishing the NME brand in the U.S. After all, an award show that sells its category names to sponsors is not one to be taken too seriously.
NME editor Conor McNicholas opened the event, declaring that "U.S. fans want more of NME." His reasoning was that NME has played a "key part in breaking U.S. bands in the U.K." and, in turn, establishing the acts in the U.S.
But there was zero evidence of such bravado at the awards. Including the pleasantly preppy indie rock of Vampire Weekend, trophies were given out to such U.S. artists as Foo Fighters ("best album"), My Chemical Romance ("best live act"), MGMT ("best breakthrough track") and the Killers (best track, best band).
Thanks, NME, but we're hip to all those guys in America.
Jones, introduced by Sienna Miller(both pictured), heaped on the NME praise when given his inspiration award, but drew a laugh from the audience when he admitted that today he gives it a "scan on the Internet, just like the rest of you." He then told a story about dogs and cats coming together for some inter-species love, and was all smiles when hammering through the choppy guitar riffs of Carbon/Silicon.
Comedian Jim Jeffries did an able job with a thankless task, landing some jabs at Osbourne ("I think she'd be famous even if her dad weren't famous -- she's just that good"), and was able to prevent the night from becoming a disaster (after the Lemonheads' Evan Dando accepted a "classic album" award with nothing more than a "thanks," Jeffries had to beg the crowd to give longer speeches).
Oddly enough, the evening's two weirdest moments both involved the Klaxons.
U.K. model Agyness Dean gifted Mercury Prize winners the Klaxons the award for "best international album," though it belonged to the Arctic Monkeys (the NME site has corrected the slight). And later in the night, a clearly blitzed Steffan Halperin from the Klaxons stumbled on stage and interrupted the nominees for "best band." The drummer just stood there, not really saying much, prompting Jeffries to say, "I love drugs too."
Many in the audience seemed unsure whether to chuckle or call for help. But that could be said for much of the evening.
At times very real and heartbreaking, Harmony Korine's first film in nearly a decade, "Mister Lonely," isn't short on its share of warped moments, as its characters and scenes exist just left of something comfortable. A seemingly conventional fish-out-of-water film, as it unfolds, "Mister Lonely" strives to become, in the words of it main character, "less ordinary."
One of the reasons the film largely succeeds in this mission is its music. Taking its name from the classic Bobby Vinton tune, "Mister Lonely" is inspired by song from the get-go, even when music isn't on the screen. Its hauntingly hypnotic score comes from J. Spaceman, the psychedelic rocker behind Spaceman 3 and Spiritualized, and the experimental music of the Sun City Girls.
The film, to be released May 2 by IFC, follows a Paris-based Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna), a street performer who has a chance encounter with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton). Marilyn persuades Michael to move with her to a commune that's become sort of a safe haven for celebrity impressionists, where the goal is to build a theater that will showcase a circus-like revue.
Luna, who starred in "Y Tu Mama Tambien," doesn't look much like Jackson, but he has his dance moves down pat.
Speaking after a screening of the film Monday night in Los Angeles, the controversial writer/filmmaker ("Kids," "Gummo") Korine discussed meeting some celeb impersonators during the process of working on the film.
"They were obsessive," Korine said. "They looked very little like the people they were impersonating. They just willed themselves."
Indeed, one of the opening scenes in the beautifully shot film is Luna's Jackson dancing, sans music, on the streets of Paris. It's implied, perhaps, that he's moving to Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," but the only sound effects the audience hears are those of Luna's kicks and swipes in the air. He's alone in his world, and the only song here is in his head.
When asked by an audience member in the below sound-clip if he ever sought out Jackson's permission or music, Korine said the thought didn't cross his mind.
Instead, later in the film, Luna moves to the music of the more frantic, electronic hip-hop of Spank Rock's "Backyard Betty," but that's as modern as the music in "Mister Lonely" gets. While Korine draws heavily from African field recordings and American folk from the 1930s to the 1950s (he briefly discusses his thoughts on picking sons in the below audio clip), it's the music of Spaceman and the Sun City Girls that fuel "Mister Lonely''s" eccentricities.
The "Mister Lonely" soundtrack was released today (April 22) via Chicago-based independent Drag City. It features 9 tracks from Spaceman, and 8 from the Sun City Girls. And while not an entirely easy listen outside of the film, Spaceman's songs immediately illustrate music's ability to provide an escape. There's a child-like wonder to the chiming keys that open the album, in which Luna tries to explain how difficult it all is when you "hate your own face" and simply want "to go completely unnoticed."
In tracks like "Blues 1" and "Paris Beach," Spaceman takes organic sounds and twists them just a little, creating a folk- or blues-based song with just a hint of manipulated guitar notes. It instantly brings utterly familiar and relaxed sounds to a slightly more wondrous, sometimes unsettling place. Or, in the case of "Garden Walk," the violins sway triumphantly, celebrating the pure cartoonish weirdness of the characters.
It's the Sun City Girls who get the score's centerpiece, however. The now-defunct experimental trio provide a take on the Vinton original with "Mr. Lonely Viola," in which the sounds of a choir and some deliberately plucked stringed instruments barely keep a melancholic violin afloat. The act also supplies the sun-scorched melodies and harmonies of "Vine Street Piano" and the orchestral overture in "Farewell," which flirts with grandness.
At one point in the film, Luna's Jackson is asked why he would ever want to be like everybody else. Why not continue to live in his fake celebrity world? Can't he see how miserable "everybody else" is? While the film does not ultimately provide an answer to the question, Spaceman and the Sun City Girls offer a musical detour while Korine tries to figure it out.
Last week, a pair of tunes from Scarlett Johansson's debut, "Anywhere I Lay My Head," found their way onto the Web.
With the acclaimed actress tackling the songs of Tom Waits, singing with David Bowie, and working with a host of underground rock luminaries (TV On the Radio's Dave Sitek and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, among others), there was, understandably, quite a bit of interest in the songs.
But within hours of the title track and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" leaking, the songs were removed from any blog that hosted them.
Yet with the May 20 release of her album, due on Warner Bros.-owned label Atco/Rhino, it seemed like high time to get the music out to the public.
The sudden Web removal of the tracks seemed a bit puzzling. Warner Bros., after all, was the first major label to strike a licensing agreement with streaming site Imeem, and there is a seeming newfound attitude among labels to get music into the hands of fans as quickly as possible (see Gnarls Barkley, theRaconteurs).
When contacted, a label rep for Johansson did not comment on why the two tracks were asked to be taken down, but did note that a new and different Johansson song would be made available the following week. And voila, it has, as "Falling Down" featuring David Bowie has landed as an exclusive on AOL's Spinner site.
Consider it proof that even in 2008, the Web can't totally derail a major label marketing campaign.
But the Web can certainly make one even more frustrating for all parties. Check the VH1 site for Madonna's "Hard Candy," which at one point offered brief snippets of every song on the album. Perhaps everyone soon came to their senses and realized that a full track or two would be a better tactic. I'm betting more fans than not are comfortable making their purchase judgments based on 30-second clips available on iTunes or Amazon, so why let them make that decision two weeks before the April 29 release?
As for Scarlett's "Falling Down," expect a more link-friendly version of the song to be available in the next day or two. It's an icier first single than expected, which Johansson offering a surprisingly still delivery around a deliberately slow swirl of spacey effects and heavily layered instrumentation.
