Jamie Foxx-who will be hosting-Â and a slew of other artists were on hand last night to announce the nominees for the 2009 BET Awards, and Beyonce and T.I. turned out to lead the pack with 5 nominations each. Beyonce scored 2 nods in the Best Video category and also was nominated twice in the Best Female Actress category. T.I. picked up nominations for Best Male Rapper and Best Video (for “Live Your Life”) among others.
Lil’ Wayne, T-Pain and Keri Hilson are right behind with four nominations apiece.
As usual, I’m left scratching my head at some of the nominations. Why have categories like Best Group and Best Female Rapper if the pools are so thin? The nominees for Best Group are Day26, The GS Boyz (of “Stanky Legg” fame), N.E.R.D., The Roots and Three Six Mafia, while the Best Female Rapper nominees are Trina, Lil’ Mama and M.I.A., who is also curiously nominated for Best New Artist, although she’s already on her second album. Looks like the BET Award nominating committee is sipping on the same sauce as the folks who do the noms for the Grammy Awards.
Ne-Yo and Maxwell are among the artists scheduled to perform on the show, which will air on June 24th. SonicClash will, as usual, be live-blogging the event.
No disrespect to Bob Dylan (or Smokey Robinson, who Dylan thinks is America’s greatest living poet), but no one writes songs better than Stevie Wonder, and that crown was sewn up back in 1976, when he was the biggest thing since sliced bread. In the thirty-plus years since “Songs in the Key of Life”, his run of classics has slowed, but it hasn’t stopped: “Lately”, “All I Do”, “That Girl”, “Overjoyed” and “These Three Words” are just a handful of the lyrical and vocal masterpieces that have come from a post-Seventies Stevie.
I won’t even get into the stuff he made before then. Let’s just say that “Talking Book”, “Innervisions” and “Songs in the Key of Life” are albums every human that’s into music should own (and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale, trippy as it is, isn’t a slouch, either). It’s an achievement to make one classic album; Stevie made a DECADE’s worth of them. No wonder the man has won more Grammy Awards than any other pop, rock or R&B performer in history.
One way you can judge a great song is by how many times it’s remade, and you could fill a box set with nothing but Stevie covers: everyone from Barbra Streisand to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to 2Pac to Wayne Brady has covered (or heavily sampled) Stevie. He has to be, apart from Dylan, the most covered songwriter of the rock era.
Those too young to remember Stevie in his Grammy-winning, slimmer phase and want to know who the dude with the sunglasses was that performed with the Jonas Brothers was definitely need to be schooled. His music, for the excellent lyricism, pioneering musicianship, stellar vocals (every R&B singer that doesn’t sound like Marvin or Michael sounds like Stevie) and positive message, is as relevant now as it was when it was first out.
I was fortunate enough to see Stevie live about 18 months ago, and with no light show and no choreography, blew the roof off of Madison Square Garden. I’ve been going to concerts fairly regularly for 15 years now, and I have never seen a better show.
In 1980, Stevie wrote and recorded a song called “Happy Birthday” in dedication to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Stevie was one of the most responsible forces for getting King’s birthday recognized as a national holiday). The song has also become a standard of sorts-go to a black birthday party and I guarantee someone’s gonna break into Stevie’s song either right before, during, or right after the candles are blown out!
Here are two of my favorite songs by him. One from his golden era (the lyrics to this song are among the best-and yet simplest-ever written), one from more recently.
26 years after Pat Benatar warned us that “Love is a Battlefield”, here comes “American Idol” Season 6 winner Jordin Sparks to basically tell us the same thing.
“Battlefield” is the first single from Jordin’s sophomore album, which is scheduled to arrive in stores sometime in July. This is the latest in a glut of “Idol”-related releases. Elliott Yamin’s album came out last week, Ruben Studdard and LaKisha Jones arrive next week, Daughtry debuted his (their?) new single last week and have an album coming in June, and now Jordin. Even Paula Abdul has a new single out. It’s like everyone’s trying to put something out (or at least create awareness) before the current season is over. Or maybe that’s the point.
Anyways, “Battlefield” is a bit more aggressive tha you’d normally expect from the (sorry to say) personality-deficient Jordin Sparks. The rumor is that the song was written by OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder (it sounds like him), and if so, the guy’s definitely becoming a songwriting force to be reckoned with (Beyonce’s “Halo”, Kelly Clarkson’s album, etc.). This definitely smells like a hit. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Jamie Foxx-who will be hosting-Â and a slew of other artists were on hand last night to announce the nominees for the 2009 BET Awards, and Beyonce and T.I. turned out to lead the pack with 5 nominations each. Beyonce scored 2 nods in the Best Video category and also was nominated twice in the Best Female Actress category. T.I. picked up nominations for Best Male Rapper and Best Video (for “Live Your Life”) among others.