It’s 25 years ago next month that a certain Norwegian synth-pop trio first entered the Billboard Hot 100 with a song that would become one of the most beloved of its era, and a video that still looks as ground-breaking and exciting as it was in 1985: “Take On Me”. Though a-ha never managed another U.S. hit of that magnitude (or even close), they never really went away. Well, except for that time when they went on hiatus for most of the 90s. But with last summer’s lovely album Foot of the Mountain, and their current “Ending on a High Note” world tour, lead singer Morten Harket, keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, and guitarist-songwriter Pal Waaktaar-Savoy are, in fact, calling it a career. But not without a small postscript. The band will release what will presumably be their last single, called “Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)”, for digital download in July. After news of the new single was leaked by a mixing engineer, the song made its official world premiere on the internet via Warner Music Norway last week. For a good-bye song, “Butterfly, Butterfly” is remarkably unspectacular – just a typically sweet, three-minute, mid-tempo, synth-pop song, with a matter-of-fact vocal performance by Harket well in keeping with Waaktaar’s ambivalent farewell of a lyric: Tomorrow, you don’t have to mean what you say/left without a reason to stay/comes the last hurrah. The single is being released in conjunction with a forthcoming 2-disc retrospective set, and coincides with Rhino Records’ recent deluxe edition reissues of the band’s first two albums Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days.
Thank Me LaterOnly two rappers have ever crossed the 1 million sales mark during the first week of their release in Soundscan history. Those two rappers are Eminem, who did it twice, and Lil’ Wayne who did it with Tha Carter III.
Just two weeks ago when Drake’s Thank Me Later was leaked, people were talking as if Drake would join that exclusive club.
However, talk of the 1 million club has subsided a bit, and expectations are a bit more realistic now that the album is officially out. I have gone on record as saying that I think he crosses the 500,000 mark.
You think he ain’t gonna go out there and push over gold the first week? I got [him selling] over 650,000 first week. That’s what I’m giving Drake: 650, man. Every now and then, a man comes along and reshapes hip-hop; this is the dude for this time. I came out, my first album, 590,000. I feel he got a bigger buzz than I did. When I came out, everybody else was still poppin’. Right now … he’s just coming down. I got my album coming, Tip coming, Ross coming, but everybody is on their Drake stuff — even me. Dude is good, man.
What does everyone else think? We’ll know next week how hot Drake really is when the numbers are announced. Until then, it’s just guesses.
Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan was always the band’s resident geek. A former pre-med student who left Rutgers to study at Juilliard, he ventured into musical theater in 2002 when he, along with playwright and lyricist Joe DiPietro, started work on a musical called Memphis, the story of a white radio DJ (based loosely on real life DJ Dewey Phillips, one of the first white DJs to play black music) and a black singer who fall in love in the Jim Crow south at the moment of rock ‘n’ roll’s ascendancy. Following several regional theater productions, the show finally opened on Broadway last fall. Tonight, it was nominated for 8 Tony Awards and won four including the night’s top prize for Best Musical. Bryan himself won for Best Score and (with Daryl Waters) Best Orchestrations. Early in the night’s broadcast, Jon Bon Jovi (and an entire Bon Jovi concert audience) wished his bandmate well via satellite.
And apparently the well-wishes worked. Memphis won out against 11-time nominee Fela!, based on the life and music of Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti. Among that musical’s many producers were Jay-Z and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Though they left without trophies, the three Fela! producers got a lot of special attention from some of the performers. Lea Michele of Glee serenaded Jay-Z and Beyonce with “Don’t Rain on My Parade”, and, earlier, Douglas Hodge, who went on to win Best Actor in a Leading Role (Musical), playing drag queen Albin in La Cage aux Folles (the part Nathan Lane played in The Birdcage) delivered one of the night’s best laughs when s/he started to take a seat in Will Smith’s lap only to leap suddenly away with a coy glance to his crotch.
The first five minutes of the broadcast looked more like the Grammys than the Tonys, culminating with Green Day‘s appearance on stage to rip through the song “Holiday” with the cast of American Idiot, the musical based on the band’s 2004 concept album. The musical was only nominated for three awards (including Best Musical), and only took home an award for Best Lighting Design. The fourth Best Musical nominee was Million Dollar Quartet, a stage re-creation of a legendary Sun Studios session that brought together Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash for a historic, one-off rockabilly summit in 1956. Levi Kreis, the cast’s Jerry Lee Lewis, won for Best Actor in a Featured Role (Musical).
