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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

music-news-from-breakups-to-the-lastest-buzz

  • Can Diddy Do It Again?

    First off, will we ever get to call him Sean “Puffy” Combs ever again?

    This coming Tuesday, all girl pop group Danity Kane releases their sophomore album Welcome To The Doll House. It seems like just yesterday when Puffy, I mean Diddy, put the group together through the MTV show, Making The Band. When he whittled down the hopefuls, the result was Shannon, Aundrea, Aubrey, Dawn, and D. Woods. Having many weeks of television is a great marketing opportunity, as millions of people were able to watch the girls blend into a mature girl group. Also, Diddy and company utilized MySpace as a marketing tool better than any professional that I’ve ever seen. As a result, the girls sold over 200,000 units during the first week of release and eventually went platinum.

    Puff Daddy, I mean Diddy, is trying to strike while the iron is hot. Trying to duplicate his success with Danity Kane, Diddy put together an all male R&B group, called Day26, during the fourth iteration of Making The Band. The show was just as much boot camp as it was singing competition, but it worked, and when the latest version of the show featured Danity Kane, Day26, and solo artist Donnie J. all fighting for studio time, my thought was that Diddy done did it again. However, the music landscape has changed even more so than when Danity Kane’s first album was released. MySpace was still the hottest website around.

    If you’ve watched the season, the girls are desperately trying hard to match the success of the first album. The guys are just trying to find their place. Donnie J., who is sort of a mix between Jordan Knight and Justin Timberlake, is simply trying to not get lost in the shuffle.

    The good news is, Day26 looks to have the chops to be a real R&B group. Danity Kane needs a hot single to hit, but I can’t imagine their new album will be that much different from what worked last time. And at this point, who really knows about Donnie J., as we haven’t seen a release date for him yet? But you have to give Diddy props for being one of the hardest working executives in the game. Traditional music marketing isn’t necessarily working as well as it did in the past, and he’s taking chances and being creative in selling his artists. It’s worked once, and we’ll see if it can work three more times.

    Day26’s album drops March 25, 2008 and you can listen to Danity Kane’s new album, Welcome To The Doll House on MTV’s The Leak.

  • Vital Idol: Who Goes Home?

    After the first real week of American Idol, we’re left with a couple of questions.

    1. Who is the front runner?

    The show would like you to believe David Archuleta is the front runner, but can a sixteen year old prodigy really be the front runner? As he showed last night, there’s a ton of pressure involved in winning this show. Truly, through week one, there is no front runner. There are several folks last night who showed that they will do very well in the competition, but we won’t know until we see who Fox promotes next week.

    2. Is this season’s cast really that talented?

    I’d say yes. The naysayers think that every year Randy, Paula, and Simon say that and they’d be right. But that’s their job. They have to promote the show. But this year, Randy, Paula, and Simon are right. Let’s look at season one of the show. Other than Tamyra Gray and Kelly Clarkson, every single one of this final twelve is better than everyone from season one. Just watch the Idol re-runs that are on cable. Match it up to how glitzy and well produced the singers are today. It’s not even close.

    By the way, last night I predicted that Kristy Lee Cook, David “The Stripper” Hernandez, and Syesha Mercado would be in the bottom three. Syesha is the odd one out, but really, who else do you put in that bottom three? She was the least memorable out of the rest of the ten.

    Let’s get on with the elimination.

    – They showed Jim Carrey who is promoting the new Horton Hears A Who movie and my first thought is, why don’t they promote the Idol albums like that? It would be nice if Ryno Seacrest told us that Jordin and Blake had albums that were in stores.

    – Syesha is the first one in the bottom three, so I was right with her.

    – Ryno just made Chikezie nearly faint as he tricked him, but he’s safe.

    – David Cook needs to wear a hat every time he’s on TV. It’s like Cal Ripken Jr. wearing a hat versus Cal not wearing a hat. The Cal with the hat looks like a baseball warrior. The other Cal looks like an old man with a round head. (Yeah, I know, dated reference. Oh well.)

    – Kristy Lee went to get the microphone to sing before Ryno even told her she was in the bottom three. She guessed right. She’s also in the bottom three. I’m two for two.

    – They should never do On Air With American Idol ever again. Please drop this segment. It was akin to watching the sweat build up on Phil Stacey’s head.

    – Katherine McPhee performed, with David Foster on piano, and that was the best publicity for her album that she could’ve ever received. Too bad her album came out last year.

    – Big Dave Archuleta breathed a sigh of relief and back to curly Brooke and Ramiele Maluby are safe as well. That leaves “Shake What Ya Mama Gave Ya” Hernandez in the bottom three. I’m three for three baby! Chalk this one up in the record book. I’ll never do it again for the rest of the year.

    – Syesha and Kristy Lee are safe. “Drop It Like It’s Hot” Hernandez goes home. Big Rube Studdard sings him home. I think I’ll go buy the new go home music on iTunes. Word to Dan Powter!

    At the end of the day, no big loss. He wasn’t going to win. I think the shake ups start next week though. Someone who doesn’t deserve it could go home.

  • Singing "Hallelujah"

    So it’s been established before that when songs are performed by the “American Idol” contestants, there is a bump in sales for the original recording, but at no point has this been more evident than this past week.
    After contestant Jason Castro sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (whose most popular version was recorded by the late Jeff Buckley), sales went apeshit.
    Buckley’s nearly 15-year old rendition of the song zoomed to the top of iTunes’ digital singles chart, with over 177,000 people downloading the song in the past week. Meanwhile, “Grace”, the Buckley album that features “Hallelujah” (and the only album Buckley completed in his lifetime), scanned 6,521 units last week, which would have been enough to place it on the Top 200 albums chart (indeed, it re-enters the catalog albums chart at #10). This, after scanning less than 500 units last week.
    “Grace” has truly been a story of a classic album and word of mouth. The album, which never peaked higher than #149 on the Billboard Albums chart, has scanned in excess of 800,000 units in the years since. Of course, much of this can directly be attributed to the mystery of Buckley’s drowning death and the legacy he left, but a lot of it is just ’cause the music is good!
    And for all folks say to down “American Idol”, you’ve gotta give props when something like this happens.
    Here’s the video for “Hallelujah”