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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

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

  • Whitney & Jay-Z: A September to Remember?

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    It’s hard to believe that the year is half over already, isn’t it? Well, labels are starting to tentatively map out their 4th quarters, and a couple of big names have already signed on to release new music in the last few months of the year.

    News reports are saying that Whitney Houston’s long-awaited, much discussed comeback album will finally come out on September 1st. This will be Whitney’s first album of new material since 2002’s “Just Whitney”. A song with Akon entitled “Like I Never Left” popped up on the interwebs last fall, but there’s no telling whether that song (which was actually pretty good) will make it onto the album. I don’t think Whitney’s totally squandered her goodwill. I think that with the right material and a sound that’s contemporary while still age-appropriate and classy, she can return to her former glory.

    Also coming out in September, allegedly, will be Jay-Z’s “Blueprint 3”. Originally scheduled to come out at the end of 2008, B3 will be Jay’s first album in two years, following the platinum-selling “American Gangster”. It will also be Jay’s first album since leaving Def Jam, his home for the last 12 years. Now, here’s an interesting factoid. “Blueprint 3” is tentatively scheduled to come out on September 11th, which will mark eight years to the day since the first “Blueprint” was released. Does Jay still have enough juice to pull out a Friday release date? If these dates remain the same (which we both know they probably won’t), I guess we’ll see. Of course, considering the dearth of good music so far in 2009, the promise of new music from two dependable artists (not to mention Sade’s rumored November return) is music to my ears.

  • The 200-Word Review: Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey”

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    Much has been made about the spectre of loss lingering over Dave Matthews Band’s new LP “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King”. After all, it’s the first album the band’s released since the unexpected death of sax player LeRoi Moore. Truthfully, though, DMB’s no more fixated on loss on this album than they’ve been at any other point during their career, and “Big Whiskey” is by no means a mournful set. The quartet powers through a song cycle that’s more of a celebration of life and love (and sex) than it is about death, with the only obvious nods to Moore’s passing being the sax noodling that opens and closes the album.

    With veteran rock producer Rob Cavallo taking the reins on this album, it retains a shiny gloss while sounding far dirtier than 2005’s overproduced “Stand Up”. Highlights include the wickedly upbeat “Shake Me Like a Monkey”, the uber-jammy “Alligator Pie” (with it’s wildly shifting tempos and semi-nonsense lyrics), the ominous “Time Bomb” (on which Matthews howls Eddie Vedder-style), and the sexy “Seven”, on which Matthews unleashes a playful falsetto. The album flows together nicely, and although a major part of their operation may have departed, “Big Whiskey” finds the DMB in as good a form as they’ve ever been.

  • MJ To Lip Sync at London Shows?

    The King of Pop may not be singing at his much hyped concerts in London this summer according to a report in ContactMusic.

    The site quote Michael Jackson collaborator Ak0n as saying that Jackson would “perform”, but may not sing.

    The 50 year old pop star turns 51 this August and announced plans earlier this year for fifty concerts in London beginning in July.  The concerts immediately sold out and, according to published reports, could possibly generate enough income to solve the music star’s financial troubles.

    Speculating about MJ on Sonic Clash Radio in March, co-host Double G and his special guest (okay, me) mused about the concerts.  Double G says, “You don’t want the first concert …word to leak out that he doesn’t have it anymore.   That would be the worst thing I can’t imagine he wants anything but praise for that show.”

    Always eager to find something worse, I quickly chime in, “Even more of a threat to MJ than bad reviews…is if he is found to be lip syncing…I think that’s going to destroy any hope he has for musical redemption.”

    But what if a proxy, public red herring, stooge, collaborator like Akon spreads the word first that it’s a performance?  The debate is taking place now in our forum.  Go and be heard.