music-news-from-breakups-to-the-lastest-buzz
One of the greatest voices in American music history has been silenced. Levi Stubbs, lead singer of The Four Tops, passed away today at the age of 72.
While folks of a certain age might only know Stubbs as the voice of Audrey the man-eating plant in The Little Shop of Horrors and even younger fans might only know Levi’s voice from the song Are You Man Enough, which was featured in the film Superbad, most music lovers know him as one of the most powerful singers Motown ever produced.
I admit, it’s been hard for me to write about music the last few weeks because I’ve turned into a total campaign coverage zombie. So my apologies for dipping into the political on a music blog, but I feel compelled to share a moment from an article by Matt Bai from the forthcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine, in which he describes a rally in rural southwestern Virginia in which bluegrass great Ralph Stanley endorses Barack Obama for President. This is sort of surprising in itself. Stanley has always struck me as a sort of populist folk-hero whose music, while certainly having a social and cultural point of view, seemed to exist outside of vulgar politics. (Springsteen modeled himself this way for most of his career – never publicly supporting a presidential candidate until Kerry’s run in 2004. He also publicly supports Obama this year.) But endorsement aside, the best line of the article came after Obama thanked Stanley for his support:
“When the candidate met Stanley backstage, Obama told him that he had some of Stanley’s banjo music on his iPod. Stanley nodded appreciatively, but a few minutes later he turned to a friend and asked, ‘What’s an iPod?’”
Hard to imagine that just nine months ago, there was a Britney death watch. Now fully recovered, having regained her sanity and looking closer to her original, kinda cute self than she has since she first got knocked up, Britney’s back with a new single and video called “Womanizer”.
Don’t really have much to say about the video or the song. The song is catchy enough (although is it me or does it sound a lot like Christina Aguilera’s “Keeps Gettin’ Better”?), but the endless repetitions of the chorus are agonizing, and there’s the little fact that Britney still can’t sing. The video is at least entertaining, even though it reminds me more than a little bit of her “Toxic” video.
Anyhow, this obviously wasn’t made for me since I’m not and never will be anything beyond a casual fan, but have a look yourself and let us know what you think.