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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

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

  • Welcome Back, Jay-Z. When Did You Leave?

    He’s been on the Grammys.

    He’s performed with Beyonce.

    He may have done that in more ways than one.

    He runs a music company — a good one.

    He even owns part of a basketball team.

    F0rget what Biggie claimed. Jay-Z is Brooklyn’s Finest, or one of ’em anyway. And now he’s back from his “retirement”? That is what Entertainment Weekly is reporting and being picked up all over the world.

    Shawn Carter is gonna make more music. Since he was born in the Nixon administration, it’s not as if he is too old to do that. So if The Black Album wasn’t really his final album, the crossover smash sold out of stores and generated three Top 40 hits. The stars out for that album — Rick Rubin, Kanye, John Legend and more — are no doubt available to him again. Look for young Beyonce to play a greater role as well.

    It’s been three years. Time to stop playing with spreadsheets and start playing with mixing boards.

    Spinning in the CD:
    I’m still liking Panic! At The Disco. I Write Sins Not Tragedies is as fresh a sound as Green Day’s American Idiot showed up two years ago.

    Tech Tags:

  • Bye Bye Bobby

    Thinking about two kids never living up to their potential. Yes, I know that Whitney was the 1980s Diva of Choice, but she should have a Streisand-like career, not a Paula Abdul-length one. And Bobby Brow, what’s up with that? One of the coolest music makers of his generation when he didn’t get sidetracked from one project to another.

    Kiss it goodbye. They’ve been through drugs, alleged spousal abuse, scandals of every kind, but Whitney Houston has reportedly filed papers to divorce Bobby Brown.

    This all appears to be happening a decade too late, and after so much abuse of their relationship, one has to wonder what finally prompted Houston to take action. Her mindset and the super-duper, hot, hear-it-here first exclusive will undoubtedly tell the tale, but for now, it’s “Buh-buh Bobby”

    Spinning In The CD
    Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys     Yeah, I know it’s 40 years old, but old music can still amaze. And, truth be told, I owe our sister Book site a review of a hot new book about Brian Wilson so I needed to soak up some fun, fun, fun in the warmth of the sun.

  • Personalized Pop

    This weekend’s Wall Street Journal carried an online music piece by John Jurgensen about personalized music. We’ve had mashuips and remixes, bootlegs and rarities. Now the economies of scale brought to us by the digital world are giving us personalized music.

    Like those kids license plate keychains you see hanging up in a Stuckey’s off the highway exit, these versions of the song are cut with individual names.

    “Hey, Billy.”

    Next

    “Hey, Chris”

    Next

    “Hey, Dawn.”

    and so on.

    Jurgensen reports that Jessica Simpson’s A Public Affair has 534 different copies for sale. To make matters even more cloying and disgusting, Simpsonc couldn’t be bothered to actually record the shout-out, relegating it instead to a backup singer.

    Personalized music could be like an autograph. If the shout out went something like, “Hey, Opie Taylor of Mayberry Enn Cee,” then I could maybe, somehow perhaps see spurging $1.99 extra for the song. There’s more money in shouting out to all the Billys, though, and having them or their friends pop down the extra money. And yes, the songs debuted at $1.99, although at iTunes (motto: “we’re even going to get The Beatles down to 99 cents”), they are now just a buck. That’s a third of a tall coffee at Starbucks. It hardly seems worth it.

    Spinning In The CD:
    I am really liking the new Bob Dylan album. I wrote someone that he was channeling bluesman Chris Smither, but his voice hasn’t sounded this good and his songs haven’t been this memorable in years. In fact, this is Bob’s best production since Jakob.