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Pop Rock Nation

Category: People

all-about-musicians-and-the-people-who-help-them-make-music

  • 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.

  • The Top 100 Songs of the ’00s, #95: “S.O.S.”

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    It’s amazing what producers and songwriters can do to a blank slate. Rihanna’s debut single, “Pon de Replay”, might get my vote as one of the most annoying songs of this past decade. I remember sneering at the TV every time the video came on VH-1’s top 20. However, just one year later, the Barbadian beauty was well on her way to becoming arguably the best singles artist of the decade (she’s the #2 artist on this list, with three songs on the survey). The song thatsent her on her way was this propulsive, sexy jam. Goosed along by a very prominent sample of ’80s classic “Tainted Love” (by Soft Cell), Rihanna channeled her thin voice into an attitudinal, erotic moan that was good enough to make us forget that we were (at the time) listening to a teenager. The song’s flirty, fun vibe took it to the top of the charts, becoming the first of Rihanna’s five chart-toppers this decade, and established her as one of the preeminent female pop singers of her generation.

    So suck it, “Pon de Replay”. “S.O.S.” marked the beginning of pop superstar Rihanna as we now know her, and for that, we as pop music listenerds (that was a typo, but I left it in, it kinda fits) should be quite appreciative.