web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Blog

  • Her Name Might Be Nicole, But She’s A Pussycat Doll

    One of the “it” girls in music over the last few years has been former Eden’s Crush member and current Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger. She was featured everywhere from magazine covers to award shows and seemed to be the next breakout star. After helping Diddy get his groove back with his biggest solo hit in years Come To Me, it seemed like a done deal. With an exotic look, a decent enough voice to make it in music today, and with Pussycat Dolls’ hits in her back pocket, it seemed that the world was ready for Nicole.

    But something happened on the way to super stardom. The album, titled Her Name Is Nicole, was finished and singles had been released including Whatever U Like and Baby Love. But both failed to spark the necessary fire that Interscope and Scherzinger wanted and the album was delayed.

    On Nicole’s website, she posted in her blog on February 12, 2008 that she’s grateful the album was pushed back.


    I know you have all been waiting patiently for the release of “Her Name Is Nicole” and I want you to know that I am actually grateful the album has been pushed back. Yes, I REALLY mean that. You see, I want to make sure this album is the best I can make it because I owe that to myself, and to all of you, to release the best music I possibly can. I hope you all continue with me on this journey because it will be worth the wait.

    In a sense, it reminded me of Claudette Ortiz who was the lead singer of a group called City High that had a hit song in 2001 called What Would You Do. Much like Scherzinger, Ortiz had breakout star written all over her. Wycle Jean featured her on his single Two Wrongs. She also joined him on a track called Dance Like This, which became more famous because Wyclef and Shakira redid it and called it Hips Don’t Lie. I’m not sure what Ortiz is doing musically today.

    As for Scherzinger, she’s back with her Pussycat Dolls sisters with an album scheduled for later in the summer. The first single is When I Grow Up, which you can listen to below.

    Will Her Name Is Nicole ever drop? If it does, expect it to be largely different than what she already recorded if history is any indication. Usually these days, artists push back albums because their tracks get leaked and aren’t received well (this happened to Usher’s album that eventually became Confessions). In Scherzinger’s case, actual singles were released and the album was delayed. Instead of waiting for the delayed solo album to drop, she’s moving on as evidenced by the new Pussycat Dolls record. The question is, if PCD doesn’t duplicate their previous success, will people still want to hear Nicole as a solo?

  • Winter Doesn’t Quite Move On: Morten Harket Feels My Pain


    Here in Wisconsin, we have a sort of love/hate thing about winter. Back in college, I remember walking to work in bitter cold, with icicles forming in my facial hair and the inner workings of my Walkman freezing to a crawl so that my mix tape sounded like a 45 played at 33. Those mornings are too sad to contemplate further, but as miserable as I was, it also gave me an opportunity to feel all stoic and rugged and butch. For us Midwesterners, the quiet endurance of an extreme winter season is both a burden and a source of pride. Suffice to say that even as May heads into June, there have been frost advisories in America’s Dairyland. Wednesday night, I mowed my lawn in a winter coat. So when they start opening the garden centers at the Home Depots and Shopkos and Wal-Marts, we flock to them like mosquitoes to bug zappers, ravenous for the color green – ravenous for color at all.

    Of course, it could be worse. We could be in Norway. (Actually, many of us are Norwegian.) And the Norwegian trio a-ha captured the poetically fleeting nature of a northern summer gloriously in the video for their 2000 reunion single “Summer Moved On” (which they debuted at the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize Concert). The band will always be best known for their 1985 hit “Take On Me” (and its video), but, even though it wasn’t a hit on these shores, “Summer Moved On” successfully re-established the band as an international pop force, and may, in fact, prove to be just as enduring and classic as their first hit. Both lyrically and musically the opposite of their signature hit, “Summer Moved On” is a languorous contemplation of a relationship’s final days which culminates with cascading strings and Morten Harket’s dramatic falsetto plea to “Stay… don’t just walk away” – how does that man hold his notes? – the song is accompanied by a video depicting a rocky ocean beach strewn with light-starved people waiting for the dawn of what proves to be an excruciatingly brief day.

    Since their reunion, and in between the members’ various side projects – primary songwriter Pal Waaktaar and his wife Lauren Savoy record together under the name Savoy and in 2004 Magne “Mags” Furuholmen recorded a solo album with members of Coldplay – a-ha have released four very good albums (available in the U.S. only as imports) including the double-live set How Can I Sleep With Your Voice In My Head, with a new as-yet-untitled record scheduled to come out this fall. In the meantime, Morten Harket has revived his solo career with a brand new studio album called Letter From Egypt, his first full-length, English-language studio album since 1995’s lovely Wild Seed. The album’s advance single is a typically sweeping ballad called “Movies” (a cover of fellow Norskies the Locomotives’ “My Woman”) which was a top 10 hit in Norway earlier this year. Check out Morten (as hunky as ever) performing the song at last year’s Nobel Peace Prize Concert to an audience which included Al Gore. The album’s second single, the slightly more upbeat and far less engrossing “Darkside” was released in Europe in May.

    http://www.myspace.com/harketmorten

    -P. Lorentz

  • Chart Chat 6/1/08: 3 Doors Down, Donna Summer, Coldplay & More!!


    Ah, the month of June. In just a couple of short weeks, it will officially be summer. Let’s see what’s heating up the music charts this week! (as usual, all chart info reprinted courtesy of the good folks at Billboard):

    Top 20 Albums:

    1) “3 Doors Down” 3 Doors Down
    2) “II Trill” Bun B
    3) “Julianne Hough” Julianne Hough
    4) “Nothing But the Best” Frank Sinatra
    5) “Narrow Stairs” Death Cab for Cutie
    6) “Spirit” Leona Lewis
    7) “E=MC2” Mariah Carey
    8) “Rockferry” Duffy
    9) “Hard Candy” Madonna
    10) “Home Before Dark” Neil Diamond
    11) “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things” Jason Mraz
    12) “Taylor Swift” Taylor Swift
    13) “35 Biggest Hits” Toby Keith
    14) “Departure” Jesse McCartney
    15) “Fight With Tools” Flobots
    16) “Carnival Ride” Carrie Underwood
    17) “Crayons” Donna Summer
    18) “Now That’s What I Call Music 27” Various Artists
    19) “Jordin Sparks” Jordin Sparks
    20) “Daughtry” Daughtry

    Top 20 Singles

    1) “Lollipop” Lil’ Wayne feat. Static Major
    2) “Bleeding Love” Leona Lewis
    3) “The Time of My Life” David Cook
    4) “Take a Bow” Rihanna
    5) “No Air” Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown
    6) “Love in This Club” Usher feat. Young Jeezy
    7) “Sexy Can I” Ray J. feat. Yung Berg
    8) “4 Minutes” Madonna feat. Justin Timberlake
    9) “Pocketful of Sunshine” Natasha Bedingfield
    10) “Viva La Vida” Coldplay
    11) “Damaged” Danity Kane
    12) “Leavin’” Jesse McCartney
    13) “Touch My Body” Mariah Carey
    14) “Bust it Baby Pt. 2” Plies feat. Ne-Yo
    15) “Dream Big” David Cook
    16) “What You Got” Colby O’Donis feat. Akon
    17) “It’s Not My Time” 3 Doors Down
    18) “Apologize” Timbaland feat. OneRepublic
    19) “Last Name” Carrie Underwood
    20) “Love Song” Sara Bareilles

    *This week’s charts are all about two things: “American Idol” and advertising. To wit:

    *Contestants from 4 different seasons of “American Idol” can be found in this week’s Top 20 charts. Aside from David Cook’s two top 20 singles chart debuts (which we discussed a couple days back), 2007’s winner, Jordin Sparks, can be found in the Top 20 of the singles and albums charts, as can 2005’s winner, Carrie Underwood. Meanwhile, 2006 finalist Chris Daughtry is still hanging around, moving up 10 spots to re-enter the Top 20 with his 18-month old debut album.

    *”American Idol” is also to blame for the resurgence of “Apologize”. The Timbaland/OneRepublic song, which has now appeared on the pop, Adult Top 40, Adult Contemporary and R&B charts, re-enters the Top 20 after OneRepublic performed it with “AI” runner-up David Archuleta on the season finale. The resurgence should be short-lived, as I can’t imagine there being too many people out there who aren’t completely sick of this song.

    *”Idol” also juices a major comeback, as Queen of Disco Donna Summer appears in the Top 20 of the pop albums chart for the first time since “She Works Hard for the Money” in 1983!! “Crayons” is actually Summer’s first album of original material since 1991. Toot-toot…hey…beep beep!! Here’s some old school Donna for ya!!

    *Meanwhile, continuing Ameria’s insatiable appetite for extremely generic rock bands, 3 Doors Down enjoys their second straight debut atop the album charts with their self-titled fourth effort. This band’s success may come as something of a surprise because they’ve traveled so far under the radar. However, not only has the band enjoyed a fairly uninterrupted stream of hit singles since their 2000 debut, but they are the third biggest-selling group of the decade so far, behind Nickelback and…crap, I forget who the second band is, but they’ve sold more records!!

    *Apple’s current advertising campaign is juicing Coldplay’s current success. “Viva La Vida”, the song used in the latest ads for Apple/iPod/iTunes, scales back up the charts this week, becoming Coldplay’s second top 10 hit. Lead singer Chris Martin also scores his first charted single as a solo artist, as Kanye West’s “Homecoming” (which features Martin as a guest artist) enters the singles chart at #96.