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  • New Release of the Week 9/29/09: Divas and Rockers

    If I’m not gonna focus on one release, I guess I should change the name of the column. Again. Any suggestions?

    While you guys ponder that, here are some of this week’s key new releases. The 4th quarter is in effect, innit?

    If you are a fan of the diva, today is a very good day for you. After numerous delays, Mariah Carey’s “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel” finally hits stores (actually, if you were using Amazon MP3, it hit stores yesterday, but that’s neither here nor there). This album was almost completely written and produced with R&B music’s current “it” man, Terius “The-Dream” Nash, and it’s spawned two hits in the Eminem kiss-off “Obsessed” and the cover of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is”. In a move that’s virtually guaranteed to score her a #1 album, she is also appearing on Oprah. Or has she done that already?

    Wrapping up 27 years on Warner Brothers, Madonna’s releasing a hits package called “Celebration”. This will be available in single and double-CD versions. “Celebration” does its’ best to collect Madge’s hits over the years, while still leaving a fair amount out (“Dress You Up”, “Angel”, “Causing a Commotion”, “Keep it Together”) and features two new songs, including one with Lil’ Wayne. Sigh. The final diva competing for your dollars today is Barbra (Yawn) Streisand. The Schnozz That Roared hits stores with “Love is the Answer”, which was produced by jazz/pop starlet Diana Krall.

    On the harder side of things, Alice in Chains returns with a new lead singer (‘cuz, you know, propping Layne Staley’s corpse on stage just wouldn’t be cool) on their first record in a decade, “Black Gives Way to Blue”. I call this as one of the year’s surprise hits-AIC has gotten some serious love at rock radio, and a fair amount of press as well. Also in stores today is the sophomore release from Grammy winners Paramore (AKA the junior-league Evanescence), “Brand New Eyes”. The “Twilight”-lovin’ Paramore fans might also want to take a gander at the new AFI release, “Crash Love”.

    Now, welcome to the potpourri round! Attitudinal country singer Miranda Lambert is back with her new album, “Revolution”, and Wu-Tang’s shining star Ghostface Killah, fresh from co-star duties on Raekwon’s “Only Built for Cuban Linx…2” is returning with an R&B-centric new album called “Ghostdini…Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City” (weird title). Laid back electronic/chillout duo Zero 7 have “Yeah Ghost” in stores today, jazz legends The Manhattan Transfer are releasing an album of Chick Corea covers (say that 5 times fast), Foreigner returns with a TRIPLE album set called “Can’t Slow Down” (unfortunately, this album is not a song-by-song cover of Lionel Richie’s 1983 album of the same name), and, finally, there’s an album I just know you’ve been waiting for…the return of Green Jelly. Remember them from their hit song and video “Three Little Pigs” back in ’93? Well, they’re still around!! And still making albums!! Woo hoo! I know you’re gonna pick up two copies!

    One release I would like to bring attention to is an album entitled “The Sun Came Out” by a collective called 7 Worlds Collide. If the band name sounds familiar, you might remember it as a lyric to Crowded House’s “Distant Sun”. That band’s mastermind, Neil Finn, is the driving force behind this album, which features appearances from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, members of Radiohead, K.T. Tunstall, Bic Runga, and Neil’s son Liam and wife Sharon, among others. Proceeds from this album benefit Amfar, it’s two CDs of new material for the price of one, and it’s really, really good stuff. Treat yourself to a copy and do a good deed as well.

    Get the full list of this week’s new releases here.

  • First Listen: The Foo Fighters’ “Wheels”

    Hard to believe it’s been almost fifteen years since that guy who played drums in Nirvana became a rock star himself, isn’t it? The Foo Fighters have built up a pretty decent following (not to mention a slew of hit albums and a few Grammy awards to boot) over that time, and in November, they’ll be releasing their first Greatest Hits album.

    I’m of the mind that a Foos compilation is long overdue. They’re definitely more of a singles band than anything else-if you have their first two albums, anything beyond that is pretty much a redundancy (and I say this as someone who has owned each of their studio albums). One album, with the evergreens on it (“My Hero”, “Everlong”, “Best of You”, “I’ll Stick Around”) is really all you need.

    The first of the new tracks from this compilation is “Wheels”, and it finds Dave Grohl and company mellowing out a little. One YouTube commenter compared it to Nickelback, which is probably a little harsh, but this is by far the band’s most radio-friendly single in quite some time. Check it out and let us know what you think.

  • Alicia Keys: Homewrecker??

    I generally don’t like writing about extremely gossipy stuff on this site, but this is too juicy to pass up. If you’ll remember, a couple months back, I posted a rumor that Alicia Keys was responsible for breaking up the marriage of hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz and his R&B singer wife Mashonda. In the time since then, Alicia and Swizz have come out as a couple both personally and professionally (witness their production credit on Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” single).

    Anyway, it seems like a relatively innocuous comment Alicia made on her Twitter page set Mashonda off, leading to an open letter to Keys that’s made the rounds of the blogosphere.

    Now, ordinarily this would be no big deal. Marriages break up all the time. However, Alicia Keys has built up a reputation as one of the music industry’s “good girls”, supporting female empowerment and presenting herself in a way that would certainly not lend itself to this kind of situation.

    I gotta say, it’s hard not to feel for Mashonda here. After all, she was (and still is) married to Swizz and they have a kid. That said, it takes two to tango and Swizz is the one who had the commitment. He certainly shouldn’t be held beyond reproach here. Either way, this situation looks like it might become a pretty major blemish on the career of someone who’s enjoyed a pretty scandal-free ride for the better part of the past decade.

    Here’s a link to rapup.com’s coverage of the mess.