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Tag: Kings of Leon

  • 2009 American Music Awards Play By Play – West Coast Edition

    Since I’m on the West Coast, we’ll pretend this show is just starting.

    (By the way, Money Mike posted his own East Coast version up. It’s East Coast vs. West Coast all over again.)

    I remember as a kid when I used to count down the time until the AMAs were about to start. Now? Not so much. They don’t make award shows like they used to, but hopefully we’ll get some fun performances.

    I expect lots of Jay-Z love, lots of Michael Jackson love, lots of Taylor Swift love, and the opposite of lots of love for Kanye West.

    Like Arsenio used to say, “Let’s get busy!”

    Janet Jackson
    Janet Jackson
    – The show started with Janet already in mid-performance. She’s going through the old hits, though not wearing the old wardrobe. She’s wearing a brown outfit that makes her look like a baggy Pocahontas.

    – Who seated Mary J. Blige next to Carrie Underwood? I bet they could talk about old boyfriends.

    MJ: Girl, you think Tony Romo was bad? Man, I wanted to break K-Ci’s knee caps.
    CU: You dated KC from the Sunshine Band?
    MJ: Um, no. K-Ci from Jodeci. Forget it.

    – The only problem with Janet going through her old hits is that it just makes anything she’s done in the last 5 years look so bad in comparison.

    – Paula Abdul is the first presenter. No, she didn’t make any Ellen DeGeneres looks, acts, and sounds like a boy jokes, though you know she wanted to.

    – The Black Eyed Peas won the first award which was for favorite group in the pop/rock category. At least this time, Fergie’s face didn’t break the HD tuner on my TV like it did last week.

    (I DVRd Saturday Night Live last week and watched it after the fact. The picture was perfect until Fergie started to sing. The picture became pixelated and then was suddenly fixed when the performance was over. Coincidence? I think not.)

    – The only thing I can really say about Shakira’s performance is, “Oh my damn.”

    – Even though that long dress made her hips and legs look like a pair of parentheses ( ), Kelly Clarkson sung the hell out of We Were Never Meant To Say Goodbye.

    – Alex Rodriguez just introduced Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. I bet he and Timberland and Dr. Dre could talk PEDs for days.

    – Nope, not sick of Empire State Of Mind yet.

    – Kate Hudson is wearing a dress that shows off her 14-year old boyish chest. She could get away with going shirtless and I don’t think anyone would flip.

    – Oh man, I hope my TV can take it. The Black Eyed Peas are back on stage. Fergie Ferg ’bout to break my TV again.

    – Thankfully, my TV was fine. The performance was actually fine too. And she didn’t piss herself on stage, which is always a plus.

    – Your boy Michael Jackson won the award for favorite male artist in the Soul/R&B and you know who accepted it for him. If you answered greasy Jermaine, you were right. Also, you got to see his son Jermajesty, which was a treat in that of itself. I was almost sure that child didn’t really exist. But he did!

    – I know nothing about the Zack Brown band. But what I learned today is that some of those dudes have some manly beards.

    – Beyonce won an award and then it was announced that she wasn’t there. My heart rate has never been so up and down in a five second period ever in my life.

    – Hat makers thank Ne-Yo for keeping them in business.

    – Rihanna has the same haircut that David Silver rocked in the first season of Beverly Hills, 90210.

    – Carrie Underwood looks good and sounds good, but needs to stay off the salad. Yes, you can be too thin. She and Kate Hudson are trying to out-skinny each other.

    – Lady GaGa was carrying something in both of her back pockets, but she doesn’t have any pockets. Hmmm.

    – That Lady GaGa performance was just, um, it was just, um, hmm. If I tried to describe it, you wouldn’t understand and I’d just give myself nightmares. This is why YouTube was invented.

    – Not sure about you, but I can really do without these Perez Hilton audience shots.

    – Some country group called Gloriana just beat Lady GaGa for the Breakthrough Award. I think I saw GaGa walk off in a huff and fly away in her spaceship.

    – Ok, I think they edited this show for us on the West Coast. There’s supposed to be a part during J-Lo’s performance and she falls while performing. All I saw is that she jumped, all of a sudden it went into slow motion, and then jump cut city. Again, why YouTube was created.

    – You go Whitty. Do your thing. Somewhere, Bobby Brown gently weeps while shaving those lines into the side of his head.

    – I’m not sure Whitney did this on purpose or not, but she screamed, “I love YOU,” like Michael Jackson used to do it where you emphasize the “you”. I think that was a shout out to Mike.

    – Taylor just won award number two and she’s not even there. I think that if you don’t attend the show and you’re not in jail like TI, or you didn’t pass away before it was given out, you have to automatically give it to Kanye.

    – And just as I say that, MJ won for favorite male artist in Pop/Rock. Greasy is back on the scene to accept the award, but this time, sans Jermajesty.

    – Lady GaGa was breaking fake glass on her piano that was on fire. Alicia Keys just did her one better by playing her piano in mid air while it was spinning. Supposely GaGa saw that from her space ship and just went into hyper speed.

    – It’s pretty telling that Eminem decided to do his verse from Drake’s Forever since nearly everything on his album was garbage.

    – Timbo is now on stage and the back of his neck looks like a pack of hot dogs. But I’m not mad because he just let Nelly Furtado join him and she’s still looking foine.

    – There’s been a Toni Braxton sighting. Good to see her back and I hope she’s healthy. Jimmy Jackson and Jason Kidd just remembered why they hate each other.

    – My main man Ryan Seacrest is out to give out the Artist Of The Year.

    Let me run down the candidates quickly:

    Eminem – Relapse may be the worst album of the year.
    Michael Jackson – Dude sold more records dead than anyone alive is selling this year, except probably Taylor Swift. Also took all the buzz away from the Beatles re-releases.
    Kings Of Leon – My friend Christal had to show me their video the other day. I’d never seen it before. Enough said.
    Lady GaGa – She’s too far ahead of her time. Like by maybe 500 years.
    Taylor Swift – I don’t have a Taylor Swift song in my music library, but she was pretty fun on Saturday Night Live.

    And Taylor Swift beats MJ. Ok, maybe she wasn’t that fun on Saturday Night Live. And she talks like Drew Barrymore.

    – Adam Lambert is closing the show. However, I don’t think he’s closing it out Mariano Rivera style.

    – I wonder if I can get my hair as high as Adam’s. That might be a 2010 goal for me.

    – Wait, is Adam Lambert gay?


    Photo of Janet from Wikipedia and shared through creative commons

  • Michael Jackson And Taylor Swift Lead 2009 American Music Award Nominations

    The nominations were released today for the American Music Awards, and we wouldn’t usually make such a big deal about the nominations. But, when word came out today that Michael Jackson had five posthumous nominations, it became very newsworthy.

    You may wonder like I did, how Jackson could be up for an award being that he hasn’t released a new album in many years. According to The Rolling Stone, it’s because of the sales racked up by Jackson’s Number Ones, which was released some 6 years ago.

    According to a press release, the nominees “were selected from data supplied by the Nielsen Company’s Broadcast Data Systems, which monitors radio airplay performance, and SoundScan, which tracks retail music sales.” This pretty much explains why Michael Jackson and his Number Ones are included on the nominees list: Even though the greatest-hits compilation was originally released in 2003, it’s sold almost two million copies since the King of Pop’s death on June 25th, making Jackson’s eligible for a posthumous Artist of the Year award.

    Taylor Swift at the Sydney Factory Theatre
    Taylor Swift at the Sydney Factory Theatre
    Taylor Swift and Eminem are also up for three awards. Jackson, Swift, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and the Kings of Leon were all nominated for the Artist of the Year award. Swift leads all artists with six nominations, while Jackson had five and Eminem received four.

    American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert is scheduled to perform his first single from his upcoming album at the awards show, alongside Alicia Keys, the Black Eyed Peas, and Jennifer Lopez.

    The show is set to air live on November 22.

    You can see a full list of the categories and vote for who you think should win at ABC’s website.

    Photo of Taylor Swift by Girl.in.the.Green.Scarf and shared via creative commons

  • Chart Chat 6/10/09: The GrooGrux King is On the Throne

    dmb2 

    It’s a good week to be Dave Matthews. His band’s album “Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King” makes a grand entrance at the top of the Billboard charts this week. DMB scores the 3rd biggest first week of the year (behind Eminem and U2), with over 424,000 folks picking the album up last week. It’s DMB’s fifth consecutive album to debut at #1 on the charts. Interesting to note that the three biggest sales weeks of the year have come from veterans, all with over 10 years in the industry. Are newer artists just not coming with good music, or is there just a different concept of fan loyalty with the newer generation?

    It’s a pretty big week for debuts, with 311’s new “Uplifter” coming in at #3, the supergroup Chickenfoot at #6, and the new one from Taking Back Sunday right behind at #7. Rancid’s return to the indie label world nets them a #11 debut, Elvis Costello pops in at #13, and Mitchel Musso (I don’t know who he is, but I guess I’ll find out) enters at #19.

    At this time last year, only one album had crossed the million-selling threshold (Jack Johnson’s “Sleep Through the Static”). In what must be good news for the ailing indistry, two albums have passed the million mark so far (Taylor Swift & the “Hannah Montana” movie soundtrack), and Eminem will jump past the million-sold mark next week.

    Speaking of Slim Shady, his much discussed incident with Sasha Baron Cohen wasn’t the only highlight of the MTV Movie Awards. Kings of Leon’s performance catapults them from #15 to #12 on a 50% increase in sales. This is the highest chart position yet for “Only by the Night”, which is already the band’s best selling album. Multiple award winner “Twilight”‘s soundtrack also shows some life, jumping two places to #15 on a 19% increase.

    Kings of Leon have the third biggest increase of the week, following singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson (with a 69% increase) and British soul singer James Morrison, whose sales jump a whopping 232% to send him back onto the chart for the first time in a couple of months.

    Is it too early to consider Green Day’s “21st Century Breakdown” a flop? I mean, in this day and age any album that crosses Gold territory in four weeks can’t be a total failure, but I think the general consensus is that better sales out of the gate were expected following the success of “American Idiot”. New single “21 Guns” is right in the pocket of pop and rock radio, so I wouldn’t count these guys out yet.