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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Paul McCartney

  • …And The Winner Is…

    So, with the CMTs just past and the American Music Awards in just a couple of weeks, the music award season is in full bloom.
    The cutoff period for consideration for the Grammy Awards was September 30th. This means that albums with a release date ranging from the first week of October 2006 to the first week of October 2007 can be considered, with the later period of releases included because they ship to stores during the last week of September.
    Grammy has become a bit hard to predict over the course of the past couple of years, and the muted list of this year’s releases makes things even easier to predict. Parity will be the name of the game here, with no surefire Norah Jones, Dixie Chicks or OutKast release to clean up at the ceremony. However, there are a couple of folks that I think will be smiling hard when the nominations are announced in mid-December.
    KANYE WEST: He’s been nominated for Album Of The Year for each of his first two albums, and (in case you’ve been under a rock and have not heard his complaining) he lost both times (to Ray Charles and U2). “Graduation” has had the biggest balance between critical cred and sales (1.7 million in two months of release), so this could be the year Mr. West finally receives his big trophy (although it would be highly ironic that he would win for his weakest album…) His competition??…
    BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: “Magic” snuck in just under the deadline, and…well, Bruce is as much of a gimme in Grammy world as any other artist. It’s Bruce’s return to rock after the well-received “Seeger Sessions” & ‘Devils & Dust”, and “Radio Nowhere” is his most catchy single in two decades. I see Record and Album Of The Year nominations in Springsteen’s future, with an outside chance at winning both awards.
    AMY WINEHOUSE: She’s almost a lock for Best New Artist (unless the stench of bad press from her assorted substance issues follows her). “Back To Black” is one of the year’s biggest surprise successes, and, despite her problems, she’s quite obviously a real talent. Besides, how much of an entertainment lift would the Grammy telecast receive based on a performance by the wildly unstable Winehouse?
    WILD CARDS: Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell both went over to Starbucks and scored fairly successful albums. Grammy has a history of awarding veterans. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to see either of these legends up for Album of the Year, where anything from Linkin Park to the Dreamgirls Soundtrack Album could be up for this. Two things that will NOT be nominated are the two biggest selling albums of the year so far-Daughtry and the High School Musical 2 Soundtrack. “HSM2” is way too kid-friendly, and Grammy has never been kind to grunge-lite. Daughtry will get a Best New Artist nomination (where Winehouse, Lily Allen, Robin Thicke and Colbie Caillat all have a chance at getting nominated), but that’ll be the extent of it.
    Speaking of “Dreamgirls”: although Beyonce’s “B-Day” is no longer eligible, several singles from the album are, and I’d be completely stunned if “Irreplaceable” didn’t end up with a Record of the Year Nomination. Other potential nominees: Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere”, West’s “Stronger”, Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”). On the R&B side, look for big mentions for Thicke, John Legend (whose “Once Again” is eligible this year although it seems like the album has been out longer) and the strong comeback effort by Chaka Khan.
    With a month to go before nominations are officially announced, lots of speculation will ensue, but I’m pretty confident that my picks will end up coming out of the presenters’ lips.

  • A Mocha Latte And A Case of You

    Paul mcCartney on stage

    I guess these two interesting things are sort of related…
    Well, folks, in a lead up to iTunes’ most popular holdouts-The Beatles-finally allowing their music to appear for purchase on the site (my spidey sense tells me that it’ll happen right before the lucrative holiday season), John Lennon’s solo work is now available. This follows Paul McCartney’s Apple/Capitol work being made available earlier this summer. The countdown to being able to download “Hey Jude” (and make Paul, Ringo, Olivia Harrison, Yoko Ono and Michael Jackson a LOT more money) begins now…

    Joni Mitchell

    Speaking of Paul, there was quite a hubbub earlier this year when Paul jumped from Capitol, which had (aside from a stint with Columbia in the early/mid Eighties) been his recording home for 40+ years to Starbucks’ Hear Music imprint. It proved to be a smart move for Macca, as his latest album, “Memory Almost Full” has, in about 10 weeks, almost outsold what his previous albvum, “Chaos & Creation in the Backyard” has sold in two years. Of course, where one starts, others follow, and fellow legendary artists Joni Mitchell and James Taylor are now both signed to Hear Music, after lengthy stays with Warner/Reprise and Columbia, respectively. This should be an interesting litmus test, especially with a notoriously prickly artist like Joni (it strikes me as kind of strange that she would align herself with a company like Starbucks, but then again, despite her grande dame singer/songwriter status, she has complained long and hard about her treatment in the record industry). At any rate, while JT could probably sign to any label in existence and sell hundreds of thousands of albums to his fervent (and record-buying) fan base (which includes me), I scratch my head wondering whether Joni will do the promotional work that would be needed to make her album a success.
    These three career artists jumping ship (along with the rumor that Madonna will be parting with Warner Brothers after a quarter century) makes me wonder who the next artist to move to Starbucks will be. And with McCartney’s success still fresh, will other companies follow suit? Is it too farfetched to think of McDonald’s or Radio Shack forming record companies and selling CDs? Who knows??

  • Will You Still Need Me, When I’m 614? (thousand)

    Word from London via Reuters is that Sir Paul McCartney’s first guitar was purchased by an American collector named Craig Jackson. The Arizona collector paid $614,000 for the acoustic guitar, which is kind of funny when one considers that multi-instrumentalist McCartney played bass in The Beatles.

    Despite that and being a collector myself, Jackson has a piece of history that is very special. It’s relatively easy to buy a guitar once owned by Paul McCartney or any of The Beatles for that matter. I would guess that one could find a six string that even Ringo or Pete Best had picked up at one time or another.

    But there is only one Sir Paul, and there is only one acoustic guitar, and Craig Jackson owns it. If I mention his name one more time and perhaps plug his business, maybe he’ll let me come over and play it.

    Until then, one wonders if Macca is liquidating special things at the much-anticipated Beatles auction as a result of divorce proceedings or simply because that “old thing was gathering dust”. (The last is a fake quote made up by me in the hopes that Jackson will feel the guitar is worthless and donate it to a worthy music columnist.)

    Until then, remember that the last time a Jackson walked away with McCartney history was when Michael Jackson snuck past the McCartneys and picked up those music publishing rights. Here’s hoping Craig Jackson (see, another mention, Craig) has a more positive experience.

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