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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Ruben Studdard

  • The iTunes Shuffle

    I was talking to a friend the other day and he was telling me about a new song from someone named Leona Lewis. As he was telling me why her song Bleeding Love was worthy of spending a buck on, I was trying to remember where I saw her name. And then it hit me. It was in an e-mail from Apple, telling me what was upcoming and hot in the iTunes Music Store. Lewis was the winner of the third season of Simon Cowell’s UK show The X Factor. And while my friend and I both agreed that a broken heart is a better metaphor to use in music than a bleeding heart, I decided to take a leap and get the song. I wasn’t disappointed. And it doesn’t seem that iTunes fans are either. It was the number one song last week on the iTunes singles chart, only to be bested this week by Mariah Carey’s Touch My Body.

    That lead me to two other immediate iTunes purchases. Sara Bareilles’ Love Song is so catchy that I just had to buy it. She’s sort of a mix between Vanessa Carlton and Fiona Apple. And finally, I had to buy the MacBook Air song, New Soul by Yael Naim that Steve Jobs chose himself to be featured in the commercial for the new laptop.

    iTunes really has me by the credit card these days. After decided that I wasn’t going to buy CDs any longer and would only buy through iTunes, I’ve found myself buying more music of late. Instead of buying Randy Jackson’s new album, I simply bought Real Love by Katharine McPhee and Elliot Yamin. And after having a discussion about Family Ties with my girlfriend and finding out that she’d never heard of Billy Vera and the Beaters, I had to buy At This Moment for her. Word to Alex P. Keaton. Lastly, because I want Big Rube Studdard to make it in this business, I bought the new American Idol go home song, Celebrate Me Home.

    Luckily, I already bought Patrick Swayze’s She’s Like The Wind, or that would’ve been my next move.

  • Soul Patrol! What Will Tay-Tay Do Next!?!?!??!

    For the record, I was one of the folks that *liked* Taylor Hicks.
    American Idol Season 5 was the first season I watched, and despite the fact that Taylor looked nothing like the typical “American Idol” looked like, I cheered him on and was happy that he won. I wasn’t impressed by Daughtry (but apparently 4 million other people saw what I failed to), and I thought Kat McPhee was a stuck-up bitch. Elliott Yamin, Paris Bennett and Taylor were my favorites. You could tell Taylor didn’t want to be a *star* per se, but he was in it for the chance to get his music heard by as many people as possible.
    I even liked the guy’s album! Granted, as a child of Eighties pop (think Steve Winwood or Michael McDonald), I would. But his album, from a qualitative standpoint, is better than any “Idol” winner’s debut, with the possible exception of Carrie Underwood’s. Unfortunately, it also sold the least (roughly 700,000 units moved), which means that shortly after one winner has been put out to pasture (Ruben Studdard was dropped about a week ago), Taylor has lost his contract with Arista Records. So two of the six American Idol winners are now label-less, and it’s more than likely due to lack of malleability more than it is talent.
    Let’s face it, Ruben’s fat. And his weight was a hindrance to his “image”. As a male R&B singer, the assumption is that no one cares about you unless you either dance like Michael Jackson or are capable of taking your shirt off and doing a few hundred pelvic thrusts. And Taylor’s “old”…granted, he looks a few years older than he actually is (at 30, he’s younger than I am), but a prematurely grey, slightly pauncy singer (no matter how talented he is) is not gonna fly in this “i want millions sold now”/”Idol”-disposable music world. While Rube is headed for Boradway (and I see a Weight Watchers/Jenny Craig deal in his future), Taylor goes back to being a bar musician, screaming his lungs out for the love of music. And something tells me that suits him a lot better than selling himself out for Clive Davis and his minions.