web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Usher

  • Award Season Is Upon Us: The 2008 AMA Nominees

    No matter how they try, the American Music Awards will never be able to escape the shadow of being the Grammys’ bastard little brother. Which is why today’s announcement of the nominees was met with a resounding yawn. The show gets ignored for several other reasons too. The awards are voted on by a select poll of consumers, which means we get hit with travesties like Milli Vanilli’s sweep in 1990 and C&C Music Factory’s sweep two years later. There have also been long-standing rumors that AMA winners are tipped off before the show airs, meaning that the winners are a lot more sure to be in attendance.

    This year’s nominees are fairly predictable. Alicia Keys leads the pack with five, followed by The Eagles and Coldplay. Other multiple nominees are Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Lil’ Wayne, Kanye West, Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, Usher, and several others. The only head-scratching category, oddly enough, is Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Group, where the nominees are G-Unit, Three six Mafia and Wu-Tang Clan. Jordin Sparks’s submission in the Adult Contemporary category is also a bit of a head scratcher. Something tells me the nominating committee struggled long and hard in order to come up with those names.

    The show will be hosted by the usually entertaining Jimmy Kimmel and will in all likelihood be live-blogged by yours truly. Expect the usual snark and wishes for a Michael Jackson sighting.

    The show airs on November 23rd, and in a new wrinkle, they’re allowing the public of the wide world of internets to vote on the winners. You can log on to vote here.

  • The Sunday Shuffle is Back: Still Here

    So I finally did the smart thing and bought an external hard drive to store my music, figuring that keeping 70MB of music on a laptop’s hard drive probably wasn’t a good idea. Hopefully, this one doesn’t poop out on me the way my previous one did, after only five months. Damn you, Windows Vista!!

    I was gonna let the new “Genius” feature on iTunes take over for me, but I’ll save that for another time, plus we’ll have a feature on Genius at some point this week. No point in doubling up, right?

    Anyway, we’re off:

    Track 1: “Fast Car (Fugee Remix)”-Wyclef Jean feat. Lupe Fiasco

    Wyclef Jean’s “Carnival II” will surprise the few of you who’ve actually stuck with ‘Clef’s last few (phenomenally shitty) albums. On the album, this song is a moody piece with vocals by Paul Simon (yes, THAT Paul Simon). On this remix, Wyclef gets a quick verse from rap phenom Lupe Fiasco and also takes it back to ’96 by virtue of the Tribe Called Quest “Bonita Applebum” sample, which broke Wyclef’s old band (The Fugees, ‘memba them?) worldwide via its’ use on their version of “Killing Me Softly”. This remix is decent, the album version is better.

    (more…)

  • Here’s Something That’s Really Off The Wall: Michael Jackson Turns 50 Today

    The cover of Michael Jackson's iconic 1982 album "Thriller"
    The cover of Michael Jackson's iconic 1982 album "Thriller"

    I’ve spent many hours over the last several years typing article after article about not only Michael Jackson‘s influence on me, but his influence on pop culture as a whole.

    Despite the fact that he’s viewed (rightfully) as a egomaniacal, plastic surgery-addled, creepy train wreck these days, there’s no disputing that Michael was one of the largest (and the longest-running) pop phenomena in history (or HIStory). Sure, he himself was a product of a group of influences (Jackie Wilson and James Brown chief among them), but Jacko blazed (or at least helped to blaze) more trails than just about any contemporary artist. He certainly rewrote the rule book for black artists, breaking MTV’s embargo on R&B music (contrary to popular belief, MTV did play the occasional black rocker prior to “Billie Jean”) and rewriting just about every sales and chart record in existence. It should go without saying that a quick scan through today’s pop music scene reveals tons of artists, from Kanye West and Akon to Fall Out Boy and Rihanna to Usher, Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown and Ne-Yo: all directly crib from the rule book that Michael wrote. There weren’t Elvis sightings all over the Billboard chart in 1980, 25 years after his debut. However if you look at a Billboard chart from earlier this year, 25 years after “Thriller” took over the world, you’ll see that not only was a re-jiggered version of the album itself nestled securely at the top of the charts (not to mention an album by his sister that danced up and down the charts simultaneously), but songs like West’s “Good Life” and Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music” directly referenced songs from the album. Regardless of what you may think of the man himself, to have that much direct influence so long after entering the music scene is a feat in and of itself. Public image be damned, this man deserves his rightful place next to The Beatles, Dylan, Stevie and James Brown…and that’s seriously not hyperbole at all. While I’ll wave my flag all day for MJ as a musical icon, I’m not one of those creepy uber-fans who lashes out at the media for being “ignorant” (sorry-just had a flashback to “South Park”‘s brilliant skewering of him) or even thought for a second about camping out at the trial site. Hell, I don’t even think the man has a skin disease.

    (more…)