Day in Pop Report for 06/03/2015
"Do you enjoy the morbid and disturbing themes of heavy metal music, but wish that it had a more cheerful, pleasant sound?", said Fallon in character as Steve Joshua. "Well, wish no more." Billed as collection of 25 "of the darkest, most skull-crushing songs ever written", the mock infomercial saw the UK singer perform the Maiden track alongside Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff", while a second project, "Ed Sheeran Sings Hardcore Rap", delivered a preview of the Ty Dolla $ign track, "Paranoid." "Run To The Hills" originally appeared on Iron Maiden's 1982 album, "The Number Of The Beast." Watch the skit here.
It turns out, Azalea's reason for canceling is as simple as feeling drained and wanting to rebrand herself. 'I've had a different creative change of heart," she told Seventeen magazine for her cover story. I want to start totally anew, and if I stayed on my tour, that would mean I wouldn't even be able to start working on that until after Christmas. "It can kind of wear on you, too, when you've been doing the same material for a really long time. Even though a lot of people just discovered it, I am a musician and a creative person and I want to be able to perform new stuff and do new things. I feel like I'm at the end of an era now. To go on a tour in late September and to stay in that mindset of what I'd envisioned for that tour, I feel like that would stifle me." It would also mean performing when she felt less than her best. "I just feel I deserve a break," she continued. "I've been going non-stop for the past two years, nearly every single day." Read more here.
Kim Kardashian was there to present the Media Award in Honor of Eugenia Sheppard to Instagram. At some point in the evening, Kardashian tweeted, her dress caught on fire. Pharrell Williams, who was there to receive the Fashion Icon Award, and his wife Helen Lasichanh apparently put it out. After she literally set herself on fire, Kanye West did his best to attempt to set the room on fire figuratively. Style.com reports that when he took the stage to present Pharrell's award, West told the crowd he would be acting "sort of like the angrier version of Pharrell." Read more here.
It's great. The acting in this thing is better than in the second half of Glitter, now that Mariah knows what a diva does, dahhling. In the video, Mariah does Mariah. Her onstage performance is a masterpiece of pretending not to notice one of her breasts is about to fall out. The b-story is Mariah joins Tinder, but being Mariah and not Hilary Duff, she doesn't actually. Instead she swipes right on a fake app that brings her Tyson Beckford, shirtless and cheesy (she passes); a guy who looks a lot like Piers Morgan, who gets an automatic door close for being white and sweaty (is it Piers Morgan, tho?); and an almost-unrecognizable Jussie Smollett, who looks like a professor with a beard and comes bearing a cute little white dog (they date). The video was shot by Brett Ratner, who is known for his Hollywood action blockbusters but who directed some epic music videos for Mariah back in the '90s. Watch the new video here.
Hollywood is gearing up for the release of a new movie called Pixels, an Adam Sandler vehicle with the ridiculous concept of alien recreations of Pacman attacking Earth. The movie's theme song features Good Charlotte and Waka Flocka trading verses over re-tooled video game music, an 8-bit upgrade of a classic rap-rock song structure. The song was produced by KoOoLkOjAk, who finds common ground between both artists with a stomping singalong chorus and a beat that wouldn't sound out of place in a club. Check out the song here.
Joining the ranks of country music stars Carrie Underwood, Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean, Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Lady Antebellum and Luke Bryan will be Eric Church, Jake Owen, Sam Hunt and Zac Brown Band. Conveniently, Church and Hunt already had plans to be in the building when the awards show is broadcast live from Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. Church will be competing against Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean, Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan for Male Video of the Year with his visual clip for 'Talladega." Hunt meanwhile is up for Video of the Year and Breakthrough Video of the Year with his 'Leave the Night On" clip. Read more here.
But if you're a true Noel fan, you may well love his classic interview moments just as much as you love his classic Oasis songs, so it's not surprising that people would ask him to repeat them. And that's what happened last night when he sat on the couch on The Late Late Show with James Corden. "I was reading your interview in Rolling Stone," the host said. "And you had what I thought was some very good advice for Zayn." And he asked him to share that advice with his audience. "I can't understand why he would do it," Gallagher explained. "Because they've only got, at most, five years left." Prepare for a Twitter hate storm from 1D fans, Noel! "Just stand in the back, smoke weed, get laid, just pick the check up! But he should get himself a good accountant." Of course, Gallagher didn't show up to the the Late Late Show only to talk smack. Read more here.
"Let me self-empower you / When you're down and they're tryin' to clown the f� out of you/ When you feel like you're runnin' out of fuel/ I'll show you how to use doubt as fuel/ Convert it to gunpowder too," he raps. The haunting track, produced by DJ Khalil, also has Eminem getting a little dark, but with a sense of humor citing Martha Stewart's barbecuing skills and B-Real from Cypress Hill. The track will be featured on the Shady Records-produced soundtrack for Southpaw, which stars Gyllenhaal as a boxer who looks for redemption after personal tragedy. The film hits theaters July 24. Check out the song here.
"I know that the song finding process has been much different for me this time around (I start my new album this week) than it was last time around," she wrote on Facebook. Her post was part of a larger conversation on where female artists aren't being played on country radio as much as male artists. She added that it's this discrimination that makes it harder to get record companies to take chances on female artists. With less females on label rosters, the songwriters don't cater as much to writing songs specifically for females. Read more here.
This comes only a week after his Chinx tribute "Miss My Dawgs" and the videos he shared for "Monster" and "Energy." "Check" finds Mill going in with double-time raps over Boomin's dark synths and heavy percussion. The song is an anthem for hustlers, an ode to kids with ambition: "Look at these at all these young n--as flexin' from the bottom," he raps. "Kumping out them Raris n--a do we have a problem?/ They say we aint 'bout it, wonder why they never tried us." While his promotional rollout seems to be going smoothly, things may not be going so well in Mill's personal life--Monday we brought you news of what appears to be discord in his relationship with Nicki Minaj. Check out the new song here.
Eldredge's song debut wasn't the only thing he revealed. After his performance, Meyers told the audience that Eldredge's sophomore album Illinois will be released on Sept. 11. The Paris, Ill., native didn't reveal anything else about the album during his appearance but was just seen smiling in the background. Illinois will be the followup to Eldredge's 2013 debut Bring You Back, which garnered him three consecutive No. 1 songs with "Don't Ya," "Beat of the Music" and "Mean to Me." Read more here.
Among the big names booked are Grace Jones, Lenny Kravitz, Kelis, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Danny Brown, Thundercat, Kaytranada, Suicidal Tendencies, and Bloc Party frontman Kele. In advance of the event, Afropunk will also host the first ever Afropunk Fancy Dress Ball, which will also feature Grace Jones, on August 21. More than 60,000 fans attended Afropunk over its two days last year, with the fest promising "an affordable paid and earned ticket program to the event to assure entry." Read more here.
This latest instance comes courtesy of Grande's mom, who took to TwitLonger to tell the dramatic and harrowing story that regular tweeting just couldn't do justice. The story recounts how the animals, Toulouse and Sirius, were nearly murdered and had to be saved once a ferry carrying the Grande clan from Amsterdam into England had reached harbor. The animals almost didn't make it through the ferry border search, according to Billboard. The event caused Grande herself to respond via Twitter, with a series of tweets putting the ferry border guards on blast. "This was unacceptable. @poferries pls have your employees treat people /animals w respect. kindness goes a long way," Grande declared, later announcing that the pups are safe, but the experience on a whole was not cool, concluding that no one should mess with her pups, ever. Read more here.
In his latest music video, for "All I Ever Wanted," Joy commemorates the journey with a clip that captures the highs of being a professional touring musician. In the video, for the song from his Dream Your Life Away album, we see Joy living up to his last name, and to the song's title. The clip finds Joy on the road, stretching before performances, and playing to adoring fans. When he sings that "all I ever wanted was time," the video can't help but feel like Joy is receiving all he ever wanted right now. The shots were filmed while in his home country of Australia during March of this year, and was shot by Max Fairclough. Watch the video here.
"You know what's been really interesting � in real life, it's super annoying with the boot, but the performances, I was really worried about them, and actually, like, we had a load of smaller shows booked, we didn't cancel them," Welch explained. "But I think had I not injured myself I would've probably performed them with the same kind of, you know, energy I would've done at a bigger show Coachella and that kind of thing. But this injury and having to sit down, it kind of created this intimacy and connection with the audience that I hadn't thought about." Struggling to find the right words, the singer draws an analogy between the intimacy of the seated shows with the nature of her band's recently released third studio album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful. "We did these shows stripped back and there was a kind of� it kind of forced me to interact with the audience in a different way and it stripped another layer of� because this record is so sort of exposing in a way to kind of be vulnerable it kind of made sense," she said. During that fateful Coachella performance, Florence + the Machine revealed more songs from How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, including the album's epic title track, which ends on horn-driven and symphonic coda that the singer said still makes her cry. Read more here.
She of course said yes right way, which isn't surprising, being that her birthday message to Young was, "I'll save the really mushy stuff for inside your birthday card that way you can blackmail me with it later. For now it's just a simple: I looooove you, I'd do anything for you. Glad you exist etc etc. Ps. If we get old together don't die before me. (Jk)." The recent social media shy rapper even took to her Instagram to show off the big yellow engagement ring from her basketball beau. And let's be honest after the Billboard Music Award petition and canceling her Great Escape tour, we're sure I-G-G-Y was happy to finally report some good news. The photo of the ring, a canary diamond, features the caption "Happiest Day," and shows off her killer manicure. Check out Young's proposal, along with photos of her ring here.
Tinashe has started hitting the studio for her followup and she's been working with an all-star roster of collaborators like Dr. Luke, Max Martin, Cirkut and Rock City, SPIN reports. While it's not surprising that the former girl group star would have access to that caliber of hit makers, it is unexpected that she's getting a stronger foothold in dance music. Last album, Tinashe worked with artists who had similar sonic leanings to her R&B past like Blood Orange's Dev Hynes, Future, A$AP Rocky and Stuart Matthewman of Sade. She's going in a much more uptempo direction this time around. 'I'm not really interested in doing like, down-the-middle EDM songs, but I'd like to figure out how to do that uptempo," she told SPIN. Read more here.
"I think that helped the album stay a little more upbeat," Gossin says over the phone from Nashville. "It was something new for us and I think you can really hear it in the sound. It doesn't sound as similar to our last two albums. [Three is] its own project and we're real stoked on it." Many of the tracks on the 12-song release include distinct drum loops and slight R&B influences, as can be heard on "Are You Ready"--a track Gossin wrote with Josh Kear, the first song the two have written together since 2011's "(Kissed You) Good Night." "The thing I love about Josh is that when he and I get together it's really just total creative freedom," Gossin explains. "We never say, 'The song has to fit in this box. It has to sound like this or say these things.' We just say, 'Let's write a cool song.'" Gossin admits "Are You Ready" sounds like nothing else out there on country radio--and that was exactly what they meant to create. Having played in all types of bands and genres over the years, he says keeping the variety in their music is very important to Gloriana. "I would be worried if our last two albums sounded too much alike," he says. "If this album sounded just like the last one I would say, 'Oh, man. We've lost our edge.' I was really glad that it had a different sound." Read more here.
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