While the Grammy nominations are being revealed tonight, I started to think about the issue that has always puzzled me about the Grammy award rules: what is the difference between the Album, Song and Record of the Year awards?

Album of the Year, of course, goes to what the National Acadamy of Recording Arts and Sciences says is the best album. Song of the Year and Record of the Year, though, are for individual songs. What then is the difference? It’s who is recognized. The Grammys website answers this question:

The Record Of The Year category recognizes the artist’s performance as well as the overall contributions of the producer(s), recording engineer(s) and/or mixer(s) if other than the artist. The Song Of The Year category recognizes the songwriter(s).

The Song of the Year award honors the songwriting and Record of the Year honors vocal performance and production.

What is also of some interest (at least to me) is that the Record of the Year and Song of the Year nominations this year are similar, but not identical. “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon, “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift and “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga were nominated for both awards but the Academy decided that “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” was the better Beyonce song and “Halo” was the better record. To round out the nominations, Maxwell’s “Pretty Wings” was nominated for Song of the Year and Black Eyed Peas’ monster hit “I Gotta Feeling” was nominated for Record of the Year.

I still can’t find an explanation for why Jethro Tull won the first ever metal Grammy.

--Tagged under: grammys--

“…[T]he truest thing [Britney Spears has] ever said was in a 2003 interview with Entertainment Weekly: “Anyone can sit down and write some boring artistic song. Pop music is the hardest s— to write.” If you think of pop music not as “three-to-five-minute-songs with vocal refrains” or even as “what happens when Scandinavians, synthesizers, and MMC veterans collide” but as the musical entertainment that’s actually popular — that appeals directly to the tastes and experiences of millions of people — then it’s nearly impossible, a mountain that defeats almost everyone who challenges it and destroys the few who reach its summit.”

- Douglas Wolk, today on Hilobrow. I excerpted most of what he wrote but the whole thing really is a great read.

--Tagged under: britney spears--

--Tagged under: douglas wolk--

I saw you twice at the pop show.

When compiling album sales charts, Billboard counts double albums as two units. For example, chart expert (and friend to this blog) Chris Molanphy pointed out that when Pink Floyd’s The Wall has sales of more than 23 million albums, there are actually only 11.5 million people who own a copy of it. It’s still a lot of people that own it but more people actually own Dark Side of the Moon (15 million+) than The Wall.

What is even more puzzling, though, is this explanation from Billboard for the number five and six albums this week on the Top 200 albums chart (which I think will appear on Billboard.com tomorrow):

Lady Gaga’s new eight-song quasi-EP “The Fame Monster” bows at No. 5 with 174,000 while her first album “The Fame” rises from No. 34 to No. 6 (151,000; up 429%). The latter “Fame’s” total jumps this week because it combines sales of her debut set in addition to a two-disc deluxe “The Fame” package that contains both “The Fame” and the new “Monster” disc.

Lady Gaga just re-released her album The Fame bundled with a bonus, eight-song EP and the whole thing is called The Fame Monster. You can, however, buy the EP separately. If I’m reading this correctly, Billboard is combining sales of The Fame Monster so that people who bought the deluxe edition with both the proper album (released in the summer of 2008, by the way) and the bonus EP each count as one unit. The expectation from Billboard before the week began was that Lady Gaga would sell around 180,000 units this week, so she was a little below expectations, she didn’t blow it out of the water by having 325,000 people bring home Lady Gaga albums last week.

--Tagged under: charts--

--Tagged under: lady gaga--

What has made both Don’t Stop and Anniemal (and the singles in between) so irresistible is the manner in which Annie describes basic human instincts of love, longing, lust and desire and tells those stories in a way that is both simple and sophisticated at the same time while having so many hooks that the gratification is immediate. That isn’t new: it’s exactly what good pop should, and does, do. Take her very best song, “Heartbeat”. It is a tale of two would-be lovers meeting for the first time on the dance floor. The melody builds around the harmony while the light-as-air vocals and catchy chorus mesh together and it forms a cohesive song that is the next best thing to meeting someone for the first time and sharing an intense mutual attraction.

Memories like that, which are captured in a perfect pop song, are timeless and it means that if it matters to one person, that song matters overall. The star-crossed lovers who found each other in the lyrics to “Heartbeat” didn’t care about how long they were single prior to meeting each other, but that they found each other. Similarly, when I had gotten my review copy of Don’t Stop, the time I waited after Anniemal (which I never grew tired of) ceased to be remembered – or at least dwelled upon. The pop landscape changed and there were a lot of great European artists to emerge since Anniemal was released, like Lykke Li, Sally Shapiro, Little Boots, La Roux and Lily Allen, but having a new album from Annie, and one that is as good as Don’t Stop is, felt like whatever the wait was, it was worth it.

- Excerpt from my piece “Annie: pop’s most welcome comeback” on TIG. Read the rest of it here.

--Tagged under: annie--

One time

I’m not one to normally reprint the press releases I get, but this one struck me as being interesting. The whole Justin Bieber phenomenon caught me by surprise (mostly because I try to limit the pop I cover to music made by adults). I read a handful of posts on nu-Idolator on him and all of a sudden he’s responsible for riots in shopping malls (see above).

JUSTIN BIEBER REIGNS SUPREME WITH THE TOP NEW ARTIST DEBUT OF 2009

ALL SEVEN SONGS FROM DEBUT CD IN THE BILLBOARD HOT 100 FOR THE FIRST TIME IN BILLBOARD HISTORY! 

FIRST SOLO ARTIST IN BILLBOARD HOT 100 HISTORY TO SEND FOUR SONGS FROM A DEBUT ALBUM INTO THE TOP 40 PRIOR TO ALBUM’S RELEASE

His album sold 136,000 copies last week, which is impressive by any measure (even if it did place below the under-performing 50 Cent comeback) and landed him at number six. I would be willing to guess that he’ll drop out of the top 10 when the next chart comes out on Thursday as there’s a lot competition from Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert (who will both probably have larger debuts) and Rihanna and the majority of the seven songs in the Hot 100 will drop off the chart.

Still, though, having 100% of your album in the Hot 100 at one time is an amazing feat. The jury is still out whether or not Bieber will be a flash in the pan or not (he has been indirectly responsible for a riot before he’s old enough to get his driver’s license) but for right now, hit songs come and go but the answer to a really great trivia question is timeless.

--Tagged under: justin bieber--

--Tagged under: charts--

"Well Adam Lambert certainly showed conservative America a thing or two last night!! (eg ‘What a popstar looks like when they try too hard’)"

--Tagged under: PopJustice--

--Tagged under: adam lambert--

--Tagged under: the raveonettes--

The incredible shrinking superstar

A few weeks ago, John Taylor, the bassist for Duran Duran, gave a speech at UCLA about the innovative nature of popular music. The reason he was invited to speak was to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first message transmitted over the internet. His speech is all over the place and not terribly consistent (why, again, is not having to bicycle to a town you don’t live in to buy an album a bad thing? The exercise you’re missing out on?) but the comment that he made that is getting the most attention is this: “When artists today are asked to Twitter their every thought, their every action, or to record on video their every breath, their every performance, I believe they are diluting their creative powers, their creative potency, and the durability of their work. And in the long run, I believe they are also diluting the magical power and the magnetic attraction that they can or will ever have over their audience.”

In other words, the barrier between the rock star and the audience is eroding. Is it? And if so, is that a necessarily undesirable?

I should point out that I found out about Taylor’s speech through Twitter. A Seattle writer who I don’t personally know but do follow on Twitter named Kitty Ambsry wrote on her excellent blog dedicated to Duran Duran “Gimme a Wristband” of the speech and she tweeted about it.

Yes, there are more media outlets than there once were - just as there were more magazines, radio stations and TV stations (do you remember when MTV played music videos, John?) for Duran Duran’s music than there were for Little Richards’ and The Beatles’. That isn’t stifling anyone’s creativity, it’s how technology advances. Taylor acknowledges at the beginning of his speech, “It has been suggested to me, that I tell you all, before we get started, in an effort at full disclosure, that I do not go on Facebook, nor do I have a Myspace page. And I do not Twitter.”

Duran Duran is very lucky to be in the situation they are in. They had a string of hit singles in the 1980s and that has carried them throughout their career even though people haven’t really cared as much about their new music after the mid 1980s. The band hasn’t had a single hit the Billboard Hot 100 since 1985 (“A View to a Kill”) or the top 40 since 1984 (“The Reflex” peaked at number thirty-five). Duran Duran hasn’t had an album certified as gold since 1995. They happened to have broken at a time when MTV was in its early stage and was able to use their good looks and catchy songs to shoot to pop superstardom and that’s propelled their career. Good for them but the results shouldn’t be considered typical.

I don’t think the gap between the audience and the superstar is narrowing because stars have control over how much access they give their fans. Madonna gave an interview to Rolling Stone recently and she refused to answer questions about her divorce from filmmaker Guy Ritchie. When I saw Pink give an electrifying performance on her Funhouse tour at Key Arena in September, the crowd went home thinking she was a goddess because of the commanding performance she gave, not because she is or isn’t on Twitter (she is).

One area where income inequality is shrinking (somewhat) is between superstar artists and lower-tiered musicians because superstars are no longer selling records at such high volumes. Less money for everyone is a bad thing, of course, but it does (in theory, at least) force people to be more innovative because the field is that much more competitive. Sometimes that is even true. Moreover, a little more than 200,000 units moved in one week may be enough for an album to debut at number one; five years ago, that number was a lot higher. Bands like Spoon or The Shins seen their most recent albums debut in the top 10 even though they are on quasi-“independent” labels. That would have been unheard of ten years ago.

A case could be made that if musicians are spending time twittering or responding to their fans’ e-mails, they are missing out on time that could be spent writing new songs or recording them, but that doesn’t seem to be what Taylor is getting at. He writes of “the magnetic attraction they will have over the audience”.

I think we could all consider the words of Christopher Walken when he played Bruce Dickinson on “Saturday Night Live” as prophetic: “I put my pants on like the rest of you: one leg at a time - except once my pants are on, I make gold records.”

--Tagged under: duran duran--

--Tagged under: charts--

--Tagged under: idolator--

All about the music...if only it were

It has now been five days into the new Idolator regime and the consensus of old readers is correct: it sucks.

A site that was once a meeting ground for intelligent music lovers who don’t automatically dismiss pop culture for bothering to exist in the first place turned into an SEO-baiting pop blog with writers who have a minimal understanding of pop music and limited grasp of correct grammar usage. The decline wasn’t gradual, it happened quite literally overnight - and that makes it no less insulting. The second post from new blogger Becky Bain referred to Rihanna as “exotic”. There were six posts on Lady Gaga in four days, including one that showed still photos from her video to the single “Bad Romance” after a post that showed the video itself.

The new writers, Becky and Robbie (Daw) really do seem in over their head – and not just because they have the misfortune of following Maura Johnston, who is a brilliant writer that is also smart, funny and never wrote down to her audience. On Twitter I called the new Idolator “a pop blog by & for idiots”, which I believe (remember: second post in and Becky’s calling Rihanna “exotic”). Pop music is plenty fun as it is (that’s why we listen to it) and fans hardly need writers who write like over-excited teenagers in a grab for the elusive page views. The writing is only slightly better than saying “oh my god you guys that Lady Gaga video is sooooo good.” LOL.

Having said that, it felt really dirty reading The Daily Swarm’s stories into the backgrounds of Robbie and Becky. (Sorry, I’m not going to link to them.) Yes, blogging is like getting arrested: anything you say can and will be used against you, but the articles dredging up Becky’s sexual past were hardly necessary. They were from her first-person blog posts and, hey, this is the internet, but who didn’t feel like they needed a shower after reading them? Becky is hardly the first person to get a job she’s unqualified for, true, but calling the new girl in town a slut just after she moved in was a little unseemly and beneath people who should know better.

Two not-unrelated notes:

1. I was very flattered by all of the comments and “likes” I had received from my last post on Idolator. They all came in while I was at work and couldn’t take the time to reply while I was on the clock, but sincerely: thank you all very much. One particular “like” and one particular comment truly made my week. For what it’s worth, that post attracted more traffic than anything I’ve ever written on Lady Gaga (which I say only on the off-chance someone from Buzznet stumbles across this blog).

2. A new Tumblr blog featuring some old Idolator writers and readers was created. It’s called Chain of Knives (“Like ‘chain of fools’. Only sharper”) and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. I hope you’ll check in on it and read and follow it and do whatever else the kids are doing these days. Many, many thanks for Michaela from The Rich Girls Are Weeping for putting it together and for letting me sit at the cool kids’ table.

--Tagged under: idolator--

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