I was excited to read that Sia had was working on new music and that her album would be released sometime this year. I had heard of Sia prior to the release of 1000 Forms of Fear, but that album (click HERE for my review) really made me fall in love with her music. What I did not know was that her portfolio was as lengthy as it was.
Sia is not a new artist although her smash ‘Chandelier’ has made her brand new in the United States. Her first album was released first album in 1997 so this claim to fame in the U.S. as an artist was her sixth album. She has worked with artist such as: Beyoncè, Rihanna, Kanye West, Flo Rida, Christina Aguilera, Eminem, and more. Six albums in and it took all this time to really notice just how awesome of an artist she really is. I had heard of her name moreso behind the scenes, but this album that I can’t stop raving about really made me take notice of her career.
In a recent interview with NME, Sia talked about why she released 1000 Forms of Fear:
“Basically, I put this out to get out of my publishing deal. I was planning to be a pop song writer for other artists. But my publishing deal was as an artist so I had to put one more album out. I didn’t want to get famous so I kept all the songs I wanted and had a lot of fun making it.”
As for her new album?
“I’m super productive. I have a full album ready to go and it’s much more pop,” she said. “I’m calling it This Is Acting because they are songs I was writing for other people, so I didn’t go in thinking ‘this is something I would say’. It’s more like play-acting. It’s fun.”
I love the title of the album because it coincides with what she’s putting out. If she were writing it for other artists clearly it’s not particularly how she feels. I’m curious to see if she’ll spill the tea on who she would actually write each song for. I’m excited that she’s doing something different with the album and I expect more radio hits from this project. Hopefully fans won’t have to wait long for her new release.
Rihanna is back with new music and unfortunately it’s not what I expected. This is her first track that’s not promo from her 2012 album, Unapologetic (click HERE for that review). She teams up with Paul McCartney andKanye West for this track.
The track is titled ‘FourFiveSeconds’ and while lyrically it’s nice, this is not what I was expecting for Rihanna music. Rihanna has a formula that her fans are no stranger to. She can do the pop, reggae, and ballads. I see that she’s trying out something different, but I don’t like it. I had similar feelings when I first heard ‘Diamonds’, but that song grew on me. I don’t see this one doing the same.
Kanye comes in and sings like he’s been doing on a lot of his tracks. Not any auto tune. No singing from Paul McCartney, he’s playing the guitar. When looking at the artwork it looks edgier than what the song really is.
Lyrically, as noted, it’s a nice song. Musically it fits the song, but I’m not feeling it. I wanted a upbeat song from Rihanna and if Kanye was going to be on it I wanted him to be spitting bars, not singing. This sounds like something for a movie soundtrack. Vocally Rihanna sounds great. Personally, I just don’t like the song.
When I think of a comeback, I think of something hard hitting and will soar on the radio. Radio play equals buzz which hypes fans for the album. Then again there’s been plenty of songs on the radio to soar yet the album would be a flop. Maybe this is a just an experiment from her. Who knows what will be on the album.
You can listen to the trackHERE and it’s available for purchase on iTunes.
While the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Atlanta Falcons square off in the third Thursday Night Football game of the season, there will be a change to the opening song. In the wake of the domestic violence case with Ray Rice Rihanna’s, ‘Run This Town’ (it’s actually Jay-Z’s song; Blueprint 3; featuring Rihanna & Kanye), was pulled from CBS last week as the Ravens played the Steelers.
Timemagazine has compiled a new pop list titled, ‘The Ultimate Ranking of Pop Stardom‘. The ranking was determined by numbers straight from the Billboard archives:
TIME went through every song that reached the top ten of the Billboard 100 back to 1960 to see which artists had both the biggest years and longest careers. We assigned points based on a song’s rank for each week it was in the top ten. Artists who collaborated on songs are both given credit for its success. Artists were chosen for this list based on all-time chart performance and contemporary significance.
Points are awarded by placement in the Top Ten, from ten points for a number-one hit to one point for a number-10 song. All artists listed by name on a track are given full points for its chart performance, but groups with members who later had solo careers are still counted as separate entities.
There are two rankings ‘By Hits’ and ‘By Debut’. ‘By Hits’ Mariah Carey trumps all. Since her debut on Billboard in 1990 her largest ranking came in 1995, Daydream, and then a decade later in 2005, The Emancipation of Mimi. Although she’s recently released an album, her charting stops in 2008. Ranking two through ten, in order: Rihanna, Usher, The Beatles, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Katy Perry, and Boyz II Men. No surprise that Rihanna‘smost successful album to date is Good Girl Gone Badand forUsher it’s Confessions. The Beatles most successful compilation was 1964s, A Hard Day’s Nightand Madonna‘s was True Blue. Janet Jackson‘s highest charting was The Velvet Ropeand Whitney Houston‘s greatest was 1998’s (charted in ’99), My Love Is Your Love. Michael Jackson‘ssolo career charting began in 1971 and his greatest year was over a decade later in 1983 with the prolific success of Thriller. In at #9 is Katy Perry. In the five year span of her charted career her biggest success wasTeenage Dream. Boyz II Menrounded off the top 10 and their highest selling album wasII.
‘By Debut’ Bruno Mars ranks #1 with Doo-Wops & Hooligans trumping his other two projects. Ranking two through ten, in order: Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Maroon 5, Rihanna, T-Pain, Chris Brown, and Kanye West. Lady Gaga‘s greatest success wasThe Fame Monsterand Taylor’s Swift‘s was RED. Miley Cyrus‘ greatest success thus far has been her latest album, BangerzandMaroon 5‘s was Overexposed.T-Pain‘s biggest year was 2007 with success of collabs with Kanye West, Chris Brown, Baby Bash, Flo Rida, Plies, and his solo work Epiphany. Chris Brown‘s greatest success was Exclusiveand Kanye‘s was 2011 withsuccess of ‘E.T.’ and ‘N***as in Paris’.
Welcome to another edition of THIS WEEK IN MUSIC! [As always, click the LINK!]
Quick chart news. Congrats to Trey Songz for having the number one album in the country, Trigga. He also ranks #1 on both R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and R&B Albums charts. To see who else ranked within the top 10 of the Billboard 200, click here and for my Trigga album review, click here. Iggy Azalea is still atop the Hot 100 with ‘Fancy’ for the 7th week, putting her in fifth place above Adele (‘Rolling In The Deep’, 2011) for longest reign on the Hot 100 this past decade. Holding the #1 spot is Rihanna’s, ‘We Found Love’, (2011-12). With another month a top the charts and she can set a record. Only time will tell. Iggy also released the cover art to her Rita Ora assisted track, ‘Black Widow’, one of my favorites from her album The New Classic. CLICK HERE for my review.
In other music news, I’ve mentioned in a post before that Drake and Lil Wayne would be heading on tour titled, Drake vs. Lil Wayne. In an interview with MTV, Lil Wayne discussed just how the show would go down:
“Since, thank God we’ve been so successful, we’ll just be going back and forth with our hits and getting the crowd to go crazy, then just finally hittin’ the stage together.”
What better way to feed off the name of the tour than with an actual battle. That should be interesting. The tour will run from August 8th to September 27th.
In other Drake news, his ‘beef’ with Chris Brown must have been ceased because the two have been photo’d in the studio together. I know I’m not the only one who wants to her a Drizzy/Breezy collab. Let’s see how long it takes to surface.
It will have been 20 years since Usher released his debut, ,and it’s been 10 years since the release of his infamous album, Confessions. It has been confirmed that he will be opening this years MTV VMAs airing LIVE August 24th. He hasn’t performed at the VMAs since his 2010 performance of ‘DJ Got Us Falling In Love’ and ‘OMG’. Currently he has, ‘Good Kisser’ out and a new Pharrell Produced and Nicki Minaj featured track titled, ‘She Came To Give It To You’. He already did a medley at the BET Awards so who knows what he’s doing for MTV. Two other performers have been announced for the VMAs, Ariana Grande and 5 Seconds of Summer. Stay tuned to future posts for updates.
Backtracking to the Usher/Nicki collab, I did not like it upon first listen, but it has grown on me. It reminds me so much of Earth, Wind & Fire. I guess I didn’t like it because the sound was not what I was expecting with Nicki Minaj being featured on the track. Being that she’s a rapper I was expecting something more ‘club’ oriented. Nicki did great on this beat and this just adds more to her versatility. I’m interested to seeing how this does on the radio. Take a listen below:
If you were questioning if Yaya Decosta was rightly casted to play Whitney Houston in the upcoming Lifetime biopic, this picture should speak for itself. The photo is a recreation of Whitney Houston’s 1987 album, Whitney. The Angela Bassett directed film will be focusing on Houston’s relationship with Bobby Brown and will not address her untimely death. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Angela Bassett stated:
“I want you to fall into the world of Whitney and Bobby. And I don’t want to stop you at the gate with maybe the image of something familiar, someone you’ve seen from something else. Yaya was far and above the only choice.”
Lastly in music news, Beyoncé and Jay Z are heading to HBO.Their ‘On The Run’ tour will be the next installment for the Carters featured on the network. For full details, click here.
Moving on to new music, Omarion and Bow Wow have teamed up for a new track, ‘Need That Love’. I’m sorry, Omarion and Shad Moss. I’m not sure why he dropped Bow Wow, but whatever. The track does sample Michael Jackson’s, ‘Lady In My Life‘ which most people might know as LL Cool J’s, ‘Hey Lover’. As for the track it isn’t horrible. If this is the direction Omarion is going for his upcoming album he’ll be sampling a lot as he sampled DeBarge on his track, ‘You Like It’. I could hear this on the radio. Take a listen below.
B.o.B released a mixtape, No Genre Pt.2. CLICK HERE to download that. Not sure when or if I’ll be listening to it. Elle Varner has released her official second single for her upcoming album titled, ‘Don’t Wanna Dance’, and featuresA$AP Ferg. The vibe of the track reminds me of ‘I Don’t Care’from her debut, Perfectly Imperfect. I like it though and from what she’s put out so far I can’t wait to hear her album. Take a listen below:
Eminem is known for being in his own lane and has yet another accomplishment to add to the books. He has become the FIRST artist to earn TWO RIAA Digital Diamond Awards. ‘Love The Way You Lie’ (feat. Rihanna) was his first track to receive that award as it surpassed 11 million in sales. [Be sure to check out the duo for The Monster Tourin August.]’Not Afraid’ (2010) has become his second track and another single from Recovery to receive the honor as it has surpassed 10 million in sales. RIAAs Chairman & CEO, Cary Sherman, stated:
“We are delighted to recognize Eminem as the first artist to earn two RIAA Digital Diamond Awards. This singular achievement—earning a Diamond Award on two separate digital songs—is unparalleled, and we congratulate him on forever etching a mark inGold & Platinum Program history.”
Take a listen to both tracks below:
As for his collab with Sia, they will be teaming up yet again for a track off the upcoming Denzel movie, Equalizer. Take a listen to their collab ‘Beautiful Pain’ (The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and the snippet of the latest collab in the Equalizer trailer below:
It’s been a few days since this has been announced, but as always I want to give my predictions so let’s get into the 2014 BET Awards Nominees.
The 14th annual show will air will air Sunday, June 29th, at 8/7c and will be hosted by Chris Rock. Yup, yet another comedian as a host. Let’s discuss the nominees in the bigger categories of the night: Best Female R&B/Pop Artist, Best Female Hip Hop Artist, Best Male R&B Pop Artist, Best Male Hip Hop Artist, Best New Artist, Video of the Year, Best Collaboration, and Coca-Cola Viewer’s Choice Award. Out of the 20 categories these eight hold the most weight.
The iHeartRadio Awards aired this past Thursday, 5.1.14, from the Shrine Auditorium. The show overall receives mixed reviews from me. There were some things I’d like to see more of and some things that need to be improved. For the first televised appearance I can’t be too hard on the production of the show, but it could’ve been put together better.
First off the best way to describe the seating arrangements and stage is to that of the Golden Globes which is held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The artists that won kept having the camera put on them and to be honest it wasn’t that big of a turnout compared to other award shows. With this being a fan based awards show and all about radio I was expecting more artists to turn out, but it didn’t seem that serious.
Performers included: Pitbull, Drake Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Kendrick Lamar, Arcade Fire, Luke Bryan, Shakira, Blake Shelton, and Pharrell. Some of the performances were via satellite. My favorite performances were Kendrick Lamar’s cover of ‘California Love’ and Thirty Second to Mars’ ‘City of Angels’.
One performance that was a FAIL in my book was Ariana Grande’s of her new song, featuring Iggy Azalea, ‘Problem’. I recently reviewed the track and it’s pretty good. The problem with the performance and by the look on the faces of Rihanna, Blake Shelton, and Luke Bryan was that of confusion. I understand she wants to test limits and add a little more sex appeal to her squeaky clean image, but the performance was not that great. I know it’s a new song and there’s room for growth but all together this performance needed a bootcamp. The dancing and singing and then playing Iggy Azalea’s part while Ariana danced was eh. They could’ve skipped over that and got to the end.
The highly anticipated tribute to Michael Jackson was another bleh moment for me and I’m not talking the song. I guess I was expecting more, but really didn’t get it. Usher came out and did his usual footwork. Yeah, not really impressed or interested. The song overall reminded me of ‘Baby Be Mine.’ Check out the video/tribute to the new Michael Jackson track, ‘Love Never Felt So Good’, below:
I could not miss talking about Pharrell’s performance. I wish he would have done a mixture of old and new, especially with Gwen Stefani being there and presenting him with the Innovator Award. I would have LOVED for them to do ‘Hollaback Girl’. Maybe one day I can get this collab again. Pharrell did perform a medley of ‘Come Get it Bae’. ‘Blurred Lines’, ‘Get Lucky’, and ‘Happy.’ With the stage setup it wasn’t far for him to go. The audio wasn’t all that great, but I still love him as the artist he is. His work is to not go unnoticed.
Sidebar — I’m so happy that Pharrell and Gwen Stefani have been added to “The Voice” lineup. A reason for me to watch this show. Both will be performing on the show this MONDAY, 5.5.14, where Pharrell will perform ‘Come Get It Bae’ and Stefani will perform ‘Hollaback Girl’. Excited to see those.
Aside from the messiness of the setup of the show I will say that my favorite part was the packages/video montages throughout the show. There was no host, just an MC which was fine. I loved how artists connected to the fans with their recounts of their first memories in Los Angeles. The packages for the nominees was great as well. I just loved how that was set up. That was something that has not been done on other award shows and I hope it remains as a signature for future iHeartRadio award shows.
Now for the winners. I talked about all my picks for the awards show and my predictions weren’t exactly correct, but I’m not surprised at who won. Again all voting was done by the fans. Rihanna was the big winner of the night with 4 wins: Hip-Hop/R&B Song of the Year (‘Pour It Up’), Best Fan Army, Song of the Year (Stay f/Mikky Ekko), and Artist of the year. As for her fashion of the evening I love the fact that she takes chances, but I wasn’t a fan of her hair at all. It’s like when she showed up to the AMAs with her hair in a wrap knowing she was receiving the Icon Award. her outfit was very edgy, as expected, I would just do without the leather jacket and her lip color was great as well. Personally I would have liked this with an asymmetrical bob.
The other winners were:
Best Lyrics – Miley Cyrus, ‘Wrecking Ball’
Best Collab – Pitbull f/ Kesha, ‘Timber’
Best New Artist – Lorde
Young Influencer Award – Ariana Grande
Instagram Award – Austin Mahone’s Mahomies
Alternative Rock Song of the Year – Imagine Dragons, ‘Demons’
Country Song of the Year – Blake Shelton, ‘Boys ‘Round Here’
The show overall started and ended on time, actually a couple minutes early as the last award, Artist of the Year, was presented by Jennifer Lopez & Ryan Seacrest. There were a few things that could be fixed for future shows, but for the 1st televised show it wasn’t too shabby. Maybe next year there will be a host and more artists will show up.
I was excited to read that Sia had was working on new music and that her album would be released sometime this year. I had heard of Sia prior to the release of 1000 Forms of Fear, but that album (click HERE for my review) really made me fall in love with her music. What I did not know was that her portfolio was as lengthy as it was.
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