Search Results for: england

Pop star Sting said on Friday that he and his two cohorts from The Police will bid a musical goodbye to Britain with a farewell concert in London’s Hyde Park on June 29. “England is where we began our career, in London. It has a special place in my heart. I’m English … We’ve done over 100 dates. But we’re still together, still friends,” the group’s frontman said. The band, consisting of Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland, burst on the scene in the late 1970s and early ’80s with a string of hits, including “Roxanne,” “Message in… Read more »

One ticket to the Super Bowl: $2,000. Thirty seconds of advertising during the Super Bowl: $2.7 million. Five seconds’ worth of Madonna in a Super Bowl ad: A heck of a lot more than that. Sources tell E! Online that the Material Girl was paid $10 million to appear in a new advertising campaign for Sunsilk hair-care products, including a commercial that will premiere during the the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants (most of whom do not make $10 million in an entire season). In the 30-second spot, old stock footage… Read more »

Just when it seemed erosion of music sales during the holiday season couldn’t get worse, December snowstorms compounded the retail industry’s misery. Album sales for 2007 are now down 15.3% for the year, compared with 2006. But for the four weeks beginning with Thanksgiving week and ending December 26, U.S. album sales were down 20% to 84.2 million units from 105.3 million a year ago, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The last week before Christmas didn’t help matters much, with sales totaling 25.6 million vs. 31.3 million units in the same period last year. The season got off on the wrong… Read more »

They might not know much about running the ball at fourth and goal, but they’ve got it covered when it comes to runnin’ down a dream. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have been tapped to headline the Super Bowl XLII Halftime Show Feb. 3 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The “Free Fallin’ ” rockers join an illustrious lineup that, in the last five years, has included Prince, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Diddy, Kid Rock, Jessica Simpson and Shania Twain. (Some shows being more memorable than others, of course.) Petty’s last album with… Read more »

Morrissey has identified his latest quarry. The singer is suing British music magazine NME for defamation, claiming the publication twisted his words in a recent interview to make him appear racist. Morrissey was quoted by the magazine as saying he would no longer live in Britain because an “immigration explosion” was stripping his native land of its identity. “The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in,” he reportedly said. “Other countries have held on to their basic identity yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.” The singer’s representatives claimed the magazine’s… Read more »

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey is suing music magazine NME for defamation after it printed an article in which he discussed his views on immigration in Britain. The magazine criticized the 48-year-old singer for allegedly saying Britain had lost its identity as a result of higher levels of immigration than other European countries. “We can confirm we have received two writs from Morrissey’s legal representatives pertaining to NME and its editor Conor McNicholas,” a spokesman for NME said on Friday. “NME takes this matter — and the issues it highlights — extremely seriously and we are currently in discussion with our… Read more »

Nick Haley took just 30 minutes to pluck the Brazilian band CSS from obscurity and hurl it into the national spotlight. In September, Haley paired the band’s dance-pop song “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” with his 30-second amateur video, displaying the capabilities of Apple’s new iPod Touch. The video ends with the lyrics, “My music is where I’d like you to touch.” “I was like, ‘This song is too perfect,’ ” said Haley, 18, by phone from the University of Leeds in England, where he studies politics. “It’s punchy, loud, fast and naughty.” Marketers at Apple headquarters in Cupertino… Read more »

U2 stars Bono and The Edge showed up unannounced and played as a warmup act at a charity concert in London. The show delighted the 250 people who attended the fundraiser on Friday night for Mencap, a charity that campaigns for equal rights for children and adults with learning disabilities. “Don’t tell Larry (Mullen) and Adam (Clayton) we’ve done this,” Bono joked about his other two band mates from the small stage at London’s Union Chapel. Bono and The Edge – performing as a warmup act for Biffy Clyro, a Scottish rock group – played four of their songs: “Stay,”… Read more »

Elton John said Wednesday that he owns a photo of two naked girls taken by award-winning photographer Nan Goldin that was seized by police at a British gallery over concerns it amounted to child pornography. John confirmed ownership of “Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing” in a statement on his Web site. He said it is among 149 images comprising Goldin’s “Thanksgiving” installation. Northumbria police said the photo was taken from the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, northeastern England. They confirmed Tuesday that an image had been taken from an exhibit “to assess whether or not an offense had been… Read more »

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Chrissie Hynde and Jerry Lee Lewis performed at a concert to benefit a local theater and celebrate the upcoming opening of Hynde’s vegetarian restaurant. Hynde, an Akron native and the lead singer of The Pretenders, presided over a weekend-long celebration of VegiTerranean, her eatery that will feature a blend of Mediterranean and vegetarian cuisine when it opens here in October. The events started with a Friday night acoustic performance, continued Saturday afternoon with the restaurant’s ribbon-cutting ceremony and ended Saturday night with the concert. Hynde handed out bean salsa and other hors d’oeuvres… Read more »