Search Results for: Jay Som

Beyonce Knowles may be “Crazy in Love,” but she kept her cool Sunday at one of the more sober Grammy Awards shows in memory. She was the night’s big winner, taking home a record-tying five trophies to join recent Grammy queens Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Norah Jones with the most wins in a single year by a female performer. OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won Album of the Year, giving the eccentric Atlanta funk/rap group three wins, including Best Urban Alternative Performance and Best Rap Album. British band Coldplay took home the prize for Record of the Year for “Clocks,”… Read more »

A new sort of Pepsi Generation will get air time on the Super Bowl: music downloaders. Some 20 teens sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, which accuses them of unauthorized downloads, will appear in a Pepsi-Cola (PEP) ad that kicks off a two-month offer of up to 100 million free – and legal – downloads from Apple’s iTunes, the leading online music seller. The sassy ad, to be seen by Super Bowl’s 88 million viewers on Feb 1, is a wink at the download hot button. Pepsi hopes the promotion will connect its flagship cola, as well as… Read more »

The big question as we enter 2004 is simply “Do you want some?” The answer will come when Liam Gallagher and elder brother Noel return to the fray with the new Oasis album later this year. Although to some the Mancunian brothers’ group may be too tied up with the hangover of ’90s Britpop to ever be a potent force again, they are still undoubtedly one of the biggest rock groups in the country. They do like to tread water, however, and a much-needed change in direction may finally come with the introduction of Death In Vegas man Richard Fearless… Read more »

Although industry-wide album sales were down from the same weeks of last year in the two stanzas prior to Christmas, an extra gift-shopping day during the holiday frame closed 2003 on an up note. With the holiday shifting back a day, from Wednesday in 2002 to Thursday, album sales are up a whopping 20.6% over the same week of the prior year. The final week’s splurge more than compensates for the 5.8% deficit seen the week before the Christmas frame or the 0.5% gap of the year’s 50th week. Further, the 31.3 million album units sold during this Christmas shopping… Read more »

What will the White Stripes, the Strokes, Metallica and Phish be doing this New Year’s Eve? They’ll be doing what they do best – standing onstage with their instruments, playing music for their fans. Other major artists who have scheduled New Year’s Eve appearances include Jane’s Addiction, Marilyn Manson, the Used, 3 Doors Down, Andrew W.K., the Flaming Lips, Kings of Leon and David Lee Roth. Las Vegas will be the city that parties the hardest. It will offer 13 shows by artists such as the Strokes with Kings of Leon, Metallica, Goo Goo Dolls, Marky Ramone, REO Speedwagon with… Read more »

Grammy-winning, multi-platinum, Aware/Columbia singer-songwriter John Mayer has had a great year. His sophomore, major-label effort, Heavier Things debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and as the year comes to a close, he readies his second single to radio, “Clarity.” “Clarity,” the new single from John’s platinum-certified Heavier Things album, will be released to radio in December. “Clarity” is the lead track off Heavier Things and holds a particularly special place for Mayer. John sums up what the song represents to him: “If you want to know who I am, all you have to do is listen to “Clarity.”… Read more »

What do you get when you put a couple of pop-punk guys together with a few near-legendary dudes from New York’s underground hardcore scene? You get Hazen Street, a hard-edged but catchy, two-singer-fronted band that has become the first act to be signed to Benji and Joel Madden’s D.C. Flag imprint. The signing of Hazen Street is neither a leg up to a buddy band nor an attempt to cash in on a current trend. For the brothers who call Good Charlotte their day job, putting out the new supergroup’s debut is a chance to show some love to the… Read more »

For years, both onstage and on “The Osbournes,” we’ve witnessed legendary metal singer Ozzy Osbourne shake, stammer, stutter and shuffle around with a walk that grew increasingly hunched over and motor functions that only seemed to be getting worse. Speculation ran rampant. Were these maladies related to years of drug abuse dating back to the Black Sabbath days? Parkinson’s Disease? Muscular Dystrophy? The answer is, in fact, none of the above. Thanks to a Boston neurological specialist, Ozzy now knows the cause of the “shakes” that have plagued him for decades and with the help of a new medication, he’s… Read more »

The week the music industry brought suit against 261 users of Internet file-sharing services, Donald L. McCabe was in St. Louis to talk about a different form of digital copying. Mr. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor, has made a career of studying the cheating of American high school and college students. His most recent study found that cheating was spreading almost like file-sharing. Of more than 18,000 students surveyed, 38 percent said they had lifted material from the Internet for use in papers in the last year. More striking to Mr. McCabe, 44 percent said they considered this sampling no… Read more »

Despite an apparent cease-fire to the mudslinging between Fred Durst and Britney Spears, the Limp Bizkit frontman just can’t seem to say enough about the sexy singer. Onstage Saturday at a free concert in London’s Finsbury Park, Durst introduced the tune “Break Stuff” by taking a swipe at the pop star. At the opening of the Significant Other single with the prophetic line, “It’s all about the he said, she said bullsh-,” Durst made his proclamation. “How many people out there have had one of those f–ed-up days?” he asked the crowd. “I can remember quite a few f–ed-up days… Read more »