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“Backstreet Men” doesn’t really have the same ring, but make no mistake, the Backstreet Boys are coming back more mature on their first album in five years. The group, which hasn’t released a collection of new music since 2000’s Black & Blue, just wrapped sessions for the as-yet-untitled album, which might surprise people expecting the same pop sound of old, according to member Howie Dorough. “We’ve been working on it for more than a year now, but it really started taking shape and changing over the past six months,” Dorough said. “It’s going in a more pop/rock direction, kind of… Read more »

Washington – You might say the Janet Jackson moment of President Bush’s inaugural festivities came Tuesday at a youth concert with hundreds of preteen Hilary Duff fans in the audience. No nudity was involved, but the Vince Neil-style profanity probably didn’t win rock band Fuel any fans at the Federal Communications Commission, nor from the parents at the concert. Now the Pennsylvania band is just hoping the concert, “America’s Future Rocks Today,” wasn’t aired live. Borrowing a word from Motley Crue’s Neil, the lead singer of Fuel proclaimed, “Welcome to the greatest –ing country in the world.” Brett Scallions followed… Read more »

2004 may go down in history as the year of the runaway breast. Yes, there was Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl flash, but don’t forget Tara Reid’s absent-minded red carpet dress-drop or the uproar over a sexy “Desperate Housewives” promo for Monday Night Football. Add in Colin Farrell’s missing manhood from the movie “A Home at the End of the World” and the curtailed puppet sex in “Team America: World Police,” and this was the year of nudity both seen and imagined. MOST INFAMOUS WARDROBE MALFUNCTION: Janet is disqualified because nobody believes it was an accident. So the prize goes to… Read more »

Los Angeles – Nearly 45 years after Stevie Wonder’s live harmonica workout “Fingertips, Pt. 2” topped the charts, the soul visionary’s musical charm still enthralls. From preteen wunderkind to adult visionary, his musical evolution embodies a “What’s next?” curiosity that still burns brightly as fans anticipate his first new Motown album in 10 years, which he hopes will come out in April. “Hopefully, that little boy will always stay in me,” Wonder said in a recent interview with Billboard. “The part of me that’s still eager to discover; who welcomes new, unbroken ground. When that ground is being broken, there’s… Read more »

Los Angeles – Wednesday’s VH1 Big in ’04 awards show was a terrifying example of life imitating art, one that was dreadfully similar to “Saturday Night Live”‘s “Train Wreck Awards” skit from a few weeks ago. There was Anna Nicole Smith, just slightly more coherent than she was at the American Music Awards, threatening to flash the Shrine Auditorium audience after accepting the Big Makeover of ’04 award. There was ultimate odd couple, Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen, fondling each other from the “beige carpet” to the stage, which they entered on a horse-drawn carriage. (They also tried to fondle… Read more »

New York – Jerry Wexler is the classic record business guy. For more than three decades, Wexler, as co-owner of Atlantic Records and later senior VP at Warner Bros. Records, signed and worked with scores of vocalists and instrumentalists, and produced some of the greatest rock and soul records ever made. Now 86 and long retired, Wexler is still applauded as an insightful producer, crafty deal-maker and promoter, divining rod of hit songs and occasional writer of songs and liner notes. “He is one of my greatest heroes,” Sire Records founder Seymour Stein says. “Jerry is a consummate record man… Read more »

With the Dubliner’s new album, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, hitting stores on Nov. 23 and their tunes already featured in everything from iPod commercials to episodes of CSI and The O.C., the group is now making plans to blanket the globe. Billboard reports that U2-which last rocked North America four years ago on their mega-successful Elevation trek in support of the 2000 release All That You Can’t Leave Behind -will kick off their jaunt March 1 in Florida. “We’ll play approximate 35 shows in the arenas in the spring in the U.S.,” the group’s longtime manager Paul McGuninness… Read more »

Recently boasting about how she always sings live, Avril Lavigne had to make good on her claims and put Ashlee Simpson, in her place. After all, some of Lavigne’s past performances have been less than on-key. Quite expertly, Napanee’s pint-sized hero delivered the vocal goods, save for her “Complicated” encore in which she still struggled with the verses’ low notes. But otherwise, the nearly packed house at the Hanger had someone worth screaming for (ear-deafeningly, of course). Lavigne’s mall-punk compadres from Ajax, Not By Choice, riled up the tykes – a group of mostly parental accompanied 10 to 17 year… Read more »

Major and independent record labels today announced the first-ever retail availability of the much anticipated DualDisc – a two-sided disc made up of a CD player side and a DVD player side. A broad range of titles have begun to hit retail shelves in the first wave of products that will continue throughout the holiday season and into next year with releases from EMI Music, Silverline Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. DualDisc is a new music product that combines audio and video content on a single disc. In addition to a full album… Read more »

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band “The Ramones” that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55. Ramone, who had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer, died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, said the band’s longtime artistic director Arturo Vega. “He was the guy with a strategy. He was the guy who not only looked after the band’s interest but he also was their defender,” Vega said in a telephone interview from New York. Ramone, whose birth name is John Cummings, had… Read more »