Search Results for: EUROPE

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 »

Global domination and making a new album are on the docket for chart-topping pop-rock band Plain  White T’s in 2008.Currently opening for Fall Out Boy, the Chicago quintet plans to head overseas in January to promote the recent international release of its “new” album, 2006’s “Every Second  Counts.” The group will play the U.K., Europe, Australia, New  Zealand and Japan, according to frontman Tom Higgenson.”We’re possibly bigger in the U.K. than we are in America now,” Higgenson told Billboard.com. “It’s still fresh over there. We’re going over to headline 2,000-seaters, which will be great.”But Higgenson and company are even more… Read more »

AJ McLean remembers the conversation well. Kevin Richardson was having doubts about his future in the Backstreet Boys, and one night in the dressing room after a 2005 show, he told his friends in the mega-selling boy band how he was feeling. “There’s some things I need to do first, for me,” McLean recalled Richardson saying. The group had been discussing “when we wanted to start recording again,” McLean said. “Everyone was ready, but that was the first time Kevin put it out in the atmosphere that he wasn’t.” The Boys needed some time to digest Richardson’s news. In June… Read more »

They’ve been called weirdoes, freaks and Satanists. Animal Collective’s otherworldly song structures, deconstructed harmonies and tribal rhythms aren’t always met with receptive ears, but there might not be a more progressive band in indie music. With two of the best-reviewed albums of the year – the band’s new “Strawberry Jam” and the solo disc by keyboardist Panda Bear, “Person Pitch” – Animal Collective has established itself as an act wildly separate from the many retro-oriented bands that populate today’s scene. The sound of the future, the psychedelic band acknowledges, is something they seek. “That’s kind of always been a goal,… Read more »

In 2004, U.K.-based independent label Memphis Industries released the sample-heavy, intentionally lo-fi and daringly jarring “Thunder, Lightning, Strike,” the Go! Team’s debut full-length CD. The buzz was deafening, so in 2005, the label entered a joint venture with Sony BMG to distribute the album internationally, with the major’s Columbia subsidiary handling it in the United States. It’s a turn of events that every band dreams of — unless that band is the Go! Team. The brainchild of Ian Parton, the Go! Team was never supposed to be mainstream. Parton set out to make “dirty” pop songs — danceable, catchy tunes… Read more »

After a year-plus hiatus during which Rilo Kiley’s two principal members pursued solo careers, the Los Angeles-based indie pop quartet is returning to business August 21 with its major-label debut, “Under the Blacklight.” Well, sort of. “People keep calling it our ‘major-label debut,’ but I think (2004’s) ‘More Adventurous’ was that,” frontwoman Jenny Lewis says. And in some respects, she’s right. “Blacklight” marks Rilo Kiley’s first effort on Warner Bros. proper, whereas “More Adventurous” was released on the band’s own Brute/Beaute imprint before the major “upstreamed” it. However you tag it, “More Adventurous,” the band’s third full-length release, is its… Read more »

Last month, when the Dillinger Escape Plan revealed that founding drummer Chris Pennie had left the highly technical mathcore outfit to join progressive rockers Coheed and Cambria, no one wanted to believe it. The surprise move baffled the band’s allegiant fans almost as much as it confused the Dillinger dudes, who started to wonder if Pennie had been fostering some strange, secret obsession with unicorns and minotaurs.”We found out about him playing with Coheed on the Internet,” explained guitarist Ben Weinman. “[Frontman] Greg [Puciato] forwarded me a link to an announcement, and I’m like, ‘What?!?’ At that point, though, he… Read more »

Some of the world’s biggest names in music were all about Saving Our Selves this weekend. SOS, of course, referring to the campaign being touted Saturday across the globe at the seven-continent, 24-hour Live Earth concert extravaganza, a worldwide shout-out to individuals, political leaders, corporations and every other entity capable of helping put a stop to the environmental scourge that is global warming. In a partnership with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and other U.S.-based and international organizations, Live 8 executive producer Kevin Wall put together a bill that included the Police, Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica,… Read more »

Michael Jackson is (a) bedridden; (b) convinced his brother Randy has been stealing from him; (c) getting evicted from his Las Vegas residence; (d) readying a European tour, or (e) none of the above. The answer, according to the reclusive entertainer’s hardworking spokeswoman, is “e.” Raymone Bain issued a statement Thursday in response to a spate of recent published reports about Jackson that she called “untrue, defamatory and malicious in nature.” Among the assertions denied by Bain was that Jackson was confined to his bed, or relying on any sort of medication, “including painkillers.” “In fact, Mr. Jackson is doing… Read more »

By The music industry has long hoped mobile phones will help turn around weak music sales, but music executives privately fear the most obvious contender, the iPhone, may give too much clout to Apple Inc., in shaping the future of the fledgling mobile music market. Sales of CDs, still the dominant music format, have dropped more than 20 percent in 2007 from a year ago, according to Nielsen Soundscan. Digital music sales are gradually claiming a greater portion of the business, but the transition has been slow. Sales of full-length songs on cellphones still claim a small portion of the… Read more »