Search Results for: Mariah Carey

Randy said her song was “way too big for her.” Paula said something incomprehensible. Simon said she was “worse than last week.” But luckily for Antonella Barba, America disagreed. After a difficult week in which racy pictures of her were leaked on to the Internet, and her performance of Céline Dion’s “Because You Loved Me” was poorly received by the judges, Barba still managed to land a spot among the top 16 contestants on American Idol. The New Jersey native, who has been praised more for her looks than her vocals this season, may well owe a large portion of… Read more »

Britney Spears is certainly not the first celebrity to go off the rails in full view of her once-adoring public. But hers is one of the most spectacular falls from grace in recent memory, meticulously documented by paparazzi and bystanders, and uploaded instantly for the titillation of the masses. At 25 she’s certainly young enough to resume her career after she regroups, and for perspective, we’ve compiled some of the most notorious celebrity flameouts of the past 10 years, along with the success (or not) of their efforts to get back on track. We’ve rated these 1-4 in ascending order… Read more »

It’s no secret – particularly to various employees at Gambleversity.com, MyBookie.org and/or BetOnAnythingThatMoves.net – that we here at MTV News enjoy the occasional foray into the exhilarating world of wagering. Of course, the key word here is occasional. But with Sunday’s Grammy Awards on the horizon, we convened the MTV News Bet-ological Braintrust – which is really nothing more than a couple of writers and “Hammerin’ ” Hank Goldberg on speakerphone – and determined just which of the Grammy’s 108 categories are most ripe for some sweet speculation. While there are plenty of intriguing possibilities – the battle between Eddie… Read more »

LOS ANGELES – Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris resents that MTV and other cable music channels built multibillion-dollar businesses around videos given away by record companies anxious to promote their artists. So when he saw his own grandson watching 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” video on Yahoo, it got him asking: “How much are we getting paid for that?” The answer – nothing – led Morris to pull all of Universal’s videos from the giant Web portal until it agreed to a licensing deal in 2005. He wrangled similar arrangements from Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and other Internet portals… Read more »

One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »

OAKLAND, Calif. – Music retailers are turning to high-tech firms that combine computer analysis with the art of listening to come up with new music suggestions for consumers based on what they already like. In a computer-crammed space at Savage Beast Technologies, divergent melodies seep softly from headphones worn by young men and women who listen to music with the intensity of submarine sonar operators. Their job is to discern and define attributes in tunes by artists as diverse as teen diva Hilary Duff and jazz legend Miles Davis. The listeners classify hundreds of characteristics about each song, including beat,… Read more »

The acronym No One Ever Really Dies will be tested for pop group N.E.R.D., whose lead singer, Pharrell Williams, has announced that the band are no more. “N.E.R.D. is dead. I don’t agree with the management at Virgin Records so we’re done,” Williams recently told BBC Radio 1. As for The Neptunes production duo of Williams and Chad Hugo, they’re not going anywhere. The uber-popular producers are definitely still together – they just won’t be doing much singing anymore. “Me and Chad still do what we do in the studio, Shay is still our best friend, you know, perhaps we’ll… Read more »

Los Angles – You only need one word to sum up the year in pop 2004: Usher. Clearly, it was his house. The rest of us were just overnight visitors. It began innocently enough, right at the beginning of the calendar year. On the Billboard Hot 100 dated Jan. 10, 2004 (coincidentally, the 55th anniversary of the introduction of the 45 rpm record), the highest new entry was “Yeah!” by Usher Featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris. Six weeks later, “Yeah!” had assumed pole position, and remained there for 12 weeks, tying it as the longest-running No. 1 (with “Lose Yourself”… Read more »

With the music industry looking to cut costs amid lower profit margins, record companies see fewer incentives to investing in artist-run label projects. Twelve years ago, Madonna decided to apply the business instincts that made her a superstar toward finding and developing new acts for her own music label. Maverick Records flourished early on. It generated hits by the likes of Alanis Morissette and Prodigy, validating the decision by Warner Music to form a partnership with its biggest star. But Maverick’s good fortunes started to turn during the industrywide sales slump that began in 2000. The label-parent relationship soured, landing… Read more »

Randy Jackson is a hero. And it’s not just because the music-industry veteran – who is a judge on “American Idol” – has given a lot of great advice in his Hyperion book, “What’s Up, Dawg? How to Become a Superstar in the Music Business.” He is not afraid to rock the boat by criticizing the music industry, even though he could easily coast on his success. The industry, Jackson tells Billboard, is “in the toilet” and does not seem to know how to pull itself out of it. “I think record companies are so out of touch with the… Read more »