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Michael Jackson said Thursday he felt betrayed by a “terrible and unfair” TV documentary about his life, in which the King of Pop revealed he sometimes lets children sleep in his bed. In a statement issued Thursday by his London representative, Jackson said British journalist Martin Bashir broke the trust placed in him, and added he felt “more betrayed than perhaps ever before.” Bashir spent eight months making the 90-minute program, which was to be shown in the United States at 8 p.m. EST Thursday on ABC’s “20/20.” “I trusted Martin Bashir to come into my life and that of… Read more »

Record producer Phil Spector and Lana Clarkson, the actress found slain in his mansion, reflected the two sides of success that exist within Hollywood’s pop culture landscape. Spector, 62, the music industry wunderkind who struck it rich in his teens and changed the face of pop music, became an eccentric millionaire with a castle home in the suburbs. Clarkson, 40, a B-movie actress who sold her pinups on the Internet and modeled herself after Marilyn Monroe, was a success within the exploitation movie world. She was nearly 6 feet tall, blonde, buxom and gorgeous. She was discovered by B-movie king… Read more »

Michael Jackson is a “disturbing individual” with a love of multi-million-dollar shopping sprees and a desire to live forever, according to a journalist granted unrivalled access to the pop star. Martin Bashir, who spent eight months making a documentary on the normally reclusive singer, said 44-year-old Jackson truly is the Peter Pan of pop who is obsessed by the idea of childhood being frozen in time. Plastic surgery, child abuse allegations and his father’s cruelty all feature in a warts-and-all British television documentary being aired in Britain Monday evening. The ITV program is the result of the unprecedented access Jackson… Read more »

The face of pop singer Michael Jackson will be the subject of a special edition of NBC’s news magazine “Dateline” next month. “Michael Jackson Unmasked,” set to air at 10 p.m. EST Feb. 17, will be “the inside story as told by some of the people who knew him best,” according to a network statement. Further details about the program weren’t given. For years, Jackson’s appearance – particularly his increasingly smaller nose and lighter skin tone – has been the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation. In announcing the program to television critics last week, NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker… Read more »

I spent 24 hours on the road with Good Charlotte recently. Most of what I saw I already knew from TV reports on tour-bus life, probably from episodes of “Diary”: You can’t do much in the bathroom, it’s eight grown men living in the space of a large bedroom, running water is a luxury and the food sucks. That’s not, however, what I went to report on. Good Charlotte are a band with punk values – they look it, they grew up on the music and they believe in the punk ethos. At the same time, though, their video has… Read more »

The technology built into some CDs to stop people copying them is futile, according to a computer scientist who has put today’s antipiracy systems under the microscope. He believes the continual software and hardware upgrades issued by the makers of computer CD drives and audio CD players render copy protection systems pointless in the long run. John Halderman, a computer scientist from Princeton University in New Jersey, plans to show delegates at a digital copyright conference in Washington DC next week that the idea of CD copy-prevention is “fundamentally misguided”. In 2001, Princeton University scientists debunked the technology the music… Read more »

In an industry that obsesses over first-week album sales, heavy MTV rotation and radio airplay, the Shortlist Music Prize is trying to help offbeat or niche recording artists find a wider audience. Now in its second year, the contest taps successful musicians to champion the work of peers who have yet to make an impact on the charts. Among this year’s “listmakers” are India.Arie, Alanis Morissette (news), U2’s Larry Mullen Jr., and filmmakers Baz Luhrmann (news) and Spike Jonze (news). “Most of the attention that records get as far as awards and all that stuff is based on record sales,… Read more »

“Surreal” is about the only word to describe it when that kid you remember from “Gremlins” and “Goonies,” all grown up now, is rocking out in the middle of a record store. And surreal it was when Corey Feldman and his band played for a bewildered crowd numbering less than a hundred recently at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. As fans and curious shoppers waited (and waited), a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist named Pharaoh and a keyboard player (none of whom would look lost at a construction site) along with two backup singers crowded onto a makeshift stage, where… Read more »

While Joey resurrects Broadway and Lance threatens to blast into space, Justin will have to be content with trying to change the face of pop music – again. Justin Timberlake’s debut solo record, Justified (November 12), is a broad, ambitious step from the clean, blissful pop of ‘NSYNC. Timberlake’s vocals still soar, but there’s a lot more funk in his step and a number of R&B artists influencing his sound, including Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Aaliyah and Missy Elliott. “I wanted to do something new that was just completely me,” he said. “I had been so personally drained from… Read more »

Three girls with three different personalities, giving three dimensions to the group, all coming at you on wax. That’s the way Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes perceived herself and friends Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, and that’s how she conceived the title of TLC’s fourth album, 3D. On Friday (September 13), Arista Records previewed tracks from the LP, which is due on November 12. Completing the album, which was unfinished when Left Eye was killed in April, was an emotional task for T-Boz and Chilli. “We promised to deliver the album, but it was a little bit of lip… Read more »