Search Results for: rise records

In his continuing bid to be the hardest-working man in rock, Travis Barker has piled a few new endeavors onto his overstuffed plate. On top of firming up plans for side project the Transplants to drop their debut LP, setting off on the road with Box Car Racer, and preparing the new Blink-182 album, the drummer somehow found time to bring his collection of vintage Cadillacs up to 11 with the addition of a ’54 Coup De Ville and ’78 El Dorado. Although the Transplants album doesn’t yet have an official title, it’s scheduled for release October 22, according to… Read more »

Major record companies, seeking to quash a brewing revolt by pop stars over royalty payments, on Tuesday released a study backing its claim that the embattled industry has negotiated past contracts fairly. The release of the study, commissioned by the Recording Industry Association of America, came as lawyers for musicians told a California state Senate hearing in Sacramento that the record industry has used faulty accounting to cheat them out of royalties. To bolster its claim that the record business is on the up and up, the RIAA released a study by Michigan State University professor Steven Wildman showing that… Read more »

If three singles can help sell in excess of 4 million records, why not roll out a fourth? This fall Nickelback will release “Woke Up This Morning” as the next offering from their breakthrough LP, Silver Side Up. The song, which was written in January 2000, addresses two emotional issues that affected frontman Chad Kroeger during the creation of the track. The first was the loss of his grandmother, who passed away a few days before he started writing the lyrics. “I was just really unimpressed with the way the whole funeral took place,” he said recently. “I felt it… Read more »

Michael Jackson’s surprise attack on Sony Music as racist has grabbed headlines, but many in the music industry have turned a deaf ear – suspecting the pop star has been motivated by self-interest rather than a concern for civil rights. Jackson, under contract with Sony until 2004 and among the highest-paid pop stars of all time, appears to be trying to pressure Sony into breaking the deal so he can exit with his valuable trove of master recordings, industry sources said. They say Jackson’s assault was prompted mostly by anger at Sony for the poor showing of his latest album,… Read more »

Linkin Park’s Reanimation is one step closer to coming to life. The album, consisting mainly of new versions of tracks from the group’smultiplatinum 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, has gone through the mastering stage, and a final track list has been settled upon, according to the band’s manager. The 20-track LP is due July 30. Linkin Park are the prototypical rap-rock hybrid (in fact, the group’s original name was Hybrid Theory), and Reanimation doesn’t do anything to change their stance on crossbreeding genres. While Hybrid Theory employed looped beats, scratching and other DJ techniques, courtesy of Joseph Hahn, Reanimation puts a… Read more »

BMG, the music division of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, announced yesterday that it has agreed to take control of Zomba Music Group, the record label that revived the teen pop genre with the likes of Britney Spears and ‘N Sync. The deal, which is estimated to be worth $3 billion, will end Zomba’s status as the world’s largest independent label. It will also provide a huge payday to Zomba founder, Clive Calder, who industry insiders credit with being out in front of some of the biggest trends, including teen pop, rap and Christian rock. Spears and ‘N Sync have… Read more »

There’s apparently still a little Muhammad Ali in Will Smith, who accepted his Best Actor MTV Movie Award last week in the voice of the boxing legend and later talked about his new record with equal confidence as “The Greatest.” “I don’t want to gas it up, but it’s definitely the best album that I’ve ever done,” Smith said backstage at the ceremony. “I think people are going to be really surprised, the direction that I decided to take.” Like the first single, “Black Suits Comin’ (Nod Ya Head),” the rest of Born to Reign finds the former Fresh Prince… Read more »

New releases will comprise half of the top 10 on next week’s Billboard albums chart, with P. Diddy leading the pack of debut entries. Right behind Diddy’s top-slot finish, albums by Cam’ron, Weezer and Moby will bump the former chart champ, Musiq, down to #5. P.Diddy & Bad Boy Records Present… We Invented the Remix will lay claim to the #1 position after selling more than 255,000 copies, according to SoundScan figures released Wednesday (May 22). Cam’ron’s Come Home With Me, the New York rapper’s first album for Roc-A-Fella Records, will come in second by about 30,000 fewer copies, thanks… Read more »

Trey Anastasio spent 17 years ripping genres apart and sticking them back together at odd angles with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink uber-jam band Phish. So maybe it’s no surprise he’s whipped up another unusual concoction: a jam/swing hybrid dotted with sugary-sweet love songs and chamber music. The self-titled release has the elements you’d expect from Anastasio, from the drawn-out, frenetic jams to the catchy guitar riffs. But it’s also a departure: It’s got horns, it’s got soul, it’s got more horns. It’s clearly not a Phish album hiding under a different name. “I’ve been listening to a lot of big band music,”… Read more »

While pre-release bootlegging has long been a detriment (or promotional tool, if you ask some cynics) to hip-hop, it’s not the only genre having a hard time keeping its music under wraps. Demos credited to the unnamed group featuring Chris Cornell and members of Rage Against the Machine have been leaked online. Thirteen tracks purported to be results of the collaboration surfaced on a Web site with an Italian domain on Thursday. Within minutes, the files were linked by several other sites and the songs were being swapped between file-sharers on services such as AudioGalaxy. As of Friday morning, attempts… Read more »