Search Results for: the early november

In early 1984, when Epic Records executives presented their slate of upcoming releases at the convention in Hawaii of parent company CBS Records they couldn’t resist playing up the success they were experiencing. So between the pitches for new albums, Epic inserted stock footage of semi trucks and a voice-over that thunderously announced, “There goes another load of Michael Jackson’s Thriller albums!” Trucks weren’t really leaving the warehouse every few minutes, but Thriller was still shattering expectations more than a year after its November 30, 1982, release. Epic was selling more than 1 million copies per month in the United… Read more »

Sade Adu, the reclusive “quiet storm” soul singer who takes notoriously long breaks between releases, has regrouped with the band that bears her name and is recording her first album of new material since 2000’s Lovers Rock. The group is in the studio through June. Sony has not set a release date but hopes to put the record out by the end of 2009. “She is in the studio and the album will come when it is ready,” according to a source at Sony. “You don’t wait for years for one and then rush it.” Sade’s longtime bandmate Stuart Matthewman… Read more »

California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s gay marriage ban Tuesday but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that took place before the prohibition passed are still valid – a ruling decried by gay rights activists as a hollow victory. Demonstrators outside the court booed, wept and yelled, “Shame on you!” Activists said they would go back to the voters as early as next year in a bid to repeal the ban. In a 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George, the court rejected arguments that the ban approved by the voters last fall was such a fundamental change in the… Read more »

MySpace Music announced that Lily Allen performing 3 Secret Shows on 3 continents. The British singer will put on intimate concerts for her MySpace fans in New York, Tokyo and London at no charge. Lily will kick off the global Secret Show series with a performance at The Bowery Ballroom in New York City on February 10th. The concert marks the first time a single artist will take part in multiple MySpace Secret Shows on a global level. The New York show, sponsored by TurboTax ® Federal Free Edition, signifies Lily’s debut concert celebrating the release of her new album,… Read more »

American Idol returns for its eighth season on Tuesday with a new judge, a better showcase for talented singers and a wary eye on its status as America’s most-watched television show. The five-month search for a new star kicks off with a two-night, four-hour premiere featuring the familiar blend of hundreds of hopeful, and sometimes hopeless, contestants auditioning in cities across the nation. But producers have tweaked the formula to keep viewers tuning in en masse after last year, when the numbers of “American Idol” faithful slipped to about 28.1 million per episode from an average 30.8 million in 2006.… Read more »

Assembling the White Zombie boxed set ” Let Sleeping Corpses Lie ” was “weird” and somewhat bittersweet for Rob Zombie the frontman for the defunct metal group that broke up in 1996. “The funny thing was when I was putting it together, it seemed so long ago,” Zombie told Billboard.com. “It felt like I was putting together a box set of someone else’s band. It just seemed like forever ago, and some of the early songs are, like, 20 years ago or something. It just seemed weird.” The Geffen Records set, which boasts four CDs and one DVD, came out… Read more »

NEW YORK —-  On the heels of the release of the second volume of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s home recordings, the alternative rock group is now taking a look back into its own vaults. Cuomo told Billboard he has “no idea” when the tentatively titled “Odds and Ends” will be released, but describes it as “just another fun project to do. They’re great songs, but for some reason they didn’t make the final cut for (a) record. They span a vast period of time from the very beginning of our career in the early ’90s right up to the present… Read more »

NEW YORK —-  Beyonce has scored her third straight No. 1 debut on the pop album chart with the double-disc “I Am … Sasha Fierce.” The Music World/Columbia album shifted a whopping 482,000 copies in the United States during the week ended November 23, according to Nielsen SoundScan . The set, split between material credited to R&B star Beyonce and her new alter-ego, Sasha Fierce, has already spawned the hits “If I Were a Boy” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Beyonce’s 2003 solo debut, ” Dangerously in Love ,” started with 317,000, while 2006’s “B-Day” moved 541,000.… Read more »

At the American Music Awards on Sunday (November 23), Miley Cyrus, celebrating her 16th birthday, broke character a bit, performing a saucy, seductive version of her new single, “Fly on the Wall”; Mariah Carey delivered a riveting rendition of “I Stay in Love”; and a barely lucid Scott Weiland ironically introduced Pink’s performance of “Sober,” calling her “one of the greatest artists of our time.” Later, Pink even joined Sarah McLachlan for a duet on “Angel.” The New Kids on the Block and Christina Aguilera both performed medleys of their most beloved tunes. Justin Timberlake gave us a lesson on… Read more »