Tokio Hotel: ‘The third record is the hardest one’
Tokio Hotel recorded Humanoid in glossy, flossy destinations like Miami and Los Angeles, but also worked on the album in a tiny studio outside of Hamburg, Germany.
Tokio Hotel recorded Humanoid in glossy, flossy destinations like Miami and Los Angeles, but also worked on the album in a tiny studio outside of Hamburg, Germany.
That’s no Abercrombie & Fitch advertisement – according to the Jonas Brothers’ official fan site and the band’s pre-order page, it’s the cover for the JoBros’ new album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, out June 15th. While the trio’s previous album, A Little Bit Longer, put the band in suits and a rain-soaked fluorescent-bulb-lit cityscape, Lines, Vines finds the casual Jonas crew leaning over what it is undoubtedly a pick-up truck. Essentially, they did a reverse Kings of Leon. These are “trying times,” as the title of the album and our wallets suggest, so the boys have scaled back on… Read more »
Gotta hand it to Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz and company: The hardworking, blue-collar Midwestern pop-punkers-with-an-emo-attitude have gotten ever savvier and, dare I say, more mature with their songwriting and song-arranging. Consequently, “Folie a Deux,” (French for “madness shared by two”) may be one of the year’s most surprising albums. A tactfully produced (Neil Avron/Pharell Williams) affair that steers the Chicago-area band more toward the pop mainstream without sacrificing Fall Out Boy’s anthemic brashness, the band’s fifth album represents the zenith of its seven-year career. Some tracks — “I Don’t Care” with its “Spirit in the Sky” guitars and the zippy… Read more »
Rolling Stone magazine is shrinking with the times. After more than four decades of standing out with a larger format than other magazines, it will step back and look like everyone else starting with the Oct. 30 issue, due out this week. The adoption of a standard format could boost single-copy sales and reduce production costs for advertising inserts such as scent strips and tear-out postcards. The magazine says any cost savings, though, will be offset by the inclusion of more pages and the shift to thicker, glossier paper. Like other devoted readers, Eddie Ward, 35, said he will miss… Read more »
More than ever, it pays to be pregnant in Hollywood. Jennifer Lopez, about to give birth to twins, is reportedly the latest A-lister to strike a deal worth millions for exclusive photos of her children. And the incentive might not be purely financial: Such pacts can also protect celebs’ privacy by thwarting the paparazzi. Those involved in negotiations for Lopez and her husband, Marc Anthony, confirmed that U.S. and Latin American rights were sold to People magazine and other international rights to OK! magazine. Advertising Age reported on its Web site Monday that Lopez and Anthony were negotiating with People… Read more »
In a nod to the ever-evolving world of Web 2.0, MTV is turning to a new source for cutting-edge music videos — fans. The company in June quietly introduced its free Video Remixer service, which enables users to create their own version of select videos using clips from the original video, archived MTV footage, photos and other media. MTV then airs the top-rated submissions. The first video available was Kelly Clarkson’s “Never Again” on June 5, followed shortly by Nelly Furtado’s “All Good Things (Come to an End)” June 29. Additional artists are being lined up for the coming weeks.… Read more »
Now that the three young women in Candy Hill, a glossy rap and R&B trio, have signed a record contract, they are hoping for stardom. On the schedule: shooting a music video and visiting radio stations to talk up their music. But the women do not have a CD to promote. Universal/Republic Records, their label, signed Candy Hill to record two songs, not a complete album. “If we get two songs out, we get a shot,” said Vatana Shaw, 20, who formed the trio four years ago, “Only true fans are buying full albums. Most people don’t really do that… Read more »
One week after he leapt into the crowd and began wailing on a security guard at the Sunshine Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz is still a little bit sore, a little bit embarrassed and – in what might be a first – a little bit wary of talking about the incident. But that isn’t stopping his bandmates from giving their accounts of the punch-up, which occurred while FOB was playing the final song of their set during last weekend’s gig at the Sunshine . “I was standing on a riser, stage left, and I… Read more »
Few things are sadder than aging punk rockers attempting to cash in on their misspent youth, especially their desperate act of trying to recapture the glory days of fickle preadolescents with disposable incomes. Such is the lot of Good Charlotte and Simple Plan, purveyors of a Splenda version of pop-punk so lightweight that only Top 40 radio will touch it. Not that the bands resemble glossy pop stars, per se: GC’s members look like thugged-out suburbanites who overdosed at the tattoo parlor, and the Plansters are the mischievous skater kids hellbent on crashing keggers thrown by the football jocks. Good… Read more »
The past two years have been a turbo-charged merry-go-round for Maryland punk-pop group Good Charlotte. The band’s debut single, “Little Things,” from its eponymous 2000 album, drove the group to the top of the “TRL” heap, and a Warped tour and outing with Blink-182 helped spread the Good vibes far and wide. The group’s new single, “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” is currently heating up airwaves, and a video for the song, which features cameos by ‘NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick, Tenacious D sideman Kyle Gass and former Minutemen and Firehose member Mike Watt, is getting lots of love as well.… Read more »