The Punk Goes Pop series is six volumes deep at this point, celebrating the release of its most recent compilation this week — but what if we were able to flip the script and pull in artists from the world of mainstream pop to take on music from our scene?
The Common Ground Music Festival in Lansing, Michigan, have just announced the first round of bands for this summer.
No Sleep Records has signed New England based indie/alternative pop band Long Lost. which features Joe Boynton of Transit on vocals.
All 29 minutes and eight songs of the Neon Trees’ debut mix up the decades, combining for a fast-paced dance party reminiscent of The Strokes and Depeche Mode.
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 »
