Shakira rocks out again (finally) in 'Sale El Sol' - watch the premiere now!

Shortly after learning her latest ESL test score

Don't get us wrong, we heart Shakira super hard no matter what genre she's thrusting her tiny pelvis along to.  But, we are also of the firm opinion that nothing she's done since the turn of the century can hold a candle to 1998's 'Donde Estan Los Ladrones?' album.  Because it was AMAZING.

Sure, she got hotter since then (awesome), and a LOT more flexible (terrifying), but we've always felt that her English-language musical path wasn't really 100% HER (read: 100% what we, in particular, demanded of her).  Obviously she's an artist and blah blah so she wants to experiment with genres and blah blah, but up until now she's kind of avoided doing exactly what made her genius in the first place - guitar driven rock with a pop edge and a killer hook.  Sure she's always had that base to her songs, but then they're always thrown together with some trendy "authentic street cred" for the American market by incorporating "ClassiKrunk" or something equally nonsensical.

Anyhoodle, our favorite incarnation of Shakira is thankfully back in full force on her new track 'Sale El Sol,' which features LITERALLY RAD electric guitar powerchords and a straight up hook.  Also the song has a video in which our sassy starlet gets to wear a GIANT DRESS, so it's obviously very good too.

Britney's new album title sounds like bad softcore or worse perfume, but 'Femme Fatale' will still be AMAZING

Logo nonsense FTW

Here's something about Britney from Britney's people. It basically talks about Britney in a way that makes her seem awesome and then says some stuff about her new album before talking about how super she is again. We're going to let the self-congratulation go because, to be quite frank, no one has ever written a press release about us and so we're really not ones to talk, and also we'd very much like to not alienate the whole of the "press-release-writing" union just in case it happens sometime in the future.

There is, however, still the matter of the album artwork which is alternatively AMAZING and SHIT depending on which part of the record cover you are looking at. To illustrate:

AMAZING

SHIT

Because Britney is obviously VERY CLEVER, we can only assume that the juxtaposition of these extremes is quite on purpose, as a sort of preview of how the album is going to be. So, going off the cover art ratio, we are forced to conclude that the album is going to be 63% BRILLIANT and 37% TREMENDOUSLY BAD, which will slot it in very nicely above 'Circus' but below 'Blackout' in the list of Top 3 Greatest Britney Albums.

Here's the press release:


Britney Spears New Album Titled “Femme Fatale” – Official Press Release

New York, NY – Britney Spears announces her seventh studio album is titled Femme Fatale. The iconic global superstar’s title Femme Fatale is a tribute to bold, empowered, confident, elusive, fun, flirty women and men. It’s not a conceptual album, Spears is letting the music speak for itself. She’s worked hard on it for two years and she considers it to be her “best album to date,” true to where she is now personally and professionally.

Femme Fatale (Jive Records) is executive produced by Max Martin and Dr. Luke.
Spears is peerless among her contemporaries. Throughout the years, Britney has consistently released hit after hit for over a decade, selling close to 70 million albums cumulatively worldwide.

Few artists have earned the distinction of having five No.1 debut albums, and 24 Top 40 hits. She most recently set a new one-day precedent for single sales with her current No. 1 hit song, “Hold It Against Me.”

Rihanna's 'S&M' video is here and it's....okay - watch the premiere now

What's teal and ugly and red on top, and got a stylist fired?

Rihanna has done a lot.  She released some good songs ('Pon De Replay'), then some BRILLIANT SONGS ('SOS'), a few shit songs ('Russian Roulette') and then seemed to settle into a nice groove of having above-average but slightly forgettable singles come out at a rate of approximately one every two-and-a-half weeks.

Though her song output has found a rut pleasant routine, her videos have continually been getting better and better.  At some point RiRi or her people decided that she was a big enough star that she could stop caring about looking foolish and just GO FOR THE GOLD which in the music business equates to ACT BATSHIT CRAZY ON CAMERA, and, to her credit, it's resulted in some pretty amazing clips.

...until now.  The video for 'S&M' has just come out and it's sort of what you'd expect from a Rihanna video, except if Rihanna was a Russian girlband and it was 2003.

To be fair it's not terrible - and it's actually kind of entertaining, but it reeks of "let's chuck every idea we have at the wall and see what sticks."  We imagine it is the product of a number of committee meetings, each of which went something like:

Record Exec 1: "The song is called S&M so maybe we should put some S&M things in it"
Record Exec 2: "Yes but she already did the whole 'Rated R' "dark" thing and we all know how that turned out..."
Record Exec 1: "Ok then let's make the S&M things NEON and therefore DIFFERENT"
Record Exec 2: "And we should make her be behind plastic wrap for some reason.  You know, because it's edgy."
Record Exec 1: "How are we so good at this?  You'd think the Klonopin would hinder our creative abilities somehow."
Record Exec 2: "We are geniuses, let's take our private planes to Hawaii for the evening."

THE END

Rihanna - S&M - The best home videos are here

Sophia Somajo's 'Wristcutters, Inc.' is better than all the Jessie Js and Nikki Minajs put together

Cramps.

Much buzz has been spent on Sophia Somajo, who has been referred to more than once as "the next big thing."  Now, to be fair, if every "next big thing" turned out to be the ACTUAL next big thing, we would be overrun with popstars dancing through the supermarkets and laundromats and the world would be a VERY DIFFERENT (read: AMAZING) place.  But alas, most of these "hotly-tipped" whipper snappers turn out to be a whole lot of nothing, and while they are usually quite good, they more often than not put out a "top 85 single" and then go off to manage an HSBC branch or something.

But every so often the blogs get it right, and we have a feeling Sophia Somajo may be the actual real deal - at least if her new jam is any indication.  'Wristcutters, Inc.' is a happy-go-lucky song about suicide and self-mutilation with a hoppity little beat and some glorious production.  Also it has a sort of "Asian theme" going - because, why not? - and, most importantly, it's got a great melody that plants itself immovably in your brain like Jessica Simpson in a booth at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

It really shouldn't be a surprise that the track is phenomenal, though, since Somajo has writing credits on some VERY GOOD things like Robyn's 'Body Talk' album, has notched up a few hits in Scandinavia, and, most of all, because Sophia is SWEDISH and if history has taught us anything it's that being Swedish automatically makes you a very talented songwriter. 

Sophia Somajo - Wristcutters Inc. by UniversalMusicSweden

"Not at all terrible"

Out tomorrow (1/31) in Sweden and worldwide release coming soon

Nikki Minaj's new video is a true Cinderella story - watch the premiere of 'Moment 4 Life' now!

kLaSsi

Quick poll:  Raise your hand if you love Nikki Minaj's promotional imagery and generally everything about her album campaign.

Ok that's just about everyone.

Now raise your hand if you actually like her music.

That'll be two people in the back who have some pretty significant hearing damage.


Nicki Minaj Ft. Drake – Moment 4 Life from Red Hoodie on Vimeo.

"better on mute."

The best Robyn music video ever isn't even a Robyn music video - watch the premiere of Savage Skulls & Douster ft. Robyn 'Bad Gal'

Sometimes when I'm sad I just look at my boobs and then everything is ok

In the future everything small will be smaller and everything big will be bigger and everyone will be smarter and prettier and Robyn will sing lead vocals on everything because that IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE.

It is truly one of the wonders of the modern world that Robyn keeps managing to chuck out brilliant tunes with such alarming consistency.  More shocking is that her tracks are awesome EVEN WHEN THEY AREN'T HER TRACKS.  You see, usually when we see any incarnation of "Random DJ ft. Established Pop Star," it is a signal to groan, beat our heads into our desks and then go on and on about "The 90's" and how everything bad is Jay-Z's fault, but RoRo has thrown our entire worldview into utter disarray with her latest offering. 

The song is by some people called Savage Skulls & Douster, who we think are lumber suppliers or the owners of a mildly successful glass repair business or something, but none of that is really important.  What IS important is that Robyn sings on it and is in the music video and that both are GOOD.

The video, quite thankfully, breaks out of R's usual "Omg I love this song...wait THIS is the video?  That's stupid." mold and instead we get a delightful romp with a van and tennis and Robyn wiggling her hips while holding a rose.   Also, in the video Robyn is wearing a jean jacket, which everyone knows is the harbinger of AMAZINGNESS.   
  


"Yes."

Menya is giving it away for free! Get their first 2 EP's now!

"WE ARE QUITE EXCELLENT."

There is a thing called Menya and it is very good.  It is 2 girls and a boy and some listenable music and also, sometimes, stuffed animals, even though the plush things don't actually sing ( :( ).  One of the members, Good Goose (the boy), is about to put out a balls-to-the-wall-brilliant mixtape (Note: exciting), and ScopiSat might just have some exclusives for you from the man himself (Note: EXCITING).  But until then we can all get our Menya fix on by downloading the band's first two EP's for ABSOLUTELY FREE. 

For the unindoctrinated looking for a jumping off point, check out 'Oh!' off the band's 2008 'The Ol' Reacharound.' It's fun and happy and it has a video, and really, in a recession that's about all you can ask, isn't it.  Also the band as a whole are not unattractive which certainly doesn't hinder the clip in the least, and at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is the song title features PUNCTUATION which means it is AMAZING.



Now go get your free downloads at the Menya website HERE

Avril Lavigne says 'What The Hell' in new video - watch the premiere now!

"I can TOTALLY go two weeks without washing it, right?"

We always know a video is going to be good when it says the person's name in big letters at the beginning.  We imagine it's because there is some sort of approval process, where the artist sits down and says "ok that was alright, but I'm not putting my name in big letters at the beginning because it's not THAT good" and then the dejected crew cancel their plans, go off and add some special effects, post-produce out some wrinkles and cellulite, and then the artist says "hurrah, now I love it, here's a giant stamp of my name in a super special font that I had made at Kinkos" and everyone goes home happy.

Even if that's not what happens, it still holds true that videos with the artist's name at the beginning in big letters are, as a rule, 35% better than videos without it.  And Avril's new clip is no exception. 

Any regular ScopiSat reader knows that we pretty much hate Avril Lavigne, and it QUITE VEXES US when she puts out stuff like 'Girlfriend' or, in this case, 'What The Hell,' because it's difficult to truly despise someone while you're nodding your head to their tune.  But whatever, life is hard, and we just have to deal with it.

For the video to the aforementioned 'Hell,' Miss Lavigne has pulled out all the stops, thrown on her best emo makeup, her Hot Topic fingerless gloves, and F*CKING GONE TO TOWN.  Quite literally, in fact.  She wakes up with some hottie, does some things, crashes a cab, and then gallavants around the city while a very good song plays and she mouths along.  In short, it's an extremely adequate video, and in this day and age that's really all anyone can ask. 

You win this round, Lavigne.