Last night was a VERY BIG NIGHT for teen pop divas-turned adult pop divas. Not only did we get the first performance of Xtina's new single with Adam Levine, but Britney decided to one-up her and chuck out her own slick new video.
First up we had good ol' Christina, trudging her caboose out on stage for the last few seconds of Maroon 5's new single her new track with Maroon 5, 'Moves Like Jagger' on which she is NOT AT ALL AN AFTERTHOUGHT. This song is actually growing on us - a bit like a fungus - but it's not like Chrissy has anything to do with that. She's literally featured for about three seconds, during which she does some vocal runs and proves, ONCE AGAIN, that she can "saaang." Still, it's very good and will hopefully set her down the road to musical recovery.
Shall we take a look? Yes, we shall - but first, a warning - for the first .5 seconds of this video you will see the face of Carson Daly. We apologize.
Not one to be outdone by her former rival, soon after the announcement that 'Jagger' would be performed last night, Brit Brit tweeted her intention to debut the brand new video for 'I Wanna Go.' We already raved about the preview, in which she wears ironic things, stands by an ironic sign, and slashes paparrazzi with a microphone. Ironically. It's all RATHER GOOD INDEED if you can get over her one eye trying to get off her face. Seriously, her makeup people can't fix that? Whatever, it's still awesome and the rest of her looks hot. Plus, flashing kids on the street is always cool.
So did it live up to our expectations? Yes. Yes it did.
Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera are solid B-list performers (sorry Christina, but even Mariah drooped to a B+ after 'Glitter.' And you're not Mariah.) but their fortunes have both been looking up as of late. After the kind of inexplicable success of talent competition/advertising revenue generator 'The Voice,' the two artistes figured they'd cash in on some of their new-found audience capital and chuck out a collaboration.
Maroon 5's last project did relatively okay, but Xtina's 'Bionic' was, in every commercial sense, an unmitigated disaster. So it's probably a good idea for the bleached troll-doll of a pop diva to cozy up with Mr. Levine, since he's in a much better position than her to dust the crumbs off failure off her music career.
Commercially, the song is a great idea, but musically it's nothing more than decent. It's got a cool kind of disco thing going, and we're actually digging the tune right now, but we're guessing no one will remember this even exists in a year or two...so, it's kind of the 2011 equivalent of that Ricky Martin/Christina thing 'Nobody Wants To Be Lonely.'
Yeah. Exactly.
It's at least a step in the right direction for Xtina's musical rehab, but as much as we love Maroon 5 we're totally calling them as the Hootie and the Blowfish of the late noughties/early teens.
Note to Christina: next time try to do something with Nikki Minaj and Rihanna. Trust us.
When we first saw the preview for Brit's new video our expectations were pretty low. If the single artwork was anything to go on, we reasoned, we were about to get some low-budget crapfest with lots of closeups of Britney's eyes or just her boob flopping around rhythmically for 4 minutes or something. So you can imagine our surprise when the preview ended up being A LITTLE BIT SPECTACULAR.
Our initial thought upon seeing Britney's newly toned bod was "damn," and it only got better from there. The microphone trick, the filming style, the distinct sense of "THIS IS HOW A VIDEO SHOULD BE DONE..."
We are very, very pleased, ScopiSubjects. If Gaga thought she had won the pop diva battle she was obviously sorely mistaken. Brit has certainly come out swinging - swinging a studded microphone, no less - and one gets the feeling it would be.....unwise... to count her out.
There are a few things in particular that make this preview amazing, and they are, in ascending order of amazingness:
1. Britney's abs
2. The marquee that advertises "Crossroads 2: Cross Harder"
3. EVERYTHING ELSE
So welcome back, everyone, to a world where Britney puts out amazing videos.
Remarkably, things happen in the world of music EVEN WHEN WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THEM, and here are a few of those things:
- Lady Gaga's new video is getting unanimously 'meh' reviews. It's slick and well put together, but it's....a little boring. When people point and Gaga and say "but anybody could have done that," she has a problem. (Star Observer)
- The Scissor Sisters (amazing) are....wait for it...scoring the new Fraggle Rock movie (AMAZING) and it will be out relatively soon (ACTUALLY AMAZING). (Rolling Stone)
- The Kylie Musical is still happening so everyone can relax and stop pretending it isn't. (Sky Living)
Robyn is amazing. That Robyn is featured in a new video is also amazing. That Robyn is featured in a new video that is a reworked version of her EPIC MASTERPIECE 'Be Mine' is even more amazing. That the bulk of the song is made up of a thing called Rye Rye is....less amazing. But still amazing.
'Be Mine' never did anything here in the States, though it was top 10 in Europe and the UK, but hopefully that can change with this new release. The protege of up-and-comer-who-never-came rapper M.I.A., we're not 100% sold on Rye's output yet, but this is a giant leap in the right direction.
The video was partly filmed at Robyn's recent Cherrytree Sessions live performance, and otherwise filmed on a street corner where Robyn and Rye Rye were hooking or something. Anyway, it's good, and here it is:
So today the debut single from much-lauded X-Factor runner-up Cher Lloyd hit the internet, and we were all set to talk about it except it's a bit crap. So instead we're going to talk about something a lot less crap and a lot more Kelly.
Rowland, to be precise. She continues her reign of the clubs over in Europe, of course, but Stateside her handlers have insisted on taking the "urban" route. To be fair, it's a route that has worked so far, as her last single 'Motivation,' outperformed former bandmate Beyonce's 'Run The World (Girls)' by quite a margin.
Following on from her BIG AMERICAN COMEBACK, Kelly has now chucked out a tune called 'Lay It On Me,' and though it continues the urban vibe set by her last single, 'Lay' is thankfully a little more pop. It features Big Sean (yeah, we don't know either) and is considerably less crap than many of the songs currently troubling the radio dial.
Apparently there's an album coming sometime soon, and with songs like this we're starting to very much look forward to it.
Ok so Nicola’s single has debuted at a lowly number 27 but there is NO REASON TO PANIC.
You see, Nicola (read: Nicola’s handlers) has a plan. A plan that probably didn’t include a barely-top-thirty debut, but a plan nonetheless. It’s a plan that hops on the relatively untested on-air/on-sale model of selling a record, which has come into existence to battle the marauding troupes of music-plundering pirates roaming the interweb seas, and is accordingly either insane or brilliant or both at the same time.
Traditionally, a song would go to radio a few weeks before its release, then a video would come out just as the single hit stores, and all of the pent up consumer demand would lead to a healthy peak position and all the GLORIOUS HEADLINES AND SHOWERINGS OF PRAISE that came with it. But then the evil pirates came, with their Limewires and their torrents, and EVERYTHING CHANGED. The throngs of music listeners became increasingly agitated that they could not own songs that they so very much loved until the “official release date,” so they began seeking out illegal copies. And also a lot of people just wanted their music for free, but we’re fixing that (read: not fixing it at all) by arresting children and housewives and stuff. As for the impatient masses, though, record companies came up with the on-air/on-sale model, where a track is available for purchase the very instant it debuts on the radio.
Some notable artists have used the on-air/on-sale model already, but the majority of those are acts who had some sort of clout with the record buying public already - Gaga, Katy Perry, people who can shift records based on their name alone. So what to do with an artist like poor ginger Nic? No one is going to buy the debut solo track of a girl who was in a band without hearing it first – especially after the whole Nadine debacle (sad face) – so it would be unreasonable to expect an impressive chart placing after only a few days at radio.
But on the flip side, postponing the release could lead to some of those who want the track downloading it illegally, costing the label the revenue from those sales. So the record company had a choice – either sacrifice a decent chart debut and risk the headlines proclaiming Nicola’s solo career a flop before it had even begun, or make a few hundred extra pounds off of some £0.79 downloads.
And we all know which one they chose.
BUT FEAR NOT, SCOPISUBJECTS – for the “men upstairs” have thought this all through. For you see, Nicola's number-twenty-seven-charting 'Beat Of My Drum' is more of a “buzz single” than a "proper single, and is only intended to drum up interest for the NEXT single, which will have the brand recognition created by this one behind it. And THAT ONE (not THIS ONE) is the single that will properly launch the album, and be the one that everyone should care about.
So in essence, according to the record company, who is always honest and forthcoming and infallible in every way, “everything is fine and this isn’t a disaster because we all knew it wouldn’t be a hit anyway because it was never intended to be, unless when it’s actually released it BECOMES a hit, in which case that’s what we always intended and we’re very glad it turned out just as we had planned.”
Just so we’re clear on that. But the one thing we're not clear on still is whether the new on-air/on-sale model is a wise move for artists like Nicola, or should be confined to established acts who can sell records even without heavy airplay and weeks of promotion. Is it really worth sacrificing a top ten chart position for a few extra pennies? Or would a chart-storming debut create better buzz for the album and future singles than does a couple low-selling weeks of extra availability? We tend to think the latter, but we're sure whoever does the books at Music Accounting Towers would disagree.
However this whole thing turns out, though, we’d just like to point out that this album is shaping up to be a genuine masterpiece of pop, in a way that is deeply, deeply exciting. In fact, we'll go so far as to say tat all signs are pointing to it being the genre-defining record of the year that Gaga thought she was making but wasn’t. And no number 27 chart debut can take that away.
KATY PERRY KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A VIDEO AND THIS IS SOMETHING WE NEED TO ALL ACCEPT.
Ok we know we've been kind of hard on Katy, but we think that if we are all honest with ourselves we know exactly why. She's always come off kind of snotty, and had a forced "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I'M SUPER FUN AND WILL PROBABLY GIVE YOU A HANDY-J IF YOU BUY ME SHOTS" vibe. Plus she married that hairy scarecrow thing.
So it has been with a certain amount of dismay and dread that we have watched the whole promo campaign for 'Last Friday Night' unfold. First there was the literally epic single cover that showed up on "the blogs." Then there was the cute little teaser that introduced the world to KP's alter ego - the nerdy outcast with thousands of dollars of corrective dental gear named Katy Beth Terry. We knew the day would come when the video would come out in full, and that on that day our WORLD AS WE KNEW IT MAY BE CHANGED FOREVER.
And today, dear readers, is that day.
For there are a lot of amazing things in this song, and more importantly there are a lot of amazing things happening in this video. In fact, a rather large proportion of all the things in the video clip are actually amazing. 95%, to be exact.
There is the wheelchair kid from Glee who somehow learned how to walk for this clip, there is Hanson, there is DEBBIE GIBSON, there is Kenny G, and in a SURPRISE TWIST there is Katy Perry being an actually tolerable person.
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