“Single Ladies” is not a Song Of The Year. A Riff Of The Year? Sure. A Viral Video Of The Year? Yes. But there are way, way better The-Dream compositions that could have easily swapped in.
the coverage of clive davis’ pre-grammy party seems especially obnoxious this year. maybe it’s because of the roster of performances shows just how little talent is on the radar of someone with the (admittedly made-up) title of “chief creative officer”? in addition to jennifer hudson paying tribute to barbra streisand and mary j. blige reminding everyone that she sang ‘no more drama’ and deserves at least a little more respect at the registers than she’s been garnering of late, we had:
Jamie Foxx wrapped up the show with Blame It, a partying bookend to the Black Eyed Peas’ lively opener of Boom Boom Pow and cover of Sweet Child O’ Mine, with Slash on guitar. In between, Ke$ha performed hit Tik Tok, Maxwell sang Pretty Wings and Bad Habits. Harry Connick Jr. sat at the piano to sing Come By Me, then did When Somebody Loves You with Carrie Underwood, who followed solo with Cowboy Casanova.
Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas teamed up for Sunshine of Your Love and Smooth.
“smooth”? really? i get the whole “let’s go back to 1999 in a time machine” feeling that the record industry has these days, and at least the current no. 1 single in america got some shine. but i this infatuation with the past — and the duets theme that’s apparently going to rule again at tonight’s awards-show telecast — seems even more ruinous in a time when younger audiences are caring about music less than ever.
how can the music business even claim to want to evolve when it’s so wedded to its past?
i might be a little u_u-faced over not live-blogging the grammys tonight. end of a mini-era, y’all. (at least i get to watch people imitating evel knievel while on snowmobiles instead, right?)
today i had a dude whose laptop was covered in stickers for things like “social media week” MANSPLAIN something to me! in person, no less! on the topic “how to use twitter properly,” of all things!!! i refrained from pulling the old “don’t you internet-know who i am” card, because it really wasn’t worth the effort. but i was kind of fascinated by the differences between the reaction elicited by “maura, youngish woman working for company x who didn’t @-reply me when i said hi to her on twitter” and the likely reaction that “maura dot com, person who has been online forever who didn’t @-reply me when i said hi to her on twitter” would have engendered. internet, am i right??
“I was arrested, the car was impounded
There was no way for me to avoid being grounded”
“V*****e W*****d’s whole “appropriation” thing is a marketing technique. They are deliberately baiting you. If what you want is for them to not be successful, you should stop talking about them.”
There is more! Go read it!
What if déjà vu is actually the result of the space-time continuum temporarily collapsing and sending afflicted people into super-super-super-short dream states?
Other songs recently featured on TV that debuted or reappeared on Hot Digital Tracks this week:
Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name” (SNL, Jan. 16; No. 152, 14,000 sold)
Ray LaMontagne, “Trouble” (American Idol, Jan. 20; No. 123, 16,000 sold)
General Larry Platt, “Pants On The Ground” (American Idol, Jan. 13; No. 194, 11,000 sold)
That horrible Jay-Z/Rihanna/Bono/The Edge song was the biggest-selling digital single from Hope For Haiti, selling 131,000 copies. Justin Timberlake’s “Hallelujah” moved 64,000 copies, while Jeff Buckley’s version re-entered the top 200 at No. 174 (12,000 copie sold). So much for my theory that the JT version would knock Ke$ha out of the top spot on the Hot 100! Maybe next week?)
Two new songs were ahead of both those on Hot Digital Tracks: Justin Bieber’s Ludacris-assisted “Baby” (No. 3, 198k) and Taylor Swift’s “Today Was A Fairytale” (No. 1, 325k — by contrast, her cover of Better Than Ezra’s “Breathless” moved 17k).
The album from which both those songs were taken debuted at No. 1 with 171,000 sales, becoming the first digital-only release to top the Billboard 200.
This January is looking pretty good for album sales, especially when compared to the last two years! Anomaly or sign that the biz hit bottom with Dreamgirls?
So I am in Aspen on a sorta-copywriting assignment for Jeep. I say “sorta-copywriting” because the writing in question will be done on Twitter. Perhaps I should call it “truncated-copywriting” instead? I’m going to be covering the X Games, which start tomorrow; you can follow my exploits here, if you’re dying to find out what I’m up to and/or who won the snowboarding competition.
It’s really pretty here — I’ve never been to the Rockies before, but the vistas are pretty breathtaking. Like the Poconos, but grander! (Cue complaints from Western-state partisans.)
I’m here until Monday, and hoping to see as many sights as possible in the few hours that I’m not working. If you have recommendations, I’m all ears!
Also as someone who really loves tiny airports, the fact that I could see the baggage from my flight being loaded in made my heart soar.
Ribbons? RIBBONS? My ankles aren’t goddamn Maypoles.
Now, the Plain Janes — those are shoes.
