Time for another guessing game — this time we pit you against Spin Magazine’s list of musicians picking their favorite albums of the year. After the jump, we’ve picked 10 of our favorite artists from their list and it’s up to you to match them with their favorite albums. Don’t worry — we gave you a hint by including a quote from each artist about their pick. Highlight the blacked-out boxes to check your answers, and learn what everyone from Bradford Cox to Wayne Coyne was listening to this year.
“I’m bluffin’ with my muffin.” Do these sound like the words of a chaste woman? Despite the sexually explicit images Lady Gaga conjures up when she sings about wanting to “take a ride on your vertical stick,” the singer recently announced that she’s celibate: “I’m celibate. Celibacy’s fine…It’s not really cool anymore to have sex all the time. It’s cooler to be strong and independent.”
It’s entirely conceivable that celibacy is just another bubble suit Gaga is trying on, attempting to sheath her personality under ever-increasing layers of fan-base feints. Of course, Gaga wouldn’t be the first notable musician to dodge hypersexuality by subverting the possibilities of actual, physical sexual expression. Considering the level of sexuality expressed in some of these musicians’ music, maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised if they gravitate towards celibacy; it’s like the butcher who is a vegetarian just to avoid taking the stench of flesh home with him. After the jump, see our list of notable musicians who are or once claimed to be celibate, some more surprising than others.
1. Jawbox, a beloved Washington D.C. punk band that had not performed together since 1997, reunited last night on Jimmy Fallon. There are no future concerts planned outside of the appearance. (video) [via ArtsBeat]
2. David Letterman is now on Twitter. [via PopCandy]
3. Steven Soderbergh‘s Spalding Gray documentary, And Everything Is Going Fine, will world premiere at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival. [via Variety]
4. Rivers Cuomo is on the mend after last weekend’s tour bus accident, which made a small puncture to his lung and cut his spleen. [via Vulture]
5. While we find this almost impossible to believe, an early cut suggests that MacGruber is the best SNL movie since Wayne’s World. [via Slashfilm]
1. Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo remains in a hospital in Amsterdam, NY following a tour bus accident yesterday. Remaining dates from the December Raditude Tour have been officially cancelled. [via TwentyFourBit]
2. The Zhu Zhu robotic hampster, the impossible to find toy that all the kids are asking for this season, may contain “toxic levels of tin and antimony.” [via The Daily Beast]
3. The staffs of the Louvre, Versailles, the Pompidou Centre, and several other major French museums are all on strike. What will this mean for their economy? [via Guardian]
4. A short clip from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has leaked online. [via Pop Candy]
5. eBookNewser, Mediabistro.com‘s thirteenth blog, has officially launched. The site will cover “eBooks, digital reading devices, publishing technology, smartphone reading applications, digital self-publishing, and the rapidly evolving future of digital publishing.”
Analyze Words is a new and super useful tool for determining other people’s personalities via their posts on Twitter. Developed by James W. Pennebaker, a University of Texas Professor of Psychology, along with his daughter Teal, Roger Booth and Chris Wilson, the program analyzes tweets based on not the “content words” but rather the “style words” — like articles and prepositions — to determine the mental state of the author.
Basically this means that you can plug in anyone’s Twitter handle — including your own — and watch it ranked in Emotional Style, Social Style and Thinking Style. We’ve been playing with this for hours. After the jump, check out some of our favorite tweet analyses of famous people.
Raditude, Weezer’s questionably-titled seventh album, hit stores yesterday — and it is silly pop music. But that’s okay, because Leighton Meester is on board. Come on, Blair! Don’t you know it’s so not cool to like a band’s recent work? You have to roll your eyes and talk about how only their old stuff is good. And like any group of self-respecting elitists, the Pitchfork reviewers (primarily Rob Mitchum, but the two other dudes who have reviewed Weezer albums in the last ten years too) hate hate hate every Weezer album after Pinkerton. Hate them.
Does this video make anyone else feel kind of sorry for Weezer? Sure, the crowd seems happy, but we can’t imagine Rivers enjoyed singing the tired hits of artists who are nearly half his age. Maybe he was being ironic (this is the same man who invented the “Wuggie”) and we just don’t get it. [via Stereogum]
On a side note, Lady Gaga just became “the third artist in the 16-year history of the Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart to collect three No. 1 songs from a debut album.” We don’t care if Kelsey sees her as a design icon, this is unacceptable.
