We generally try to avoid rejoicing in others’ misfortune, but as music lovers, we couldn’t help but cry tears of joy this morning when we saw the news that the Black Eyed Peas are going on an indefinite hiatus. But even so, there was a tinge of sadness behind the unconstrained delight that we won’t have to suffer through any more dreadful half time shows or Slash collaborations again any time soon, because before the Black Eyed Peas were the band responsible for a constant stream of songs that make you want to claw your own face off, they were a perfectly acceptable middle-ranking hip hop trio who made a couple of decent albums in the early 2000s. Where did it all go wrong? Join us as we chart the key points on the Black Eyed Peas’ journey from respected alt-hip hop crew to critically reviled commercial behemoth. … Read More
Black Eyed Peas
The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. That free Black Eyed Peas concert that was supposed to happen in Central Park last night to raise money for the Robin Hood Foundation was cancelled because of the weather, making an estimated 60,000 people really mad. Given the fact that Will.i.am has been forgetting his own lyrics lately, maybe this was… Read More
BuzzFeed’s 10 Most Viral Posts of the Week
Editor’s note: Each Friday, our internet-savvy friends over at BuzzFeed curate a post for us that’s filled with links to some of the most talked-about items on the web that week. Enjoy!
* Christina Aguilera caused quite a stir at the Super Bowl when she sang the wrong lyrics to the Star… Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. Ben Affleck is in early negotiations to direct Argo, an adaptation of Joshuah Bearman’s April 2007 Wired magazine article about the Tehran hostage crisis. George Clooney is co-producing the political thriller. [via
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. It’s official: Beavis and Butt-Head is returning to MTV this summer in all new episodes, but what’s unclear is whether the duo will still be in high school or not. [via Gawker]
2. The final season of Friday Night Lights — which has been airing on DirecTV for the past few months… Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. The 2011 Golden Globes nominations have been announced, and Black Swan, Glee, The Social Network, and The Kids Are All Right all scored multiple nods, while The King’s Speech leads the pack with seven. View the full list here.
2. Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter — who play a brother… Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. Lilith Fair has canceled ten more dates of the tour — which means no womyn rock for Salt Lake City, Montreal, Raleigh, Charlotte, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Birmingham, Austin, Houston, or Dallas. [via soldout.]
2. Can James Cameron really be working with the Black Eyed Peas on a 3D concert movie? [via… Read More
Social Media Sites as Hip-Hop Artists
Yesterday Russell Simmons wrote a piece for the Huffington Post entitled “Social Media Is the New Hip-Hop.” A sampling: “Social media is the rock and roll of the sixties, the hip-hop of the 80′s, the radical new equalizer, giving parity to new voices and leveling the access to culture, politics, and social justice.” While he lays on the Facebook love a little thick, it’s definitely worth a read. Inspired by the concept, we ask our hilarious writer friend Christopher R. Weingarten (whose 33 1⁄3 book on Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, is on shelves now), to reimagine some of hip-hop’s biggest names as social media sites. Click through to see what he came up with, and be sure to buy his book, dammit! … Read More
Visualizing the Best-Selling iTunes Songs of All Time
Apple iTunes is closing in on the titanic milestone of 10 billion songs sold, and they’ve just announced their best-selling songs of all-time. Looking at the titles listed is hard enough (nothing about “TiK ToK” will ever seem okay), but our masochistic tendencies inspired us to create word clouds for every one of the top 12 songs. (Thank you, Wordle.)
These clouds weigh the appearance of certain lyrics within the songs and create charts assigning size status based on word frequency. If you’ve ever bemoaned the state of modern commercial music, the inanity of looking at these consolidated lyrics will do nothing to ease your pain. But it is kind of funny. Commiserate with us after the jump. … Read More
Dissecting the Drama of the 2010 Grammy Performances
The 52nd annual Grammy Awards came and went last night and, as usual, music’s “biggest night” was pretty tame. Unlike the MTV Video Music Awards, the Grammys are when we’re supposed to take music seriously. Madonna can’t kiss Britney on stage or writhe around seductively in a wedding dress. Diana Ross can’t grab ‘Lil Kim’s boob. Kanye West definitely can’t interrupt Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech.
So while the Grammys are sort of like the nerdy older sister of music awards shows, we did notice a theme running through many of the evening’s theatrical performances: Blame it on Glee if you want, but musicals are suddenly cool again — and it’s clear most of the artists who performed last night were inspired by some of the Great White Way’s best. Here, we list our fave five performances from the Grammys and the big, brash musical numbers that may have inspired them. … Read More
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