The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| Posted: PHARRELL Williams is really making waves this summer! The rapper/singer/songwriter/producer is involved in not one but two of today's top hits – Blurred Lines (Robin Thicke and T.I.) and Get Lucky (Daft Punk). These two tracks are on high rotation in local radio stations, and topping the charts, too. Apart from Blurred Lines and Get Lucky, Pharrell also has a string of other tracks that are released this summer. Twisted – Usher, featuring Pharrell Lose Yourself To Dance – Daft Punk featuring Pharrell 2 Chainz, or Tauheed Epps, will be releasing his second album, B.O.A.T.S II: Me Time, soon and Feds Watching is the lead single. The video (explicit version) is out now on 2 Chainz's official YouTube channel. Happy – Pharrell Williams |
| Posted: Happy-sad — that's the hallmark of She & Him. On a Tuesday afternoon in the basement studios of Capitol Records, She & Him was recording a volley of live tracks for a few radio station sessions. Singer Zooey Deschanel finished an umpteenth take of the duo's single I Could've Been Your Girl, and she felt that something was sounding a little false. "Do you have any ribbon mikes? We're just not used to sounding digital," she told the session engineer. "Maybe an RCA-77?" That specific taste in microphones showed her technician's ear – and the craftsmanship that goes into the winsome summery music she makes with longtime collaborator M. Ward. With the release of She & Him's fourth album, Volume 3, even once-skeptical audiences are coming around and admitting that they are real artisans of classic pop. She & Him began as a side gig carved out of Deschanel's and Ward's respective acting and solo musical careers in 2008, but the act has since become as big a venture as the duo's day jobs. As might be expected of an actor-fronted band, there was plenty of early groaning (it's hard to read much about the band without Deschanel's New Girl tagline "Simply Adorkable" popping up somewhere). But her voice was undeniable – a bright, resonant instrument with a hint of Patsy Cline – and Ward's pristine, tasteful arrangements conjured the AM of decades gone by. The robust and immaculately written Volume 3 should put any last grumbly holdouts on notice. The album is the duo's most "produced" yet, full of the old Hollywood string arrangements and brass lines and stacked harmonies that make a simple tune take on new shades. But it's also home to some of Deschanel's most acute and acidic songwriting. The first lyrics on the album, from I've Got Your Number, Son, are as self-aware a depiction of dysfunction as a songwriter can ask for: "What's a man without all the attention? Well, he's just a man ... who am I without all your affection? Well, I'm a nobody too." The jaunty, family-band singalong Together quietly implies that, well, love stinks and nobody really understands anybody: "We all go through it together, but we all go at it alone." "We're always talking about that mix of happy-sad, where a dark melody gets an upbeat lyric or vice versa," Deschanel said. "I love that Beatles song And I Love Her for that reason. I find sadness and strife to be so much more interesting with an upbeat melody." Of course, it's hard to hear a song like that or the album's single I Could've Been Your Girl without reading subtext from her recent real-life divorce from Death Cab For Cutie and Postal Service singer Ben Gibbard (a subject she doesn't talk about in interviews). But that very public pain lends some even darker corners to songs that on the surface seem aglow with nostalgia and sweetness. "People who say, 'There's no grit there,' have no use for someone like Sam Cooke or the Beach Boys," Ward said. "The productions are rich because her songs are rich." To listen to the duo tout the emotional virtues of diminished chords and the deep cuts of Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry (whose Baby gets a cover treatment on the album) is to hear two lifelong students of the best American songwriting at work. Yes, they know their arsenal of hipster-cute endearment is deep – watch Deschanel's vamping in her self-directed video for I Could Have Been Your Girl for proof. Few are immune: At Tuesday's session, one radio interviewer took his last seconds with the duo to have Deschanel record a congratulatory message for his daughter's recent track-team accomplishments. But She & Him knows that clean fun and serious skill aren't opposed in pop music. They're both necessary, and committed miserabilists can go jump in a lake. "I remember having this friend in school who said she didn't like the Beach Boys," Deschanel said. "And in that moment I knew we couldn't be friends anymore." – Los Angeles Times/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
| Rolling Stones debuts at Glastonbury Posted: FIFTY one years after it was formed, British music icon the Rolling Stones finally made its debut last Saturday night at one of today's biggest music festivals in the world – Glastonbury (in Somerset, England). The band played on the festival's infamous Pyramid Stage, which was expanded this year to fit a capacity of 100,000 people. However, according to reports, a mass of 170,000 fans stormed grounds to see Mick Jagger and gang strut their stuff on stage.This was the first time Rolling Stones had participated in Glastonbury, which first began 43 years ago at essentially the same venue.
Meanwhile, the festival also saw performances by bands and artistes like Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Primal Scream, The Smashing Pumpkins, Public Enemy, Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, Ben Howard, Arctic Monkeys and Dizzee Rascal. Check out the BBC's video of Primal Scream – led by Robert "Bobby" Gillespie in a neon pink suit (pic below) – playing its hit, Rocks, at Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage last weekend: http://youtu.be/ji5DTEOZnnY
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