The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| New Brit invasion: Coldplay, Sam Smith set fastest-selling album sales of the year Posted: 03 Jun 2014 01:00 AM PDT British band Coldplay and singer songwriter Sam Smith top the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic, posting records for fastest-selling albums of the year so far. Coldplay's new album topped the Billboard 200 album chart on May 28 in its opening week, notching the highest weekly sales by any artist so far this year and scoring the British rock group its fourth No 1 album on the chart. Ghost Stories, the sixth studio album from the quartet fronted by Chris Martin, sold 383,000 copies in the US last week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. Downloads accounted for 64% of total sales for Ghost Stories, Billboard said.  Coldplay: The UK pop rock band scored its fourth No 1 on the US Billboard Album chart with its latest offering Ghost Stories (below). Michael Jackson's posthumous release Xscape fell to third from second, while the hit soundtrack to Disney's US$1.2bil (RM3.9bil) grossing animated film Frozen held at fourth place. Last week's top album, The Black Keys' Turn Blue, dropped to fifth. Meanwhile, in the UK, British singer songwriter Sam Smith's debut album went straight to the top of the charts with his debut album In The Lonely Hour on June 1, the Official Charts Company said.  Sam Smith: The UK singer songwriter's R&B-tinged debut album In The Lonely Hour (below) went straight to the top of the UK's album chart in its first week of release, posting the year's fastest-selling figures for a debut album. The 22-year-old's album has sold 101,000 copies over the last seven days, making it the fastest-selling debut album of the year so far – and knocking Coldplay's Ghost Stories into second place after a week at No 1. The album, which Smith has described as "all about unrequited love", was apparently inspired by "a guy that I fell in love with last year, and he didn't love me back." The publicly out Smith also said that working on the album was a way to exorcise the emotional aftermath. "I think I'm over it now, but I was in a very dark place. I kept feeling lonely in the fact that I hadn't felt love before." Coincidentally, Smith's melancholy album draws thematic parallel with Coldplay's Ghost Stories which was apparently written and recorded during the year that bandleader Chris Martin grew apart from his actress wife Gwyneth Paltrow. The couple, who married in 2003, announced their "conscious uncoupling" on her website Goop in March, just weeks before Coldplay released their new album, which critics have noted is more subdued and personal than their previous work. – Reuters |
| 'Metal Knight': Christopher 'Saruman' Lee releases metal album at 92 Posted: 29 May 2014 01:05 AM PDT Screen legend Christopher Lee celebrates his 92nd birthday by releasing a heavy metal mini-album entitled Metal Knight. The actor, known to younger fans for his portrayal of Saruman in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, is a long-time devotee of heavy metal – a genre partly inspired by the horror films he starred in earlier in his career – and already has several album releases under his belt. He turned 92 on May 27. "I associate heavy metal with fantasy because of the tremendous power that the music delivers," explained Lee, who possesses a booming, classically-trained bass voice, and is probably the oldest metal performer in rock history.  Man of metal: Christopher Lee (above), best known to younger film fans as Saruman in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, is also a metal beast. Celebrating his 92nd birthday, the actor who was knighted by Prince Charles in 2009, released Metal Knight (below), a mini-album of covers from the Man Of La Mancha, Carmen and Frank Sinatra's My Way. Cementing his credentials within the rock community, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi presented the star with the Spirit of Metal prize at the Golden Gods Awards in 2010 for his services to metal music. In December last year, the actor became the oldest ever performer to place in the US Billboard singles chart with his record Jingle Hell. Metal Knight features four tracks and three alternative edits. Two songs are from the Man of La Mancha musical: I, Don Quixote and The Impossible Dream. The others are The Toreador March from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen, in its original French, and My Way, popularised by Frank Sinatra. "As far as I am concerned, Don Quixote is the most metal fictional character that I know," said Lee. "Single handed, he is trying to change the world, regardless of any personal consequences. It is a wonderful character to sing". – AFP/RelaxNews |
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