The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
- Hospitalised singer George Michael "improving"
- Korean pop music out to conquer the world
- Beyonce's ''Live at Roseland'' almost worth the self-worship
| Hospitalised singer George Michael "improving" Posted: 30 Nov 2011 04:16 AM PST LONDON (Reuters) - British singer George Michael's health is improving, doctors treating him in Vienna for pneumonia said in a statement on Wednesday. The 48-year-old former Wham! frontman was hospitalised in the Austrian capital and diagnosed with severe pneumonia, forcing him to cancel the remainder of his European tour. "The latest development in Mr. Michael's case -- which has evolved from a severe pneumococcal infection -- necessitated intensive care due to its severity and extension," said professors Gottfried Locker and Christoph Zielinski. "We are happy to announce that Mr. Michael is improving steadily with an impressive regression of pneumonic symptoms and follows a steady rate of improvement as hoped. "As we said previously, complete rest and peace and quiet are mandatory." The doctors also appeared to address speculation in the British tabloid press that Michael was suffering further, potentially serious health complications and that he was receiving state-of-the-art treatment during his stay at the Vienna General Hospital. "There are no other health issues with regards to the patient other than the underlying pneumonic disorder, and no further measures had to be taken," they said. "Michael is receiving precisely the same treatment as any ordinary patient in Austria would receive at the hospital for this disease." The Grammy award-winning singer found fame in the 1980s with Wham! before going on to pursue a successful solo career. He has sold an estimated 100 million records and has a personal fortune estimated at 90 million pounds. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Korean pop music out to conquer the world Posted: 30 Nov 2011 02:10 AM PST LONDON, Nov 29 (Reuters) - A host of young Korean stars are taking to the stage in London, New York and beyond in a bid to crack one of the final global frontiers for Asian culture - pop music. ''K-pop,'' as Korean pop is called, has made major inroads into Japan, the world's second largest music market. But breaking into key countries further afield like Britain, Germany, France and, most crucially, the United States, has so far eluded acts who may be household names at home but remain virtual unknowns outside Asia. Korean bands are not the only ones trying to be the next Britney Spears, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber. Japanese artists, some of them ''J-pop'' superstars, have also looked overseas for new audiences, although the size of their own market, only just behind the United States in the world rankings, means they have less incentive. [ID:nL5E7MS3RP] ''It is a pain for a lot of these Japanese bands to make the effort to try and penetrate overseas markets,'' said Steve McClure, executive editor of McClure's Asia Music News and an authority on the region's music scene. ''Time spent doing that is time not spent here and it's a really fast-paced market and you have to work at it,'' he told Reuters, speaking from Japan. Foreign music accounts for around a quarter of Japanese record sales, and the top 10 albums on record are all by local artists. Hikaru Utada holds the record with ''First Love'' from 1999, while Mariah Carey is the biggest international artist. K-POP VS. J-POP McClure, like many others, believes that K-pop stands a better chance at success globally than J-pop, although even that is far from certain. The structure of Korea's relatively small music market is such that telecom companies control a large proportion of revenues, he said, meaning bands have an economic incentive to look abroad. And K-pop acts, often created and nurtured by savvy record companies like S.M. Entertainment, are being groomed for specific markets - learning Japanese, for example, and fitting in with Japan's musical mores. One recent success story has been the nine-member South Korean girl band Girls' Generation, whose first full-length Japanese album sold over 500,000 copies in Japan. McClure also argued that Korean pop acts, though often manufactured, were generally more professional than their Japanese rivals and produced a better sound. The most obvious, and biggest barrier to Asian acts breaking regions like Europe and North America is language. Since music is about communicating ideas and feelings, common language helps. And the prevalence of English makes it easier for a singer from Toronto, for example, than one from Tokyo. ''The language barrier is probably the biggest thing that sets us apart from the global (arena),'' said G.NA, a 24-year-old Canadian-Korean singer whose first language is English but who has found success in Korea. She, along with two other K-pop acts, will be appearing at London's 02 Academy Brixton on Dec. 5 as part of what the PR company handling the gig called ''The Invasion of K-Pop.'' It follows a K-pop concert at New York's Madison Square Garden in October. Those and other similar gigs outside Asia underline the ambition of K-pop acts and management companies to conquer the West and beyond. It may be less invasion and more a small-scale foray, but promoters say there are encouraging signs for K-pop. ''We can't spend too much money if there is no market for us,'' said Ronnie Yang, head of CABA Entertainment who is organising the London gig featuring artists from Cube Entertainment. ''But we feel this is the right stage for developing a new market - there is demand and it is higher than before.'' G.NA, for one, is not getting lost in the hype. Chance, she says, is as important as anything else. ''This industry is kind of like gambling,'' she told Reuters by telephone from Seoul. ''You lose something, and you may lose everything. You may win and win more than expected. I think there's a lot of luck. ''It does depend on how much we try, but no matter how hard we try, if the circumstances don't work out, then things may not work out the way we planned. This concert is huge - if people don't like it that could be the end of that.'' ''GENRE-SPECIFIC'' The wide pop genre may be the hardest market to crack abroad, but there has been success in the United States and elsewhere within narrower categories of music like classical, dance, rock and heavy metal. Japanese heavy metal band X Japan staged a North American tour in 2010 catching the attention of major news outlets, and have visited Europe, Latin America and Asia this year. L'Arc-en-Ciel, a Japanese rock group, has flirted with the United States and Europe, and plans a 2012 world tour. The event is limited in scale so far, however, with seven dates showing on the website including indigO2 in London with a capacity of around 2,500. The band's guitarist Ken alluded to a cultural barrier which has proven tough to break down. ''In Japan I am always listening to music from the U.S. and the UK,'' he told Reuters by telephone, speaking through a translator. ''But I never really got the impression people in the UK were listening to music from other parts of the world. So I'm really looking forward to getting a sense of how those people in Britain will perceive our music.'' McClure added: ''Music is meant to be the universal language...well, yes and no. ''There does seem to be this inability to accept an Asian face in the world pop music market place. I don't know why that is, as there are Asians who have done well in other spheres.'' Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Beyonce's ''Live at Roseland'' almost worth the self-worship Posted: 29 Nov 2011 08:36 PM PST LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com): No one ever need organize a tribute concert for Beyonce, since she's done such a good job staging her own self-homage with ''Beyonce: Live at Roseland,'' a concert DVD that also doubles as a self-directed episode of ''This is Your Life.'' The second half of the program, shot during a four-night stand in August, is a nearly complete run-through of her most recent album, the possibly underrated ''4.'' Fan reaction to the record hasn't been as enthusiastic as it was for Beyonce's earlier albums, which doesn't stop her from introducing it (without any real elaboration) as ''my most defining moment.'' Preceding this is a 30-minute medley/monologue billed as ''The Journey B 4,'' in which the pre-2011 greatest hits of Beyonce's and Destiny's Child are excerpted mostly in half-minute snippets, interrupted by a self-serving stream of fact- and figure-filled historical commentary. It's sort of like the inevitable middle act in a Diana Ross show dedicated to paying lip service to the Supremes. It's all highly impressive, and almost all a little annoying, if solipsism isn't your thing. Say this for Beyonce though: Even at her most egotistical, she's strangely never less than utterly likable. She might actually be the world's most good-natured megalomaniac. Part 1 was probably more fun to experience at Manhattan's Roseland ballroom than it is to watch on home video - especially if you already own a copy of ''I Am Yours - An Intimate Performance in the Encore Theater,'' a 2009 DVD filmed in Vegas that included a scripted Destiny's Child mega-medley almost identical to this disc's. In the intervening two years, apparently no one told her she needed a script doctor to reshape a life story that goes a little like this: ''And the hits just kept on coming! But the success just wasn't enough to keep Destiny's Child together With a lot of success comes a lot of negativity Now it's 2002, and I just finished co-starring in my first No. 1 movie, 'Austin Powers' They told me I didn't have one hit single (on 'Dangerously in Love'). I guess they were right. I had five!... All the hard work (portraying Etta James) paid off, since it got me my second Golden Globe nomination '' And then this: ''What do you do after 16 Grammys and millions of records sold? Whatever makes you happy!'' Repeated triumphs over show-biz adversity aside, no one will be mistaking this for an Elaine Stritch one-woman show. Part 2 proves far more satisfying, even though Beyonce may be overestimating ''4'' as the culmination of her career to date, if only because the tunes all last more than a minute each and there is no further boasting about the accolades she has earned from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Liberated from the lousy patter to pay tribute to songs instead of herself, she is fairly glorious. Naturally. Almost across the board, the live versions of the ''4'' material are more invigorating than the studio equivalents, with Beyonce's's eight-piece all-female band making everything sound like the great cross-pollination of contemporary urban and '70s soul you'd hope for. (You do have to wonder what that 10-piece string section - also all-female - is doing constantly sawing away directly behind Beyonce's, besides providing visual props, since you'd be hard-pressed to ever hear cellos and violins in the mix.) ''End of Time'' is a particular stunner, with drummer Cora Coleman-Dunham transforming an already martial beat into something like a one-woman marching band drum corps. And Bey is at her best on ''Love on Top,'' which takes what is a very tired diva stunt - repeated octave changes - so far over the top that the trick officially becomes spectacular again. It doesn't hurt that she's employing her mastery of multiple key changes not on some hackneyed ballad but on a fun, Motown-inspired romp. ''4'' had more balladry than we'd heard on a Beyonce's album in a while. Three of the first four songs featured from the album fall into that category, climaxing with the memorable sight of the singer kneeling on a piano top for ''1 + 1,'' allowing us a chance to focus exclusively on the super-humanness of her thighs and, sure, vocal prowess that seems almost irritatingly effortless. It's all good until the closing ''I Was Here,'' a self-celebratory anthem that seems to be arriving a few decades earlier than any superstar's valedictory ballad should. While Beyonce sings about the mark she's making on the world, you get random footage of the star traveling the world, admiring a portrait of Gandhi, earning more awards, greeting Make-a-Wish kids, and hanging with Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson, Obama, and Oprah. Oh, well. The straightforward performances were fun while they lasted, before they gave way not just to that terrible closing montage but also auteurist end credits that have Beyonce's giving herself title cards as director, executive producer, and co-show-director/choreographer. It may be up to true diva devotees, of course, to rightfully determine whether all this sweet self-congratulation counts as hubris when we're dealing with an actual goddess. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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