The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| Posted: 10 Feb 2013 02:13 AM PST JUSTIN Timberlake will join Elton John, Taylor Swift, Jack White, Rihanna, Sting, Bruno Mars and other stars performing at the 55th Grammy awards show. Six-time Grammy winner Timberlake's appearance at the awards will come on the eve of his first studio album for seven years, titled The 20/20 Experience. Other artistes already lined up for the music industry's biggest awards show include Kelly Clarkson, Ed Sheeran, Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert, The Black Keys, fun., The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons and Carrie Underwood. The awards ceremony will be hosted by veteran rapper LL Cool J. |
| List of nominees for 2013 Grammys Posted: 09 Feb 2013 10:05 PM PST LOS ANGELES: Here is a list of the nominees in the main categories at the 55th Grammys, to be held Sunday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The show starts at 5:00 pm (0100 GMT Monday). Record Of The Year (for producers of song):
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| Posted: 09 Feb 2013 09:18 PM PST She came, she saw and she conquered. Whitney Houston stole our hearts with her gift of song, as some of our writers recall. > I WANTED to be Whitney. Didn't we all? And when the karaoke rage first hit us in the 1990s, it gave us the chance to pretend to be her. No karaoke joint was complete without her songs and no one could resist having her on their list. And so we paid homage to her by singing her greatest hits, more often than not badly, but sang them we did. The beauty of Whitney's songs was that they were near impossible to master but easy to sing. With a mike in hand, whether it was Saving All My Love For You ("A few stolen moments, that's all that we share..."), or Greatest Love Of All (I believe the children are our are future...) or I Will Always Love You (So, goodbye. Please, don't cry, we both know I'm not what you, you need...), we could launch into them with ease. We would try to imitate the wobble or snarl she put into certain parts, or vibrate our lower jaw the way she did, but no one could match her hugeness of voice, control, range and virtuosity. We loved her songs because she put so much emotion and heart into them so that we believed she was the conflicted mistress of a married man; or the woman who understands that the most important love is to be found in herself; or celebrity who had to give up the man she loved. She made it all unforgettably real. And that's why we became her great pretenders in the karaoke lounge. – June H.L. Wong > TRYING to recall when the name Whitney Houston came to memory is a tough one. I guess using her songs as lullabies for me burned that mezzo-sopranic voice of hers into my childhood memories. Mom was a huge Houston fan. As she is a soprano too, mom would be humming her songs while dicing the meat for lunch or stir-frying rice in the wok. More pertinently, I grew to listen to my elder brother fingering away on the piano to How Will I Know and even more so, Greatest Love Of All. These classic pieces were then passed on to me, which became my practice pieces as well. Mom would also get my teacher to find different arrangements of the pieces for me to play on. Watching her deliver the Star-Spangled Banner at Tampa Stadium, Florida in 1991 was just so profound, which coincided with a period in my life when I began to embrace the American culture. Her mammoth crescendos made my heart cry with the song and no doubt, it was the greatest Superbowl history has ever seen. When her timeless movie The Bodyguard was finally available on Malaysian television, I think no movie fan would ever forget the scene where Houston stopped her pilot and ran down the plane to Kevin Costner's arms with her highest-grossing hit I Will Always Love You being played. Later on, she went down a similar route to the likes of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, and it was saddening to see her struggle with her married life and drugs. But then again, who could ever forget her golden moments and the standard she set for the younger generation of female artistses? Houston's songs have stood and will continue to stand the test of time for she still is the "greatest love of all" to all music scribes out there. – Christine Cheah > CALL it a guilty pleasure, but there was something that made me feel all fuzzy and warm inside when I first heard Whitney Houston's rendition of Greatest Love Of All in the mid 1980s. While I no longer indulge in this particular genre of music, the memory of the simple electric piano intro and Whitney's sweet voice gliding over it remains etched in my mind ... forever, it seems, since I still recall it so well ... to this day. I remember so distinctly staggering down the stairs of my home at 6am (after my dad would switch the fan off in the bedroom I shared with my brothers ... a sure fire way of getting us to wake up, because it would get so stuffy) and instinctively switching on the radio on the family stereo system in the hall. I'd be all blurry-eyed and barely awake, and for some reason, Greatest Love Of All would almost certainly be played between the 6-7am belt on the Blue Network (later Radio Four and today, Traxx FM). It was a combination of the hope in the words and her luscious voice, and as a song, there aren't too many better written and arranged pop songs, honestly. Why, the song was even referenced in a movie that easily eschewed everything pop-related, School Of Rock. Remember that scene in the canteen when Jack Black quotes the opening lines from the song to his fellow teachers, hoping to justify his position as a teacher at the school? While it was funny, it also confirmed the song's place in popular culture. Sure, Whitney didn't write it – George Benson did. But it's really Whitney's version that reached out to the world. When I was 12, I attended my secondary school's Variety Show (an annual showcase of the school's talent pool). The year was 1987. A couple of sixth form girls did a dance routine to Whitney's I Wanna Dance With Somebody. I was so infatuated with one of the two girls and later bumped into them at the canteen. I was dying to tell them I loved their dance routine, but when words failed me, I just hummed I Wanna Dance With Somebody to myself and was content to simply replay their performance in my head. I was completely immersed in rock music by this point and wouldn't give pop music a second chance, yet, when it came to the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympic Games, I was once again cast under Whitney's spell. One Moment In Time is still one of the best games songs ever sung. Call it up on YouTube now, I dare you. And tell me that's not a good song. Yes, Whitney seemed to be everywhere ... all the time, too. And my final memory of her all-encompassing prowess was when I worked as a waiter at the coffee house of a hotel in Ipoh. I always hoped to get the afternoon or night shift, which would mean I could catch the resident Filipino band on its nightly stint (and also so that I could sleep in late). And my favourite chore during the band's set was wiping the plates, dishes and cutlery – I would be doing it behind the stage. The lead singer of the band, this really cute Filipina, used to do a jaw-dropping version of I Will Always Love You. Sure, it was two years later from when Whitney's version hit the airwaves as part of the soundtrack of the godawful The Bodyguard, but the song clearly had lasting power. I would hold my breath when it came to that break near the end of the song, where ... wham!!!! ... she would burst in with the chorus at a higher key. Talk about drama! While I was always enthralled by her rendition, Whitney's version would make the hair on my neck stand on end during that part of the song. It's crazy when you think Whitney had less than 10 years of a great run, yet, she's carved her place among the legends ... the Aretha Franklins, the Tina Turners, the Diana Rosses ... That said, just listening to Greatest Love Of All again today can send shivers down my spine. I still can't put my finger on what it is that really does it for me. I'm compelled to think that nostalgia has a part to play, but the more I listen, the more I'm convinced that there won't be too many pop songs as endearing as this again ... and that's a tribute to the inimitable Whitney Houston. – N. Rama Lohan Related Story: |
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