New CD Releases, December 18: Mary J. Blige, Rivers Cuomo, Lupe Fiasco
Mary J. Blige "Growing Pains"
The acclaimed R&B vocalist returns with her ninth studio CD, "Growing Pains," which follows the multi-platinum smash "The Breakthrough." The first two singles from the album are "Just Fine" and "Worth That," the latter of which is being featured in an ad campaign for Apple's iPod.
The new set features guest spins and production work by such hip-hop/R&B stars as Dr. Dre, The Neptunes, Ludacris and Usher.
Many expect that "Growing Pains" will not only debut at the top of the charts, but also continue on to be one of the big sellers of early 2008. Those expectations are consistent with Blige's track record.
The superstar is one of the most successful R&B performers in the business. To date, she's sold more than 40 million CDs and grabbed six Grammy Awards. She's also up for two more trophies at the upcoming Grammy Awards presentation.
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Rivers Cuomo "Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo"
The mastermind behind the indie-rock band Weezer releases a compilation of demos recorded between 1992 and 2007. The 18-track disc includes some cover songs, tunes from the singer-songwriter's unfinished rock musical "Songs From the Black Hole," and the original demo for "Buddy Holly."
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Lupe Fiasco "Lupe Fiasco's The Cool"
The Chicago rapper, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, returns with a follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, last year's "Lupe Fiasco's Food and Liquor." That debut was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including Best Rap Album. Fiasco is also known for appearing on the hit "Touch the Sky" from Kanye West's "Late Registration."
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Original Soundtrack
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
The film adaptation of the hugely successful musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is scheduled to open in theaters on Dec. 21. The big-budget movie stars Johnny Depp ("Pirates of the Caribbean") in the title role and was directed by Tim Burton ("Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas"). The soundtrack features the popular songs from the musical, composed by the team of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, including "The Worst Pies in London."
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Jaheim "The Makings of a Man"
The hip-hop star delivers his fourth album, which follows last year's chart-topper "Ghetto Classics." This album--his first not to use "Ghetto" in the title--features the single "Never."
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Original Soundtrack "Blade Runner Trilogy--25th Anniversary"
Big fans of director Ridley Scott's highly influential sci-fi flick--and by big fans, we mean really, really huge fans--might want to think about buying the "Blade Runner" anniversary special edition. It's an epic, three-disc set, featuring the complete music from the film--which, reportedly, encompasses more than what was featured on the original soundtrack--and a whole lot of other things that should interest fans. Notably, there are spoken word segments from such luminaries as Scott, Roman Polanski and Oliver Stone.
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Other new releases:
Miguel Bose, "Papitour" (Warner)
Chingy, "Hate It Or Love It" (Disturbing Tha Peace)
Kirk Franklin, "Fight of My Life" (Gospocentric)
Helalyn Flowers, "A Voluntary Coincidence" (Alfa Matrix)
Laura Pausini, "Live in San Siro" (Warner)
Emma Shapplin, "Carmine Meo" (EMI)
Various Artists, "WWE Raw's Greatest Hits" (Sony)
Cristian Vogel, "The Never Engine" (Tresor)
Keller Williams, "12" (Sci Fidelity)
Soundtracks and scores:
"Darfur Now" (Lakeshore)
"Resident Evil: Extinction" (Lakeshore)
"Sweeney Todd Soundtrack Highlights" (Nonesuch)
"There Will Be Blood" (Warner)
Morissette Experiments With New 'Flavors'
Alanis Morissette will burst back onto the scene next spring with the album "Flavors of Entanglement." The set balances world- and folk-influenced tracks against the experimental pop leanings of producer Guy Sigsworth (Bjork, Madonna).
"When I heard the song 'Let Go' by [Sigsworth's band] Frou Frou, I listened over and over again. I was blown away by it. I called him on the phone myself and after a couple of conversations, I could tell we were going to be on the same page," Morissette tells Billboard.com.
The Canada native envisioned an album that pulled in her various musical interests, "a combination of everything" from organic instruments to hip-hop beats. Plus, "it's the first time since I was 16 I've had a boy back-up sing on one of my album. I'm finally giving them a chance," she laughs.
The effort, which she hopes to whittle down to 11 tracks in the following weeks, includes "Not As We," which features only piano and vocals, and "Moratorium," which is "essentially a song about my readiness to stop repeating bad patterns. I've kicked some of those in my life."
Thematically, the album explores Morissette's personal struggles over the last few years and the more political struggles in the world over. "Really, in the end, the personal struggles are political. Our emotions align themselves with larger symptomatic things in the world," Morissette explains. "We face a large war out there, but [the album] more closely reflects the war in peoples' living rooms... the icy silence at home, versus the big cold war."
As previously reported, Morissette signed on to the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1985 sci-fi novel "Radio Free Albemuth," which started shooting in October. Morissette, who has acted since she was a preteen, said her screen ambitions have been a welcome escape from the music industry at times.
Fans eager to hear new material can catch the aritst on the road with matchbox twenty starting in January.
Leno, O'Brien return without writers
NEW YORK - NBC's two late-night franchises are coming back. Will the laughs come with them?
Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien plan a Jan. 2 return with fresh episodes, ending two months of reruns brought on by the writers' strike, the network said Monday. But until the strike is settled, the hosts will be on their own.
While late night TV will forge ahead without joke writers, they won't be far from anyone's mind.
"I will make clear, on the program, my support for the writers and I'll do the best version of `Late Night' I can under the circumstances," O'Brien said in a written statement. "Of course, my show will not be as good. In fact, in moments it may very well be terrible."
Both NBC hosts indicated it was a tortuous decision for them to come back, torn by their support for the writers and knowledge that several dozen other staff members would be laid off if the shows remained dark. Some of the late-night stars covered employees' salaries during the holiday season.
Leno said that with talks breaking down and no further negotiations scheduled, he felt it was his responsibility to get his 100 non-writing staff members back to work.
Mike Sweeney, chief of the "Late Night" staff of 14 writers, said "we all know what a difficult position Conan is in. He's been incredibly supportive of us."
Sweeney said he didn't want to comment on his boss' decision to come back without the writers. The "Tonight" show's chief writer, walking the picket line in Burbank, Calif., was similary reluctant to criticize his boss' decision.
"I'm happy that he's been able to hold out this long," said Joe Madeiros. "He's not the only one. There's a lot of pressure on late-night hosts.
The union itself offered no reaction.
The strike has left the nation's public discourse without its laugh track as the baseball steroids scandal spread, pop stars Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears continued to spiral out of control and the presidential campaign heated up in anticipation of the first votes.
NBC's announcement could make it easier for other programs like Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" or "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on ABC to return. Also, the WGA is talking about a separate deal with David Letterman's production company so his CBS show can return with its writers.
The development could cut both ways for the union. Suspended late-night programming has been the most visible sign of the strike for the viewing public, and bringing the shows back could remove a significant piece of leverage. At the same time, the hosts could come back and pepper their network bosses with ridicule in support of the writers' cause.
That's what Johnny Carson did in 1988, when he similarly returned to the air after two months off during a writers' strike then. Carson worked without writers for three weeks, then reached a separate deal with the union to bring his staff back.
"We've been taking shots at NBC for 15 years," noted Jeff Ross, "Late Night" executive producer.
The networks have been suffering in the ratings without the live programming, giving ABC's "Nightline" its biggest boost since the days of Ted Koppel.
Both Ross and Debbie Vickers, executive producer of "Tonight," said they are beginning to contemplate how their shows will be different. It's not even clear whether Leno will open the show with a traditional monologue, Vickers said, although she noted that Carson kept that element even without his joke writers by writing his own.
But Carson was not a guild member, whereas Leno and O'Brien are. For that and other practical reasons, they may be forced to return to an old-fashioned notion of a talk show by spending more time with guests. In recent years, the late-night programs have relied much more heavily on prepared comedy bits.
"There are a lot of ways we can go with this," Ross said. "Now we have to be serious and figure it out."
If Letterman's Worldwide Pants production company strikes a separate deal, it raises the prospect of a Letterman show with its writers competing for a prolonged period against Leno without writers. It could give Letterman a competitive edge in a time slot where Leno has dominated in the ratings for the past decade.
A similar imbalance is possible an hour later: Worldwide Pants owns Craig Ferguson's CBS talk show that airs directly opposite O'Brien.
"It certainly isn't our first choice to go against them with writers," Vickers said. "But this is beyond our control."
With Kimmel's show ultimately controlled by the Walt Disney Co. and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" by Viacom, it's far less likely they would strike separate deals with writers.
Both the NBC show executives said that many potential guests privately expressed a reluctance to cross picket lines to appear. But as the strike has continued, that opposition is melting, they said. Neither of the programs has announced any bookings for their returns.
On Monday, the writers guild said it would meet with the Directors Guild of America to discuss new media and DGA studies on the issue. The directors guild has said it could begin its own contract talks with the alliance as early as January, which could increase pressure on the writers to reach a deal.
"Walk Hard" soundtrack ups ante for parodies
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Creating a parody soundtrack for film is no easy task.
Just ask writer-director Jake Kasdan, who spent eight months with co-writer Judd Apatow and a gang of songwriters in the studio recording songs for the "biopic" comedy "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," which Columbia Pictures will release in theaters on December 21.
"It was daunting at the onset," Kasdan says. "We knew part of the appeal to this was the opportunity to go for it right away and we enlisted the help of a bunch of really talented people."
To add pressure to the process, there's the Holy Grail of parody soundtracks -- "This Is Spinal Tap" -- looming in the background. It looms over any movie creating a canon of funny songs for a fake rock star.
"'Spinal Tap' is perfect and the record is insanely great," Kasdan says. "That's the kind of gold standard you aspire to when you're entering this world."
When Kasdan and Apatow sat down to write songs for larger-than-life musician Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly), they cast a wide net to bring in songwriters and a few musical legends to help pen music that spans seven decades.
"We wanted the music to be good music, even though it's a parody, even though it's funny," says Lia Vollack, president of worldwide music for Columbia Pictures. "Bad music unfortunately in a movie isn't funny, it's just bad. It actually becomes its own joke."
By the first draft, Kasdan and Apatow, who unlike their "Spinal Tap" counterparts are not musicians, had created titles and lyric fragments suggesting the kinds of songs they wanted for each sequence of the film. From there, they collaborated with a core group of songwriters, including producer Michael Andrews, Dan Bern, Mike Viola -- who lent his vocals for 1996's "That Thing You Do!" -- and with Reilly. They also recruited several indie artists (and friends), including Antonio Ortiz, Gus Seyffert, Charlie Wadhams and Benji Hughes.
Veteran musician Marshall Crenshaw was brought in to tackle the title track, the Johnny Cash-inspired "Walk Hard."
"It was an important one," Kasdan says of the song. "He just nailed it and just found that basic thing, that riff."
To tap into Cox's political period, Bern, known for his Bob Dylan folk influences, came up with "Royal Jelly," a song Kasdan says is "marked by incomprehensible metaphors." Cox also sings a pair of politically incorrect protest songs that take up the causes of "midgets," "injuns" and others.
Composer and producer Van Dyke Parks, who collaborated with Beach Boys singer Brian Wilson for the ill-fated "Smile" album, was brought in to capture the essence of late 1960s experimental sounds. Parks penned a three-minute, 45-second acid trip titled "Black Sheep," which is highlighted in the film by Cox's in-studio drug-influenced eccentricities.
By the end of the process, hundreds of songs were in the can, and they were eventually boiled down to 15 for the soundtrack. An additional 15 songs are on iTunes.
The finished product is certainly creating a buzz in the film and music community. "Walk Hard" and "Let's Duet" made the shortlist of 59 songs in contention for an Oscar nomination.
"I think the way this particular soundtrack is structured, and based on who's writing for it, it takes the 'Spinal Tap' experience up to 12," says Downtown Records president Josh Deutsch, who worked on parody soundtracks for "Music & Lyrics" and "Borat."
But can "Walk Hard" go down the same legendary path as "Spinal Tap?"
From elaborate press kits complete with concert T-shirts and "Walk Hard" lyrics "scribbled" on a cocktail napkin to the monthlong "Cox Across America Tour," Dewey Cox seems to be walking hard in that direction.
Film Institute lists year's 10 best
LOS ANGELES - The crime tale "No Country for Old Men," the oil saga "There Will Be Blood" and the legal drama "Michael Clayton" were among critical favorites that landed on the American Film Institute's list of the year's 10 best movies.
Also on the AFI's list, released Sunday, were the jewel-heist story "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," the stroke-victim tale "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," the road drama "Into the Wild," the pregnancy comedies "Juno" and "Knocked Up," the animated rodent comedy "Ratatouille," and the sibling comic drama "The Savages."
Unlike other film honors, the institute does not rank films or pick one as the year's best. The filmmakers behind the top-10 choices will be honored at a luncheon Jan. 11.
Many of the films on the list picked up Golden Globe nominations last week and are expected to compete for Academy Awards. Nominations come out Jan. 22.
Among Globe best-drama nominees were "No Country for Old Men," Joel and Ethan Coen's Texas thriller starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin; "There Will Be Blood," Paul Thomas Anderson's California oil-boom epic with Daniel Day-Lewis; and "Michael Clayton," Tony Gilroy's corporate-lawsuit drama starring George Clooney.
The AFI also released a top 10 list of TV shows and movies for 2007, featuring "Dexter," "Everybody Hates Chris," "Friday Night Lights," "Longford," "Mad Men," "Pushing Daisies," "The Sopranos," "Tell Me You Love Me," "30 Rock" and "Ugly Betty."
The top 10 lists were chosen by two 13-member panels, one each for movies and television. Members included actress Melissa Gilbert, filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan and critics Leonard Maltin, David Ansen and Richard Schickel.