Happy New Year from all of us here at www.anythingbut.com!!
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
To celebrate, here are Five Great Performances of Auld Lang Syne!!
Is 'Empire State of Mind' the new 'New York, New York'?
It has been nearly impossible lately to surf the radio without hearing Jay-Z rapping about his gritty-to-glamorous ascent in the big city as Alicia Keys swoons about the "concrete jungle where dreams are made of . . ."
The song "Empire State of Mind" was the biggest hit at Yankee Stadium this fall, and then, just days before Jay-Z turned 40, it gave the rap legend his first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 list. And if it wasn't already ubiquitous, its beat blaring from the radio in almost every corner store, last month Keys issued her own version on her new album and has been regularly performing this salute to the aspirations of native New Yorkers.
For the last three decades, Frank Sinatra's " New York, New York," from the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, has ruled as the city's sentimental favorite -- in ballparks, at weddings and to signal determination. Over the same three decades, hip-hop grew to be the dominant force in pop music and culture and Jay-Z one of its leading citizens. Like any good New Yorker, he has made no secret of his ambition to topple what came before him; and since there are few left to take on, he's trying to elbow aside the Chairman of the Board with an anthem reflective of a new generation.
But can any hip-hop song prove as universal and enduring as Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train" (written by Billy Strayhorn) or Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's " Manhattan"? Or, for that matter, that other easy-to-whistle "New York, New York," by Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green,which explains, "the Bronx is up and the Battery down, the people ride in a hole in the ground"?
The answer is maybe, maybe not.
From the very start of "Empire State," Jay-Z's lyrics sum up his rise from street kid to celebrity as well as his vision of New York in line with anthems that precede him:
Yea I'm out that Brooklyn
Now I'm down in TriBeCa
Right next to DeNiro
But I'll be hood forever
I'm the new Sinatra and . . . since I made it here
I can make it anywhere.
Even the idea of a "new Sinatra" feels wrong to Jonathan Schwartz, a radio personality from New York with an encyclopedic knowledge of the singer. During a phone interview, Schwartz hums one of his favorite ballads of the city, the 1934 slow-tempo "Autumn in New York," by Vernon Duke, who composed "April in Paris."
"These songs are . . . for everyone, forever," he says, complaining that the street music of today "won't last because it has no melody and very little that even rhymes. Words like 'home' and 'alone' don't rhyme and yet that's what these rappers use. That never would have been with a Vernon Duke or Oscar Hammerstein . . ."
But composer John Kander, who with the late Fred Ebb wrote the musical "Cabaret" as well as Sinatra's enduring anthem, is intrigued by Jay-Z's ode to the big city.
"I thought it was kind of interesting because it juxtaposed totally different styles of music," says Kander, 82, explaining it was first brought to his attention by another musical theater star, 29-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, who mixed rap with other styles in the Broadway hit "In the Heights."
Other than suggesting that an anthem usually embodies some measure of hope, Kander could not -- and would not -- attempt to explain what makes a city connect with a certain song; he merely pointed out that "Empire State of Mind" has as much of a chance of enjoying another 30 years of popularity as his did 30 years ago. "It doesn't matter what I think or what the critics say," says Kander. "It's what people think and feel and hang on to."
Kander and Ebb wrote and then rewrote "New York, New York" for a 1977 Martin Scorsese movie of the same name. ( Robert De Niro, who costarred with Liza Minnelli, didn't think their first version was "strong enough," so out of sheer anger of being told what to do by an actor, they reworked it in 45 minutes.) But even that version didn't go anywhere until Sinatra remade it a few years later.
"He rearranged it for his more limited range and botched the lyrics," Kander recalls with a chuckle (there was no "A Number One" in Ebb's lyrics), "and when I first heard it, I thought, 'Oh gosh, shouldn't we fix it for Sinatra?' But it became huge without us. So who's to say?"
Sinatra first performed "New York, New York" at an October 1978 concert in Radio City Music Hall. He was 62 with a voice that wasn't what it once was. But he still had the timing and the feral excitement of the kid from the mobbed-up Hoboken waterfront you could just imagine looking across the river thinking, "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere."
There are generations of songs that capture New York's magic and allure, its extremes of wealth and poverty, of uptown and downtown, of private misery and public joy. Most date themselves by casting the city in a moment; others hang onto enduring ideals. Bob Dylan, in "Talking New York," reveals it through the eyes of an outsider; Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" is about a native coming home.
The songwriting duo Rodgers and Hart invented a tune for almost every New York: their classic references pushcarts at the same time it portrays a city as "a wondrous toy, just made for a girl and boy." But in "Give It Back to the Indians," they complain how New York has gone to hell: "We tried to run this city, but it ran away."
"It's classically New York that it would inspire a song for every mood and era," says Tony Fletcher, a music historian who recently published "All Hopped Up and Ready to Go" about the city's music scenes 1927 to 1977.
Growing up in Yorkshire, England, Fletcher, 45, got to know New York through the lyrics of the Ramones and Blondie, which romanticized (at least for him) the grimy Lower East Side and obscure areas in the boroughs.
"When I was coming in from JFK for the very first time, when I moved here, I was stunned to see a sign for 'Rockaway Beach,' " Fletcher says of the Queens area, also the name of a Ramones song. "It was a thrill to find out these places weren't fictional."
There are any number of hip-hop odes to specific neighborhoods, mostly in the spirit of yours-versus-mine, Queens vs. the Bronx vs. Brooklyn vs. the 212. On his albums, Jay-Z often returns to the Marcy Houses projects in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn where he grew up. In "Where I'm From," he explains, it's "where the pimps, prostitutes, and the drug lords meet; we make a million off of beats, cause our stories is deep" and says you can forget about tomorrow "as long as the night before was sweet."
In "Empire State of Mind," however, he expands his community pride to cover the whole city and a wide spectrum of New Yorkers, including the late rap superstar Notorious B.I.G. and Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour. Jay-Z also samples broadly for this song -- for the title from Billy Joel, for the backing track from the 1970 hit "Love on a Two Way Street." Two lesser-known New Yorkers, Angela Hunt and Janet "Jnay" Sewell-Ulepic, wrote the lyrics for the chorus, or hook, which Keys, a New Yorker herself, reworked for a more introspective version on her new album, "The Element of Freedom," which was released on Dec. 15.
It's the hook that many see as Jay-Z's bid to make this The One -- that once-every-few-decades song about New York that catches on and becomes an anthem. "Empire State" pulls in a broader audience by tapping into classic mythologies with lines that revere a city where:
There's nothin' you can't do . . .
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Let's hear it for New York.
For now -- at least in New York -- this song has become something of a cultural phenomenon. The lyrics are mapped in the blogosphere and have been translated into a suburban boast by Stephen Colbert disguised in a hoodie. The local Madison Square Garden Networks re-aired Jay-Z debuting the song at the venue on Sept. 11 at a concert in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack back-to-back with a performance there by Sinatra in 1974; the concerts were promoted together as "Two Generations of Cool" or "Bada Bling!"
Not that any of this is a guarantee that Jay-Z's song of the city can live past its moment and beyond its generation the way Sinatra's did. But Al Shux, who created the backing track for "Empire State of Mind," will know when it has gone from a blip on the Billboard chart to a beloved entry in the American songbook.
"When someone says, 'Start spreadin' the news,' you know exactly what they're talking about and what comes next," says Shux, a British producer and a Sinatra fan even at the age of 27. "Someday I hope when someone anywhere in the world says 'I'm out of that Brooklyn,' the whole world will know what comes next."
Theater owners name Sandra Bullock 2009's top star
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – In the eyes of U.S. movie theater owners, Sandra Bullock shined as 2009's top Hollywood star at the box office, as the actress nicknamed "America's Sweetheart" scored with audiences after a two-year absence from screens.
Quigley Publishing Company's annual list released on Thursday of top money making stars, based on a poll of hundreds of theater executives, had Bullock beat out such stars as George Clooney and Denzel Washington, on the strength of her roles in "The Proposal" and "The Blind Side."
Romantic comedy "The Proposal" made $315 million at worldwide box offices following its June release, and football drama "The Blind Side" has made $193 million only in the U.S. and Canada since its November 20 release, with its roll-out in other countries still to come.
Bullock, who also starred in the 2009 comedy "All About Steve" with its $34 million take in the U.S. and Canada, is the eighth woman to top Quigley's list of top money making stars, which the company has put out each year since 1932.
Quigley Publishing said the list does not rank stars only on how much cash their films made, but on what theater owners say about who attracts audiences on their star power alone.
For instance, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" was the top movie at U.S. and Canada box offices in 2009 with more than $400 million, but many in Hollywood attribute that to the appeal of the franchise itself and the toys it's based on.
The last woman to top Quigley's list was Julia Roberts in 1999. She failed to make Quigley's 2009 top 10 this year, after her turn in romantic comedy "Duplicity" bombed at the box office.
Bullock scored her first smash hit with 1994 action movie "Speed" and became one of Hollywood's biggest stars, but before "The Proposal" she had not starred in a film since 2007.
"Public Enemies" star Johnny Depp came in at No. 2 on Quigley's top 10 list, followed by Matt Damon, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Denzel Washington.
Marvel shareholders approve acquisition by Disney
NEW YORK – Shareholders of Marvel Entertainment Inc., home of Spider-Man and the Hulk, on Thursday approved the company's acquisition by The Walt Disney Co., as expected.
Marvel said the $4.3 billion acquisition will close at the end of the day, bringing Spider-Man, Iron Man, and 5,000 other comic-book characters under the same roof as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
Approval of the deal was expected. Marvel Chief Executive Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter, who owns 37 percent of Marvel stock, supported it. He will be overseeing the Marvel business after the acquisition.
Marvel shareholders will receive $30 per share in cash, plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share they own. Disney shares traded midday Thursday at $32.53, up 25 cents on the day. That values Marvel shares at $54.25, just above their trading price of $54.23.
The deal is Disney's largest since it purchased Pixar Animation Studios Inc., the maker of "Up" and "Cars," for $7.4 billion in stock in 2006.
Irish radio says Van Morrison denies baby report
DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish state broadcaster RTE said on Thursday it had received a statement from Van Morrison denying widespread media reports that the singer had fathered a child with his manager.
The statement published on RTE's website www.rte.ie says that reports which said Morrison had fathered a child with Gigi Lee were the result of a "hacking attack" on the 64-year-old Belfast-born singer's website.
"The comments which appeared on my website did not come from me," said the statement that RTE published as signed by Van Morrison. "They are completely and utterly without foundation."
Van Morrison and his official representatives were not immediately available for comment.
The www.vanmorrison.com website on Thursday contained only links to his other sites on youtube.com, facebook.com and myspace.com and a note that a new website was coming soon.
Earlier on Thursday, John Saunders, a Dublin-based executive at public relations agency Fleishman-Hillard, told RTE radio and Reuters that Van Morrison had told him over the telephone the reports he had fathered a baby were false.
"He has said to me on the phone today, he has said it's not true," Saunders told Reuters. "He has never heard of this person Gigi, the name means nothing to him."
Saunders said that Van Morrison was a long-time friend but not a client of his agency.
Newspapers and agencies reported on Monday that Morrison had become a father for the fourth time after his manager gave birth to a son described as "the spitting image of his daddy."
"Gigi (Lee) and Van Morrison are proud to announce the birth of their first born son, George Ivan Morrison III," said reports sourced to the website www.vanmorrison.com.
Asked why Morrison had waited several days to deny the statement, Saunders said that the singer was not good at handling his public relations.
"Van is a mystery man in many ways, his fans will testify to that," Saunders told RTE.
Morrison, whose 45-year career spans soul, blues, jazz, R&B and country, has a 39-year-old daughter, singer-songwriter Shana Morrison, from his first marriage to Janet "Planet" Minto and two other children with Irish socialite Michelle Rocca.
"For the avoidance of all doubt and in the interests of clarity, I am very happily married to Michelle Morrison with whom I have two wonderful children," said the statement attributed to Morrison on the RTE website.
Famed for such tunes as "Gloria" and "Brown Eyed Girl," he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 but declined to attend the ceremony.
U2 tour tops annual rankings in North America
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U2 may have suffered disappointing sales for their new album, but the Irish rockers were easily the most popular draw on the North American concert circuit this year, according to data issued on Wednesday.
The band sold $123 million worth of tickets to its stadium tour, while Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came in second with $94.5 million, said trade publication Pollstar.
Among all-time tours, the U2 trek ranks at No. 5, Pollstar said. The Rolling Stones hold the record with $162 million from their 2005 outing. U2's 2005 tour is No. 3 on the all-time list with $138.9 million.
Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni said the overall concert business bucked the recession, mirroring a similar phenomenon at movie theaters. He said most people go to only one or two shows a year, and are willing to pay a premium for good seats.
U2 hit the road to promote its latest album, "No Line on the Horizon," which failed to generate any hit singles and sold a relatively modest 1.06 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Pollstar said the band played to 1.3 million people at 20 shows on the North American leg of its world tour, and charged an average of $93.77. The average price on the band's 2003 tour, when it played 78 shows, was actually higher at $97.
Piano men Elton John and Billy Joel's latest co-headlining stint came in at No. 3 in 2009 with $88 million, followed by rehabbed pop princess Britney Spears at No. 4 with $82.5 million, and hard-rockers AC/DC at No. 5 with $77.9 million.
Country star Kenny Chesney made the top 10 for the sixth consecutive year, landing at No. 6 in 2009 with $71.1 million.
As in years past, veteran rockers dominated the rankings, in part because they are able to charge more than developing acts. But the fresh-faced Jonas Brothers made No. 7 after selling $69.8 million in tickets to their young fans.
Fellow Disney star Miley Cyrus was No. 13 with $45 million, and country-pop starlet Taylor Swift was No. 35 with $25.5 million. Bongiovanni said he expected Swift to make the top 10 next year on the heels of a three-month North American tour that kicks off on March 4.
The top 10 was rounded out by the Dave Matthews Band at No. 8 with $56.9 million, Fleetwood Mac at No. 9 with $54.5 million, and Metallica at No. 10 with $53.4 million.