Category: Music

Taylor Swift changes her tune on ‘1989’

In October, Taylor Swift’s transition to pop music will be complete.

The 24-year-old singer/songwriter has long had one foot in country and the other in pop, sometimes to the chagrin of country fans. But with her fifth studio album, the October 27 release “1989,” Swift has eliminated her twang altogether.

“At a certain point,” she told Rolling Stone in its new issue, “if you chase two rabbits, you lose them both.”
Instead, she’s taken inspiration from ’80s pop acts like Madonna, Phil Collins and Annie Lennox, and turned to producers and musicians like Max Martin and Fun.’s Jack Antonoff to help her shape what she calls her “blatant pop” sound.

Along with her change in tune has come other shifts in Swift’s life: She’s moved to New York, has focused more on her friendships and has backed off dating (at least for now). Where past Swift albums could fuel gossip for weeks over which song may be about which ex-boyfriend, “1989” has a different vibe. It’s not as “boy-centric” as past releases, Swift explained — basically because there haven’t been any boys.

“I feel like watching my dating life has become a bit of a national pastime, and I’m just not comfortable providing that kind of entertainment anymore,” Swift told Rolling Stone. “I don’t like seeing slide shows of guys I’ve apparently dated. I don’t like giving comedians the opportunity to make jokes about me at awards shows. I don’t like it when headlines read ‘Careful, Bro, She’ll Write a Song About You,’ because it trivializes my work. And most of all, I don’t like how all these factors add up to build the pressure so high in a new relationship that it gets snuffed out before it even has a chance to start. And so, I just don’t date.”

Don’t feel sorry for her, as Swift presumed readers might; there’s plenty that she “really like(s) about my life right now.”

“I have friends around me all the time. I’ve started painting more,” Swift said. “I’ve been working out a lot. I’ve started to really take pride in being strong.”

That strength was evident in her push to have “1989” made in the way she envisioned. When Swift turned the album in to the head of her record label, she was told that it was “extraordinary” and the best she’s ever done but also in need of a few country songs.

Swift held her ground.

“Love you,” she recalled responding. “But this is how it’s going to be.”

Album Sales Are at an All-Time Low, Again

In what come as a surprise to probably no one, album sales have hit a new all-time low. The 3.97 million albums that sold across the past seven days is the smallest weekly sum since 1991 (but likely much farther back), when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking that data. As Billboard reports, this is the first time that number has fallen below the 4 million mark.

This historic dip comes on the tail of a relatively slow release week, which included Wiz Khalifa’s Blacc Hollywood as the top earner with sales of 90,000 units. But trends over the past quarters show considerable decline beyond this week’s low, dropping from averages of 4.75 million units sold in the first quarter to 4.55 million units in the second quarter to 4.2 million in the first eight weeks of the present third quarter.

As streaming services become more popular, album sales are increasingly falling out of fashion. And plenty of companies have been picking up on this trend, moving into monetized services. While Spotify reported 10 million paid users earlier this year, recently SoundCloud debuted its ad-based revenue program that — more or less — follows in the footsteps of Amazon and Google’s YouTube, entering the marketplace.

Prince Amps Up Funk and Soul on Two New Albums This Fall

It’s been five years since Prince put out a new record in the United States, since he limited the release of his 20Ten LP, but that will change this fall. On September 30th, the artist will release two new records: Plectrumelectrum, his long-teased album with the group 3rdEyeGirl, and his recently announced solo LP, Art Official Age. He will reportedly hold a series of special events and live dates around the world, details for which are forthcoming, to celebrate the albums’ release. Both records are available separately as pre-orders, via the website ArtOfficialAge.com, and include “instant gratification” download.

Art Official Age is being billed as “classic Prince,” since it was produced, arranged, composed and performed by the musician (alongside singer-songwriter Joshua Welton). The record reportedly contains a mix of soul, R&B and funk. The pre-order includes the songs “Breakdown” and “Clouds,” as well as three digital singles. The funky, jazzy latter track is now streaming at Complex.

Prince has already released the video for album track “Breakfast Can Wait” and he played “Funknroll” during his appearance on Arsenio earlier this year, though the version on Art Official Age is “funkier and nastier,” according to a Minneapolis Star Tribune writer who got an early listen. The reporter also claimed that “This Could Be Us” was a ballad inspired by Prince’s Purple Rain costar Apollonia Kotero and that “The Gold Standard” had lyrics “wild and rude.” The writer also said the album contained an “aggressive and menacing” rap song featuring Rita Ora.

Plectrumelectrum, a “classic band album” that is said to be an “electrifying funk-rock statement,” features the singer leading the all-female group ThirdEyeGirl. The ensemble test-drove a number of the record’s songs on their recent Hit and Run tours. “No one can play like this band,” Prince told Rolling Stone about the record. “People are going to try, but they won’t be able to.”

He also previewed the record at a late-night listening session in New York City, which revealed the hard-rock guitar number (and pre-order instant-gratification track) “Pretzelbodylogic,” as well as the original version of “Funknroll.” Notably absent from the record is Prince’s duet with Zooey Deschanel, “Fallinlove2night,” which got its debut on The New Girl in March.

The records mark Prince’s return to Warner Bros., the label he split from acrimoniously in the Nineties after wearing the word “slave” on his face as a protest to his record contract. “When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave,” he told Rolling Stone in 1996. “That’s where I was. I don’t own Prince’s music. If you don’t own your masters, your master owns you.” Earlier this year, Prince worked out a deal with the label where he now owns the masters to his recordings. The label previously announced a plan to put out a deluxe, digitally remastered, 30th anniversary release of the Purple Rain soundtrack, though it has yet to announce a release date.

“Prince is one of just a handful of visionary artists who have truly reshaped and redefined modern music and culture,” Warner Bros. Chairman & CEO Cameron Strang said in a statement about the two new records. “For the past 35 years, he has never stopped evolving, challenging himself, reinventing his sound and pushing boundaries. In true Prince fashion, he has just given us not one, but two extraordinary albums that express the incredible range and depth of his talent. All of us at WBR are immensely proud to be working with Prince to bring this brilliant new music to his legions of fans around the world, and needless to say we are thrilled to be working in partnership with him again.”

Art Official Age track list:

1. “Art Official Cage”
2. “Clouds”
3. “Breakdown”
4. “The Gold Standard”
5. “U Know”
6. “Breakfast Can Wait”
7. “This Could Be Us”
8. “What It Feels Like”
9. “Affirmation I & II”
10. “Way Back Home”
11. “Funknroll”
12. “Time”
13. “Affirmation III”

Plectrumelectrum track list:

1. “Wow”
2. “Pretzelbodylogic”
3. “Aintturninround”
4. “Plectrumelectrum”
5. “Whitecaps”
6. “Fixurlifeup”
7. “Boytrouble”
8. “Stopthistrain”
9. “Anotherlove”
10. “Tictactoe”
11. “Marz”
12. “Funknroll”

Taylor Swift Dismisses the Haters, Dances With Fans for New Song ‘Shake it Off’

After a week of dropping hints, Taylor Swift finally hired a skywriting plane last Friday to spell out “TAYLOR SWIFT 8/18 5PM YAHOO” above New York City, suggesting to fans that the “22” singer might finally be dropping some new music from her much-anticipated fifth album. When the clock struck 5 p.m. EST on Monday, Swift delivered: As part of her Yahoo! live stream, Swift debuted her new single “Shake It Off” in the form of an impromptu dance party with the studio audience. Swift also revealed that 1989, the follow-up to 2012’s Red, is set for release on October 27th and will be her “first straight-up pop album.” 1989 refers to the singer’s birth year, and Swift revealed that the music of the late-Eighties – “a time of limitless potential” – had a huge impact on her new LP, right down to the album cover: a Polaroid photo of the singer.

“Two years gives you enough time to grow and change; change what you believe in and what’s influencing and inspiring you,” Swift said of the two years between Red and 1989. “In the process, my music changed. I woke up every single day not wanting, but needing, to make a new style of music. This album is a rebirth for me.”

“Shake It Off” was co-written by Swift, Max Martin and Shellback, with the latter two producing the track. Martin and Shellback previously worked with Swift on the hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Immediately following the Yahoo! stream, 1989 was made available for pre-order on Swift’s official site (though her site crashed immediately following her announcement). Swift also revealed that the deluxe edition of the album will feature an envelope of 13 Polaroid photos and three bare bones versions of tracks that Swift recorded into her phone.

“I’ve had every part of my life dissected — my choices, my actions, my words, my body, my style, my music,” Swift tells Rolling Stone about the new single. “When you live your life under that kind of scrutiny, you can either let it break you, or you can get really good at dodging punches. And when one lands, you know how to deal with it. And I guess the way that I deal with it is to shake it off.” Swift is also scheduled to perform at the MTV Video Music Awards in Englewood, California on August 24th, which is as good a venue as it gets to debut “Shake It Off” live.

Finally, Swift premiered the “Shake It Off” music video, which she filmed in June over the course of three days in Los Angeles. Directed by legendary director Mark Romanek, the visionary behind Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” and Janet and Michael Jackson’s “Scream,” the video finds Swift adopting a series of personas, including cheerleader, hip-hop B-girl and Lady Gaga-esque performance artist. “All I think about are metaphors and cats,” Swift said on the livestream. “And life can be greatly reflected in your willingness to dance.”

“It was so much fun. I woke up every day of that shoot and couldn’t wait to get to set,” Swift tells Rolling Stone about the video shoot. “We had twerking, which was so funny. Those girls were trying to teach me how, and it’s just never gonna happen. I tried really hard. They were teaching me what they do, and there’s like a science to it – they’re like digging their heels into the floor without you seeing their legs move, but their butts’ moving. It’s mind-blowing to me. They were explaining it all to me, and it’s so above my comprehension of how to understand your body.”

As for the video’s concept, which finds Swift unable to master the art of moshing and ballet among other dance moves, Swift says, “It takes a long time to figure out who you are and where you fit in in the world. I’m putting myself in all these awkward situations where the dancers are incredible, and I’m having fun with it, but not fitting in. They’re doing the most beautiful things, and I’m being embarrassingly bad at it. It shows you to keep doing you, keep being you, keep trying to figure out where you fit in in the world, and eventually you will.”

Swift was tight-lipped about her new album during her visit to The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on August 13th, not even biting when the late night host asked her if she’d “Beyoncé an album and just pop it out,” during the Yahoo! Announcement.

“I think the goal for the next album is to continue to change, and never change in the same way twice,” she explained to Rolling Stone last year. “How do I write these figurative diary entries in ways that I’ve never written them before and to a sonic backdrop that I’ve never explored before? I’ll bring in ideas and they’ll take such a different turn than where I thought they were going to go, and that level of unexpected spontaneity is something that really thrills me in the process of making music. What if we did this? What if we made it weirder? What if we took it darker? I love people who have endless strange and exciting ideas about where music can go.”

Bob Seger to Release First Album in Eight Years This Fall

Bob Seger will return from an eight-year recording hiatus on October 14th with the release of his new LP Ride Out. The album’s first single, a cover of John Hiatt’s “Detroit Made,” was released to radio over the weekend. No track listing has been announced, but a press release indicates it will also contain a cover of Wilco and Billy Bragg’s “California Stars” and “All The Roads,” an original song Seger debuted on tour in 2013.

“I feel really good about this record,” Seger said in a statement. “This album touches on how I think a lot of us feel about finding our place in a more complicated world – from how we appreciate things as simple and pure as love, to navigating through the corruption and violence that permeates the news. It sums up a lot of feelings I have about a variety of subjects.”

Seger largely disappeared from public view after wrapping up a tour in support of his 1995 LP It’s A Mystery in order to focus on his family. He reemerged in 2006 with Face The Promise, which he supported with an American arena tour. He returned to the road for another tour that lasted from 2011 to 2013.

U2 Still Planning to Release New Album in 2014

U2 fans may get their hands on a new album before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, possibly as early as next month. Reports circulated a few months ago that U2 were delaying the album until 2015 so they would have enough time to work on material with producer Paul Epworth, but a spokesperson for the band has told Rolling Stone that that timing is inaccurate: “We’ve always said an album is expected this year.”

The news is consistent with reports in the Irish media that the album is coming out within the next few months, and Universal Music Venezuela and Universal Music Colombia briefly posted tweets saying the album was coming out in September.

Whatever the near future holds, U2 seem to be hard at work. The French newspaper Nice-Martin reported that the group shot a new video in Nice, France, the other week, and the Irish Times quotes a source saying there will be a single in September, an album in September or October and a tour announced in December, with dates beginning in April of next year. “It is believed,” says the article, via U2 fan site atu2.com, that “the band will release it with little of the fanfare usually associated with a new U2 album.”

Earlier this year, U2 attempted to launch a new album with great fanfare, debuting their new single “Invisible” during a Super Bowl commercial and allowing fans to download it for free on iTunes. They also played the song on the roof of Rockefeller Center during the first Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. The song charted around the world, but it wasn’t a huge smash and weeks later, word began to spread that the album was pushed back yet again.

U2 have been working on a follow-up to 2009’s commercially disappointing No Line on the Horizon for about five years. They originally planned on releasing material from the No Line sessions on a disc called Songs of Ascent, but that plan was ultimately scrapped. The band has since recorded with producers Danger Mouse, Will.i.am, David Guetta, RedOne, Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder. When the new album is released, it will be the longest they’ve worked on a single LP.

Earlier this year, U2 spoke with Rolling Stone’s David Fricke about the new album. “We really want the songs to be right,” said The Edge. “That’s the only reason why we’re not on tour – because we’re so good at starting, not so good at finishing. That’s always the way it’s been.”

Is Katy Perry Playing The Super Bowl? Five Reasons Behind The Theory

Could the KatyCats be flocking to Glendale, Arizona in February? Here are five reasons we think the “PRISM” star is playing the halftime show.

With the NFL regular season getting underway in a few weeks, pop fans can also start speculating about who will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show next February in Glendale, Ariz. After all, Bruno Mars was announced as the halftime performer in early September last year, so the successor could very well be named in less than a month’s time. Although there are several worthy candidates to rock the Super Bowl XLIX halftime, one makes the most sense in our minds: Katy Perry.

Full disclosure: this is all just speculation, and neither the NFL nor Perry has signaled that the singer will be the 2015 headliner (the NFL did not respond to request for comment). However, here are five reasons why Perry is the most logical performer at next year’s Super Bowl halftime show:

1. She has big, current hits. Teenage Dream spawned a record-tying five No. 1 singles, and last year’s PRISM already has four Top 20 hits (“Roar,” “Unconditionally,” “Dark Horse,” “Birthday”), with new single “This Is How We Do” currently striding up the Hot 100 chart. While Bruno Mars’ halftime show in February had a relatively predictable set list, the breadth of Perry’s pop reign makes it hard to pin down which smashes she would trot out. “California Gurls”? “Hot N Cold”? “Firework”? They’re all fair game, and all universally memorized.

2. She’s internationally popular. A global event like the Super Bowl deserves a performer whose reach extends worldwide, and Perry has been touring as an international headliner since 2011. And guess who has the most Twitter followers — 55.4 million — out of anyone in the world? A Katy Perry Super Bowl performance won’t be hurting for viewers.

3. She’s family-friendly. Following Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004, the Super Bowl halftime show became a platform for Older Men Whose Nipples You Would Not Want To See Anyway — Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, U2. In 2011, the kids were finally given a youthful performer in the Black Eyed Peas, and since then, the halftime show has skewed young while cautiously offering artists that have largely avoided controversy in recent years (Madonna, Beyonce, Bruno Mars). Perry is right in the Super Bowl’s wheelhouse, then: a hit-maker with no real cause for concern amongst parents (except, of course, when she appears on Sesame Street).

4. She’s currently on an eye-popping tour. Here’s where Perry has a leg-up on other possible performers like Taylor Swift or the Foo Fighters: the Prismatic tour is already up and running, with a spectacular stage set-up and fairly positive reviews. That’s not a necessity for a Super Bowl performer — Beyonce and Madonna launched tours after their halftime shows — but it’s a nice bonus that Perry already has a proven formula she can bring in Glendale.

5. She has a big gap in her tour dates around the Super Bowl. The Prismatic tour breaks for six weeks: after wrapping up for 2014 on Dec. 20 in Auckland, New Zealand, Perry resumes on Feb. 16, 2015 in Barcelona. The Super Bowl is on Feb. 1, 2015. Hmmmmmm.

Daniel Lanois: U2’s new album ‘amazing’

Like U2’s legion of fans, Daniel Lanois is also eagerly anticipating the release of the Irish band’s long-delayed 13th studio album.

But the seven-time Grammy-winning producer, who isn’t in the fold this time around, says people can expect a top-notch record (rumoured to be produced by Danger Mouse) when it finally sees the light of day.

“Bono played me the new record a year ago, and I heard some amazing things then,” Lanois told QMI Agency. “I can only imagine what they’ve done between then and now. I can’t wait to hear it myself.”

The as-yet-untitled album was originally scheduled for an April release, before it was bumped to summer. According to the Irish Times, there are rumblings that a new crop of tunes may be out in September or October.

Lanois suggests there is a big reason for the slow pace of the group: “They are very smart people with great expectations from themselves, and they’ve probably gotten to a place that’s striking and powerful.”

He admits that he’s happy that he’s not hammering it out in the studio with them.

“I’m glad I didn’t do the record this time around because I don’t think I would have survived,” he laughed. “And they might not have survived either.”

Foo Fighters finish work on ‘epic’ new album

Butch Vig has confirmed that Foo Fighters have finished work on their new album.

The producer, who worked with Dave Grohl on Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ and is also a member of Garbage, tweeted earlier today (July 30) to reveal the news. “We are officially done with the new Foo Fighters album. 23 straight days mixing! IT’S EPIC!!!” Vig tweeted.

The new album was recorded in eight different studios in eight states across America. It will be accompanied by mini series Sonic Highways, broadcast on HBO, which will document the recording progress. Dave Grohl will operate as director on the project, following his Sound City documentary of 2013.

Meanwhile, Foo Fighters are to return to the UK stage at the closing concert for the Invictus Games in September.

The event takes place at London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on September 14, and sees Dave Grohl and co top a line-up including Kaiser Chiefs, Ellie Goulding, Ryan Adams, The Vamps, Rizzle Kicks, James Blunt, Diversity and Military Wives Choirs. The 26,000-capacity outdoor concert will take place on the south lawn of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park from 5pm to 10pm and highlights will be broadcast by the BBC.

“Weird Al” Yankovic earns first No. 1 album, first comedy album to go No. 1 in 54 years

For all intents and purposes, “Weird Al” Yankovic literally took over the Internet in the last week, releasing not one, not two, but eight expertly-crafted music videos in support of his new album, Mandatory Fun. All that hard work has paid off (literally), as the comedian has earned his first-ever No. 1 album. Not only that, but Mandatory Fun is the first comedy album to debut No. 1 in 54 (!) years.

According to Billboard, Yankovic’s 14th LP moved 104,700 copies in its first week. The success is largely attributed to the viral success of those eight aforementioned videos, which received more than 20 million cumulative views during their initial week of release. Ironically enough, Yankovic’s label, RCA, refused to pay for the videos, so instead the comedian partnered with sites such as Funny or Die, College Humor, and Nerdist to help bring his project to fruition.

Yankovic has two previously top 10 albums in 2006’s Straight Outta Lynwood and 2011’s Alpocalypse. His previous best sales week, when Straight Outta Lynwood sold 73,000 copies in its first week.