The What’s Your Number? premiere is tonight in Los Angeles! I have my dress and I’m super excited!
I’m gong to be tweeting live from the red carpet at 6:30 PM PST for US Weekly magazine, so make sure to follow them and me on Twitter:
Source: http://www.prettyinthecity.com/blog/2011/9/19/whats-your-number-premiere.html
Jennifer Gareis Jennifer Garner Jennifer Gimenez Jennifer Love Hewitt
Raising Sand, from Led Zeppelin vet and bluegrass superstar, wins five Grammys on Sunday night.
By James Montgomery with MTV News staff
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images
<P>"I'm bewildered," <a href="/music/artist/plant_robert/artist.jhtml">Robert Plant</a> said onstage as he accepted the <MTVNLINK type="news" id="1604580">Grammy Album of the Year award</MTVNLINK> with <a href="/music/artist/krauss_alison/artist.jhtml">Alison Krauss</a> on Sunday night. "In the old days we would have called this selling out, but it's a good way to spend a Sunday." He was probably one of the few who were surprised, because <i>Raising Sand,</i> which won five trophies at Sunday night's show, is in many ways the perfect <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/grammys/">Grammy</a> album. It features two respected veterans, a critically lauded producer, some sandpaper-and-velvet vocals and a baker's dozen of time-tested standards.</p><div style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;"><embed src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:338316" width="256" height="223" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashVars="configParams=instance%3Dnews%26vid%3D338316" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" base="."></embed></div><p> You're probably familiar with Robert Plant from his <a href="/music/artist/led_zeppelin/artist.jhtml">Led Zeppelin</a> days, and you might be aware of producer T-Bone Burnett's work on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack (it won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002). And if you don't know who Alison Krauss is, she possesses a haunting set of pipes and is one of the meanest fiddle players in the world. Oh, and she's won 21 Grammys, more than any other female artist and the seventh-most in history. Really, she's the key to <i>Sand</i>'s success, and not just because of her voice (or her fiddle playing). She and Plant first met in 2004, at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute to legendary bluesman Leadbelly, and the former Zeppelin man was amazed by her knowledge of American Roots music — so much so that they began kicking around the idea of recording an album together. Three years later, <i>Sand</i> was released. And while Plant possesses the more famous voice, the album's finest moments radiate from Krauss. Whether she's getting bluesy on Little Milton's "Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson" or entwining with Plant's husky voice on songs like "Please Read the Letter" and Roly Salley's winsome "Killing the Blues," she more than carries her end of the bargain. And perhaps that's also due to producer Burnett, who handpicked the 13 songs the duo cover on <i>Sand.</i> His arrangements are sparse — giving the two voices ample room to breathe — yet dense, warm and crackling at the same time. It's a testament to his work that he's often given just as much billing as Plant and Krauss on the project … and it's certainly justified. To date, <i>Sand</i> has sold more than 1 million copies, heaped tons of acclaim and actually earned a Grammy last year — "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" took home the award for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals. One expert was surprised not by the album's success, but by the fact that it's actually quite a good album. "At first, the album seemed like a vanity project. … Two names, clearly a one-off record, didn't have to be any good, you know?" <i>New York Times</i> music critic Jon Caramanica said. "Led Zeppelin fans would buy it because of Robert Plant, Alison Krauss would get a check. But it actually turned out to be a really thoughtful, really <i>good</i> record. So when you combine all that with the fact that the Grammys love to lionize one of their own, I could really see it taking home some awards." </p>
Related Videos
Related Artists
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1604582/plant-krauss-win-album-of-the-year-grammy.jhtml
Adam Lambert is in full-on album promotional mode.
A few days after releasing the cover art for “Trespassing,” the former American Idol favorite is taking fans behind the scenes of his upcoming music video for the first single off that CD, “Better Than I Know Myself.”
“Sometimes you screw up or you say something to hurt your partner’s feelings, or you haven’t been supportive,” Adam says below. “This song basically owns that, says, ‘Look, I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m not perfect but without you I don’t know what I would do with myself. I need you because you are the only person that knows me better than I know myself.”
Adam Lambert Video Teaser: Behind the Scenes of “Better Than I Know Myself”
Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/behind-the-scenes-with-adam-lambert/
Brand will also perform at Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball, along with Coldplay, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
By Jocelyn Vena
Russell Brand
Photo: Getty Images
Russell Brand has nabbed a starring role in the Michael Bay-produced “The Hauntrepreneur.”
The movie will revolve around a “peculiar man” (presumably Brand, given his penchant for those types of roles) who is hired by a family to help them adjust to living in a new town. Calling himself the “Hauntrepreneur,” he creates a haunted house full of kooky characters to try to help them get acclimated to their new surroundings, Variety reports.
Paramount has yet to comment on the casting. It marks the latest move Brand has made since filing for divorce from Katy Perry over New Year’s weekend.
On Wednesday, it was announced that Brand will perform as part of an Amnesty International benefit March 4 at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. It marks his first public appearance since news broke of his split from Perry. Coldplay, Mumford & Sons, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Reggie Watts and others will also appear at Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball.
Brand will next be seen in “Rock of Ages,” alongside Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, Mary J. Blige and Alec Baldwin. The big-screen adaptation of Broadway’s rock musical will open June 1. He’s also attached to Diablo Cody’s “Untitled Diablo Cody Project,” which also will feature Hough.
Additionally, he’s working with the FX network on a series of six half-hour late-night comedy specials that will be filmed in front of a live audience as well as an animated comedy he co-created that will air on the Fox network.
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677931/russell-brand-hauntrepreneur-movie.jhtml
‘I’ve listened to their music since I was a child,’ says the R&B diva, who recorded ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love.’
By James Montgomery, with reporting by Larry Carroll
Photo: MTV News
<P>You wouldn't peg Mary J Blige as the black-light-and-tapestry sort, but, as has become readily apparent in recent weeks, she absolutely loves Led Zeppelin. In early February, reports began circulating that <a href="/news/articles/1631297/mary-j-blige-records-led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven.jhtml">Blige had re-recorded Zeppelin's classic "Stairway to Heaven,"</a> working with Travis Barker, "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson and guitarist Steve Vai on the track, which is slated to appear on the international reissue of her <i>Stronger With Each Tear</i> album, due Monday. </p><div style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float:left;"><embed src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtv.com:491065" width="256" height="223" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashVars="configParams=instance%3Dnews%26vid%3D491065" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" allowScriptAccess="always" base="."></embed></div><p> But after she had recorded "Stairway," Blige continued to get the Led out, covering <i>another</i> Zeppelin classic — the thunderous "Whole Lotta Love" — for the album too. And when MTV News caught up with her on the <i>Essence</i> Black Women in Hollywood red carpet, she told us all about channeling her inner Robert Plant for the tracks, a process that came much easier than you'd probably imagine. "I did Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' and 'Whole Lotta Love' — it's crazy," she said. "I am a Led Zeppelin fan. I'm not going to say I've been to their concerts, but I've listened to their music since I was a child, and it's always moved me, especially 'Stairway to Heaven,' and 'Whole Lotta Love' is just fun." Blige also said she recorded another new song — a "club record" called "I Can't Wait" — for the re-release. And while it's only slated to hit shelves outside the U.S., she hopes her fans will get a chance to hear all the new songs pretty soon. "I want y'all to hear it," she laughed.</p>
Related Artists
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1633563/mary-j-blige-dishes-on-her-crazy-led-zeppelin-covers.jhtml
Jennifer Garner Jennifer Gimenez Jennifer Love Hewitt Jennifer Morrison
Despite all the hype and controversy, critics are pretty impressed by Del Rey’s atmospheric music.
By Gil Kaufman
Lana Del Rey in “Born To Die”
Photo: Interscope
The now-infamous “Saturday Night Live” performance fail. All the hype about her looks, her path to the spotlight and the obligatory album leak a week before her debut dropped.
Lana Del Rey survived a lifetime’s worth of slings and arrows before her major label debut, Born to Die, was even released. But now that it’s officially out, critics have had a chance to listen to the atmospheric tracks she’s put together, and for the most part, they’re pretty impressed.
The Chicago Tribune gave it two out of four stars and said the finished product is not always as interesting as the run-up to its release. “[The album] positions itself as a knowing retro commentary. It borrows heavily from B movies starring various second- and third-level ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ bad boys on motorcycles, string-drenched ‘Last Kiss’ pop tunes in which young lovers die in each other’s arms, beehived teens-with-attitude declaring, ‘He hit me and it felt like a kiss,’ ” music critic Greg Kot wrote. While Kot said Del Rey wishes to be taken seriously as “the bad girl in a gown, the cabaret singer with a masochistic streak,” he said she’s not always up to the task, even as he praised her distinctive, draggy vocal delivery and the dramatic, eerie arrangements from producer Emilie Haynie.
Over at BBC, the focus was squarely on the music, saying above and beyond the drama, Born to Die is about “something older and more mysterious than that; the extraordinary, resilient power of the pop song.” The reviewer lamented that nothing on the 12-track album quite reaches the exquisite bummerness of lead single “Video Games,” with several of the songs “run[ning] … perilously close, while revealing there’s more to her than the love-stunned torch singer [of that song].” What makes the album so fascinating and sets Del Rey apart from the typical “I’m hot, you’re hot” pop tart is her “preoccupation with Hollywood archetypes of American femininity, and her ability to shape-shift between them.”
MTV News’ own James Montgomery believed the hype, writing that the album was “positively brimming with atmospherics — soaring, sonorous strings, echoing electronic boom-bap, morose, maudlin guitar crescendos — all of which imbue it with a truly epic (if not unnecessarily dramatic) scope.” For him, the album is a “thrilling headphone experience” that sounds like the $1 million he suspected it cost to make.
The U.K.’s Guardian also praised the “sumptuous” orchestration and Del Rey’s “fine” voice. But after being impressed by the “beguiling description of a mundane love” affair in “Video Games,” the reviewer said the album’s other lyrics are “incredibly heavy-handed in their attempts to convince you that Lana del Rey is the doomed but devoted partner of a kind of Athena poster bad boy, all white vest, cheekbones and dangling ciggie.” If anything, the Guardian critic didn’t buy the Del Rey tough-girl personality and said the best bet is to mostly ignore the lyrics and focus on “how magnificently most of the melodies have been constructed.”
Leave your own review of Born to Die in the comments!
Related Videos
Related Artists
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1678050/lana-del-rey-album-born-to-die-reviews.jhtml
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=501686&vid=410008
In her new memoir Hiding from Reality, Taylor Armstrong pulls the curtain back on her six-year marriage to the late Russell Armstrong. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star opened up about being physically abused by her venture capitalist husband shortly after filing for divorce in July 2011. One month later, Russell committed suicide. Now in her book, Taylor reveals just how obsessed Russell was with having control over her.
‘Idol’ has kept the predictably awful singers to a minimum so far, and we’re not sure that’s right.
By Gil Kaufman
Magic Cyclops auditions for “American Idol” in Aspen
Photo: Michael Becker / FOX
Like casual sports fans who can’t wait for the Winter Olympics to revel in the schadenfreude of watching world-class ice-skaters bite it, “American Idol” watchers have been conditioned to expect early audition episodes packed with a healthy mix of decent, great and truly awful singers.
In fact, some eagle-eyed “Idol” observers will tell you that there is a whole legion of viewers out there who only tune in to the first few weeks to see the next William Hung, General Larry “Pants on the Ground” Platt or Keith “Like a Virgin” Beukelaer.
But in keeping with the shiny-happy-people vibe “Idol” initiated last year in its first post-Simon Cowell season, through the four audition episodes so far, season 11 “Idol” has noticeably eased up on the so-bad-it’s-good factor. Instead, it has focused on mediocre or not laughably terrible singers, with a handful of decent ringers thrown in for good measure.
Yes, we saw a man with a fake accent named Magic Cyclops crash and burn on Wednesday night not long after seemingly joke-worthy Angie Zeiderman performed “When You’ve Got It, Flaunt It” from “The Producers.” But she quickly turned it around and won over the judges with a good-enough take on Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou.”
The bait-and-switch appears to be the new look for “Idol,” as evidenced by Ali Shields’ cringe-inducing rap/ghetto dance on Chris Brown’s “Look at Me Now,” followed by a more passable cover of Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Like a Star.”
That kind of rope-a-dope may actually be worse than the plain-old “montage of mediocrity” of the past, because, at best, it’s dishonest, and at worst, it makes you wonder how low the talent bar is this season.
The season so far seems to have traded chuckle-inducing singing for outright meanness, as evidenced by the mockery of African immigrant Mawuena Kodjo in the first episode, the sexist baiting of Bikini Girl 2.0 Jennifer Diley, the overly long, indulgent segment on not-that-interesting Ryan Seacrest look-alike Shaun Kraisman and the sniggering at twin Tealana Hedgespeth on Wednesday’s show.
The latter seemed the most cruel. For a singer whose segment focused on her ego-denting struggle to emerge from the shadow of her multitalented sister, the snide asides from the judges at Hedgespeth’s expense just seemed heartless. At least in the past when Cowell called someone a “bush baby” or the judges fell off their chairs laughing, they mostly did their worst out in the open instead of stringing the singers along just to crush them after the audition.
I know we’re barely two weeks into the cycle, but I won’t lie: I love the crash-and-burners. Watching a mind-blowingly horrendous singer (or three) in an audition episode with an equal amount of ear-catching talent is one of the thrills of “Idol.” It puts the variety in an audition cycle that is often a dull parade of same-y R&B takes on Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey and Aretha Franklin.
For the past couple of years, “Idol” producers have crowed about focusing on the talent rather than the freaks in the auditions episodes. But isn’t that what the rest of the season is for?
What do you think about the lack of outrageously bad singers this year? Let us know in the comments!
Get your “Idol” fix on MTV News’ “American Idol” page, where you’ll find all the latest news, interviews and opinions.
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677994/american-idol-terrible-singers.jhtml
‘This tour is going to be really good for her,’ psychic Jesse Bravo says of Gaga’s planned 2012 BTW Ball.
By MTV News Staff
Lady Gaga
Photo: Jason Kempin/ Getty Images
<P>As 2012 rolls along, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/music/artist/lady_gaga/artist.jhtml">Lady Gaga</a> has already teased she has some <a href="/news/articles/1676582/pop-culture-news-2012-beyonce-lady-gaga.jhtml">big plans</a> ahead. So MTV News decided to look to New York-based psychic Jesse Bravo to see what fate has in store for the pop superstar. Bravo recently rolled up to the MTV News offices and looked into his crystal ball. </p><div class="player-placeholder right" id="vid:722498.id:1676617" width="240" height="211"></div><p> "Lady Gaga for 2012, it's going to be sort of a slower year for her because she has her tour, which means she's not putting out a lot of new material," Bravo explained, despite Gaga's tease that she is working on her <a href="/news/articles/1675458/lady-gaga-next-album.jhtml">follow-up to 2011's <i>Born This Way</i></a>. "So for me, when I sort of looked up around there to see what was happening for her, I saw her sales sort of slow down because of new material. But she's also building up this new momentum for running her base for this tour. This tour is going to be really good for her." Gaga has already thought about the <a href="/news/articles/1675649/lady-gaga-born-this-way-tour.jhtml"><i>Born This Way</i> Ball</a>, tweeting over the holidays that she was pondering the things she wants to sell on tour. "Designing merch for the tour, when you see it you will die. <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/ladygaga/status/152392027093483520" target="_blank">#deathbyinexpensiveglamour</a>," she wrote. Mother Monster is also famously known for her wild style, which Bravo said won't disappoint in the next 12 months. "I believe her next big outfit is a cross between two things, and I was sort of stuck in between, like, where I should go with this because I saw two outfits, which means they can come in succession," he said. "I don't know which one is going to come first. But I will believe the one that I saw is this outfit, and I can't really describe it, but it's going to have lights embedded in it. So it's going to be pretty bizarre. And then I saw another outfit and it's like a body outfit, one that you spray-paint on, and I don't know if it's a stars-and-stripes theme, but I saw that there were stars and stripes in the right areas." In addition to all the ups in her career, Gaga's personal life will also prosper, according to Bravo, which means that she may get even more serious with her rumored beau and "You and I" co-star, "Vampire Diaries" actor Taylor Kinney. </p><div class="player-placeholder right" id="vid:722468.id:1676617" width="240" height="211"></div><p> "Her personal life is going to stay stable for a while. The reason why is that on the outside she shows she's a strong character — and for business she is — but on the inside she's a mush. And so as a result, she needs to have her relationship in place, especially right now when she needs that support on going on something that's so big," he said. "Two years is a long, long time [to tour]. I don't think that relationship is going … it's not going out." Just how serious might they get? Well, Gaga, believe it or not, is already pondering a family, according to Bravo. (Although she did note in a recent interview that the only family she is focused on is <a href="/news/articles/1676799/beyonce-baby-lady-gaga.jhtml">her new music</a>.) "I also feel this need of having children. So I don't know how this is going to play because we know she has a tour and she's not going to stop the tour short to have a child," Bravo predicted. "And I know that work is on her mind, but I know that [her spirit guide] Liberace is telling me about a child. And I know that in the back of her mind, she wants one. I think with her, it's about scheduling … and I would say we're looking somewhere at 2014-2015. That's going to be her time." <i>What do you think about Jesse Bravo's predictions for Lady Gaga? Tell us in the comments!</i></p>
Related Videos
Related Artists
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676843/lady-gaga-2012-predictions.jhtml
