That’s just music

Ringo Starr had recently said that he is not going to perform at the next year Olympic games in London, noted Sky News. The fact that Paul McCartney and Starr may perform together during the opening or closing of the games began to spread all over the place sometimes in the midst of the last week. Practically, British tabloid The Sun did actually underline that talks between organizers of the event and both musicians went pretty far. The same paper wrote that the latter joint performance may be accompanied by John Lennon’s and George Harrison’s children, also totally incredible musicians and good people. However, according to other sources, the game’s organizers planned to put together a super-band, which besides Starr and McCartney was supposed to include Mick Jagger and John Lydon; this startling project had to perform during the opening. Currently, Starr is insisting on the fact that exactly during the games in London he will be seriously busy with touring the U.S. Numerous fans on the British isles and probably those organizers, who truly wanted to see him during the games are upset, but not his American fans. At this time the whole agenda is not certain at all, Ringo is still contemplating on the issue. Eventually, musicians and often their managers possess very personal plans regarding what they want to do, nothing is certain in their careers. If being absolutely clear, Ringo should visit London for at least one night (the opening) and later just keep on with the tour.

One of the vocalists and co-founders of The Libertines Carl Barat shall perform the ancient vocal part, which was originally performed by the Roman emperor Nero; the whole thing should be included into the modern opera masterpiece titled “Pop’pea”, noted Contactmusic. This opera in which Barat will participate is the newly re-created work of Claudio Monteverdi, it was originally written way back in 1642. It’s recreated version will be presented at the Shatle theatre in Paris not later than the end of August this year. The Libertines was founded by Carl Barat and Pete Doherty; during it’s career they’ve released two studio albums called “Up the Bracket” (2002) and “The Libertines” (2004). Sadly, in 2004 the project fell apart due to some radical difference and arguments between Doherty and Barat. After the fall of The Libertines Barat had formed the band titled Dirty Pretty Things in which he managed to produce two albums. Also, in October, 2010 Carl had released his debut solo work, at the same time The Libertines came back together in 2010 in order to perform at the few venues, so fans were not as upset as in 2004, when nothing was shining the light at their joint future. Today both musicians are not really talking about their plans, even if it’s not dealing with their co-working process. Both of them keep on having some differences in musical tastes, thus most likely The Libertines will remain in shadows for years to come. Doherty’s career is doing absolutely fantastic, however, he is also not really planning to re-unite The Libertines.

Vocalist and the leader of Evanescence Amy Lee had announced the fact that she is using absolutely different ideas for the band’s new album. Particularly, the new material for this upcoming studio work was strongly influenced by trip-hop and MGMT’s music (another curious project), noted Rolling Stone. As Amy had personally said, totally due to the first fully completed MGMT’s “Oracular Spectacular” album she became seriously interested with synthesizers. At the same time she is adding that her musical interests had always involved such bands as Portishead and Massive Attack. Lee is promising that the above mentioned artists will be reflecting some indirect influence on the upcoming release, curiously, works were seen by critics as metal and goth rock, so Evanescence is certainly moving on with the brand new genre. They got tired of what they’ve been doing for year, music can’t sit still and must move on. Besides all of these facts, Lee had mentioned her absolutely fresh interest in playing harp, thus parts of this ancient instrument may be heard on the album, it’s magical sound should be enormously beautiful. Originally, Lee had received a harp from her husband and began  to practice all the time. Discussed album will be the band’s third studio release and will be called “Evanescence”, it must hit the stores on October 11 this year. Notably, it’s their first album in five years, the last one came out in September 2000 and was titled “The Open Door”; “Evanescence” shall be as romantic and touchy as all their previous works, Amy Lee is definitely picking up new talented ideas all along the way.

One of the bridges located in the Washington state (Aberdeen) is now planned to be named after the legendary Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain, wrote New Musical Express. Noted bridge is currently called Young Street Bridge, and it’s expected that particularly this place was mentioned by Cobain in his song “Something in the Way”; this track was included into the band’s infamous “Nevermind” album. Sometime in the end of July the city council of Aberdeen is planning to discuss this possibility, but nothing is for sure so far. Some members of the council are defending this idea, but many others believe that such a thing is totally impossible. According to their opinion Cobain’s biography is mocked with drug addiction and suicide, in other words for them he can’t be the right name for the Aberdeen bridge. They believe that this city may receive not the best reputation. In April this year Aberdeen had welcomed an opening of the little memorial monument dedicated to Cobain’s guitar; this sculpture is reflecting an exact copy of his concert guitar, which was used by him during numerous venues. “Rocky instrument” is added with an iron banner accompanied by a citation from Nirvana’s song “On a Plain”. Interestingly, nobody can say for sure whether Kurt Cobain would truly admire this kind of dedication because most likely his personal attitude towards such matters could be skeptical, he wasn’t striving for fame, especially of this kind.  

Rihanna is considered to be the most popular woman on the Facebook, notably when first signs of this fact began to emerge, she was able to gather 40,570,154 “likes”. It’s on twenty three thousands more than what Lady Gaga managed to put together, however, this virtual fight is still far from being over. At the same time both performers couldn’t reach the most popular performer on the Facebook, Eminem, his heights are unbeatable for numerous years, and all of them where not achieved on the latter social network, but in the real world; his page collected 43,28 million “likes”. Eminem became the leader of this social network in February and prior to his takeover Lady Gaga was on the first spot. Also, she is still topping over Twitter, her micro-blog includes 11,6 million users who had signed up under her name. Practically, she may get back if the game of popularity will not go down, only new music and new videos can retain her not just over social networks, but over music tastes of the new generations. On the other hand Eminem is not that popular on Twitter, he maintains 4,9 million users behind him and is quite far away from the top. Realistically speaking all of these rates are not truly interesting to those who worth art in it’s honest and original form, music business is often too far away from perfection. Any other news on the TV may appear to be the same as the one mentioned above, so no matter who stands on top of Twitter or Facebook the real talent is probably somewhere absolutely far away and way behind of it all.

Billboard had recently prepared the list of albums, which sold the biggest amount of copies in the last six months. A half year chart is currently led by Adele’s “21″ album, it was released during the second half of February this year, and obviously it’s doing absolutely great. A little bit more than in four months this album was able to sell 2,5 million copies in the US alone, so Adele is doing totally well in comparison to many other artists of her age, or any other musician, who is more experienced than her. The second spot went to Lady Gaga with her “Born This Way” album, it sold 1,5 million copies since 23 of May this year, interestingly it’s doing even better than “21″ because it had way less time to move on; it’s extremely possible that it shall soon overtake the whole thing and remove Adel from the top level. Third place belongs to Munford and Sons’ “Sigh No More”, it sold out 982 copies, but this is not the end of it all, this band may also get higher in the course of time. On the other hand, Billboard-200 chart is now led by Beyonce’s “4″ album, during the first week of sales Americans had purchased 310 thousand copies, all her previous solo songs such as “Dangerously in Love”, “B’Day”, “I am… Sasha Fierce” were also winning over this chart. Generally speaking, Beyonce is doing very good and it’s hard to find anyone who may be equal to her talents within the pop scene today.

Infamous Noel Gallagher had announced the fact that in the nearest time he is about to release two brand new studio albums, noted The Quietus. Musician shared these plans during his recent press conference, which took place in London on July 6. The first disk will be called “High Flying Birds”, (notably the same title is possessed by his new music project) and may enter the stores on October 17 this year; technically all the musical material was recorded in London and Los Angeles. It’s expected that the album shall include ten songs, and the full track-list is supposedly going to impress many people. “High Flying Birds” is Gallagher’s solo work and once again it shows his incredible talent in music, without Oasis this guy is still keeping his musical strengths. The second album was created with some help from many other specialists including The Future Sound of London project. During the above mentioned press-conference Noel had promised to perform Oasis songs at the time of the upcoming series of concerts, so fans should be absolutely happy about such a fact. Noel Gallagher without his former Oasis legacy is very hard to be imagined in the face of the music world, thus, fans are definitely going to support some old sounds from the past. According to numerous opinions Oasis had to remain intact, however, both brothers, Noel and Liam Gallagher couldn’t stay within the same band any longer.

Popular British magazine New Musical Express had decided to call the “Hurt” video clip by Johnny Cash to be the best in the whole history of music videos. The original version of the latter video and a song was part of the Nine Inch Nails album “The Downward Spiral” released in 1994. Cash had recorded a cover song in 2002 for his album “American IV: The Man Comes Around”, the video itself was filmed by Mark Romanek, the guy who used to work with David Bowie, Madonna and Lenny Kravitz, so eventually the whole video came to be absolutely stunning. First of all it’s beautiful, the onset reflects the life of Johnny Cash, his high and lows, troublesome and strikingly shiny past of this incredible musician. A song is truthfully strong in it’s lyrical agenda, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails knew what he was writing about, the life of a man reflects in every word. The second video on the NME’s list is Radiohead’s “Just” song, and the following third place was taken by Chris Isaac’s “Wicked Game”. Besides the above mentioned videos the top ten list includes such infamous performers as Soundgarden, Bjork, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Beastie Boys, Sigur Ros and The Prodigy. All one hundred songs (this list is truly huge) can be seen on the NME’s website, and according to many expertise opinions it’s something to be heard and later watched. Nowadays it’s tough to imagine music without videos, this is a total blend of two genres, visual and acoustic.

American singer and poet Patti Smith is planning to release the collection of singles, said Consequence of Sound. It will be titled “Outside Society” and should hit the stores on August 23 this year. Smith had personally chosen eighteen songs, which shall be included in the disk, so here is the full track-list:

1. Gloria
2. Free Money
3. Ain’t It Strange
4. Pissing in a River
5. Because the Night
6. Rock N Roll Nigger
7. Dancing Barefoot
8. Frederick
9. So You Want to Be a Rock N Roll Star
10. People Have the Power
11. Up There Down There
12. Beneath the Southern Cross
13. Summer Cannibals
14. 1959
15. Glitter in Their Eyes
16. Lo and Beholden
17. Smells Like Teen Spirit
18. Trampin’

Her most recent studio album “Twelve” came out in April 2007, it incorporated covers on the whole variety of musicians, for example it included “Are You Experienced” by Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles’ “Within You Without You”, “Changing of the Guards” by Bob Dylan, and even Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Smith is obviously very talented and extra ordinary, many believe that she is also extremely controversial. Her poetry can be very dark and extreme, she left her child in order to continue the musical career. She is truly wild and can be considered to be the last beatnik and hippy before the upcoming era of disco and punk music. Patti’s peering eyesight is looking into other world, she is not living within the frames of the material things, her transcending poetic powers simply move the outer spheres. Smith’s album “Horses” had inspired numerous musicians and bands, guys from The Clash used to say that the latter album is probably the only thing which had inspired them.

Exclusively talented actress Gwyneth Paltrow had curiously entertained the crowd right before the Beady Eye’s concert on July 5 at Roundhouse in London, noted New Musical Express. Previously, she used to sing, so it’s not the first time, moreover, in March this year the press was spreading a lot of rumors regarding the fact that she had signed a contract with Atlantic Records. Later, it became known that this deal didn’t work out due to some strange issues that still remain to be absolutely personal. To some it may look really strange, but during the Beady Eye’s performance Paltrow wasn’t singing, but talked about cooking, cuisine and other things that may be related to it. At the same time she is possessing the website, which is fully dedicated to cuisine, also her videos regarding this topic may be regularly seen at YouTube. Her beautiful book about cooking can be useful to anyone who enjoys such a thing. Paltrow and Beady Eye were performing within the frames of the iTunes music festival, and notably the whole event shall last until the end of July. Such bands as Linkin Park, Foo Fighters and Adel will be presented along with other sixty two groups, so those who are still interested in this tour may visit it. Paltrow is more than an actress, her obvious talent and the taste of music is surely great, she can stay on two sides, one is acting and another is singing. Some people believe that her favorite style is country and this genre can truly move her future in music.