Billboard 200 Update
Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D. steps in at #1 on the Billboard 200 after selling 304,000, marking the first #1 album for the group. Last week's #1, Dave Matthews Band's Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King drops to #2 in its second week with 128,000 sold, a 70% drop.
Meanwhile, Eminem's Relapse falls one position to #3 with 87,000 (a 38% drop) while weirdo supergroup Chickenfoot jumped up to #4 after selling 79,000 copies of their debut. Latin quartet Aventura enters the Billboard 200 at #5 with Last, shifting 47,000 copies, putting them at #1 on the Top Latin Albums chart, the band's first chart-topper.
Billboard Hot 100 Update
As if spending 11 weeks at #1 on the singles chart with "Boom Boom Pow" wasn't enough, the Black Eyed Peas have now also claimed the #2 spot with the debut of "I Gotta Feeling" on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. By doing so, the group becomes the first since OutKast to occupy the top two spots on the Hot 100. OutKast accomplished it in 2004 with "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move".
Meanwhile, Keri Hilson's "Knock You Down," featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo held on to the #3 spot, Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" dropped #2-4, Lady GaGa's "LoveGame" climbed #6-5 and Jeremih's "Birthday Sex" fell 4-6. Following up, Lady GaGa's "Poker Face," fell #5-7, while Sean Kingston's "Fire Burning," rose #9-8, Shinedown's "Second Chance" dropped 7-9 and Beyonce's "Halo," fell #8-10.
UK's From the Basement (created by producer Nigel Godrich) will host a special session featuring Jack White's new band The Dead Weather on June 22nd at 9 PM (that's Monday, June 21st at 4 PM Eastern). The set will be streamed live online at www.ftblive.com - don't miss it!
The Dead Weather features The Kills' Alison Mosshart joined by Jack White (The White Stripes/The Raconteurs) on drums/vocals, The Raconteurs' Jack Lawrence on bass and Queens of the Stone Age's Dean Fertita on guitar. Their debut album, Horehound, is set for a July 14 release on Third Man Records.
Have you seen the video for Green Day's latest single, "21 Guns"? If not, check it out here.
Apparently building new ground isn't as easy as grabbing the bats and pulling out the old dead horses. Blink 182 have scrapped their plans to write a new album for the time being, calling the idea "too ambitious" before its upcoming tour. Instead, they'll have one new song ready before they hit the road on July 23, kicking off in Las Vegas.
Guitarist Tom DeLonge tells Billboard.com that the track, titled "Up All Night," has "got a little bit of (Pink) Floyd, a little bit of Rush, a little bit of blink in there. It's crazy, but it somehow sounds exactly like where we left off (in 2005). It's an amazing song." I bet. DeLonge says the tune is nearly finished, waiting just for Travis Barker to complete his drum tracks. Release plans haven't been determined yet.
The guitarist explains that he, Barker and bassist Mark Hoppus had all the best intentions, but they're just victims of their own success, really. "I think nobody realized how massive this tour was going to be," DeLonge says. "The tickets outsold what the promoters expected, three to one. So everyone's trying to play catch-up right now and really nail this tour to be the best it can be and get everything ready, so there's no studio time right now. Everyone's so busy just trying to make this thing happen, I think."
DeLonge says Blink-182 fans can expect to hear plenty of their old hits (duh) in a two-hour set that will feature "massive production and arcs in the show that involve lots of bad words...The talks this morning were hot to incorporate the word 'fuck' in such a way that it somehow is parallel if not better than when it was lit on fire 10 years ago." Sounds like the boys are all grownsd up.
The ever-amazing French electro-pop act Air has slated October 6 for the release of their fifth studio album, Love 2. The twelve song record is the first album to utilize the duo's new Paris-based recording space, Atlas Studio.
Air has previously worked with producers such as Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Paul McCartney) and Tony Hoffer (Beck, Supergrass), but Love 2 marks a new stage for the duo, who wrote, recorded and produced everything on the album. Two singles will hit this summer to build anticipation: on July 7, opening track "Do The Joy" will hit digital retailers, followed by "Sing Sang Sung" on August 25.
Radiohead may be free of their obligations to their old label, but Capitol has the band's entire pre-In Rainbows catalog at its disposal, and they plan to milk that until the end of time. Last year, the label released a Radiohead greatest-hits collection without the blessing of the band, then issued expanded double- and triple-disc versions of their first three albums, full of rarities and b-sides which didn't harm the band's legacy any, and reminded a few fans of what the whole big deal was about back in the heyday of Ok Computer.
On August 25, Capitol will complete their expanded reissue project with the next three Radiohead albums: 2000's Kid A, 2001's Amnesiac, and 2003's Hail to the Thief. Once again, these reissues come stacked with B-sides, live songs, studio session and everything else under the sun that didn't make it onto the actual albums.
Then, as if that weren't enough, the even-more-deluxe Special Collectors Editions will also come with DVDs, which will include music videos and TV performances. And by the time we're all done with that, Radiohead will likely have a new album ready to drop. How awesome is that?
Just over a week ago, Nine Inch Nails frontman/nucleus Trent Reznor announced that he was done with Twitter and with every other social networking site because of the rampant assholism on the internet: "I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule."
Well, Reznor's back up in the hot 140-character action, and he's not making any apologies.
Unbelievable: A Minnesota jury has awarded the RIAA $1.92 million in their lawsuit against a woman named Jammie Thomas-Rasset. The jury found that she had willfully infringed on record labels' copyrights after she downloaded and shared 24 songs on Kazaa.
So that works out to $80,000 in damages per song. One woman, living at home, downloading two albums' worth of songs. There's something to be said here about punishments fitting crimes, but I'm too disgusted with this story to trot it out. This is just ridiculous.
Her lawyers claim that it’s nearly impossible to prove that she was the one who downloaded the songs, as her children and ex-boyfriend also had easy access to her Kazaa account. They tried to make a point of her standing up to the RIAA and hoped that, if a precedent could be was set, more people would do the same.
In Thomas-Rasset’s first trial, she was fined $222,000 for the violations, but the judge called it a mistrial after acknowledging that he may have made an error in instructing the jury. After that, Thomas-Rasset decided not to settle as most defendants had, resulting in the astronomical fine. This does not bode well for the defendant in another unnamed but high-profile RIAA case, which may or may not involve a dear friend of yours truly.
Are you really going to buy this backpedaling crap? Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst is now telling anyone who will listen that he's a changed man, not the misogynistic fake-ass suburban anger douche we all remember him as. In order to move forward with Limp Bizkit, Durst claims he had to come to terms with the attitude of some of its fans. Naturally, he's pulling out the old "I was abused" story.
"I got abused a lot growing up," Durst said. "For years I looked into the crowd and saw a bunch of bullies and assholes who tortured me and ruined my life. They were using my music as fuel to torture other people, even dressing like me. The music was being misinterpreted and the irony effected me and we stepped away." Now, how exactly someone misinterprets a song like "Break Stuff" is beyond me, but I digress.
Living Colour has announced plans to release their first new studio album in five years, The Chair In The Doorway on September 15th. Original members Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, Will Calhoun and (since 1993) Doug Wimbish recorded at Sono Studios outside of Prague in The Czech Republic during the fall of 2008 and spring of 2009. "We feel like this is the best record we've made yet and we couldn't be more excited to be releasing it with the legendary Megaforce Records," says guitarist Vernon Reid. "Some of our favorite bands were or are Megaforce artists, Metallica, Bad Brains, Anthrax, Black Crowes, so it's an honor to be part of a label with a great legacy."
Check out Street Sweeper Social Club's video for "100 Little Curses". The clip stars Drea de Matteo ("The Sopranos") and Breckin Meyer. The band's self-titled debut is in stores now.
