According to this story on Billboard, Michael Jackson has sold over 30 million copies of his albums around the world since his death one year ago (June 25, 2009.)
In the US alone, MJ has sold over 9 million copies of his albums in the past year. On top of that he has sold over 12 million track downloads.
The This Is It film made $72 million at the box office in the US making it the highest grossing concert film ever. On top of that, it made another $188 million overseas.
Today at 3:30PM EST Paul McCartney is performing a benefit concert which is going to be streamed live on the Born HIV Free YouTube Channel.
In other cool McCartney related news, I appreciate that he is refusing to apologize for the joke he made about George W. Bush when he was collecting the Gerswin Prize at the White House. Continue reading “Paul McCartney Live On YouTube / Political Rant” »
Radiohead has released seven studio albums to date. What if you were to take the top two most played tracks on Last.FM (using the last 6 months rankings) from each of those albums and put them on a mix? It seems like this mix would be a pretty good introductory overview of Radiohead’s career to date.
That’s my theory anyway, the 14 track mix below is the result of that theory put to the test (each song title is a link to where you can download the song so you can put this mix together yourself.)
The songs are in chronological order. The total amount of unique listeners for each song to date is included. Continue reading “Radiohead Compilation Mix Based On Last.FM” »
It’s hard for me to believe it’s already been a full year since Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 but by looking at the calendar I know that is the case.
I don’t have anything interesting to say really, but I do have a cool MJ related article (on the making of the “Thriller” video) to share with you: Vanity Fair “Thriller” Article.
Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien said that a new Radiohead album is likely to be coming out sometime this year in a recent BBC interview (on Adam Buxton’s Big Mixtape.)
A choice tidbit from the interview: “I’m really excited… I feel like this is the best record we ever made. It really is genuinely exciting. It’s very different from what we did last time.”
Along with the tantalizing information about a possible 2010 Radiohead album, there is some other really interesting stuff in the interview. I was especially interested in how difficult a time he said they had getting In Rainbows right.
Listen to the complete interview:
And these were the songs on his “mixtape” for the show: Continue reading “New Radiohead Album / Ed O’Brien BBC Interview” »
The Beatles USB is back in stock. It had been sold out for quite some time so now that Amazon has more of them I thought I should share the good news (especially since I know from my StatCounter that a lot of people come to this site looking for it.)
The Beatles USB is essentially a digital version (in both MP3 and super high quality FLAC) of The Remastered Beatles in Stereo Box Set. It’s the easiest way to legally get The Beatles entire catalog onto your iPod.
For audiophiles it’s the 24bit FLAC files that are the most interesting part of The Beatles USB stick. Regular CD files are just 16bit, so these 24bit FLAC files are the highest quality versions of The Beatles remastered songs available.
It should be noted that this USB stick does not include the remastered mono versions that are found in the Beatles in Mono Box Set.
OK Go have a reputation for inventive music videos (click here for a post from January on some of their earlier videos) and their latest (for “End Love”) is definitely not going to do anything to hurt that reputation. In fact, I think it’s their most interesting one yet.
Check out what Jeff Lieberman (who directed the video with Eric Gunther) said about how the video was made:
The fastest we go is 172,800x, compressing 24 hours of real time into a blazing 1/2 second. The slowest is 1/32x speed, stretching a mere 1/2 second of real time into a whopping 16 seconds. This gives us a fastest to slowest ratio of 5.5 million. If you like averages, the average speed up factor of the band dancing is 270x. In total we shot 18 hours of the band dancing and 192 hours of LA skyline timelapse – over a million frames of video – and compressed it all down to 4 minutes and 30 seconds! Oh and don’t forget, it’s one continuous camera shot.
Watch The Video:
I’ve been making an effort to give a good open ear to as many of the critically acclaimed albums of the year as I can make time for. My playlist on Winamp (all of these albums can be downloaded from AmazonMP3) includes 30 of these albums and what follows are my initial reactions to them.
In some cases these reactions are formed only hearing some portion of the album, in some cases it’s from hearing the album multiple times. So they haven’t all got an equal shot. Some I’m really still trying to figure out if they do anything for me or not, while others I’ve had a strong reaction to (either positively or negatively.)
Strong Positive Reaction: Yeasayer – Odd Blood, Beach House – Teen Dream, Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid, and Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today. Continue reading “Initial Reactions To Some Critically Acclaimed 2010 Albums” »
Through 11PM EST (it started at 2PM) you can watch live as 20 cats listen to Devo’s first album in 20 years, Something for Everybody, on UStream. Click Here to check it out.
There is a reason why Heavy Metal attracts more guys than girls. Why? Because you can barely understand the lyrics. Metal is surrounded by a crazy drummer playing heavy double bass beats accompanied by a couple of guitarists playing the fattest riffs as loud as possible. Truly head-banging music. Girls, in general, do not recognize with this. The tone and topics of the lyrics tend to push them away. Guys could care less, they just think that the guitar riffs or drums are bad ass.
Guys: have you ever been playing one of your favorite songs, rocking out in the car, and looked over at your girlfriend sitting there with a funny look on her face? That’s because she’s thinking, “I can’t understand what that singer is saying”. Thats ok. It goes both ways. What about when that one song comes on the radio and your girlfriend gets all excited and starts singing… “She’s just a small town girl…. Living in a lonely worlddd”. The guy thinks to himself, “I’m kinda sick of this song”. That is the way the world turns.
Guys tend to like the flow of the song. They like the energy and passion into the music. They tend to look at complexity of melodies and rhythms. Girls look for the energy and passion behind the vocals. Girls like to talk; they like to listen. Guys like to get their blood flowing. Of course, there are exceptions, However.
I recently heard a band debating what songs to put on their new EP coming out. They were deciding over two songs. One song was a more radio friendly song and a little easier on the ears, but the other song was by far more impressive musically speaking. They could not decide which one they wanted to release on the EP. The guitarist looked over at the bassist and drummer and said, “Well guys, it comes down to this: Chicks or Dicks?” He was talking about whether to release the song more pleasing to the females because of the catchier vocals, or to showcase their musical abilities.
I’ll let you know what their decision was when the CD comes out.