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Adam Lambert's Band Looks Cool And Familiar

Posted 11/18/09 10:23 am EST by in Music


During his tenure on "American Idol," Adam Lambert always showed signs of a glam rocker buried deep beneath the network television-friendly exterior. Now that he is dictating his career, the floodgates have opened. Last week, we saw the first photos from the video shoot for "For Your Entertainment," which appears to be set at an S&M club in the "Mad Max" universe. Yesterday, Lambert hopped on Twitter and revealed the first photo of his band to the universe. The five person combo keeps the theme going, combining Rihanna's taste for bondage with the end-of-humanity styling in John Carpenter's "Escape from New York."

The band will be appearing in the "For Your Entertainment" video and will also perform on stage with Lambert when he plays the American Music Awards, which air live this Sunday, Novmeber 22 on ABC and will also feature Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston and Jay-Z.

One striking thing about the photo of Lambert's band: In those costumes, they sort of look like goth New Wave futurists Orgy. This is an excellent development, as Orgy were a perpetually underrated band that were strangely lumped in with nü metal (being on Korn's record label probably didn't help) but actually dealt in glammy, pulsating futurist rock that featured healthy doses of Bowie and the Cure. Of course, we already have a sense of what For Your Entertainment is going to sound like, and it's nothing like Orgy, but it's refreshing to have a group that deals in such interesting aesthetic choices. For Your Entertainment is less than a week away, and it promises to be a huge juggernaut.

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Blink-182 Drop Their Break-Up Album: Wake-Up Video

Posted 11/18/09 9:00 am EST by in Wake-Up Video


When they first scored a breakout hit in 1997 with "Dammit," it seemed like Blink-182 would simply be another pop-punk band who had ridden the coattails of Green Day to another anonymous radio smash. But there was something about the potty-mouthed trio that kept people coming back, and the group with the nonsense name ended up becoming one of the more influential rock groups at the turn of the millennium. It helped that they continued to deliver great songs ("All the Small Things," "What's My Age Again?" and "The Rock Show" among them) along with excellent videos (the boy band-skewering "All the Small Things" was a notorious "TRL" staple for a large portion of 2000).

As time progressed, the group became more and more adventurous on record, adding a healthy dose of early adult melancholy and a handful of sonic experiments. Despite it's pun-tastic title and a series of big hooks, 2001's Take Off Your Pants and Jacket is something of a bummer (at least tonally), and the band's self-titled fifth album (which was released on this day in 2003) is mostly filled with New Wave-inspired sounds and profoundly "adult" themes. It sounded like an album made by a band dealing with tumult, so it wasn't particularly surprising when the group announced they were going on hiatus in 2005. It opened the door for a number of side projects (including Angels & Airwaves, +44 and the Transplants), each of which received some degree of success. But the group finally decided to get back together and tour earlier this year, and a new album is coming in 2010. It's safe to say that the fans agreed with the sentiment of Blink-182's "I Miss You," a dramatic, Cure-inspired ballad that stands as one of the band's biggest hits.

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'Dancing With The Stars' Results: Joannna Krupa Goes Home, Kelly Osbourne Heads To Finals

Posted 11/18/09 8:00 am EST by in Music, Television


It's been a long, winding season of "Dancing with the Stars," but at last we've arrived at the finals. This week's semi-final series of episodes ended with Joanna Krupa getting sent home in something of a semi-upset. Krupa certainly moved better than Donny Osmond or Kelly Osbourne, but she's far less famous than either of those two and was thus shown the door. She seemed completely unsurprised by the decision and did her exit dance without much fuss.

In fact, her dismissal was something of a metaphor for the back half of this season, as now that the drama-makers have been tossed off and the underdogs have all put their shoes away, we're down to actually naming a winner. And has anybody doubted — even for a nanosecond — that Mya was going to win this season? The public do love Osmond, but the goodwill of the over 60 set won't be enough to give him the crown. It's sort of a cheat, really, as Mya is about as close to a professional dancer as you can get without actually putting it on your tax return. (It's always been sort of unfair to have figure skaters on this show, too.) If the show was a sham, Osbourne would totally be named the winner next week, as she has provided a great story. Remember how borderline hostile she was in the opening episodes? And now she's totally great! In the brief history of "Dancing with the Stars," nobody has ever improved so much so fast.

This week's performance episode was great, as it was four couples doing impressive dancing (the choreography on this show is sometimes spotty, but everything was on point). The nearly drama-free results episode was one of the more insane hours of television in recent memory: Alicia Keys dropped in to perform "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" (the best song Price never recorded), Leona Lewis belted out "Happy" (from her excellent just-released new album Echo) and then Robin and Barry Gibb tapped into their falsettos for a run through "You Should be Dancing." Can you guess which on was the most surreal?

There won't be much tension during next week's finale, as Mya should already have printed up business cards announcing her as the season's victor. Just to make it interesting, the producers of "Dancing with the Stars" should give Mya some sort of stomach virus, just like Carol Hannah on "Project Runway." But unless there's projectile vomiting involved, the former "Lady Marmalade" contributor will dance away with the trophy.

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Is Rihanna's 'Russian Roulette' Video An Homage To A David Lynch Movie?

Posted 11/17/09 5:45 pm EST by in Movies, Music


Rihanna's new video for "Russian Roulette" is an incredible cinematic affair, full of striking images and a narrative that may or may not hold together or even exist. It cuts between Rihanna being monitored in a padded cell, then shifts to the singer sitting across a table from an anonymous man and contemplating the gun between them. Then there are flashes of tigers and Rihanna ends up in the desert, where she is buzzed by a car. Finally, she ends up underwater, shot in the chest and bleeding (theoretically to her doom). There certainly seems like there is a story in there, but it's unclear and pretty dense.

In that sense, it's a lot like a David Lynch film. In fact, there are so many similarities between Rihanna's "Russian Roulette" and Lynch's 1997 film "Lost Highway" that it seems like it must be a direct homage. "Lost Highway" is a difficult film to describe, but here's a brief synopsis: It's a fever dream of a movie wherein Bill Pullman kills his wife, then goes to jail and morphs into Balthazar Getty, who gets out of jail and gets involved with a gangster's girlfriend. Along the way, the two characters run up against a porn director, a violent mob boss and a guy with no eyebrows who may or may not be the devil himself. It's a difficult film, and one of Lynch's most underrated.

There are a number of parallels between "Lost Highway" and "Russian Roulette." In both pieces, the protagonists both seem to be projecting themselves out of prison into alternate lives that are theoretically free but no less dangerous. They both have scenes that feature cars nearly running over characters in the desert. Even the figure watching over Rihanna in her cell somewhat resembles the evil Mystery Man in "Lost Highway." There's also the scene below, which shows both Patricia Arquette and Rihanna standing mysteriously next to dark cars.

Whether it's intentional or not, Rihanna is not the first artist to indulge in film homages. In fact, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga's new clip "Video Phone" borrows the opening scene from Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs." Kanye West also dipped into his DVD collection for his video for "Stronger," which uses images from the anime classic "Akira." And of course Faith No More essentially recreated all of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" for the video for "Last Cup of Sorrow."

Click here for a complete look at the space where film and music video cross over!

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The Beatles Team Up With Fashion Line A Bathing Ape

Posted 11/17/09 5:03 pm EST by in Music


By Steven Roberts

With reissues of their entire catalog and their own video game, Beatlemania is sweeping the country again. Although the band has been broken up over 40 years, they have still maintained a special place in the hearts and minds of millions, as well as an undeniable spot on the pantheon of musical greats. So what better way to celebrate Paul, John, George and Ringo then to slap them on the front of a T-shirt?

The Japanese clothing brand A Bathing Ape (or simply Bape) is the latest to jump on the craze. They collaborated with Apple Corp. Ltd — the Beatles' multimedia corporation — to release a capsule collection line of clothing featuring the band. The line will feature a number shirts and sweaters as well as a coin pouch and will probably cost a pretty penny.

Apple Corp also released info about it's collaboration with another Japanese clothing line, Rei Kawakubo's COMME des GARCONS. The CDG collaboration features a variety of t-shirts, bags and jackets.

The Beatles X COMMME des GARCONS line is expected to release later this month, while there is no official word on the release of the Bape x The Beatles collaboration. Please Please Me, With the Beatles, Help! and Revolver are in stores now — along with a couple other ones, I think.

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Ken Ober's 'Remote Control' On MTV: Where High And Low Culture Collided

Posted 11/17/09 4:53 pm EST by in Television


Yesterday's news about the untimely death of Ken Ober is still being felt by family, friends and colleagues. As Kurt Loder wrote in his remembrance of the veteran comedian and TV producer, "Remote Control" was so ahead of its time that the rest of television has yet to really catch up to it. "Remote Control" was a remarkable half hour of programming, somehow simultaneously supporting the quiz format, sketches, stand-up, music videos and the occasional foray into pick-up baseball.

The game show portion was especially brilliant, as it brought together the sort of knowledge found in dusty boxes of "Trivial Pursuit" with garbage facts left behind after hours of television viewing (movie theme songs, cast members on "The Partridge Family," details about "The Facts of Life"). In essence, Ober was a nerd who managed to spin his obsession with junk culture into a point of view and a career. In the age before the Internet, this was a remarkable accomplishment.

There may be no more definitive 90 seconds of "Remote Control" than the clip below. Ober introduces a lightning round called "Gershwin, Beethoven or Partridge Family," wherein he names song titles and the contestants must choose which of the above wrote that particular tune. It's followed by Ober's casual dismissal of the contestant, a wacky stunt exit and an incredible blast of audience participation. It's an incredible amount of comedy and zaniness crammed into a minute and a half, and it's all fueled by Ober's lightning fast wit.

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50 Cent Knows What The People Want: The MTV News Quote Of The Day

Posted 11/17/09 3:51 pm EST by in Music


"What I realized translated most through my material is the aggression, and the people miss it because the other artists don't come from the same type of background or lifestyle. They don't want that from those artists. You know, what they would knock me for is if I sung on a record — 'Oh, 50 is singing on a record' — they get upset when I use the melody. I've been encouraged to use more melody because I'm an international touring artist and I'm watching the music break language barriers, and all they can follow is melody when you go out there at different points. So I brought it, I came back, and I did different things creatively and they kind of resent me for what they love Drake for. It's interesting."

-Rapper/mogul/cultural critic/"New Moon" fan 50 Cent, discussing the reasoning behind the harder-edged songs in his catalog, especially on the just-released Before I Self Destruct. During a long conversation with MTV News, 50 went through each of his albums one-by-one and talked about the choices he made at various points in his career. For instance, he admits that he was probably overextending himself during the creation of The Massacre. "I overwrote this album. It's 22 cuts, the maximum playing time on a single CD. Technically it's a double-disc. You know, I had so much going on creatively at that point that I also wrote the hit music that was on Game's effort, you know, doing this project." According to 50, Before I Self Destruct is the best album he's ever produced. "I finally found a balance of what I feel like a great album is — and this is representation of it."

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Vivian Girls Get Their Nails Did On A 'First Date'

Posted 11/17/09 3:13 pm EST by in Music


By Steven Roberts

As my colleague Rya explained in the previous installment of "First Date," we started this project with the idea that we would go on dates with musicians we really liked. Working at MTV News is cool, but it leaves you with very little time for a proper social life. You see your co-workers more than your family, and you constantly have to cancel on your friends (not to mention on actual dates). And if you like high-maintenance, artistic girls, forget about it. They need constant attention that you just can't provide after a day of writing, shooting and editing. Then they got their own thing going on and ... well, enough about me.

For my first "First Date," I decided to take out one of the best all-female low-fi noise surf trios out there. Vivian Girls are an indie outfit from Brooklyn, consisting of Cassie Ramone, Kickball Katy (not her government) and Ali Koehler. They crank out a brand of fuzzy rock that doesn't skimp on noise but keeps a deep groove going, putting them right at home alongside contemporaries like Titus Andronicus, Crystal Stilts and No Age. Their self-titled debut earned them a devoted, enthusiastic following, and their newest album Everything Goes Wrong expanded on their already highly-evolved sound, adding hints of shoegaze and even more reckless abandon.

So where does one take a lo-fi/surfer-punk/Brooklyn warehouse band? To grab a pedicure, naturally. Our crew met them at Enigma Nail & Spa in the Fashion District, and they were the sweetest girls. They were a little shy, and we might have come from two different worlds — I'm more hip-hop and R&B guy — but that's to be expected on a first date. They were definitely excited about a relaxing day at the spa, especially having played the night before. This was my first pedicure, and mein gott! I had no idea what I was missing.

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Justin Bieber Celebrates Release Of My World At Dinner With Usher

Posted 11/17/09 1:48 pm EST by in Music


There are a ton of new releases hitting the streets today, including albums from Kris Allen, John Mayer, Them Crooked Vultures and 50 Cent. But the one album that might be the most anticipated of any of those is the debut from Justin Bieber. My World is now available (currently on sale for $7.99 at iTunes), and it is the culmination of all of the build-up that Bieber has had in the past few months. Bieber first made a splash two months ago at the MTV Video Music Awards, where he gave a shout-out to a contest-winning fan during the red carpet show.

After that, he parlayed his many Twitter followers and Facebook friends into an aggressive onslaught that saw him drop a total of four singles (which makes up half the album), cut a pair of videos (for "One Time" and "One Less Lonely Girl") and appear on just about every talk show imaginable (including "Today," "Good Morning America" and "Ellen," where he'll be making his second appearance today).

Bieber's story is now the stuff of legend: He put footage of him singing up on YouTube just so his extended family could see him perform, and the video clips got spread around and lead to a bidding war between Justin Timberlake and Usher. The latter signed the 15-year-old Canadian, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Bieber celebrated the release of his debut last night with a dinner with his new mentor. In traditional Bieber fashion, he tweeted about the experience and posted a picture. Today, he posted a video thanking his fans for his success in celebration of the release of My World. For Bieber, it's just getting started.

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Spotted: The 'New Moon' Cast Steps Out

Posted 11/17/09 12:30 pm EST by in Movies


Every day a multitude of stars wanders through the halls of MTV News to talk about their latest projects and goof around with our intrepid correspondents. But sometimes we catch stars elsewhere, and that's why we put together Spotted!, a daily compendium of stars in the wild.

There might have been other cultural events happening last night, but as far as the pop universe is concerned, the only real event last night (and all week, really) was the premiere of "New Moon," the hotly-anticipated second entry in the "Twilight" film series. The film had its big red carpet event last night (check out last night's live blog over at Hollywood Crush for all the sordid details) that again brought together the series' hot trio of Taylor Lautner, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. The premiere was also attended by co-stars Dakota Fanning, Nikki Reed, Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene, as well as 50 Cent, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Chris Walla, Emma Roberts, OK Go, film director Kevin Smith and, of course, hundreds of fans who gathered outside the Mann Village Theater in Los Angeles.

There were other lower-profile events happening yesterday too, as Rihanna celebrated the release of her new album Rated R at a London club and Justin Bieber hung out in Queens on the eve of his album's release. Click here for these photos as well as the entire "Spotted!" archive, which features over 350 candid shots of stars like Britney Spears, Madonna, Adam Lambert, Justin Timberlake, 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, the Jonas Brothers and Shakira!

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