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Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' Gets Endorsed By Madonna: The MTV News Quote Of The Day

Posted 2/15/11 3:00 pm EST by in Music


"There is really no one that is a more adoring and loving Madonna fan than me. I am the hugest fan personally and professionally. The good news is that I got an e-mail from her people and her, sending me their love and complete support on behalf of the single, and if the queen says it shall be, then it shall be."

-Grammy winner, international pop sensation and excellent talk show guest Lady Gaga, letting the world know that Madonna has co-signed "Born This Way," the first single from the forthcoming Gaga album of the same name. Wearing a see-through black dress, a lacquered mask and the same prosthetic facial pieces she wore on the Grammys, Gaga was a guest on "The Tonight Show" on Monday night (February 14), and the conversation swerved around to the response to "Born This Way." Since the release of the single last Friday (February 11), the discussion has surrounded exactly how much Gaga has borrowed from pop legend Madonna, who operated in much of the same idiom when she first came up over 20 years ago. It's hardly the first time Gaga and Madonna have been entangled (there was similar hand-wringing back when Gaga dropped the Madonna-referencing video for "Alejandro" last year), and it certainly won't be the last.

Gaga is particularly proud of the vibe and the message of "Born This Way" (which is already a massive hit). "I think today in music, the freedom in the song, the sort of R&B, early-'90s vibe that it has, it's so full of love and spirit, and I think it's the spirit that people are reacting to the most," she told Leno. "I just want everyone to rejoice and celebrate and be unafraid to be happy with music. It doesn't always have to be so dark. It doesn't always have to be so sexy. Sometimes it's wonderful just to celebrate life and go to church with it."

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Britney Spears Going Nude In 'Hold It Against Me,' So Here Are Her Best Naked Video Moments

Posted 2/15/11 2:00 pm EST by in Music


Britney Spears has never been afraid to bare all in her music videos. She appears scantily-clad in just about all of her clips, and she has even gone completely nude in a handful of vids. (Of course, she has taken her clothes off plenty for photo shoots stripped down to a nude bodysuit during her performance of "Oops! ... I Did It Again" at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards, but for the purposes of this round-up, we're only counting the video appearances.)

So as we gear up for the release of "Hold It Against Me," MTV News is taking a look back on the times she has appeared nude in videos. Why? Well, choreographer Brain Friedman recently gave us the scoop that Lady Spears will bare it all once again in the clip (which premieres this Thursday, February 17, at 9:56 p.m. Eastern on MTV and MTV.com). "I love nudity," he teased.

She kicked it all off in "Toxic" in 2004, which was the first time she appeared without a stitch of clothing in one of her music videos. For the scene in question, Spears wanted to appear "wearing diamonds and nothing else," according to director Joseph Kahn. So, how naked was she? "There are jewels all over my body," she later said. "There's nothing actually underneath."

For "Everytime" (also in 2004), Spears not only stripped down but also let fans into what it might look like when she takes a bath. The singer appears in the clip as an embattled celebrity hounded by paparazzi, and to wash off her latest encounter she hits the tub and takes it all off. A few years later, she appeared as a stripper in the clip for "Gimme More," the lead single from her 2007 album Blackout. She mostly teased, but she does in face appear topless in the video.

"Toxic" director Joseph Kahn got the singer to strip down again for her 2008 video for "Womanizer." It was Spears' big comeback video, and he knew she had to go there again in order to make a statement. "I was like, 'You know, if we do this video, and she went through all this work to get a new paint job, I was gonna show off the paint job," he recalled. "She's gonna be naked in this video.'"

Don't miss Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me" video premiere Thursday, February 17, at 9:56 p.m. ET on MTV and MTV.com, followed by a live discussion on MTV.com at 11 p.m. about the new clip and what's next for the pop star!

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PJ Harvey's Let England Shake: The Reviews Are In!

Posted 2/15/11 1:00 pm EST by in Music


With Arcade Fire winning Album of the Year at the 53rd Grammy Awards and the Decemberists recently finding their way to the top of the Billboard album chart, could 2011 be the year that indie rock breaks through (again)? Polly Jean Harvey has spent the better part of two decades grinding out an ever-morphing hybrid of blues, folk and electronic music that has seen both highs (1993's breakthrough Rid of Me, 2000's intense and moody Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea) and lows (1998's sleepy Is This Desire? and 2007's even sleepier White Chalk). For her new album Let England Shake (which hits store shelves today), Harvey has left the soft piano tinkling of White Chalk behind in favor of her core guitar-driven sound. Is Harvey's return to form a welcome experiment or an exercise in treading water?

According to the reviews, everybody seems completely on board with Harvey's latest work. Entertainment Weekly's Mikael Wood called Let England Shake "a hoedown for the end of civilization" and said the album was "her loosest, most eclectic effort in years." The Guardian shared that same sort of excitement, declaring the album "a richly inventive album that's unlike anything else in Harvey's back catalog." Critic Alexis Petridis also noted that Let England Shake "sounds suspiciously like the work of a woman at her creative peak."

In a four star review in the Los Angeles Times, writer Ann Powers also heavily endorsed Harvey, who she called "rock’s master polymorph." "The gore in Harvey's words, the eerie strum of the autoharp and rattle of the guitars and drums, all keep fracturing these songs even as they come together," she wrote. "Harvey's song structures give rise to the feelings we've been taught are proper about nationhood (pride, vigor), but her arrangements — the off-kilter instruments and the sometimes almost Muezzin oscillations of her singing — topple that response, send it somewhere dark and dangerous." Harvey's recurring lyrical themes about nationalism's ghosts also sucked in J. Edward Keyes of eMusic. "England is Harvey's love letter to and, occasionally, bitter reproach of, her homeland," he wrote. "Recorded in a church near Harvey's birthplace and bolstered by expert underplaying of longtime collaborators John Parish and Mick Harvey, the album is both familial and strange, a valentine cooed from a crooked mouth, the kind of sonnet that makes room for lines like, 'let's head out to the fountain of death.'"

Of course, not everybody is as enamored of Let England Shake. "The feral vivacity with which Harvey shook the pop-music world back in the '90s is in short supply here," wrote USA Today's Elysa Gardner. "There's some potent social commentary here, but nothing that will likely re-establish Harvey as a rock goddess." Still, the greatness of Let England Shake was summed up perfectly by Spin writer Amanda Petrusich. "Arguably her most pop-friendly record since 2000's Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, it's an intense indictment of the way countries fight, apolitical only in that it outlines what war does to human beings, not governments," she wrote. "Sung with warmth, these tracks offer a welcome antidote to her more familiar performance mode — spectacular austerity. They're as bloody and forceful as the battles Harvey references."

What do you think of PJ Harvey's new album? Let us know in the comments!

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Spotted: Esperanza Spalding Begins Her Post-Grammy Life In Japan

Posted 2/15/11 12:00 pm EST by in Music


Every day a multitude of stars wander 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.

A few weeks ago, only a select few people knew who Esperanza Spalding was. But now that the 26-year-old jazz bassist beat both Justin Bieber and Drake for the Best New Artist prize at the 53rd Grammy Awards, it seems like everybody knows her name. Under normal circumstances, her trip to Japan wouldn't attract paparazzi, but now that she is a Grammy winner (and the first Best New Artist victor to come from the jazz world), she should get used to having her photo taken. She handled it with the same grace she used to get through her Grammy Awards experience, moving gracefully through Narita International Airport in Tokyo and smiling all the way.

She wasn't the only star getting out in the public eye, as both Avril Lavigne and Justin Bieber were spotted moving around the streets of London (Lavigne was in town to promote her upcoming album Goodbye Lullaby, while Bieber was there to attend the annual Brit Awards), and Johnny Depp walked the carpet at the premiere of the new animated film "Rango" in Los Angeles. Click here for these photos as well as the entire "Spotted" archive, which features over 500 candid shots of stars like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Katy Perry, the Jonas Brothers, Mariah Carey, Madonna and Kanye West!

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Trey Songz' 'Love Faces' Video: The Key Scene

Posted 2/15/11 11:00 am EST by in Music


Trey Songz maintains a grand tradition in R&B, and his latest video "Love Faces" — which premiered on Monday (February 14) and represents the third single from Songz' excellent 2010 album Passion, Pain & Pleasure — is the latest entry in said legacy. His brand of music is the sort of stuff that R. Kelly, Ginuwine and D'Angelo made huge at the turn of the century, full of sexed-up imagery, limited vocal histrionics and solid grooves that underscore the fantastic filth of the lyrics.

As a song, "Love Faces" has a pretty straightforward narrative — one that Songz explains in the spoken word intro to the tune. "When I met you woman, I couldn't help but notice a face so beautiful," he says. "I imagined the faces you would make if we ever made love." Following some sweet nothings, Songz actually gets to find out what those faces might be.

Meanwhile, the video actually has a nice little story line that sees Songz and his girlfriend pretending they don't know each other at her first gallery show (she is a painter, and there are several pieces that come to life over the course of the clip). The video is show mostly in black and white, and the few splashes of color include Songz' isolated performance shot (which is tinted a deep red) and the centerpiece painting of the art show. In the key scene, we learn the significance of that piece, as it contains Songz' hand print — one that occurred while Songz and the woman were indeed making love faces. The final shot tells it all.

The clip, co-directed by Songz and Justin Francis, is the singer's most narrative-heavy video — which, according to him, was by design.

What do you think of Trey Songz' "Love Faces" video? Let us know in the comments!

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LCD Soundsystem Bid Farewell To Television On 'The Colbert Report'

Posted 2/15/11 10:00 am EST by in Music


When James Murphy announced that he would be hanging up the performing and recording spurs as LCD Soundsystem, it sent a ripple of sadness and disappointment through his community of fans who have danced and banged along with Murphy since the group's inception back in the early part of the 21st century. But at least Murphy is making the most of his farewell, as he already has already scheduled a massive goodbye show at New York's Madison Square Garden (which sold out so quickly — mainly due to virtual gate-crashing by scalpers — that Murphy had to add a series of other shows at New York's Terminal 5), and on Monday night (February 14), he made what was billed as his final appearance on television as a guest on "The Colbert Report."

The host seemed vaguely incensed that Murphy, 41, was walking away from the rock and roll lifestyle. "Why walk away from the rock world?" Colbert asked. "Retirees get very few honey-dipped coeds waiting in the wings for them."

"It seemed like the right thing to do. I'm 41, and I think at some point it gets embarrassing," Murphy explained. "Because it started later, I had a life beforehand, and there's a lot of things I want to do. I have a label I run. I like to produce."

Colbert was tickled by the idea of Murphy as "the man." "You're going to say to young rockers, 'You know what? I don't hear a single. Let's put a reggaeton beat on that and add some Auto-Tune. We'll get Shaggy to sing with you.' That's going to be you now." Colbert also explained that Murphy was going about his exit all wrong. "There are only three ways to end your career if you're a rocker: Overdose, overstay your welcome, or write 'Spider-Man: The Musical,'" he joked.

"I don't want to do any of those three," Murphy deadpanned.

Following the interview, Murphy delivered an impassioned live version of "I Can Change," one of the key songs from LCD Soundsystem's much-loved 2010 album This Is Happening. If this is it, then he certainly is walking out on top.

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Whitney Houston Knows Hot To Get To Number One: Wake-Up Video

Posted 2/15/11 9:00 am EST by in Wake-Up Video


When Lady Gaga took the stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles to receive the award for Best Pop Vocal Album at Sunday night's (February 13) Grammy Awards, she gave a shout-out to a very special diva who has been relatively under the radar as of late. While accepting her award (one of three she took home on Sunday night), Gaga noted that she was picturing Whitney Houston singing "Born This Way" when she wrote it. "I need to say thank you tonight to Whitney Houston," Gaga said. "I wanted to thank Whitney because when I wrote 'Born This Way,' I imagined she was singing it because I wasn't secure enough in myself to imagine I was a superstar. So Whitney, I imagined you were singing 'Born This Way' when I wrote it."

"Born This Way" will likely be at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 this week, but on this day in 1986, Houston herself was at the top of the chart heap with "How Will I Know." The fourth single from her self-titled debut album (which was released on Valentine's Day in 1984), "How Will I Know" found Houston hitting an incredible groove. "Saving All My Love For You" had already gone to number one, and Houston would end up dropping an unprecedented streak of seven consecutive chart-topping singles ("Saving All My Love For You" and "How Will I Know" were followed by "Greatest Love of All," "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," "Didn't We Almost Have It All," "So Emotional" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go").

"How Will I Know" spent two weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 before it was replaced by Mr. Mister's "Kyrie." The video became a big hit for Houston, and it's easy to see why. Since she was mostly known as a balladeer, it was eye-opening to watch her cut loose in a fun environment.


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The Rock Returns To The WWE After Seven Year Layoff

Posted 2/15/11 8:00 am EST by in Television


In the words of the guest of honor on Monday night's (February 14) episode of "Raw," "Finally, the Rock has come back!" Dwayne Johnson walked away from professional wrestling back in 2004 (his last appearance was at WrestleMania XX) to follow his dream of becoming a movie star (a goal he has accomplished several times over). In the years since his departure, plenty of stars have been made (John Cena, Randy Orton) and plenty of veterans have left and returned (Mick Foley, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin), but fans have been clamoring for the Rock to step back into the wrestling world in some capacity or another. On Monday night, they got their wish.

The show had been hinting at the idea of having a host at WrestleMania XXVII (which will be held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on April 3) for a while, and last week WWE chairman Vince McMahon announced to the audience that said host would in fact be revealed this week. The rumors immediately began to circulate, and while both Bob Barker and Justin Bieber had been batted around the Internet as possibilities, most fans believed that this role belonged to Johnson (who went along with the Internet rumors and teased the reveal on his Facebook page).

In an attempt to throw the audience off one last night, the producers of "Raw" suggested that the host would actually be a woman (they shot footage of what was supposed to be the host's car arriving at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California). But after a complete blackout and a strange video package of a lightning storm, that old familiar music kicked in and the Rock walked into the ring for the first time in seven years.

He hasn't lost a step, either. Over the course of a 15 minute speech, the Rock explained why he came back and issued challenges to both top superstar John Cena and current WWE Champion (and MTV reality show alumnus) the Miz. He also took the time to rip into much-loathed WWE play-by-play man Michael Cole and hit on all of his classic catch phrases. It's uncertain exactly what his hosting of WrestleMania will entail and whether or not he'll actually step into the ring to compete (he certainly still looks in fighting shape), but the fact that the Rock has returned is enough to not only keep current fans thrilled but also to bring back people who loved Johnson the first time around.

What did you think of the Rock's return? What do you think he'll do at WrestleMania? Let us know in the comments!

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The Grammy Awards: Five Things That Need To Change

Posted 2/14/11 5:00 pm EST by in Grammys


After the final award of the night was given out at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Grammy Awards had declared a number of winners. Some were literal, in the sense that Lady Gaga, Eminem, Lady Antebellum and Arcade Fire all walked away with high-profile wins in some of the biggest categories of the night. Others scored more professional victories, like Mick Jagger (who proved that he's still got it after decades on stage) and Justin Bieber (who was one of the night's most electric performers despite only being 16 years old). Even the producers could consider themselves winner, as the telecast was watched by 26.5 million viewers — the largest audience for the Grammys in a decade.

But the viewers didn't necessarily walk away with a sense of victory. Though the show contained no shortage of highlights, there were also some things that could be changed moving forward. Here are five things that should be reconsidered moving forward.

Shorten The Show
Even though last night's show was mostly entertaining, it was still too long. Three-and-a-half hours is an awfully long time to be watching much of anything (most people don't sit down to watch films for that same amount of time). By tightening the edges and knocking off two or three performances (sorry, Barbra Streisand), you could really have a tight show that is way more viewer friendly and kinetic (which would make them more like the far superior MTV Video Music Awards).

Focus More On The Awards
We know it's impossible to give out 109 awards live on the air (that's how many categories there were this year), but the Oscars manage to give out two dozen awards over the course of an evening. Read More...

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The 'Jersey Shore' Board Game: How Well Do You Know Your Favorite Reality Show?

Posted 2/14/11 4:00 pm EST by in Television


While most of the MTV News squad was distracted by the events of the 53rd Grammy Awards in Los Angeles over the weekend, there was a small contingent (including MTV Splash Page editor Rick Marshall) who spent their Sunday (February 13) at Toy Fair 2011, the annual trade show designed to show off the best new action figures board games on the horizon. While the crew was mostly on the hunt for movie-related toys (including new products related to the upcoming "Green Lantern" movie and the forthcoming "Thundercats" project), they happened upon one item that was right in the MTV Newsroom blog wheelhouse: The official "Jersey Shore" board game, designed and distributed by Cardinal Games.

The trivia game contains over 500 questions about the show's first season as well as the sojourn to Miami. The questions range from very straightforward ("Which cast member has left the show both seasons?") to the incredibly specific ("What did the boys do with the shoes Angelina left behind?"). There's a little bit of chance involved (based on the roll of the dice) and there are steep penalties for getting questions wrong.

If you think you are a "Jersey Shore" expert, you'll be able to beat down your friends with the "Jersey Shore" trivia game when it hits store shelves in March. Until then, you should really bone up on all the events you might have missed, and prepare yourself for future editions of the "Jersey Shore" board game by tuning in every Thursday night at 10 p.m. Eastern for brand new escapades featuring Snooki, the Situation, JWoww and the rest of your favorite Seaside Heights residents.

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