MTV Newsroom ›

By Adam Stewart

No car this holiday weekend? So you’re stuck in the city and can’t find your way down the shore or out to the island. Fear not. Instead of wasting away the days frying on your co-op’s sweltering rooftop listening to a senior’s book club yap while you’re daydreaming of a better life, why not join the 25,000 others who’ll be dancing their cares away right in your backyard? There’s still time to grab tickets and join in on inaugural Dance Here Now Festival. Pacha Nightclubs presents the first of its kind event on NYC’s Governors Island this weekend, July 1-4, bringing together world class acts, top notch sound and one hell of a view.

“The four day open-air festival will be housed in the biggest outdoor arena in NYC history,” says Eddie Dean, president of Pacha Nightclubs. “It’s custom made and built for the occasion, with a sonic and visual onslaught by festival specialists AG Light & Sound”.

Construction on the massive arena is currently under way as over 200 crew members erect the structure which will house 15 world class headlining DJs, including Laidback Luke, Benny Benassi, Paul Van Dyk and Fatboy Slim, James Zabiela, Victor Calderone and The Japanese Pop Stars, as well as over 60 supporting acts spinning sets in the courtyard tents. Read more...

Tags Benny Benassi, dance here now festival, Fatboy Slim

Beyonce’s hot new album 4 is out today and is expected to top the Billboard charts. The reviews have been solid (some rave) but a recurring theme has cropped up again and again that deserves a little discussion: the criticism of the amount of ballads and slow jams on the album.

NME seems to miss the upbeat tunes the most, writing, “Beyonce making million-miles-an-hour in-yer-face pop singles: amazing; Beyonce doing schmaltzy R&B ballads: nowt to write home about. So it’s with great, great disappointment that we are forced to report that Beyonce’s fourth album is comprised almost entirely of the latter.”

EW, in a still mostly positive review, isn’t much kinder, saying, “Why does it feel like Beyonce is struggling so hard to prove herself on 4? The album is an every-song-for-itself welter of conflicting ambitions: It wants to be cutting-edge but familiar, accessible but artistic, hot-blooded but strictly impersonal. Those tensions hurt most in its lumbering first half, a defiant bird flipped at anyone expecting out-of-the-box radio killers. Instead, we get a sleepy recital of ballads.”

But we think these reviewers are missing the point, making a broad generalization that the volume of the slow songs is a bad thing regardless of their quality (we think most are very good), and are borderline suggesting something they’d otherwise chastise – that Beyonce keep releasing the same pounding, radio-friendly dance track over and over again and not mature as an artist or attempt anything outside the box. We love Beyonce’s up tempo tunes as much as the next guy, and it’s worth noting that there are more than a few to chose from on 4, but why is it a bad thing that she chose a different direction for her new album? Read more...

Tags Beyonce

By Matt Goodhue

With James Bond star Daniel Craig’s secret marriage to Rachel Weisz late last week, we at MTV News have rekindled our excitement for what's in store for the British secret agent. Although the latest Bond movie, the twenty third in the series, is not due out until October of next year, there are already talks about which artist will be writing the theme song that defines the cunning, swift and fearless actions of agent 007.

Jack White and Alicia Keys performed the theme to 2008’s "Quantum of Solace," and the list of artists in the running for this gig has made us curious as to how they will interpret the James Bond theme. Each of these artists has a unique sound and surely can bring something different to the table. But who will best capture the essence of the world's longest-running secret agent?

Kings of Leon

If I had any say in the matter, I would surely pick the Followill clan to turn out a distinctive track. With a distorted bass leading the way, the guys in Kings of Leon could add some heavy rock and roll to pick up the excitement and danger that follows Bond's latest mission. Singer Caleb Followill commented on the possibility of the song, stating, "I've always wanted to work with strings so that would be a good excuse to do it." A full orchestra backing the Kings' rock while Daniel Craig speeds through a fiery explosion? Sounds pretty epic to me.

Lady Gaga

It seems like Lady Gaga can do just about anything, so a theme song for a Bond film would just add to the list of the accomplishments she's achieved. Lady Gaga is an incredible songwriter and has a distinct, powerful voice that could truly capture the mayhem that would ensue on screen. Gaga's unpredictability would fit perfectly with the always-on-the-move lifestyle of Bond, but perhaps she would need to perform something harder than her poppy dance music.

Read on for more. Read more...

Tags Adele, Beyonce, James Bond, kings of leon, Lady Gaga, michael buble

This weekend in Pilton, England, the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts thrilled more than 170,000 festivalgoers with sets from Coldplay, U2, Beyonce, Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Morissey, Wu-Tang Clan, Paul Simon, Fleet Foxes, Bright Eyes, Lykke Li, Kesha, Cee-Lo Green, Big Boi, Crystal Castles and hundreds of other big-name musicians.

Founded by Michael Eavis, a now 75-year-old dairy farmer who had the idea after seeing Led Zeppelin perform at a music festival, Glastonbury has become one of the biggest festivals in the world and routinely lands some of the biggest stars in music as headliners.

The reviews for this year’s fest are in and apparently it was a banner year over in jolly ole England. Had there been a roof over the outdoor fest, it seems Beyonce would have blown it off. Check Queen B out above and read on for more action from Glastonbury. Read more...

Tags Beyonce, glastonbury festival, U2

From MTV Movies Blog:

By Josh Wigler

The first round of the Harry Potter World Cup has drawn to a close, narrowing the playing field down from the original 64 wizards and witches to a smaller pool of 32 heroes and villains. For the most part, the people you expected to move on have moved on — with some notable exceptions, of course — and as we step forward into Round 2 today, I think you'll find that there are some very, very difficult decisions on the horizon.

But before we look forward, let's look back at what happened in the first round. Get the highlights from Round 1 of the Harry Potter World Cup after the jump! Read more...

Tags harry-potter

By Zachary Swickey

Arguably one of the most iconic items in musical wardrobe history, the red and black calfskin jacket that Michael Jackson wore in his classic “Thriller” music video (above) has sold at auction for an astounding $1.8 million.

Darren Julien, president and CEO of Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, states the jacket was purchased over the weekend by Milton Verret, a commodities trader from Austin, Texas. Verret plans on sending the jacket on tour and using it as a fundraising tool for children’s charities. In addition, some of the auction’s proceeds will benefit the Shambala Preserve, a large cat sanctuary located in California that currently cares for two tigers previously owned by Jackson.

The $1.8 million price tag trumped the original estimated auction price of $400,000, and the two-year anniversary of MJ’s death is likely the reason. If you think almost two million bucks for a 30-year-old jacket is ridiculous, here’s a sampling of some of the crazy and pricey music memorabilia that has hit the auction block.

John Lennon’s 1965 Rolls Royce Phantom V - $2.3 million

Any item that has even been touched by John Lennon of The Beatles is worth a pretty penny. A 1965 Rolls Royce Phantom V limousine would be pricey today by any standard, but when previously owned by Lennon, it catapults in value exponentially to a pricey $2.3 million. That’s how much his wildly painted, psychedelic ride sold for at a 1982 auction (adjusted for inflation, it would likely go for several times that today). That’s a little bit more than the $2.1 million that “Faith” singer George Michael paid in 1990 for the cigarette-burned piano Lennon composed “Imagine” on.

Elvis Presley’s hair - $115,000

Elvis Presley’s barber must have been an interesting man or simply knew he was regularly hedging a gold mine every time he snipped some of The King’s hair. A few tresses of Presley’s hair sold for a freakish $115,000. Apparently, the hair-auctioning-biz is a legit market to tap into.

Read more...

Tags Michael Jackson

Beyonce’s hotly anticipated new album 4 drops tomorrow, and word is that Bey has done it again. Well, kind of.

While some critics have mixed feelings about the number of ballads featured on 4, most of the reviews have skewed positive, with some outright raves sprinkled in for good measure. The Atlantic sums up 4 the best, saying, “The course of 4 documents a progression, a maturation, of Beyoncé's worldview” – apparently so much so that New York magazine posits an alternate title: I Am Sasha Happily Married and Thinking Seriously About the Joys and Tribulations of Making Long-Term Commitments in Life.

Indeed, almost every reviewer has noted that the album deals heavily with themes like commitment and the gravity of what it really means to settle down, suggesting Beyonce, now 29 and happily married to hip-hop mogul Jay-Z, is less interested in pushing broad generalizations about self-worth and its relation to independence and is now ready to examine the strength derived from being part of a team while not losing yourself in the process.

For the record, we love the album. The lyrics to some songs occasionally border on simple and she’s not breaking ground here, but you don’t get the impression that she’s really trying to either. This is top-notch R&B comfort food from the master of the game. The lack of theatrics on 4 is refreshing and the pared-down lyrics are more relatable than if she'd chosen to sing about how awesome she is (the way many singers and rappers do). You’d think it would be difficult to find common ground with Beyonce, but she’s uniquely able to connect with universally human things like love, loss, hope and her desire to leave a lasting impression. And when she does turn the tempo up, with the “Get Me Bodied”-like jam “Countdown” and “Party,” respectively, she brings a smooth groove absent from the current top 40, which has recently favored erratic Euro beats and dubstep breakdowns.

Check out a sampling of reviews below. Read more...

Tags Beyonce

Credit: Gil Kaufman, MTV News

Cincinnati – Always about as subtle as a flaming, spiked sledgehammer to the sternum, Mötley Crüe mince no words with the title of their current summer tour: "30 Years of Crüe … F**k You."

And because I somehow missed out on seeing the band in their heyday, I felt it was my duty to celebrate three decades of decadence with the boys on Sunday night at the packed Riverbend Amphitheater, because, well, you never know.

Though I didn't pack a handy flask of Jim Beam in the boot of my jeans to bust out at just the right moment (that would be during "Dr. Feelgood," FYI) and I was not sporting a full back tat of the Shout at the Devil album cover (I spotted three, in addition to countless massive Theatre of Pain inkings), I dutifully took my place among the masses tossing up the horns for 90 minutes of pyro-fueled mayhem.

Only bassist Nikki Sixx came out rocking the classic Native American ghoul face paint, but when singer Vince Neil raised his bedazzled microphone and stalked the stage in his sliver American flag leather pants for the set opening "Shout at the Devil," the on-stage flame-throwers were so intense you could almost smell the layers of eye shadow being burned off the faces of the fist-pumping ladies in the front rows.

What followed was exactly what you'd expect from a Crüe show, which is to say a non-stop barrage of rock thuggery and expletive-laden exhortations from a group whose debt to punk speed and attitude and conventional hard rock has long since outstripped their early pretty-boy glam look.
Read more...

Tags motley-crue

Ten years ago this week, “Lady Marmalade” was celebrating its fifth and final week at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. The Missy Elliot-produced single appeared on the soundtrack to the Oscar-nominated film “Moulin Rouge!” and won Christina Aguilera, Pink, Lil Kim and Mya a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. The smash video featured the sexy songbirds as lingerie-clad ladies of the night at a Paris brothel and took home the MTV VMA for Video of the Year. It was kind of a big deal.

The song lives on in the clubs, where we heard it this weekend while out celebrating NYC Pride and the passage of the groundbreaking same-sex marriage equality bill in New York. When the tune started booming over the sound system, everyone on the dance floor went bonkers. The crowd remembered every word; some even knew the choreography.

This got us thinking about who would fill Pink and the Queen Bee’s hooker boots today. Sure, hip-hop stars call on their friends in rhyming for first-rate mega-collaborations all the time, but it’s been a while since we’ve see an all-star pop star explosion of this magnitude. Can anyone hold a candle to Xtina and the gang? Read on for our ideas. Read more...

Tags Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, kesha, lady marmalade, lil-kim, mya, nicki minaj, Pink, Rihanna

By Zachary Swickey

Flea, the rambunctious bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers has revealed through an interview with Spinner that he recently thought about quitting the band and leaving his tighty-whitey stage antics behind him.

He said he asked his compatriots for a two year sabbatical in order to regroup his thoughts. “We’ve been going really hard for a lot of years with small breaks here and there, but never a major break,” Flea said. “And I just felt like I wanted to take two years away just to really look and see if the band was something we should be doing.”

Flea attributes his friendship with lead singer Anthony Kiedis, which dates back to childhood, as an inspiration and big reason for his decision to continue making music. “I said, ‘Together let’s do this, let’s make this album, I love you, and let’s f**king rock.’ And as cliché as that might sound, I think for us as a band, and for he and I, both of us, we decided to do it.”

As most RHCP fans are already aware, the group plans on releasing their new album, I’m With You, on Aug. 30, their first with new ex-Warpaint guitarist Josh Klinghoffer – who replaces John Frusciante, who left the group in 2009.

The near-breakup experience of the Red Hot Chili Peppers seems to be a rite of passage that almost every band faces. Some almost breakup in between every album they create. Here are some more groups that claim they almost didn’t make it for a variety of different reasons. Read more...

Tags breakup, Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band, Deftones, Paramore, red-hot-chili-peppers, Slipknot