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Two Years Later, Glamberts Remain A Fan Army To Beat

Posted 6/20/12 6:30 pm EST by in awards, Music, Video

The third cycle of the O Music Awards, MTV’s show that honors the achievements in digital music and web culture, are just around the corner (June 27 at 7:30 EST to be exact), so if you haven’t cast your vote for Best Artist with a Cameraphone, Best Online Concert Experience, Best Web-Born Artist or Most Adorable Viral Star, among many others, you should get to votin' already!

One of the most exciting categories for we pop culture savants in the MTV Newsroom is Fan Army FTW. You see, we deal with fan armies all the time. In my time here at MTV, I've been both embraced and scorned by Little Monsters, gotten yelled at by the Rihanna Navy and felt the love of the Beehive. It's always an eye-opening experience and serves as an eternal reminder of just how dedicated a fan can be to the star they love.

>> Fan Army Manifestos: Adam Lambert's "Glamberts"

One of the chief fan armies out there are the Glamberts, a varied bunch who lavish nothing but love on pop star Adam Lambert. Our pals at the O Music Awards blog have put together a fantastic "Fan Army Manifesto" on the Glamberts that you just have to watch to see the impact the platinum-selling "American Idol" runner-up has had on their lives. Check it out:

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O Music Awards

Of course, here at MTV News, we've been on the Glambert beat for years. Back in the summer of 2010, we caught up with some of Lamberts biggest fans on a scorching summer day as they lined up more than 24 hours before the pop star's show at the Nokia Theatre in advance of his "Glam Nation Tour" stop at the venue.

>> Rabid Adam Lambert Fans Line Up 24 Hours Before New York Show

If the two videos make one thing clear, it's that Lambert's fans remain as dedicated as ever.

Don't forget to vote for Fan Army FTW over at the O Music Awards site and check out our chat with Lambert's fans, after the jump. Read More...

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Lily Allen Confirms Work On New Album

Posted 6/20/12 1:06 pm EST by in Lily-Allen, Music, Tweet Beat

Lily Allen

So shut the f**k up about it, OK?!

It's been rumored for a while, as we previously reported, but today (June 20) Lily Allen confirmed what fans of the British pop doll have been longing to hear – that she's coming out of "retirement" and is in the studio working on a follow-up her 2009 hit It's Not Me, It's You.

As people are wont to do these days, the news was broken via tweet. Responding to a tweet from Popjustice regarding Kate Nash's return to music, which read, "It's better than no music at all isn't it. ISN'T IT LILY," Allen – whose Twitter handle is @lilyrosecooper – hit back, tweeting, "You will be pleased to know that I am currently in the f**king studio with @GregKurstin so SHUT UP PETER!"

(The "Peter" in question is Popjustice editor Peter Robinson.)

Allen "retired" from the music in 2010 to focus on fashion with her store, Lucy in Disguise, and later her family life with husband Sam Cooper and their first child, Ethel, born in November 2011. The "Smile" singer had said she was swearing off recording new material of her own, though she's recently been has penning songs for the upcoming "Bridget Jones' Diary" musical set to premiere in London's famed West End later this year.

In April, she was spotted at RAK Studios in St John's Wood, London, though she didn't comment at that time. Kurstin has worked with Allen before – he co-wrote and produced her 2008 hit "The Fear" – and is on something of a roll right now, having co-written and produced Kelly Clarkson's mega-smash "Stronger."

She followed up the announcement of her studio sessions with Kurstin with a bit of insight into exactly what she's up to, tweeting, "No big deal really, I'm just throwing s**t at the wall and seeing if anything sticks."

As longtime fans anxious for new searing pop ditties from the affable Allen, we certainly hope something does!

Check out Allen's last collaboration with Kurstin, "The Fear," below!

Read More...

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Lady Gaga Fans Crash Servers In South African Ticket Frenzy

Posted 6/20/12 10:44 am EST by in Lady Gaga, Tour Dates

Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga's "Born this Way Ball" has hit some road bumps since kicking off in South Korea in late-April. Many of the massive tour's dates in Asia were plagued by protests from Christian and Islamic groups, culminating in a particularly frightening situation in Indonesia, where an Islamic extremist organization threatened the pop superstar with violence, forcing her to cancel a sold-out show in Jakarta.

One thing the road show has not encountered is a lack of interest from fans. Each of the 16 Asian shows that did go forward sold out, and in less than two months, the tour has already pulled in a staggering $45 million.

Gaga will be able to add two shows in South Africa to her sell-out list … just as soon as the ticketseller gets its website back up and running after a deluge of Little Monsters crashed it. Less than 24 hours after the "Bad Romance" diva announced plans to play concerts in Johannesburg on November 30 and Cape Town on December 3, fans rushed web retailer Computicket so hard that servers shut down after being overwhelmed by traffic.

"Just woke up to emails saying South African monsters crashed the online ticket servers due to high demand for The Btw Ball! I can't believe it," Gaga tweeted late yesterday (June 19).

Computicket promises it is working to rectify the problem.

Gaga is currently in Australia, with the first of three shows at Sydney's Allphones Arena planned for tonight. The star also happily reported earlier today that she is just fine after suffering a concussion during a concert in Auckland, New Zealand when a dancer accidentally hit her with a set piece mid-song (and she kept right on performing after).

"Went for an MRI. No harm from the concussion but it appears my brain is just water and a large floating jellyfish," she joked on Twitter.

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Justin Bieber's Believe Drops Today! What's Your Favorite Track? (Poll)

Posted 6/19/12 8:00 am EST by in Justin Bieber, Newsroom Poll

Bieber Album

Justin Bieber's new album Believe finally hit stores today. On the album, we find a more mature Bieber. He's entrusted some of the biggest names in the game to craft his sound, with production credits going to the likes of Max Martin, Rodney Jerkins, Babyface, Diplo and the Messengers. His mentor Usher, who recently released his own album, Looking 4 Myself, serves as the set's executive producer.

The beats are heavy on Believe and the collaborations are top-notch – we get appearances from Drake ("Right Here"), Big Sean ("As Long As You Love Me"), Nicki Minaj ("Beauty and a Beat") and Ludacris ("All Around the World"). Bieber muses on love, serenades the ladies and takes us to the club. It's the pop stars big attempt to be all things to all people … and he pulls it off with aplomb.

>> Justin Bieber's Believe: Five Key Tracks

The album is sure to be a crowd-pleaser, which got us thinking about you, Bieber's famously devoted fans.

Which Believe track is your absolute favorite? Vote in our poll below and sound off in the comments with your thoughts on the album and the new, grown up Justin!

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Madonna's Got a Pretty Demanding Tour Rider

Posted 6/14/12 3:19 pm EST by in Madonna

Madonna

Allegedly, of course!

The riders for touring musicians run the gamut from pretty basic (Adele) to lavishly extravagant (hello, Jennifer Lopez), but if you pick up this week's In Touch Weekly (via Boy Culture) (and if you believe In Touch Weekly … which, you know, you do at your own risk), Madonna is quite the demanding diva.

The pop superstar has been making headlines around the world on her "MDNA Tour." Last week, she was flashing her breast in Istanbul, Turkey, and the other day she mooned the audience in Rome. She got a reaction out of Lady Gaga after she performed an on-stage mash-up of her 1989 classic "Express Yourself" with Gaga's hit "Born This Way" (hint: they still sound kind of the same-ish), and is encountering threats of legal action from French politician Marine Le Pen because of an image of the conservative leader with a swastika on her forehead used in the "Nobody Knows Me" video interlude shown during her show.

So, yeah, Madonna's been busy.

But if the tour demands In Touch is talking up are true, at least she's pretty comfortable on the road. The rag mag reports that Her Madgesty has a 200-person entourage (!) on tour with her – including 30 bodyguards, an acupuncturist, a yoga instructor, an on-site dry cleaner and several personal chefs. That's pretty intense, but not particularly surprising (of course Madonna has chefs and yoga instructors on the road with her … and so does everyone else), but we can't help but wonder if that very large number includes crew members that would be backstage on any artists' tour.

Why not provide further details about this enormous entourage unless that's the case? Seems like a sneaky, concerted effort to make Madonna look like an even bigger diva than she is…which isn't something you'd think they'd need a lot of help with.

Her backstage demands reportedly include a strictly vegan menu – which, unless things changed recently, is also suspect, because Madonna is not vegan. Additionally, the Queen of Pop would like there to be 20 international phone lines in her dressing room, for the furniture to be "draped in a special fabric" and decorated with lilies and white and pink roses with their stems cut to exactly six inches.

Most interestingly, though, are her alleged hotel demands. Madonna likes to take home on the road with her and "requires all be removed from the rooms and replaced with her own pieces that she has shipped in."

Now, if that's true, we bow down to the Queen!

Related:
>> Madonna On Nipple-Flashing: 'I Don't Like To Repeat Myself'
>> Nero To Join Madonna On North American Leg Of 'MDNA Tour' This Fall
>> The Real Star Of Madonna's 'MDNA Tour': Her Son Rocco Ritchie
>> Go Behind The Scenes Of Madonna's 'MDNA Tour'

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Canada Is Mad At Rob Lowe

Posted 6/14/12 11:42 am EST by in Television, Tweet Beat

When you are going to be tied up working on location out of the country, it's probably not in your best interest to call the place a "hellhole," something "Parks and Recreation" star Rob Lowe is learning first hand.

In Winnipeg, Canada to shoot a made-for-TV movie about Casey Anthony and her lawyer (of course he is!), Lowe has the locals in a tizzy after writing a message on Twitter that ended with the hashtag "#Trappedinahellhole."

Lowe's tweet seems like more of a complaint about the local sports bar he was watching the NBA playoffs in – the station interrupted the game for coverage of a municipal election – than about Winnipeg itself, but area residents quickly fired back on Twitter, calling Lowe a "jerk, a schmuck and other names," according to the Edmonton Journal.

(Ed note: Canadians are so nice! We've been called FAR worse for our Internet scribbling about pop songs.)

Interestingly, the Journal notes, there were no municipal elections in Manitoba on Tuesday. The station Lowe was complaining about was likely based across the Canadian border in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

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Check Out Usher's Awesome Cover Of Foster The People's Hit 'Pumped Up Kicks'

Posted 6/14/12 10:42 am EST by in Usher

We're used to seeing Usher crooning his club classic hits into a headset microphone so his limbs are free for his signature smooth dance moves. It's not often that you see the hunky R&B superstar, whose new album Looking 4 Myself dropped this week, plucking away on a bass, which makes his funky cover of Foster the People's hit "Pumped Up Kicks" all the more awesome.

In the U.K. promoting Myself, which is expected to debut at #1 on the Billboard album chart next week, Usher stopped by the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge for a performance of his latest smash "Scream" and thrilled the audience with the cover.

Check it out:

See Usher's equally fantastic "Scream" performance from his BBC Radio 1 visit below! Read More...

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Britney Spears' Blackout Added To The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Music Library

Posted 6/13/12 5:51 pm EST by in Britney Spears

Britney Spears

Britney Spears' critically acclaimed 2007 album Blackout has not only topped a million in sales but it is now the pop star's only album to be added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's music library and archives. The Hall developed the archive to be the "most comprehensive repository of materials relating to the history of rock and roll … in order to broaden awareness and understanding of rock and roll, its roots, and its impact on our society."

The Celebrity Café reported earlier today (June 13) that the album was added to the archive this month, so we reached out to the Hall of Fame to get the details on the acquisition.

"We purchased that CD a few months ago as part of a project involving the acquisition of the most critically acclaimed albums of the past couple of decades," Andy Leach, director of Library and Archives at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, tells MTV News via email.

Leach cited the album's appearance on Rolling Stone's list of the top 50 albums of 2007 as the reason it ended up on the Rock Hall's list of album's to acquire and archive.

Esteem for the album, which was released during a particularly turbulent time in Spears' life that culminated a few months after Blackout's release with the singer being physically removed from her home by police, placed in an ambulance and escorted to the UCLA Medical Center, has grown in the years since its release.

In a 2010 blog post talking about Spears' demo of Lady Gaga's "Telephone" (the song was originally written for Spears and was recorded by Gaga only after she decided against using it), Rolling Stone paid the album a very big compliment, writing, "People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if 'Telephone' proves anything, it's that Blackout may be the most influential pop album of the past five years."

It seems the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seems to agree.

Read More...

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OK, We Suppose Colin Powell's Cover Of Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe' Is Pretty Good Too

Posted 6/13/12 4:38 pm EST by in Politics, Video

Yes, you read all of those words correctly. On CBS' "Early Show" this morning, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, along with Gayle King, briefly performed an a capella rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen's ubiquitous hit "Call Me Maybe."

>> Carly Rae Jepsen And The Unstoppable Ubiquity Of 'Call Me Maybe'

And here we were all set to call a moratorium on coverage of "Call Me Maybe" covers following Jimmy Fallon and The Roots' charming rendition, which featured Jepsen herself. But you simply can't ignore when one of the most respected men in America takes to the daytime talk show circuit and proves that not only is he aware of the hit (and really, how could he not be?), he knows the words – and has some pretty sweet flow.

>> Carly Rae Jepsen Thinks 'Call Me Maybe' Viral Videos Are 'Rad'

Check it out:

Of course, Powell isn't the only politician to get carried away by Jepsen's pop magic. President Obama recently covered the track too … kind of! You can check out below. Read More...

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Chris Brown Approves Of Our Homage To Him In The MTV Newsroom (Pic)

Posted 6/13/12 3:06 pm EST by in Chris Brown, Photos

MTV News, Instagram

Superstars pass through the MTV Newsroom on a daily basis. Usually, they are in and out without much fanfare. They stop by to do their jobs and promote their projects, and we are here to facilitate that, conducting interviews, editing videos and writing up articles. A great time is had by all … it's a great gig if you can get it.

The staff here loves music and movies and the people who make those things happen, so everywhere you look, you see a famous face. Cardboard cutouts of Lady Gaga, Madonna and Lauren Conrad stand tall on our file cabinets, Lindsay Lohan's mug shots adorn the walls and all of our cubicles are filled with images of our favorite stars (to my own left is Nicki Minaj's black-and-white poster for the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards that features the hip-hop superstar riding a motorcycle in a leather jumpsuit). The environment around here is just as chaotic, cluttered and fun as you'd imagine it would be.

On a wall in the middle of the newsroom is a poster of Chris Brown on a jet ski that one MTV staffer superimposed in front of a massive explosion. It was made here at our Digital Oasis image center a few years ago and until today was mostly just another funny image of a star whose every move we cover.

Brown swung through the newsroom today for an interview promoting his latest album, Fortune, and loved the homage. He enjoyed the poster so much that he agreed to be a good sport and strike a playful pose in front of it, as you can see above!

Just another day at the office!

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