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'American Idol,' Lady Gaga And Katy Perry's Muppet Fiasco: This Week's Deep Cuts

Posted 9/24/10 5:30 pm EST by in Deep Cuts


It has been quite a week here in the MTV Newsroom. We watched Lindsay and Paris in court, sat down with Tony Yayo for a heart-to-heart, argued about the new judges on "American Idol," watched a ton of television and watched a classic indie rock band in the middle of a crazy-ass lightning storm. All that activity has left us sort of run down, which is why it's time to hop into the hot tub and enjoy a little leisure time. You should do the same, but not before you take a stroll through the links below to catch up with anything you might have missed this week.

» "American Idol" has two new judges in Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez, who join Randy Jackson as the show's new adjudication trio.

» While people do seem enthusiastic about the new judges, it appears nobody will ever top the show's original three-way of Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Jackson.

» Justin Bieber isn't joining the cast of "American Idol," but he was on TV this week. He made his television acting debut in the season premiere of "CSI."

» You know where else Bieber was this week? Hooters!

» "Dancing With the Stars" kicked off this week, though "Jersey Shore" star the Situation stumbled a bit with his cha cha.
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Jack Johnson's 'At Or With Me' Video: Andy Samberg In His Finest Role

Posted 9/21/10 1:30 pm EST by in Music


When 2010 finally wraps up, it seems inevitable that Jack Johnson's excellent album To the Sea will be looked over on year-end best-of lists. That will not be surprising, as Johnson usually just goes about his business moving albums and selling out arenas on his massive tour. He's a workmanlike entertainer, but that shouldn't be mistaken for mediocrity. Rather, To the Sea contains some of Johnson's best songwriting and most adventurous ideas. But since he doesn't do much to call attention to himself, he doesn't tend to stick out in the minds of the people, and always ends up being slightly underrated despite moving millions of albums since his debut.

But his just-released video for "At or With Me" should grab him some more high-profile attention, and he has "Saturday Night Live" star and viral video legend Andy Samberg to thank for anything that tumbles his way. In the clip, Samberg (who once played Johnson on "Saturday Night Live" as the host of a program called "The Mellow Show") plays a cartoonish version of himself, showing up to a Johnson concert to drink too much and heckle the singer's performance of the song. Eventually, "the mellow guy" (as Samberg dismissively calls Johnson) finally decides he has had too much and lets the fists fly. The second half of the video is made up entirely of the awesome fight between the two, featuring lots of smashed glass, broken furniture and a nod to Michael Jackson's classic video for "Beat It."

Nobody plays a jackass like Samberg, and the jerkier version of himself appears to be the part he was born to play. Well, that and the role of Jack Johnson.

What do you think of the new Jack Johnson video? Let us know in the comments!

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Spotted: Jack Johnson Keeps Cool In London

Posted 7/1/10 3:30 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.

It's difficult to surf in the English Channel. Still, that didn't stop platinum-selling singer-songwriter and outdoor sports enthusiast Jack Johnson from hopping across the Atlantic to perform a killer set at London's O2 Arena. Johnson is currently in the midst of the tail end of a European trip before jetting back over to the United States for an extended run through our nation's amphitheaters (that leg of the tour wraps up at the end of August in West Palm Beach, Florida, but he'll be back out on the road again in October). Johnson is touring behind his latest album To the Sea, which has sold nearly a half million copies and hasn't left the Billboard top 10 since it debuted a few weeks ago. His shows have been extremely well-received in the U.K., proving that his songs about life and love are truly universal (even if you never have shot a curl).

Johnson wasn't the only star out on the road, as the members of Maroon 5 visited the Sirius-XM studio in New York and Kim Kardashian unveiled her wax statue at the Manhattan branch of Madame Tussaud's. Click here for these photos as well as the entire "Spotted!" archive, which features over 400 candid shots of stars like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Jay-Z, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Madonna, 50 Cent and Rihanna!

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Jack Johnson Hopes You Connect With To The Sea: The MTV News Quote Of The Day

Posted 6/1/10 5:00 pm EST by in Music


"There's different songs that people will tell me, you know, 'This song really means a lot to me after I lost a close friend,' or, 'This song is what we danced to at our wedding.' And you start to realize — as I do with other people's songs — you take 'em and they mean something, you have certain imagery that goes along with it. So I hope there's songs on this — as I went through certain things in my life, whether they were heavy or just something fun, and wrote a song about it — hopefully, people can take those songs and they mean something and they can use it in their life."

-Singer/songwriter Jack Johnson, hoping that his new album will resonate with people in as personal a way as some of his previous work has. Johnson's latest album To the Sea hit store shelves today, and it seems to be a sure-fire hit after having sat near the top of the iTunes album chart for weeks based solely on pre-order sales.

But no matter how well the album sells, he'll be short at least one copy this week. "Whenever friends' albums come out, I go out and buy them. But when it's my own, I don't want to jinx it," Johnson told MTV News. "Generally, I've been out and about when the records come out ... [but] we're about to leave for two weeks on a little camping trip, [and] that works better for me, a little bit. Get away from it and not think about it too much. So we're going to be camping for the next couple of weeks, and it'll be good." Once he returns from his camping trip, Johnson will head out on a tour of Europe before returning to the United States for his run through North American that will take him through the remainder of the summer.

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

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Celebrate Earth Day With Michael Jackson, Pearl Jam, U2 And Jack Johnson

Posted 4/22/10 11:00 am EST by in Music


Happy Earth Day! The international holiday is celebrating its 40th year of building awareness, launching outreach programs and providing a platform for environmental activism. Earth Day was first celebrated in Philadelphia in 1970, where U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson called for a national day of education regarding environment-related issues. Over time, it spread across the world and has become more and more vital each year as our issues continue to grow. The problems surrounding the natural world and voluminous, so on this Earth Day you should take the time to consider just one of them, whether it be the continued depletion of our natural resources, the hole in the ozone layer, the erosion of beaches, the melting of the ice caps or the endangering of thousands of species of animal. A fact to consider on this Earth Day: Every day, we lose as many as 150 species to extinction, mostly because of deforestation or pollution of the natural world.

But Earth Day doesn't have to focus entirely on the problems — it also focuses on the beauty of the Earth. So while you're out today planting a tree, building a compost pile or simply enjoying the fresh air, fire up the video playlist below to get you in the proper Earth Day frame of mind. It's full of bands who have taken an active role in cutting down their impact on the environment while touring (including Pearl Jam, U2, Mewithoutyou and Jack Johnson), as well as plenty of bands who have dropped "Earth" into their names (including Iced Earth and Earth, Wind & Fire). The Deftones provide a cautionary tale about "A Hole in the Earth," but Belly encourage us to "Feed the Tree."

The whole thing kicks off with Michael Jackson's "Earth Song," an environmentally-conscious cut from HIStory that asks, "What about the elephants?" Jackson was deeply concerned about the fate of the natural world, and his work reflected that.

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MTV News' Musical March Madness: Jack Johnson Vs. Young Veins, Weezer Vs. Sublime

Posted 3/19/10 1:00 pm EST by in Music


It's Musical March Madness! The sprawling bracket — both a parody and a tribute to the NCAA basketball tournament, masterminded by MTV News' James Montgomery — takes the 65 biggest names in rock, splits them up into four regions, assigns them seeds and puts them up against one another in a single-elimination series of match-ups in a winner-take-all contest. We're leaving it to you to decide an actual champ in this field of 65. Over the next few weeks, we will present a series of polls that will allow you to vote for the match-ups presented in MTV News' Band Bracketology. You vote for the winners, we'll keep advancing the seeds and, in the end, we'll have some sort of champion. What will the winner receive? Little more than our esteem (as well as that of the fans) and some Internet bragging rights.

The games roll on, and so do the band match-ups. Here are two more top-shelf confrontations in the West bracket!

(3) Jack Johnson vs. (14) The Young Veins
Though the Young Veins are like the mid-major team who got a bunch of transfers from Duke who could play spoiler at any time. Jack Johnson is that team that somehow "quietly" wins 27 games (think of him as Kansas State). This is a tough one, and if the Young Veins score an upset, it could set up an eventual showdown with Panic at the Disco in the Sweet 16. But do they get out of the first round?

(6) Weezer vs. (11) Sublime
Weezer come in as spry veterans who always manage to make the big dance and always score a big win or two, and the power of Raditude (compounded with their killer live show) could take them far. They're up against Sublime, who still have an intense following even though frontman Bradley Nowell passed away in 1996. Can they ride the wave to a victory or will Weezer push their way forward?

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Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay And U2: Artists Unite For Apple's iPod

Posted 10/23/09 11:08 am EST by in Music


Think about this for a moment: The iPod is only eight years old. In less than a decade, Apple's portable music and media device has become an absolutely necessary part of modern life. The first iPods hit the market on this day back in 2001, with five and 10 gigabyte versions available. The first iPods were hilarious looking, especially compared to current models. They used a clunky mechanical scroll wheel and weighed about ten pounds. They were so solid you could use them for masonry. But like all technology, the iPod evolved quickly. The iPod (and by extension the iPhone) is now not only a music device but also a video player, gaming system, personal organizer, Web browser, messaging system, navigational tool and on and on. Last month, Apple introduced an iPod that has a capacity of 160 gigabytes, enough space to store over 53,000 songs. Consider that in 2000, the best option for carrying around music you liked was to burn a mix CD, which meant that you had 20 or so tunes at your disposal.

Not that it really needed it, but the iPod was also supported by a tremendous marketing campaign, and to this day, getting your song in an Apple TV spot tends to do great things for a band's business. The first batch of iPod commercials featured a track from '90s big beat enthusiasts the Propellerheads, and a number of bands have used iPod commercials as jumping off points to launch new albums (U2, Coldplay) or their entire careers (Chairlift, the Ting Tings). The first group that catapulted to superstardom care of an iPod ad was the Black Eyed Peas, whose song "Hey Mama" propelled their 2003 album Elephunk up the charts. Along the way, iPod commercials have helped give a jolt to the careers of the Caesars, the Fratellis and Chairlift and helped extend the lives of hit songs by Feist and Jack Johnson. Check out the video playlist below that takes a look back at the songs that helped make the iPod into a part of everyday life.

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Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters Lined Up For 2008 Virgin Mobile Festival

Posted 4/1/08 1:00 pm EST by in Festivals


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We've actually been to the Virgin Mobile Festival (didn't it used to be called just the 'Virgin Festival'? Right?) in Baltimore before, and it's actually a pretty great time. It's a simple festival on the beautiful grass of the Pimlico Race Course, and if you get there a couple of days early, you can feast on delicious crab and catch an Orioles game and drive around the city pretending you're on The Wire (we don't actually recommend this last bit, btw).

The headliners for this year's festival - taking place on August 9 and 10 - have just been announced: Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters and a reunited Stone Temple Pilots (since that Velvet Revolver thing seems like it needs to decompress a bit). Oh yeah, and Jack Johnson, who is this year's festival slut. The full-lineup is expected in the next few weeks.

Here's the interesting question, though. Will people beyond the greater Baltimore/D.C. area travel for this? Lollapalooza happens the weekend before, in Chicago. And the new All Points West Festival, put on by the organizers of Coachella (and also featuring two days of Radiohead), actually happens ON THE SAME WEEKEND. Like if you live in Philly, where you gonna go?

The festivals are all a good thing but maybe folks could've spread them out a little more?

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For The Record: News on Game, Led Zeppelin, American Idol, Radiohead and More

Posted 3/3/08 12:05 pm EST by in For The Record


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· The Game will have a chance to add another tattoo to his face. He began serving a two-month jail sentence on Sunday.

· We kind of stopped counting around the time all those news hounds got rope-a-doped by the Lez Zeppelin / Bonnaroo announcement, but the rumors of a Led Zeppelin reunion appear to have been deep-sixed for good due to singer Robert Plant's overwhelming desire to turn down $200 million in favor of playing bluegrass versions of “Black Dog.”

· How do 900 pissed off Lil’ Boosie fans protest a no show in Omaha? By wildin' out on a ticket booth.

· Can it really be that Radiohead and Jack Johnson are the only headliners available for every major U.S. festival this summer?

· Russell Simmons has officially endorsed Barack obama's presidential bid, feeling that at this “transcendent and historic moment in American politics...I am obligated not to remain on the sidelines.”

· Bono, Fergie, John Legend and Eli and Peyton Manning have been added to the list of performers and presenters for the second annual "Idol Gives Back" charity show on April 9. They join a previously announced roster that includes: Brad Pitt, Miley Cyrus, Reese Witherspoon, Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood, but, sadly, no Gary Busey.

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Billboard Charts: Jack Johnson, Others Still Putting You To Sleep

Posted 2/27/08 2:13 pm EST by in Charts


Sleep Through The Static

For a third-straight, utterly-uneventful week, during which a total of 13 new releases bowed, Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through the Static will once again lead next week’s Billboard albums sales chart, capping the top 200 after having sold another 105,000 units. Right behind Jack at #2, climbing one chart position, is Alicia Keys’ As I Am, which scanned 53,000-plus copies. Down one spot at #3 this week, and still coasting off of her recent Grammy successes, its Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, which generated sales of nearly 51,400. After the jump, Kidz Bop, Fergie, Plain White T's and Jim Jones.

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