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Lady Gaga Follows Other Artists Behind The Camera

Posted 4/4/11 4:36 pm EST by in Music, Television


Lady Gaga just wrapped up production on her music video for "Judas." And while she's relied on the instincts of professional music video directors in the past, this time around the singer (along with creative director Laurieann Gibson) has decided to helm the video herself.

This isn't the first time, however, that Gaga has taken on a directorial role. She had a hand in her "Born This Way" video as well, enlisting her Haus of Gaga to co-direct the video along with fashion photographer Nick Knight.

Gaga is hardly the first pop star to direct his or her own music video. 30 Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto acted as a director, under the pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins, for five of his band's clips. He even got the band a 2010 VMA for the "Kings and Queens" video.
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Is Fred Durst Really Getting A Waste Disposal Service Named After Him?

Posted 2/3/11 1:30 pm EST by in Music


Austin, Texas is home to many wonderful things: The University of Texas, the annual South By Southwest Music Festival, Iron Works BBQ, Roky Erickson. And if voting holds, you'll soon be able to add another item to that list: The Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts.

Of course, much like its namesake, the FDSHA has nothing to do with the actual arts (or humanities), and everything to do with the disposal of solid waste — stuff like household garbage, recyclables and toxics. And, yes, Austin is okay with this. In fact, they seem to be encouraging it.

Confused? Well, please allow us to explain. It seems the City of Austin is looking to rename their Solid Waste Services Department "to better reflect all the services the Department provides," and they're open to suggestions. So they posted a thread about it on their City Connection site, asking for folks to submit potential ideas (they also came up with three rather demure suggestions of their own) with visitors casting ballots for their favorites. One particularly bright fellow — a guy named Kyle Hentges — chimed in with the aforementioned "Fred Durst" title. And, well, voters seemed to like his suggestion. A lot.

As of Thursday (February 3), the "Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts" not only leads all potential suggestions, but does so by a huge margin. It's racked up nearly 12,000 votes (its closest competitor, "Department of Neat," has slightly more than 1,100), and barring some miraculous comeback from a challenger (voting is set to close on February 10), it appears to be a mortal lock to win the competition.

But if (and, seemingly, when) it does, will Austin go ahead and name its Solid Waste Services Department after the Limp Bizkit frontman? We won't know until April, when the new name is officially announced, and according to Jennifer Herber, the public information officer for the Austin's Solid Waste Services, Durst fans (and, we suppose, haters) shouldn't hold their breath.

"The potential names will be taken under advisement. I think it's important to note that we don't have to go with [the winning name]," she said. "But, we knew that, being that Austin is a unique and artistic place, we'd get some weird ideas. And I love that this is getting attention not just around the city, but around the world."

For his part, Durst seems strangely touched by the potential honor. On Wednesday, after being asked about it by a fan on Twitter, he responded that not only was he aware of the voting, but that he "loved it." Herber said she hasn't heard from the singer or his reps, but that, regardless of what Austin decides to call its Solid Waste Services Department, she hopes Durst will be involved somehow.

"Maybe we'll have him down here for the unveiling," she laughed.

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Taylor Swift's Speak Now Sells A Million, Joins An Elite Club

Posted 11/3/10 10:02 am EST by in Music


Just as both professional pundits and hardcore fans predicted, Taylor Swift's third album Speak Now has sold over one million copies in its first week of release. All told, Swift moved 1,047,000 units this past week, easily earning her the top spot on the Billboard albums chart and giving her the best single-week sales since 50 Cent sold 1,141,000 copies of The Massacre in 2005 (she just bested the sales of Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, the last album to cross the seven figure threshold in a week). She is also only the third woman to sell a million in her first week (joining Britney Spears and, curiously, Norah Jones) and is also only the second country artist to pull off the feat (Garth Brooks did it with Double Live in 1998).

(Click here for a look at the other artists who have sold a million albums in a week, including Eminem, *NSYNC and Britney Spears!)

Pulling off this incredible feat puts Swift in a very elite class of performers who have sold one million copies in the first week of an album's release. Some of the biggest pop stars in the world — including Beyoncé, Madonna and Mariah Carey — have fallen short of this particular belt notch. In fact, the seven-figures-in-the-first-week trick has only been pulled off a dozen times before. Here are the rest of them.

(Click here for a look at the other artists who have sold a million albums in a week, including Eminem, *NSYNC and Britney Spears!)

Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
Fueled by dozens of top-shelf mixtape tracks, a healthy endorsement from Kanye West (who himself had just missed the million-in-a-week mark with Graduation) and some chatter that he had taken the "Best Rapper Alive" moniker from Jay-Z, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III turned into a cross-cultural event.

50 Cent, The Massacre
50 Cent scored a massive hit with his debut album Get Rich or Die Tryin' (and the smash single "In Da Club"), so he quickly hit the market a second time with The Massacre. On the back of "Candy Shop," 50 fever was in full effect when he pushed his seven day million.

*NSYNC, No Strings Attached and Celebrity
At the height of boy band mania (and in the era just before downloading torpedoed album sales), every pop star was looking to win big during week one. Read More...

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'American Idol,' Bret Michaels And Rihanna: This Week's Deep Cuts

Posted 5/28/10 5:30 pm EST by in Deep Cuts


The sun is shining, the grills have been lit and the beach is calling, which can only mean one thing: It's Memorial Day! No matter what you end up doing for the next three days — be it heading out to your local baseball stadium, lounging by the pool or just relaxing in the living room without a care in the world — you should safely enjoy the holiday and dive headlong into the first official weekend of summer. But before you do that, be sure to check out the stories you may have missed this week on the MTV Newsroom blog (and take an extra minute to vote in our 2010 summer jams poll).

» "American Idol" came to a close this week, and at the end of the road, only Lee DeWyze was left standing. Relive the magic of both the final night of performances and the grand finale via on-the-ground live blogs from MTV News "American Idol" expert Jim Cantiello.

» Perhaps the biggest highlight of the last "Idol" week was the appearance by Bret Michaels, who performed the classic "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" live on the show.

» That wasn't Michaels' only big victory of the week, as he also scored a win on the final episode of "The Celebrity Apprentice." Michaels appeared live on that show as well, kicking off an extremely active week on the way to the beginning of his tour this weekend.

» Another ending this week? "Lost," which wrapped up its six season run with a polarizing final two-and-a-half hours. Most rock stars had trouble parsing out the show — except for Hayley Williams, who managed to nearly predict the finale despite never having seen the show.

» It wasn't all about endings this week, though. The new season of "So You Think You Can Dance" kicked off with new rules, new judges and a whole bunch of all-star returnees.
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Limp Bizkit Did It All For 'Popology'

Posted 5/26/10 4:30 pm EST by in Music


They say a well-rounded education is the key to success, and if that truly is the case, the my schooling is woefully incomplete when it comes to the subject of pop. That's why we bring you "Popology," the guide to modern radio-friendly stars as seen through the eyes of a guy who grew up on punk and metal. In case you missed previous installments, catch up with Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and the Spice Girls here.

In this week's installment — a slight departure from the norm — Limp Bizkit puts the "nu" in nu-metal.

If there's one thing that stood out about the sad passing of Slipknot bassist Paul Gray, it's the fact that there was a time in this country when metal was totally accepted in the mainstream. And we're not talking about the type of metal that Guns N' Roses or Mötley Crüe dropped onto the radio in the 1980s. This was savage, brutal music. Consider this: Slipknot's 2001 album Iowa debuted at number three on the Billboard chart and sold a million copies in a months, and that album is brutal. Despite the snatches of melody in the singles "Left Behind" and "My Plague," most of it is an absolutely savage combination of technical skill and raw sonic purging.

But it had to come from somewhere, and the trend that lead Iowa to the upper echelons of the charts began in 1999 with the release of Limp Bizkit's Significant Other. Fronted by rapper/singer/hype man Fred Durst and powered by the funky, guttural riffs of guitarist Wes Borland, the Bizkit turned the proto-rapcore of their debut album Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ into a radio-friendly mix of arena riffs, hip-hop swagger and just the right amount of melody.

The release of Significant Other was a massive cultural event, fueled by the ubiquity of the smash single "Nookie" and the iconic video that found a permanent home on MTV's "Total Request Live." Durst was rapping alongside clips by Backstreet Boys and Christina Aguilera, which made for a striking departure in the streamlined end-of-the-century pop menu. But you can't associate with those acts without sort of becoming one of them, which put the Bizkit in a weird place: A (theoretically) hard band with radio leanings and videos on MTV. They ended up picking up a ton of cultural baggage following the initial fervor over the release of Significant Other (including an ill-fated performance at Woodstock '99), but before that, there was only an album.

Significant Other opens with a super-freaky intro the features some bass-heavy narration announcing "You wanted the worst? You got the worst. Limp Bizkit!" You have to admit one thing: *NSYNC never opened an album like that. Read More...

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M.I.A. Joins The Pantheon Of Absurd Album Titles

Posted 5/12/10 5:15 pm EST by in Music


M.I.A. is one of the music world's most colorful personalities, and her fashion sense, visual flair penchant for melding together disparate styles of electronic music into a rugged stew have kept her in the conversation since she first dropped her debut album Arular back in 2005. She just let the world know the title of her new album, and it's worthy of a double-take. The record, which will hit stores in July, will be called /\/\/\Y/\. Sure, it sort of spells out her name (her government moniker is Maya Arulpragasam), but it's mostly just a bunch of slashes with a "Y" tossed in there for good measure.

In fact, it immediately ascends onto the list of these confounding album titles that are either bizarre, uncomfortable or simply unpronounceable.

Limp Bizkit, Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water
For a band whose signature song was called "Nookie," Limp Bizkit crammed an awful lot of words into their chart-topping third album. Though everybody assumed that the phrases "chocolate starfish" and "hotdog flavored water" referenced some sort of truly heinous sex act, it was never actually clarified by Fred Durst. (It's probably safe to assume the same of their upcoming album Gold Cobra.)

Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King
Sure, it's a loving tribute to late DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore, but like the Bizkit album before it, Big Whiskey has way, way too many words in it. Still, like Chocolate Starfish, it managed to top the charts, proving that the lengthy name of your album doesn't necessarily disqualify you for success.

John Frusciante, Various Albums
The former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist has floated in and out of that band for nearly two decades, and in between funky jams with Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith and Flea, he put out a steady stream of bizarre solo albums with even weirder titles. Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt is a monster of nonsense (especially considering the song title "Your P---y's Glued to a Building on Fire"), as are Shadows Collide with People and To Record Only Water for Ten Days.

Prince, "Symbol"
The Purple One had a bit of an identity crisis once the '90s rolled around. His second album with the New Power Generation was titled an unpronounceable symbol — a symbol that Prince later used as a name, which is why he was known as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" for a while. It's a shame, because "Symbol" contains some great mid-period tunes like "7" and "Sexy MF," but it's damn-near impossible to sort.

Fiona Apple, When the Pawn...
Apple's legendary sophomore album (which remains grotesquely underrated) was known as When the Pawn... but actually had a title that was over 400 characters long. It's an eight line poem that Apple wrote in response to letters she read about herself in Spin magazine. She held the record for the longest album title ever recorded until 2008, when Chumbawumba (no, seriously) put out an album that had an 865 character title (perhaps one for each copy sold).

Aerosmith, Honkin' on Bobo
Who is poor Bobo, and why are we honkin' on him? And why did Aerosmith record a bunch of blues standards in the first place? These are the questions the Hard Rock Monks meditate on, never coming to any conclusions but getting pretty spacey in the process.

What are your favorite over-the-top album titles? Let us know in the comments!

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Catch Christina Aguilera, Limp Bizkit And Others At The Five Funniest Sponsored Venues

Posted 5/11/10 3:50 pm EST by in Music


With summer just around the corner, it's time for your favorite acts to announce their plans to hit the road (provided, of course, your favorite acts are Christina Aguilera and Limp Bizkit), because, as time — and tanlines — can attest, nothing goes together quite like live music and sunstroke.

Yes, the summer tour season is magical and manic, a time when basically every band with something to promote piles into a bus and heads out on a big-budget jaunt. As you can imagine, things are already getting pretty hectic here in the MTV Newsroom, as every hour we're hit with another press release trumpeting a new tour, each one bigger and better than the last. Calendars are quickly filled. Plans are made, then scrapped. Hotel rooms are reserved. It's enough to make your head explode, honestly.

Through all this madness, one thing has become abundantly clear: Corporate sponsorship is out of control. It seems that every wireless provider in North America has slapped their name on some shed out there, to the point where now, bands can't make it through two cities without playing a Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre or a Cricket Wireless Pavilion (or both). But it's not just the high-tech folks who are getting in on the act. There's the deliciously-named Dunkin Donuts Center in Rhode Island, the refreshing Molson Canadian Amphitheatre in Toronto or the soon-to-be open KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville. Reading through a band's tour schedule is a lot like leafing through the NASDAQ listings at this point.

And though seemingly every spot with a stage and some seats has been branded by now, there are some venues that go above and beyond when it comes to corporate sponsorship. Here are five that are so patently ridiculous that they've somehow earned our respect — pavilions and amphitheatres willing to slap any name on the marquee, so long as the check clears. It's sort of admirable in a way, because if you're going to sell out, you might as well sell out.

05. The Jobing.com Arena
Located in beautiful Glendale, Arizona, the Jobing.com plays host to Phoenix Coyotes home games (and, next month, Justin Bieber). It's named after a company that claims to be "Your First Choice For Local Jobs," though most wrestling fans know that "jobbing" is also a term used to describe losing a match. The reason it made our list, however, is because three different people read its name and said "Who's Joe Bing?"

04. The Jenny Craig Pavilion
Tucked away on the campus of the University of San Diego, the Jenny Craig is affectionately known as "the Slim Gym," which is actually way more creative than the actual name. No word on what the concessions are like inside, though we imagine they're probably a bummer.
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Limp Bizkit Invade 'The Tonight Show' In This Week's 'Late Night Lineup'

Posted 5/10/10 11:30 am EST by in Music


Jimmy Fallon should feel pretty good about himself and his still-developing late night program "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." He is constantly improving as a host, his writing team is top-notch and his commitment to online-exclusive content (like the excellent "Lost" parody "Late") is clearly setting the stage for the future. He has also developed a knack for booking musical guests that other shows are clearly paying attention to. This week, many of the late night hosts have made esoteric choices for their musical guests. Take Jay Leno, who will welcome Limp Bizkit to "The Tonight Show" on Monday (May 10) and will follow that up with a visit from Macy Gray on Wednesday (May 12) and the Jonas Brothers on Friday (May 14).

That's a pretty eclectic week, though not nearly as all-over-the-place as David Letterman, whose "The Late Show" will have performances from MGMT on Tuesday (May 11) and Brooklyn brooders the National on Thursday (May 13). Letterman will also welcome "American Idol" reject Aaron Kelly on Monday, as well as the cast of "Million Dollar Quartet."

Jimmy Kimmel, on the other hand, has gone the more mainstream route this week, with appearances by Michael Bolton (yes, that Michael Bolton) on Tuesday and the chart-topping B.o.B on Wednesday. But worry not, as he'll still have some crunch from Crash Kings (Monday) and Dirty Heads (Thursday). And while Craig Ferguson doesn't normally have many must-see musical performances on his "Late Late Show," he is opening the week with Wilco (Monday) and Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi (Tuesday), both of which should make for incredible television. Also a sure-fire hit? The Hold Steady on "The Colbert Report" on Thursday.

If you prefer your music on television while the sun is still out, you're sort of out of luck this week (save for Paramore's appearance on "Ellen" on Friday). Then again, LL Cool J will be on "The View" on Thursday, and though he probably won't perform anything, he's always an electric presence.

Who are you most looking forward to seeing on late night TV this week? Let us know in the comments!

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Slash's Label Leads The List Of Silly Vanity Imprint Names

Posted 4/14/10 11:10 am EST by in Music


After years of toiling in some wildly successful rock bands (most notably Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver), Slash has finally made his way into the center of the spotlight with his first true solo album. It just debuted in third place on the Billboard album chart, moving over 60,000 copies in its first week on the strength of the behatted guitarist's non-stop promotion and the single "By the Sword" (a team-up with Wolfmother frontman Andrew Stockdale.

Slash is actually a tremendous collection of hard rock songs that center around the axe man's signature chunky, swirling riffs. His backing band features all of the original members of Guns N' Roses (Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler — only Axl Rose is absent). In Santana style, each track has a guest vocalist, some of which work really well (Stockdale, Ian Astbury, Chris Cornell, Dave Grohl) while others stumble a bit (Fergie, Myles Kennedy). On balance, it's an excellent album, and it feels good to have that classic Slash sound back.

But there is one thing that stands out about the record: It has been released on Slash's own imprint. The label's title? Dik Hayd Records. Like the top entry on yesterday's list of ridiculous band names, "Dik Hayd" combines a juvenile joke and bad grammar for a truly silly stew. In fact, it immediately rockets to the top of the list of silliest vanity label names. It sits about the rest of these.

Elementree Records
Founded by Korn in 1997, Elementree Record (another wacky for no reason spelling choice) provided a home for the likes of Orgy, Deadsy and Videodrone. When Jonathan Davis' crew exited Epic Records (also the home of Elementree), the label folded up, but it lives on in the minds of fans of horrorcore rapper Marz.

Decaydance Records
What is with rock stars and wacky puns? Pete Wetz's imprint may provide the world with music by Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is... and Cobra Starship, but it's hard to pronounce and is guilty of violating the Funky Spelling Rule (which I just invented yesterday).
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The 10 Most Ridiculous Band Names Of All Time

Posted 4/13/10 1:35 pm EST by in Music


As you might imagine, we listen to a lot of bands here in the MTV Newsroom. Some we know well, some we know less well and some are introduced to us when we open the envelope that contains the press release. This morning, MTV News' own Gil Kaufman received a press release from a band called Child Abuse, which he immediately declared as one of the most ridiculous band names of all time.

While Child Abuse is pretty bad, it probably wouldn't touch the top 50. What Kaufman doesn't realize is that the well of horrible band names is extremely deep. Here are the top 10.

Limp Bizkit
First, there's no such thing as a "bizkit." And even if you assume that it's merely a wacky variation on the word "biscuit," it still doesn't make any sense. What's a limp biscuit? Or a limp bizkit? The world still does not know.

Dogs Die in Hot Cars
Is there a more unpleasant image than the one invoked by this short-lived group's name? Plus, they played ska, which is problematic.

Cute Is What We Aim For
Really, even the best emo bands probably have awful, absurd or overly-wordy names. For grammatical purposes, Cute Is What We Aim For makes us the most crazy.
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