Blue Blast Aguilera
December 20, 2004 - World Entertainment News Network

British boyband Blue have hit out at Christina Aguilera, because she ruined a recent gig they performed.

The All Rise hitmakers were stunned to spot the sexy singer at the concert and found the experience off-putting.

Singer Antony Costa says, "We did a gig in France and Christina Aguilera was there, sitting in the front row of the audience with this snooty look on her face. We took one look at her and it really put us off.

"I think it might have been one of out worst performances, because her evil eyes made us feel really uncomfortable."

Source:teenmusic.com

Recent releases

Various artists
BMG
2 stars

"Ultimate Christmas 2" is ideally a holiday CD that the entire family can groove to. For mom and dad (and maybe grandma and grandpa), there's Elvis Presley with the Jordanaires ("Santa Claus Is Back in Town") and Barry Manilow with K.T. Oslin on "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Seasonal tunes from such American Idols as Ruben Studdard and Kelly Clarkson are included for the younger set, as are tracks by TLC, Christina Aguilera and 'N Sync (remember them?). But "Ultimate Christmas 2" has moments that might drive everyone from the family room. Britney Spears sings like she's spent too much time in the snow and caught a cold on the otherwise perky "My Only Wish (This Year)." Kenny G and his syrupy soprano saxophone are a slab of musical fruitcake on "Winter Wonderland." So much for that Norman Rockwell moment.

Source: http://www.sacbee.com

The Week in Weird

Web sites around the world have long attracted folks in desperate need of unmentionables once worn by big-deal singers. And while we can sympathize with folks seeking to get up close and personal with the undies of say, Christina Aguilera or Beyonce, we're a bit perplexed at a recent auction that saw a pair of Bryan Adams' unwashed socks fetch nearly a thousand bucks. The footwear -- from what we can gather, a lovely cotton-poly blend -- fell into the hands of a Welsh limo service owner when Adams decided to treat himself to a costume change while on the road home from a gig in the vowel-phobic country. The dough raised will go to a local hospice; the socks, we can only assume, to one of the land's most prominent foot fetishists . . .

Source:http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6770622/

At last, the mash-up has gone mainstream
MUSIC REVIEW

December 19, 2004


With the No. 1 debut of Jay-Z and Linkin Park's "Collision Course" album this month, mainstream America has finally caught on to the concept of mash-ups - taking the vocal from one song and joining it to the instrumental track of another.

Never mind that the idea's been around for years or that "Collision Course" isn't even the best mash-up album built around Jay-Z's "Black Album" songs. (Danger Mouse's mash-up of "The Black Album" with The Beatles' "White Album" gets that honor. Unfortunately, lawyers representing Beatles' interests refused to allow that album to be released, choosing to turn music lovers into technical lawbreakers rather than helping them hear the creative new songs.)

When music historians 25 years from now look back on the origins of mash-ups, "Collision Course" will be seen as the groundbreaker, achieving what "Rapper's Delight" did for hip-hop, breaking it down to a level that regular folks could understand.

This was the year that mash-ups developed into a new mode of musical expression instead of simply being a clever production trick - one that can now be duplicated by imaginative fans with the right software and access to a capella and instrumental tracks that are becoming easier to track down. Though remixers have had access to those tracks for years, this year, Jay-Z had the foresight - one of many reasons he's the perfect choice to be president of Def Jam Recordings - to release an unprecedented a capella version of his "Black Album" raps so mash-up makers wouldn't have to go to Kazaa or Grokster to get them.

The improvement in software and source materials has led to better mash-ups. Instead of simply marveling at the way mashers such as Go Home Productions can make Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" fit into Radiohead's "High and Dry" for sheer shock value, a new generation is actually improving the songs. For example, Soundhog takes Christina Aguilera's provocative vocals from "Dirrty" and welds them to Jet's revved-up guitar rock on "Are You Gonna Be My Girl," which was kind of bland in the lyrics department, to create one of the year's best-sounding songs, "Are You Gonna Be My Dirrty Girl."

MTV sees the signs. After sponsoring and documenting the collaboration of Jay-Z and Linkin Park for its special "MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups Presents Jay-Z/Linkin Park Collision Course," the cable channel is planning five more mash-up projects for next year. "Our goal for 'Mash-Ups' in 2005 is to give more of the biggest artists in the business the freedom to create something entirely new for their fans," Tom Calderone, MTV's executive vice president of music and talent programming, said in a statement announcing the plans.

However, this may be another one of those rare times that MTV is chasing a trend, as well as building one.

After all, the smash hit "My Boo" by Usher and Alicia Keys is not a mash-up, but it's meant to sound like one. Already cobbled together from separate sessions producer Jermaine Dupri had with the singers, "My Boo" essentially is a tame ballad with pieces of two other songs stitched into it - the "I don't know about y'all, but I know about us" part and the "My-oh, my-oh" part, which don't fit with the tempo of the rest of the song.

Though part of the song's success obviously has to do with the Usher juggernaut, its six-week run as No. 1 also shows that mainstream music fans are embracing this idea of joining different songs with the same beat, something dance music fans have enjoyed for years. The difference with the mash-ups, though, is that unlike dance music, in which the union of songs could go on anywhere from 10 minutes to hours, mash-ups generally telescope that time into less than five minutes.

Sure, that's a change of pace that will take some getting used to, but music fans have little choice. The "Collision Course" has begun.


Source:newsday.com

Goodbye, pimps and hos
Pop music starts to look `grown up'

Conservatism or natural evolution?


THOMAS BARTLETT
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Quoth Jay-Z: "You can't be running around in jerseys when you're 30 years old."

The oracle spoke, the people listened. Jay-Z, with his new fondness for suits and button-up shirts, best set the year's tone: Maturity was in, clean-cut was in. An old-fashioned, elegant idea of what was stylish was ascendant. In popular music, this was the year of the white suit, of the rakishly angled hat.

The new aesthetic was everywhere: in the retro-utopian ballrooms of R. Kelly's "Happy People" and Outkast's "I Like The Way You Move" videos; in the speak-easy vibe of Beyoncé's "Naughty Girl" video; in the Ed Sullivan Show theme of the "Hey Ya" video; in the sudden celebrity of P. Diddy's natty manservant, Farnsworth Bentley. Nelly, the man who brought us "Hot in Herre," released a record called Suit. And look at what happened to Christina Aguilera! I don't know how they got the skank out of that girl, but now she's dressing in '20s-style flapper dresses with a coquettish curly bob. Out with bling, in with bespoke.

This may have been most transparent in fashion and in visual aesthetics, but it also came through loud and clear in the year's most successful music. In place of the forward-looking, sparse, jabbing production and challenging harmonic terrain that had been so dominant in hip hop and pop, there was a new emphasis on warmth and fullness, on sumptuous orchestrations and comfortable, well-worn harmonies and baroquely florid arrangements. Perhaps taking a cue from an increasingly politicized culture, the most popular music stayed conservative, channelling the sepia-toned lushness of classic soul and pop.

Consider the two greatest critical/commercial triumphs of the year: Usher and Kanye West. Rapper/producer and critic's darling West had more impact on the sound of pop music this year than any other single artist, both with his own singles ("Through the Wire," "Jesus Walks") and productions for other artists (Twista's "Slow Jamz" and "Overnight Celebrity;" Alicia Keys's "You Don't Know My Name"). West's music is built on the analog warmth and nostalgic crackle of old soul samples and smoothly sophisticated string orchestrations, and "Slow Jamz" might be the distilled essence of it all: lyrics referencing great slow jam artists of the past ("Marvin Gaye, some Luther Vandross, a little Anita," for starters), a couple of nostalgia-inducing soul samples, a silky smooth, string-laden arrangement, but also a finicky complexity to the way it's all fit together, with Twista's lightning-fast rapping interlocking precisely with the sample above it.

What's extraordinary about Usher is simply the magnitude of his success; that a straight-up R&B crooner, singing thoroughly unmodern ballads like "Burn" and "Confessions (Part 2)," could be not just a big seller, but also a hip, young celebrity with real glamour and star power. Usher's female counterpart, Alicia Keys, has an appeal based entirely on her nostalgic evocations of classic soul, and by the air of "class" provided by a grand piano. The flashy piano run in the chorus of her hit "You Don't Know My Name" was an extreme example of the kind of gushingly complex flourishes so in vogue this year. Usher and Keys currently hold the No. 2 spot on the Billboard singles chart with their duet "My Boo," a slick, sentimental ballad that represents everything unadventurous, retiring and uninteresting about this year's pop music.

Notable by their absence in 2004 were Timbaland and the Neptunes, the producers who had been such dominant commercial and artistic forces for the last few years, their lean, sharp-edged tracks replaced by West's warm, rounded, lushly blended fantasias. The Neptunes have finally come storming back with one of their oddest, and coolest, productions, Snoop's "Drop It Like It's Hot," currently at the top of the charts. And if there's any justice, the brilliant new Timbaland-produced Ludacris track, "The Potion," will be joining it there soon. But until the recent release of those songs, this year had produced nothing with the bumping minimalism of Missy Elliott's Timbaland hits like "Get Ur Freak On" and "Work It," or the out-of-nowhere strangeness of Kelis's Neptunes-produced "Milkshake." Those songs were part of a daring, forward-thinking spirit in pop music, testing the bounds of how abstract and alien it was possible for a hit song to be. But that pretty much evaporated this year.

A cynic might say that the trend toward sweet, smooth, retro sounds was evidence of an art form losing its youth and freshness, becoming self-conscious, but I don't think that's what's happening here. Music doesn't develop in a straight line. It moves in fits and starts, reactions and counterreactions, a pendulum swinging back and forth, with each generation correcting, and usually overcompensating for, the excesses of the previous one: the romantic torrents of Berlioz and Chopin replaced the cerebral, methodically structured classicism of Haydn and Clementi; punk-rock sharpened its fangs to puncture the bloat of prog-rock and scratch the glossy facade of disco. The last few years have been dominated by the brutal minimalism of Timbaland and Missy (and a legion of imitators), the glittering, brash futurism of the Neptunes; by pimped-out guys and skanked-out girls. What more natural reaction than lush orchestrations and an elegant white suit?

But there's also more than a whiff of conservatism to the whole thing, of playing it safe, of new money trying to pass for old because it's more respectable. After all the excitement of the hip-hop high life, of rap moguls like P. Diddy and Jay-Z shattering the glass ceiling, even the rebel kings are putting on suits and telling people to grow up. There's also an air of post-Nipplegate timidity, fear of Michael Powell and the "moral" watchdogs. Sex is still being sold, of course, but more subtly, without all the sweat and physicality, without the big-ass Timbaland beats and booty shaking.

In a year of such intense political polarization, so much anger and activism, it's surprising that popular music has withdrawn into relative conservatism, that major statements like Eminem's searing "Mosh" were so rare. Or maybe not. Just as often as popular music provides a rallying cry, giving voice to people's angers and frustrations, it can provide an escape from them

Source:thestar.com

Rem, thanks for posting those articles.

This:
could quite possible be the funniest thing I've read all week. Hee. Her "evil eyes". Way to be completely dramatic boys and blame her for your own lack of professionalism. Still, very amusing.

I finally bought the Stripped DVD yesterday. I'm so happy....I went home and put it in my DVD and watched the "Walk Away" performance like 20 times. :D

Pat Thanks! I hope I'll be able to go too. :) That would be so exciting! :D And yay, you finally got a copy of the dvd. I still don't have one but I'll get one soon. :)

Rem Thanks for those articles. :)

I never really liked Blue. So rude of them to blame Christina for their bad performance. Maybe she had a lot of things going on that day.:look:

Yay! I'm glad you got your copy. And dude, 'Walk Away' is such an amazing performance. As a matter of fact I have it playing right now on my comp. Hee. So effin' good! I love the *big bit* you know the 'begging pleading' part. Love that bit. Love how the crowd goes wild and she throws herself to her knees.

Man, I so need her new album to come out. Lmfao. I have been listening to 'Stripped' an insane amount of times lately. I need some new music my 'Stripped' album is starting to skip. :lol:

Samii, ITA...and you can't forget about that guy on the pole. :drool:


New Pictures of Christina Bowling with Friends

http://www.christina-aguilera.net/photos/bowling_04.jpg

http://www.christina-aguilera.net/photos/bowling_02.jpg

http://www.christina-aguilera.net/photos/bowling_03.jpg


Cute outfit. :D

Samii The 'begging, pleading..' part.. she always does it magnificently! Have you seen the Letterman performance of Walk Away? She nailed that part too.. it's uh.. so amazing! :eek: I have not seen the Walk Away performance in the DVD though.. :(

Thanks for the new pics Pat! :D And I there's a pretty big chance that I'm gonna go to the MTV Asia Awards this February :yay: I talked to my mom last night and she said she'd let me go. :yay:

No I haven't. :bawl:

Is there anywhere to download it?

I love that she performed this song even though it wasn't released. Very unusual.

BTW, thats awesome that you will get to go there. Dude, we must have a blow by blow recount. Hee. I hope she performs.

maita, CONGRATS on getting to see Christina at Asia. I want a full report. :D

Btw, I do have Christina's performance recorded on Letterman and she did a awesome job. All the high or low notes were right on. :smirk:

That's so cool. I'm trying to get tickets to go to MAA as well! I really want to see Christina. Too bad she won't be performing.

Samii I think it's available at CMM, not sure though. I can't remember where I got my copy of it. I have it in mpeg format. I can e-mail it to ya if ya want. :) And for sure.. a blow by blow recap of the MAA if I get to go! **crosses fingers**

Pat Thanks! February's still a little far away so we'll see. I really hope all will be good and I'll be able to go. All I know is that so far.. so good. :D

ps_dreamer Oh that's cool! Are you Asian? If so, where are you from? I hope you don't mind me asking. Yeah, too bad she won't be performing but who knows.. maybe she'll surprise us all! ;) But hey, I'd take hosting than performing one song any day. She'll be on stage a lot more! Hosting and performing will be the best combo though.. ;)

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. :glow: