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Rihanna Teams With Ne-Yo For Ominous “Rated R” Single “Russian Roulette”

BASOAdmin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:46:42 +0000

The wait is officially ova: Rihanna’s “Russian Roulette,” the first single off her upcoming album Rated R, debuted this morning at approximately 11:23 a.m. EST at the official RihannaNow Website. “Roulette” opens up with a desperado guitar lick that hints at an impending shootout before the throbbing and foreboding bassline that carries the track settles in. The dark ballad, which Ne-Yo wrote and produced, seems to find Rihanna singing about enduring a tumultuous relationship and keeping faith in a dangerous boyfriend. “You can see my heart beating, you can see it through my chest/I’m terrified, but I’m not leaving/Know that I must pass this test,” Rihanna sings on the chorus, “So just pull the trigger.” The song ends with an ominous gunshot. The song’s title and lyrics echo the singer’s recent interest in guns; in March she had a tiny gun tattooed on her side.

Rihanna’s fierce fashions: get a look at her most famous looks, onstage and off.

Rated R, the follow-up to 2007’s multiplatinum Good Girl Gone Bad, arrives physically and digitally on November 23rd, the same week as Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster, Adam Lambert’s For Your Entertainment and Britney Spears’ The Singles Collection hit stores.

Ne-Yo’s partnership with Rihanna has been fruitful in the past, generating hits like “Unfaithful,” “Take A Bow” and “Hate That I Love You.” Rhianna also recruited producers The-Dream & “Tricky” Stewart, Chase & Status, Stargate and Justin Timberlake for Rated R. As Rolling Stone reported yesterday, Stewart called his and The-Dream’s track for Rihanna a “monster” edgy club banger, and Chase & Status also talked about collaborating with the “Umbrella” singer on her new album.

“Russian Roulette” is the first Rihanna standalone song since her altercation with then-boyfriend Chris Brown before the Grammys on February 8th. Rihanna appeared in Kanye West’s “Paranoid” video and recently featured on Jay-Z’s “Run This Town,” but “Russian Roulette” marks the first time since “Disturbia” that she’s not sharing the spotlight. According to a press release, a video for “Russian Roulette,” which Rihanna was spotted shooting this past weekend with director Anthony Mandler, will debut in prime time on ABC at an unspecified time.

Rihanna and Chris Brown’s Grammy Weekend: photos of the days and hours before the infamous fight.

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Tags: Ballad, entertainment, Singer, Artists, notes, video, Rock, guitar, rolling stone, Singing, News

New Michael Jackson Song, “This Is It,” Premieres Online

BASOAdmin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:52:08 +0000

As Rolling Stone previously reported, the title track from Michael Jackson’s upcoming concert rehearsal film This Is It made its debut last night on the King of Pop’s official Website at midnight. “This Is It” — a gauzy ballad filled with strings and piano that was recorded during Jackson’s sessions for 1991’s Dangerous, but reportedly written in 1980 (between his releases of Off the Wall and Thriller) — opens with Jackson singing, “This is it, here I stand/I’m the light of the world, I feel grand/Got this love I can feel/And I know yes for sure it is real” as he tenderly hits his signature high notes crooning about a new lover he feels he’s known “since 1,000 years” and never thought he’d fall for. Musically, “This Is It” sounds most similar to “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” the duet Jackson sang with Siedah Garrett on 1987’s Bad. The New York Times points out the song’s resemblance to the Jackson and Paul Anka-penned “I Never Heard,” which was released by Safire in 1991.

See photos from Jackson’s This Is It rehearsals here.

The new song features background vocals by Jackson’s brothers and will be played during the closing sequence of the film. Two versions of “This Is It,” the original and an orchestral take, will be included on the two-disc soundtrack due out October 27, just one day before the This Is It documentary premieres. The second disc also includes an unreleased spoken word track of a poem written by Jackson titled “Planet Earth.”

Look back at Michael Jackson’s life in photos.

In August, Rolling Stone reported that hard drives holding new Jackson songs and unreleased cuts from his ’80s peak were removed from the King of Pop’s estate by sister LaToya after the singer’s death on June 25th. Jackson’s manager Frank DiLeo told RS there are more than 100 unreleased MJ songs, and that the tunes on the hard drives contained music he worked on with Akon, Will.i.am and Ne-Yo. A previously unheard Jackson 5 song titled “That’s How Love Is” is also on the Web and coming to stores soon: As RS reported, the tune, featuring a young Michael, is part of a new Jackson 5 compilation called I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters due November 10th.

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Tags: cover, music, video, piano, News, News, rolling stone, Ballad, new york, original, recording, blog, Singing, Rock, songs, documentary, vocals, Singer, notes, Artists

In Montreal by 256

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:00:19 +0000

MeFi Music
Ever listened to the Friends theme song and thought: that needs to be sampled and used in a heavy metal ballad? I have. SMUT is primarily a two man band, of which I am the lyricist, vocalist and sometimes the bass player.

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Tags: Music Podcasts, Ballad, music, vocalist

Thom Yorke Dances Up a Storm at Official Debut of New Solo Band

BASOAdmin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:22:22 +0000

Photo: Shearer/Getty
Thom Yorke likes to boogie, and he wants you to, too. “I hope you dance, because this is a dance record,” he said by way of introducing “Skip Divided,” one third through the first of a two-concert solo stand last night at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre. “You can just sit there like you’re at the cinema, but I hope you get down.”

The Radiohead frontman himself had been following his own advice since the first song. Entering the stage to a standing ovation, Yorke began at a standup piano facing away from the audience, pushing out the chunky chords that announce “The Eraser,” the title track from his 2006 solo album. However, as his elite backing band kicked in — Red Hot Chili Peppers’ icon Flea on bass, Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) on drums, Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Bebel Gilberto) on percussion, longtime Radiohead/Yorke producer Nigel Godrich on guitar/synths/laptop — Yorke began to shake his tailfeather with aplomb. Strapping on a guitar, Yorke and Flea began their own punk-funk hootenanny, grooving in unison as they vamped on an angular disco riff; behind them, their bandmates built up waves of propulsive percussion that evoked more an LCD Soundsystem show than, say, “Karma Police.”

Yorke’s L.A. appearances, his first official solo shows backed by a band, quickly sent tremors through the blogosphere after their abrupt announcement. The wave of anticipation was impressive in a town built on hype: according to Themusicslut.com, a surprise warmup “rehearsal” two days earlier at the smaller Echoplex club drew the likes of Daft Punk, Zack De La Rocha, Neil Diamond, Celine Dion, Spike Jonze, Madonna, Prince, Rick Rubin, Slash, Sting, and, er, Barbra Streisand (at the Sunday show, however, this reporter spotted only Ed Norton and Sandra Oh, although Yorke’s Radiohead bandmate Colin Greenwood, to whom Yorke dedicated “Paperbag Writer” during the encore, was in attendance).

At both the Echoplex and Orpheum, Yorke & co. played The Eraser album in its entirety, which proved a clever conceit. The Eraser is the ultimate bedroom electronica opus, its synthetic beats influenced by dubstep and IDM starkly rhythmic. In the live setting, however, the songs, taken out of the computer realm by virtuoso musicians with such passion, suddenly became transformed into downright euphoria.

Yorke’s elastic, idiosyncratic voice obviously remains the primary attraction — his off-kilter, Joni Mitchell-style runs on “Atoms For Peace” simply startled, while his falsetto scatting in the middle of the James Brown/My Life In The Bush of Ghosts groove of “The Clock” literally proved bone-chilling. But while Yorke’s vocal melodies provide the key dynamic element, live he often subsumed himself into the band’s thrilling, unified wave of rhythm, helping draw out grooves for full hypnotic effect. Waronker’s drumming, especially the complex patterns underpinning “Black Swan” and the Johnny Cash-style railroad clip of “Atoms For Peace,” added a crucial, evocative element to the proceedings. Flea, as expected, brought the funk, giving the head-bobbing bassline in “Harrowdown Hill” extra, expert swing; the song has an angry, politically-charged lyric, but here it became a celebration of sorts.

On “Black Swan,” Yorke and Flea engaged in one of many jam-out duels, the Red Hot Chili Pepper exploring Bitch’s Brew-style low-end theory while guitars and synths chimed away hypnotically. After the sweaty, club-ready climax of “Cymbal Rush,” replete with Underworld-style synths, Yorke brought things down to earth for the encore with two new, stripped-down songs played without band backing. One, the piano-driven “Open the Floodgates,” had the frayed, homemade feel of classic Neil Young à la “After The Gold Rush.” Another, the mesmerizing ballad “Lotus Flower,” found Yorke accompanying himself with just guitar. On “Lotus Flower” and the rare Radiohead song “Super Collider,” Yorke’s voice became so impossibly supple, he seemed to be singing harmony with himself, driving the manic crowd to astounded quiet.

Yorke brought the players back for the night’s only other Radiohead song, the B side “Paperbag Writer,” and the heavy rhythms of the main set recommenced. Again, Yorke the dancer came out, even more so on the final songs of the set, the recently released new tracks “The Hollow Earth” and “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”; the latter of which verged on evoking, say, the loping New Orleans groove of the Meters, abetted by Godrich alternately unleashing ethereal washes of glittering harmonics and sub-bass booms. Inspired by these thumping basslines and beats, Yorke was throwing shapes like nobody’s business, sometimes verging on a moonwalk, sometimes almost pogoing, his angular moves drawing screams like Jonas Brothers: imagine Ian Curtis’ twitches but more on the beat, and you get the picture.

As deep, dark, and meaningful as Yorke’s songs are, in this context they also proved righteously fun. This was different than a Radiohead show — the sight of Flea doing his characteristic bop onstage alongside Yorke confirmed that — but it proved equally sublime: separate, yes, but perhaps equal. Solo, Yorke proved cathartic in his own way: a Radiohead show might make you weep, but Yorke and his band of merry rhythm makers will shake your body down to the ground.

Set List:

“The Eraser”
“Analyse”
“The Clock”
“Black Swan”
“Skip Divided”
“Atoms For Peace”
“And It Rained All Night”
“Harrowdown Hill”
“Cymbal Rush”

Encore
“Lotus Flower”
“Open The Floodgates”
“Super Collider”
“Paperbag Writer”
“Judge, Jury & Executioner”
“The Hollow Earth”
“Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”

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Tags: musicians, Singing, Ballad, cd, dio, music, guitar, piano, musician, falsetto, blog, News, Rock, help, songs, Electronic, shows

New Music Report: Avett Brothers, Plus La Roux

BASOAdmin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:01:24 +0000

Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell spotlights the Avett Brothers’ major-label debut, I and Love and You, in this week’s roundup of essential new releases. The North Carolina trio get an assist from Rick Rubin on the disc, which results in polished songs including upbeat jams and pretty piano ballads, like the title track, which shows off brothers Scott and Seth Avett’s Beatlesque harmonies.

Also out: the self-titled debut from La Roux, a next big thing from Britain who churn out Eighties-style pop made of cheap synths, skittering beats and cheap come-ons from sassy frontwoman Elly Jackson. The best track: “In for the Kill,” a tune that would rock as the theme for the next James Bond movie.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Report video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

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Tags: songs, podcast, video, music, rolling stone, Rock, piano, Ballad, News, shows

Be A Star Online » Ballad

Rihanna Teams With Ne-Yo For Ominous “Rated R” Single “Russian Roulette”

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