Showing posts with label Pop music. Show all posts
Wednesday 15 October 2014
Costello, Lauper up for Songwriters Hall of Famecaste
(AP) — Tom Petty, Vince Gill, Cyndi Lauper, Elvis Costello and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds are among the performing songwriters being considered for the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The organization announced its 2015 nominees Wednesday. Other performers up for the honor are Gloria Estefan, Cat Stevens, Toby Keith, Steve Miller, Steve Winwood, Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson of Heart, and Harry Wayne "K.C." Casey of KC and the Sunshine Band.
Nonperforming songwriters being considered are Linda Perry, Allee Willis, Rod Temperton, Motown songwriter William "Mickey" Stevenson, Bobby Braddock, Bob McDill, Rudy Clark and Randy Edelman. Songwriting duos Mike Chapman & Nicky Chinn, Sandy Linzer & Denny Randell, P.F. Sloan & Steve Barri and Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia will also compete.
Winners will be inducted next June at a New York gala.
Thursday 2 October 2014
Metallica, Rihanna booked for 'Valor' concert
(AP) — Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica and Rihanna are among the artists booked for a televised live concert from the National Mall in Washington next month to raise awareness of issues concerning veterans.
"The Concert for Valor" is planned for 7 p.m. EDT on Veteran's Day, Nov. 11. It will be televised by HBO, which will provide its signal free to non-subscribers.
Jamie Foxx, Dave Grohl, comic John Oliver, Carrie Underwood and the Zac Brown Band also are scheduled to perform, with appearances by Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Other participants will be announced in the coming weeks.
Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz is spearheading the event. The concert is free, but sponsors hope to direct fans to ways they can volunteer or donate money to causes helping war veterans.
"They've stepped up," Schultz said. "Now it's our turn."
The concert will feature stories from a book Schultz has written about veterans' experiences.
Thursday 25 September 2014
Yusuf/Cat Stevens cancels New York show over scalpers
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(Reuters) - Singer-songwriter Yusuf, who was Cat Stevens until he converted to Islam, said he had cancelled a show scheduled for New York City because scalpers had driven up prices.
Yusuf, who was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said in a posting on Facebook on Wednesday that fans had alerted him to exorbitant ticket prices demanded by some websites for tickets, so he had decided to cancel the event.
"My fans will understand and I thank them for informing me about the extortionate ticket prices already being listed on some websites," the British-born singer wrote.
"I have been a longtime supporter of paperless tickets to my shows worldwide and avoiding scalpers."
Yusuf's show was part of an international six-city tour that will be his first in the United States since 1976. He is scheduled to play in Toronto on December 1, followed by a five-event trip through the United States starting in Philadelphia.
Yusuf's first new studio album in five years, "Tell 'Em I'm Gone", will be released on October 27, his record label Sony said last month.
Tuesday 23 September 2014
Lady Gaga sheds quirky image for jazz album with Tony Bennett
(Reuters) - Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, bridging a 60-year age gap to form one of music's unlikeliest pairs, launched a jazz album on Monday that lets the pop diva put aside her wacky image to sing sweet harmonies with the elder statesman of cool.
"Cheek to Cheek," on sale on Tuesday after a launch concert in the ornate Renaissance setting of the Grand-Place in Brussels, features jazz standards by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and others a distant world away from Lady Gaga's 21st century.
"When I began writing music for the music industry, I became known as the quirky girl from downtown New York," she told a news conference at the 15th-century city hall.
"So I tailored my music to be that way, to get noticed, to be able to travel more and play more shows," said the 28-year-old artist known to many as much for startling costumes - like a robe made of meat - as for her innovative music and stage shows.
But swathed in blue velvet with a 2-metre (6-foot) train, Lady Gaga this week was more 1950s Hollywood star than queen of MTV in 2014 - although still easily young enough to be Bennett's grand-daughter.
"I feel liberated," she said, holding the hand of her fellow Italian-American New Yorker and musing on the challenges of old-style jazz. "It's been over eight years and I've not been singing out. But Tony will not accept any less than all of me."
The two first met in 2011 at a charity concert in New York and a short time afterwards, recorded a version of "The Lady is a Tramp" for Bennett's album Duets II.
"I was overjoyed that he had heard that I'd been singing jazz for so long, perhaps I was even afraid that I had lost that part of me," Lady Gaga said.
Bennett, who shot to fame with "Because of You" in 1951, said he enjoyed the simplicity of a jazz setting.
"I started the very same way as she did, with thousands of people cheering," he said.
"Later on I said I want to keep it in a simple way. Instead of the big stadiums, I'd like to play in fine acoustical homes."
For the concert to launch the album, the two chose a grand but intimate outdoor location, setting up stage on the Grand-Place, a site of pomp and pageantry down the centuries.
Once again, Lady Gaga kept it simple, sticking to a glittery gold cocktail dress and refraining from any of the costume changes that her live performances are known for.
Another change was the composition of the approximately 5,000-strong audience on the square, combining Lady Gaga's young fan base with many middle-aged spectators.
For about 30 minutes, the two performed some of the highlights of the album, from the upbeat duet "It Don't Mean a Thing" to Lady Gaga's solemn solo performance "Lush Life."
The crowd in Brussels responded enthusiastically to the brief show and Lady Gaga appeared touched by the reaction as she and Bennett bowed out.
Before the concert, Bennett had already predicted that Lady Gaga would strike a chord with fans as a jazz singer.
"I know that when Lady Gaga comes out you will hear a reaction that's never been heard in this great city," Bennett said. "People love her, and she loves them back."
Monday 22 September 2014
BENNETT, GAGA HAVE SPECIAL CHEMISTRY ON NEW CD
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Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga, "Cheek to Cheek" (Interscope/Columbia)
Tony Bennett has never forgotten the boost he got when Frank Sinatra declared him "the best singer in the whole business." Now it's Bennett's turn to grant his imprimatur to another Italian-American singer from New York: Stefani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga.
Bennett and Gaga first teamed up on his Grammy-winning 2011 "Duets II" CD to perform the standard "The Lady Is a Tramp," with Gaga displaying impressive vocal chops. It turns out that this seemingly odd couple — separated in age by 60 years — both share a passion for the Great American Songbook and jazz singing, which Gaga says she first took up as a teenager.
That led them to record "Cheek to Cheek" — only the second full album that Bennett has done with another singer in his nearly 70-year recording career. The first was the sublime 2002 album, "A Wonderful World," with k.d. lang, on which the two voices blended smoothly on a subdued collection of ballads associated with Louis Armstrong.
There's a completely different chemistry on "Cheek to Cheek," starting with the opening track, Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," with the duo trading lines in a bright, brassy big-band swing arrangement. A sassy Gaga enthusiastically belts out her lines, while Bennett is as always elegant and precise in his phrasing.
Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" and Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" are both briskly paced with Gaga's high register vocals spinning around Bennett's middle-range lines with the two engaging in some crisp harmonizing and occasional scatting. On the Nat King Cole hit "Nature Boy," Gaga shows a different side, breathily caressing the lyrics and softly blending her lines with Bennett's, backed by a lush orchestral arrangement and the late Paul Horn's airy flute solo.
This is a liberating album for Gaga who shows that she doesn't need the outlandish meat dresses, voice-altering electric effects and elaborate stage shows to make an impact because her voice stands out on its own. Had she been born in an earlier era, Gaga would have been right at home in an MGM musical. On her solo features, Gaga sings softly and with restraint on Porter's ballad "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," and shows her vulnerability in an emotional rendition of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," clearly identifying with the song's theme of loss and heartache.
The only surprise with Bennett is how vibrant he sounds at 88 with a voice that though raspier than in his early years has matured gracefully like fine wine, taking on more emotional depth, as reflected in his solo numbers, "Don't Wait Too Long" and Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady."
Bennett brings out another side of Gaga's artistry by recording this album in his customary manner — with the main performers interacting in the studio. The arrangements feature his touring jazz combo with pianist Mike Renzi plus such top-notch guest soloists as tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Brian Newman.
At times, Gaga's jazz phrasing can sound forced, as on Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance," and she sometimes belts out the lyrics like a pop star. Gaga, who says she intends to record more jazz albums, has great potential as a jazz singer and could learn much from Bennett who early in his career often sang in a stiff operatic voice before becoming more relaxed, nuanced and jazzier once he started recording albums of the timeless standards.
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