BY ANNIE ZALESKIPop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The following ten singles saturated the Top 40 -- or what passes for hit-oriented radio in this topsy-turvy musical climate -- while proving that accessibility doesn't necessarily preclude creativity.
Well, the "electronic" mail. That counts, I'm sure.Got an e-mail today from Atlantic Records promoting "their" a cappella group "Straight No Chaser." (That's how they put it: "Straight No Chaser is Atlantic Records' a cappella group." As if they own them, and if they can't have more than one a cappella group at the same time. Well, both things may indeed be true.) Since I (or anyone else, I assume) haven't really heard much from the genre since the immortal Rockapella, I was naturally intrigued.
There's something distinctly familiar about the Latin powerhouse Boogaloo Assassins. Maybe it's that authentically greasy mixture of sharp brass, pounding drums, thick bass and gang vocals that hearkens back to the time of sweaty basement parties on a hot summer night in Spanish-Harlem...pre-reggaeton. Maybe it's the fact that pretty much everyone in the band comes from another Latin or ska inspired act you may have seen before (i.e. Ocean 11, Police and Thieves, See Spot, The Chris Mu
Jamie Foxx, leave something for the rest of us. He can act, he can tell jokes, he can sing the hooks of smash-hit Kanye West tunes, and now he's got his own solo career going, too. His third studio album, Intuition (not to be confused with the Jewel song of the same name, not that anyone would), came out late last December, and hit #3 on the Billboard 200 despite some middling reviews.Sure, it would be easy to make Eddie Murphy/"Party All the Time" jokes if he wasn't working with legit hip-hop s
Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker has had plenty of side gigs over the years. Box Car Racer and 44 both featured other Blink members, while a duo called TRV$DJAM included his friend Adam Goldstein. Known as DJ AM, Goldstein, of course, was with Barker in a Learjet crash that killed four people in September, 2008, and he died late last month in an apparent drug overdose.
Motörhead are currently on tour (including a stop at the House of Blues in Anaheim), they also play a role in upcoming action/adventure game Brütal Legend, out next week on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (we got a chance to play it at Comic-Con this year, it's a fun, straight-forward beat 'em up with some cool visuals). That game, with Jack Black voicing the main character and additional vocal appearances from Rob Halford, Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford and Motörhead singer Lemmy will probably be a
