Idol Headlines for 06/30/09
Barrino Returns to Color Purple Role, Beginning June 30 at the Kennedy Center
“American Idol” winner Fantasia Barrino reprises her award-winning performance as Celie in The Color Purple, which begins a limited run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, June 30.
The Kennedy Center engagement marks Barrino’s first return to Purple since making her Broadway debut in the New York production in 2007. The national tour of the Tony-nominated musical officially opens July 1 and will continue through Aug. 9 at the D.C. venue.
Wanna be an American Idol? Here’s some advice
It’s time to warm up those vocal chords and see if you’ve got what it takes to become the next American music sensation.
American Idol is holding open auditions at Orlando’s Amway Arena for its ninth season on July 9. Audition registrations are on July 7 and 8.
More Idol Headlines after the JUMP…
Interview with Matt Rogers, host of Kennesaw reality show, Ace Young engaged, Syesha in ‘Dreamgirls’
Matt Rogers, who finished 11th back in season three of ‘American Idol,’ recently had lunch with Diana DeGarmo and her mom. He has been spending the past couple of weeks in a subdivision in Kennesaw hosting a new CBS reality show ‘There Goes The Neighborhood,’ starting August 9.
‘I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you I was doing cartwheels inside right now,’ Rogers said, of this opportunity on TV’s No. 1 network.
Eight families are trapped inside their homes for three weeks as they get eliminated one by one. One family gets $250,000. Yes, it’s another one of those ’social experiment’ type reality shows. Here’s my video interview with Matt, who had a lot of charm in front of the camera but wasn’t the best singer. Sort of like Michael Sarver this past year though I forgot to mention that comparison to Matt.
Former ‘American Idol’ contestant William Hung a hit with Woodchucks fans
Woodchucks fans got more than a baseball game’s worth of entertainment Sunday night when a former “American Idol” contestant stepped onto the field.
William Hung, best known for his rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” during the 2004 season of the wildly popular Fox TV show, sang, signed autographs and watched the Woodchucks take on the Waterloo Bucks.
Hung, 26, didn’t make it past the first round of the San Francisco “Idol” auditions in September 2003, but that didn’t keep the Athletic Park faithful from cheering him on whenever he stepped onto the field.
Joanna Pacitti Remembers Her ‘American Idol’ Experience
Joanna Pacitti checked in with fans on her blog at MySpace on Monday (June 29), talking about how it’s been a year since her prematurely completed ‘American Idol’ experience began. She writes:
Dancing With the Stars’ Len Goodman Tangos With Cancer
If Len Goodman appeared to be struggling to award 10s to Dancing With the Stars finalists Shawn Johnson, Gilles Marini and Melissa Rycroft, the fault may not have been entirely in the dancing. The center judge himself was in the midst of a much headier battle than the one for the disco ball trophy.
The 65-year-old ballroom dance expert has admitted he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March, but tells Britain’s Mail on Sunday the disease was caught early at an annual checkup and, after surgery, he feels “right as rain.”
Rather than have the cancerous tumor removed immediately upon discovery, Goodman chose to put on a brave’â€if occasionally snarky’â€face and continue his lead judge role on the hit ABC series.
DWTS’s Melissa Rycroft Engaged
Former Bachelor and Dancing With the Stars contestant Melissa Rycroft is finally headed down the aisle, proving she may be lucky in love after all.
Rycroft got engaged to Dallas insurance agent Tye Strickland on June 26 after they dated on and off for more than two years, PEOPLE has learned.
“He’s my best friend,” Rycroft, 26, gushed to PEOPLE last April about the 28-year-old agent.
The twosome rekindled their romance after Rycroft’s engagement to The Bachelor’s Jason Mesnick ended via a televised breakup on the After The Final Rose special on March 2.
Michael Jackson-themed BET Awards draws record audience
Sunday’s BET Awards, hastily transformed from a regularly scheduled presentation to a tribute to Michael Jackson three days after his unexpected death, may turn out to be the highest-rated broadcast in the 27-year history of the black oriented cable network. Yet, the show also provoked scathing reaction from bloggers and viewers who found some elements of the show, along with host Jamie Foxx’s constant self-promotion of his album and upcoming tour, distasteful and offensive.
The live broadcast, which was hosted by Foxx, drew about 10.2 million viewers, a 61% increase over its audience last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. An estimated 10% of televisions that were on at that time were tuned in to the ceremony, which Nielsen said was an unusually high number for a cable network.
Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ as pop-cultural touchstone
‘The Sopranos’ used the 1981 Journey hit as its swan song, but the tune itself lives on in movies, TV and theater as the go-to show closer.
There’s an old pop aphorism that goes: “Don’t bore us — get to the chorus.” By that yardstick, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” should be one of the most boring and unsuccessful rock recordings of all time.
Structurally, it’s a mess: Surely one would get tossed out of songwriting school for a tune that follows its opening piano riff with a verse, a guitar arpeggio, a second verse, a bridge, a guitar solo, a third verse, a repeat of the bridge, another guitar solo . . . and then, 3 minutes, 20 seconds in, when the song is ready to fade out, one of the most unforgettable choruses in rock.
Is it any wonder “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” stalled at a just-OK No. 9 when it was released in 1981?
Michael Jackson Album Sales Estimated In Multiple Six Figures
Michael Jackson is about to rock the Billboard charts.
Nielsen SoundScan’s sales numbers won’t be released until Wednesday (July 1) morning, but industry prognosticators indicate that three of Jackson’s albums — “Number Ones,” “The Essential Michael Jackson” and “Thriller” — each sold 100,000 copies last week. The sales tracking week ended at the close of business on Sunday (June 28) night.
To compare, Jackson’s entire catalog of solo albums sold 10,000 in the week that ended June 21.
The aforementioned titles will also be the top three albums on Billboard’s Top Pop Catalog chart, and Jackson may lock up anywhere between six to nine slots in tally’s the top 10.
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63 Responses to “Idol Headlines for 06/30/09”
Adam just twitted that he changed his twitter account from therealglambert to adamlambert. If you were a follower for therealglambert, you don’t have to do anything, now you are following adamlambert instead. For new followers, seach adamlambert and you’ll get the real Adam.
Here link to RS article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/06/30/adam-lambert-on-getting-jackson-news-everybody-just-stopped/
Okay, I’m sure I’m the only one who cares about the discussion of the structure of Don’t Stop Believin’ in the LA Times article mj linked to in the headlines, but I’m gonna post about it anyway….
The song’s structure isn’t nearly as bizarre as the writer makes it out to be. It’s a bit unusual, but it’s not “a mess” or “nutty” as the writer called it. It’s essentially a pretty standard verse-verse-chorus, solo-verse-chorus sequence, with a different chorus (the famous one) added at the end. The writer calls the initial chorus a “bridge”, but it’s really just a different chorus — and thus it’s not that weird a structure.
Journey also did something similar in Girl Can’t Help It, adding essentially a different chorus toward the end of the song (and that chorus is the most beautiful passage of Journey music I know of, btw).
If you want a Journey song that really is pretty weird, check out the title song from the Escape album — it’s pretty much two complete songs in one. (It’s also one of their two or three best hard-driving songs, along with Keep On Runnin’ and maybe Stone In Love.)
Really nice Newsweek article:
Kris talking about Michael Jackson
http://www.popcrunch.com/kid-rock-dating-kellie-pickler-sheryl-crow/
Kellie Pickler dating Kid Rock?
I can’t find the Monday numbers thread, so I checked HDD to find its final prediction. Consistent with the article above, MJ’s album sales predictions:
CHART DATE: 06/29/2009
LAST UPDATE: 06/30/2009 12:49:17
NOW IN: FINAL
– 1 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 106,956 — THRILLER
– 2 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 105,648 – ESSENTIAL
– 3 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 104,163 – NUMBER ONES
– 14 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 34,225 – OFF THE WALL
– 25 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 18,929 – BAD
– 26 JACKSON 5 MOTOWN 17,677 – ULTIMATE COLLECTION
– 32 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 14,351 – DANGEROUS
– 35 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 13,951 – ULTIMATE COLLECTION
– 39 MICHAEL JACKSON EPIC 12,150 – HISTORY:GREATEST HITS,VOL. 1
^^^weareallinnocent, I saw that that thread was slowly getting to the bottom of the sidebar, so I’m glad you posted this here. Wow, just wow! I’ll be interested to see the real numbers as well. Based on these numbers the albums sold =428,050. That’s if I added correctly. Almost half a million in the top 50 alone. Well over half of that in the top 3.
Sorry if this has been posted somewhere else already. The news (or rumor) is that Johnny Depp will be playing Michael Jackson in a biographical movie about him. You can read about it here in the Insider.
ETA: According to Extra, it is not true, straight from the horse’s mouth…
Johnny revealed, “That is such an obtuse rumor that I never had the pleasure of cultivating — it’s not my idea, you know.”
I think we should be ready for any and every kind of rumor. It’s just been crazy and probably won’t stop soon.
But a movie with Depp? I’d see it.
I think the reason why no one is jumping Fonzerelli’s back is because this release is not trying to usurp anything away from Adam or use him in any way(unlike with Hi-Fi). It’s not claiming to be his big summer release or his signature sound or any of that stuff that completely riled the fanbase.
And Adam got paid for this gig ages ago as a session singer or whatever, so he’s not being short-changed.
Latest news from CNN:
Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse, told CNN that Jackson suffered from severe insomnia and pleaded for the powerful sedative Diprivan, despite knowing its harmful effects.
Watch (listen to) the video interview.
On today’s CNN morning news, Lee said that he desperately wanted to get some sleep, 8 hours, so that he can be refreshed in the morning. MJ told her that he would pay any amount of money to have someone administer it to him. Lee implied that someone must have given in to his pleas and to the monetary gain for doing so.
Lee asked him, why Diprivan? Why not some sleeping pills? MJ told her that the pills don’t work for him. Lee refused to comply to his wishes. In fact, she was not even familiar with the drug. She had to ask a doctor friend of hers to find out what it was. Diprivan is an intravenous drip used for inducing sedation for going into surgery or for certain procedures such as intubation. It is not something that is generally given at a residence. It is generally given while in an ICU unit because constant and close cardiac and respiratory monitoring is required due to its narrow therapeutic window (i.e., a little too much can be fatal).
Dr. Conrad Murray, MJ’s in-house doctor, has insisted that he did not give Michael any Demerol or Morphine. But did he give him Diprivan?