July 31st, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: 2008, Paul Rodgers, Queen
Hi! Thanks for visiting Unreality Music! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed for regular updates.
Just when you thought they’d cashed in on the Queen name enough, Brian May and Roger Taylor (along with not-quite-Freddy frontman Paul Rodgers) are squeezing a few quid more out of fans desperate to hear a bit more Queen.
The new album - the first since their Made In Heaven album in 1995 - is to be called The Cosmos Rocks. Looking back to when we first talked about the possibility of a new album in November last year, we were obviously pretty excited.
Read more & comment »
July 31st, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: 2008, Katy Perry
If Katy Perry got criticism for Ur So Gay, she’s redressing the balance on I Kissed A Girl, America’s massive #1 hit single this summer. It’s held the Billboard top spot for around six weeks.
You’ve got to love America’s fascination for a song about a wee bisexual fling. Better still, the lyrics are juicy and overflowing with lustful intent. There’s nothing coy in Perry’s delivery, and you kind of imagine her overpowering the nearest girl for a quick snog.
Read more & comment »
July 28th, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: Linkblogging
Here’s a bunch of cool music-related blog posts I’ve come across recently.
Was John Lennon’s remark about The Beatle’s popularity more about the waning influence of Christianity in the face of pop culture? This article claims that Lennon was religious, but against the institution of the Church.
Imagine if millions of people had seen you naked before you were old enough to say “embarrassing.” That’s the story of Spencer Elden, whom you may know as the little baby floating towards a dollar bill on the cover of Nirvana’s 1991 album, Nevermind.
Fascinating find - secret recordings made by the engineer behind the Doctor Who theme tune.
View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia
July 27th, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: Missy Higgins, Recommended By You
This young woman is big news in Australia. Her name? Missy Higgins.
Unlike the other famous Missy, this one isn’t known for her dirty rapping style, or anything like that.
This Antipodean is gaining a reputation for herself as an amazing singer/songwriter, and has already released two albums, The Sound Of White back in 2004 and this year’s On A Clear Night. And she’s only a tender 24 years old.
She’s won stacks of ARIA awards (that’s the Australian recording industry, fact fans), and her music has been featured on loads of American dramas, like Smallville, Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill.
Read more & comment »
July 24th, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: 2008, Dr. Dre
The excitement of big name album releases this year continues, with Dr. Dre’s latest project, Detox being considered for release in “November or December”.
Dre hasn’t released a full solo album since 1999’s 2001 (confused?), but considering it took him 7 years between The Chronic and 2001, you can be fairly sure that the Doc has been putting his heart and soul into the production of this album.
Read more & comment »
July 23rd, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: 2008, Metallica
After being unintentionally outed by retailer Music Dispatch, Metallica have officially announced the track listing for Death Magnetic, due out in September.
But if an over-enthusiastic retailer is what it takes to get the low-down on the highly anticipated Death Magnetic, then shouldn’t we all just be grateful?
The song titles are suitably foreboding, and could easily hark back to the golden era of thrash that we’ve all been hoping for. Titles after the jump…
Read more & comment »
July 22nd, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: Alice Cooper, Classic Rock, The Best Of
Alice Cooper. What a legend. With his trademark theatrical make-up and a gallows or guillotine always on hand to dispatch his fiendish stage persona straight to hell, Alice has left an indelible impression on the history of rock.
To celebrate the release of Alice’s 25th studio album, we thought it was a good time to look back over some of the best songs of his career. This is our Top Ten - feel free to add your own favourite Alice Cooper songs in the comments section.
10) I’m Eighteen
I’m Eighteen is the coming of age song that launched the Alice Cooper band into the limelight. Featured on their major label debut, “Love It To Death”, it’s become a heavy metal classic through the years - and the teenage angst theme would feature in future Cooper tracks like School’s Out and Teenage Lament ‘74.
Read more & comment »
July 22nd, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: The Zutons
Oh dear. It seems that The Zutons had an ice cold reception from fans at their recent T4 On The Beach gig.
We’ve always had a soft spot for The Zutons here at Unreality Music, and were looking forward to the release of their third album. However, with the release of Always Right Behind You, we got that sinking feeling that the band had made some bad musical decisions.
Read more & comment »
July 22nd, 2008 by Gerard McGarry. Tags: Announcements
Dear Reader (yeah, you)
We’ve never hid the fact that Unreality TV has a forum, but if you’re a music fan, you’ll definitely enjoy our music board.
The cool thing about the music forum is that you can start your own topics - as opposed to reading what we have to say here on the blog - and you can share your opinions with other music fans.
You can talk about bands you like, and the types of music that you love. There are even ‘guess the lyric‘ games and much more.
If you’re a member of the forum, you can also receive our monthly newsletter which lets you know what’s going on around Unreality TV and what we’re chatting about.
Click here to join the forum now!
Read more & comment »
July 22nd, 2008 by Gerard McGarry.
We’ve been saying it for a while now - the Indie music scene is a joke and bogged down in all-too-similar bands flogging the same dull by-the-numbers music.
How fitting that The Independent newspaper should be laying the smackdown on Indie music:
John Niven was an indie fan in the 1980s, an A&R man in the Britpopping 1990s, and is now the author of Kill Your Friends, a sadistic satire of the record industry of which he was once an enthusiastic member. “I was in Gap a few weeks ago and there was some sort of generic indie music playing,” he says. “I was with a friend who’s a promoter and a bit younger than me. After about three or four tracks I asked him: ‘Whose LP is this?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s a compilation.’ Every track sounded identical. The guitars, the production; all these bands sound like they’re made in the same studio with the same producer. It’s such a ball-less, soulless, generic whitewashed indie sound. You could probably take a member from each band and throw them together in a new group and no one would be able to tell the difference. They’re completely interchangeable. Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan’s scrotum emptying. They’re abysmal.”
Another excellent quote about the new wave of Indie bands choking the charts…
When I glance around the bands that are supposedly ‘indie’ today, I don’t see any attitude. I don’t see any content in their records, any political interest in the band members. They’re a terrible generation, unfortunately, but they’re becoming famous overnight and selling a lot of records.
Plenty of scathing remarks about Scouting For Girls, and an impressive history of the Indie scene and its slow death (culminating in another scathing remark about Scouting For Girls), this article makes a lot of sense.
But there’s one question remaining - who will reclaim Indie for the people? Or should we just give up now and pre-order the new Britney album?
