Monthly Archives: February 2014

Find out what’s happening in the world of Rock & Roll, Alternative Rock, Hip Hop, EDM, and Top 40 music every Manic Monday on the SBS Facebook Page! Have you heard any music news?

TOP 40/POP NEWS: Daft Punk, and Lorde come up big at the Grammy Awards.

Two robots from France who call themselves Daft Punk led the 56th Annual Grammy Awards by becoming victorious in all five categories they received nominations for. Two were for, Record Of the Year for the single, “Get Lucky”, and Album Of the Year for their hit album, Random Access Memories. They were not the only artists in the spotlight. A 17 year old drew her fair share of attention. New Zealand’s Lorde became the youngest Song of the Year winner ever taking home the honor for her breakthrough hit “Royals.” She noted, she would not be winning the award without her producer Joel Little. Earlier in the evening Lorde had astonished the audience with a live performance of “Royals.” In another nod to the praise directed at Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Pharrell Williams, the singer for their song, “Get Lucky,” was honored as Non-Classical Producer Of the Year.

Our second piece of Top 40 Pop music news is about the new sensation of 2013, Lorde. Lorde has achieved so much at her age. Case and point: The New Zealand native reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 last year and she just took home two Grammys for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance for her smash hit “Royals.”

But the singing sensation’s success got a bunch of conspiracy theorists wondering if the pop phenom is in fact a teenager. A 17-year-old to be exact.

Website The Hairpin wanted to put an end to the rumors that Lorde is an age imposter once and for all, so they ordered a copy of her birth certificate for NZ$17.02.

According to the document, Lorde’s birth name is “Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor”, and her date of birth is Nov. 7, 1996. So there you have it! Lorde is a teenager.

“At last, Lorde age truthers, the rumors can be put to rest: Lorde is not old, she is just more talented and successful than you were at 16 or perhaps than you ever will be, really. (She’s also quite funny about it.),” the website adds.

But Lorde understands that she’s more mature than her age, and looks and acts much older than her age.

“Hi, I’m Ella and I’m actually 45,” she deadpanned to Vanity Fair during a recent interview. 

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/entertainment-eonline/20140129/b505177/

ROCK “N” ROLL NEWS: Brian Wilson is back! At least on Facebook, answering fans questions.

Brian Wilson, of the famous Beach Boys from the 60’s and onward sat for a half hour on Monday, January 27, 2014, and answered over 50 questions from fans around the world.

Due to the overwhelming response to the Q&A, only a portion of the questions could be answered, but Brian did talk about his new album and career.

The event was a big success – Brian had a lot of fun and is looking forward to doing it again.

Wilson has a brand new album coming out this year so look for it when it comes out.

ALTERNATIVE NEWS: It’s a “Vampire Weekend” for the win!

Vampire Weekend, the New York quartet alternative band won alternative music album for its LP “Modern Vampires of the City” at the 56th Grammy Awards at this years Grammy’s.

This is the band’s first ever Grammy win, and the band, fronted by singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig, first rose to prominence on indie-rock blogs in 2008 with its self-titled debut album for XL Records.

“Modern Vampires of the City” was a critical and commercial success, and was the band’s second album to debut atop the Billboard 200.

Vampire Weekend beat fellow nominees including the alt-country singer Neko Case, brooding rockers the National, electro-rockers Nine Inch Nails and Australia’s Tame Impala for the honor.

The Grammy winners are determined by about 13,000 voting members. The eligibility period for nominated recordings was Oct. 1, 2012, to Sept. 30, 2013. The 56th awards were held at Staples Center and telecast on CBS.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/music/la-et-ms-grammys-2014-alternative-music-album,0,119489.story#ixzz2rniZY65n

EDM NEWS: For Avicii, a dream come true.

Most people don’t know this, but the one of the most successful EDM acts in 2013 is not actually named Avicii, but Tim Bergling.

Bergling is a 24-year-old Swedish DJ producer, and as his tracks for his first album ever which came out in 2013 became polished, Bergling began calling himself “Avicii,” which is a creative modified spelling of the lowest level of Buddhist hell. (Today, he finds it off-putting when people call him that rather than “Tim.”) His current manager heard a few tracks of his online in 2008, and immediately contacted him. Soon, Bergling was flying around the world for gigs. Bergling soon found success after a career-making performance at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival in 2011 and a string of big singles – including the global smash “Levels,” which was built around an Etta James sample. He soon discovered he was able to pull down $200,000 or more in a single night.

There’s nothing understated about an Avicii show. When Bergling takes over L.A.’s Hollywood Bowl on a Saturday night, he brings smoke machines, dizzying roller-coaster footage on giant video screens and five straight minutes of fireworks to punch up his supersize EDM beats. He drives his usually strong crowds bonkers with his Top 10 EDM-country hit “Wake Me Up,” and quickly thanks his fans and slips offstage.

Bergling tried to learn guitar and piano but showed no particular aptitude for either instrument. As a teenager, he assumed he would end up doing something creative, but he had no idea what – art? Web design? Then, at 16, he downloaded the home-recording software Fruity Loops and taught himself how to make house music. “For eight months of the year, it’s very cold and dark,” Bergling says of his hometown. “There’s not that much to do – during the winter, it’s very easy to go into a studio and focus on that.”

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/aviciis-next-level-backstage-with-the-swedish-rave-king-20140109#ixzz2rnegn0yz

HIP HOP NEWS: Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are Hip Hop.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis say to those who suggest that the Seattle duo don’t belong in any of the 2014 Grammy hip-hop categories, they have a rebuttal.

“Of course we deserve to be in that category, no question,” Ryan Lewis said to MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway and MTV2 “Girl Code” star Nicole Byer while he and rap partner Macklemore were on the Grammy red carpet.

Earlier this week, an unnamed source told the AP that “most” members of the rap committee of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences looked to keep the duo out of the award ceremony’s rap categories, arguing that their pop success was a strike against their hip-hop cred.

Despite all that talk, Macklemore and Ryan beat out Jay Z, Drake, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar for the hotly contested Best Rap Album award. “It is a beautiful time in hip-hop music where people are pushing the comfort zone of the listener, of the art. If you look at the list of the people that were nominated for Best Rap Album, everybody in their own way pushed people out of their comfort zone,” Macklemore said.

“With that being said, I think that we gratefully, humbly are one of those five people,” he continued. “We should be there. I came up on hip-hop music, this is the foundation, it’s beats and rhymes, that’s what it is first and foremost.”

The group scored a number of platinum plaques and two #1 singles with their 2012 album The Heist and its standout singles “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us.” The album’s fourth single, “Same Love,” took gay rights issues head on and earned the group a Song of the Year nomination at the 2014 awards.

Macklemore says, “it is hip-hop music. I’m just trying to push the art, I’m trying to push the genre and make music that documents my experience on this earth.”

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1721164/macklemore-lewis-hip-hop-haters-grammys-2014.jhtml

New Music Release:

Our last item for this week’s Manic Monday Music News…Noted February Birthdays this week in Music!!

February 1: Lisa Marie Presley (US singer, daughter of Elvis Presley, former wife of Michael Jackson), Rick James (US singer), Big Boi/Antwan André Patton (US rap artist;Outkast), Don Everly (guitar/vocals, Everly Brothers)
February 2: Shakira (Colombian singer, songwriter), Robert DeLeo (bass; Stone Temple Pilots), Graham Nash (guitar/vocals, The Hollies, Crosby Stills Nash & Young)
February 3: Dave Davies (UK vocals, keyboards, harmonica, guitarist; The Kinks)
February 4: Gavin DeGraw (singer, piano, guitar), Natalie Imbruglia (Australian actress, singer), Clint Black (country singer, harmonica, guitar), Alice Cooper (rock singer).
February 5: Bobby Brown (singer; New Edition/solo), Duff McKagan (bass; Guns N’ Roses/Velvet Revolver)
February 6: Axl Rose (vocals; Guns N’ Roses), Natalie Cole (singer), Bob Marley (Jamaican singer/songwriter/guitarist; Wailers/ solo)
February 7: Garth Brooks (country singer)
February 8: John Williams (composer for Star Wars, conductor)

Every Monday look forward to the “Manic Monday Music News”, run by yours truly, Scott Rossi! Music is the Universal language which brings the world together, something we can all agree on, so I will always try to find some cool weekly news for you to hear about, here on the Sounds by Shelly page.  Enjoy!

Let us know what you thought of our new 4th edition in the comments section below. Or, let us know if you’ve heard any music news we missed! Thanks! Scott Rossi, DeeJay Shelly!!!

Find out what’s happening in the world of Rock & Roll, Alternative Rock, Hip Hop, EDM, and Top 40 music every Manic Monday on the SBS Facebook Page!  Have you heard any music news?