Popmaterialist / A blog about pop (music)

…rocked the whole place on Friday. No place was left unrocked.
I know, I checked.
(video after the jump)

“I don’t know about it. But I’m not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong.”
– Noel Gallagher
“It’s ridiculous, if we don’t embrace what is new then how do we progress? I’ve never actually experienced anything like that before. It’s 2008, what is that about?”
– Jay-Z
Indeed. What was it about Noel Gallagher and others not wanting [...]

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it.
Brilliant.
[via Big Contrarian]

The life of a songwriter who has technically mastered her craft can be a thankless existence. In any other line of work proficiency and consistent excellence are admired. But, ironically, if you are a creative artist those very same qualities can work against you and brand you as predictable. In pop music mere excellence without [...]

What happens when you buy an album and it turns out to be a completely different from the album you thought you were buying. And I don’t mean qualitatively different but different as in by a completely different artist. An artist of whom you’ve never heard of and, after a listen, don’t much care for.
Let [...]

After Metallica revealed their “Revolutionary Pricing Tiers” for their Mission: Metallica experience the parallels between Microsoft and Metallica got scary.
Why am I calling Metallica the Microsoft of music. Well, firstly, both Microsoft and Metallica have had a troubled relationship with the internet. Recently for Microsoft, the Yahoo debacle has drawn attention to the company’s online [...]

No Eurovision song will ever beat My Lovely Horse (which wasn’t actually a Eurovision song but, well, you know…). They should just say this is the ultimate Song for Europe and be done with it. Forever.

Note: I wrote this post for another blog (that is now dead) sometime ago. Since the Eurovision Song Contest is being held today I thought I’d repost it here.
In 2006 Lordi won the Eurovision Song Contest with Hard Rock Hallelujah. This year Finland brings heavy metal back with Teräsbetoni performing the song Missä miehet ratsastaa [...]

Over the last weekend I sat down to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film Sympathy for the Devil or One + One. It was filmed almost exactly 40 years ago and, in honour of its anniversary, I though it was about time I saw it.
I didn’t expect a masterpiece. The film has been denigrated ever since [...]

As a 33-year-old with a good-for-nothing minor in political science I should probably scuff at politics at the music video level. Having said that, I like this new alternate Coldplay video for Violet Hill. Talk about undermining political image building. The highpoint… well, I can’t pick.

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And if you want to talk about the issues [...]