WARNING: This video features a lady playing guitar

This here is the video for Rihanna's new single (in the US), 'Rockstar 101'.



Rumour has it that her label have already got Rihanna working hard on a 'poppier' follow-up to last year's Rated R, a record that showcased her harder edge (i.e. she wore black a lot and talked a bit about shooting people). In all honesty, this campaign has at least given Rihanna a bit of an edge when a lot of other pop stars have faded into the background like some fairly pleasant wallpaper. Either way, Slash looks hot in this video, right?

Bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat

There's much to hate about Jo Whiley - that voice, her fawning over every new band as if they were the second coming, creating Fearne Cotton - but perhaps her biggest sin is the legacy of The Live Lounge. For those unfamiliar with the concept, let Musick enlighten you; basically, every week a band or singer arrives at the Radio 1 studios ready to "revamp" and "re-contextualise" a current hit single. So, for example, Scouting For Girls will rock up, play their new single and then deliver an irony-free take on 'My Humps' by The Black Eyed Peas and the general public go, "wow, I didn't realise how good that song was until it was stripped back and delivered by an earnest Tory-boy with a weirdly sexist take on relationships".

This new-found love for the 'unexpected' cover version (they're usually so fucking obvious it hurts) has reached some kind of nadir with the following act. They call themselves The Baseballs, dress like twats and record stupifyingly terrible covers of recent chart hits (usually by women) that aren't even interesting on first listen and then get knuckle-nawingly shit should you have the misfortune to hear them again. For some inexplicable reason their cover of Rihanna's 'Umbrella' has reached over 8 million hits and nearly all the comments say ridiculous things such as "LOL OMG, this is, like, so much better than the original. Rihanna sukz and The Baseballs vintage take on a modern classic really brings out the soul in what is already a rather sweet song about being there for someone. Or summink".

This band are huge in Germany...

"Boom, boom, boom"

This is the new video for Rihanna's new single, the not very subtle 'Rude Boy'. It's a blatant rip off of an M.I.A video, but as rip offs go, it's really good (and it has much higher production values). The black and white bits look really great and the animal straddling is what's lacking from all pop music videos these days. We demand to see Susan Boyle straddling a snow leopard before the year is out, OK?

New Musick Monday

As the yuletide approaches, it's getting harder and harder to find any music to recommend, unless the new Westlife album floats your boat, in which case the virtual door is that way. So, this may well be the final New Musick Monday of 2009 *stunned silence*. So, let's, for one last time, do a little recap on last week, shall we? Brigadier Ambrose performed well given the fact the album is self-released and wasn't available in shops (that happens in the new year), whilst Rihanna's album somewhat under-performed by entering outside the top 10 (although the single made it to number 6, so what does that tell us? No, really, what does that tell us?). Lady GaGa was more successful, entering at number 7 and celebrating at least six songs in the top 75. Well done the GaGa.

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Lungs (Deluxe box set edition) by Florence & The Machine



Around this time, record labels decide it's best to make money by releasing albums by talent show contestants, old boybands or re-packaging an existing album to guilt trip genuine fans into buying the album again. This re-release of the brilliant Lungs (look out for it in Musick's rundown of the top 20 albums of 2009, coming, er, ahem, well, kind of soon-ish), adds three extra discs that encompass a live album, remixes, covers, demos and a DVD with all the videos and a live show. PLUS, you get expanded artwork and an essay by David Vann, who, as we all know, is a very talented author. Better than putting it in a slipcase and adding a couple of b-sides don't you think?

LAUGH AT ALL OF THIS

Untitled by R Kelly



First of all, please click here to be mortified. That's 'Pregnant', one of the many delicate ballads R Kelly has recorded for his new sex opus. This, let's not forget, is the man currently battling charges for having sex with a minor. Here are some of the choice lyrics that Kelly uses to make the pre-teens swoon (ALLEGEDLY!!):
"Girl you make me wanna get you pregnant...Knock you up, pregnant, Knock you up"
"Shes more than a mistress enough to handle my business / Now put that girl in my kitchen"
"Now I ain’t got nothing to do tonight, I gotta wait for my crew / I just wanna put some in you"
A-MA-ZING.

'Forest Green Oh Forest Green' by Holly Miranda



OK, so this came out a few weeks ago but it's so great we thought it best to try and get it a few more downloads. Produced by Dave Sitek and featuring members of TV On The Radio, this is the first single taken from Miranda's forthcoming album, The Magician's Private Library. It features some gorgeous vocals, some bells and indeed some brass. Here she is doing a gorgeous version of 'Ex-Factor' by Lauryn Hill:

New Musick Monday

We all knew last week would be a success, in fact, we made sure of it. Echo sold over 160,000 copies in its first week, to debut at number 1, but that's about half of what her last album sold in the same period. Now, we're not suggesting that the wheels are falling off Leona's career per se, but what she lacks that a lot of other pop stars have is a definite personality. Songs like 'Happy' don't help matters. Speaking of personalities, Will Young's best of crashed in at, er, no. 9, which is hardly the work of a TV talent show alumnus, but we're pretty sure that's all he can hope for now. The Arctic Monkeys single seems to be missing from the top 40, which must be some kind of blip, right?

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Fuzzo by Brigadier Ambrose



OK, confession time, this band are friends of the blog. Not just, "oh yeah, we met them at a party, they seem like nice guys" kind of friends, but proper "we went to school together" type friends. We feel the need to make this clear from the outset given the fact that we love this album so much it's going to seem like nepotism either way. You'll assume we're friends even if we weren't when we say that Fuzzo is one of the best debuts of 2009. Influenced by surrealist British comedy just as much as they are by bands like Blur, Belle & Sebastian and Pavement, they've crafted an album that keeps one eye on the everyday and the other turned skywards. It also features this lyric; "Silences don't really mean a great deal anymore/ One minute for footballers and two minutes for war / Three for terrorist atrocities / Four for the death of Morrissey". Kind of says it all really.

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Rated R by Rihanna



The Fame Monster by Lady GaGa



Two of pop's biggest characters return with albums on the same day, one trying to build a new image after some well-publicised personal problems and the other cementing her status as 2009's best megastar. Rated R is a darker, denser affair than Rihanna's previous efforts, featuring far more aggressive, almost sadomasochistic imagery. Guns are licked, fired and drawn on skin (she has a tattoo of one on her hip), whilst love is variously depicted as dead, deadly or, er, Spanish ('Te Amo'). WARNING: This album features will.i.am. Lady GaGa's The Fame Monster on the other hand should be subtitled "what this? Oh I knocked this up in my lunch break", such is the run of form she seems to be on. Eight brand new songs, four potential singles, Beyoncé drops by for a brief cameo and somewhere Madonna dies a little inside.

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Fall Be Kind EP by Animal Collective



This 5-track EP is a little bit darker, a little bit denser than their last album...oh, have we written that before today? Erm, it's their equivalent of Rihanna's Rated R album, only with longer songs and slightly more droning. Very good as ever, in other words.

...NEXT!

New Rihanna songs are like black-hued buses these days. You wait - well you don't actually have to wait that long the rate she releases material - for one and two come along at once. No sooner has lead single 'Russian Roulette' been premiered, then the second single, 'Wait Your Turn (The Wait Is Ova)' leaks.

Anyone still hankering for the Rihanna of old - all baggy jeans and the desire to hear a song played louder - should probably learn to deal with the new look Rihanna pretty quickly (that's a picture of the new album cover below). Gone is the softness and girl-next-door prettiness and in comes the razor-sharp haircut, jagged make-up and lots and lots of black. This track is another moody, mid-paced stomper, but has a certain edginess that 'Russian Roulette' lacks.



You get the feeling she could do a song entitled 'I love Salt & Vinegar crisps' and she'd still be asked if it was about Chris Brown. "Yes, you say it's about crisps, but why salt and vinegar? Isn't Chris Brown allergic to vinegar? Are you acting out some kind of revenge attack? It's all incredibly subtle". Possibly.

Eh? Eh? Eh?

It's normal that big American superstars are awarded about six months of pre-release buzz in order to get everyone's attention before dropping a ridiculously catchy, precision-tooled 'joint' all up in our collective grills. Weirdly, Rihanna has suddenly and unexpectedly announced that she'll release her new album this November (it's called Rated R, but isn't a cover of the entire Queens of the Stone Age album of the same name).

This might have been preferable, however, given that the comeback single is so, well, 'meh'. Her label have obviously decided that in the crowded Christmas market, what we really need is a Ne-yo-produced, mid-paced plodder all about shooting yourself in the head as part of some bizarre game of chance. Imagine doing THAT around the dinner table this year instead of pulling a cracker.



PLOT SPOILER: She shoots herself at the end.

Running up that hill

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Jay-Z's forthcoming new album, The Blueprint III, surely has no more secrets to reveal come release time? So far, we've had the one that mentioned Noel Gallagher, the one about Obama, that other one with Santigold on it and finally the one dissing Autotune. Well, none of these are the official first single, that comes in the shape of 'Run This Town', which features Rihanna on the chorus and Kanye West rapping sans Autotune.



It's alright. The beat has that marching-band motif that 'Jesus Walks' has, and hearing a guitar over the top is a nice surprise, but Jay-Z sounds a bit bored and Kanye West says the following; "she got an ass that will swallow up a g-string, and up top two bee stings". Rihanna is the real star of the show, delivering the chorus in that kind of dead-eyed way she's perfected.

There are more surprises on the album of course - MGMT also make an appearance!