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Usher was in tears after losing two awards at the American Music Awards to Justin Bieber, including favorite entertainer of the year, the top AMA honor.
But Usher wasn't upset about his loss — far from it. Instead, he was welling with pride over the success of his young protege, Justin Bieber, who was the night's biggest winner with four awards and the youngest performer ever to capture the entertainer award.
"To see Justin take the award — having received that award before — it was like an out of body experience, you understand?" Usher said backstage. "It was emotional. I don't cry that often, but I did. Hopefully it gives an indication of how hard we worked to build a career that hopefully will flourish and blossom over the years."
Bieber, who is signed to Usher's label, had a perfect debut at the American Music Awards, winning all four awards he was nominated for: entertainer of the year, breakthrough artist of the year, favorite pop/rock male and favorite pop/rock album for "My World 2.0."
Bieber's debut album is one of the year's top-sellers, with almost two million sold, and he's got a new CD, "My Worlds Acoustic," out this week at Walmart. His ascension marks a phenomenal rise since first garnering attention via homemade videos on YouTube about three years ago.
"This means the world to me," said Bieber after winning breakthrough artist. "I come from the smallest town in the world, of like 30,000 people; I never thought this was possible."
Bieber bested mentor Usher and Eminem for two of his wins. Eminem, whose "Recovery" was a critical and commercial triumph, was nominated for five awards on the evening, tying him with Lady Antebellum, who also had a breakthrough year with their near triple-platinum album "Need You Now."
Neither were the night's big winners, but they came away from the night with something: Eminem got two awards, while the country trio won favorite country band, duo or group.
"Thanks for inviting us to the party," said Lady A's Charles Kelley after the win.
Other winners included Black Eyed Peas and Taylor Swift. But Sunday's ceremony at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles was as much a showcase for acts with new albums as it was a celebration of the biggest achievers of 2010. While some of the night's winners will likely be nominees when next week's Grammys are announced, the American Music Awards aren't so much a predictor of the Grammys is it is a party for the industry's mainstream acts.
Rihanna, with her hair dyed a ruby red, gave the show a colorful and sexy start, performing a medley of songs from her just released album "Loud," including the No. 1 hit "What's My Name," wearing a bustier and what seemed like a scarf wrapped around her backside.
"This is amazing!" said an exuberant Rihanna, who danced onstage later to receive her award — favorite soul/R&B female.
The Black Eyed Peas, winners for favorite pop/rock band, gave a levitating performance, singing from boxes atop the stage during part of their performance of their new single, "The Time." Kid Rock gave a stirring, acoustic performance of "Times Like These," his song lifting up his hometown of Detroit during its recent economic struggles, from his new CD, "Born Free."
A pregnant Pink was among the evening's performance highlights. Unlike recent performances marked by a high-wire act, she stayed close to the ground to perform her latest song, "Raise Your Glass," with a tightly choreographed, high-energy dance number.
Swift, last year's artist of the year, took home favorite country female. Sporting sleek blonde hair instead of her usual cascading curls, Swift said simply: "I just want to thank the fans."
Swift later performed her new single "Back to December," a song she also performed on the CMA Awards earlier in the month, but mixed things up by incorporating some of OneRepublic's "Apologize."
Ke$ha, perhaps trying to make up for the absent Lady Gaga, had the night's most bizarre performance: She performed her heavily Auto-Tuned hit "Take It Off" looking like something out of space, with beams of light for eyes and sporting a motorcycle helmet. She then stripped down to a mirrored outfit, segueing into the next song with a pack of male dancers dressed like her, complete with blond wigs and fishnet stockings. (AP)
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To those who may play instruments but never really focused on learning music theory, your hesitation is warranted. The standard method of teaching theory includes all sorts of redundancies and complications that reduce it to a hard-to-apply series of terms and classifications. That being said, theory is still incredibly useful and rewarding if understood. So how do you go about learning it in a simpler and more utilitarian way?
The key is to focus on intervals, and you can find many free music lessons online that will lay them out for you. And understand that when I say focus on intervals, I mean learning their names as well as learning their sounds backwards and forwards. A true understanding of theory means not disconnecting it from sound at any point, but this is hard to do when introduced to scales and other large collections of intervals at once.
You cannot understand how a scale works in theory or in sound until you understand intervals in theory and sound. Scales, chords, and everything else are just collections of intervals; they are not really anything different, and if you know all of the intervals, you know all possible scales.
So to get a very solid knowledge of the intervals you will need to spend a lot of time with them one by one. The best way to do this is to play them on the instrument of your choice, and also sing them. Start with the root to minor second interval and play it in every possible way on your instrument, and then sing it in every different key.
After you’ve got it down a little bit, test yourself by playing a root and singing the minor second. Do whatever exercises you can think of, and after you have the interval mastered, move on to the next one. Just make sure that you practice the root up to the interval sound, and the root down to the interval sound.
When you feel like you have a handle on the single intervals, start combining them into triads and other three note collections and repeat the process. Gradually move up to full scales and you will find that your knowledge of theory and of your particular instrument is on a level that you never could have imagined.
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Composing music on the guitar is something that every composer should become familiar with. In particular, the guitar offers a new perspective on how notes relate and work together compared to that of the piano; the instrument most composers work with. Although the piano is without a doubt the most powerful instrument for music composition, knowing how to compose music on the guitar is a valuable skill as well, and those interested in becoming as knowledgeable about music as possible should study guitar composition in addition to any other instruments.
The reason that most composers focus on the piano is clear; you can play ten or even more notes at once, you can play multiple parts at once with relative ease, and you have a very wide tonal range of multiple octaves. These facts make it easy to experiment with a full arrangement of sounds, where on other instruments you may only be able to play one melody line at a time.
Composers used the piano because it could give them a complete picture of their compositions in a way that no other instrument could. The guitar cannot get quite as much into the realms of playability, but it does offer a few advantages that piano composers are unable to access.
One of the most significant of these is the fact that you can move chord shapes around with great ease on the guitar. A major chord for example can be slid up and down the fretboard without needing to take white notes and black notes into account. On a piano, you can certainly move major chords around, but you have to adjust them for the white and black key differences.
This lack of effort required for moving chord shapes around on the guitar can allow you to use more of those types of chord motions in your compositions. They are a technique not used often by piano players because of the instrumental differences and the general music tradition, which doesn’t often move the same types of chords around a lot.
In addition to these chordal motion differences, the guitar allows you to use alternate techniques such as string bends, legato playing, sliding, and strumming; all of which the piano cannot duplicate. These techniques can help you shape compositions that will greatly differ from the usual piano pieces, and with most other composers using the piano, this can help set you apart.
The guitar simply offers you a different look at the arrangement of musical notes, and this can help you tap into new kinds of melody and harmony. In theory, the more instruments you are familiar with, the more varied your compositions can be, and the more adept you will be at writing for other instruments, so it is a good idea to start learning them. With this in mind, the guitar, and its ability to play both chords and melody, is probably the first place to start.
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Teaching group music lessons is a much different activity than normal private lessons. While the end goal is the same, groups require more planning and compromise, and will take some thought and adaptation to get through. Any music teacher who is taking on group lessons for the first time may find them more of a challenge in certain ways, but with the right planning and attitude, they can be successfully managed and quite rewarding in the end.
Most of the issues with teaching a lesson to multiple people arise from the fact that there are different skill levels to deal with. Whether you found the students by getting your name on a music teacher listing, or you work at a music store, your groups will have people of different talents and abilities, and this can be tough to navigate.
What may be easy for someone in the group may be impossible for another, and on top of this, what interests someone in the group may be boring to another. So how do you reconcile these differences? Well, to start out, it’s important to realize that you can’t do it completely.
What you can do is build the right amount of compromise and flexibility into your lesson plans so that everyone gets something out of their time. For example, if you want your students to play a short chord progression in unison, allow the ones incapable of playing chords to just play the bass note. It’s important to just get everyone playing something musical, so they get a taste for it and are motivated to practice.
If you can, it helps to get the students playing music that they like, but this may not always be possible in a class. One strategy that might work is to play a different style each lesson, and you can also try to choose generic pieces that should appeal to just about anyone in the class, no matter their age or tastes.
Something else that can make the lessons fun and interesting is to have a contest between the students to see who can memorize a melody or the notes of the guitar strings. Have a simple reward and get a good natured competition going that will drive the student to practice more and get them enjoying themselves during the lesson.
It may be hard at first to get a group of different students learning the same material, but once you get used to it and find out what works, it can be very fun to teach many new students who may become great musicians some day.
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This Legacy Edition of Couldn't Stand The Weather commemorates the 20th anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan's premature death.
It's an expanded version of the 1984 album, the second of four the great Texan axeman and his backing rhythm section Double Trouble made that decade, which did so much to revitalize rhythm and blues together with the work of Robert Cray and Jeff Healey.
Their first album, Texas Flood, released the previous year, was the biggest-selling blues album for 20 years, and this one did even better. Couldn't Stand The Weather reached out further to mainstream rock audiences who admired what Vaughan could do with his Fender Stratocaster, and while his vocal range may have been relatively limited, he certainly knew how to put a song's lyrics across.
As always, there is excellent support from Tommy Shannon on bass and Chris Layton on drums, who provide a solid springboard from which to launch Vaughan's guitar fireworks. And although his technical ability to produce a wide variety of effects was phenomenal it always served the music.
This Legacy Edition contains two CDs (with extensive liner notes): the first disc features the original album's eight tracks plus 11 outtakes from the recording sessions of that time; the second showcases a concert the band gave in Montreal just three months after the album's release.
However, the album itself was first remastered in 1999, with four of these outtakes added then, while four of the other outtakes had already been included on the posthumous 1991 compilation album The Sky Is Crying, so only three outtakes here are previously unreleased. And though the recording of the concert is a new release, it does overlap heavily in terms of material with other live albums already available. Nonetheless, if hardcore Vaughan fans won't get too much extra value from this repackaging, this is still a terrific introduction for newcomers.
It's true that Couldn't Stand The Weather does not really break any new ground after the debut album, with only four songs by Vaughan (including two instrumentals), plus four covers. But even if the songwriting does not progress, with the band on top of their game it goes down a storm.
The title track (recorded in front of a live audience) is one of Vaughan's best compositions, with a funkier sound than usual. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) is an impressive account of the rock classic by Jimi Hendrix (one of Vaughan's big heroes and influences), as he stakes his claim to be considered one of the great man's successors.
Tin Pan Alley (aka Roughest Place In Town), the longest track at over nine minutes, is a slow, smouldering blues number, which proves to any doubters that Vaughan's could play guitar with considerable delicacy and depth of feeling as well as blistering power and virtuosic technique. And the jazz instrumental Stang's Swang adds welcome variety.
The additional tracks include previously unreleased versions of the wonderfully soulful cover of the Elmore James ballad The Sky Is Crying, the James-influenced Boot Hill and an alternate take on Stang's Swang minus tenor sax. There's also Vaughan playing slide guitar for a change on Give Me Back My Wig, a breathless account of the pioneering blues-rock guitarist Lonnie Mack's instrumental Wham! and the Grammy Award-winning instrumental cover of Hendrix's Little Wing.
On disc two all except the opening track of Couldn't Stand The Weather are put through their paces in a live arena showing Vaughan could well and truly deliver the goods at the sharp end without any studio trickery. It also features five tracks from Texas Flood, including storming opener rock instrumental Testify, the beautifully gentle, free-form Lenny and probably Vaughan's best-known song Pride And Joy bringing the gig to a rousing climax.
It's bitterly ironic that, having kicked his potentially lethal drink and drug habits, Vaughan should be killed in a helicopter accident aged only 35, but his outstanding musical legacy lives on. (Neil Dowden)
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Once you know the music you want to release, you will need to set up a deal with the artists. One of the best thing about indie labels is that you can essentially have any kind of deal you want. In fact, it makes life a lot easier when you create a deal that works for you and the artist on a case by case basis. Having said that, it is a good idea to know your limitations and to have some basic principles in mind. Here are some things you'll need to think about:
- Do you want musicians to deliver a master, or will you go in on recording costs?
- Will you be paying advances, and if so, how much? (If you have a very small budget, your best bet is to try and convince your potential signings to keep any advance small so there is money left to promote their release.)
- How will any earnings from releases be divided up? Will your artists get a percentage, or will you split things 50/50? Will the label recoup manufacturing costs and promotional costs before paying?
- Will the artists get to approve promotional expenditures over a certain amount? If so, how much?
- How many promos/free copies will the artist get? Over that limit, how much will they pay for additional copies?
- What is the length of the deal?
- Is the deal for just one album or several?
- Will the musicians be entitled to audit your books? How often, and what kind of notice do they need to give?
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Two aspects that have developed recently have created a dramatic shift in the way music is distributed: the first is the falling costs of music production equipment and software, allowing many more individuals to become involved with making music, and the second is the increasing ability and range of the internet.
These simultaneous changes have virtually destroyed the old plan where you had to be on a major record label to have your music distributed or even recorded. Now many people are producing their own professional music independently, and this article will talk about how those same people should be able to distribute it on their own as well.
Thanks to the demand caused by the rising number of independent music artists and their desire to sell music online, several websites have risen to support this market, but before you consider any of them, there is one thing you need to think about first.
Any music you sell online independently must be copyrighted to ensure that you have legal ownership of it. You can copyright your music online with the federal US government by filling out a form and sending them a sample of your music. It will cost a small fee, but you will then have full legal control of your music and this will help you if someone tries to use it or sell it without your permission.
Now that your music is ready to be sold online without worry of legal issues, you can start looking at the different sites to see which one would fit you best. For most cases, the best first place to look will be CD Baby.
This site allows users to sell hardcopy albums or digital downloads of their music, and can even get your music listed on itunes. It will cost some money to get this all set up, but it is a reasonable fee and with some good online music promotion, you should have no trouble making a profit. Many well known artists sell their music on CD Baby so it has a very well established reputation.
Another option besides selling you music on some other site is to sell it from your own website. This will benefit you in that you will keep all of the profits and not have to pay a setup fee, but it will require much more work out of you to get an online store operating on your site. If the store breaks down for some reason it will also be you that has to spend time fixing it.
Another disadvantage to this is that your site will not get the added traffic that CD Baby receives through search engines and other artists. This means that you will have to be even more adept at online music marketing and promotion. However, for certain individuals, it makes sense to use your own site if you know how to set up an online store and you want the satisfaction of doing it all on your own.
These are just a few of the ways you can sell your music online. Make sure that before you commit to anything you research everything in depth and find out what works best for you. With some great music, and a little bit of promotion and marketing, every musician should be able to make a profit with their work online.
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It would be wise for any musician to take full advantage of the promotional and marketing power that the internet can have, and in order to do this, you need a website. True, you can have MySpace accounts and pages on other similar sites, but there is something more legitimate and professional about having your own site. This article will show how any musician can design their own website to feature, promote, and even sell their music.
The first thing that you need for a music website is a domain name, provided that you already have some hosting to put it on. It would be a good idea to try and get a domain name that is, or is close to your own name, or whatever name you or your musical group go by. This will help with search engine rankings later on.
Once you have a domain to locate the site, you will need some sort of content management system. The days of putting together websites one page at a time are over, now there are free software programs like Wordpress that will allow you to create professional looking websites that can be updated easily even by people who are not familiar with website design.
A Wordpress setup will let you choose the name of your site, and again, it should be the name of your musical group or your name as a musician. You want people to be able to search for your name on an engine and find you as one of the first results, and this will help with that.
There should be plenty of themes you can choose from for the look of your site, and with some modification, you can have one that is basically unique. You should try to modify it a little bit because that will make it look more professional.
The most important thing on a music website will be to have samples of your music in an easy to access part of the site. You want people to be able to listen to your music right away, as that is what they are there for. As a secondary feature, you can add in all the text and pictures you want to complete the information available about you.
These days, having your own website is easier than ever, and there is no reason not to have one if you are a musician. They are the best way to promote yourself and they allow you access to the world music market. The internet should continue to connect musicians to their fans around the world and keep growing with time. Make sure that you are a part of it.
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Something that has been for the most part lost in today’s music listeners is a will to explore different styles of music. Many people will end up committing to one particular type of music and stick with it through thick and thin. The strange part about this is that there is more opportunity than ever to hear different music genres, but for some reason people have a bias towards what they know and are familiar with. Though it is nice to have a main style to pay attention to, you are missing out on a lot of great music by ignoring others.
One of the most common rebuttals for not listening to a wider variety of music is that people don’t like other styles as a whole, or so they claim. This is probably because they hear a few songs that may not be the best a certain style has to offer and then make a judgment about the whole lot based on it.
In any style of music there will be only a few good artists at the top of the heap, and those are the only ones you should bother with, so to discount a style without taking the time to hear the very best is irresponsible if you want to consider yourself a music lover.
Instead of exploring other styles, many people just end up listening to countless bands in one narrow genre that become simple copies of each other and can offer nothing more than mediocre reminders of what the best of them used to be able to do. There is no reason to start scraping the bottom of the barrel when there is a whole world of music out there waiting to be heard, and plenty of artists in it that are at the top of their game.
People should be more critical and hard to please when it comes to music, because the fact is that there is so much of it out there that you can and should afford to become picky. Your time in this world is valuable, you might as well spend it listening to the best there is.
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Something very beneficial to all composers and makers of music has been going on as of late. The combination of the internet and decreasing costs of producing various forms of digital media has given rise to whole new areas of demand for music. This is obviously a good thing for the people who make it, but it does not necessarily mean that they will be able to find work and make a living by their art all of the sudden.
New art forms like web videos, visual music, video comics, flash animations, and so on all need music to complete their effects. Composers and producers should be able to step in and fill this void, but there are a few things working against them along with all of these benefits.
One major point is that as it has become more practical to make high quality music on your own, the number of musicians out there has also risen. This means that composers who want to get their music in films or videos face more competition.
It is also a challenge for those composers to become known to the people who need the music. With so many people producing so many types of media, making the right connections can be daunting.
Sites such as thing one can help with these facts, and over time, it should become easier to deal with these problems. In the general sense, it cannot be seen as a bad thing that there is so much more demand for music out there, and more ways of fulfilling that demand should appear.
As things progress, video content and other forms of media that make their way online with continue to require music, this means that composers may find themselves more and more in need if they can master some basic marketing techniques and make their name stand out enough to be seen.
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For most people starting record labels, the idea to get a label going in the first place came from hearing some great music that no one else was putting out. If that's the case for you, fantastic - move on to the next step. If you just have the idea for the label and need some music to get going, now is the time. You will need to have a release - or even a few releases - lined up to move on to the next steps, like finding distribution and PR.
Finding music to release can be harder than it sounds - it's a bit like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. One of the easiest thing you can do is to start locally. Go check out some local musicians and see if you can find a few artists you'd like to work with. You can also listen to some music on MySpace, Bandcamp, ReverbNation and other sites that featured unsigned acts.
An indie label is a labor of love, so it is really important to hold out for some music you *really* believe in. When you've decided to start a label, you can feel like it's pretty urgent to go NOW. In the long run, waiting until you have a record you love and can't wait to bring to the world is worth it.
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iTunes' top 10 selling singles and albums of the week ending Nov. 1, 2010:
Singles:
1. "We R Who We R," Ke$ha
2. "Like a G6," The Cataracs, Far East Movement, Dev
3. "Whip My Hair," Willow
4. "Only Girl (In the World)," Rihanna
5. "Just a Dream," Nelly
6. "Sparks Fly," Taylor Swift
7. "Bottoms Up (feat. Nicki Minaj)," Trey Songz
8. "Just the Way You Are," Bruno Mars
9. "Raise Your Glass," P!nk
10. "Monster," Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Bon Iver
Albums:
1. "Speak Now," Taylor Swift
2. "Come Around Sundown," Kings of Leon
3. "Glee: The Music — The Rocky Horror Glee Show," Glee Cast
4. "Man On the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager," Kid Cudi
5. "The Incredible Machine," Sugarland
6. "Sigh No More," Mumford & Sons
7. "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," Kanye West
8. "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," various artists
9. "I Am Not a Human Being," Lil Wayne
10. "Recovery," Eminem
(AP)
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Lil Wayne has thanked P. Diddy for visiting him in jail in a letter written in his prison cell.
The rapper, who is set to be released on Thursday (November 4) after serving a sentence for gun crime, wrote a letter to Billboard.com from Rikers Island, where he is currently being held.
In it Wayne answered questions about his time inside and thanked P. Diddy for being among those who have visited him while he has been incarcerated.
"All artists and friends were very supportive. Thank God I've gotten two visits a week since the day I walked in," he wrote. "I'd have to say the visit from Diddy was most surprising because there's a lot that you're required to go through and to think he did just to see me is more than cool. But again, everybody has been more than supportive. I never felt alone."
Wayne also said that following his release he will be "giving my musical attention to 'The Carter IV' and promoting 'I Am Not A Human Being'," though he added that he may not stop there.
"I may drop a mixtape! " he explained. "You know me!" (NME)
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Katy Perry and Gemma Arterton were among those honoured at the Cosmopolitan Ultimate Women Of The Year Awards 2010 last night (02.11.10).
The 'Firework' singer was named Ultimate International Music Star, while Gemma was given the Ultimate Film Actress accolade at the ceremony at London's Banqueting House in Whitehall.
Though the ceremony recognises the achievements of women, two men were also honoured.
'Glee' star Mark Salling was named Ultimate Hottie, while rapper Dizzee Rascal received the coveted Ultimate Man of the Year honour.
Speaking at the event, Dizzee said: "There's a lot of hotties here, Kelly Brook told me she was single, there's a lot going on!"
The 'Dance Wiv Me' rapper has earlier posed on the red carpet with 'Piranha 3D' actress, who also praised Dizzee for his dapper appearance.
She said: 'He does look good. He's very handsome too and very sweet and charming."
Plus-sized model Crystal Renn was named Ultimate Catwalk Queen, while 'Mad Men' actress Christina Hendricks was named Ultimate US TV Actress.
Taking home the Ultimate UK TV Actress gong was 'Doctor Who' star Karen Gillan, while 'Bad Boys' singer Alexandra Burke won Ultimate UK Music Star.
Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts took home the Ultimate Fashionista title, and was joined at the star-studded ceremony by her bandmate Kimberley Walsh, who was one of the judges who selected the non=celebrity winners.
She was joined on the panel by Cosmopolitan's agony aunt, Irma Kurtz, businesswoman and TV star Karren Brady, radio presenter Reggie Yates and former Spice Girls singer Mel B.
Cosmopolitan's Editor Louise Court ' who headed the group of judges - said: ' have been honoured to once again celebrate the achievements of such deserving people. The women that have been recognised tonight are truly inspirational and all embody the 'fun and fearless' spirit of the magazine.'
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100 Miles From Memphis is a sea change for Sheryl Crow. In place of her usual acoustic pop tunes, Crow has returned to the kind of music she loved as a kid growing up in the shadow of one of America's hottest soul hotbeds. The result finds her sounding more at home and effortlessly exuberant than she has since Tuesday Night Music Club.
Amid the white noise of the soul revival (see Amy Winehouse and Duffy) Crow sounds refreshingly genuine. Her road-worn voice seems made for these tunes and, alongside co-producer Doyle Bramhall II, she's created a completely convincing window into the joyful golden age of soul. But it's not just nostalgia or an attempt to recapture bygone sounds; Crow lends the album the feel of the prodigal returning home to open the fire hydrants and dance in the street.
Crow still treads the same lyrical ground she always has: sunshine, searching for connection, questioning the American political climate. She's just changed the method of delivery. Sure, there's a bit of the usual Sheryl Crow politics (as on the sombre Say What You Want) threatening to rain on the parade, but the fun wins out.
Our Love Is Fading opens the album with a dose of soul-blues, and establishes Crow as a capable bandleader, perhaps under the whirling lights at a roller rink. "Some day when you're older, and you search the world over, you might wish you could hold someone," she sings amid building B3 organ and escalating horns.
Keith Richards contributes guitar work to the reggae-styled Eye To Eye. Citizen Cope sings along on Sideways. Justin Timberlake does a bit of background vocals on Terence Trent D'Arby's mid-tempo brooding jam, Sign Your Name. Here, Crow sings "Sign your name across my heart. I want you to be my baby" while forcing Timberlake to fade into the background, and managing to upstage his neo-soul tenor at every turn.
Lead single Summer Day channels the same let-the-sun-shine vibe as 2008's Soak Up The Sun, but the old soul sound fuses with the message to give it a nearly transcendental wonderfulness. "A summer day that I recall, you came into my life and you let me fall in love," she sings amid horns, strings, and backup singers.
But the most thrilling track on the album is the bonus track, a spot-on cover of The Jackson 5's I Want You Back. It's here, in her faithful recreation of a young Michael Jackson's controlled, soulful wail that Crow reveals herself at her truest; she's obviously a student of soul who's been living in seclusion for too long.
Where will 100 Miles From Memphis land with listeners? There's a good chance that will alienate some of Sheryl Crow's fan base, so far removed is it from her previous body of work. There's also a chance that devotees of the soul revival will dismiss Crow as a poseur. But one listen to the album reveals that, at least in her mind, she's the genuine article, and that she's feeling the need to let herself loose. (Andrew Burgess)
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Usher was in tears after losing two awards at the American Music Awards to Justin Bieber, including favorite entertainer of the year, the top AMA honor.
