Brandon's Buzz

Soul II Soul (featuring Caron Wheeler) —
“Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)” (from Keep On Movin’) —

I had to drive eight hours round trip for work yesterday, so suffice to say, there was lots of iPod shuffling goin’ on, and this classic from 1989 was one of the chestnuts that popped up. I hadn’t heard this in eons (and I reckon you haven’t either), but damn if I wasn’t jamming along within seconds anyhow: one of the first bona-fide club smashes to cross over to the pop charts, no less a connoisseur than George Michael loved this song so much he remixed his own hit “Freedom ’90” to sample it. (Am I nuts, or can you trace the rise of the modern hip hop movement all the way back to this tune’s explosive crossover success?)

Kate Rusby — “The Wild Goose” (from Sleepless) —

Looking for a little bit of relief from the horrendously unamusing asswhipping that those irritating San Diego Chargers delivered unto my beloved Indianapolis Colts last night on Sunday Night Football, I flipped over to CBS for a bit during the game’s devastating third quarter to sneak a peek at the terrific Sarah Paulson — Harriet Hayes from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, y’all — acting her astounding heart out in November Christmas, the latest teleflick offering from the prestigious Hallmark Hall of Fame. (Don’t know what the movie was even about, nor do I terribly care, but if Paulson is involved, I’m in, every day of the week.) This song was playing over the lone scene I watched, and, for a fleeting moment, I was riveted and ravished: Rusby grabs hold of a rowdy old sea shanty and unearths the purity of spirit inside its core, transforming this tale of a young boy’s desire for a flip girl who’ll never requite it into a wrenchingly ethereal heartbreaker for the ages. Four minutes of smooth, transcendent magic.

I decided to leave that unwieldy record store report on the front page for the full day today; hence, no dispatch from the hive today. But if you missed any of the rest of Thanksgiving week’s goodies, check out the recap below:

MONDAY: Semisonic — “Singing in My Sleep”
(from Feeling Strangely Fine) —

TUESDAY: Sugarland — “Every Girl Like Me”
(from The Incredible Machine) —

WEDNESDAY: Pink — “God is a DJ” (from Try This) —

THURSDAY: Dido — “Thank You” (from No Angel) —

FRIDAY: Christina Aguilera — “Show Me How You Burlesque”
(from Burlesque [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]) —

SATURDAY: Lee Greenwood — “Dixie Road”
(from The Best of Lee Greenwood) —

Life has been a bit crazy the past couple of weeks, but the record store report is back in action, and wouldn’t you know it’s just in time for the quarter’s three busiest frames. Holiday shopping season is in full swing, kids, and the music business is playing along mightily. Dig in:

 

Recent smashes from almost all of A’s favorite gals — Katy Perry (“Teenage Dream”), Sara Bareilles (“King of Anything”), Sugarland (“Stuck Like Glue”), and Ke$ha (“Take It Off”) — not to mention midlist hits from Maroon 5, OneRepublic, and Paramore, punctuate the track list for the new compilation Now That’s What I Call Music! 36. Also noteworthy from the Now folks: following up their pulse-pounding pair of discs celebrating the best of the ’80s, they have now turned their gaze to another decade with a strong new collection, Now That’s What I Call the 1990s, a masterful mix of grungy garage rock standards (Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” Collective Soul’s “Shine”), fair Lilith-era lovelies (Joan Osborne’s “One of Us,” Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You),” Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”), and the passionate prom-night epics of the day (Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be,” Shawn Mullins’ “Lullaby”). Of course I have a few quibbles with the song selection here — let it suffice to say that “Missing” and “Mr. Jones” and “You Oughta Know” and “Hold My Hand” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” must land front-and-center spots on the inevitable Volume 2, no excuses — but if you ever doubted that the ’90s brought us every bit as much terrific tuneage as the decade it succeeded,
this record stands as a stark testimony to the fallacy of that argument.

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Lee Greenwood — “Dixie Road”
(from The Best of Lee Greenwood) —

So I’m in a retro ’80s country mood first thing this morning. Sue me.

Christina Aguilera — “Show Me How You Burlesque”
(from Burlesque [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]) —

On the Waterfront it is most certainly not. But A and I took in a screening of Burlesque — the new showstopping movie musical starring uber-divas Cher and Christina Aguilera — the night before Thanksgiving, and found it to be two hours of good, trashy fun. Essentially, it’s Coyote Ugly on the left coast: instead of Violet, our heroine’s name is Ali; and instead of Jersey, she hails from Iowa; and instead of dancing on a bar, she dances on a stage; and instead of being a songwriter, she’s a singer who falls in love with a songwriter. Considering that the lion’s share of the action centers on beautifully becleavaged dancers in a seedy-ish Los Angeles nightclub (translation: boobies galore, urry scary last one of them thrust up toward the heavens), the film is surprisingly tame; indeed, the only outright nudity I can recall is the brief glimpse we get of actor Cam Gigandet’s supple, beauteous backside just prior to the nubile ingenue’s requisite tender deflowering. Still, Aguilera proves to be a stunningly capable actress — true enough, she’s smarly surrounded by pros who prop her up at every turn, including Veronica Mars‘ Kristen Bell (playing smashingly against type as a hard-assed alcoholic dancer livid by the sudden arrival of a corn-fed rival), Stanley Tucci (the gay costumier who, in a fun twist, stumbles across a little happiness of his own), and the indomitable Cher (and you’re fuckin’-A right, we still love her when she’s 64) — and that patented over-the-top, blast-through-the-boombox vocal style — the same one that tends to make her albums, on the whole, such tough slogs — fits right in in this fanciful milieu, particularly on tracks like “Show Me,” the film’s triumphant closing number, which allows the astonishingly gifted Aguilera a shot to loose her emotional bondage and let all the good stuff fly, honey.

Dido — “Thank You” (from No Angel) —

Thankful for lots today, but chief among them, I’m thankful for the fact that, for some two and a half years, I’ve had this funky, fabulous forum through which to express my thoughts on whatever. And I’m thankful that, on almost 44,000 occasions over those same two and a half years, those thoughts have touched a chord with all of you who have come here. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Pink — “God is a DJ” (from Try This) —

Pink’s sweet spot has always been her uncannily brilliant
ability to create divinely danceable music that is deeply rooted in her own peculiarly jagged brand of rock-hued badass attitude. Her new greatest hits record, released last week, stands as a terrific career recap, but I was crushed to find that what I’ve always found to be the strongest example of Pink’s aforementioned talent — the startling second single from her unfairly maligned third album — didn’t make the cut. Feh.

Sugarland — “Every Girl Like Me” (from The Incredible Machine) —

Give this much to the incredible Jennifer Nettles: even when the song she is singing lands on the slight side, the effervescent exuberance of her vocal performances is often so ingratiating and infectious that you invariably find yourself surrendering to her bewitching charms. (I keep going back and forth between this and the amazing title track whenever I try to pick a favorite song from Machine, one of the few of this fall’s blockbuster releases that I’ve been able to sit through more than once, warts and all.)

Semisonic — “Singing in My Sleep”
(from Feeling Strangely Fine) —

Rob, you got it a hundred percent correct, sir:
love really is a mixtape.

Access Hollywood‘s Shaun Robinson pre-empted the hive today, but if you missed any of the rest of last week’s tunes, you can find a quick recap below:

MONDAY: Jerrod Niemann — “What Do You Want”
(from Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury) —

TUESDAY: Patrice Pike and the Black Box Rebellion — “Miss Ramona”
(from Fencing Under Fire) —

WEDNESDAY: Joni Mitchell — “If I Had a Heart” (from Shine) —

THURSDAY: the cast of Glee (featuring Gwyneth Paltrow) —
“Forget You” (from Glee, The Music: Volume 4) —

FRIDAY: Cowboy Junkies — “Hollow as a Bone”
(from Miles From Our Home) —

SATURDAY: Lee DeWyze — “Me and My Jealousy”
(from Live It Up) —

Honey from the Hive is taking a brief breather this Sunday so that I can bring you a Brandon’s Buzz exclusive presentation. A few days ago,
I got a chance to speak with ace entertainment reporter Shaun Robinson (who has covered major national news stories for local outlets across the country, including an award-winning stint right cheer in Austin, Texas; and who is currently the class of Access Hollywood) about the continuing feature — Living Legends, which shines a light on some of the most compelling and creative artists of our time — that she contributes to the series, and she got candid about the latest Legends to be profiled, as well as about the repetitive, mentally trying grind that her job can sometimes become.

BRANDON’S BUZZ: I’ve heard you say in other interviews that in your line of work, you get caught sometimes shining the spotlight on folks who don’t really deserve all the attention they get.

SHAUN ROBINSON: Exactly.

Given your hard news background, do you ever have days where you just wanna go, “Give me a break, not one more Mel Gibson story! Not one more Lindsay Lohan story, not one more….” Does it ever get to you sometimes, the seeming monotony of entertainment journalism?

Well, one of the reasons that I love doing [Access Hollywood’s Living Legends] series is that I got a chance to talk to folks who are real stars, and I think, unfortunately, today, if a person is on TV, they get that ‘celebrity’ title, which I don’t think many of them deserve. But, you know… it’s what people are interested in. But I think people are also interested in hearing these legends talk about their careers and about what got them to ‘legend’ status, because the difference between [the Legends participants] and a lot of the folks that are ‘in the news’ is that these people have true longevity in our business. And I don’t think that the reality stars that are on TV today will have that longevity.

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