Last week we heard a cover of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” that had already earned four million views on YouTube. Since, that ten-hands-one-guitar performance has earned 22 million more, making it maybe the most viral cover video we’ll see all year (until Karmin comes out with another one that is). Continue reading »
The Big Pink may have found the ultimate in hard-to-Google band names. Generally, even something vague like “Air” or “Justice” can be easily found by adding “band” afterwards. However, searching for “Big Pink The Band” is somehow less than helpful in tracking down this British indie duo. Thankfully, they’ve hit an SEO-friendly level of success thanks to a 4AD signing, a Lykke Li cover, and a 2009 album that dipped a toe into the charts. Continue reading »
MTV Unplugged, a staple of 1990s music, lay dormant for much of the past decade. In its day, though, that series brought us legendary one-of-a-kind performances by Nirvana, Eric Clapton, and many others. In the past year, thankfully, the station has revived the series. The latest addition: Lykke Li. Continue reading »
Next Sunday, the Simon Cowell-helmed UK television singing competition The X Factor (based largely on American Idol, itself a spinoff of his British series Pop Idol, on which Cowell also judged) will crown the winner of its seventh go-around. As tradition has held since the show’s second season, the victor’s debut single will drop the following day so as to compete to be the “Christmas number one,” (the top spot on the UK singles chart for the sales-heavy week prior to the holiday), a feat accomplished by four of the last five champs, much to the chagrin of the show’s detractors. Last year, however, a grassroots Facebook campaign known as Rage Against the X Factor lobbied over 500,000 supporters to pay to download “Killing in the Name,” the explicit 1992 debut single by Rage Against the Machine, and the title held off the debut of X Factor winner Joe McElderry (a cover of Miley Cyrus‘ “The Climb”) to become the first download-only Christmas number one in chart history. Continue reading »