I really wish I could blame the Chinese for this one, but alas, it seems like the Brits censored their own Led Zeppelin and forced a minor lyrical change for a performance of “Whole Lotta Love” at the Olympic Closing Ceremonies.  Two reasons are cited in the news report; 1) organizers deemed a particular lyric “too racy” and 2) female singer Leona Lewis who sang with Robert Plant thought that the lyrics weren’t fitting of a female singer.

BEFORE: I’m gonna give you every inch of my love.

AFTER: I’m gonna give you every bit of my love.

As the Brits say, BULLOCKS. What’s rock and roll without double entendres?  See what happens when you start to sanitize some of rock’s greatest penis references after the jump:

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According to Wikipedia, on August 30, 2006, Pharrell Williams himself said on BET that the new song he’d produced would not only show off his gangsta side, but also tackle the issue of racial conflict in Los Angeles between African Americans and Hispanics and call for racial unity.

The song he was talking about was “Vato,” by Snoop Dogg featuring B-Real (the guy with the nasally voice from Cypress Hill) as the voice of the Hispanic community. Observe and enjoy.

Does the song deliver? The answer, right here –

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Madonna turns 50 today. Enjoy Like a Prayer.

Madonna is the paragon a kind of pop music that I enjoy (only semi-ironically) far more, I imagine, than my fellow writers on the blog. But despite the many (younger and younger*) girls who have come after with aspirations to the crown, I think nobody has, like, a prayer of coming close. Why? My thoughts after the jump. more »

If you’ve been watching TV at all lately, you’ve probably come across this commercial for the shamelessly sleazy CW show Gossip Girl.

I’ve not watched the show before, and I don’t think I care to.  But what is UP with that music?  The man you’re hearing is Plastic Bertrand, and the song is 1977’s Ca Plane Pour Moi.  It’s way better when it isn’t chopped up into three second clips. more »

From Isaac Hayes’ breakthrough 1969 album, Hot Buttered Soul, which remains one of the great achievements in American pop music.  If you only know him as Chef from South Park, you owe it to yourselves to give his music a listen.  If you already know his catalog backwards and forwards, you owe it to yourself to listen again.

He will be missed.

Once again, Overthinkingit hops into the saddle for Stacie Ponder’s Final Girl Film Club. This month’s pick:  The Car.

Can we all just take a minute to consider how stupid that title is, by the way?  Sure, there’s a proud tradition of naming horror movies after the thing that’s doing the killing:  “Anaconda,” “Piranha,” “Bats,” “Orca,” “Leeches!,” etc.  etc.  These all work as titles because the things they refer to are scary, or at least used to be until Free Willy came out. I get nervous when I see an anaconda at the zoo.  I twitch a little when I type the word piranha - have you seen pictures of these bastards?  “The Car” isn’t going to do the trick.

Yes, I know carbon emissions are destroying the planet.  Don’t care.  I know that drunk driving is the number one killer of Americans aged 1-29.  Still don’t care.  Cars aren’t scary.  It doesn’t matter how many people they kill.  I mean, would you go to see a horror movie called “The Heart Disease?”  At the very least, they could have used this for the tagline… more »

In many cases, a movie’s soundtrack is just another piece of its marketing campaign. But occasionally, a song from a film actually becomes more popular than the film itself. Here are eight you can probably sing from memory (whether you want to admit it or not), from movies you’ve probably never heard of. Consider this a spoiler alert - if you read the name of a film and don’t want the plot described, just skip to the next one.

(NOTE: For a song to qualify, it has to have originally been released as part of a soundtrack. And I decided to stick to movies from the 60’s onward. Otherwise, this list might be all Gershwin and Porter.)

Let’s count ‘em down… more »

I’m a two-blog man now.

As some of you know, I write and produce Hotnewz.tv, the best darn news show for college kids on the web. We recently started a blog where we talk about some of our favorite segments. After the jump is something I wrote for it, on the enigma that is Andrew WK. more »

“Da Game is to be told, not to be sold.”
— Snoop Dogg, 14th Annual Conference
on Hip Hop Securitization

In 2003, I identified what I believed to be a speculative bubble for bling bling — the shine, the scrilla, the ostentatious displays of wealth that reinforced and promoted hip hop record sales.

At its heart, the Bling Bubble was a case of overleveraging; even the Ruffest of Ryders and Biggest of Tymers found themselves deep in debt, but still pulling out all the stops, even as record gas prices force them to keep only a quarter tank of gas in their new E-class —

The global Cash Money crisis begins, after the jump —

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The film composer Howard Shore has written an opera. It is an adaptation of one of the movies he did the music for. However, it’s probably not the one you’d expect/hope. Here’s a list of operatic movies Howard Shore has scored, that are NOT the movie in question: The Lords of the Rings, The Departed, The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Aviator, and The Gangs of New York.

Instead, Howard Shore looked back upon his body of work, and decided The Fly really needed to be an opera. And there’s a photo after the jump. more »