BuzzSugar

Buzz In: What Should Be Your State's Rock Song?

BuzzSugar — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:30:52 PDT

In charming civic-type news, The Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize??" has been nominated for official Oklahoma rock song, apparently the token indie rock entry in a list that includes the likes of Elvis Presley and, well, Oklahoma. As Pitchfork writes:

"Oklahoma already has an official state song ("Oklahoma," from the musical, natch), a state folk song, and a state country-and-western tune. What they don't have just yet is an official state rock'n'roll song. And that is where you come in."

The state legislature has ordered Oklahomans to vote here before Nov. 15 - though as far as I can tell, anyone can vote, 'cause the computer has no way of knowing whether or not you're an Oklahoman - for whichever rock song you like.

This is a pretty fun idea, so I think we should start thinking of the official rock songs for the rest of the 49 states! For example, it seems to me Washington should probably at least nominate "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana as one of theirs (it seems the Evergreen State only has a state folk song). Maybe something from my 50 Songs for 50 States challenge could get you started.

What do you think? What other songs would you nominate for which states?

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Miley Cyrus Slips Into a Bikini For a Relaxing Malibu Day With Shirtless Liam Hemsworth

Katie Henry — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:15:04 PDT

Miley Cyrus wore a bikini Thursday to hit the beach with her boyfriend, Liam Hemsworth, in Malibu. Earlier this Summer, Miley and Liam went jet skiing in another two-piece during a trip to Michigan. During their latest loved-up afternoon, the couple snapped photos, dipped their toes in the chilly Pacific waters, and lounged casually on the sand. Miley's special outing with Liam comes just after she took a trip to Haiti. She visited the struggling country last weekend on behalf of the Starkey Hearing Foundation, and during her stay in Port au Prince, she aided doctors and volunteers with fitting Haitians with hearing aids. Back in the states, Miley's family got the exciting news that her brother Trace Cyrus is engaged to Brenda Song. He shared their news by tweeting, "I am very excited to say, last week I asked my girlfriend Brenda Song to marry me and she said yes! We are both very excited to be engaged!"

Gwen Stefani Splits Her Time With Zuma and Kingston as No Doubt's Reunion Gets Delayed

Lindsay Miller — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:49:15 PDT

Gwen Stefani was hand in hand with Zuma Rossdale yesterday on their way to a London park. Today, she stepped out with Kingston Rossdale, who was wearing a new pair of glasses, for a bite to eat. Gwen and the boys have been hanging out together in Gavin Rossdale's hometown while he's on the road with Bush. Gwen has been splitting her time in England between kid-friendly outings to the aquarium and the zoo with Kingston and Zuma and grown-up nights on the town. She met up with Kate Winslet at a cookbook launch last week and also recently partied in honor of Stella McCartney's 40th. Gwen celebrated her own birthday, her 42nd, on Oct. 3. The singer relaxed with her kids and accepted a major delivery of flowers on the big day. Gavin couldn't be there because of his concert dates back in the States, and the rocker pair will likely trade off touring duties next year, when No Doubt's reunion album finally debuts. The quartet has been recording songs for the CD since January, but just announced that the finished product won't be out until next year despite initial plans to release it in 2011.

All Our Favorite Music Is About Sex

Annie Scudder — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:20:17 PDT

Sex sells records, according to new research that set out to prove an intuitive conclusion. The study, with the fancy name Songs as a Medium for Embedded Reproductive Messages, examined the country, pop, and R & B Billboard charts and found that 92 percent of the songs that made it into the top 10 in 2009 contained at least one or more "reproductive message." The average number of mentions was 10.49.

Inspired by recent studies, including one on romance novels that discovered the five most common words in the books were love, bride, baby, man, and marriage, the researchers from the State University of New York in Albany wanted to see if reproductive issues were recurrent in music, too. They looked for themes including courtship, sex, pair-bonding, parenting, fidelity, mate guarding, and themes related to long-term and short-term mating strategies.

"Let’s have some fun/This beat is sick/I want to take a ride on your disco stick," from Lady Gaga's 2009 "Love Game" was an example of a reference to short-term mating strategies. “He knelt down and pulled out a ring/And said ‘Marry Me Juliette’” from Taylor Swift's "Love Story" was an example of "commitment and fidelity" themes. And “They say she low down/It’s just a rumor and I don’t believe ‘em/They say she needs to slow down/ Baddest thing around town” from Akon's "Sexy Chick" references "promiscuity/reputation/degradation," according to the study. While messages about sex were pervasive among all genres, they weren't the same messages. Top country songs had mentions to marriage, parenting, breakups, and fidelity, while R & B songs referenced themes like the singer's sex appeal or erotic acts.

It's not just modern music lovers with sexy music taste, though. The research also looked back at opera arias over the past 400 years and found mentions to sex. So Akon and Puccini do have something in common.

Pre-Fashion Week Profile: Elie Tahari Talks Guilty Pleasures and Favorite Songs, Plus See an Exclusive Sketch!

Chi Diem Chau — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:00:08 PDT

As we prepare ourselves - and our wardrobes - for New York Fashion Week, designers are in final preparations to present their Spring 2012 collections, and that final stretch can be wildly chaotic. We interrupted the madness long enough to get the skinny on designers' guilty pleasures, what they love and hate most about Fashion Week, current favorite songs, and more. First up: Elie Tahari, the man known for creating simultaneously modern and elegant confections worn by Hollywood hotties such as Leighton Meester and Emmy Rossum.

Guilty pleasures during Fashion Week: I try to take the morning for myself, because once I get to work it never stops . . .
Top songs in constant rotation: Sexy love songs and Alicia Keys's “Empire State of Mind”
Favorite thing about Fashion Week in September: I love the excitement, you can feel it all over the city and except for the occasional hurricane - the weather is usually amazing. In September it’s like starting all over . . . “back to school.”
Most hated thing about Fashion Week: I don’t like NYC traffic!

Check out another sketch from his Spring '12 collection, plus Elie's FNO plans, and how he's celebrating the end of Fashion Week.

Jason Segel Talks Muppets, Amy Adams, and His Next Hollywood Dream

Allie Merriam — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:48:00 PDT

We were able to pay a visit to the LA set of The Muppets earlier this year, and the movie's mastermind, lifelong Jim Henson fan Jason Segel, stopped by to chat about life on the set with Kermit. The project was written by Jason and his partner Nick Stoller, and was brought to life with director James Bobin, leading lady Amy Adams, and a roster of talented puppeteers. Jason spoke about how he and Nick tried to make the film fun for both kids and adults, and revealed how happy he was to land Amy Adams as a costar. Jason, who at the time was finishing the Five Year script with Nick between scenes while logging an almost-regular workweek on the set of How I Met Your Mother, also touched on new Muppets, operating Fozzie himself, and what his next big Hollywood dream is. Jason said:

On people's perceptions of a Jason Segel Muppets movie: "I think maybe there was a moment of wariness that I was doing this with a sense of irony. Like there was a wink-wink about it - 'Oh, cute. R-rated Jason Segel is going to do the Muppets and make fun of it.' But as soon as we arrived on set and everyone saw that that wasn't the case, that this was coming from a very genuine and true place, we were all on the same team very very quickly."
On making a movie for kids and adults: "We're trying to harken back to the original three Muppet movies, The Muppet Movie, Muppets Take Manhattan, and The Great Muppet Caper. I think one of the things the original Muppet movies did amazingly well is that they don't condescend to children by feeling like they have to dumb things down to the lowest common denominator. And when you don't do that, you get a family film in its truest sense. An entire family can sit and watch and enjoy it. The worst equivalent is Barney the dinosaur where parents are having to sit there while their kids watch this and the parents want to blow their brains out. This I think is going to be the exact opposite. I think parents are going to be laughing as hard as kids are going to be laughing. We have jokes geared toward children and we have jokes that are geared specifically toward adults that go right over a kid's head. It's something that The Simpsons does as well. There's something very special about a family sitting down to enjoy something together - that was our goal."
On why Amy Adams is the perfect leading lady: "I wrote it for her. She was in my mind from the beginning, ever since I saw Enchanted. The role is very different, but first of all, she's like the best actress alive. To go from Enchanted to Doubt, and The Fighter, this woman can do anything. She's able to do this wide-eyed naiveté that is not part of her personality in real life - she's one of the most smart, on-top-of-it women I've ever met. But she can do this kind of thing - my character and her character and Walter are true innocents. She's able to do that. She channels it through her eyes, and she can sing. She's totally game. She's up for it. She also really gets the jokes, so she was the perfect choice from the start. I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't gotten her."
On writing, filming TV, and filming movies at the same time: "I spent [ages] 21-25 totally out of work. And so now that I have a chance to do stuff, there's a part of me that thinks I'm not letting this opportunity pass by. You see it go away so quickly. It's so fickle. I like writing, I genuinely do. I get tired and all that stuff, but when you think about it, it's like the alien is going to burst out of your chest. When I get an idea it's kind of hard not to do something because it feels like the alien is going to burst out of my chest. I'm not good at setting it aside and saying I'll get to it eventually. I want to start writing it, even if it means staying up all night. It's tough to complain . . . I bought a house! What do I have to complain about, a little lack of sleep?"

View 5 Photos ›

Photos courtesy Disney To read what Jason says about the new Muppet, more on the movie, and his one remaining Hollywood dream, just read more.

On creating a new Muppet: "Nick Stoller and I did. We wrote the script together, he's my writing partner. We invented Walter! We did not get to design him physically because then they would owe us a lot of money. So we came up with him on paper and then they were very clear that we could not be involved in any aspect in the physical design of Walter. But it is pretty crazy when I saw him and I knew he was born in our brains. It's like Nick and I had a little baby - with our brains."
On whether or not this movie would be a musical: "We knew it was going to be a musical from the start. All the Muppets movies are musicals. When you look back at the great lineage of the Muppet music, like "The Rainbow Connection." I mean that is not a joke of a song. That is a serious song. If a legitimate musician put out that song they'd win a Grammy. We really wanted the music to be great and James (director) was the perfect choice for this movie and it seems like he's been training for this."
On what Muppets we'll see again: "We're bringing out a lot of the Muppets from the archives. A lot of guys from the old Muppet shows, some of the kind of obscure performances make appearances. I can't give too many away, but there's some old favorites of mine . . . there's some really cool weird ones."
On improv from the Muppeteers: "There is! I did not expect that for a minute! These guys know the characters so much better than I could hope to. I could imagine what the character might say, but these guys have been playing them for 20, 30 years."
On operating a Muppet himself: "Yeah I just operated Fozzie a minute ago! I've done Fozzie, Dr. Teeh, and I've done Beeker so far. It's been amazing. That is what knocks your socks off. This is going to sound different from how I mean it - but my hand is inside Fozzie? That's amazing. I never thought that would happen!"
On taking pieces from the set home: "I really want a lot of stuff that I see around here. They're very protective certainly over the puppets, but I've gotten a few bits of paraphernalia that I'll save and treasure forever. Some really special photographs. Me with Kermit, shooting the . . . breeze? What's the the PG version of that? That's the greatest picture I've ever seen. I love it."
On Muppets not being puppets: "In the original script, I was a ventriloquist and Walter was my puppet. But one of the things you find out is that you really don't want to cross the line into mentioning puppet. It becomes very, very complicated because the Muppets and not puppets. Muppets are living creatures in this world, you know what I mean? So as soon as I realized that that made things really complicated to have a puppet vs. the Muppets . . . it became complicated, so we cut that aspect of the story and it actually really simplified the story."
On Walter's personality: "Walter is the sweetest little guy you'll ever meet. He's like Kermit. He's like a very young Kermit. He's naive and he's sweet. Walter's thing is he's never met anyone like him. Like I said you don't use the word puppet, but he's my best friend and we grew up in Smalltown, USA - that's literally the name of the town - and he's never seen anything else like him. Except for the Muppets on television. So his dream is to go meet the Muppets and maybe have a family. It really does have tones of young Kermit."
On the movie's bad guys: "There are some other new Muppets. Villainous characters - they're not specifically Muppets. They're not very nice, so they're not Muppets. But they're adorable. I love them. They're another great creation. I can't give too much away about them, but they're really cool."
On the movie being a lifelong dream: "Once [the studio] said they were going to make it, everyone in my life was like, 'All right! Whatever you need. Let's get this thing made.' Because I've had puppets and Muppet figurines in my house, in my bedroom, since I was a kid."
On making Muppets history: "I'm not an arrogant dude, but to be even the tiniest footnote in the Muppets lineage is nuts to me. That is insane! So I feel very honored."
On Hollywood stars requesting cameos: "I got a lot of calls, especially my contemporaries who have kids all wanted to be a part of it for their kids. The idea of bringing their kids to meet the Muppets, or even to be able to show them the movie eventually. People love the Muppets. There's a lot of Muppet love out there."
On the music: "Bret McKenzie wrote most of the songs, and we have a couple reprises of some of the old songs. I wrote one of the songs, but it's a jokier version. Bret really took the songs and ran with them, and they're awesome . . . but some of the lyrics are definitely adult-based."
On where we find the Muppets: "We've got them in varying states of success and disarray. Some are famous, some are . . . destitute is the wrong word, you're not going to see any destitute moments . . . but some aren't doing what they wish they were doing. Everyone is doing their own thing, and it's a bit of a struggle for all of them to come back and do the Muppet show again."
On his next big Hollywood dream: "I'd like to be president of the United States. No. I've like to play a villain in a superhero movie. I think I'd be really good at it. I'm like 20 percent creepy. I'm really am. I am 20 percent creepy, I exclude it from this movie. But when you watch Sarah Marshall, the Dracula musical is funny but it's 20 percent creepy. I really want to play a villain in a superhero movie."

Do You Rent Music Videos Online?

Kristy Korcz — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:05:54 PDT

MTV doesn't play as many videos as they used to, but you can still head to places like iTunes and YouTube to see your favorite star's latest releases. Katy Perry just released her video for "Last Friday Night" with a big cameos from famous stars, including an appearance by none other than YouTube sensation Rebecca Black. As you may recall, Rebecca Black became famous (and famously spoofed) for her song "Friday," which some have called the worst video ever made. If you haven't seen it, you can still check out "Friday" online as a YouTube rental, but you're going to have to pay. That's right - to watch "Friday" in its entirety, you now have to shell out $2.99. No more rocking out in shame for free.

Although I still like watching some music videos (Lady Gaga has had a string of highly-entertaining episodes), I've never paid to watch them online, and don't think I ever would. But what about you - do you rent music videos online?

Update: Looks like Rebecca Black's "Friday" video has been pulled due to a copyright dispute. A YouTube Spokesperson stated: "YouTube takes copyright infringement very seriously. When we receive a complaint alleging that a video infringes another person or company's copyrights, we remove that video. Users who believe that a video was removed in error can appeal the copyright takedown."

Glee-Ful Highlights From Episode "New York"

Becky Kirsch — Wed, 25 May 2011 08:07:10 PDT

After a long season of wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin', the New Directions finally live out their dream to perform at Nationals in NYC on this week's episode of Glee. Their week in the Big Apple is full of expectations as each of the gleeks has their own ideas about how to experience New York. Of course, there's also the competition to prepare for, and - oops! - they haven't written their songs yet. (Um, seriously, Mr. Schue?)

Finn is still doing everything he can to get back into Rachel's good graces, but she's too distracted by the bright lights and big city. Meanwhile, Mr. Schuester has his own business to take care of: he has to decide once and for all if he's going to leave the club for Broadway. Overall it's a sweet, sappy kinda season finale, but the NYC backdrop makes it a fun episode (there's even a couple of surprises along the way). Let's recap when you

Selena Gomez Hits the Beach to Shoot a Video With Controversial Horses

Lindsay Miller — Sat, 21 May 2011 08:46:31 PDT

Selena Gomez worked on the video for her new track "Love You Like a Love Song" yesterday afternoon on the beach in Malibu, complete with a flowing dress, a long-haired leading man, and painted horses. Selena may have liked the dyed animals, but singer Pink took to Twitter to say altering the four-legged creatures was over the top. Selena's rep was quick to respond to those allegations, stating that no animals were hurt during the shoot and that a Humane Society representative was on hand to monitor the production.

Hot! Russell Brand Throws On Swim Trunks to Take a Jet Ski For a Whirl in Miami

Allie Merriam — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:44:55 PDT

Russell Brand donned a life vest this afternoon to take a jet ski out in Miami! He's down in Florida prepping for his singing and dancing role in Rock of Ages. The movie's director, Adam Shankman, has some of the stars like Julianne Hough and newcomer Malin Akerman in the Sunshine State perfecting their moves before the cameras start rolling during the early Summer. Russell's wife, Katy Perry, meanwhile, continues to travel the world on her Teenage Dream tour. Russell and Katy have been meeting up for the occasional rendezevous when their equally busy schedules allow - they had a particularly loved-up moment in London two weeks ago at the UK premiere of Arthur. She's in Australia at the moment, apparently longing for a traditional California Cinco de Mayo celebration between shows, though she was able to attend the launch of her fragrance, Purr, in Melbourne last Saturday and attended the city's Logie Awards Sunday. Katy also landed on the June cover of Vanity Fair, and spoke about deciding to finally show pictures from their wedding during the Grammys in February. Katy said, "I felt the moment was right and not forced. Russell and I had time to savor our moment privately first and then share it with people when we were ready, and not for a paycheck. I loved the idea, because I thought it was beautiful and artistically accompanied the song I wrote for him. Plus, it was Valentine’s eve!"