Search Posts

about this blog

  1. Obsessively blogging about pop music, pop videos, pop stars, and pop culture from inside the MTV headquarters in Times Square. We also have a slight Jonas Brothers problem. And a little fixation with Tokio Hotel.

    Contact us as buzzworthy@mtv.com and follow us on Twitter at @MTVBuzzworthy.

Follow Us

  1. Get the latest updatest in your favorite RSS feed reader.

While we're wrist deep into a pint of ice cream, napping off the working week, Taylor Swift will be GRINDING. Girl is pulling double duty at Saturday Night Live this week as both host and musical guest.

It's been quite a year for Taylor. She and the writers will have plenty of material to mine for sketches. It sounds like she's down for whatever, so here's 5 skits we'd love to see happen.

Read more...

When you type "Owl City Sound Like Postal Service" into that magic little Google contraption you get 280,000 results. Now, I'm sure some are about owls. Some are about cities. And I bet a bunch are about the mail.

But even if you siphon off some of the results, this is clearly a hot-button issue. I, personally can't believe that 60 Minutes hasn't jumped on this already, but we'll take it on here at BW.

Owl City is, more or less, Minnesotan musician Adam Young; he tours with a more fleshed-out band, but he does all the heavy lifting in the studio. They are incredibly popular. Their jam, "Fireflies" is a top 10 hit. It also sounds A LOT like Ben Gibbard (main man of Death Cab For Cutie) and Jimmy Tamborello's electronic-pop duo The Postal Service.

A LOT.

So, the question is this: does that matter? I don't personally think so. While I never encourage full-on biting of another artist's style, one would have to point at the Postal-Service-shaped void left in our pop landscape right now. The Postal Service haven't delivered (hawhaw) anything 2003's Give Up. Now, I'm not a math major, but that feels a lot like six years to me.

So if Postal Service aren't really a going concern, and Owl City make a very pleasant version of Postal-Servicey pop, should we not enjoy it for what it is?

I mean, if your mailman stopped coming for six years, and then a new dude showed up and was equally reliable and nice, would you not take his mail because he's not the same dude? Of course not! So why should it be that much different when it comes to pop?

Marinate on it and feel free to agree or disagree in the comments. And if you need a Cliff's Notes version of the two bands, watch Owl City's "Fireflies" and The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" below.

According to the always in-the-know peeps at MTV News, Hova and Alicia Keys are already cooking up a sequel to their smash Big Apple anthem, "Empire State Of Mind."

The track has been ubiquitous (especially for New Yorkers) since it unofficially debuted at the MTV Video Music Awards (along with that infamous Lil' Mama cameo); it gets played at least once in almost every club in the 5 boroughs on any given night, and was the unofficial theme song for the Yankees march to the World Series championship (Jay and Keys performed before Game 2, and Hov did it today at the Yankees victory parade).

But is it too soon to go back to the well? Will Jay and Alicia strike oil twice? It ain't easy. Here are a few (some good, some bad) song sequels/remakes.

Jessica Simpson's remake of "These Boots Were Made For Walkin'". Pretty much a FAIL in every conceivable way. Took Nancy Sinatra's all-time jam and turned it into a honky-tonk strip tease jingle.

"Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang is one of the all-time classics.

But Redman, Erick Sermon and the Def Squad's sequel to the track actually embraced the pass-the-mic energy in the best possible way.

We can talk all we want about sequels, but Jay-Z's been down this road before. He and Beyonce remade Tupac's "Me And My Girlfriend" as "'03 Bonnie & Clyde."

Can you think of any other dope remakes or sequels? Any not so dope one's? Let us know in the comments!

It would be easy to just peg Amanda Blank as a raunch-rapper; a purveyor of sex-crazed rhymes in the vein of Lil' Kim or Trina, shot through an electro-indie prism. But there's a lot more going on here.

Blank is a Philly native who came up through the same eclectic scene that helped produced artists like Diplo and Spank Rock (both of whom she's collaborated with on her debut album I Love You).

While their certainly is a lot of NC-17 material on her album, the more interesting aspect is the way in which she delivers it. Blank's flow is super-tight; she has control over the kinetic electronic beats that she raps on. And she's not at all one-dimensional; some of her stuff veers towards feisty electro-rock in the vein of Le Tigre.

Check out Blank's video for "Might Like You Better" below. And if you like what you hear, vote for her in the mtvU Woodie Awards. She's nominated for Left Field Woodie!

Ke$ha is a bad girl gone worse. Last night's makeup and glitter still liberally applied to her face, she's putting off the morning after by charging right into the next night.

Ke$ha (real name Kesha Sebert) is a California girl. With a musical family, she was probably bound to wind up on stage and in front of the camera but, credit to her, her rise has been hard-earned.

Before going to work on her debut album (due out next year), Ke$ha could be heard singing background vocals for Britney, Miley and The Veronicas and turning up in her pal Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" video.

Now she's on her own, and by the looks of the video for her debut single, "Tik Tok," she plays as hard as it works. It's a down-and-dirty electro jam with Auto-Tune flirtations. Check out Ke$sha's "Tik Tok" video below, and watch Ke$ha's live MTV UK video performance.

It's the question on the tip of everyone's tongue. No, not, "How will Lost end?" It's, "What happened to Thursday?!"

You remember Geoff Rickly and the boys, right? After the success of their Full Collapse album, they were supposed to be emo's big hope, dragging the sub-genre, kicking and screaming (naturally), into the arena to stay.

Things didn't go according to plan, Thursday didn't become the American Radiohead, and the New Jersey band wound up splitting with their major label and going underground (again). But their true-blue fans held on, and so did Thursday, which brings us to "Circuits Of Fever" (from their forthcoming Common Existence album). It's an impressionistic video for a rather shoe-gazer-ish song. The swirling atmospherics match the flashing imagery, and the rhythm is perfectly synced with the random pieces of machinery featured in the video. Welcome back, dudes!

Ohhhhh Joss Stone. When you're a host of a live show or a red carpet, it's kinda your JOB to be super NICE to people. And not... you know... call them liars? Which is actually what happened when she asked Kevin Jonas if the Jonas Brothers planned on partying after the MTV Europe Music Awards in celebration of  Kevin's 22nd birthday.

Kevin Jonas innocuously told Joss that no, the Jonas Brothers would NOT be poppin' bottles with models after the MTV EMAs because they're off to Italy to do a show. But Joss and MTV Germany's Joko Winterscheidt wouldn't take no for an answer, and awkward host banter ensued while the Jonas Brothers stayed diplomatic, but you could tell they were probably suppressing clenched teeth and an eye roll. Nick Jonas kinda wears an expression that sorta suggests "Is this real life?" (à la "David at the Dentist") -- the kind of expression one does when reality-meets-surreality on live international TV.

If I were the Jonas Brothers, I would've totally pulled out my Blackberry and started pretend-texting until the nails-on-a-chalkboard moment was over. (But then again, I hate confrontation.) The end of the clip is great, as Joe Jonas is kiiiiiinda-sorta like "Nah, really, I'm good."

OHHHH Joss Stone and Joko Winterscheidt! Totally blowin' up Tokio Hotel's SPOT with the pyrotechnics and stuff! Maybe the fire in their "World Behind My Wall" performance was supposed to be a S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E, mkay? Anyway, enjoy this video of Tokio Hotel on the red carpet at the 2009 MTV Europe Awards in Berlin. Plus, enjoy the fun potent Tokio quotables such as:

+ Bill Kaulitz saying, "We just know some words from our school time." (Tee!)

+ Tom Kaulitz, who says that Tokio has been doing "a lot of dirty interesting and you know, nasty things."

+ "We are old-school." -- Bill Kaulitz... Granted, five seconds later, Tokio Hotel joined Twitter, so you never can tell!

+ Plus: Watch the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards on demand, watch every MTV EMA performance, and check out more red carpet interviews.

The performances at the 2009 MTV Europe Awards were like hitting "shuffle" on your iPod... except exponentially more intense. Shakira and Beyonce, Jay-Z, Leona Lewis, U2, Green Day, Foo Fighters, and Tokio Hotel -- all celebrated popular music's bounty, from U2's timeless unifier, "One," to Shakira's box-fresh "Did It Again."

Watch each and every live performance from the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards now.

Where do you go when you're Beyonce, you're an unstoppable international triple threat, you've dominated the globe, and the world at large just gave you THREE MTV Europe Music Awards? You next-level it with a scintillating performance that shows off your good-girl side, and then you get nasty too, all in the same performance. Watch both sides of Beyonce tear it down live at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin in her live performance of "Sweet Dreams." And check out the photos of Beyonce in action.

+ Watch all of the 2009 MTV Europe Music Award performances here.