Daily Noise Blog | SPIN.com

Deconstructing M.I.A.

Ken Bachor — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:45:54 +0000

Confused revolutionary? Brilliant provocateur? As her Super Bowl digit malfunction reminded everyone, Maya Arulpragasam is one of the most polarizing figures in pop today, a neon blur of contradictions and conflations — but she may also be the most thrilling. Here's a handy primer to her life and art and everything in between SPIN originally published in our August 2010 issue.

By some accounts — including her own — we should all be done talking about Maya Arulpragasam. In 2007, promoting her sophomore album, Kala, the singer known as M.I.A. told an interviewer, "I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me. Part of me wants to carry on. Part of me wants to stop." Eight months later, onstage at Bonnaroo, she went even further: "This is my last show," she announced.

Like many things she says, the statement posed more questions than it answered. And soon enough, M.I.A.'s career was on another upswing: In the summer of 2008, the trailer for Pineapple Express turned Kala's best song, "Paper Planes," into a hit; she performed at the Grammys (on the day she was scheduled to give birth); got an Oscar nomination for Best Song for the Slumdog Millionaire track "O…Saya"; and saw Kala go gold.

Now, she's just released her third and most anticipated album, /\/\/\Y/\, and the mirror is only getting bigger and bigger, shifting fun-house-style. The ultraviolent video for "Born Free" caused a media shit storm. The New York Times Magazine chimed in with a nine-page feature that attempted to expose M.I.A. as an entitled, politically naive hypocrite (if you missed the ensuing Internet-fueled micro-scandal, you really need to spend less time outside). Of M.I.A.'s many talents, explaining herself may not be her strongest or her favorite — she declined to go on the record for this story — but that's okay. We're happy to give it a shot. In that same 2007 interview, she predicted, "I might be in carpentry next year." Or maybe not.

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I. HER MUSIC
M.I.A. has claimed that when she moved from war-torn Sri Lanka to London in 1983 at age eight, she only knew two English words: "Michael Jackson," as if her beats-without-borders worldview came via some sort of Thriller-inscribed primal scene. When "Galang" hit in 2004, it worked a space between hip-hop, dancehall, and then-trendy grime, like the Slits meets rave meets Missy Elliott. Never much of a singer or dancer, she worked in the tradition of technically limited geniuses like Madonna and Miles Davis, who only used exactly the amount of talent necessary to make a scene.

"She's got a million ideas," says Rusko, one of the producers on her new album. "When we record her, we fix some of the out-of-tune notes and keep some in. A lot of recording with her is happy accidents."

M.I.A. got her start as a London graphic designer and scenester, hanging with English pop heavies like Elastica's Justine Frischmann and Blur's Damon Albarn. In 2000, while working as Elastica's tour videographer, she learned how to operate a Roland MC-505 drum machine with help from the tour's opening act, smut-rapper Peaches. A large coterie of producers and engineers worked on her 2005 debut, Arular, but it still had the euphoric feel of a novice punching buttons and letting her chanting-rapping-trilling-spieling vocalese bounce off the sounds she conjured.

"Today, hip-hop is club music," says Rusko, who notes that having M.I.A. on his résumé led to work on new Britney Spears tracks. "Hip-hop and R&B are looking towards club music for ideas right now. She and [ex-boyfriend and frequent collaborator] Diplo were some of the first people to do that. It's the rule now."

2007's Kala was supposed to be the record where she went pro. Timbaland was on tap to coproduce (he ended up doing one track). But when the U.S. government denied her a long-term work visa, she regrouped and recorded throughout the third world, culling performances from Nigerian MC Afrika Boy and a 30-piece Indian drum circle, among others. On Kala, the sounds of third-world slums hammer at the gates of first-world pop; "I put people on the map that never seen a map," she sang on "20 Dollar."

In a sense, /\/\/\Y/\ is a map, a global picture of the matrices of technology, power, and money. The technology theme gestated during her pregnancy, where the housebound mom-to-be became obsessed with new media. (Google is thanked in the liner notes.) "XXXO" turns on a metaphor about flattened identities in the iPhone era; "Internet Connection" is a meditation on aloneness inspired in part by a three-hour bout with customer service; "Lovealot" is the story of Russian Islamic teen terrorists who met online; and the album-closing "Space Odyssey" turns the floaty phrase "My lines are down, you can't call me" into a double metaphor for romantic disconnection and techno-alienation.

The music is as universal as the theme, less worldly in that it doesn't use global beats but more of-the-world in that it plays off the pop music that most people actually listen to. It's folk music for the iPad age, her most radical gesture yet.

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II. HER POLITICS
In 2004, M.I.A. and Diplo released their first mixtape, titled Piracy Funds Terrorism, comparing downloaders to suicide bombers. It established her unique political posture, charging herself with being the chief Western voice of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, an ethnic group that has been subject to systemic oppression at the hands of the country's Sinhalese majority. This has forced her into a problematic rhetorical relationship with the militant separatist Tamil Tigers, whose most extreme tactics include the use of child soldiers and many suicide bombings (which they are credited with popularizing). M.I.A.'s father founded a nonviolent forerunner of the Tigers, called EROS, and while many early stories on her fabricated a Tiger connection, she strenuously claims he was never in the group. In 2008, she said, "I don't support terrorism and never have," and she doesn't support the Tigers. Other statements ("Give war a chance"), suggest a radical-chic identification with violent rhetoric that recalls '60s groups the Weather Underground and Red Brigades. Detractors point to her use of tigers in her videos and on her website; in 2008, a Sri Lankan–American rapper named DeLon posted a parody video of "Paper Planes," featuring images of Tiger atrocities.

She has been articulate in explaining the ways reactionary leaders brand all dissent as "terror": "When [Westerners] think Tamil, you automatically think Tiger," she said in 2009. "If you're a terrorist organization, you don't have the right to speak. That's been passed on to the Tamil civilians." At the same time, she can play fast and loose with facts. She claims, for instance, that the Sri Lankan military is "a million soldiers big" — it's closer to 340,000. She has also been criticized for calling the civil war in her native country a "genocide," though it hasn't been officially designated as such.

"Any time you're trying to address a complicated situation or complex ideas, you're going to have a hard time getting it across," says Boots Riley of leftist Bay Area rappers the Coup (and rap rockers Street Sweeper Social Club), who caused a media maelstrom by depicting the World Trade Center exploding on the cover of a record that was supposed to come out right after 9/11. "When it's CNN interviewing you and you've only got five seconds, you've got to cut to the core." In 2009, shortly after her genocide claim, hostilities in Sri Lanka came to an end. Yet at least 80,000 Tamils still live in army-run camps.

M.I.A. throws herself into this mess headlong, embodying the impulse to incite and also to heal. If her comments often seem contradictory, that too is a kind of message. "If I represent anything, it's what it's like to be a civilian caught up in a war," she said in 2005. In other words, she represents not just struggle, but dissonance, a kind of permanent refugee status. Maybe that's why her political statements can at times end up sounding like this recent tweet:

"I got digital cash Hactivism at its best Google Bombing with my Infotainment."

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III. HER BUSINESS
M.I.A.'s only hit began to bubble up just as the global economy started to tank. "Paper Planes" was built around a sample of the Clash's "Straight to Hell" and its refrain ("All I want to do is [boom boom boom] and take your money") circled a nexus of capitalism and nihilism, the rallying cry for the AIG gangstas torching our 401(k)s.

Like everything about her, M.I.A.'s own connections to capitalism are complex. This year, she turned down licensing offers from Coke and Pepsi, and recently said, "Money is the enemy of music." Yet, in 2008, she told this magazine she was "polluting the mainstream" by licensing "Galang" to Honda. It's a measure of M.I.A.'s heart-tugging power over leftoid music fans that this engendered debates about the nature of selling out and quaintly harkened back to the early days of punk. Reflecting a less tortured impulse, her own actions, and those of her fiancé, Benjamin Bronfman, suggest a positive relationship between wealth and power; Bronfman used seed money from his father, Warner Media Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr., to cofound Global Thermostat, a sustainable-development firm. M.I.A. gives extensively, though quietly, to a number of charities.

She claims that if she does license her music, it will only be to help her protégés. M.I.A. has signed several young artists to her boutique label, N.E.E.T. (based on the acronym for "Not in Employment, Education, or Training"), bankrolled by Interscope. "Record companies don't have the money to pay A&R people anymore," says Diplo. "They give these labels to everyone. A lot of people don't do anything with them. She has." M.I.A.'s big score is punky, crunky Brooklyn duo Sleigh Bells, this year's buzziest New York band. She's also played Henry Higgins to 19-year-old Baltimore rapper Rye Rye and oddball producer Blaqstarr, who lent his dark, grimy beats to /\/\/\Y/\. She sees N.E.E.T. more as a media company than record label (one signee is a photographer, Jaime Martinez). And while her role varies — she was very involved in Rye Rye's forthcoming debut but less so with the Sleigh Bells album — it all enhances the sense of M.I.A. as an arbiter of boundary-busting possibility.

"I'm all about hip-hop and R&B," says Rye Rye. "She introduced me to other genres, tribal stuff. People thought a couple songs sounded more like hers than mine. We compromised."

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IV. HER AESTEHTIC
"When i met her, she was silk-screening her own covers for the 12-inch for 'Fire Fire,' " Diplo recalls of the pre-Arular M.I.A. "I was amazed. It was hand-painted, with these Molotov cocktails and her tiger prints and stuff. She always knew this was the angle." Before the candy-colored images of guns, war planes, bombs, and tanks that decorate the Arular CD booklet caused controversy, they won her acclaim as a visual artist. In 2002, she was nominated for a prestigious Alternative Turner Prize, and early profiles of M.I.A. often noted that Jude Law was among the early collectors of her work.

The mix of hyper-bright and vaguely insurgent is a thread she's followed in making the now-standard pop-star move into fashion design. M.I.A.'s own look can run from futurist-aerobics instructor to new-wave pirate to dancer in an old X-Clan video to queenly candy raver. Early-'90s photos of African slum kids carrying AK-47s and wearing Michael Jordan jerseys donated by American charities goes a long way toward explaining this.

The clothes she sells are pastiches, radiantly bright and button-pushing, not exactly the kind of thing you can expect to see trickling down to Filene's Basement. From a bomber jacket ($210) resembling a hodgepodge of African flags (like the cover of Bob Marley's Survival) to a sleek hoodie festooned with watermelon slices, her music's themes of commodification, appropriation, and noticeability-at-all-costs (including a $65 tank top) are all there.

"She samples styles and mixes colors and prints the same way she constructs music," says designer Carri Munden, who has worked with M.I.A. since the "Galang" video. "It's chaos. But the end result is unique, and she is one of the only female artists on her level to be completely in control of her own style."

Indeed, in an era in which music occupies an increasingly thin, crowded cultural bandwidth, being a "multi-platform" operation is essential. "Even when we were working on tracks, she'd be putting pictures together and getting images off Google," says Rusko. "She was always thinking about the whole package."

M.I.A. smartly gives this strategy its own global-revolutionist cast. "The Kala artwork and sound and clothes are all about being worldly and representing the idea of the whole world being mashed up into one," she said in 2008.

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V. HER LIFE
Ironically, /\/\/\Y/\ is actually less steeped in the iconography of terror and revolution than her previous work; there is a song called "Teqkilla" but nary a Molotov cocktail gets flung. It's easy to credit this shift to a savvy assessment of her fans' rosier Obama-era worldview. Those close to her credit the shift to something more basic that isn't easy to discern from outside. Confrontational videos and guerilla media tactics aside, her life is more normal than ever.

"She's content now," says Rusko, who lived in the L.A. home she shares with Bronf-man and traveled with her to Hawaii while recording /\/\/\Y/\. "Her life is a lot more settled now. She's got the baby. When we were recording, she'd do vocals, then go upstairs to be with the baby for a couple hours. There wasn't much drama."

It shouldn't be shocking that the less hard-knock her life has gotten the more hits she's taken and the more paranoid of the press she's become. When M.I.A. first arrived in 2005, the gorgeous, impossibly cool singer with the exotic background and "freedom fighter" father made for ideal copy. Five years later, the image has flipped. In the lengthy Times Magazine profile, writer Lynn Hirschberg mustered a wide range of evidence (the food she eats, the house she lives in, the way in which she gave birth) to imply a disconnect between M.I.A.'s radical political rhetoric and her comfortable lifestyle. M.I.A., who sings, "I fight the ones that fight me" on "Lovealot," walked the walk by tweeting Hirschberg's phone number and posting an incendiary dis track on the N.E.E.T. site.

"That writer was setting her up," says Boots Riley. "An artist has access to media now that allows you to hold a writer accountable. Her move was brilliant."

The track is at once confrontational and wounded. Titled simply "I'm a Singer," it gives off a sense of awe at the values of a world that cares about the words of a pop star and ignores the real suffering of real people. ("Babies lying in the ditch / Thinkin' if they had a Kyte phone, you'll see this shit").

The old mirror paradox is back in play — scale, proportion, focus, all out of whack. "All I ever wanted was my story to be told," she sings on /\/\/\Y/\. For someone so skilled at image manipulation, that's hardly the whole picture. But if tomorrow night, the CIA black helicopters of her wildest fantasies really do swoop in and remove her to some undisclosed location for waterboarding and Justin Bieber–enhanced interrogation, and "I'm a Singer" was her final statement to the outside, its message would be clear enough: In the end, it's really all just art.

This story originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of SPIN.

Kid Rock's 'Made in Detroit' Clothing Line Not Actually Made in Detroit

dmaloney — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:49:05 +0000

If you had been hoping that your diehard Kid Rock fandom and merch purchases were justified by the good cause of supporting local industry, we're sad to let you down: Kid's clothing line Made in Detroit, it turns out, is so not made in Detroit. According to a report by the Detroit Free Press, the company — which Kid has promoted since the early '90s, and for which he bought the trademarks and designs after the company filed for bankruptcy back in 2005 — prints its designs on stock apparel imported from countries like India, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. Some pieces apparently don't even carry manufacturer labels (which, by the way, is totally illegal — FTC regulations mandate that textiles must be labeled with their point of origin).

According MID president Tommy Dubak, the operation uses anywhere from eight to 10 different manufacturers, all of whom get their supplies from who-knows-where. The company — which says on its website that it's "born to represent" (though perhaps just represent and nothing more) — also has a paltry seven full-time employees, which begs the question: not clothes, not jobs — what, exactly, is being made in Detroit, here, Kid?

Dubak wants people to look on the bright side, though. He says that the rocker doesn't take profits from the operation (or at least not a salary) and that they will be looking into using more stateside-manufactured textiles in the future.

Grammys '12: Who Should Win the Major Categories

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:37:38 +0000

The 54th Annual Grammy Awards are almost upon us! Hey, we'd love to help you with your office pools and living room side-bets with some sure-thing Vegas-ready odds. However, we always seem to be dead wrong (fucking Esperanza Spalding). So here are some completely arbitrary, critical decisions on who should win the nine biggest categories, just in case you want to know who we're rooting for on the SPIN couch.

Everything You Need to Know About the 54th Grammy Awards Nominations

Record of the Year
Adele - "Rolling in the Deep"
Bon Iver - "Holocene"
Bruno Mars - "Grenade"
Mumford & Sons - "The Cave"
Katy Perry - "Firework"

Who Should Win: Adele
Why: This one goes to the producers, engineers, and performer for making the total pop package. Bon Iver and Mumford are a little to insular, Bruno and Katy a little too eager. Adele somehow lives right in between, both muted and bombastic, rockist-pleasing "authentic" and poptimist-pleasing immediate. It’s the "Heart Shaped Box" of a new generation. We had it all!

Album of the Year
Adele - 21
Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Lady Gaga - Born This Way
Bruno Mars - Doo-Wops & Hooligans
Rihanna - Loud

Who Should Win: Lady Gaga
Why: It did rank the highest of these five albums on our Top 50 Albums of 2011 list, and we can’t exactly give the award to Fucked Up, can we? Writes our own Mikael Wood: "Beneath the hair and makeup and arena-razing disco-metal grooves, Born This Way delivers a message that old glamazon Pete Seeger could dig: She thinks pop can still move policy, and she might be right."

Song of the Year
Kanye West - “All of the Lights” (songwriters: Kanye West, Jeff Bhasker, Really Doe, & Malik Yusef)
Mumford & Sons - “The Cave” (songwriters: Ted Dwane, Ben Lovett, Marcus Mumford & Country Winston)
Bruno Mars - “Grenade” (songwriters: Brody Brown, Claude Kelly, The Smeezingtons & Andrew Wyatt)
Bon Iver - “Holocene” (songwriter: Justin Vernon)
Adele - "Rolling in the Deep" (songwriters: Adele & Paul Epworth)

Who Should Win: Adele
Why: This one goes to the songwriter, and naturally we'd want to give it to the co-writer of our No. 1 single of 2011, a blown-out blowback of relationship bluster and that high D that can drown out car alarms.

Best New Artist
The Band Perry
Bon Iver
J. Cole
Nicki Minaj
Skrillex

Who Should Win: Skrillex
Why: Before you Bon Iver fans tear us limb from limb in the comments section, let us clarify. Although we clearly love Bon Iver's extra-naked, sensitive, '80s AM gold take on folk rock, our guyliner-and-glasses pal is essentially helping reinvent a new musical language of bowel-busting bass and whirring industrial noise. Bon Iver's forbear Bruce Hornsby already won this very award in 1987, while an electronic artist has never taken one home. Let's hear it for drawing new blood.

Best Rock Album
Jeff Beck - Rock ‘n’ Roll Party (Honoring Les Paul)
Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Kings of Leon - Come Around Sundown
Red Hot Chili Peppers - I’m With You
Wilco - The Whole Love

Who Should Win: Foo Fighters
Why: Because exactly one album on this list actually "rocks."

Best R&B Album
Chris Brown - F.A.M.E.
El DeBarge - Second Chance
R. Kelly - Love Letter
Ledisi - Pieces of Me
Kelly Price - Kelly

Who Should Win: R. Kelly
Why: An underrated classic of throwback soul in the Raphael Saddiq vein, Kells proves he can pretty much do it all.

Best Rap Album
Jay-Z & Kanye West (The Throne) - Watch the Throne
Lil Wayne - Tha Carter IV
Lupe Fiasco - Lasers
Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Who Should Win: Kanye West
Why: Not only is it the most meticulously constructed, labored over rap album in the history or time; not only is it full of weird vocoder noise and Nicki's greatest verse ever; but Kanye will be totally mad if he loses and we'll never hear the end of it.

Best Rap Song
Kanye West - “All of the Lights”
Wiz Khalifa - Black and Yellow
Dr. Dre ft. Eminem & Skylar Grey - “I Need a Doctor”
Chris Brown ft. Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes - “Look at Me Now”
Jay-Z & Kanye West (The Throne) - “Otis”
Lupe Fiasco - “The Show Goes On”

Who Should Win: Diplo, Busta Rhymes, and Lil Wayne
Why: Fuck unrepentant dickhead Chris Brown with a hot waffle iron forever and ever. But, seriously, two amazing rappers bringing their lightning-round A-games and one headknocking beatmaker need to go home with some trophies.

Best Pop Duo/Group Performance
Tony Bennet & Amy Winehouse - “Body and Soul”
The Black Keys - “Dearest”
Coldplay - “Paradise”
Foster the People - “Pumped Up Kicks”

Who Should Win: Coldplay
Why: Fuck you, we like this song.

Metallica Hint at Grand Scheme, Await Two-Volume Biography

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:41:50 +0000

Metallica are either planning to ask you to marry them, or else preparing to unveil a major interactive musical event. Heading into the weekend, the rock titans sent out a "Save the Date" request, in the form of a video telling fans to stay tuned for a big announcement on Tuesday at 11 a.m. PST. This announcement will presumably either be the actual wedding invitation, or else the other thing. You know, the music-related one.

The clip shows images of concert-going throngs overwhelmed by the power of Metallica's rocking, along with text that reads: "You've seen them at festivals across the world. But you've never seen them… Tune in Tuesday, February 7 at 11 a.m. PST. Metallica.com." Maybe they'll be performing in 3D? Except, if you've seen them live, you have seen them in 3D. Hmm.

As Blabbermouth points out, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich evidently dropped word about this announcement during the band's 30th anniversary throwdown back in December. He said there would be an announcement in January regarding "a special interactive event" that would actually happen in June, according to Blabbermouth. By rock'n'roll time, February 7 is certainly close enough to January for this to be the same thing. We'll see.

Separately, a two-volume biography of Metallica is set for next year. British publisher Faber bought the rights to the book in a six-figure deal, TheBookSeller.com reports. The authors will be music writers Paul Brannigan and Ian Wood, who have spent roughly 75 hours interviewing the band and who had access to Metallica's tours, studio recordings, and Bay Area headquarters. In 2011, Brannigan published a Dave Grohl biography titled This Is a Call. No word yet on the new two-volume set's title, but we're guessing that won't be the subject of tomorrow's big reveal.

Courtney Love Plans Suit Over Unflattering Legal Leak

dmaloney — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:01:55 +0000

In a wholly unsurprising and redundant turn of events, Courtney Love is threatening a lawsuit against whomever leaked details contained in deposition papers her daughter filed against her to addiction site the Fix and its editor, Maer Roshan. Roshan recently published an ebook about Love that highlights information from Frances Bean Cobain's filing for a restraining order. The details, it should go without saying, are not pretty.

Love's attorney, James Janowitz, is on the paper trail, saying that the papers, which contained Cobain's claims that Love's carelessness with her prescription pills had caused the death of family pets, were confidential and sealed. He added, "When I find out what happened, we will take the appropriate legal action," per Extra.

Roshan has, of course, said that everything contained in the book, called Courtney Comes Clean: The High Life and Dark Depths of Music's Most Controversial Icon, is "absolutely true." In that statement, however, he also points out that the book gives a "nuanced and empathetic portrayal" of the Hole singer, so while he "regrets" that Love is upset, he "stands by every word."

Fair Warning: The Best and Worst Moments on Van Halen's 7 David Lee Roth Records

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:03:30 +0000

Few bands in hard rock history have been so adept at balancing the awesome and trivial as Van Halen in their prime. Consciously or instinctively, they understood that virtuoso mastery on instruments feels a whole lot less like work to listeners when you have a high-IQ stand-up comedian spouting lecherous asides during the bridges. And they also knew that eccentric noise goes down easier when it's got giant hooks and fun in the sun. They could be ridiculously corny, but their corn more often than not made them better. Most heavy metal since has been too scared to risk being cheesy — at least on purpose. So, since early Van Halen were so good at being "bad," parsing the band's best from their worst is a bit of a balancing act. Still, here's an attempt — the "most transcendent" and "most embarrassing" moments for each of Van Halen's seven albums with David Lee Roth in honor of new album A Different Kind of Truth. Flipping of coins was often necessary.

Van Halen (1978)

Most Transcendent Moment: "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," one of the least romanticized admissions of manly single-guy refusal-to-settle ever recorded, not to mention ridiculously tough-chugging hard rock yawp in a proto-hair-metal context. David Lee Roth calls the target of his disaffection "semi-good-looking," tells her if she wants it she'll have to bleed for it — mean and nasty as Jagger or Axl. Excellent "Hey! hey! hey!" soccer-terrace gang-shouting at the end, too. But the best part is probably when the earth opens up and the bottom drops out and Dave tells us he's been to the edge and stood and looked down and he's lost a lot of friends there and has no time to mess around — you can hear the chasm he's talking about. No wonder the Minutemen covered it, long before punks decided liking Van Halen might be cool.

Most Embarrassing Moment: The supposed "I got bim bam banana Dixie cups" line in "Ice Cream Man" (at least that's how online lyric sites tend to translate it), which has always sounded more like "footbomb Habana (hic!) Dixie cups." A cover of a raunchy '50s Chicago blues by John Brim, "Ice Cream Man" was clearly Van Halen's attempt at an equivalent of Aerosmith's "Big Ten Inch Record" from three years before, just kind of more gross about it. And did the "pushups" mean bras, or not?

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Van Halen II (1979)

Most Transcendent Moment: "D.O.A.," where Van Halen demonstrated that they really are the "atomic punks" they'd sung about on their first album — or at least, that they can will punkdom into existence when the situation requires them to do so. In "D.O.A." (for "dead or alive," not "dead on arrival"), they do it by sounding more like the Raw Power Stooges than most any supposedly "Stooges-like" hardcore or garage-revival band ever has, partly because they understood how the Stooges put dance in the rhythm, and they do it by letting the groove carry a threatening tale of hoods in the street: "We were sitting ducks for the po-lice man / They found a dirty-faced kid in a garbage can." "Down and dirty, dressed in rags" — in what sense is this not punk rock? Plus yelps and oofs! and musicians who start racing faster and faster toward the finish line, and David Lee Roth getting the last word in: "I'm a spark on the horizon!"

Most Embarrassing Moment: "Women In Love…," a fairly spiritless if not absolutely horrible gimme-nookie-or-go-away midtempo semi-ballad groupie come-on that's made more noxious by being the dullest song the band had recorded up to that point. And still, admittedly, it's got a certain dusky suburban late '70s warmth to it. But when all is said and done, even Roth's obnoxious diddy-bopping belches and stutters in "Bottoms Up!" and "Beautiful Girls" and "Somebody Get Me A Doctor" are more useful.

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Women And Children First (1980)

Most Transcendent Moment: "And The Cradle Will Rock…," first song on the first side, where these guys take an unusual hard-rock stance of singing from the point of view of the older generation, partly even as parents of teenagers ("Have you seen junior's grades?", followed by crazy crunching Eddie effects), though later Dave sarcastically refers to Mom and Dad in the third person (the kid hits the street at an early age, and now "he's unemployed… his folks are overjoyed.") Seems like a deft sociological comment on their burnt-and-flunked-out fanbase. But a hilarious one, and of course those burnouts ate it up — and decades down the line, though this album has some of the hardest rock VH ever made ("Fools," "Romeo Delight," "Loss Of Control"), this is the track everybody remembers, for real good reason.

Most Embarrassing Moment: "Could This Be Magic?" the jokey Manilow-titled Tin Pan Alley ragtime-revival supper-club sea chantey novelty or whatever the hell it's supposed to be, featuring the chorus from whence Women And Children First derives its name. The album kind of peters out for its last few cuts in general, to be honest, but "Take Your Whiskey Home"'s alcoholic boogie (with Dave pronouncing "bottle" exactly like Gil Scott-Heron!) and "In A Simple Rhyme"'s mixed-up pomp (with angelic harmonies wimpier than Angel's!) at least have some kick to them. "Could This Magic?" does have some sweet old-timey picking, at least. But it also has Dave pronouncing the "t" in "often" — total deal breaker!

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Fair Warning (1981)

Most Transcendent Moment: "Mean Street." Welcome to their jungle, with a nod to Martin Scorsese, no doubt. Five minutes flat of scritchy, abrasive, heavy funk metal, for a walk around a scary urban block. (Notice a trend with their "transcendent moments" so far? Don't want to sound like a broken record, but there was a certain kind of music of the gritty city streets that Van Halen were really great at, even though nobody ever talks about it.) Anyway, in this one, "The poor folks play for keeps down here, they're the living dead," and it's way too easy to wind up on the business end of a gun. Nothing but a party band!

Most Embarrassing Moment: "Hear About It Later," basically a four-minute holding pattern slog with an okay, incongruous, half-minute-or-so percussion break stuck in the middle, and even that doesn't go anywhere. The gonorrhea-drip guitar at the start of this might not quite be Exhibit A for just how boring Eddie can be sometimes, but it's still gotta be up there. And Roth's delivery, like everybody else's here, is so phoned in that you probably never even noticed the first verse is about being broke. I mean, at least the stupid take-it-all-off strip bar interlude in "Dirty Movies" has an intriguing disco beat underpinning it.

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Diver Down (1982)

Most Transcendent Moment: "Little Guitars." Not a whole lot of competition here, frankly — what else is there, the first 10 seconds of "Intruder" or "Dancing In The Street"? Though to be fair, "transcendence" probably wasn't what VH were going for on this album. So "Little Guitars" it is, picking up on the Latin lilt of 1978's (far more transcendent, but what the heck) "Dance The Night Away" and the empathetic power-pop of 1979's (also far more transcendent) "Jamie's Cryin'" while anticipating the glorious electro-rock of 1984's (you got it) "Jump," yet still a very catchy ditty (the hook goes "catch as catch, catch as catch" — can't get much more catchy than that!), with Eddie paying homage to flamenco master Carlos Montoya on a pygmy Les Paul guitar (hence, the song title.) Plus, levee-breaking drums at the beginning!

Most Embarrassing Moment: The whole album! Just kidding. Some of those cover songs and guitar doodles hold up. So how 'bout: "Happy Trails," barbershop-quarteted (not doo-wopped) old-fogey kitsch left over from Roy and Dale Rogers on B&W '50s TV sets and radio sets before that. Just two songs after "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)," the pre-"I Ain't Got Nobody" Emmett Miller cover where Dave unleashed his Eat 'Em And Smile blackface minstrel side. But at least that one had, uh, educational value or something. "Happy Trails" was just a tired TV theme. At least covering the Sanford And Son theme would've come off hip for the kids. Plus, it gets a laugh track at the end: Unfunniness evidence for sure.

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1984 (1984)

Most Transcendent Moment: "Jump," duh. Or okay, maybe not quite "duh." But let's face "Panama" and "Hot For Teacher" are merely magnificent demonstrations of talent; "Jump" is proof of genius. Well, at least as much as Diamond Dave's college entrance exam scores were. But seriously, this is obviously synth-pop-and-roll for ages. Some of the warmest technocrat music ever made. Eddie should put his guitar down more often! And then, uh, pick it back up for a cool solo, of course. "I ain't the worst that you've seen" might be the most self-deprecating brag ever in a number-one single, and this has to be the only '80s chart-topper with a "record machine" in it that's even better than the one Joan Jett sang. (Didn't everybody call them jukeboxes by then anyway?) Not to mention probably a better Cars song than the Cars ever did, which is saying a lot, right? Plus, like all truly great songs with "jump" in the title, it does.

Most Embarrassing Moment: "I brought my pencil! Gimme sumpin' to write on, man!" in the otherwise sweat-hog classic "Hot For Teacher." A Cheech & Chong imitation, seemingly, but at most only half of the dumb sexual metaphor (if that's even what Dave was going for) works. Either that, or Eddie's minute-long Star Wars-ish album intro "1984" itself: Maybe he was nostalgic for Meco, who the heck knows.

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A Different Kind of Truth (2012)

Most Transcendent Moment: “Outta Space,” which actually manages to survive its nearly three minutes without ever once letting up its energy or falling on its face, while meanwhile carrying us to planets VH never thought to visit before — or at least to some fast-and-furious brand of retro-futurism, with rocket bumper stickers and “interstellar facial pulls” (that’s what it sounds like anyway) and cyborg voicings. Otherwise, the could’ve-been-a-trainwreck comeback album contains several surprisingly almost-there attempts at Sounding How Van Halen Used To Sound, but even most of the better ones — “China Town,” “Bullethead,” “As Is,” “Honeybabysweetiedoll,” maybe a couple others — tend to wind up clumsy or just “off” here and there, confused about whether nü-metal or Las Vegas is the band’s true calling. Awesome intros, for the most part, and no lack of topologically twisted curveballs thrown, but Roth’s talk-show asides, especially, are aggravatingly inconsistent, inspiring as many huh?s as ha!s. Further exposure could flip-flop this opinion, but for now there’s something apt about the best song on an album with an almost-Buzzcocks title (see: A Different Kind Of Tension, 1980) being the record’s most new wave cut.

Most Embarrassing Moment: The leaden, half-assed, not particularly bluesy “You And Your Blues” — especially the parts where an unusually gravelly Roth blows his colon-groaning “Woman!! Suffah for a cullah!!” then claims he’s suffering 'cause of her, and everybody else is suffering too. Well, we sure are. No idea whether this is meant as some kind of racial allegory — “Crossroads” references suggest maybe; “19th Nervous Breakdown” references suggest maybe not. Who do they think they are, Chickenfoot?

Gucci Mane Drops Mixtape, Sees Ice Cream Tattoo Memorialized in Sculpture

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:44:05 +0000

Yesterday wasn't only Super Bowl Sunday. It was also the day Gucci Mane released his first official solo mixtape since his December 11 release from prison. Hosted by DJ Holiday, who shouts out effusive praise fewer times than Super Bowl announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth (everything was "brilliant" to Collinsworth, wasn't it?), Trap Back> brings out a roster of guests that includes Waka Flocka Flame, 2 Chainz, Future, Jadakiss, and Yo Gotti. They rhyme over beats from Lex Luger, Zaytoven, and Drumma Boy, among others. Stream the mixtape below, or download it via Dat Piff.

Even when Gucci isn't giving away music, he is on our collective minds. Partly because of that ludicrous giant tattoo of an ice cream cone permanently etched onto his right cheek. As Buzzfeed points out, an artist has made a sculpture based on the Atlanta rapper's mystifying tat. Tre Reising, a student at Michigan's Cranbrook Academy of Art, reportedly said, "I mean, I would give it to him … if he wants to miss out on all the swag points he would get from buying it." Based on Trap Back's lyrics, Gucci might've already spent too much money on lawyers and wristwatches. Burr!

Read our review of Gucci Mane & V-Nasty's BAYTL.

Nicki Minaj Mopes About Fame on 'Marilyn Monroe'

dmaloney — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:48:12 +0000

A new Nicki Minaj track has materialized out of thin air, to coincide seamlessly with her Super Bowl halftime show appearance with Madonna last night. No one seems to know anything about it — namely where it came from and whether it will be on Roman Reloaded in April — but it's a far cry from the foul-mouthedness of "Stupid Hoe" (you're welcome, BET). We can't help humming B.o.B's "Airplanes" and Eminem's "Love the Way You Lie" (not to mention a few Something Corporate songs) over the repetitive piano riff. Ingenuity, or lack thereof, aside, the mopey, sucks-to-be-an-objectified-celebrity lyrics don't make us feel much better. Like You Heard That New, we, too, are still awaiting the "Monster" Nicki resurrection.

Video Premiere: diskJokke's Environmentally Friendly 'Now Dance'

Ken Bachor — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:36:13 +0000

Here's something you don't see everyday in the nerdisphere: For Norwegian producer diskJokke's recently released "Now Dance" single (out now on 7" vinyl, courtesy of Splendour) production company Babusjka teamed up with NORWEA (the Association of Norwegian Wind Energy) to shoot this CGI-enhanced clip in Smøla, a remote municipality on Norway's northwestern coast that's home to one of the largest wind energy projects in all of Europe. If he hasn't seen it already, somebody please send this to Al Gore right away.

Making Sense of Liz Phair's Lana Del Rey Defense

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:26:55 +0000

Has each successive wave of backlash and backlash-to-backlash over a young pop singer with an OK voice, a distinctive Betty-Draper-gone-Beth-Orton (plus dated hip-hop slang!) aesthetic, and a couple of otherwise-forgettable TV appearances got you dizzy yet? Just you wait. Liz Phair wrote about Lana Del Rey over the weekend for the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, and Phair's take is, um, complicated.

The connection between the two would seem to be that both are female singer-songwriters whose music can be frankly (hetero-)sexual and critically divisive. Phair, for her part, released an almost universally acclaimed indie-rock landmark with 1994 debut Exile in Guyville ("Phair doesn't merely show promise — she seems to have it all, good and bad, already," our reviewer prophetically opined), then put out a couple of almost universally somewhat-less-acclaimed records before splitting everybody with a self-titled album of shiny pop. Del Rey, of course, is the "Video Games" singer with the Brian Williams-panned Saturday Night Live performance and the anticlimactic debut album Born to Die. (See also: Deconstructing Lana Del Rey.)

What the industry veteran has to say about the fresh-faced up-and-comer is complicated — one could less charitably say "confusing" — so let's try to break it down. In one fell swoop, Phair basically claims Del Rey as an heir, says Del Rey's music isn't necessarily that good, revisits the tired old authenticity debate our critic Rob Harvilla already took care of once and for all, links Del Rey to a vision of a woman-led society (sounds better to me, honestly!), calls for Del Rey to "duke it out" with female musicians from M.I.A. to Tegan and Sara, and tells us we won't understand why she's saying this (I'm still not sure I do). Then Phair brings it all back to, well, herself.

A few choice quotes from Phair: "You see, Lana Del Rey is exactly what I was hoping to inspire when I took on the male rock establishment almost twenty years ago with my debut record, Exile in Guyville." Continuing directly: "Let me break it down for you: she's writing herself into existence." On authenticity: "I would argue that the uncomfortable feelings she elicits are simply the by-product of watching a woman wanting and taking like a man." On feminism: "I just want to hear the true voices of women self-expressing — smart ones, stupid ones, ugly ones, beautiful ones, good ones, bad ones, fat ones, thin ones, all of it — until the profound silence that has resounded throughout history is filled with a healthy chorus coming from our side of the aisle."

It all ends like this, politician-style self-reference entirely Phair's: "So how does Liz Phair feel about Lana Del Rey? Well, as a recording artist, I've been hated, I've been ridiculed, and conversely, hailed as the second coming. All that matters in the end is that I've been heard."

Phair's overall point appears to be that she's happy to see women expressing themselves whatever the quality of that expression, just because it evens out the divide between women and men a little bit more. After watching a Super Bowl where people had to apologize over a word that means "poop" but nobody had to apologize for making gazillions of dollars on marketing messages reinforcing the repulsive notion that the world revolves around male chauvinists ages 18 to 34, we couldn't agree more! But her argument falls apart in a couple of places. First, when she talks about "the true voices" of women "self-expressing," isn't Phair pulling us back into that whole horrible "authenticity" morass? Second, as far as we understand the harshest criticism of Del Rey, it's not that she's "wanting and taking like a man," it's that she's "wanting and taking" just like a stereotypical, anti-feminist conception of a woman: That is, she isn't wanting at all; she's existing only as an object of desire, completely in thrall to the male gaze (an argument David Letterman creepily underscored last week when he fawned over her as if she were one of his female employees).

So is Del Rey advancing the cause of women everywhere by reinforcing the same ideas about femininity you might see in a GoDaddy.com ad? Phair appears to be saying so, which is totally Phair's right. As someone who considers himself a feminist and yet can't help but love Drake's misogyny-tinged Take Care, however, I'd argue the problem with Born to Die isn't its perceived politics — it's that the songs just aren't interesting enough to entertain, move, inspire, or achieve much other emotional connection over the course of an entire album. After all, if we wanted to get political couldn't we just as easily talk about class rather than gender, and how Phair and Del Rey are both a couple of rich kids whose banal idea of rebellion ultimately reinforces the status quo? But why the hell would we want to do that? And anyway, weren't there a couple of so-so tracks even on Exile in Guyville?

Right, it's complicated. But from the point of a view of music listeners (and critics) the debate should ultimately boil down to whether or not an artist has the songs to back up their particular shtick. Phair did once; Del Rey does on a couple of songs. The rest is just the internet being the internet. And somewhere around this point in the blog post is when the snake eats its tail, though obviously not for the first time, and almost definitely not for the last.

Sleigh Bells Slay Tampa: Exclusive Live Shots From 'Paradise Lost' Tour

Ken Bachor — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:50:18 +0000

Alexis Krauss and Derek Miller are preparing to unleash 'Reign of Terror' with a tour that roared into gear in Florida over the weekend. SPIN has your only photos from the show!

First Spin: Download Fort Lean's Anthemic 'Sunsick'

Ken Bachor — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:53:15 +0000

"Sunsick," the new track from Brooklyn's Fort Lean, is anthemic in all the right ways. The rousing rocker is full of pounding, echoed guitars, backing falsetto woo wooos, drum work that doesn't stint on either the kick or crash, and a melody crooned with passion and bite by frontman Keenan Mitchell. It's a good start-your-week-off-right track. The 7" single, from which this song comes, is out on February 28 via Neon Gold/Black Bell, and you can watch their video for "Beach Holiday" on SPIN, too!

DOWNLOAD

Beauty Bar: See 'SNL' Host Bon Iver, Defend Lana Del Rey

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:08:03 +0000

Justin Vernon's Christmas dream came true on Saturday night. As promised, Bon Iver performed not only "Beth/Rest," but also "Holocene," both from last year's self-titled record, on Saturday Night Live.

Bon Iver's performance followed Lana Del Rey's oh-so-supposedly-significant appearance a couple of weeks earlier. If you want to wash out the taste of someone who brings out the at-home fans' inner Simon Cowell, it's a good look to book an act that specializes in abstrusely nostalgic soft rock with aspirations toward capital-b Beauty. With all the vague, Kenny G-cheesy prettiness, it was sort of like the musical equivalent of a Thomas Kinkade painting, except a lot more difficult to enjoy ironically.

Which brings us back (sorry!) to Del Rey. Only days after David Letterman praised the singer's still-just-OK TV return in creeptastic fashion, SNL's Kristen Wiig went on "Weekend Update" to mount a defense of the artist who needs defending so badly she's probably going to wind up at No. 2 on this week's Billboard album charts. Taliban jokes! A tired return to the irrelevant authenticity debate! Wrong-headed Bubba Sparxx insults! We've even reached the point where a major TV show suggests criticizing someone who is (successfully) marketing a product on TV for being "weird" is somehow equivalent to criticizing weird-seeming people in real life for just being themselves. Am I the only one who feels kinda bad for Ashlee Simpson right now?

See Super Bowl XLVI's 10 Best Musical Moments

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:36:09 +0000

1. Madonna's Halftime Show
Whether you loved it or hated it, Madge's extravaganza — complete with M.I.A.'s flip-off — was pure entertainment spectacle.

2. Kelly Clarkson Singing the National Anthem
She nailed it. Beautiful.

3. The Darkness Believe in a Thing Called Samsung
With a new album finally on the way, the Darkness surely consider this Samsung commercial, which featured a unitard-clad Justin Hawkins blasting out "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" as a high-profile step in a long-awaited comeback.

4. Echo & the Bunnymen, Vampires, and Audi
This ad was awesomely weird. Set to Echo & the Bunnymen's goth-rock classic "The Killing Moon," this spot seems to suggest that Audi is now making headlights a selling point — because they're so bright they can kill partying vampires!

5. OK GO Go Nuts for Chevrolet Sonic
The masters of the ingenious viral music video lend their talents to a daredevil Chevy ad.

6. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert Perform "America the Beautiful"
I was hoping for more vocal pyrotechnics, but Nashville's cutest married couple acquitted themselves nicely.

7. Elton John Is the King of Pepsi
Another gloriously quirky commercial. Elton John plays a fancy-pants king who reluctantly offers X Factor

winner Melanie Amaro a Pepsi — with unintended results. Plus: Flava Flav!

8. The Kia Optima Is For Men!
A scantily clad supermodel, rodeo riders, MMA fighting, lots of fire — one couldn't accuse Kia of opting for subtlety here. Which is why Mötley Crüe made for perfect musical accompaniment.

9. Bud Light Platinum Goes "Runaway"
The weirdest thing about Bud's use of Kanye West's "Runaway" was that they only aired the eerie piano plinking at the beginning of the song — Ye's voice is never heard.

10. Clint Eastwood Replaces Eminem For Chrysler
During last year's Super Bowl, hometown boy Eminem repped for Detroit's proud legacy (courtesy of Chrysler). This year, the honor went to Clint Eastwood, who played someone from Detroit in Gran Torino. Weird too that the ad was about "halftime in America." Does that mean we're only lasting another 200 odd years? Either way, stirring classical music gets me every time!

Bjork Blinds Us With Science at First U.S. 'Biophilia' Show

WhineyG — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:11:31 +0000

A stagehand moving an iPad is maybe the funniest thing you'll see at a rock show all year.

As far as I know, Björk hasn't made an instantly hummable song since 120 Minutes went off the air. So now her life is, justifiably, the indieverse's "important artist," the 800-pound swan in the room, a dreamer and doer of grand gestures, a mix between Amelie and Terrence Malick who gets to vacillate between whimsical and batshit and genius and hilarious and goofy and awesome. The first night of her Biophilia residency at the New York Hall of Science was all of these things and I got to touch a Mars rock!

The whole Biophilia album, app and stage show is tethered to learning — Life's Sir David Attenborough provides narration, workshops for kids happen later in the week, geometric shapes show the patterns around us, an intro promises "nature, music, technology... listen, learn, create," basically Ludwig von Drake gone Alexander McQueen. Naturally, Björk provided an outlet where the curious could show up early and poke around a museum, maybe explore a robotic sub's interior, feel the heat of a mine wall, or see how much water is in your body (14.1 gallons for me), all while organ versions of Björk songs made for perfectly uneasy ambiance. Most of the exhibits went unloved, though, as people rushed inside to get a good spot.

(Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Inside the museum's grand hall, Björk had set up a stage in the center of the room, the deepest point away from it was about seven heads back. There was literally no bad place to stand, as she worked all corners of the room; everyone getting a different vantage point to all the gee-gaws, mousetraps and music-making steampunk whoosiwhatsits churning along on stage. Björk and her suit (which looked like it was made of four latex Smurf ears) obviously cut an arresting presence. But in such a unique location with a unique setup and unique instruments, it was hard for it not to feel like the machines and doo-dads weren't battlebotting themselves into being the real stars. And they were indeed cool: A tesla coil lowered in a giant birdcage generated a bigger robo-scuzz boltnoise than the Skrillex show downtown, her "gravity harp" of four giant metronomes plucked mesmerizingly like the world's biggest office toy, drummer Manu Delagu played some sort of space pod that worked like a steel-pan turned inside out, Björk whacked an noise-making iPad with a four-finger slam like she was playing the best game of Simon.

Add a 20-person, all-female choir in space robes and it was less like watching a concert and more like going to Bowie's EPCOT. That's obviously a huge compliment, but since the toys were so grand, the enormous chunks of the show not driven by technological ingenuity and funky synesthasia seemed to drag in comparison. The Biophilia tunes on their own (and she played 90 percent of them) sound mostly like 90s IDM attached to the disjunctive melodies that Dirty Projectors have been trying to cop for years, with Björk's singing about mushrooms and technotic plates with a delivery as chilly as a scientist's. But at least sometimes we'd get cool videos of some starfish holding hands (holding points?), and whenever the choir would rrrrrrush into a crescendo, it would instantly overpower nature and machine in the best way humanly possible.

(Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

'Yo! MTV Raps Classic Cuts' Returning With Special on 'Compton,' 'O.P.P.'

dmaloney — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:10 +0000

Everyone's favorite old-school hip-hop tutorial Yo! MTV Raps Classic Cuts will return to television this month, MTV2 has announced. This time, the special will highlight N.W.A's "Straight Outta Compton," Naughty by Nature's "O.P.P.," and Common's "I Used to Love HER."

The first installment of Classic Cuts aired back in December and featured the reminiscings of Busta Rhymes, ?uestlove, Q-Tip, Ice Cube and more, on the subject of A Tribe Called Quest's "Scenario," Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," and Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day."

The new show airs Sunday, February 19 at 10 p.m. (9 CT), so if you're new to this whole song and dance, you have plenty of time to brush up on classic hip-hop. If you're interested in other people's property, you can start nowhere better than our look back at "O.P.P.".

Watch the last special in three segments, starting with Tribe Called Quest's "Scenario":

On Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on Me":

On Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day":

Madonna Executes a Royal Super Bowl Spectacle for XLVI Halftime Show

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:35:29 +0000

On 2008's Hard Candy Madonna sang about having "four minutes to save the world." At Super Bowl XLVI she had 12 to do the near impossible: entertain an audience of skeptical football fans, media critics, and bathroom-breakers during the country's most-watched television event while also promoting herself and her upcoming album, M.D.N.A. The possible pitfalls, to name a few — go too sexy and be accused of mimicking Nipplegate; play it too safe and risk being told she's too old for the game; sing only classic songs and be called a heritage act; sing too many new songs and risk alienating the fans who fell in love with her music two decades ago.

So the Queen of Pop executed the performance as though it was one of her highly choreographed tours. She hired the tech whizzes at Moment Factory to construct a huge stage covered in screens (no blinking letters like last year's Black Eyed Peas debacle, and no fans awkwardly waving their arms in front of her face). She brought along her core crew of gifted dancers and collaborated with Cirque du Soleil. She found clever ways to connect five of her biggest hits into a medley that also included her new single "Give Me All Your Luvin'." She probably didn't please everyone, but she put on an impeccably produced show up to her own strict standards. It was an extremely entertaining pop spectacle on a massive scale.

The performance kicked off with a "Vogue" remix that visually recalled Madonna's two most recent tours, with the star on a throne (a nod to her Sticky & Sweet Tour opening) flanked by a battalion of marching gladiators (a reference to the advancing dancers at the top of her Confessions Tour). Echos of "move to the music" melded into the beginnings of her Music single "Music" as the stage transformed into a vibrant boombox and her dancers twisted themselves down a set of bleachers, assisting the 53-year-old singer with a series of cartwheels. A tightrope walker bounced on a wire as LMFAO arrived and "Music" began to mingle with their own "Party Rock Anthem." Madonna strutted at the top of the stage to one of last year's biggest hits, and contorted her chiseled body to the "Sexy and I Know It" lyric "I work out!" (Yes, we all know!)

Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. hit the stage next in full cheerleader regalia to assist on "Give Me All Your Luvin'," and while Minaj got the bigger cheers for her (almost certainly lip-synched) motormouth verse, M.I.A. took the bigger chance, flipping the bird on her final line. Compared to Madonna's history of boundary-pushing, however, the gesture seemed tame.

Madonna then began singing the chorus of "Open Your Heart" a cappella over the rat-a-tat of an arriving drumline, and Cee Lo Green joined her for a bit of "Express Yourself." The soul god's real purpose, however, was to provide the gospel heart beneath "Like a Prayer," which of course featured a massive robed choir. As the song reached its final peak, Madonna vanished into a poof of smoke and the words "World Peace" were digitally scrawled across the floor. Was it audacious to try to connect the prior 12 minutes' entertainment to international politics? Of course. But as marketing gimmick or genuine sentiment, "Music" does make the people come together.

WeekSauce: SPIN's Friday Night Highlights

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:58:22 +0000

• This was the week of deep thinking about Lana Del Rey and man, did we think deeply about pop's polarizing new presence this week. Thanks to our Deconstructing story and album review, we even landed in one of those amazing Taiwanese animated videos. This is truly the greatest honor to befall us in a long time. We'd like to thank our parents.

• LDR wasn't the only new artist we explored this week, however: In fact, we featured five of them in our Best New Artists for February roundup.

• When we weren't musing on new music, we were celebrating the life of Don Cornelius, Soul Train's creator and silky-smooth host, who died after an apparent suicide at age 75.

• SPIN also brought you Feist's heavy duty new video for "The Bad in Each Other," Puscifer's Lynchtastic vid for "Telling Ghosts", an incredible Disco Demands podcast, footage of Death Cab for Cutie playing live in the Artists Den, a stellar new Beach Fossils track, and full album streams by the Twilight Sad, Blondes, Band of Skulls, and Trailer Trash Tracys.

• We also chatted with Ladyhawke (about her upcoming disc), the Chemical Brothers (about their synapse-destroying documentary), All-American Rejects' Tyson Ritter (about being a bad boy), and Say Anything's Max Bemis (about ... dude, everything).

• Looking onward: Saturday Bon Iver will play on Saturday Night Live and he was kind enough to share his set list with us. And don't forget about the Super Bowl — here are all the musical moments you'll want to catch.

Super Bowl Cheat Sheet: 7 Musical Moments You Won't Want to Miss

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:18:27 +0000

1. Madonna's Halftime Show
It's about time: The biggest pop star in the world performing at the year's biggest televised event. Presumably, Madonna will be bringing along M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, both of whom guest on the "Give Me All Your Luvin'" single. And, if Will.I.Am is to be trusted, LMFAO might stop by too.

2. Kelly Clarkson Singing the National Anthem
Based on the concert we just saw, we're pretty confident Kelly Clarkson will nail this. She's even got national anthem experience, having sung at the 2011 NBA Finals. At the very least, seeing Christina Aguilera flub the lyrics at last year's game should've scared Kelly into some extra practice time.

3. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert Performing "America the Beautiful"
Chalk this one up to promotion — Shelton is a co-host of NBC's The Voice, the second season of which will premiere on the network's post-game slot. He'll be performing with his spitfire wife, the great Miranda Lambert. Her participation pretty much guarantees this'll be a lively performance of the song. For something more than that, watch this video right now.

4. Lenny Kravitz and the Fray During the Pre-Game
NBC is showing six hours of pre-game coverage. They have to fill it somehow. But I'm wondering whether or not the Patriots' offensive line be able to withstand the vaunted Giants' pass rush? How will Gronkowski's ankle injury affect Tom Brady's aerial attack? And why don't more people realize that boneless buffalo chicken wings are far superior to bone-in?

5. Elton John Being Is the King of Pepsi
X Factor Winner Melanie Amaro and Flava Flav also feature in this elaborate ad, which will air during the game, and which features Elton John dressed in royal finery as a monarch who's stingy with his Pepsi. Question: Did Elton dig into his own closet for his wardrobe? The ad has already premiered online.

6. John Williams Goes Dubstep
The composer of epic soundtrack anthems (including Indiana Jones and Star Wars) will see his 2006 piece "Wide Receiver" wub-wub-ified at some point during the game.

7. Mötley Crüe Schilling for KIA
This cock-rocking ad has also launched online. In it, a mischievous elf (or something? Gnome? Fairy?) causes some some Joe Schmo to dream about Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima and burning rubber in a Kia Optima while the Crüe play in the middle of a racetrack. Ah, the sophisticated techniques advertisers employ to reach the coveted "male" demographic.

In all seriousness, enjoy the game! I'm going Patriots 27 — Giants 20, but only because I'm trying to incur a reverse jinx. Look back at five of the Bowl's best halftime shows — including Michael Jackson, U2, and the Boss — in our super roundup.

Want to Be Ke$ha's Assistant? Break Out That Penis Costume

dmaloney — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:31:35 +0000

Usually day-glo man-eater Ke$ha recently posed for Glamour wearing (gasp!) regular human clothing. Between that great photo, her for the Amnesty International benefit compilation, and her collaboration with the Flaming Lips, perhaps the glitter princess is really trying to tell us something about her upcoming sophomore album, which is in its early stages right now. She did, after all, promise MTV News, "People say that rock'n'roll is dead, and it is my mission and my goal to resurrect it in the form of my pop music."

In this latest interview, Ke$ha told Glamour a lot of very typical Ke$ha things, like that she has clothing-optional parties at her Nashville pad at which attendees basically just "body-paint each other and run around," and that she is so busy taking "so many different instrument lessons," designing clothing and jewelry, and prepping her next album, that men are not a priority in her life.

But we have to call attention to the weirdest — and most Ke$ha-y — snippet of the interview:

I'm just very amused by five-year-old humor. Don't get me wrong: I do destroy men on a weekly basis. It's like a hobby. I'm like a praying mantis. They fuck me, and then I eat them. But who isn't amused by a giant, dancing penis? Sometimes when I'm sad, I make my assistant put on the penis outfit and bounce around my house.

First of all, didn't JWOWW say that first part? Second of all, keep this in mind, potential Ke$ha assistants!