Lionel Richie

The Top Eight Celebrity Tax Evaders

After clutching at the spotlight, a lot of stars learn how to evade things--like parapazzi, fans, and especially the IRS. Here's a very timely summation I was just sent which details the top celebrity tax evaders of all time. It's free, so don't even think of writing it off! Top Celebrity Tax Evad ... More >>

Enduring in Red Hook

Stairs, barbecues, and disaster tourists

Lionel Knows Best: 10 Black Pop Stars Who Should Go Country

By Mike Seely [Editor's note: Country Time is a new biweekly column for our sister music blog in Seattle.] With the nation's major-party political conventions drawing to a close recently with a rousing reelection appeal from the nation's first black president, it seems fitting to cast a spotlight ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Kelly Clarkson, Lionel Richie And Countrified Pop Tunes

After Kelly Clarkson went to No. 1 on Billboard's Country Songs chart last year with the Jason Aldean duet "Don't You Wanna Stay," I wondered hopefully if the Texas-born pop star would finally go country with her next album. So I was a little disappointed a few months later, when she debuted the bla ... More >>

Three Reasons Why Old Records Are Bigger Than Ever

Deep catalog diving

Q&A: Sontag Shogun On Playing Visual Art Installations, Lionel Richie, And Susan Sontag

There's a tangible loneliness to Sontag Shogun's music, but there's a wistful loveliness present, too. The Brooklyn trio assumes a sort of songwriting assembly line, with Ian Temple's emotive, tremulous piano figures falling prey to Jesse Perlstein's legion of atmospheric, laptop-catalogue samples a ... More >>

100 & Single: The R&B/Hip-Hop Factor In The Music Business's Endless Slump

Here are a few recent data points from chart bible Billboard and data provider Nielsen Soundscan as we move into the second half of 2012: • In its midyear music-industry report card, Soundscan reports a return to the dismal album sales climate; year-to-date disc sales are off 3.2% from the sam ... More >>

Three Other Reasons Why Sales Of Old Records Are Outpacing Sales Of New Ones

This week the news came out that sales of catalog albums outpaced those of new records during the first six months of 2012. Current (less than 18 months old) albums sold 73.9 million copies between January 2 and June 1, down from 82.8 million in the first six months of 2011; catalog albums sold 76.6 ... More >>

Q&A: Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite On How Happy Hardcore Sucks, Not Caring That Instrumental Rock Is Out Of Style, And Covering The Jewish Prayer "My Father, My King"

For the last fifteen years, the sonic-terrorizing Scottish smashheads Mogwai have remained true to their original vision: the cathartic squelching of a loud/soft gargantuan-riff dynamic undeterred by the music fashions and trends dictated by the Bitchfork monarchy. Admittedly an uncool bunch— ... More >>

Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" Takes One Person's Sanity To The End Of The Line

This month, to celebrate the Internet's unbridled love for wallowing in nostalgia and even greater relishing of talking about why certain cultural artifacts are horrible, Sound of the City presents First Worsts, a series in which our writers remember the first time... they ever hated a song enough t ... More >>

HELLO. . . .

Is it Lionel Richie you’re looking for?

Madonna's Album Took a Record Nosedive, Say Insiders

I'm happy for Madonna's longevity. I don't agree with all the ageist complaints about her. I realize the decks are stacked harder against the woman because of these prejudices. And I applaud her for using a crafty array of marketing devices to try staying on top, as she's always done. The other ... More >>

Guns N' Roses At The Cafe Carlyle?

Shocking moment: Talented Canadian singer Gregory Charles sang "Sweet Child O' Mine" at the hotsy totsy Cafe Carlyle last night. By request! It was like hearing the Sex Pistols at a coronation. Charles and his trio do a really fun show which starts with them banging out some jazzy standards ("Ta ... More >>

Fiona Apple, The-Dream, And More At SXSW Day One (With Video Of Two New Fiona Apple Songs)

If you're familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in this planet's many happenings, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. To break down the chaos, a few of Village ... More >>

Coming This Week: SXSW Coverage

by Chris Gray "What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area." —Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive You don't have to spend much time at South By Southwest to know that all of ... More >>

Oddsmaking: Should The Grammys Just Give The Album Of The Year Award To Adele Now?

For the last twenty years, the award for Album of the Year, the biggest Grammy honor of them all, has tended to go to two types of people: young women and old men. Female solo artists under 30 (Lauryn Hill, Taylor Swift) and male veterans over 40 (Tony Bennett, U2) have dominated the category for tw ... More >>

Oddsmaking: Will Adele Go "Rolling" Over Her Song Of The Year Competition?

The Grammys have a determinedly behind-the-times history, and Song of the Year is one of the ceremony's most reliably old-fashioned categories. It's given to the songwriter—even though what constitutes a "song" today is a lot different than when the Grammys began in 1959, back when sheet music ... More >>

Kathleen Hanna Is The Set Designer for an Insane Clown Posse-Inspired Performance Piece

It's not the first place we'd expect to find Kathleen Hanna's name, but there it is, subtly tacked onto the credits for Neal Medlyn's Wicked Clown Love, a 2012 experimental work "built around the music and culture of hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse, their devoted fan base the Juggalos, and other form ... More >>

100 & Single: LMFAO's Pair Of Chart-Toppers Suggest Stardom, Guarantee Nothing

​The national star-making machinery only begins to take you seriously when you command the field more than once. Just like, say, GOP presidential candidates, pop acts can't chart one strong number and assume dominance is permanently theirs. They've got to come back on top, week after week, sur ... More >>

The Band Perry, Taylor Swift Win Big At Last Night's Country Music Awards

Last night, country music's biggest stars (not to mention welcome outsiders like Lionel Richie and Kenny Loggins, who joined Male Vocalist of the Year Blake Shelton for a performance of "Footloose") convened in Nashville for the CMA's annual awards show. By the time hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Un ... More >>

100 & Single: The Dawning Of The MTV Era And How It Rocket-Fueled The Hot 100

​What was the first rock and roll song? Ask music historians and you'll get a range of '40s and early '50 candidates, from "Good Rockin' Tonight" to "Rocket 88." Ah, but when did the Rock Era begin? That's easier. Everybody knows that Bill Haley and His Comets' rendition of "Rock Around the C ... More >>

Levi Aron Suspected in Murder of Brooklyn Boy Leiby Kletzky; Facebook Page Asks, 'Is Your Family Safe?'

​Levi Aron has been named as the suspect, not yet charged, in the brutal murder of Leiby Kletzky, the Brooklyn boy missing since Monday who was found chopped up in a suitcase, left in a Dumpster in Park Slope. It has also been reported that some of the boy's remains were found in Aron's refrig ... More >>

Annoyed Scientist Wants All You Narcissistic Pop Stars To Get Off His Lawn

​Today's Times has a piece on a psychologist's theory about song lyrics of the current day being proof that we are all self-obsessed narcissists. The psychologist who came up with the theory, Nathan DeWall, was apparently inspired to embark on this quest by Weezer's "The Greatest Man Who Ever ... More >>

American Idol Season 10, Top 11: The Freaky Rictus Smile of Thia Megia

This person has no idea what Motown is. Photo courtesy Michael Becker/ FOX. ​Since last we spoke, Karen Rodriguez has gone back to MySpaceLand, Steven Tyler's wardrobe has grown impressively more absurd, and Jacob Lusk has bodied the fuck out of Heart's "Alone." I missed the last week of Ameri ... More >>

Lionel Richie: Marvel Superhero & other horrors from America's worst coloring books

​Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power. Three Godawful Coloring Books The coloring book industry now profits thousands of do ... More >>

Who Should Perform at The Michael Jackson Tribute?

​On September 26, Vienna will be home not to just mountains of high-caloric wiener schnitzel, but to scads of bad-for-you stars singing their love for Michael Jackson so they can gain a mass televised audience and revive their careers. It's basically the memorial all over again, but without al ... More >>

Obits Do Minnesota Public Radio

​The SOTC-beloved quartet Obits recorded at three song set at Minnesota's public radio affiliate KCMP on Monday, performing the relative rarity "I Can't Lose" (it was released on a Record Store Day 7" as the A-side to a Graham Nash "Military Madness" cover), a super-mellow "Two-Headed Coin," a ... More >>

Live Blogging the Michael Jackson Memorial

Live Video streaming by Ustream For all the lovely grace notes, homages, and eulogies that have flowed from any number of erudite and compassionate individuals in the wake of Michael Jackson's untimely death at the young age of 50, a celebrity's death is not over in American until the huge, gaudy, ... More >>

MJ in LA Update

Latifah said, "I'm here to represent millions of fans who loved Michael... all of you." She reads a Maya Angelou poem, "We had him," composed for the occasion: "Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing/Now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer win ... More >>

Found: World's Least Persuasive Apartment-Share Ad Reply

So we've all heard that one silver lining to the whole economic meltdown is that New York is

Neal Medlyn's Unpronounceable Symbol

Voice Choice: Neal Medlyn's Unpronouncable Symbol

SEXUAL HEALING

A dude who knows how to Get Off

Jamie Lidell, the Only Thing on Television

Usher Doesn't Have Sex Anymore

He now 'makes moments that will outlast the world' instead. You'll live with it.

Free Will Astrology: Week of April 30

American Idol Week Six: The Archuleta Problem

American Idol Week Three: "Hallelujah" and Bullshit

Why We Love Justice (and Shouldn't)

The perils of hyping dance music you can't really dance to

Sublime Frequencies

The Field turns Lionel Richie and the Mac into thundering, florid ambient triumph

The Grammy Awards: A Running Diary

Country Music Grapples With Race

Face Off

Slow jam superproducer returns to AC with vintage but divaless set

Laugh Your Heart Out

Everyday life as vaudeville and vaudeville as coming-of-age in Jewish heritage (ha-ha)

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