Sometimes I feel the need to call out hypocrisy and logic-bending processes of thinking. Sometimes I need to tell the world how awesome something is. And sometimes I just want to laugh and have others laugh with me. I'm Kyle Shelton, and this is my blog.
Justin Bieber is quite the polarizing artists. Some hate him. Some (aka every 14 year old girl) love him. Some hate him and love his music (me).
Well his most recent collaboration is karate chopping its way to the airwaves. "Never Say Never" is a song produced by The Messengers and performed by Justin Bieber and The Karate Kid star, Jaden Smith. It serves as a "theme song" for the film, but most never really heard it till recently when it started charting on the Billboard top 100. Debuting at number 96 this past week, "Never Say Never" is a surefire hit, featuring the automatic chart-topper Mr. Bieber as well as the unorthodox but surely welcome guest rapper, Jaden Smith.
Check the song out in my sidebar. I've added an auto-play playlist chronicling my ever-changing personal music chart. Never Say Never is in the #2 position, just below Eminem and Rihanna's exceptional "Love the Way you Lie" and just above The White Tie Affair's Summer party anthem "You Look Better when I'm Drunk." Let me know what you think!
If you haven’t heard of 12-year-old Greyson Chance yet, you probably don’t get on Facebook or watch Ellen very often. The 6th grader is a piano-playing singer from Oklahoma who rose to interweb fame with his rendition of “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga at a talent show-esque event. He was recorded, uploaded to the celebrity-spewing machine YouTube, and now he’s gone viral with over 2,000,000 views.
In case you have a life, this is the now famed video:
[Note the incredibly lackluster faces on the girls behind him. These same girls are probably kicking themselves in the face for looking so trollish on a now internationally-spread video. Ha!]
If you are like me and like to lurk on the computer all the time, then forego that video and tell me what you think about Greyson Chance. Why? Well, if you Google his name into… well, Google, you’ll see a cornucopia of websites chanting that Mr. Chance is the new Justin Bieber.
For the record, I’m not sure how famous or how long someone has to be famous in order for them to have a “new” version of themselves. A “new” Michael Jackson or a “new” Madonna would make sense, but Justin Bieber has been renown now for barely a year, and to this day plenty of critics foresee him as a passing fad (cough, Ke$ha, cough). Regardless, I beg to differ that Chance is the “new” Bieber, not because I believe Bieber to be uber talented in any regard, but because I actually don’t think Chance will make it as the new rising young musician. He’s alright, I guess… he’s certainly not terrible. However, people complain about Bieber and the likes of Miley Cyrus as not knowing what “love” is and them not retaining the proper experience or social permission of peoples over the age of 16 to make gazillions of dollars. Why should this kid be any different? If anything, he deserves less of a reason to make it big considering he’s skyrocketed to fame by rendering a cover of someone else’s song.
Luckily, though, he has written, both lyrically and musically, two other songs entitled “Broken Hearts” and “Stars.” This is great, knowing that he doesn’t just have a cover of another song to back up his blossoming career; however, give a listen to the other songs and see whether or not he truly has a commercial future with his music. Personally, I don’t think he’s that great… obviously I’m taking into account that in these videos, it’s just him and his piano with a video camera watching, so he doesn’t have Grade-A producers or (God forbid) an autotuner to make him sound spectacular; and of course the fact that he’s only 12 doesn’t help his cause much. He definitely has potential, but for some reason, people around the world are already calling him a child prodigy and that. just. isn’t. true.
But, again, tell me what you think. Is he really that great? Comment wars, hooo!
First of all, congratulations to me for updating and reworking my entire blog. You’re welcome.
Just. Kidding.
But seriously, you’re welcome. Too much stuff has been occurring recently in our media world for me to just sit here and let it all… well, occur. And so, one of the biggest new things to hit the interwebs is Miley Cyrus’ new video; more importantly, Miley Cyrus’ new look.
The video for “Can’t Be Tamed” premiered about a week ago on E!, demonstrating Cyrus’ new direction in her music career: aka, trying to sound like everyone. else.
Aside from a random little cameo from a Lady Gaga impersonator, Cyrus’ new song sounds like someone took all of Britney Spears songs from both Blackout and Circus, ate them and threw them up all over Ms. Montana’s edgier alter-ego.
Let it be known she’s also extremely sexual in the video. I wanted to make a point of this because, as we all know, Miley Cyrus is a cute little towngirl from Tennessee who sings about living a double life and finding love.
Then she breaks out with a song about how she, more or less, hates that life, and wants to be free and do what she wants. That’s great and everything, but you don’t have to be a slut to do it. Cyrus can be seen sensually touching herself in her 12-year-old nether-regions, and her lyrics come off as quite conceited mixed with a touch of whore. For example:
“Every guy everywhere just gives me mad attention
Like I'm under inspection, I always get the 10s
'Cause I'm built like that
I go through guys like money flyin' out their hands”
With all these boys barking up her tree, you’d think she wouldn’t have time to be writing a song. Then again, we all know the Achey-Breaky one-hit-wonder Billy Ray Cyrus (Miley’s dad for those of you who actually have lives and don’t follow this), primarily wrote all of her old songs. Something tells me he’s evolving from managing, loving, helpful father to pimp-daddy very very fast. Let’s not forget Miley’s magazine cover shoot where she was NAKED, with her father’s graceful and ever-watchful eye simply watching.
Then, of course, it was finally revealed that Miley Cyrus is a bird. So, that’s fun. In the beginning of the video, a nicely dressed banquet host introduced Cyrus as a creature thought to be extinct, “Avis Cyrus.” I’m not kidding. Then all of these rejects from Britney Spears' “Circus” video and Rihanna’s “Disturbia” video appear out of nowhere and start groping Cyrus, cheering her on to be as promiscuous as humanly (or birdly) possible.
Back to the important part though, what do you think? Do you think Miley Cyrus’ ridiculous new direction in her music is good or bad? I can’t help but feel like she wants to ride the Britney/Ke$ha/Cascada/Lady Gaga/Christina Aguilera bandwagon by using some more dancey-clubby synthesized music than her usual pop-rock, mildly country persona she retained before. Then again, you know this song is going to get played at clubs, and the ever popular “I hate the artist but love this song!” quotes will be spewing from everyone’s mouths, including mine.
