This week Eddie Vedder postponed his U.S. tour; The Jackson 5 announced that they would be reuniting onstage this summer; Green Day was added to the roster of speakers for the upcoming Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony; and Beyonce took over the internet. Catch up on this week’s news below.
Jay-Z is changing his ways. According to NME, the new proud father wrote in a poem that he’s going to clean up his lyrics in honor of his baby girl Blue Ivy Carter. Could it be true? Is the rapper, who once spit that he had “99 problems,” really giving up the B-word?
UPDATE: Jay-Z told NY Daily News that the poem is “fake.” His daughter has not changed his perspective on how he refers to women.
Because if the media is to be believed, Blue Ivy (the obligatorily horridly-named celeb child of Beyonce and Jay-Z) is the second coming of Jesus, the child is already being allowed to take over whole buildings. At least, that’s the complaint of several new parents currently having to share space with the celebs at the Manhattan hospital where Blue Ivy was born.
Sexual reproduction—homo sapiens have been using this process of meiosis and fertilization to genetically further our species since we first originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago. It is a method of reproduction that has generated such historically and culturally significant human beings as Gandhi, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, William Shakespeare, Adolf Hitler, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Miles Davis, Leonardo DaVinci, Joan of Arc, Louis Pasteur, and Charles Darwin. Further, it is a technique that produces 490,000 new babies every day, which equals roughly 179,000,000 new babies every year. And yet, somehow, despite the fact that this process has created nearly 100 billion lives since the dawn of mankind, I have to stop and write about the fact that Beyonce Knowles is knocked up.
Today in Pop Stars Say/ Do The Darndest Things!, a handful of our brightest pop stars (including Beyonce, 50 Cent, Usher, and Mariah Carey) are responding to the finger-pointing and accusations that have developed since it was revealed that they performed concerts put on by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi (if you haven’t been around a television, computer, newspaper, magazine, radio, cell phone, or other human being in the past few weeks, you may have missed the news that Libya has been under severe scrutiny for crimes against humanity—oh and then there’s the whole state-sponsored terrorism thing of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, approved by Gaddafi).
So I’m sure Mariah Carey has a totally reasonable explanation, aren’t you?
Proving that their festival headliners can be just as underwhelming and obvious as we Yanks and our desert fests, NME reports that U2 and Beyonce are set to headline this year’s Glastonbury festival with Coldplay in England.
Forbes has released their list of the top 20 highest-paid men and women in Hollywood and Beyoncé is slotted at #9, the highest-earning music artist of 2010.
Seated between George Lucas (#8) and Dr. Phil (#10), Forbes estimates Beyoncé’s 2010 earnings at $87 million; Queen of the world Oprah Winfrey is at #1, no surprise, with a whopping $315 million for 2010.
Check the full list of Forbes’ List of Hollywood’s 20 Highest Earning of 2010 below!
For most of us, Thanksgiving entertainment comes in the form of football games and drunk relatives, but if neither of those choices are your thing, a couple of the country’s hottest pop stars will be providing less violent alternatives.
Vibe is reporting that Beyonce Knowles and Taylor Swift will each be broadcasting concerts on November 25. Beyonce’s, part of her recent world tour, will air on ABC and feature songs from throughout her career. The show begins at 9:30 PM EST.
Jeff Tweedy wins again! This time the Wilco singer turns his finely-tuned, homage-ready guitar to Beyonce’s monstrous hit “Single Ladies.” Pitchfork (by way of TwentyFourBit) reminds us of Tweedy’s benefit shows at Chicago’s Vic Theatre back in March where the singer took a few pre-submitted audience requests. One of the requests called for either Wilco’s “Ashes of American Flags” or Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” It didn’t take long for the Wilco tune from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to lose out to the power of Beyonce’.
The performance of “Single Ladies” begins as a cool, acoustic version, but then Tweedy changes course and decides to recite the lyrics as if he were part of some alt. poetry slam. And there’s even a few, sassy ‘Put A Ring on It’ hand gestures direct from the Beyonce’ video. It’s your world, Jeff Tweedy!
Check out the video below:
