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Katy Perry

Katy was a former Christian artist who ditched the sacred sounds of CCM for a secular mix of sass and spunk, Katy Perry combines the cheeky, club-ready pop music of Lily Allen with the commercial pop/rock of Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette. Born on October 25, 1984, in Santa Barbara, CA, she grew up in a Christian household as the daughter of two pastors. Though she was not allowed to listen to secular music as a child, Perry later found herself captivated by Alanis Morissette and Freddie Mercury, having discovered Queen`s music during a slumber party. Religious music remained at the forefront, however, and Perry released a self-titled Christian album in 2001 under the name Katy Hudson. She would later abandon the genre in favor of a pop career.

At age 17, the burgeoning songwriter began working with hitmaker Glen Ballard, who had produced and co-written Alanis Morissette`s chart-topping Jagged Little Pill in 1995. Several years later, she teamed up with the Matrix, a Grammy-nominated production/songwriting team whose résumé includes collaborations with Avril Lavigne, Shakira, and Korn. Tired of producing music for other artists, the Matrix had plans to record their own album with Perry serving as one of the group`s two singers. The project was ultimately shelved, but not before Perry appeared in a 2004 write-up by Blender magazine, who hailed her as "The Next Big Thing!"

With the Matrix`s unreleased album sitting in the vaults at Sony Records, Perry went back to the drawing board and ultimately signed with Columbia in 2007. Her debut single, "UR So Gay," generated some online buzz with its mischievous lyrics and accompanying music video. However, "I Kissed a Girl" proved to be her true breakthrough single, topping the charts in 20 countries and pushing its accompanying album, 2008`s One of the Boys, into the Top Ten in America. Perry supported her debut by joining the Warped Tour that summer and appearing in an episode of The Young and the Restless. Meanwhile, "Hot N Cold" became her second number one hit.

Views: 71971

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The Lonely Island

The Lonely Island is an American comedy troupe composed of Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg, best known for their musical parodies. The group is from Berkeley, California, and is currently based in New York City. The group began creating live comedy skits in junior high and continued to do so, expanding its repertoire to comedic shorts, music parody (both songs and videos), and one full-length television pilot, before coming to the attention of Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Once on the show, they wrote ``Lazy Sunday``, a better-produced music parody video much like the group's previous work. It became an instant Internet success, and led to the creation of similar 'digital shorts' which were also aired on Saturday Night Live. ``Dick In A Box``, ``Jizz In My Pants``, ``Like a Boss`` and ``I'm On A Boat`` have subsequently had huge success both on the show and on the Internet and prompted the recording and release of an album, INCREDIBAD, which has seen the group move in a more musical direction.

Views: 33065

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Fall Out Boy

With slick production, commercially minded songcraft, and a tabloid-grabbing bassist, Chicago`s Fall Out Boy rose to the forefront of emo-pop in the mid-2000s. The band`s four members first came together in suburban Wilmette, a bedroom community just 14 miles north of the Windy City, around 2001. Vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump, bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz, drummer Andrew Hurley, and guitarist Joe Trohman had all been in and out of various units connected to Chicago`s underground hardcore scene. Most notably, Hurley drummed for Racetraitor, the furiously political metalcore outfit whose brief output was both a rallying point and sticking point within the hardcore community. As Fall Out Boy, the quartet used the unbridled intensity of hardcore as a foundation for melody-drenched pop-punk, with a heavy debt to the emo scene. They debuted with a self-released demo in 2001, following it up in May 2002 with a split LP (issued on the Uprising label) that also featured Project Rocket, for which Hurley also drummed. The band remained with the label for the release of a mini-LP, Fall Out Boy`s Evening Out with Your Girl, but a bidding war of sorts was already in full swing.

Views: 30721

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Lily Allen

With her omnivorous musical tastes and cheeky attitude, London-based pop singer/songwriter Lily Allen made a name for herself almost as soon as she released her demos on the Internet. The daughter of comedian Keith Allen, Lily spent most of her childhood bouncing from one school to another -- in fact, she attended 13 different schools between the ages of five and 15. This constant moving meant she didn`t have much of a chance to make lasting friendships, so Allen entertained herself with books and, especially, music: she listened to everything from T. Rex, the Specials, and the Slits to the Happy Mondays and drum`n`bass, and even ran away to see the Glastonbury Festival when she was 14. After she left school a year later, she realized that music was the only career for her. Allen concentrated on her songwriting and singing, developing a style that was equally sweet and bratty; late in 2005, she set up a MySpace page and posted demos of her songs, as both individual tracks and as part of two limited-edition "mixtapes" that also featured tracks by Dizzee Rascal, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Ludacris. The critical acclaim for her work fueled Allen`s publicity, leading to tens of thousands of friends on MySpace, airplay on BBC Radio One, and a record deal with Regal/Parlophone before the end of 2005.

Views: 30450

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Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was unquestionably the biggest pop star of the `80s, and certainly one of the most popular recording artists of all time. In his prime, Jackson was an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the tools to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility, and loads of sheer star power. His 1982 blockbuster Thriller became the biggest-selling album of all time (probably his best-known accomplishment), and he was the first black artist to find stardom on MTV, breaking down innumerable boundaries both for his race and for music video as an art form. Yet as Jackson`s career began, very gradually, to descend from the dizzying heights of his peak years, most of the media`s attention focused on his increasingly bizarre eccentricities; he was often depicted as an arrested man-child, completely sheltered from adult reality by a life spent in show business. The snickering turned to scandal in 1993, when Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy; although he categorically denied the charges, his out-of-court settlement failed to restore his tarnished image. He never quite escaped the stigma of those allegations, and while he continued to sell records at superstar-like levels, he didn`t release them with enough frequency (or, many critics thought, inspiration) to once again become better known for his music than his private life. Whether as a pop icon or a tabloid caricature, Jackson always remained bigger than life.

Views: 27445