Please Feed The B...

Would someone please get Jessica Biel a cheeseburger? I can safely call myself Jessica Biel's biggest fan and she needs to eat SOMETHING! She has been turning into a skeletor as of late and it is making her look like an entirely different person. It is very worrisome and I would just appreciate if she could just go to the BK Lounge and have a couple whoppers. The End.

Kelly Clarkson Is Amazing...

Simon Cowell, Simon Fuller, and 19 entertainment should be praised for bringing American Idol to this country. While some of the singers that come through their have gotten by on their personalities and quirks, there is some considerable talent. In my opinion, Kelly Clarkson has the strongest voice out of anyone that won the show and while she won't sell as many records as Carrie Underwood, which is the nature of the music industry-particularly the huge sales that country music has due to most artists being jokes and good ones being a dime a dozen, she has a chance of being known as one of the best female vocalists in modern music history. One of the things that used to worry me about Kelly was her rather weak vocal chords. You can see what I'm talking about by watching her perform "Sgt. Peppers...." on American Idol. This stays with me because around this time she was having vocal problems and you could almost hear her voice threatening to give out when she hit the high notes. This has not been the case as of late. In fact, her voice is stronger than ever and possibly the best voice that is in music right now. With every performance she brings a noticeable passion and you can feel how deeply she cares about what she is singing. I think that is the mark of a great artist, when you can feel their pain and passion. Anyone can sing a song and have it auto-tuned and radio ready, but when you actually hurt or have an emotional reaction from listening to a song, that's when you know they're good. This pretty much sums up my feelings at the concert I attended in Youngstown on October 17th. The thing that has stuck with me are some of the comments that she made in the concert. I don't remember them exactly but she said things along the lines of "My favorite songs are never the singles off of albums" and "I love to do bluesy songs, but my label doesn't." Record companies are all about making money and to do this, you're not going to get what are known as "An Artist's Record", or albums that underperform but have acclaim and are some of the best material of the singer's career. An example of this is "My December", an album that was almost solely written by Clarkson and had deep lyrics and songs that aren't radio friendly. This had critical acclaim and is loved by fans, but it did nothing on the charts. I think it's important to do things that are meaningful to you and it's evident that this was a work of passion, screwing the radio and making something that would mean more to the listener. Take one listen to "Irvine", something that she will never release or perform again, and you will find one of the most haunting songs released by a mainstream artist in recent times. This song is painful to listen to and I can remember the first time I heard it, being shocked and tears filling my eyes as I read the heartbreaking lyrics as she sang them. Part of me thinks that the listening audience is shallow and part of me think it's the nature of the record business, but passion is hard to come by these days. I was refreshed to see passion returning during the concert this past weekend. In my next post I will go into details of the concert and talk about my favorite parts.