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Adele has released a tracklist for new album, “30.”
There are no duets– though fans kept speculating– but Adele does the only singing on the album. There is, however, a bonus track with Chris Stapleton, of all people. Go figure. She’s trying to reach the country market, obviously. It’s a duet on her current hit, “Easy On Me.”
The real surprise is a credited performance by late great jazz pianist Erroll Garner. It’s on a track called “All Night Parking (Interlude) featuring Garner. Now, that should be interesting.
She does have a song called “I Drink Wine,” which could be humorous. Watch the third and fourth tracks for singles. “Cry Your Heart Out” does not sound like much fun, just more hankies. And “Oh My God” may be something we’re hearing all year.
Update: “To Be Loved” is not the famous song. It’s one cooked up Adele’s writers.
One big question will be about the song listed here, “To Be Loved.” Jackie Wilson, of course, had such a famous song that Berry Gordy wrote. If Adele has covered it, it will be on my playlists forever.
01 “Strangers By Nature”
02 “Easy On Me”
03 “Cry Your Heart Out”
04 “Oh My God”
06 “Can I Get It”
07 “I Drink Wine”
08 “All Night Parking (Interlude)” (With Erroll Garner)
09 “Woman Like Me”
10 “Hold On”
11 “To Be Loved”
12 “Love Is A Game”
13 “Wild Wild West” (Bonus Track)
14 “Can’t Be Together” (Bonus Track)
15 “Easy On Me” (With Chris Stapleton) (Bonus Track)
Yes, it’s that time of year again. The annual Mariah Carey Christmas cash in campaign.
Mariah is being sued by both siblings for her memoir, published a year ago, called “The Meaning of Mariah Carey.”
According to reports she’s tossed her mom into a senior citizen home in Florida and sold her house.
So it’s time to get warm and fuzzy as Mariah launches the 27th year of her single, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the Phil Spector soundalike co-written by the very forgotten Walter Afanasieff.
Every year, an assault on iTunes begins to get “All I Want” back to the top of the charts. And now streaming, as well. Come, all ye faithful, to the PR onslaught Mariah kicked off last night as Halloween ends and MariahMass begins.
And all this is fairly necessary since, though Mariah is rich rich rich, her annual income is lot lower without the ability to perform in Vegas. And she sells no records during the year, just dribs and drabs of old singles here and there. But not enough to maintain homes and lifestyles.
No, “All I Want for Christmas” is a product, like other holiday baubles, and this is the season of giving. To Mariah.
Merry Xmas! Now we have two months of this cynicism to look forward to!
Hilaria Baldwin, Alec’s wife, lives in some kind of disconnect world, a fantasy land.
She’s posted pictures not only of her kids, but of her and Alec in full Halloween regalia, some matching costumes, from their Manchester, Vermont getaway. There’s even a video of their two youngest kids dancing in costume. So cute.
It’s only ten days ago that Alec accidentally shot and killed a woman, a mother, and a wife. He also injured a man. They were respectively the cinematographer and director of his movie, “Rust,” on location in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Over the weekend, Alec and Hilaria, whose real name is Hilary, gave an impromptu press conference on the street in Manchester while shopping. During the interview, Alex swatted Hilaria away not once but twice for getting in between him and the interviewer.
Hilaria gave a separate statement, explaining how they got to Manchester, Vermont. It’s a surprise turn of events since the family lives in Greenwich Village in a massive apartment, and also has a huge home in the Hamptons. Hilaria said when news broke of the Santa Fe shooting she threw her kids in the car and just drove as fae away as she could, winding up in Manchester by accident.
But truth be told, Hilaria– er, Hilary’s– family has had a home in near East Arlington for years. Her grandfather, John Thomas Sr., lived there. The house was sold when he died. But the Thomases have deep roots there. They are indeed, not Spanish in away. They are blue blood, red-blooded Americans.
According to his obituary, Thomas was a trustee for the Bennington Museum and of the Vermont Historical Society. He and his wife spent time “preserving, building, and curating the Russell Vermontiana Collection,” which is now at the Martha Canfield Library. He was one of the founders of the Arlington Townscape Association, which, according to the obituary, was responsible for a book about the history of Arlington.
So Hilaria is essentially lying when she makes it seem like their arrival in Manchester is by chance. And the pictures on her Instagram account indicate they are in a local home, no doubt owned by them or relatives.
No one is denying the Baldwin six pack of kids a Halloween, or even trick or treating. But it’s the posting of the photos that’s galling. You can imagine that the child of the woman who was killed, Halyna Hutchins, did not have such a swell Halloween. His father and family must have been desperate to give him one. But his mom is dead and not coming back. And 3,000 miles away, the family of the man who was involved in her death is having a grand time, and telling everyone about it.
You would have to guess that singer of “Band of Gold,” one of the great pop singles of all time, had a good romantic secret. After all, the story sung in “Band of Gold” is almost more debated than the one in Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.” Is the bride turning down her groom on their wedding night, or is he impotent or gay? Or all of the above!
I always remember that in Lillian Roxon’s “Rock Encyclopedia,” the bible of rock and roll, a reviewer wrote of “Band of Gold”: “Freda Payne could sing the Yellow Pages.” Or something to that effect.
The song was written by Eddie and Brian Holland, and Lamont Dozier, authors of dozens of Motown hits for the Supremes and Four Tops. They couldn’t use their real names because they were locked in a lawsuit with Motown’s Berry Gordy after leaving the label over a money dispute. (Everyone is friends now, 50 years later.)
Freda was from Detroit, also, and grew up with the Motowners. I’m sure I met her years and years ago through the late Mary Wilson. They were great friends, as were Mary and I.
I was 13 when “Band of Gold” came out. I didn’t know what was going on in it, but I loved the arrangement and Freda Payne’s voice. I played it over and over summer of 1970 at the Camp Greylock radio station. Freda had a bunch more hits including “Deeper and Deeper” and the anti-Vietnam war single, “Bring the Boys Home.” The latter was very controversial and banned on radio at first. It was good publicity.
Later in the 70s, Freda would marry singer Gregory Abbott. She divorced him right before he had his mega hit, “Shake You Down.” (They have a son.) She also had a relationship with Edmund Sylvers, lead singer of his family group. (His hit was “Boogie Fever.”)
There’s a lot more, but here’s the secret. Before the marriages, Freda writes that she had an affair with US Senator John Tunney. He was a big deal then, the son of boxer Gene Tunney. He was also married. But she met him through Frank Sinatra at a charity event. When Holland-Dozier-Holland didn’t pay Freda for her hits, Tunney helped get her a top Hollywood lawyer who came, guns blazing, and got her a big settlement.
It was Sinatra who pointed out to Freda that Tunney was head over heels for her. He was good looking and had just been elected to the Senate from California after six years as a Congressman. Freda, who’d become a star, moved to Los Angeles and took up residence in the former home of Movie Star Maureen O’Hara. She was living the life.
Freda writes that she fell in love with Tunney, which was a mistake. But she had other loves, too. :I was in love with Quincy Jones too. I was so in love with him. Those were my three big love affairs: Quincy Jones, Eddie Holland, and John Tunney.” She was playing in the Big Time.
She writes of the affair:
It was starting to unravel at that point. When this happened, Tunney and I had to take a break from seeing each other. After that, our affair just started to fizzle and dissolve. I assumed he had been approached about the knowledge of our love affair, and he figured the relationship was way too risky, and could destroy his political career. Later on he had an affair with the actress Elizabeth Ashley, and I became insanely jealous. I remember thinking to myself, “What does he want with that old bitch? She’s six years older than me!” Ah, to be 30 again! Years later, when John Tunney’s re-election came up, he lost. So, he didn’t stay in office too long as a Senator.
There’s more, lots of it, Mark Bego helped Freda put it together, he’s an expert at these things. I like this new world of people like Elton John, Demi Moore, Katie Couric, all telling the real stories in their books. After 50 years of this pop culture, we deserve some answers!
So welcome Freda to New York on Monday! She still looks like a million bucks, and the voice is better than ever!
Most movies, if they made $69 million in two weeks studio executives would be popping open Champagne.
But with “Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s epic, it’s a much different story. “Dune” is a glacier at the box office.
Costing somewhere between $150 and $200 million, “Dune” is a slow starter out of the gate.
So far, through today, “Dune” has earned $69 million in the US. Most epics in wide release would have done that in 1 week, or faster.
But “Dune” is long, three hours almost, and it’s also available on HBO Max. Those two things are slowing it down.
This past weekend, “Dune” made $15 million. It’s not a disaster yet. But it’s plodding along to the $100 million mark. So it’s break even point is way in the distance.
Warner Bros. was smart in releasing “Dune” internationally before letting it hit here. The result is a foreign box office so far of $222.7 million. They’re close to $300 million worldwide.
But fear not: “Dune 2” is coming in two years, and there will be HBO Max spin off series, so way down the line– way, way, down the line — they will break even and maybe turn a profit. We will all be long gone. But we’ll read about in the clouds, I’m sure!
I returned to the Belasco Theater on Saturday afternoon, my first show on Broadway since the start of the pandemic. It was also one of the last shows I saw before the pandemic: Conor McPherson‘s “Girl fron the North Country.”
McPherson wrote and directed, and used songs from the Bob Dylan catalog, to tell a Depression era tale set in Dylan’s Minnesota. I know my review from opening night was glowing, but a lot of time has passed and I wanted to see this musical again.
What a treat it is, too, a gem that is so moving, profound and entertaining I can’t urge you enough to put on a mask and head on over to the Belasco. “Girl from the North Country” is like a spiritual awakening. There are three nominal stars — Mare Winningham, Jay O. Sanders, Robert Joy, and Marc Kudisch. But there is also a cast full of lesser knowns who should be stars in their own right including Todd Almond, Kimber Elayne Sprawl, Jeannette Bayardelle, Luba Mason, Tom Nelis, and Matt McGrath.
McPherson infuses a kind of bleak narrative of people struggling to survive the Depression with two dozen or song Dylan songs re-arranged gorgeously for theater in gospel, R&B, and country settings. Dylan should sending McPherson roses every day because the playwright-director has revived Dylan’s catalog in the most exciting possible way. The songs include “Like a Rolling Stone” and “I Want You” and even the more recent “Make You Feel My Love.” The orchestration is so exact that even bits of other songs float through instrumentally, like “Lay Lady Lay.”
You will not want to miss Mare Winningham’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Or Todd Almond’s left curve solo from heaven. Or Luba Mason singing like Janis Joplin and playing drums. Or the heavenly voices of Kimber Elayne Sprawl, Jeannette Bayardelle.
I said back in March 2020 “Girl from the North Country” was the best musical of that season. The show opened, but the Tony Awards cut off didn’t include it with that year’s shows. So it will be a force to reckon with in 2022. I can’t wait to see it again!
UPDATE ABOUT THE MICHAEL JACKSON MUSICAL “MJ”: This is really goofy. Last week, the Michael Jackson musical “MJ” announced the casting of Michael as a child with the Jackson 5.
The main child cast is named Walter Russell III. No one said a word about who he was, and his name sailed right by me.
Guess what? Little Walter, who is 13, is a STAR already. He is literally STEALING the show at the Metropolitan Opera in Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”
I was there two weeks ago. Walter gets a standing ovation. If he’s half as good leading the Jackson 5, “MJ” is going to be a hit no matter how screwy the script is (and I’m hopeful it’s okay. Really.)
Weird that no mention was made of Walter’s career so far, his rave reviews. From the Met to Michael. Now I’m really curious about this musical. It’s going to be good.
PS Twitter handle @andjustice4some notes that Walter shares the same birthday as Michael Jackson. That’s a good omen!
EXCLUSIVE Paul McCartney recorded three songs with Michael Jackson in the early 80s including “The Girl Is Mine,” “Say Say Say,” and “The Man.” The latter appeared on Paul’s “Pipes of Peace” album but gets short shrift even though I think it’s the best of the trio.
“Say Say Say” is the only one of the three documented in Paul’s “The Lyrics” two volume memoir of songs that will be published on Tuesday. Considering what happened after these sessions– Michael bought the Beatles catalog out from under McCartney — Paul is very generous to Michael in the recollection.
Initially Paul says he thought the high pitched voice on the other end of the phone was someone else. “I thought, This is a fan girl, and how the hell did she get my number?” Quickly Paul realized it was Michael Jackson, who asked him, “Do you want to make some hits?”
Paul writes that Michael flew to London, and they met in his office. “We were both quite excited to work together, and the song came together quickly,” McCartney recalls in “The Lyrics.” He says: “I let him lead quite a bit, and I think a lot of the sensibility of the song was Michael’s. ‘Baptised in my tears’ — that’s a line I wouldn’t have used.”
McCartney says of writing, “It’s a time of discovery, and that’s what I love about it.”
There are two versions of “Say Say Say.” One was the hit, and the other was an outtake in which they reverse the singing parts. If you know the original, this other one is cooler.
It was a rough weekend for Searchlight/Disney, formerly Fox Searchlight.
Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” went wide and didn’t catch the ball. The omnibus film with a large celebrity cast had a big Friday with just over $1 million. But then reality set in as word of mouth must not have been good. Saturday and Sunday each showed successive declines. In 788 theaters after 2 weeks, “French Dispatch” stands at under $5 million. C’est la vie!
Searchlight also introduced “Antlers,” a horror movie from Scott Cooper, best known as the director of Jeff Bridges’ “Crazy Hearts.” The hope was for $5 million for the weekend. But “Antlers” was a moose– a mess- at just $4.1 million. And that’s on Halloween weekend. Certainly terrifying.
Something is wrong. Either Disney isn’t helping Searchlight, or Searchlight isn’t smart as a Fox anymore. Their “Eyes of Tammy Faye” is also dead at the box office. And the doc “Summer of Soul” may not qualify for the Oscars because it has so much previously released material. (It will do well with the Critics Choice Doc Awards, though.) Time to re-group for next year!
PS Also dead is “The Last Duel,” a possible $150 million write off for Fox-Disney. Total is now $10 million.
It’s not like they didn’t try everything. But the last Daniel Craig film as James Bond, “No Time to Die,” is not a massive hit at the US box office.
This weekend, “No Time to Die” made $7.8 million in theaters completing 24 days of release. This brings its total to $136 million.
For most movies, this would be a relief. But for “No Time to Die,” which was delayed for a year and cost closer to $200 million, it’s not that great.
Indeed, “No Time to Die,” if it gets to $150 million, will come in the lowest for a Bond film since 2002’s “Die Another Day” at $160 million. The number the Bond producers would probably like to get to is $200 million, where “Spectre,” landed in 2015. That’s a very long shot. And they won’t get near the massive high of “Skyfall” in 2012.
As I said, it wasn’t for lack of trying. But the pandemic coupled with the film’s length of nearly 3 hours made box office heights impossible to achieve.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame fixed some mistakes last night at their annual induction ceremony in Cleveland.
They finally welcomed Tina Turner, Billy Preston, Carole King, Gil Scott Heron, Todd Rundgren, and Charley Patton.
Rundgren didn’t bother to show up or send a video, but that’s him. Hello? It’s him. He has not seen the light.
Tina couldn’t travel from Switzerland. This morning on Twitter she wrote: “As you can surely tell from my beaming smile: I am thrilled to now be officially inducted into the @rockhall as a solo artist. What an honor! I am grateful to so many people who stood by me on my journey here – especially you, dear fans. Keep on rocking”
Billy Preston, the Fifth Beatle, was inducted by Ringo Starr via video. Paul McCartney, who was there to induct the Foo Fighters, didn’t get involved in that, although he did play a little “Get Back” reportedly at the end of the night– well after midnight– with Dave Grohl.
Keith Urban had to substitute at the last minute for Bryan Adams, whose COVID test came back positive. Talk about fortuitous! And Keith brought wife Nicole Kidman, which classed up the event a million times.
Other inductees included Jay Z, we won’t get into that, and LL Cool J, again, the whole idea of the Hall of Fame is changing into a Music Hall of Fame. The best LL Cool J song was “I Need Love.” No one ever mentions it.
This ceremony cleaned up a lot of old business for the RRHOF. New CEO John Sykes, taking over from the now missing Jann Wenner, is righting a lot of wrongs. Next year let’s hope we see Carly Simon, Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, Carla and Rufus Thomas, the late Mary Wells from Motown, J Geils Band (now an embarrassing situation), and Sting as a solo artist. And, of course, Chubby Checker.
As you can surely tell from my beaming smile: I am thrilled to now be officially inducted into the @rockhall as a solo artist. What an honor! I am grateful to so many people who stood by me on my journey here – especially you, dear fans. Keep on rocking! 💃🏿 pic.twitter.com/LSD2PE6FBk
Hilaria Baldwin, Alec’s wife, lives in some kind of disconnect world, a fantasy land.
