THE OUTRO: OUR HEAD HURTS, AND FOR ONCE, IT'S NOT BECAUSE OF JAMES BLUNT

Thus ends our brief experiment with Earshot. We've learned a lot during the past two days, mostly that we shouldn't make fun of bloggers anymore. Except for maybe this guy.

Read more!

GENE SIMMONS: BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF...SOMETHING

Gene Simmons' website is hilarious. He prints most of his fans' letters, and you can almost hear the scowling as he dispenses the most minimal-effort responses (he even turns down a fan's request to appear with him on Deal or No Deal). Most of the correspondence is inane:

Gene,
Does the money, women, fame, being in the public eye, being a rock icon, etc. ever get old?

Best-
W

Response from Gene:

No.

...or this one, for which there are not enough [sic]s in the world:

was watching Free Ride on Sunday and Im not sure what episode it is but the main charaters firned Doc i think was with his band and was wearing clothes just like GEne Simmons. He had the bass and everything. I thought maybe, maybe not. But then he said "check this out" and stuck his tongue out and made it look excatly like Genes. It was crazy. Im typing as i watch this show its so cool. Matt You Biggest Fan

Response from Gene:

Not me.

He has—no kidding—750 pages of this stuff.

Read more!

MICHELLE BRANCH: NO LONGER SPITTING HOT FIRE

Late last year, Michelle Branch went rom The Spirit Room to the crazy room, posting a lengthy anti-industry screed on her website (you can find it on the Velvet Rope; just search the terms "Michelle Branch flies off the handle"). Ostensibly pissed off about over the hold-up of her long-in-the-works side project, The Wreckers, Branch then devolves into a full-on meltdown by the third paragraph:

I would give nothing more than to play music in a shitty bar and fold clothes at The Gap for a living. My "being famous" has done nothing but ruin my relationship with my parents, mostly my Father and it has made me hate doing what I used to love more than life itself...playing music....I have maybe written two songs in the past year. That's ridiculous. This isn't fun for me anymore. I'm sick of sucking dicks to get my music heard, putting on a fake smile, and saying things that are acceptable.

So you can see why it was taken down. But the strange footnote is that a few weeks ago, Maverick finally gave the Wreckers a release date, and launched a brand-new fancy MySpace page, complete with a blog co-written by Branch. But it would appear that Branch has rethought her smile-faking ways (not so sure about the other things):

Everything is going as perfect as could be *knock on wood* it's almost too good to be true...keep on keepin' on!

Hmmm...how did Maverick buy her silence? Maybe they put her into a bootcamp-style reform school, making her fold Gap capri pants all day. Or maybe they gave her some free Madonna tickets.

Read more!

THE MADONNA TICKET MADNESS: NOT EVEN DANNY AIELLO CAN AFFORD TO GO ANYMORE

Blogger-turned-consumer crusader BrooklynVegan has found yet another Madge ticket scam: Apparenty, Ticketmaster is auctioning off primo seats, with starting bids ranging from $380 to $750. Considering how many charity cases Madonna's involved with—AmFar, Make-A-Wish, Guy Ritchie—you'd think they were going to a good cause; alas, the money appears to be going straight into Ticketmaster's service-charge loving hands. You can follow the controversy here.

We understand that illegal downloading has hurt the industry, but man, is she really hurting this much? Or did she think the money was in pounds? Either way, at least she's found a new, lame way to piss people off again.

Read more!

FINALLY, ANOTHER REASON TO RUN A PICTURE OF SAM THE EAGLE

We just checked out some reviews of Alice Cooper's Town from Citysearch. Apparently it's been voted one of the Best Sports Bars in Phoenix, which, as far as credible accolades go, is somewhere in between Best Attendance (2nd Grade) and Best Supporting Actress. Our favorite comment:

...what can you say about a place that has Rhino's jersey hanging on the wall, Dave Mustaine's fractured guitar and Fleetwood Mac's pics as well? I still haven't seen Alice in person since the Christmas concert at New Haven Colliseum when Alice and the band beat St. Nick up on the encore number under the blacklight Christmas tree. Hello, Hooray ... let the show begin ... I'm always ready!

Yes, what can you say, except that Alice clearly gets a little violent around the holidays. On Groundhog's Day, for example, he's been known to popout of a blacklight hole in the ground and wail the crap out of a woodland creature. It'll make you spit out your Sammy Hagar Green Chile Burrito.

Read more!

PANIC! ATTACK

A few months ago, Earshot was in a store near Union Square* when we heard one of the worst songs of our lives—a shrill, whiny dirge about marriage and lust, with lots of bad wordplay. Believing that all new strains of emo should be tagged and tracked so that they can be kept from roaming the wild, we wrote down some of the lyrics, went home, and googled them to find the name of the offender.

It was Panic! At the Disco.

Now they're selling 30,000 records a week, thanks to terribly titled songs like "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" and "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage," and the fact that they all sorta look like little-boy versions of the L Word cast. The new issue of Rolling Stone has a Q&A with songwriter Ryan Ross, and his taste in music pretty much explains it all:

What's your ring tone?
I'm getting a new phone in five days, and I have my ring-tone plan down. I've got Sixpence Non the Richer, "Kiss Me." That's one of those songs that you hate to love — but I really do like it.

Other guilty pleasures?
Some people would say Counting Crows or Third Eye Blind would be a guilty pleasure, but they're two of my favorite bands — I'm not ashamed of it.

Admittedly, it seems cheap to pick on a 19-year-old with dodgy tastes, but seriously...Sixpence None the Richer? On a ringtone? We listened to some wussed-out stuff at that age (sorry, Sense Field), but that's like Sepultura compared to Adam Duritz. Is it possible that emo is getting more emo? In ten years, will the kids be talking about how James Blunt was "mad fucking deep"? We're doomed.

* It was Forbidden Planet. We love our Peter Bagge reprints.

Read more!

TLC, MEET BSS

We just took a look at our iTunes “Just For You” list, in which they use our previous purchases to make recommendations. Our conclusion? We are batshit crazy:

“Waterfalls,” TLC
“In Her Heart,” Capleton
“Second Time Around,” Shalamar
“I Want to Be Your Joey Ramone,” Sleater-Kinney
“Don’t Be Cruel,” Bobby Brown
“Cybele's Reverie,” Stereolab
“Swimmers,” Broken Social Scene
“Cherry Chapstick,” Yo La Tengo
“1 Thing (Featuring Eve),” Amerie featuring Eve
“Waiting for Tonight,” Jennifer Lopez

Jesus. This reads like the line-up for a wildly unsuccessful summer festival. But the sad truth is that they’re pretty spot-on—except for J. Lo. “Jenny From the Block” is much more our speed.

In other iTunes news, Apple wants to make the store available on planes. That may be better than watching In Her Shoes for the hundreth time, but as the list above proves, Earshot has made enough drunken downloads to know that five-hour flights + cheap airline wine + iTunes access = an entire Mastercard statement of regret.

Read more!

DEEPER AND DEEPER...INTO YOUR WALLET


Link courtesy of BrooklynVegan

Read more!

LUNCHROCK: SLIGHTLY MELLOWER TUESDAY-AFTERNOON EDITION

Guillemots, "Train to Brazil": Bouncy.
Bishop Allen, "The Monitor": Chirpy.
Isolee, "Schrapnell": Loopy.
The Replacements, "If Only You Were Lonely": Boozy.
Jason Collett, "Hangover Love": Canadian.

Read more!

D12 MEMBER PROOF DIES


The longtime Eminem friend and collaborator was shot and killed last night at a club on Eight Mile. Proof was an interesting guy: Though he'll probably always be associated with Eminem—he appeared on the Anger Management tour, had a cameo in 8 Mile, and was the best man at Em's wedding (not sure which one)—he had a pretty solid solo career of his own, and last year released Searching for Jerry Garcia, probably the only hip-hop album ever inspired by the Grateful Dead (Proof was a huge fan). He was 30 years old.

Ironfist Records Official site

Read more!

VAN HUNT: WHERE IS THE LOVE?
We get pretty bummed out whenever we see Van Hunt's awesome debut album, Van Hunt, in the $5 bins at Amoeba Music. It was a big, Princely album, and its shoulda-been-bigger singles, "Dust" and "Hold My Hand," are two of our favorite R&B cuts of the past few years.

So when we got the promos for last week's On the Jungle Floor, we were convinced this would finally be his big breakout: It's a great record, with lots of '70s and '80s R&B touches, and he even rocks out a bit, though thankfully not in a Lenny Kravitz kind of way. So far, the response has been mixed, but maybe we can all turn that around. Check out "Dust" and "Hold My Hand" to get prepped, and then hit up these new Jungle Floor tracks:

Van Hunt, "Hot Stage Lights"
Van Hunt, "Mean Sleep" (with Nikka Costa)
Van Hunt, "Hole in My Heart" (Warning: Slow-Jam Alert)

Van Hunt Official Site

Read more!

FINALLY, A REASON TO RUN A PICTURE OF SAM THE EAGLE

Today's New York Times has a profile of Bert Padell, financial advisor to the stars. Check out his roster:

"The music business, or any fast business, has a lot of money up front, and slowly but surely it trickles down to nothing," said Mr. Padell, whose clients have included Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Alicia Keys, Rakim, T-Rex, the Kinks, Ben Vereen and Alice Cooper. The problem is, Mr. Padell said, you can't really get a rock star excited by traditional long-term investments.

"You tell him to go into an I.R.A. and what can you put away, $15,000 a year?" he said. "If he had five years, what would you have, $75,000? I don't have to tell you how long that would last for a musician. What young musician would think of something so mundane?"

Good thing Tupac was saving up—we all know how Biggie felt about the burdens of financial extravagance. But the weirdest revelation in the article is that Cooper owns a rock-and-sports-themed restaurant chain, Alice Cooper's Town, and that the menu features all sorts of ridiculously punny offerings, such as "Wings of Mass Destruction"and "Gonzo's BBQ Beef." The best part is that the web site plays Cooper's "Posion," which is probably not the song you want to hear when ordering food. Anyway, we're totally getting the Stevie Nicks Garden Burger.

Read more!

WE'RE DEEPLY CONFLICTED

If there's one ploy that would get us to buy a Black Eyed Peas CD, it would be putting an adorable picture of a serious-looking, suit-wearing chimp on the cover.
Damn you, Fergie!

Read more!

SHMANDY SMILONAKIS

Have you been watching The Andy Milonakis Show this season? Earshot used to think it was just another show about rap and pancakes, but it's actually pretty darn charming. And it makes good use of its hip-hop guests, who always seem to be trying not to laugh when Andy bites into a frying pan. Check out Paul Wall grilling Andy here.

Read more!

THIS WEEK'S NEW RELEASES: EVEN LL COOL J WANTS J. LO TO SHUT THE HELL UP

We’re going to get the obvious out of the way: Yes, there’s a new Raffi album out this week. And yes, it’s called Quiet Time: Songs for a Pause, Cuddle, or a Nap, which is simultaneously the best and worst album title of all time. But it’s not the only contender for your Limewire bandwith:

• LL Cool J’s twelfth album, Todd Smith, features a Puffy-level number of guests (Mary J. Blige, Pharrell, 112) and a hard-to-hate-on first single, “Control Myself,” which proves that Jennifer Lopez is an okay-enough singer, as long as her cooing is buried way down in the mix. The reviews are mixed: Entertainment Weekly puts “Myself” on its must list, calling it “A thrilling dance-floor hit with a killer beat that'll keep you shakin' all night long” (apparently, they’re saving Time Inc. moolah these days by using more contractions); but the Daily News notes that Smith “pushes things a tad too far toward the soft side.” Not that they’d say that to his face.

• You In Reverse, the comeback album from Boise, Idaho’s Built to Spill is just as noodly as ever, with a kick-off single, “Goin’ Against Your Mind,” that clocks in at nearly nine minutes. And while Earshot is happy to have Doug Martsch and company back after five years, most of Reverse sounds like the kind of songs that will work best when they're played live, confirming that BTS is slowly becoming an indie-rock version of Phish. PItchfork says "suffers from a lack of structure that leaves much of it sounding indulgent and extraneous," but you have to get through 300 words of typical BS to get to the point.
  

• Finally, there’s Toby Keith’s new album, White Trash Wins Lotto, which we haven’t listened to yet, mostly because it’s Toby Keith’s new album. But the Times’ “Krazy” Kelefa Sanneh”—who discovered country music sometime last year, and has been rubbing it in our face ever since—loves it. We’re just excited that someone’s finally put out a record that endorses both fat chicks and school prayer.

Read more!

THE WEEK AHEAD: WOLF! THERE IT IS!*

• There’s no shortage of lupine-loving live acts to choose from this week: Montreal’s oft-spazzy Wolf Parade plays at Webster Hall; fizzy New York pop outfit Voxtrot are at the Mercury Lounge, pimping their new EP, Raised by Wolves; and Australian Sabbath ripper-offers Wolfmother are at Bowery Ballroom tomorrow night. Proving once again that the indie-rock community has only a handful of ideas, most of them painfully stupid.
  

• If someone boring you know is in town and wants to go out, jazz pianist Chick Corea—our fourteenth-favorite songwriting Scientologist of all time—is at the Blue Note Thursday night. Ask nicely, and maybe Chick will perform his fourteen-hour instrument-free new suite, “Silent Birth.”

• The Death Cab for Cutie/Franz Ferdinand tour rolls into Hammerstein Thursday and Friday night. Make sure your mom picks you up a few blocks away at Sbarro’s, so the other kids won’t see.

• Douchebaggy guitar-wank Joe Satriani plays at Nokia, wondering if more indie-rock snobs would like him if he was called Wolftriani.

* We apologize for the awful, awful Tag Team pun, but it's been a long day of wordy toiling. We never knew our computer could sweat so much.

Read more!

SHOW PATROL: GORILLAZ IN OUR MIDST
Gorillaz
The Apollo Theater
Thursday, April 6


The first big surprise of the night was waiting for us when we got out of the A-train station at 125th street: Everywhere we looked, there was a horde of befuddled-looking honkies wandering around Harlem. Not since Hall & Oates recorded Live at the Apollo has this theater been invaded by so many whitebred dudes and their dates. The second surprise was inside the theater itself. It’s amazingly small, which just reinforces how much it must hurt when someone gets tossed on their ass on amateur night; the chances are pretty good that the person who booed you the most is sitting only two rows behind.

In town for just five nights, the Gorillaz crew tried to make the most of this setting: A half-dozen or so multi-colored video screens lined the stage, which was overstuffed with musicians (shadowy Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn stayed in the back.) On the balcony, two lewd, oversized puppets opened the show by cracking a few jokes for the audience, which included real-life lewd oversized puppets Kate Moss and Harvey Weinstein. It was the only touch of humor in the whole show, which is a shame, since if there’s one thing Gorillaz needs, it’s a bit of levity; they may be cartoons, but with all their apocalyptic imagery, they’re not that cartoonish.

The music was just as advertised: Demon Days Live. No "Clint Eastwood”—just the new album, front-to-back, with plenty of paraded-out guests. A children’s choir pop-locked and chanted during a joyous “Dirty Harry,” De La Soul cackled for “Feel Good Inc.,” and Ike Turner, looking like he’s just slapped a bedazzler, played a completely nonsensical piano solo (between Ike and fellow guest stars like Dennis Hopper and the Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder, there must have been one helluva long backstage confab about the merits of peyote on one's eyelids).

Even Albarn popped up, reluctantly, at the end, taking the vocals on the languid B-side “Hong Kong.” You almost wanted to bum-rush the stage and tell him it was okay to have fun, but it probably wouldn’t have done any good; Gorillaz is a larky project he has to take very seriously, and its success seems to embarrass him. For that one moment, he looked like the most befuddled honky of them all.

Read more!

NEWS ROUND-UP: IT'S ALL SPITZER'S FAULT

• Radio programmers are afraid to get adventurous with their playlists, blaming Elliot Spitzer's payola crack-down for the sad state of the industry. We tried to get a DJ comment on why listeners don't care about radio anymore, but WLTX's "Morning Spankfest," hosted by Fat Daddy and the Nookie Monster, was in the middle of a Daniel Powter marathon. (LA Times)
• Two Madonna tickets will run you almost $800. But isn't worth it to finally hear "This Used to Be My Playground" live? (BrooklynVegan)
• Good news and bad news for Who fans: The good news is that a new album's on the way. The bad news is that it will be preceeded by an eleven-minute mini-opera, The Glass Household, which we all have to pretend to like. (Billboard)
  
• Troubled Love lead singer Arthur Lee is battling leukemia; an L.A. benefit show is planned for as early as next month. (Billboard)
  

Read more!

INSTANT FAN: THE M'S

We’ve been all googly-moogly over this Chicago foursome’s undeniable (and possibly unhealthy) ’60s Brit-rock fixation since their self-titled 2004 debut, which took a batch of Kinks-y mod-power songs and sexed them up with glammy production. But this year’s Future Women—already one of Earshot’s favorite albums of the year—is brasher and better, and one of the few retro-minded albums that nods to the past without bowing to it (which may be why they landed a spot on the Lollapalooza bill). But enough of our yammerin':

The M's, "Plan of the Man"
The M's, "2x2"
The M's, "Holding Up"
The M's, "Banishment of Love"

Buy Future Women from Amazon
Offical Site: The M's

Read more!

LUNCHROCK: FIVE SONGS TO LISTEN TO DURING YOUR MEASLY HOUR-LONG BREAK

• Figurines, "The Wonder" Is there anything the Danish can't do? Well, they can't quell religious unrest. But still.
  
• Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy" You'll be sick of it when it takes over the world in the next few months, so get your sing-alongs in now.
• Hot Chip, "Boy From School"Just when you think it's going to be another so-so electronic dance number, it rips it up with some sick-ass harpsichord. That's right: Harpsichord!
  
• Ambulance, Ltd., "Arbuckle's Swan Song" Could this sound any more like a 1978 AM Gold jam?
• Ghostface Killah, "Be Easy" Note: NSFW. Even if you W as a longshoreman.

Read more!

THE ITOD: CREATING TOMORROW'S HIPSTERS, TODAY

When Earshot was growing up, our main source of music was the arsenal of Maxell tapes we used to record the Sunday-night countdown on Philly’s Eagle 106 FM (we still have the cassette featuring only the first half of The System’s “Don’t Disturbing This Groove,” leaving us forever confused as to how the song ends, and whether said groove was left undisturbed). Anyway, The London Times Online has a write-up on the new iTod, a Fisher-Price MP3 player aimed at not only kids, but the yuppie-prick parents who want their child to listen to Sufjan Stevens instead of the Wiggles.

The best part of the iTod is its extras, which includes access to a kid-friendly digital-download shop (all the good 2 Live Crew songs are edited—we checked) and a device that “visually symbolize(s) songs, such as displaying a star for ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’” This last feature, of course, will be completely abused by college stoners.

But what "grown-up" songs do kids actually enjoy? Earshot was a big fan of the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" and Kurtis Blow's "Basketball," even though boating and sports played zero part in our childhood. Any other strange childhood soundtracks? Or would everyone rather play it cool and pretend that the first record they owned was Surfer Rosa?

Read more!

CONDOLEEZA GETS FINGERED

Yesterday's New York Times featured a ludicrously precious profile on the musical career of Condoleeza Rice, the second-most dangerous pianist of all time (if you think the Iraqi civil war deserves her a first-place slot, you've obviously forgotten about Billy Joel's wine-and-wheels habit). Anyway, the overly breathy piece is full of the kind of soft-news non-revelations you'd expect from the always-mum Secretary—she totally disses Puccini!—but it's salvaged by this quote from one of her bandmates:

"We generally like to start off with a nice finger-buster for the secretary," Mr. Battey said. That way, he explained, she's warmed up when they really get to work.

Earshot obtained a transcript of the unused parts of Mr. Battey's subtlety-free interview, in which he notes that Rice "prefers ebony over ivory, if you know what I'm saying," and that she'd "love to hook up with Alicia Keys." Expect Mr. Battey to be found dead in an Iraqi barley field by the end of the week.

Read more!

LEAK OF THE WEEK: THE RACONTEURS

Jack White had a pretty batshit 2005: He got hitched in a Brazillian rain forest, wrote a Coke jingle, and, worst of all, started moseying around in a muscular, mustachioed gaucho get-up that was one part Carlos Santana, one part Snidely Whiplash.

Thankfully, he also found time to record an album with Brendan Benson—a supremely underrated power-popper who looks like a skeleton but who often sounds like a much cooler Todd Rundgren—and a few members of the Detroit garage-rock outfit the Greenhornes. Calling themselves the Raconteurs (or the Saboteurs, if you live in Perth) their Broken Boy Soldiers album is a great clang of ‘70s classic-rock revivalism, kind of like Houses of the Holy meets “Holy Diver.” It’s probably the most relaxed White has sounded since the “Hotel Yorba” days, and, accordingly, you can find tracks from the May 23 release all over the Internet. We strongly recommended the lead-off single “Steady as She Goes” and this live version of its B-Side "Store Bought Bones." You can also snag much of the album on The Hype Machine, of course.

Read more!

MICK AND KEITH: RED-FACED IN CHINA

The Rolling Stones played their first-ever gig in China this weekend, and sadly, it was like pretty much every other Stones show of the past ten years: The tickets were overpriced ($375, which is the equivalent of a month's pay for most Chinese workers), and the audience was mostly rich old white dudes and their trophy wives. The few non-foreigners who showed up weren't that impressed:

"I've never listened to their songs," said Shen Yichen, a 16-year-old girl who was accompanied by her parents. "Maybe listening like this for the first time is more authentic."

Before the show, her father, equally unfamiliar with the music, downloaded a song. "I don't know what song it was," said the father, Shen Shiji, 46. "Maybe it was a song paying tribute to Dylan.

"I don't know if it's their lyrics that make people like them," he added, "but listening to the melody, it wasn't so beautiful."

In all fairness, the group was banned from playing "Brown Sugar," "Beast of Burden" and "Let's Spend the Night Together," three of its best songs, so maybe the unbeautiful melodies were from any of its underwhelming albums of the past, oh, twenty years or so. But seriously, you have to be really bad to offend music fans over there. Have you heard any Chinese "pop" songs lately? They sound like a zither dry-humping a didgeridoo.

Read more!

THE STREETS' POP SECRET: WHO'S GOT THE CRACK?

The Streets’ Mike Skinner—a.k.a. the pasty-faced, drug-abusing British youth icon who’s not getting with Kate Moss—has a new album out at the end of month, the cheekily titled Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living. The record’s kinda ennh, but the lead-off single, “When You Wasn’t Famous,” is like “You’re So Vain” for the Misshapes set, in which an MTV-loved pop star is accused of hitting the pipe. Check out the lines (tee-hee!) below—oh, and "prang" means coke in Limeyland:

But I realized with you the truth could be a whole lot worse than the flack.
My whole life I never thought I'd see a pop star smoke crack.

Considering the amount of prang you'd done, you looked amazing on CD:UK.
You learn dances, do promo, cameras flashing, get in the van, zoom away….

Whenever I see you on MTV, I can’t stop my big wide smile.
And past the children’s appeal, I see the darkness behind….

Hmm. A trouble-making, youth-skewing starlet? ODB's too dead, and we all know that Whitney doesn't get out much these days. So that still leaves plenty of candidates. We know Natalie Portman checked out a Streets show a few years back, but does anyone know of any other possible binging birds from Skinner’s past? E-mail guesses to earshotblog[at]gmail.com.

Read more!

PARIS HILTON'S ALBUM: THE BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENTS BEGIN

The Los Angeles Times reports that Paris Hilton's much-delayed debut album—the Chinese Democracy for people who don't actually know where China is located—will finally be released this summer. The as-yet-untitled record is being kept away from the press, a strategy usually reserved for Rob Schneider movies; but the Times reports that the 10-track disc includes credibility-squandering collaborations with Three 6 Mafia, Scott Storch and DJ Paul Oakenfold (who delicately notes that "a lot of people were expecting it to be a lot worse than it is"), and that at least one song, "Jealousy," is aimed at Nicole Richie:

"Jealousy" rocks harder, shot through with guitars, violins and plaintive lyrics. "You're not the girl I once knew," she sings. "Tell me where she is 'cause she's not you." On "Fighting Over Me" (featuring Fat Joe and Jadakiss), her "collabo" in the vein of LL Cool J and Lopez's recent rap-R&B hybrid, "Control Myself," Hilton busts a rhyme over a hip-hop beat: "Every time I turn around, boys are fightin' over me / Maybe 'cause I'm hot to death and so, so, so sex-ee.

So many questions: What will be more embarrassing to white people—her rapping or her singing? Has she finally, finally learned how to spell phonetically? And does she really think that guys are fightin' over her whenever she turns around? We're pretty sure they're more likely to be delousing themselves with Ketel One and some WD-40.

Read more!

'SHOT HAPPENS: THE INTRO TRACK

Welcome to Earshot, one of the 4,256 new music blogs that will be launched this week. We're not as indie-centric as Pitchfork or as industry-centric as Billboard, so no matter what your taste in music might be, we'll make it worth your while. Just to show you how much we care, here's a kick-off MP3 from this guy.

Oh, and by the way: We have no idea what the hell we're doing, a fact that will become abundantly clear as the day goes on. So please drop us a line at earshotblog[at]gmail.com and let us know what you think.

Read more!