Pop Shots
We're Skewing Old This Week
By: Adam Bernard
Last updated February 17th , 2010

Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings. Covering all things pop culture, this week Pop Shots is hitting you with thoughts on everything from MTV ditching a part of their old logo, to an old rock band performing at an old haunt, to an older woman being credited with bringing sexy back in the 80's. Oh, and then there's John Mayer's penis, because apparently we're all required by law to talk about that now. And since this is Pop Shots you know everything is seasoned with a little bit of attitude.

* There's really only one place to start this week's Pop Shots and it's with John Mayer and his "white supremacist" junk. In the Playboy interview heard round the internets, Mayer dropped the N-bomb and proclaimed his penis was a white supremacist. In the same interview he also described Jessica Simpson as "sexual napalm" (side note to Jessica - I love the smell of napalm in the morning). Mayer's done the usual "I'm sorry" thing, and personally I'm willing to give my fellow Fairfielder a pass on this one. Who I'm NOT willing to give a pass is Rolling Stone. As a subscriber I expect THEM to get this kind of an interview, which was far more buzz-worthy than their own cover story on Mayer two weeks ago that only netted us the information that he masturbates his problems away. Oh, and John, unless you plan on playing your guitar with it, could you please stop talking about your penis?

* MTV is finally admitting it has nothing to do with music. Well, OK, not really, but they did make a major marketing move this past week by dropping the words "Music Television" from their logo. They're also placing stars of their reality shows inside the new MTV logo as a nod to the rebranding they've done of the network, a rebranding that's had old school fans, fans who preferred when it was all about the music, up in arms. The days of Dire Straights wanting their MTV are long gone. Now the stars of Jersey Shore, My Life as Liz, Teen Mom, and The Buried Life are the face of the network. We never knew how good we had it with Downtown Julie Brown, Pauly Shore and Kennedy.

* A new version of "We Are The World" was released this past week to raise funds to Haiti. The song has some high points and some low points, but let's start by focusing on the good. Jennifer Hudson, Pink, Jamie Foxx, Enrique Iglesias, Adam Levine, Usher and LL Cool J all knock their parts out of the park. They truly understood the concept of a team effort and a group song. It was a little saddening, however, to not see some of the biggest stars of today involved in the project. Couldn't they have organized this in such a way as to get folks like Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes and Paramore involved? I mean, it's great Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion could jump on the track, as they can both still sing, but in 1985 "We Are The World" had all biggest stars of that era. I know, I'm nitpicking, and I'll stop now, because overall I applaud the effort and hope it raises some money.

* Carrie Underwood achieved a new level of stardom last week as she now has her own Sesame Street character. Named Carrie Underworm, the latest addition to the Sesame Street gang is voiced by Underwood herself and her first appearance was this past week. You can check out Carrie Underworm's debut here. At least three more appearances are planned in the coming months.

* In news about rockers doing cool things, Axl Rose brought some of the old school vibe back to the John Varvatos store in NYC during fashion week. For those who may not recognize the name of the establishment, maybe you'll be more familiar with it by it's old name - CBGBs. Last Thursday Axl brought the latest version of Guns N' Roses to the small stage that still stands at the store and reportedly played a nearly two hour set featuring 17 songs that spanned the entire GNR catalogue. Hopefully they cranked it up to eleven and blew some of the waify models and emaciated hipsters right off the map!


* A solemn rest in peace to Doug Fieger, lead singer of The Knack, who passed away on Sunday after losing his battle with cancer. Everybody remembers The Knack's classic hit "My Sharona," but did you know Fieger was actually the first artist to approve one of Weird Al's parodies ("My Bologna")? That is truly awesome.

* Coming under the heading of "you win some, you lose some," one classic pop act is coming back to TV, at least momentarily, while another is missing a huge event. First, Devo will be one of the 15 acts performing at the Whistler Victory Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics this year (I told ya this edition of Pop Shots skewed old). It will be the band's first televised performance in twenty years. Peter Gabriel, on the other hand, will be missing quite the major event, and honor, as he will be on tour overseas when Genesis, a band that he was a founding member of, gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month. Gabriel was the original lead vocalist of Genesis before Phil Collins joined the group. (Hey, I wonder if I can find a way to raise the average age of the people mentioned in this column even more? Here goes...)

* Finally, Billboard's poll of the sexiest songs of all-time was released and according to the publication's mathematical equation where each song was given points according to its performance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart from August 1958 until January of this year (basically, Billboard's version of the BCS... and we all know how well THAT usually works out), Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" is the sexiest song of all-time. Billboard said in a statement, "some songs (on the list) are steamy slow-jams, some are hi-octane arena-rockers, but what they all have in common (and what got them on this list) is that the subject matter of each song is directly related to sex, in some way." What about seminal classics then, like, oh....


And with that, my time is up for the week, but I'll be back next week with more shots on all things pop.

[Tags] POP

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