Three stories have caught my attention in the past two days off of Billboard.com:
– As mentioned here in October, the Indigo Girls are definitely going the indie route, signing with Vanguard to distribute “Poseidon and the Bitter Bug” on their IG Recordings label. Arriving March 24th, the Mitchell Froom-produced CD will be a double, with one disc the fully formed versions of the songs, and the other disc all acoustic versions of the songs. No word on touring plans, but Amy is currently out touring for her “Didn’t It Feel Kinder” solo set. She’ll be here playing the Fox Theater in Boulder on February 7th.
– A recent addition to the Year End categories has been Top Digital Artist, and this year’s top artist is Flo Rida. Yeah…no kidding. He grabbed the #1 Digital Song and #2 Hot Ringmaster honors with “Low”, which has sold 4.4 million downloads. That’s some serious (legal) downloads! He also hit #1 on the year-end Hot 100, and #3 on the Best New Artists chart, only getting squeezed out by Leona Lewis and Jordin Sparks, who both had the full year to rack up points. [Side note: among the folks he’s working with on his follow-up is none other than Dr. Luke. For some reason, Dr. Luke = Poster Girl in my mind…]
– 2008’s #1 artist Chris Brown has a lot of irons in the fire for 2009, including some potential duets with Rihanna, TWO label start-ups for Interscope and Jive, writing for a whole host of pop artists, and a collaboration with Tim McGraw on a song called “Human”.
“It’s incredible”, he says. “I wanted to do something more along the country line. That’s a bigger and different audience for me.”
Tim McGraw continues to be one of my favorite country artists, primarily because he’s not afraid to step outside the box and take some chances in his career (see his cover of Ryan Adams or his duet with Nelly). Having said that, I have no idea what this collaboration might sound like, but I’m definitely keeping an open mind.
Stumble It!
Pop Music Notes 
John, it’s almost scary you say that since it was a few weeks ago I first had the thought, “Wow, Dr. Luke is kind of…hot?” (I’m not sure if comments here can handle links…) That’s probably overstating things, but not bad-looking in a scruffy kind of way. And that’s definitely not always been the case.
Flo Rida with him? That’s a collaboration I never saw coming.
I’m still hoping that Chris will surprise us all with a brilliant third album. From the millions of demos leaking, if he picks the right songs, he could do it…but will he do that?
If Chris keeps on like he’s been, 2009 will be the year of CB.
I am very excited about the return of the Indigo Girls. It’s been far too long since their politicoacoustic tunes rocked my stereo! And hopefully the Chris Brown stuff will blow him even more sky high than he already is 🙂
PG, I made the association, based on your praise for his BBoys work. He apparently has done a good amount of work with hip-hop acts, though.
Yuri, I won’t begrudge him the success, but can we please have someone else make some music for a couple of months?
Paul, I love the fact that you get into IG as well as your other pop obsessions. And see above on CB.
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