Proving that she hasn’t learned her lesson yet, Leona Lewis has hooked back up with producer Ryan Tedder to record songs for what is believed to be for her upcoming third studio album.

“Went to Frankfurt to record with Ryan Tedder! Was so fun, really excited!” she tweeted, before mentioning that Ryan recommended her some new tunes to listen to. “Got some new music from Ryan to get into, temper trap and jaydiohead!”

As I’m sure you all know, Ryan Tedder produced the amazing “Bleeding Love”, followed by the truly horrendous “Happy”. Gross.

Can’t she ditch Ryan and just release “Nowhere Left to Go”, “Stone Hearts” or “Myself” instead?

By the way, I noticed that Teairra Mari has way more followers on Twitter than Leona does. I was kind of shocked, until I looked at Le-Lew’s page and realized that even I don’t follow her, yet I’ve been following Tea-Tea for months… That’s one point to Tea-Tea, zero to Le-Lew.

The “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” TV special aired last night, and just-so-happened to feature Taylor Swift’s very first performance of her new single “Mine”.

The last time we saw Tay-Tay lighting up the stage was during her off-key Grammy’s performance with Stevie Nicks, that ended up leaving most people wondering whether she could even sing or not. Luckily Taylor’s sake, she made up for it with this rendition of “Mine”, hitting most of the notes just as they are on the studio version. She’s clearly no Carrie Underwood when it comes to vocals, but seeing that she can carry a song live (that she solely wrote) while playing an instrument and engaging an audience, deserves some props.

As of this week, “Mine” is officially back in the top ten of the Hot 100, climbing from 14-9. The slight rebound is probably due to the song’s music video being released last week, but with some more performance and increased radio play, “Mine” will probably be able to linger within the top twenty for a while to come.

My latest Disney obsession Emilegend Osment is shaking off the haters after her raunchy Radar rip-off “Let’s Be Friends” flopped Stateside, and has moved on to her second US single, “Love Sick”.

Emily’s obviously realized that copying a three-year-old Britney song that barely even charted in the first place may not be a shining path to success, so this time she’s tried to craft something that’s slightly less of a blatant knock-off. “Love Sick” is a huge electro-pop number filled with arcade-style blips & beeps, an explosive pop-rock chorus and a heavy dose of the Veronica’s sophomore album, Hook Me Up. Love <3

How are all these Disney brats so amazing? First Hilary, and now Demi, Miley, Selena and Emilegend. You can keep Miranda Cosgrove, though. Oh wait, Miranda is Nickledeon, which explains why she’s boring and has crap music.

Anyway, check out a medium quality version of Emilegend’s next flop “Love Sick”, below. Please buy her album, Fight or Flight, when it hits stores in October, or else Emily will go to college to study physics and then we’ll never see or hear from her again.

Spurred on by the release of her sophomore album Teenage Dream, Katy Perry’s latest single, also titled “Teenage Dream”, received a surge in downloads this week, topping the digital songs chart with 259k copies, enough to certify it Platinum for total sales of over 1 million. However, Katy’s strong digital showing wasn’t enough to knock Eminem & Rihanna off the top of the Hot 100, who log in their seventh consecutive week at No. 1 with their airplay ruler “Love the Way You Lie”, leaving “Teenage Dream” settle for for No. 2.

The next most notable move on the Hot 100 comes from everybody’s favorite party girl Ke$ha, who cracks the top ten with her latest single “Take It Off”, moving 16-10 in it’s seventh week. This gives Ke$ha four consecutive top ten hits from her chart topping debut album Animal – five overall when including her feature on 3OH!3′s “My First Kiss”. This now means that every single Ke$ha has released or appeared on has gone top ten. We’ll see if she can continue her winning streak when her collaboration with Taio Cruz, “Dirty Picture”, goes to mainstream radio later this month.

Also making a splash is Kid Cudi, who debuts at an impressive No. 22 with his Kanye West-assisted single, “Erase Me”. The song has been at radio for nearly three weeks, but it’s debut was mainly due to a strong opening week on iTunes, with 99k copies sold. The No. 22 debut makes “Erase Me” Cudi’s second highest-charting single ever — featured or solo — since his 2008 debut, “Day ‘n’ Nite”.

Another interesting move on this week’s Billboard charts belongs to Chris Brown, who seems to be staging somewhat of a comeback with his new mixtape single, “Deuces”. The song reaches a new peak of No. 24 on the Hot 100, and comes in at an impressive No. 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop singles chart — his first R&B chart topper since 2007′s “Kiss Kiss”. He also topped the box office on the weekend with his new movie, Takers. He’s now planning to capitalize off his current popularity with a brand new Polow Da Don-produced single titled “Calypso”, which is rumored to be coming out soon.

What a positive week on the charts for everybody. Until next time, folks.

Mah man Kid Cudi has been out on the road to promote his new single “Erase Me”, and during a recent show at the University of Buffalo, he managed to find a second in between songs to explain the reason why his sophomore album, MOTM2: The Legend of Mr. Rager, has been pushed back several times.

“Let me explain why I pushed it back: I spent so much time making these records for y’all, that I forgot to do all the other shit for my album. Like artwork, all the important shit you’re supposed to do. And I really wanna include a lot of dope shit in the packaging, and like, really put y’all up on like, what this is all supposed to be about: music, packaging, vinyls. Just bring art on all levels — musically and visually with the packaging. Not a lot of artists get the chance to do that… Another movie poster will be in the packaging, we’ve got DVD footage, we’ve got the deluxe version, we’ve got the regular version.”

“And then also, I’m dropping another album. I’m doing another album and I’m dropping it this year with [producer] Dot Da Genius. Me and Dot, we go back, we made “Day ‘n’ Nite’ together, we’ve got a crazy chemistry together… I’m thinking about dropping it around the time that Man on the Moon comes out, so y’all can just have a shit load of Kid Cudi music.” {source}

My baby is so eloquent and refined. I’m glad that he’s decided to bless the world with not one album, but two. The more the merrier.

By the way, his new single “Erase Me” is shaping up to be a bit of a hit, and is the highest entry on the digital songs chart this week, coming in at #11 with 99k sold. That should be enough for a very nice debut on the Hot 100 when the official chart is unveiled tonight (Australian time).

You can check out Cudi performing the single, below.

Kimberly Wyatt of dance-duo Her Majesty & the Wolves sent out a few Twitpics yesterday from the set of her band’s new music video, “Stars In Your Eyes”. The video saw Kim reunite with fellow PCD bandmate Ashley Roberts, who acted as an official choreographer for the shoot. Ashley also hinted at a possible cameo in the clip, before jumping on a flight to Australia once filming wrapped up.

“Stars In Your Eyes” will be the official first single from Her Majesty & the Wolves, as it’s since been confirmed that the clubby “Glaciers” was just a promotional buzz single.

Meanwhile, Kim’s other, less interesting former bandmate Nicole Scherzinger, sat down with Piggy Perez for a new interview, in which she stated that she “didn’t know” what was going on with all the new Pussycat Dolls’ members and that there wouldn’t be any PCD “in the indefinite future”. Her first single is due in the Fall, followed by her RedOne-produced solo album, which will most likely never be released.

You can watch Nikki’s interview with Piggy Perez below the cut, under the picture.

Read more »

Yesterday, I posted about country music superstar Miranda Lambert leading the CMA Award nominations with five, but mentioned to the possibility of her receiving more once all the nominations were announced. Well, now all the noms are out, and Miranda has made CMA Award history by receiving a whopping total of nine nominations — the most ever for a female solo artist.

The fiery Texan earned nominations for entertainer of the year, female vocalist of the year, album of the year, single of the year for both “White Liar” and “The House That Built Me,” song of the year for “White Liar,” musical event for “Bad Angel” with Bentley and Jamey Johnson, and video of the year for both “White Liar” and “House”. {source}

It was a good day for Lambert, who was in great company with her friends from Lady Antebellum who received five nominations, and her fiance Blake Shelton who received four. Fellow country diva Carrie Underwood — who is hosting the show when it airs on November 10 — didn’t fair quite as well as she usually does, only picking up nods for female vocalist of the year and album of the year.

It’s been a whirlwind year for Miranda, who has emerged from critical darling into one of country music’s hugest stars over the past 12 months. Her third album Revolution was the most critically-acclaimed country record of 2009, she won three ACM Awards, a CMT Award, topped the charts with her single “The House That Built Me”, got engaged, and now she’s about to sweep the CMAs.

It couldn’t happen to somebody more talented and deserving!

Check out Miranda on the Today show from earlier this morning, where she discussed her record nominations, her engagement and much more.

Sky Ferreira sat down with Punchbowl TV recently for a new interview to promote her UK single “One”. But, we already know everything there is to know about “One”, which is why it’s good that Sky spoke about a bunch of other stuff too, including her US single “Obsession”, which she still appears to hate despite weakly trying to pretend that she actually loves it.

“It [Obsession] was pitched to like Rihanna, Adam Lambert, like all these huge people. But whatever, another man’s trash is another person’s treasure [laughs].

“I had to compromise with it. I mean,  love the song and it’s very poppy and stuff, but it’s um… I think I just wanted to try something a little different at first, but, you know, I’ll do what I have to do to get out. I mean, I don’t, like, hate the song — well, some parts of it I don’t like it.”

I love that she hates the song. I hate it too, but knowing that she also hates it kind of makes me love it.

Besides showing her obvious disdain for another one of Tedder’s turds, Sky also spread some love by stanning for Britney Spears again, just like she seems to do in every interview (and I love her for it). She also spoke in detail about having birthdays parties over at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, her fashion, and a few other random things like as washing her hair and not taking drugs.

By the way, “Obsession” is on iTunes now. I can’t decide yet if I want it to flop so Sky can give her label the finger for pairing her with Ryan Tedder, or if I want it to be a hit because I love Sky and want to see her successful. Decisions, decisions.

It’s been less than a year since Shakira graced us with her criminally-underrated pop album She Wolf, but she’s already back and ready to do it all again with the release of her brand new single “Loca”.

The song features British rapper Dizzee Rascal, and is essentially a cover, or remake,  of El Cata’s underground hit “Ella es loca con su tigre”. With it’s sexy, Latin flavors and exotic influences, “Loca” could easily be labelled as a return to the ‘old’ Shakira, but the song’s heavy Cuban-influences and the addition of grime king Dizzee Rascal show that Shakira is still exploring new territory after fifteen years in the business.

“Loca” is fresh, fun, sexy, infectious, and all around ridiculously amazing. She really hasn’t had a single this hot since “La Tortura”.

Shakira’s new bilingual album Sale El Sol drops October 15. You can check out what is rumored to be the official album artwork above.

Take a listen to the radio rip of “Loca” below, and then tell me how much you love it in the comments.

Update: Spanish version added.

Singer JoJo proved over the weekend that her trademark power pipes haven’t been lost to autotune and whispers, when she performed an acoustic rendition of her leaked song, “Safe With Me”. As always, she nailed it. Not only is JoJo a great singer from a purely technical standpoint, but she’s also got so much genuine soul, which is something that even some of today’s top vocalists are lacking.

Meanwhile, her new mixtape single “In the Dark” has been making waves across the internet since it’s release on Monday, and is currently the most read article on urban bible Rap-Up.com where it premiered, raking in over 125 comments and counting. It must be great for JoJo to see that there’s still so much public interest in her, despite being off the scene for four years and technically only having two real hits to her name.

JoJo is back, and no wig is safe!

In the best piece of news to happen to Pop music since Heidi Montag announced her sophomore album, producer Fernando Garibay has revealed that he’ll be executive producing Lady GaGa’s upcoming third album, along with the Lady herself.

Garibay worked with GaGa on her last album The Fame Monster, producing the self-conscious sex anthem “Dance in the Dark”, which was released as a single in Australia in July.

Seriously, could this get any better? Not only does it confirm that Satan RedOne isn’t exec-producing, but it also guarantees that there will be some killer tunes on GaGa’s third record. Garibay is one of the best and most overlooked contemporary pop producers in the industry today, so pairing him with the world’s biggest pop star can only mean good, non-generic, non-RedOne things.

Some of Gabiray’s most fabulous classics include Jordan Knight’s “Give It To You”, Enrique’s “Rhythm Divine”, Ashlee Simpson’s “La La”, Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind”, Britney Spears’ “Amnesia” and the best unreleased pop song of 2010, “Down” by the Paradiso Girls.

GaGa’s new album is due out first quarter next year.

Nicki Minaj conquered the charts with “Your Love” and has every celebrity in the industry basically calling her the second coming of Jesus, so, it’s kind of like a big deal that her new single has arrived.

For her next surefire smash, Nicki has teamed up with Will.i.am for an “OMG” sized hit, “Check it Out”. It’s got repetitive, mindless lyrics, generic production, auto-tune galore, some watered-down version of what is supposed to be ‘rapping’, and yet somehow it’s more addictive than crystal meth (and probably just as damaging to the brain, too). You can attribute this to three things: Will.i.am’s uncanny ability to create earworm after earworm, Nicki’s larger than life personality, and the catchier-than-the-flu sample of “Video Killed the Radio Star” that “Check It Out” is built around.

Nicki might want to work on some original material in the future, though. “Check it Out” relies heavily on “Video Killed the Radio Star”, while “Your Love” did the same with Annie Lennox’s “No More I Love You’s”. She’s gonna have to top the charts without rehashing old hits if she wants to meet the insane amount of hype that’s currently resting upon her shoulders.

Anyway, “Check It Out” is the next big hit, it’s the jam, it’s catchy, and you’re gonna get real sick of it once radio put it on ultra-heavy rotation, so enjoy it while you can.

“Check It Out” will officially impact Top 40/Mainstream radio on September 14. It’s officially listed as “Will.i.am & Nicki Minaj”, so it appears to be a joint single for the pair. You can check out the mixtape version of the song below.