Global X Factor in the works

Tuesday, 08 December 2009 16:58

In a recent interview, Simon Cowell told GQ magazine of his plans to take the ITV talent program global, via the internet. Cowell is getting together with Sir Philip Green for the project, a retail tycoon whom Cowell describes as having “show business in his blood.”

A Christmas song with soul from Louis Eliot

Friday, 04 December 2009 21:29

As we approach Christmas so begins the inevitable onslaught of Christmas songs – it’s very refreshing to hear something that’s both new and completely effortless and charming.

This wistfully evocative track is brought to you by Louis Eliot & the Embers. 
Louis Eliot is the former front man of Rialto and the track appears on ‘Kittow’s Moor’, his first new album in half a decade.

‘Kittow’s Moor’ is the follow up to ‘The Long Way Round’ - Louis Eliot’s critically acclaimed solo debut that was released by IRL in 2004.  Marking Louis’s transition from metropolitan songsmith to country troubadour as he headed for home, it was declared album of the week by The Sunday Times and attracted high praise across the board.

Throughout his career, Louis has been at the hub of British song writing talent, most recently contributing two co-writes to Adventure Man by current Ivor Novello Songwriter of the Year, Eg White – yet another addition to the proven CV of an artist who can deliver a heart-stopping hit with easy charm.

And ‘Kittow’s Moor’ is no exception, demonstrating more than ever Louis’s extraordinary talent for wry observation and a rip-roaring, roller-coaster ride of a tune, but this time in the context of the countryside.

‘Kittow’s Moor’ is an album full of warmth, pastoral beauty and raw passion, played with effortless skill by a band of consummate musicians, so obviously attuned to Louis’s artistic vision – among them a dairy farmer and a tin whistler who runs a fairground waltzer ride – that the glorious sound they make feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Pete Doherty suffered heart failure in October

Wednesday, 25 November 2009 18:30

Platinum predicted for Susan Boyle

Tuesday, 24 November 2009 19:19

Many are speculating that female singer, Susan Boyle’s debut album, I Dreamed a Dream, will achieve platinum status even before Christmas arrives. The album has been selling out in a number of Scottish shops, hours after its release.

New British bands head to Dubai fest

Tuesday, 10 November 2009 17:12

Almost 50 British bands performed at a new music festival in Dubai this past weekend. Dubai Sound City was organized in order to create exposure for new British bands in an entirely new market.

Dave Pichilingi, the British event director, told the BBC: “The record industry is in sharp decline, the more markets we can open up the better. It offers [the British music industry] the opportunity to do business with people they might never have met before, the paying audience for the festival have come from places like India, China and Japan.”

Morrissey hit by beer bottle

Tuesday, 10 November 2009 17:09

Two songs into a gig at the Liverpool Echo Arena on Saturday, singer Morrissey was hit by a beer bottle propelled from the crowd. The former Smiths frontman then abandoned the audience of 7,500 that had come to see him perform.

US Website Sued by EMI over Online Beatles tracks

Friday, 06 November 2009 22:52

According to Reuters, a music website based in the US is being sued by the Beatles’ label, EMI. The label claims that BlueBeat.com was selling unauthorized Beatles songs online.

Joss Stone dismisses Lily Allen’s filesharing rants

Thursday, 05 November 2009 22:49

According to singer Joss Stone, Lily Allen is more a “personality” than she is a musician, and Stone went on to dismiss Allen’s online adversary to illegal filesharing.
“[Lily] needs to sell records because she’s not a singer,” Stone told the Press Association, “and that’s not an offence to her because I think that she knows that too.”
Stone believes that she is “making real music [that] people [will] come to the show” for, whereas with an “artist like Lily… it’s about the track, their personality and their celebrity”, said the femaile singer.

Stone Roses’ Ian Brown arrested

Wednesday, 04 November 2009 15:04

Former Stone Roses singer Ian Brown was taken into custody over charges of assaulting his wife, Fabiola Quiroz. The police were called to the home Brown shares with his Mexican wife in West Kensington, London, on Monday morning at 8:05. Reportedly it was the couple’s neighbors who called in the disturbance.

Quiroz, a 37-year-old model/ actress, informed the police upon their arrival that Brown had attacked her.

New Christmas Tune from George Michael

Friday, 30 October 2009 21:25

George Michael is preparing to release a brand new single for the holiday season, the BBC reports. The song will mark Michael’s first release since his 1984 hit with Wham!, “Last Christmas.”