Alexia Twister, a Brazilian drag star, has recreated Madonna's entire Super Bowl half time performance, complete with appearances by Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.
The performance - found via Dangerous Minds - took place at Victoria Haus in Brasilia, Brazil.
Personally, I prefer Alexia's version. This is awesome.
A Sarasota, Florida act called Boyce Avenue has covered Rihanna's "We Found Love." The rendition features piano and sparse percussion and is pretty nice.
Boyce Avenue covers lots of popular songs on their YouTube channel, where you can also find renditions of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and Adele's "Rolling in the Deep."
Of course, YouTube is chock full of covers of "We Found Love" from unknowns, kinda-knowns and well-knowns, like Coldplay. Here's Boyce Avenue's version, Coldplay's version, a version by a group of male singers called Ahmir, and Rihanna herself. Whose do you like best?
Hey Susan Boyle fans. I know you like Susan Boyle so here's some Susan Boyle.
She's debuted her cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" and as expected, she's slowed it down and added soaring orchestral instruments and...you guessed it...a choir! (There was a moment there where I started to think "What? No choir? Has she gone mad?!" But then there it was, in all its bombastic Susan Boyleness and all was right with the world again).
So, enjoy, Susan Boyle fans. You love this sort of thing.
Bennett's upcoming album DUETS II features one of the last recordings of Amy Winehouse.
Happy birthday to legendary crooner Tony Bennett, who turns 85 today.
It's been a long time since he left his heart in San Francisco but the man shows no signs of slowing down and has just finished recording sessions with Lady Gaga and Aretha Franklin, completing the lineup on his highly anticipated DUETS II CD.
Bennett laid the tracks down in New York. The final 2 sessions cap off four months of recording with a celebrated list of artists that includes Michael Bublé, k.d. Lang, Sheryl Crow, Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Queen Latifah and Willie Nelson.
The record also features one of the last studio recordings of Amy Winehouse, who died on July 23, on a duet of Body and Soul.
Lady Gaga joined Tony for a rendition of the Richard Rodgers song, The Lady Is A Tramp, while Bennett and Aretha Franklin collaborated on the Alan and Marilyn Bergman classic, How Do You Keep The Music Playing. Both tracks were recorded live in the studio in New York in the past week.
This is cute. It's Weird Al's parody to the tune of Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me, called TMZ, mocking the paparazzi.
The song, off his album Alpocalypse, which dropped June 21, begins, “You’re sorta famous, a minor celebrity, and so it only makes sense the world would be obsessed with every single thing you do,” but the best line is, "I tell you it's getting to the point where a famous person can't even get a DUI or go on a racist rant," Ha. So true. What's the world coming to?
The song itself has little to do with Taylor Swift herself. After all, she's not one of the more serious paparazzi targets, like Britney Spears or Jennifer Aniston. But Michael Jackson isn't fat and Chamillionaire isn't white and/or nerdy. That last, by the way, is my hands down favourite Weird Al songs in the history of Weird Al songs.
Let's look at the top five (and, no, Perform This Way is not among them).
Cee Lo Green has released another version of Forget You/F*** You. This one is in conjunction with Duracell and is a thank you to volunteer firefighters, called Thank You.
You can download it for free on Duracell's Facebook page, which says, "When Cee Lo Green heard about what Duracell was doing to power volunteer firefighters, he wanted to help. The issue hits home for Cee Lo, who wanted to be a firefighter when he was growing up—and whose mom served as a volunteer firefighter. His message in the lyrics of “Thank You” is one of deep appreciation for all of the courageous heroes who sacrifice their time and energy to help others."
Beyonce might be getting sued for a hundred million dollars for allegedly ruining Christmas and driving 70 people into unemployment (a claim I have no trouble believing even though I suspect it's actually not true - how's that for making no sense? - because for reasons I don't even understand myself, I just think Beyonce seems like a major pill) but Grace Potter still loves her.
"Beyoncé is becoming my hero," said Grace after leading her band, the Nocturnals, through a rootsy acoustic rendition of Why Don't You Love Me on Billboard's Mashup Monday. "We just brought our soul game into the picture."
Lady Gaga has recorded a Bollywood remix of Born This Way, for which she teamed up with Desi Hits and famous Bollywood music composers Salim-Sulaiman. She's also released an urban Desi version, created and produced by Culture Shock, which fuses Bhangra with elements of Dub step. Last year Culture Shock produced Urban Desi remixes for Rihanna and Sean Paul.
Lady Gaga's manager, Troy Carter, tells Desi Hits, "We collaborated with Indian music producers from across the globe to show our respect and appreciation for our Desi fans and the music community. We're looking forward to more Desi collaborations in the near future."
Hear the Desi versions here, as I can't embed them.
Now, we've got Indian and country inspired versions... Wonder what's next. I still don't like the song much and think it's her weakest to date. So, I'll be happy when we move on. High hopes for Judas!
Here's Avril Lavigne covering Ke$ha's Tik Tok on BBC's Live Lounge. She stopped b to talk about her album Goodbye Lullabye, which is out this week after all those fights with her label.
Avril has been going on about her label for a while, posting a letter on her website a few months ago blaming RCA for the long delay in releasing the record. And this week she reportedly told the News of the World, "It's hurtful actually. I put so much into this record, but the record company were kind of cold. But what it came down to was they really wanted me to go in a different direction and that was not OK with me.
"I've been doing this for ten years now and I write my own music. All of these new people were telling me what to do and I was like: 'NO, NO, NO!' This is my fourth record and I'm 26 so it's time for me to do something a little different. I love this record and I'm really proud of it."
