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Britney Spears’ ‘3′ Video To Premiere Friday
Oct 30th
Pop star promises to reveal sneak peeks of the clip over the next three days.
By MTV News staff
Britney Spears on the set of “3″
Photo: GSI Media
Britney Spears hit her Web site Wednesday (October 28) to announce that the video for her provocative single “3″ would debut in “1…2…3″ days. She also promised fans some revealing sneak peeks before the clip’s Friday premiere.
“1…2…3 days until the premiere of my new video, but don’t stress,” she wrote on BritneySpears.com. “I will be sending out lots of pics and clips for the next 3 days.”
The pop princess has already delivered two pictures from the video on her Twitter page: one of her holding her hair up on her head and an innocent-looking close-up.
Spears has been teasing fans with “3″ video news for a while now, posting pictures and details from the clip’s set on her Twitter and Web site. “I am so happy y’all love it because I do this all for you,” she tweeted October 14. “I can’t wait till you see the video!” The week before, she informed her followers, “2nd day shooting my 3 video in LA with Diane Martel. Lot’s of new choreography from Tone & Rich. It’s gonna be hot!”
Spears also took to Twitter to thank her fans for making her new track an instant hit. “I want to thank my fans for making ‘3′ the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100,” she tweeted. “I am truly blessed with the greatest fans in the world.”
With “3,” Spears is the first artist to break onto the singles chart at #1 since Taylor Hicks did it three years ago, and she’s the first non-”American Idol” alum to pull off that feat since Lauryn Hill broke into the Hot 100 with “Doo Wop (That Thing)” in 1998.
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Paramore’s Hayley Williams Recalls ‘Ginormous’ Halloween Costume
Oct 30th
‘The head was absolutely huge,’ she says of her Casper getup.
By Joel Hanek, reporting by James Montgomery
Paramore’s Hayley Williams
Photo: MTV News
It’s no coincidence that on the weekend of Halloween (arguably the scariest of the holidays — save for Groundhog Day) mtvU is airing their Ulalume Music Festival special featuring AFI, Kid Cudi, Dead By Sunrise and Paramore. The show, whose name comes from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, is a showcase of artists who embrace the dark aesthetic and supply the perfect soundtrack for Halloween night.
During the fest, MTV News caught up with the Nashville natives Paramore and asked about some of their favorite Halloween costumes and memories. After all, they did write that song for “Twilight,” so they should be experts of all things macabre, right?
“One time someone made me a Casper costume because ‘Casper’ was my favorite movie,” Paramore singer Hayley Williams shared. “It kind of looked like … what’s his name from ‘Ghostbusters’?”
Drummer Zac Farro tried to help. “Bill Murray?”
“No, marshmallow dude!” Williams said, referring to that frightening Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. “I looked like that, and the head was absolutely huge — it had these huge plastic eyes and I could see out of the bottom of them. It was legit; I could probably go to Disney World with it but I looked ginormous.”
Zac described a Halloween highlight that involved him and brother/ Paramore guitarist Josh Farro. “When Josh and I were little, we weren’t allowed to trick-or-treat — my mom thought it was Satan’s day. But we saw Coneheads … it was like a family of Coneheads — it was amazing.”
“Wow, I probably would’ve gotten scared!” Williams laughed.
For more from the “New Moon” cast and to see an exclusive clip from the film, check out MTV’s “Ulalume: Howling at New Moon” on Friday, October 30, at 9 p.m. ET — and check MTV.com at 10 p.m. to see the clip exclusively online!
It’s Halloween Week, the spookiest time of the year and also the most fun. So as the leaves fall and it gets a bit colder, we here at MTV News decided to pay homage to the holiday by rounding up some of your favorite celebrities’ Halloween memories and costume ideas — some even offer advice on how to dress up like them this year. So brace yourselves: You’re in for one horrifying week!
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Priscilla Renea Parlays YouTube Success Into Recording Deal
Oct 30th
‘Dollhouse’ singer went from singing the dictionary over Fergie’s ‘Glamorous’ to working with same producers as Mary J. Blige, Britney Spears.
By Gil Kaufman
Priscilla Renea
Photo: Charley Gallay/ WireImage
Priscilla Renea isn’t the first artist to parlay YouTube fame into a music career, but she might be the savviest. Even though the 21-year-old Vero Beach, Florida, native is wrapping up work on her major label debut, Jukebox (due December 1), and has already scored a hit single with her Katy Perry-esque love-gone-wrong anthem “Dollhouse,” even she can’t believe how far she’s come in such a short time.
“I got the majority of my fanbase from YouTube, because I was on there for a year and a half before anyone saw me from a label,” said Renea, currently a featured artist on MTV’s Discover & Download.
It all began in December 2006, around the time “Dreamgirls” came out and Justin Timberlake participated in the “My Grammy Moment” promotion on music’s biggest night. Renea entered the Grammy contest but didn’t win, though she took the video she made of herself singing JT’s “Cry Me a River” and the “Dreamgirls” showstopper “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” to YouTube and learned about the power of the video-sharing site overnight.
“I had a small group of fans at first and I started to notice that it was growing at a rapid pace. And then I did [MTV's] ‘Say What Karaoke,’ singing Cassie’s ‘Me and You,’ and MTV played it every Sunday for four weeks. And that’s when it took off and I had, like, 2 million views,” she said, noting that she was an 18-year-old college student at the time. “I was going to a community college in my neighborhood because my mom didn’t let me move to New York for college like I wanted to.”
In one of those stories that’s almost too good to believe, she said her most popular video became a clip of her singing the dictionary over Fergie’s “Glamorous.” In another sign of her entrepreneurial spirit, Renea said she sent an e-mail to an editor at YouTube, whom she’d met before, and suggested she check out this hot singer Priscilla Renea singing the dictionary over a Fergie song. “The next morning I woke up and it was on the front page of YouTube, and then the MTV show aired the next day.” A week later she got a call from a producer in Atlanta who asked her to come to the musical hub of the South to see if she had what it takes.
Happy to give up her job at a CVS distribution center, the then 19-year-old Renea moved to ATL, shacked up in a house with a bunch of other budding producers, managers, DJs, and artists, and regularly stayed up until six in the morning working on music. “It was like a frat house for music,” she said. “But after I got signed, I broke off as everyone else was becoming more successful.”
With a label deal in place, in March Renea released an EP of her YouTube greatest hits called Hello My Apple and began work on her debut, which is being produced by Benny Blanco (Britney Spears, 3OH!3) and Lil’ Ronnie (R. Kelly, Mary J. Blige). She ended up writing or co-writing every song on the album and said, for now, she doesn’t mind the constant Perry comparisons “Dollhouse” has garnered.
“It’s just because of the way that track sounds,” she said of the bouncy electro female-empowerment pop tune with the candy-colored video that has garnered nearly half a million YouTube views to date. “I don’t mind being compared to people who are successful. I think it was done around the time ‘I Kissed A Girl’ came out and we didn’t intend for it to be me — we shopped it to different artists — but the head of radio at Capitol said it was the perfect single for me and I understand why. People are quick to pigeonhole me because they hear a song that sounds like Katy, but we’ve got ballads, some Christina Aguilera-sounding songs, some where I’m rapping like Lauryn Hill and some that are more whimsical like Lily Allen.”
Renea won’t know for a few months if her dream ride to major label fame will turn into a fairytale, but she knows that she won’t be going back to that CVS gig. “If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to be doing something in music,” she promised. “I won’t quit, that’s not for me.”
Brand-New ‘Twilight: New Moon’ Clips
Oct 30th
Brand-New ‘Twilight: New Moon’ Clips
Watch the brand-new, exclusive movie clip from “Ulalume: Howling at New Moon.”
Lil Wayne Calls Rock-Heavy Rebirth A ‘Freedom Album’
Oct 30th
‘I say what I want, how I want,’ he tells Billboard of removing the rules of hip-hop.
By Jayson Rodriguez
Lil Wayne on the November 7th issue of <i>Billboard</i>
Photo: Nielsen Business Media, Inc.
The more Lil Wayne’s rock-leaning LP Rebirth is delayed, the more fans wonder if the superstar rapper can really pull off the genre-switching feat he’s attempting.
The project has been pushed back several times already, and producer Dre of Cool & Dre told MTV News back in April that the project wouldn’t necessarily be all rock. But in the November 7 edition of Billboard magazine, the Cash Money lyricist emphatically states he’ll be rocking out on Rebirth.
In the interview, which appears to have taken place before Weezy pleaded guilty to felony gun possession last week, the MC also assured fans that he knows exactly what he’s doing with this foray into rock.
“Yes, the album is still rock,” he explained. “I play guitar on 80 percent of the songs, and there’s a lot of rock influences and rock beats. I also have Travis Barker on the album. But I don’t want people to think I’m trying to do something I can’t do. Don’t think you’re going to put on the album and hear me screaming and singing. … Don’t worry about that. [Laughs.] When people hear me say rock, they may get a little scared like, ‘Oh, God. What is he going to do?’ When I said I was doing a rock album, it was about doing a freedom thing. This album isn’t hip-hop. When I do my Carter albums, I know I’ve got to rap, I know I’ve got to spit. I know the words I’ve got to say and the subjects I’ve got to talk about. I also know the things I shouldn’t say, the things I shouldn’t talk about. There’s none of those limits on this album. I say what I want, how I want. That’s what this album is: a freedom album.”
Wayne repeated that Rebirth and Young Money’s crew album will be released together. The projects are tentatively slated for a December 15 release.
A number of tracks from Rebirth have appeared online prematurely, to Wayne’s chagrin. But he said he’s retooled the album in an effort to keep fans off balance.
“I had to add new cuts, because a lot of things leaked, making people think they had an idea of what I was doing with Rebirth and what it would sound like,” he said. “And I hated that, because I never want anybody to think they know what I’m doing until I present it. So what I did was make it totally different. I flipped it.”
In addition to those projects, Wayne is also overseeing his protégé Drake’s debut, Thank Me Later, expected to drop at the top of 2010. He said the upstart star is hands on with his project, and so far, Wayne hasn’t chimed in. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Toronto MC were already finished.
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Steal Lady Gaga And Adam Lambert’s Style With Doe Deere’s Makeup Tutorial
Oct 30th
Bold, bright makeup looks — like Lady Gaga’s baby pink lipstick, the spring green eyeshadow Adam Lambert rocks on the cover of his For Your Entertainment album cover or the statement-making dramatic deep-dark makeup choices Rihanna makes — are a fun way to play with color, especially as winter rolls in. But neon looks aren’t always easy to achieve. So I called on Doe Deere (that’s her above), who’s a model, musician, and owner of makeup line Lime Crime.
Doe Deere’s constructed an entire modern-day Rainbow Brite universe of unicorns, cupcakes, candy, and cats (not to mention science!) So she’s just the perfect person to show you how to properly apply crazy-bright, highly pigmented fluorescent lipsticks and shadows to get the perfect Gaga/ Lambert/ Rihanna/ pick your popstar look.
The World Series, Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga, Rihanna And Justin Bieber: This Week’s Deep Cuts
Oct 30th
As the week comes to a close here in the MTV Newsroom, we’re left with a handful of questions before we slide out the door and into the weekend. Is it too late to start training for the New York Marathon? (Answer: Yes, as it’s Sunday.) Is this weekend when we roll the clocks back? (Yes, so enjoy an extra hour of sleep before running the marathon.) What’s going to be the most popular costume for Halloween? (We’ve already seen more Sookie Stackhouses than we care to count.) But most importantly: What might you have missed this week here on the Newsroom blog? Lucky for you,
we have whole cornucopia of answers ready and waiting for your clicking pleasure.
» The World Series kicked off this week, with the Phillies and the Yankees each taking a game in the Bronx. We still think the Yankees have the better playlist, but the Phils do have the power of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”
» “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” premiered this week, and Adam Lambert and Paula Abdul celebrated at MTV’s red carpet premiere.
» Speaking of Lambert, he revealed the cover for his album For Your Entertainment this week, which caused Jim Cantiello to go a little bit insane and insert himself into some crazy “American Idol” album covers.
» The next day, the craziness continued.
» And obviously, with any good bout of madness, there are always outtakes and deleted scenes.
» Speaking of album covers, Rihanna unveiled hers as well. The people weighed in, but what do you think?
» Justin Bieber dropped a new single this week, and it really made us want to put on a sweater.
» Joe Jonas changed his hairstyle, and everything turned out just fine.
» Har Mar Superstar made a rare appearance in the consciousness of the public, and he brought plenty of caftans to share.
» Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner may or may not be dating, but that’s beside the point. More importantly: Which is your favorite famous Taylor?
» Sarah McLachlan brought back Lilith Fair this week, so we brought back tape of an all-star jam of Indigo Girls “Closer to Fine.” Oh, the ’90s.
» You know who else hosted all-star jams this week? The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anniversary concert. But despite the fact that Bruce Springsteen traded solos with Tom Morello, they weren’t as stirring as Tom Hanks’ performance of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”
» Eminem, Black Thought and Mos Def traded rhymes in a freestyle cypher at the BET Awards. It wasn’t a competition, but for the record, Thought totally killed it.
» Eric Cartman (of “South Park” fame) added to his legacy of amazing musical performances with an incredibly intense rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.”
» And finally, just in case you can’t get into a World Series game, just grab a press pass and wander onto the field. Follow Swizz Beatz for bonus points!
Jay-Z Says It’s ‘Incredible’ Hearing His Music At Yankee Stadium
Oct 30th
‘It’s beautiful … beyond explanation,’ the MC says of Yankee players using his songs for at-bat music.
By Shaheem Reid
Jay-Z
Photo: MTV News
Before his World Series performance of “Empire State of Mind,” Jay-Z got to play the field — literally. Hov told ESPN’s “Mike and Mike in the Morning” that he got a chance to roam the green and imagined catching a ball and doubling a guy out at home plate.
“I felt like a kid,” he said. “The field is beautiful. I’ve never been that close to the field. Walking around, I jumped over the center-field fence and everything, like I was catching a home run.”
Talking to MTV News earlier in the week, before Thursday’s performance with Alicia Keys, Hov noted he loves attending games at Yankee Stadium and hearing his music.
“Jeter plays ‘Empire State’ every time he’s at bat. A-Rod does ‘Already Home’ and ‘Reminder,’ ” Jay said. “[Robinson] Cano does ‘Run This Town.’ It’s like the Jay-Z compilation at the stadium. It’s beautiful.
“Incredible,” Jay added. “Beyond explanation. Just the whole fact, being in Yankee Stadium, really interacting, knowing the players. I grew up a fan of he Yankees — Reggie Jackson, Mickey Rivers, Chris Chambliss, God bless Thurman Munson, all these guys. To be there and interact with all these guys [the current Yankee team], they’re throwing the Roc sign up — it’s fantastic.”
Ironically, Jay couldn’t stay for the show. He jumped in his Maybach and was driven out of the stadium just minutes after his performance with Alicia Keys, as he had a flight to catch for a show in Canada. Hov did keep abreast of the game, though, noting that his beloved Yankees won 3-1.
“It’s a fantastic series,” he told “Mike and Mike.” “I figured the Phillies are going to be tough and we’ll take it in seven.” And you know Hov does not lose.
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Drake Says He’ll Hold It Down For Lil Wayne: The MTV News Quote Of The Day
Oct 30th
“He’s kinda more concerned about getting as much music as he possibly can, so that when he’s in there, people are still satisfied musically with Lil Wayne product. That’s just the mind of a true businessman. I’ll just do what I can to keep the whole Young Money/ Cash Money team going. I just want to play my part as a team member and keep the brand strong until the boss gets home.”
-Rapper Drake, speaking to RapUp.com about Lil Wayne’s impending stay in jail. Drake, who signed to Weezy’s Young Money label over the summer, talked to the hip-hop Web site about what will become of the Young Money crew while Wayne is incarcerated. Wayne’s commitment to churning out product has already begun, as he unveils the new No Ceilings mixtape this weekend. The tape will contain even more tracks than the version that leaked earlier this week, and it seems like Wayne will be banking as much music as possible between now and when he gets locked up. In the meantime, he still has his rock-oriented Rebirth album on the release docket, as well as a Young Money crew album.
The 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards Are Coming To Berlin — And Buzzworthy — Thursday, November 5
Oct 30th
The 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards are just around the corner. If you haven’t booked your ticket to Berlin, well, you’re probably screwed. But fortunately Buzzworthy’s gonna give you a first-hand look at all of the international stars, performers and performances, and fan-picked awards on Thursday, November 5.
Here’s what you need to know about the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards in Berlin.
+ Katy Perry’s hosting! Fun and fashion are expected… if not DEMANDED!
+ Rock royalty Foo Fighters and Green Day, hip-hop kingpin Jay-Z, the lycanthropic Shakira, and the gorgeous Leona Lewis will all perform too.
+ … And Hometown heroes TOKIO HOTEL will perform! LIVE. Digest that.
+ U2 will hold a special musical performance in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
+ Pete Wentz will be hosting the show online!
+ And THE JONAS BROTHERS AND BACKSTREET BOYS are presenting! It’s like boy bands’ greatest hits go to Germany!
+ More presenters include the darling Miranda Cosgrove, and the empirically bananas-hot Bar Refaeli, Joss Stone, and more.
It’s like the VMAs but with a more impressive passport.
Stay tuned to the MTV Buzzworthy Blog for more 2009 EMA info, AND to stream the entire show as it happens, live in Berlin.
Feeling ready? Almost? Not quite? Vote for your favorite EMA nominees, watch Katy Perry battle Hans the creepy German puppet, check out this greatest hits video of EMAs past, featuring Justin Timberlake, Snoop, Wyclef Jean, Robbie Williams, Kylie MInogue and more, to see what you’re in for, and watch Tokio Hotel perform “Automatic” live on MTV.