Blog: Spinner.com

Filed under: News AP Photo | Getty Images Likeability is a mysterious formula to nail down. When you have it, it's like lightning in a bottle, and when you don't, well people just don't really like you. Mitt Romney learned this the hard way when he attempted to follow in the musical footsteps of President Barack Obama, who recently wowed an audience with his rendition of [...]

Filed under: News , Exclusive , Q + A Knomia Usually, it takes something pretty severe to force a performer to stop their set cold and disappear from the stage for a few minutes. But in the case of Larkin Grimm , who had to press the pause button on a recent performance in Portland, Ore., it was something a little more personal: Her five-month-old son needed to be nursed. "That was unusual," [...]

Filed under: Video , Exclusive Photo Finish Records Circa Survive vocalist Anthony Green recently released 'Beautiful Things,' his second solo album. Although Green recorded the new collection at his wife's parent's beach house in Avalon, N.J., you wouldn't know it from hearing it. Tracks like 'Big Mistake' and 'Get Yours While You Can' ooze with layer upon layer of guitars, vocal harmonies and the wide-screened production values usually found on albums [...]

Filed under: News Getty Images (2) Mitt Romney, the current frontrunner in the Republican's endless -- and endlessly nasty -- presidential primary, has spent the past few months throwing red meat at the party base. One of America's richest men, he's been arguing for lower corporate taxes and more military spending while stoking anti-immigrant jingoism. So it makes sense, then, that in his Florida primary victory, Romney's people would blast the patriotic song 'Wavin' Flag.' Except, [...]

Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News Taylor Hill, FilmMagic On his 2007 single 'Radio Nowhere,' Bruce Springsteen sang about "spinnin' round a dead dial" and searching in vain for life on the airwaves. The answer, it seems, was switching from terrestrial to satellite. Next month, the Boss will help SiriusXM celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special show at New York City's legendary Apollo Theater. Springsteen's first-ever Apollo show will broadcast live [...]

Filed under: News , New Music , Exclusive , Q + A Rob Shanahan Even when Ringo Starr is in a rush, he's still as happy as anyone can be. On Tuesday afternoon, Spinner caught up with the Beatles legend during a break in rehearsals for ' The Late Late Show ' to chat about his new album, 'Ringo 2012,' which is out now via Universal. Full of laughter and [...]

Filed under: Exclusive , New Music Robert Yeager Van Halen celebrates the release of 'A Different Kind of Truth,' their 12th studio album, with a 90-second teaser of ' Beats Workin ',' a new track from the long-awaited collection. It's the legendary act's first album with original frontman David Lee Roth in over 26 years and [...]

Filed under: News , Exclusive Joshua Ostroff, AOL When Rob Base bounded onto the stage of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum for TOGETHER 2012, the United Jewish Appeal fundraiser may have been an unlikely event but the venue was rather apropos, what with all the dinosaurs in the building. The '80s hip-hop legend no longer performs with his one-time partner DJ E-Z Rock, but Rob Base was part of a stellar old-school hip-hop [...]

Filed under: Video , Exclusive , RPM Ruvan Wijesooriya At the top of Bird Peterson and Ocelot 's banging single 'Soul Survivor,' a voice-over tells us there has been "a real mean killing, and the wrong guy died." The luckless chap was buried, "but his soul survived." Right there, you've got the makings of a great horror flick, and when Ocelot went to shoot the video, that's precisely the direction they took. The [...]

Filed under: News , New Music Andreas Meichsner The supergroup collective known as Apparatjik has always done things its own way. They released their second album, 'Square Peg in a Round Hole,' to the public after spearheading an initiative to plant 1,000 trees around the world. The members -- Magne Furuholmen ( A-Ha ), Guy Berryman ( Coldplay ), Jonas Bjerre ( MEW ) and producer Martin Terefe -- apply this ethos of a worldwide community [...]

Filed under: News , New Music Getty Images (2) Neil Young is determined to "get the sound back to the people." After endorsing Occupy Audio last month, the iconic singer-songwriter now says he and Steve Jobs were working on a next generation iPod prior to the Apple founder's death. Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media technology conference -- and reported by The Guardian -- Young said: "Steve Jobs [was] a [...]

Filed under: News , R.I.P. Frederick M. Brown, Getty Images Don Cornelius , who helped popularize black music and culture through ' Soul Train ,' a show he created and hosted for more than two decades, was found dead earlier today (Feb. 1) in Sherman Oaks, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reports. He was 75. According to sources, the cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound . Police arrived at Cornelius' apartment [...]

Filed under: News , Holy Hell Getty Images As Spinner previously reported, an inquest into the death of Amy Winehouse had ruled the singer's demise the result of "misadventure." Now NME reports that the person who performed Winehouse's autopsy was not qualified by law and that the investigation itself may be declared illegal. Inner North London Corner Dr. Andrew Scott Reid appointed his wife, Suzanne Greenaway , to the role [...]

Filed under: News , Politics as Usual AP Photo/Matt Rourke Newt Gingrich was sued by the '80s band Survivor after Gingrich used the seminal pump-up anthem 'Eye of the Tiger' without permission at his campaign stops. So now, Gingrich has to figure out what music to play at his campaign events. Since Gingrich has been in the public eye for a long time, we have quite enough fodder to offer [...]

Filed under: News , Holy Hell Buzz60.com The Rolling Stones were masters of controversy in their heyday, but now its their legacy which is causing a stir. A soon-to-be-opened museum in the German town of Luechow has had female fans in an a tiff over the urinals in the men's room, the L.A. Times reports. The urinals are based on the band's infamous red lips-and-tongue logo, which designer John Pasche created [...]

Filed under: Video of the Day Artist: Louise Burns Video: 'Drop Names Not Bombs' Highlight: "We liked the idea of doing a 'fun' video, as in getting our friends drunk and doing karaoke, but also tapping into a darker side; where something feels a bit off," Louise Burns tells Spinner. "Kind of like the little girl in ' Poltergeist ' watching static on her TV. In our case, there's a poltergeist in the karaoke video in the form of me (haha). The [...]

Filed under: News , R.I.P. YouTube.com King Stitt , Jamaica's oldest living DJ, has died after a long battle with prostate cancer. He was 72. According to The Washington Post, Stitt's good friend and musicologist Bunny Goodison has confirmed the death of pioneering DJ , who was also being treated for diabetes at a Kingston hospital at the time of his death. Born Winston Spark, the DJ began his [...]

Filed under: News , Twisted Tales YouTube Here at Spinner, we feel like we've done a pretty good job of documenting the whole Lana Del Rey debacle (even asking, can artifice survive in the age of Adele? ). But we've been one-upped by Taiwan's Next Media Animation studio. No amount of jazzy alliteration or hilarious hyperbole can compare to their kooky CGI Lizzie Grant [...]

Filed under: News Glassnote I'm a huge fan of Spotify and tend to be outspoken when technophobes in the music industry make things difficult for companies helping to develop solutions for the broken system. Remember Lars Ulrich 's anti-Napster commercials? He's since learned a thing or two about the web, yet somehow Coldplay still choose money over access . Isn't it a bit ironic that Daughtry was the first [...]

Filed under: Concerts and Tours , News AFP, Getty Images Bryan Adams is coming home -- well, at least for the duration of his long-overdue coast-to-coast Canadian tour this spring. The longtime Vancouverite, now living abroad in England, will bring his classic rock anthems back to his homeland on April 11, kicking off the 20-date arena tour on the far side of the country in St. John's, Nfld. A tour like this [...]