In his latest movie, The Woman In Black, Dan traded his Hogwarts uniform for a totally new role as a Dad.
Natalia brings you the latest news on Adele’s interview with Anderson Cooper, Kristen Bell’s interview on Ellen is auto tuned, Ladyhawke’s latest music video and much more!
Natalia discusses what’s new with Pharrell Williams and her thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld’s mean comments towards Adele’s weight. She also shows a roster of animals behaving like humans and, wait until you see the new size of coffee available at Starbucks!
Natalia dishes the latest news on the Juno Awards nominees, the upcoming Spiderman 3D film starring Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield and is Katy Perry hooking up with Tim Tebow? Watch today’s episode to find out.
When The Kooks are in the studio they’re focused and most importantly, sober. Watch Hugh and Luke explain their reasoning below.
The Kooks released a new album called “Junk of the Heart,” and you would think Hugh and Luke would be very excited about it. Well, they seemed rather indifferent to be honest. We spoke about that and why they don’t care about critics.
Natalia dishes the latest in entertainment news on Joan Rivers, Lana Del Rey and a brand new trailer for the movie Hunger Games.
Natalia talks about how Snooki might be pregnant, Nicolas Cage’s Cage Rage, Elisabetta Canalis is dating Steve-O and more for Feb 1, 2012.
Natalia dishes the news on Miley Cyrus breaking her tailbone, a 100 year old woman who plays the Nintendo DS to stay young and Houston, Texas contemplating a statute of Beyonce.
David Beckham debuts a new line of underwear, the worst dressed celebrity – Shy’m and Matthew Broderick is back as Ferris Bueller with a brand new commercial airing during the Super Bowl on Feb 5th 2012.
Daniel Radcliffe is back with his new movie The Woman In Black. It’s a bone chilling remake of a film from the ’80s. Ironically, Daniel actually scares very easily but he’s not afraid of ghosts. In this interview he tells us what really gives him the creeps.
Next time you’re struggling to make conversation, try asking this question: “If you could invite anyone (living or dead) to the perfect house party, who would it be?”
Graffiti6 is starting to make their North American invasion, and they are hitting up the Tonight Show. Does this sound familiar? Well the Beatles made the exact same journey over 40 years ago. Naturally, @jordans_life had to make some comparisons.
Nick plays World of Warcraft. Not only that, he’s the head of his guild, demonstrating that it IS possible to juggle being a hardcore gamer with being a top-selling recording artist.
During a LIVE interview on andPOP.com Nick Carter gave out a number and took phone calls from his fans. These were real phone calls from real fans who we gave exclusive access to one of the biggest recording artists of our generation.
There were great questions about music, fitness, the backstreet boys but the most popular question, however, was about his underwear. In this clip Nick talks about his his ‘Haynes’ and covering his fans with glow in the dark paint.
When releasing new music today, half the battle is online promotion. However, contests, signed merch and giveaways aren’t always the best solutions. When working on their latest album, Hedley came up with a brilliant idea, they decided to make trailers.
It’s hard to prepare for an interview with Hedley. So in this interview, we threw caution to the wind, got a 24 of beer and broadcast the interview live on our USTREAM (andPOP.tv). Eventually Jacob, Dave and @jordans_life ended up talking about hairy legs, their newest music video and more.
Diamandis from Marina and The Diamonds talks to us about her very serious disease. It’s called synaesthetic. And we lied, it’s not a disease. More like a cool condition. Diamandis explains further.
Would you be embarrassed if someone scrolled through your iPod? We sit down with Spee and Brendan to talk about the diverse music on their playlist.
Have you noticed that electronic music has taken over pop music? Think about Top 40 music, its filled with electronic music like David Guetta, MGMT, and Martin Solveig. Martin explained to us why electronic music has exploded, and he also talks about his latest hit “Hello.”
Martina Sorbara’s music career has been like one one-night-stand after the next.
The lead singer of Electro-Pop group Dragonette has been involved in many projects – both as a solo singer and in group settings – but she has yet to be part of a follow up album – until now.
Dragonette’s second album Fixin to Thrill, was released last month, and Sorbara’s feeling of the album’s completion is sublime.
“It’s a huge deal for me,” Sorbara, 31, tells andPOP. “Just putting out a second album is kinda like a milestone. I just think that every time we finished a song, that was a big high point for myself.”
Picture this: it’s just another day in the studio and Dragonette are putting the final touches on their soon to be released album “Galore.”
Next, throw in a prostitute and some drugs.
“Yeah, doing a gram of blow off a hooker’s tits, that was pretty exciting,” drummer Joel Stouffer recollected.
“While recording drums!” front-woman Martina Sorbara added.
Now that’s what I call multi-tasking.
It’s a hot summer’s day on the patio at Ronnie’s in Kensington Market in Toronto and I’m joined by the good looking foursome which also includes guitarist and newest member Will Stapleton and bassist Dan Kurtz, formerly of the New Deal.
They’re kidding about the blow, of course, at least I think. You never know these days, especially with a group that has such an addictive electro-pop sound, and such irresistibly sexy singles as “I Get Around” and “Take it Like a Man.”
On the verge of releasing their debut full-length album, Dragonette haven’t had that hard of a ride attaining the attention many bands in their position struggle for. Their second concert ever saw the band playing a show with New Order, which was followed by a tour in support of Duran Duran, during which they landed a record deal. Oh yeah, and somewhere along the way they were slapped with the label of being “the next big thing.” Their battle may just be proving to the world that they live up to the hype.
In the beginning, some five years ago, Sorbara was a solo artist whose single “Bonnie and Clyde II” was included on one of those Women and Songs compilations.
Then, she met Kurtz and as they say one thing led to another.
“We met at a festival and we hooked up, a lot of alcohol and a late night. So, thank you Smirnoff,” Sorbara summed up, in an interview with andPOP.
Thank you indeed, for if it hadn’t been for that chance romance, Dragonette would never have been born. But, let’s not forget, that Kurtz had a live-in girlfriend at the time. If this had happened to you, I reckon you’d do any number of things from trying to drown your sorrows by consuming copious amounts of alcohol, to cursing their unholy union and hoping it fails miserably, or, at the very least, you may pray to never ever hear from them again.
Well, not so much. Not only are Kurtz and Sorbara now husband and wife, receiving international recognition, the lyrics to the track “Competition,” which is about their relationship, aren’t exactly subtle. “Your girlfriend’s got competition/ Goodness I like this being your mistress.”
As their love affair blossomed, the pair started messing around in the basement – musically that is. It was a joke at first, but eventually the recordings evolved into what is now known as Dragonette. The sound is in stark contrast to Sorbara’s solo material and doesn’t always showcase the full extent of her vocal ability, but who really cares, aside from maybe her father Greg, Ontario’s Minister of Finance, who implied he preferred her old material.
“I think I still write the same kind of songs,” the younger Sorbara said. “I think I write them on a different template and I think my limits are broadened. There’s only so much I knew how to do with a guitar and a piano and voice. Now I write from the same place but I think I can go to places I wasn’t able to before.”
“We’re into beats and dance music, unless it’s shit, and that’s always been the basis for most of our songs anyway,” added Kurtz. “The difference I think [is that] Tina writes songs as opposed to us like writing a house track with Tina diva vocalizing over top of it. Somewhere in there it’s like traditional song writing, with machines and people playing loud, and hard and fast.”
He’s described Sorbara’s old music scene as tampon music, a.k.a. tamponic, a scene that Sorbara was quoted saying, she grew bored of.
“I think that what I was saying by being bored of making that music is more just being bored of what I do by myself. I don’t know how to take myself to a different place. Like I only know what I know how to do and I can only get to a certain spot. Collaborating with someone is a completely different thing and you get to places you never get to by yourself. It just makes you branch out and totally puts your limits to like a thousand miles away from where you’re used to,” Sorbara explained.
Kurtz added, “And I think you got a little bit tired of the sentimentality that you had to dial up all the time.”
“Yeah, I wanted to write songs that weren’t heavy and were more fun,” Sorbara said.
The result is a self described “Toronto/London sex love soundclash” that takes elements of pop, rock, and electronica to effectively create a sound that’s catchy and melodic, yet nothing like the manufactured pop that’s polluting our airwaves.
In the process of writing the album, Sorbara recorded the track “Take Me Back to Your House” with Basement Jaxx, which wound up becoming a hit single and no doubt helped spark interest in her own band. The video was shot in Kiev, Ukraine, one of the last places Kurtz had envisioned he would end up writing a song.
Another first is how he feels about “Galore.”
“This is the first record that I’ve made that I listen to a lot, still, and I guess that’s the measure of making a record for the sake of making something you love and want to hear again and again,” he said.
Dragonette, which according to Sorbara means “tough and beastlike but also effeminate and girly, kind of androgynous,” are three parts Canadian and one-quarter British, currently residing in the UK. Although they are often compared to Gwen Stefani, the band thinks another blonde is more a suitable comparison.
“If we had to be compared, I like the idea of being compared to Blondie. Really great guitar riffs, i.e.: me,” Stapleton said in his British accent. “A really good singer, they’re a really cool band, and they’ve stood the test of time.”
And now, Dragonette are left to contend with the label critics placed upon them.
“I think hype is a dangerous thing,” Kurtz said.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Stouffer added.
“Our major label-marketing machine started rolling before there was any substance to what we’d actually done,” Sorbara explained. “And so we had all this press saying ‘biggest band, next band of the summer,’ all this shit that actually had no bearing on reality. So we just had all this press that wasn’t substantiated with anything and that’s what hype creates. When you have to go out and try to like catch up with whatever’s been said about you.
“Obviously there’s people in our record company that have the clout and persuasion to say like ‘yeah this band is going to be amazing and big’ and so the journalist is like ‘this band is going to be amazing and huge.’ And it’s like, I don’t know, maybe we will. And I think finally now, in the past couple of weeks, we’re proving ourselves on our own merit, without the hype machine behind us. People are coming to our shows because they’re interested in us, not because they read this article in the Guardian that said, ‘you’re going to like this band.’”
Suddenly I’m informed, to my great astonishment, that my time is up. Naturally, I proceed by asking the most insightful, profound and meaningful question – the one on everyone’s mind.
“Do you really eat Sandwich Sandwiches on tour?”
For those who haven’t seen it, the band has created an entertaining Martha Stewart food network infomercial style video entitled “Road Food: Service Station Delights” which features the band cooking and eating some rather interesting concoctions, that can be made when your source for dinner is the local Mac’s convenience store. Take the Sandwich Sandwich, quite literally a sandwich of sandwiches, and instead of adding salt and pepper, why not add salt and pepper flavoured chips. It’s available for your viewing pleasure at YouTube, but I’m sure you get the point.
“No!” Sorbara answered, laughing. “We came up with that and laughed hysterically when we did and decided to make it.”
“Those were disgusting by the way,” Stapleton added.
“Except the processed cheese and cheezies grilled cheese sandwich…” Sorbara started.
“Was good,” Stouffer exclaimed.
“Was phenomenal,” Sorbara finished.
But Kurtz added, “I’d never eat that again either though.”
And they’re not going to have to. If things keep up, who knows, maybe Wolfgang Puck will be catering their next tour.
