Jason Derulo Future History Album Zip __FULL__
Lori Govan
For the first time, the NOW That's What I Call Music! ( ) series is looking to the future by exposing the audience to a brand new track by an artist that may be destined for NOW compilations to come as part of their special bonus track feature, "What's Next New Music Preview." The first "What's Next" bonus track included on NOW Vol. 32 is "Had It All," the debut single from Katharine McPhee's forthcoming album.
The NOW That's What I Call Music! series debuted in the U.S. in 1998 after the brand had been a multi-platinum international success for 15 years. The series has generated sales of over 200 million albums worldwide, including more than 74 million copies in the U.S. Every album in the numbered U.S. series has reached the Billboard Top 10, with NOW 3 the first non-soundtrack, multi-artist collection in history to reach #1.
Instead I see in the numbers a hip-hop resurgence. I don't pretendto project the future from such statistical "trends," which usuallyinvolve too much happenstance, such as the simultaneous return to formof Eminem, Big Boi, and Kanye West. Clearly more momentous than the2009 tokens by Mos Def and Raekwon even if they're slightly overrated,these three faves are the latest and most decisive proof that hip-hophas supplanted rock as popular music's most aesthetically fruitfulgenre. Right, happenstance happens--there was no Bob Dylan album in2010, no U2 if I must, no Yeah Yeah Yeahs, no . . . Coldplay? Also,distribution arrangements complicate these analyses unduly. Still,isn't it striking that not one of the over two dozen rock records onthe 2010 Dean's List came from a major label unless DFA's Virgin dealputs LCD over the line, and that Hull's top 40 adds just the BlackKeys and Broken Bells? Yet of the 17 Dean's List hip-hop albums (lastyear there were just seven), seven were accounted profit-promising bythe guys with the obscene expense accounts.
This charge cannot be lodged at my considered choice for the mostoverrated album of the year. Janelle Monae can do it all, and that iswhy The Archandroid has created such a fuss. My riposte is that allshe can do well is dance--her songwriting is 60th percentile, hersinging technical, her sci-fi plot the usual rot. For me, theanti-Archandroid is Halcyon Digest by Deerhunter, who after nine yearsand a typically muddled release history decided and/or learned how tosequence 45 minutes of coherent music--in late-'90s Sonic Youth modeonly with fewer tunes and less sprawl, conjuring form out of mess andemotion out of mood. It's not quite brilliant, but unlike so manycomparable projects, it definitely works if you give it the time arecord this beloved has earned. So while I'm pleased to note that inits reactive way indiedom has re-engaged with pop songform after longdeclaring it yucky, Halcyon Digest means more to me than SurferBlood's Astro Coast or Best Coast's Crazy for You. It means less,however, than an unnoticed songfest from England: the eponymous AlloDarlin', featuring Queensland, Australia, twentysomething ElizabethMorris, whose flirty voice and storytelling flair render romancephysical and indeed sexy where for Best Coast's superficially sunnyBethany Cosentino it's atmospheric and indeed foggy.