Word: billboard
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...They were good years to be sullen and dumpy. After a decade characterized by women in suits shaped like triangles and hairdos shaped like sea monsters, it was finally okay to slouch and cultivate split ends. A spirit of general dishevelment spread from grunge rock's coup on the Billboard charts into fashion and movies. This was the heyday of the Breeders...
SHERYL CROW Her new CD, C'mon C'mon, bowed at No. 2 last week--the highest Billboard chart position of her career. Crow's $2,699 signature instrument is a replica of a popular Gibson model--a 1962 Country And Western she uses often onstage. It has a distinctive square-shoulder body...
DIED. JAY CHIAT, 70, idealistic adman whose influential Los Angeles-based firm, Chiat/Day, pioneered the "West Coast style" of conveying strong messages without prominently featuring logos, as in Nike's 1984 billboard portraits of Olympic athletes with a tiny swoosh in the corner; of prostate cancer; in Marina del Rey, Calif. Among the firm's other creations: Apple's 1984 campaign (based on the Orwell novel) to introduce the Macintosh PC, in which a brightly dressed woman rebels against look-alike zombies; and the drumming Energizer Bunny. A tough boss, Chiat once said, "My real talent was for losing clients...
...exception. Nappy Roots, a six-man crew from Bowling Green, Ky., is the latest to make being from the South not just a fact in its bio but an agenda. To be fair, its major-label debut, Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz (last week's biggest gainer on the Billboard Top 200 chart), shows none of the crass preoccupation with pimping and cash that dominates rap from the coasts. On the laid-back Po' Folks, the guys rhyme through thick drawls, "All my life been po'/But it really don't matter no mo'/And they wonder why we act this way/Nappy...
...Take Kelefa Sanneh's piece in the March 31 New York Times, "New Ideas from the Top of the Charts." Sanneh makes the excellent observation that the tops of the Billboard charts are filled with music that blends different popular styles (No Doubt, Linkin Park), while rock's rebel fringe (The Strokes, The White Stripes) has gone retro, inspired by ancient garage rock and punk. Sanneh allows that in many cases the latter milieu cuts better albums. But the story also seems to equate the mix-and-match stylistic approach of the popular bands with innovation and originality...