ash magazine: beauty, music and pop culture

 About a couple of weeks ago I heard piano-songstress Vanessa Carlton’s, www.myspace.com/vanessacarlton first “Nolita Fairytale” on the new fresh 102.7 (yes, I listen to every radio station in the tri-state area, and its good music to sleep to) and I was very excited to hear that she had a single out because of all the drama with her sophomore album not doing so well in sales and loosing her record deal, I was thinking she was yet another good artist whose sales failed their career. Fortunately, Irv Gotti (yes, the Irv Gotti, producer/owner of Murder Inc., which has R&B, Hip-Hop and Rap artists like Ja Rule and Ashanti) lured her over and signed a deal with her, making her the first pop artist to The Inc.(formely known as Murder Inc.).”Nolita Fairytale” is definitely a great piano driven pop song, about the two years she went through to find herself and its a plus that she gives it a NYC feel.

I have been a fan of the LOGO, www.logoonline.com (a channel owned by MTV Networks,for the LGBT community since me and my mom mistakenly found it during a Noah’s Arc Marathon. If you don’t know, Noah’s Arc, www.myspace.com/noahs_arc  is a drama/comedy about four black gay men living in West Hollywood. I looooove that show, its like Sex and the City meets Girlfriends meets Queer as Folk. Well, since its owned by MTV Networks, music is a big part of LOGO as well, featuring artists of all music genre’s and sexual orientations (think J.LO to George Michael, to whoever). One video that has caught my eye is hip-hop artist Melange Lavonne, www.myspace.com/melangelavonne, her song/video “Gay Bash” is about a fictional friend, Kevin, who is a victim of gay bashing and Melange calling out to the Christians who claim to preach no judgements except for the judgements of the LGBT community, specifically gays and lesbians. I know this is not a political blog, but songs like these need to be heard. People like Gwen Araujo, http://www.gwenaraujo.blogspot.com/ , Brandon Teena, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Teena, as well as Sakia Gunn, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakia_Gunn , and Matthew Sheppard, http://www.matthewshepard.org/site/PageServer  , were killed out of hate, unknown fear and hate, and it shouldn’t be tolerated.

Timbaland’s Remix of rock/pop band One Republic’s debut single, “Apologize”, has been getting massive airplay on almost every station, its like whatever artist he works with turns to gold.One Republic is a band based out of California, and if you take a listen to their songs on their myspace page , www.myspace.com/onerepublic , you’ll find the original version was actually is just as good. Their sound is like an uptempo new sounding  mix of The Click Five meets the Goo Goo Dolls. All these songs, I highly recommend to check out.