Bruce Springsteen won best song for “The Wrestler.”

New ‘Idol’ judge wants to work with Daughtry
‘Please call me,’ Kara DioGuardi said hoping the rocker was listening

Kelly Clarkson My Life Would Suck Without You

The book starts by detailing how Michael Jackson’s Thriller saved the industry in the ’80s, and ends by insisting a huge hit like that wouldn’t even help now. Will we eventually lose our superstars, too?

I don’t think there’s gonna be ever again a Thriller-level album. I don’t think there’s gonna be someone who can sell 20 million copies or 10 million copies of a record the old-fashioned way. I do think there will still be stars. I just think stars will be marketed in different ways. Celebrity is more fascinating than ever, and who are the top celebrities? People who have music ties. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Beyoncé, Jay-Z. Music still can create a great deal of celebrity. But as far as Saving the Major Labels, will a hit save the major labels themselves? I don’t think so. If they’re waiting for the next Thriller to come along and save everything, they’re really, really misguided. I hope they’ve figured it out by now.

Village Voice blog

Congrats to Lil Wayne, whose Tha Carter III was the best-selling record of 2008—and the weakest-selling yearly bestseller since SoundScan started tracking these things nearly two decades ago. Couldn’t crack three million. The music industry is toast, my friends. And congrats to Rolling Stone vet Steve Knopper, whose fantastic new book Appetite for Self-Destruction explains why, as it charts the dizzying highs (Thriller, the CD boom, boy bands) and brutal lows (payola, Napster hysteria, the “rootkit” debacle) of an oft-amoral biz whose legendary coke-fueled boom times now read as ancient history and/or science fiction. I rang up Steve recently to talk about it; here are some excerpts.

Village Voice

There are those who say journalists must merely stand back and observe as horrors unfold before them. And there are others who hold that we can use our platforms to do some good in the world. I have never been one to insert myself into the story, but in these dark times for Idol Nation, when no international Idol government exists to intervene and insert peacekeeping forces between the combatants, I feel as a citizen of the pop culture world I have no choice but to attempt to use what little influence I have to work for peace.

Los Angeles Times

Mr. Knopper, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, provides a wide-angled, morally complicated view of the current state of the music business. He doesn’t let those rippers and burners among us — that is, those who download digital songs without paying for them, and you know who you are — entirely off the hook. But he suggests that with even a little foresight, record companies could have adapted to the Internet’s brutish and quizzical new realities and thrived.

And:

One of the first things the labels got wrong, Mr. Knopper says, was the elimination of the single. It got young people out of the habit of regularly visiting record stores and forced them to buy an entire CD to get the one song they craved. In the short term this was good business practice. In the long term it built up animosity. It was suicidal.

New York Times

The year is off to a bad start for the music industry with U.S. album sales off 6.2 percent from the first week of 2008, according to data issued Wednesday.

Reuters

Kelly Clarkson (TBA)
Now that she has gotten the Goth bug out of her system, the “American Idol” star is set to reclaim the charts with “My Life Would Suck Without You,” a new single produced by Swedish pop Svengalis Dr. Luke and Max Martin — the men behind Carolina Liar’s “I’m Not Over,” Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” and Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.”