Music

POP UNCULTURED: A roundup of weird happenings in music for the week

by Anne T. Donahue

Since it’s impossible to address the total madness of the music industry in only five days, Pop Uncultured saves some of the week’s strangest stories for Friday afternoon. Enjoy?

Protest the Hero guitarist sells his beard on eBay; world avoids photo [FULL STORY]
Let’s just start this week out with a bang, shall we? Protest the Hero guitarist Tim Millar is selling his expansive ginger beard on eBay to raise money for the MS Society of Canada, and for a minimum donation of $103, it could be yours. This is a good cause, so we’ll keep the “ewwwww” factor to a minimum, but because it’s Friday and we can, you have to watch it happen:

will.i.am thinks he would’ve been a “notorious gang member”
Not that we’re going to assume to know the circumstances around will.i.am’s upbringing, but there’s something about the Black Eyed Peas and “notorious gang member” that doesn’t particularly go hand in hand. The frontman recently revealed that had his friends not saved him, he would’ve “rebelled against his mom” then “rebelled against the law”, subsequently spiralling into a life of crime that he seems to think would’ve paralleled Scarface. (Personally, I was thinking Oliver!.) [via Music-News]

Rihanna shoots a fictionalized rapist in “Man Down” [FULL STORY]
Let’s get controversial, guys!

There’s a new Rebecca Black, and she’s from Norway [FULL STORY]
It’s not over till it’s over, and now that we’ve feasted our eyes upon Tonje Langeteig and her “bangin’ new track, “I Don’t Wanna Be Your Crappy Housewife” (and really, who does?), we can make peace with the fact that until the world ends, we are sentenced to a lifetime of YouTube “sensations.”

Also, kind of wish she dressed up like this:

A closer look at Moby’s Alien Sex Party [FULL STORY]
You know, we could offer up an explanation that put this into better context, or we could just post the video and let you go to town:

Needless to say, “Frosty the Snowman” has kind of lost its edge.

Lady Gaga’s 99-cent Born This Way venture cost Amazon over $3 million
Thanks to last week’s ” Born This Way for 99-cents!” stunt, Amazon is now $3 million poorer than it was before. Not that Gaga particularly cares: she recently applauded the company for pricing the record at fair value, since digital albums “are invisible” and “in space.” Somewhere Sean Parker is crying.

Courtney Love is the new xoJane blogger [FULL STORY]
How about an expert from the recently-launched Courtney’s Diary?

Twitter isn’t so good for me. The grammar, having the limited characters. I’m not good with brevity. I have a standing offer with the LA Times to write an Op/Ed anytime if it was under 2,000 words. And I have tried, and I have failed…I’m not really good with brief. So this is a good way. Blogging. I trust Jane, and this is a good way to have a little voice, and I have a pretty adventuresome, chaotic life, and maybe the lesson is to have the voice in the chaos. It’s kind of like a coffee commitment at an AA meeting, though. If you don’t show up, you get really embarrassed.”

We’re sure you’ll do fine – just don’t call Jane old.

A Spice Girls could’ve happened, and then it didn’t [FULL STORY]
Thanks to a Twitter impostor, dreams were raised and then destroyed when a fake Geri Halliwell got Mel B totally stoked on the idea of a Fab Five reunion. Man, people are just the worst.

Hacked PBS site confirms that Tupac is alive, well and living in New Zealand
You know, this mental picture is so lovely, that we’re just going to report that the site claimed that ‘Pac’s hanging out in a “small resort town”, which has housed Tupac and Biggie for “several years”. Sounds beautiful. [via NME]

Jeff Bridges’ album art confirms that he is, indeed, badass
Any questions? [via Spinner]