Similar yet different

Posted by February 21, 2012

LET’S play a game. I’m going to describe a singer and try to guess who it is.

This singer is in her early 20s and in the last few years, has taken the music industry by storm.

She is an excellent songwriter and is famous for her ability to write songs about her personal relationships, heartbreaks and loser ex-boyfriends.

Her songs have topped the charts worldwide and she has won many accolades, even picking up a few awards at the recent Grammys where she also gave a rousing performance – which earned her a standing ovation.

So, who is it?

Is it – A: Country superstar Taylor Swift or B: British songstress Adele?

Well, the answer is both.

Taylor is 22, while Adele is 23. They both have enjoyed similar fortunes in their careers and have become famous by simply writing and singing songs about their failed relationships.
However, despite their small age gap and similar song topics, Taylor and Adele cannot look, sound or perform more different than one another.

We all know Taylor as the tall and scrawny girl who wrote songs like Teardrops On My Guitar, Fifteen, Love Story and You Belong With Me.

She has a steady stream of followers who comprise mostly of tweens, teens and lovelorn adults (who obviously hadn’t heard of Adele before pledging their loyalty).

Taylor is innocence personified. She dresses demurely, speaks softly and seems appreciative of everything around her.

There is even an Internet meme about the predictable “shocked” face she gives when she wins awards or receives a standing ovation after a performance. YouTube it – it’s cute but definitely gets annoying after a while.

The singer from Nashville, Tennessee, United States, is still kid-friendly and it’s evident in her songs which include lyrics like “Someday, I’ll be living in a big old city and all you’re ever gonna be is mean…”. The world is yet to hear her utter a curse word in her interviews or songs.

The “worst” anyone has ever heard her say was “da*n” on the song Teardrops On My Guitar, which was subsequently removed for a “clean” radio edit.

Adele, on the other hand, is a Londoner who curses like a drunken sailor, sneaks in a few cigarette breaks in her schedule and is now trying to stay sober after quitting cold turkey last May.

She has had her fair share of broken hearts and somehow, her music resonates better with young adults. Her voice is much more refined than Taylor’s and her singing range is unparallel to her current peers.

Adele is a buxom young lady with curves and big hair, and has a classic fashion sense. She dresses more often than not in black and seems wise beyond her 23 years of age.

When she gets on stage, one can’t help but pay close attention to not only her gorgeous face, but her equally gorgeous voice.

She brought the house down at the recent Grammys with her strong and cool peformance of the award-winning Rolling In The Deep, during which she hit all the notes perfectly and effortlessly.

If anyone had listened to her sing that night, they wouldn’t have guessed that the singer is still recovering from throat surgery. When she received a very deserving standing ovation for her peformance, she looked painfully shy and didn’t show an ounce of pride.

What many don’t know is that Adele gets uncomfortable on stage. She has admitted in various interviews to vomitting due to nerves before and after some of her previous performances.

For someone with a colourful personality as hers, she is very timid about perfoming in front of large crowds – a total opposite of Taylor, who revels in such attention.

Taylor is a confident performer and has played in huge arenas where all eyes were on her and her alone.

Adele, on the other hand, still sticks to smaller venues and prefers to entertain her fans in private concerts and showcases.

These young girls are so similar yet different in many aspects of their lives and careers but that doesn’t mean that we can only be a fan of one of them. They are good singers (though Adele is definitely the better vocalist) and write meaningful songs that most people could relate to.

At the end of the day, they reach out to their target audience made up mostly of broken-hearted folks with no songwriting talent of their own … and doesn’t that describe most of us?
Sharm says: Someone recently asked on Twitter what kind of songs we would get to hear if Taylor and Adele dated and then broke up? I don’t think the world is ready for such wrath …

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Glee no more

Posted by February 15, 2012

OKAY, I have a really important question here – what the heck happened to the once awesome TV show Glee?

It has become extremely boring, draggy and what was that again? Oh yeah, boring! It is now one of the saddest television shows around and it doesn’t seem as if it will get better any time soon.

But that wasn’t always the case, remember?

When the musical TV series about a bunch of singing and dancing high school students premiered in 2009, it was kind of revolutionary.

There were no other shows back then that focused on the fictional underdogs, nerds, geeks and outcasts in schools which got the underdogs, nerds, geeks and outcasts in the real world all excited.

People couldn’t stop talking about the show which revolves around students who are part of their school’s glee (talent) club, called New Directions, which takes part in show choir competitions.

They gave new twists to all-time favourite tunes and also performed hit songs from the likes of Madonna, Kanye West and Lady Gaga. Even Britney Spears made a cameo appearance on the show and gave the series one of its highest ratings ever.

Everyone fell in love with the cast members, made up primarily of Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Dianna Agron, Kevin McHale, Chris Colfer, Cory Monteith and more.

People regarded the show’s producer and writer Ryan Murphy as the most intelligent person in the TV business for creating Glee … that is, until he started spewing nonsense in season two and expected everyone to just play along.

Seriously. How difficult could it be to maintain a TV show for more than one season? The creators of Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier did it. Cheers did it. 24 did it. Lost did … well, hmm … to be fair, the second season of the logic-defying show was pretty insane (and not in a good way at all).

Lost was one of the shows that started off very strong but then the writers eventually got too smart for their own good. Just like the writers of Heroes – a show which totally tanked in its second season.

OMG, who remembers the awesome pilot episode of Heroes and how mind-blowing the entire first season was? *raising both arms*

The second season was unable to provide the audience with the same kind of excitement the show’s debut season did, when everyone was praying for Peter Petrelli (played by Milo Ventimiglia) to “save the cheerleader, save the world”.

Heroes finally met its death after “torturing” viewers for two more years. Many ost of us are not even sure or care about what happened to the cheerleader (played by Hayden Panettiere).

Lost almost met the same kind of ending after producers messed with the fans’ minds by introducing the creepy “Dharma Initiative” and killing off innocent (and good looking) characters in the second season.

But somehow, the show’s writers miraculously got their mojo back and gave viewers a kickass third season, which got everyone hooked on the supernatural drama once again.

The show had a proper ending in its sixth season and even answered all the burning questions fans had about the origin of the island and its mysterious elements.

Well, now it’s time for the creators of Glee to decide which way they want to go – Heroes or Lost. They can either clean up their act and give us a show that would make us beg for more, or continue to stay in a rut and force us to move on to another show.

The show is currently in the middle of its third season and it’s still possible for the writers and creators to return Glee to its former glory.

They should start by NOT introducing new characters to the show and just focus on the cast that they already have.

The audience have come to love the regular faces and there’s no point in forcing people to accept new characters. It just won’t be the same.

And while they are at it, they should also cut down on the number of “revolutionary” ideas they have for the show – you know, like same-sex and hot boy/fat-girl relationship.

Well, it’s nice that the show’s creators are trying to keep it real and include every kind of scenario that could happen in a high school but instead of being educational and inspiring, the storyline looks forced and therefore comes off as fake.

Seriously.

With time, effort and a bit of brain power, the creators could get us all back to loving that once popular show. It’s not as if Glee is a lost cause, right?

That, people, is so totally Gossip Girl. There’s really no saving that show anymore … xoxo.

Sharm says: I know how to get the fans back. Just reduce Lea Michele’s screen time and the creators would see an increase in the ratings in no time!

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Judging the judges

Posted by February 7, 2012

OMG, don’t you just love Jennifer Lopez in the current season (what is it …10? 11? 15? 20?) of American Idol? She is most probably the only reason why people still tune in to watch that dying talent show.

First and foremost, she is super gorgeous and everything she wears is sparkly and trendy – she just makes looking fashionable seem effortless.

Secondly, she may just be the only sane judge on that panel which includes ageing Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler (he’s still cool, though) and Randy Jackson – who even after all these years, is still unable to prove his worth as a judge on the show.

StarWorld is currently showing the auditions segment of American Idol, which is probably the best part of the whole talent competition.

This is when you get to see awesome, inspiring, weird and even downright scary people walk into the audition rooms and blow everyone’s minds away with their talent, or for some, lack thereof.

It is really fun to see Jennifer being all excited over listening to the new talents and you can sense that she’s always hoping for the best in others. Unlike Randy.

The music producer has often gestured for the contestants to stop singing – even when they were pretty good – causing Jennifer to smack his arms in retaliation.

Sometimes it seems like Jennifer (and maybe Steven with whatever is left of his hearing ability) is the only person who really listens to the contestants before deciding whether they should go through to the next level or not.

Randy is just so impatient and gets exasperated easily nowadays. He was not like this before.

It was usually Simon Cowell – the much-loathed former American Idol judge – who was quick to judge someone, had a short temper and even shorter attention span.

Simon didn’t just have terrible temperament and manners on American Idol. He was also quite unbearable on the other shows that he was on.

Yes, some might argue that Simon is the best judge of them all, but sometimes he lets his mood get in the way of judging. He gets annoyed at people just by looking at them. How is that fair?
Remember how he almost wrote off Susan Boyle during her audition on Britain’s Got Talent in 2009? Even before she opened her mouth?


The dumbfounded look on his face as Susan sang I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables is still one of the most memorable moments on television. One can only hope that Simon finally learned the true meaning of the adage “Don’t judge a book by its cover” that day.

According to some people, Simon is not exactly the easiest person to work with. Well, you don’t say. His brashness is evident when he interacts with his fellow judges, and he often acts as if he is not just right but always right.

This side of him was very visible throughout the US X-Factor show for which Simon is a judge.

He had questioned Nicole Scherzinger’s talent numerous times (well, so do we), causing the former Pussycat Dolls lead singer to belt out Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You just to shut him up.

The rocky relationship among the judges got worse at the end of last year when Nicole made a terrible judgment call by allowing Americans to decide the fate of the show’s front runner, Rachel Crow.

The talented 13-year-old singer was voted off the show and that decision not only angered the nation but also Simon tremendously.

He had called out Nicole’s inability to make decisions at crucial moments and had even labelled her as defensive towards criticisms.

Needless to say, Simon who is also the excutive producer for X-Factor, decided to get rid of Nicole before the start of the show’s next season. Also getting the axe from the show are fellow judge Paula Abdul and host Steve Jones, who, to be honest, didn’t contribute much to the talent show at all.

Why can’t all judges just be awesome and nice like those on The Voice? Christina Aguilera, CeeLo Green, Blake Shelton and Adam Levine all come from (somewhat) different musical backgrounds but somehow they gel together as one on this show.

They know that at the end of the day, the talent show is not about them at all (even though they always bicker about whose team is doing the best). It is about the up-and-coming singers.

These mentors often push the singers under their tutelage not just to beat their contenders, but also to test their own boundaries as vocalists. And that’s exactly what talented and experienced musicians should do – help the newbies find their way in the entertainment industry.

And as a judge, the least they can do is fully listen to the contestants before passing judgment, regardless of how they look or sound.

Sharm says: Jennifer Lopez should totally be the fifth judge on The Voice. Although X-tina is holding up well on her own, it’ll be nice to see another opinionated woman put Blake, CeeLo and Adam in their places.

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Marilyn lives forever

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It cannot be denied that Marilyn Monroe is one of the most iconic artists in the entertainment industry.

Many have tried to emulate the curvacious actress and they are yet to capture the magical essence that was part of her persona.

The Getty Images Gallery is presenting Marilyn, a collection of imagery and memorabilia to commemorate 50 years since the untimely death of the entertainer.

Showcased in London for the first time, the exhibition will feature a number of original dresses and costumes worn by the Hollywood icon, alongside unique and iconic photographs.

 

1956: EXCLUSIVE American actor Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962) reacts while American actor Don Murray carries her on his shoulder on the set of director Joshua Logan's film, 'Bus Stop'. They are surrounded by a crowd in bleachers. Monroe is wearing a cowboy hat, a blouse and a slit skirt.

 

 

NEW YORK CITY - MARCH 1955: American actress Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962) leans over the balcony of the Ambassador Hotel in March 1955 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

 

 

 

American actress Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962) out for a cycle ride with her third husband, American dramatist Arthur Miller (1915 - 1905), 13th August 1956. (Photo by Harold Clements/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 

American actress Marilyn Monroe (1926 - 1962) posing on a rooftop circa 1951. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)

 

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Photos from the 18th Annual SAG Awards

Posted by February 1, 2012

It was all about glitz and glamour at the recent 18th Annual SAG Awards held at the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles.

 

* In the spotlight *

 

* Gorgeous George and his pals *

 

* Emma Stone and Chris Lowell *

 

* The ModernFamily *

 

* Jessica Chastain (left) and Cicely Tyson *

 

* Cast and crew of The Help *

 

* Emily Blunt and John Krasinski *

 

* Diana Agron and Emma Stone *

 

* Cast of Bridesmaids *

 

* (From left) Kristen Wiig, Busy Phillips and Michelle Williams *

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Bye Paula and Nicole!

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So,the rumours are true after all. Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger will not be returning to judge the next season of X-Factor!

* Bye Paula and Nicole! *

The Wrap claims that the duo was fired from the show because they both … erm, sucked. And it also says that the show’s Executive Producer Simon Cowell was just waiting for the right time to get rid of them.

So, now is the perfect time then?

Simon also made another cut by letting go of the show’s host Steve Jones. Aww..he was kinda cute.

Now that Paula, Nicole and Steve have left (or fired, whichever it is), there are three spots left to be filled on that show.

So, who’s gonna join Simon and L.A Reid to find the next X-Factor star?

OMG. Let’s hope that Simon won’t go crazy and bring a bunch of lunatics to judge and host the show just for the sake of increasing the show’s ratings.

Sharm says: I would totally die if any of the Kardashians were hired to host the show. Like seriously. Die.

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