RBI Music

Robbie Comes Home

It has been 15 years since Take That performed together as a band. The band was one of Britain’s biggest selling outfits until the usual disaster struck.Robbie Williams decided to walk out on his band mates at the height of the band’s popularity in 1995. While this left fans devastated, Take That did try to make it without the fifth member. This approach didn’t work for very long and the band split up the following year. Since then Gary Barlow and Mark Owen have had decent success with their solo careers, Barlow more than Owen. Williams seemed to have come out best of all in that deal. His solo career soared and he became one of Europe’s best entertainers. Williams sold around 57 million albums after going solo and won the most amounts of Brit awards ever.

But all that changed as the wave he was riding ran out. In the meantime Barlow, Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange (the other band members) reformed Take That in 2005. Since then they have almost returned to the popularity that they encountered in the early 1990’s. While that happened, William’s career flat lined.Perhaps it was that reason or maybe he genuinely missed his band mates, but Robbie Williams has decided that enough is enough and has agreed to rejoin the band. Williams said that he was really excited about the venture and Owen said that it was like a dream come true. They have already been working on an album and it is due to be released in September. Whether this will be a second coming for the band or a disastrous flop (like the reformation of the Spice Girls and the resulting tour) is something that could be worth watching.

“Locomotion” Star Back on Track

Twenty three years on since she hit the charts with her cover of “Loco-Motion”, Kylie Minogue is still going strong. The pint sized pop star is all set to reign on the charts as her new album “Aphrodite” hits the stores on July 6th.

If you are looking for sensuous ballads, look elsewhere. Kylie is sticking to the catchy, pop song, dance floor dominators that have brought her the most success. The twelve tracks on the album have already received excellent reviews from the BBC, which called it “pure Kylie Magic”, and The Telegraph, which gave it a four star rating.

The Australian singing sensation has constantly re-invented herself over the years and always maintained a sexy and sultry image. Constantly in the shadow of the Queen of Pop - Madonna, Kylie has always challenged for the title but never really attained it. But it is a testament to her will and inner strength that she has persisted so long and that too through her arduous battle with Cancer. She recently made an appearance at a music festival held in Glastonbury, the first one since she was diagnosed with the deadly ailment five years ago.

Minogue has managed to corner Producer Stuart Price, the most sought after man these days, for this album. Price was behind Madonna’s 2005 smash hit album “Confessions on a Dancefloor”. The album is not only seen as a revival of Minogue’s career, but is also a lifeline for the EMI Group which has seen hard times lately.

The joy of listening to free music

Everyone loves music. Period. There’s no doubt that this assumption holds water especially if one gets a hold of free music through any medium, be it radio, television or even the internet. In regards to the internet, audio albums and singles can be downloaded in matter of minutes just by performing a couple of searches using any of the search engines like Google, Yahoo and so on and so forth.

Music can also be downloaded in the form of torrents that uses clients like BitTorrent, and normally lets the person download entire albums as opposed to singles that can be downloaded from a P2P client.

There is another way to listen to music by sidestepping the annoyance of downloading client and risking the security of your computer and that is through the medium of internet radio, which requires one to just get a broadband connection.

Not only can one get 24 hours a day of music streaming over the internet but they do not have to pay for it, unless they would like to listen to high quality music that comes at a monthly price. And speaking of high quality music, there are several genres that one can listen to such as jazz music, rock, pop, Christian, country, indie, jam bands and so on and so forth.

With such variety at one’s disposal over the internet and at no cost to, it is true when they say that the best things in life come for free.

Rap Is In the Air

Rappers Lil Jon and Fat Joe are set to get back in the game, as both have albums ready for release in the next few weeks. Both have had lapses in their careers which they hope will be rectified by their new offerings.

“Crunk Rock” from Lil Jon is the first in six years. His 2004 album “Crunk Juice” has sold over 2.5 million copies. In the intervening time period Lil Jon has had many issues including a dispute with his label TVT. The label eventually shut down and so did Lil Jon’s career, for a while. The artist went back to his roots of DJ-ing for many years before heading back to the studio to produce, what he hopes, will be a chartbuster. The album features several prominent names in the rap industry including Soulja Boy, Elephant man, Ice Cube, Pitbull and the Marley brothers.

Fat Joe’s 2002 “J.O.S.E.: Jealous Ones Still Envy” was a personal record setter for the artist, as it sold 945,000 copies. Since then his output hasn’t been very well received. “J.O.S.E. 2″ sold only a meager 20,000. Fat Joe puts the blame for that one squarely on his previous label, Capitol. For the new album he has gone over to E1 music and spent six months in recording “The Dark Side”. The album may be aptly named as the rapper does not hold back with what he has to say about other artists. The album also features collaborations with prominent artists like Young Jeezy, Cam’ron, Trey Songz and R. Kelly.

Country Music for Flood Relief

The Country Music world came together for a good cause on Sunday, as they banded together to raise money for flood relief. All the proceeds will go to the Community foundation of Middle Tennessee. Over 2,00 homes were damaged or destroyed by the disastrous flooding that took place at the beginning of this month. The damage is estimated to be over $1.5 billion dollars.

Artists Keith Urban, Brad Paisley and Lady Antebellum were part of a multitude of stars who took part in the telethon. Kicking off the show was Paisley with “Welcome to the future”, he also personally donated $100,000 towards the cause. Sheryl Crow was also among the performers and although she was a newcomer to the Nashville scene, she said that she had never felt as at home as she did here.

Keith Urban performed a Beatles cover and then proceeded to recount his own personal experience of the flooding. The artist lost much of his home and his belongings in the flooding. Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records, also donated $100,000 towards the relief effort. Kellie Pickler, Hillary Scott, CeCe Winans, Keb’Mo, Rodney Atkins, Randy Montana and Martina McBride were among the other artists who performed. The artists also worked the phone banks in addition to performing.

The show closed with Will Hoge performing “Washed by the water” which had the whole audience on their feet and singing the chorus with him. The concert took place at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and was broadcast on GAC.