Lady Gaga Beats Oprah On Forbes Celebrity 100 List

Justin Bieber debuts behind the ladies at #3 on this year's power tally.
By Gil Kaufman


Lady Gaga
Photo: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Lady Gaga has had a good year. The evidence is pretty obvious: She's sold millions of albums and downloads, headlined a major world tour, made the cover of nearly every magazine and recorded one of the most anticipated albums in ages.

But what really says you're having the best year ever? Leaping over Oprah Winfrey on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list in the same year that the Queen of All Media launched a new network and wound down the most popular daytime talker in the history of the medium.

Lady Gaga topped the list released by Forbes on Wednesday, leaping four spots from last year on the ranking of entertainment industry power, fueled by earnings, media visibility and social media popularity. It's only the third time in seven years that anyone has moved past Winfrey on the list, and Gaga did it by earning $90 million from her Monster Ball tour, rolling up 32 million Facebook fans and becoming the first star to corral 10 million Twitter followers.

All those Little Monsters helped her sell 1 million digital downloads of the title track from the just-leaked Born This Way in five days. They also bought MAC makeup, Monster headphones and Virgin Mobile phones that were endorsed by Gaga (and featured in her videos). Her Monster Ball tour grossed $170 million from 137 shows; she's sold 15 million albums worldwide and has endorsement deals with Polaroid, Monster Cable and PlentyofFish.com. Also, a Russian billionaire reportedly paid $1 million to appear in the "Alejandro" video.

"Lady Gaga beat Oprah this year because of her social media power. She can use Twitter and Facebook to work the 'little monsters' into a frenzy that leads to record sales and media attention," Forbes editor Dorothy Pomerantz told Reuters. "She's the best example of how celebrities will need to manage their careers in the coming years."

With her syndicated "The Oprah Winfrey Show" ending its legendary run next week after 25 years, Winfrey didn't fall far to #2, thanks to estimated earnings of $290 million. Her wealth came in as a result of the fees from her show, as well as the programs from the stars she's created, including Rachel Ray and Dr. Oz.

Justin Bieber is the youngest person on the list, debuting on the tally at an impressive #3, courtesy of an estimated $53 million in earnings from concerts (which bring in $600,000 a night), music sales and the "Never Say Never" movie, which grossed close to $100 million at the global box office and is now out on DVD.

Irish rock legends U2 are at #4 with $195 million, mostly due to their 360 Tour, which became the highest-grossing tour in history last year, with estimated grosses of $700 million by the time it wraps up this summer.

At #5 is Sir Elton John, who grossed $204 million for 102 concerts over the past year. Rounding out the top 10 are disgraced golfer Tiger Woods, Taylor Swift, veteran Jersey rockers Bon Jovi, "X Factor" boss Simon Cowell and Miami Heat star LeBron James.

Other notables: Angelina Jolie (#11), list newcomer Katy Perry (#12), Johnny Depp (#13), Leonardo DiCaprio (#15), the Black Eyed Peas (#16), "American Idol" host and media mogul Ryan Seacrest (#24), former TV star Charlie Sheen (#28), Beyoncé (#29), Usher (#32), Muse (#34), Jay-Z (#38), "Idol" judge Jennifer Lopez (#50), Diddy (#52), Robert Pattinson (#53), Kristen Stewart (#63), Eminem (#71), Kanye West (#76) and Lil Wayne (#85).

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1664186/lady-gaga-forbes-celebrity-100.jhtml

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Coldplay, Led Zeppelin Album Covers Featured On New British Stamps

Album art from Pink Floyd, Blur and David Bowie also included.
By James Montgomery


Coldplay's new British stamps
Photo: Royal Mail

On Thursday (January 7), the U.K.'s Royal Mail unveiled a series of 10 new stamps, honoring the most iconic album covers of the past 40 years.

The albums featured in the new series are the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin's IV, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, The Clash's London Calling, New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies, Primal Scream's Screamadelica, Pink Floyd's The Division Bell, Blur's Parklife and — the most recent album on to make the cut — Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Meant to honor "the most potent graphic images of modern times, many of which have provided a visual soundtrack to people's lives," the series is the end result of a lengthy research process by the Royal Mail, who looked through thousands of album covers by British artists before deciding on the final list. And, during a Wednesday night BBC Radio broadcast, it was revealed that the queen herself actually approved each design.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page — who helped design the cover for IV — was on hand to celebrate the release of the stamps and recalled the mysterious nature of the album's iconic imagery.

"Almost 40 years after the album came out, nobody knows the old man who featured on the cover, nor the artist who painted him," he said. "That sort of sums up what we wanted to achieve with the album cover, which has remained both anonymous and enigmatic at the same time."

Of course, any great honor is befitting of an equally great contest, so, on the same day the stamps were made available to the general public, Coldplay decided to give one of their Rush of Blood stamps away. In a message on their official site, the band held a contest to send one lucky fan "a letter using a Coldplay stamp, postmarked with today's issue date."

"We visited our local post office earlier today and bought some of the Coldplay stamps," the message read. "Very nice they are too."

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1629227/coldplay-led-zeppelin-album-covers-featured-on-new-british-stamps.jhtml

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D.C. United vs. L.A. Galaxy rivalry gets renewed tonight

Despite being on opposite coasts, D.C. United and the LA Galaxy share one MLS' most storied rivlaries. The two clubs are the League's two most successful franchises. United has 12 major trophies to its name, while LA keeps 8 pieces of hardware in its trophy case at the Home Depot Center. Both clubs are the only two MLS sides to win CONCACAF Champions Cups. Before D.C. and LA square off Friday night (11:00 p.m. ET/FOX Soccer), we take a look at some key events in the rivalry's history.

KEY MOMENTS:

Source: http://feeds.dcunited.com/~r/DCUnited/all/~3/HMGj3pxsZE0/dc-united-vs-la-galaxy-rivalry-gets-renewed-tonight

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Usher, Ke$ha And More Help Dance Music Go Pop In 2010

But is it here to stay? Our music-industry experts weigh in.
By Akshay Bhansali


Ke$ha
Photo: Andreas Rentz/ Getty Images

In 2010, pop princesses, R&B icons and chart-dominating newcomers all danced to the same beat. Not only did dance music go pop, but pop music caught the club-music bug.

Between Katy Perry's "Firework," Ke$ha's "We R Who We R," Rihanna's "Only Girl (In the World)," Enrique Iglesias' "I Like It," Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love" and "OMG" and countless other singles, established artists definitely looked to dance beats for surefire hits. And two of this year's biggest success stories in music were Jason Derülo and Taio Cruz; could there be a soul left in this country who hasn't heard "Dynamite" or "In My Head"?

The love went both ways, with dance music's biggest stars finding mainstream success this year. Dance-music maestro deadmau5 took up house-artist duties at this year's VMAs, and Swedish House Mafia and Usher teamed up for a medley of their gems at the American Music Awards.

So how did this happen? We caught up with some music-industry experts to get their takes.

"You definitely saw tempos go up this year," Jon Caramanica of The New York Times told MTV News. "And I think what you had are a lot of producers who are really familiar with nightclub stuff. They are familiar with Europe. Things are happening on a more global scale now."

"I think everything from Europe, and sometimes even Asia, it comes to America, and we just adopt things a little bit slower," said Jared Eng of JustJared.com. "I think it was just a change. People like different types of music at different times. And dance was of this moment."

Noah Callahan of Complex magazine added: "I think 2010 saw the merging of the pop and dance genres. Pop artists realized that there were best practices that could be borrowed from dance music. And, ultimately, [all] pop music that has been made in the past 20 years had ended up being remixed for the club by dance artists. I think they basically just cut out the middleman and went straight there."

Dance music being introduced into the hip-hop and R&B realms was particularly notable this year.

"I think David Guetta kind of at the end of last year and the beginning of this year spearheaded it," said freelance writer Julianne Escobedo Shepherd. "He produced a lot of tracks. I think as trends go, people revile 'unst-unst.' But it's just coming back around. Big-room techno was a way for people to get decadent in a year that no one could get decadent."

"You have someone like will.i.am, who's like, 'Well, I spent all this time in Ibiza, and this is what they are doing,' and he wants to find a way to bring that into his music," Caramanica said of the Black Eyed Peas mastermind. "R&B especially became dance music. And especially with your Jason Derülos, Taio Cruzes. Guys like that would have literally been blocked at the border two years ago. That would not have made it through customs. And now all of a sudden they have #1 songs. I think will.i.am had a lot to do with that last year."

Elliott Wilson of RapRadar.com added: "It's actually even affected hip-hop. I was talking to Q-Tip, and his next record, I feel like that's gonna kind of go in that vein. I know that was also Jay-Z's thought process with Blueprint 3 at first, that he wanted to make a little bit more of a world music [vibe], a little more dancey. I think the kids today want to go to the clubs. They wanna have a good time. They wanna dance. So I think the artists of today are trying to kind of feed that audience."

"I think it's caught on this year because the people who've done it have been successful," offered Clover Hope of Vibe magazine. "Like 'OMG,' with usher, he didn't have success until he made a dance record. He had 'There Goes My Baby' and these really, like, adult-contemporary records that didn't really catch on. And then once you see that everybody is doing it and that people are liking it, they are like, 'OK, let me just try this out.' It's like Auto-Tune. Like, 'Let me see what I sound like on a record by David Guetta.' They end up liking it and doing more of it."

So does the club-music trend have staying power. According to our tastemakers, not so much.

"I do think it's a blip," Caramanica said. "I don't think that's gonna be something that lasts in America. I think this is gonna be a moment we'll all look back on and go, 'Wasn't that weird when Jason Derülo and Taio Cruz had #1 records?"

"At some point, these R&B artists will get kind of sick of it and be like, 'Let me go back to my soul background,' " Hope said. "When you actually have to say something, dance doesn't really lend itself to substance. And I think that R&B artists, they really want to talk about love and in a deep way, and to do that, you need to do, like, a soul or a traditional R&B record. I want to say that it's kind of a fad."

"I think music is very cyclical," Eng offered. "So I think dance music might be here for a little bit, but I'm sure it will phase out at some point."

Wilson called dance music "the sound of today. I think that people want more aggressive, faster beats, and I think that that probably has legs until at least next summer."

What do you think? Is dance music here to stay? Let us know in the comments!

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1655031/usher-keha-more-help-dance-music-go-pop-2010.jhtml

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Michael Jackson's 'Thriller': Story Behind The 'Glee' Cover

MJ classic is mashed up with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Heads Will Roll' for post-Super Bowl episode.
By Aly Semigran


"Glee"
Photo: FOX

Madonna, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and now, finally, Michael Jackson. The cast of "Glee" has covered plenty of icons during their first two seasons, but it's taken 33 episodes to get around to the King of Pop.

With a huge catalog of Jackson songs, the singing, dancing students of McKinley High paid homage to the late singer with one of his biggest staples (and, arguably, the greatest music video of all time) with their take on "Thriller."

The groundbreaking single from Jackson's best-selling album of the same name was mashed up with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Heads Will Roll" for the post-Super Bowl episode (titled "The Sue Sylvester Bowl Shuffle"), featuring a zombie-fied "Glee" cast.

Bound to become a smash all over again (though with its nonstop rotation at Halloween parties and wedding receptions until the end of time, it's never truly gone away), here's a brief history of the dance/pop classic.

Released on January 23, 1984, "Thriller" was the seventh, and final, single to be released from Jackson's smash record. According to the RIAA, the album (released by Epic Records) has gone gold 29 times, narrowly edging out the Eagles' Greatest Hits 1971-1975 for the title of best-selling album of all time.

In 2009, MTV News estimated that the Thriller album was poised to go triple diamond, meaning 30 million records sold in the U.S. alone.

After Thriller's other singles (including "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and "Wanna Be Startin' Something") dominated the charts, it was time for the spooky, undeniably original track to take over. The song "Thriller" also appeared on many of Jackson's other albums, including the compilations HIStory and Number Ones.

Clocking in at a little under six minutes (though the radio edit was closer to four-and-a-half), the song features pop-music mainstays like synthesizers but shakes things up with its spooky sound effects, including creaking floors, howling and thunder.

The song was produced by Quincy Jones and written and composed by Rod Tempterton and spent 14 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #4.

But it's the music video for "Thriller" that truly made it the phenomenon it was in the '80s and continues to be today. Less a music video than a mini-motion picture, the video (over 13 minutes long and directed by John Landis) won three MTV Video Music Awards and has been named the best music video of all time by many outlets, including VH1 for the special "VH1: 100 Greatest Videos."

The chiller features Jackson in that iconic red leather jacket on a date with his girlfriend (played by Ola Ray) before things go terribly awry. After all, as Jackson (whose disclaimer at the start of the video reads, "This film in no way endorses a belief in the occult") sings in the opening line, "It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark." Cue werewolves, zombies, Vincent Price's soliloquy and one of the most memorable dance sequences ever.

The video was (no pun intended) a monster hit. As the Los Angeles Times notes, "At the height of the song's popularity, MTV would run the 14-minute 'Thriller' video twice an hour."

Choreographed by Jackson and Michael Peters (who, as the LA Times also reported, appears in the video as one of the zombies) and with makeup by Oscar-winner Rick Baker (also an undead "Thriller" extra) was made with a huge budget of an estimated $500,000.

Still, the efforts paid off. Landis (who told the "Today" show back in 2009 that no one wanted to give them the funds to make the risky vid) made the accompanying 45-minute documentary about the venture, called "The Making of Thriller." Featuring the behind-the-scenes wizardry, as well as the music video in full, it would go on to move more than 10 million copies.

Since then, the signature song and video have seen their share fair of tributes in movies (notably in the 2004 comedy"13 Going on 30") and TV ("South Park," "Family Guy," "30 Rock," among others), not to mention the countless flash mobs that have gone viral. (Remember the prisoners in the Philippines who became overnight phenomenons on YouTube?)

Even with the "Glee" number, this likely won't be the last incarnation of "Thriller." Billboard reported in October that a "Thriller" film is in the works. With a plot allegedly revolving around Price's narration, Kenny Ortega, who directed Jackson's last effort, "This Is It," will reportedly helm the project.

Since Jackson's untimely passing on June 25, 2009, the song and video's legacy continue to live on. In the week following Jackson's death, "Thriller" was the best-selling track in the U.S., with sales of 167,000 copies on the Billboard Hot Digital Singles chart.

Then, in December 2009, "Thriller" was the first music video to ever be inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It seems "no mere mortal can resist ... the thriller" after all.

What did you think of the "Thriller" mash-up on "Glee"? Let us know in the comments!

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1657395/glee-thriller.jhtml

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Steve-O Says He Should Top Justin Bieber For MTV Movie Award

'Jackass' star also competing with Natalie Portman, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, and James Franco for Best Jaw Dropping Moment.
By Kara Warner


Steve-O
Photo: Matt Elias/ MTV News

One of the many ways the MTV Movie Awards distinguishes itself from all the other awards shows out there is the unique categories for which performances by actors, actresses and assorted moments in film are nominated and awarded.

The Best Jaw Dropping Moment is a perfect example. This year's nominees run the gamut from cringe-worthy and painful moments to larger-than-life concert experiences, amazing special effects and being covered in poo.

The nominees are: Natalie Portman for her hangnail moment in "Black Swan," Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page for the dream-within-a-dream "café scene" in "Inception," James Franco between a rock and a hard place in "127 Hours," Justin Bieber performing in his 3-D concert doc "Never Say Never," and the mighty Steve-O for his Porta-Potty moment in "Jackass 3D."

When MTV News caught up with poo and Porta-Potty expert Steve-O recently, we asked him how he feels about going up against fan favorite Justin Bieber.

"I'm not sure exactly what Justin Bieber's jaw-dropping moment is. From what I gather, it's not actually that spectacular," Steve-O said, pointing to the fact that Bieber's concert performance isn't quite as intense as Portman's or Franco's painful scenes. "But with his following, I'm pretty much showing up at this Movie Awards feeling like I'm a spectator and I'm going to watch him win," he continued. "I'm fine with that."

The "Jackass" star went on to say that the big reason he is a fan of the Biebs is not for his singing career, but his skateboarding skills. "Justin, I'm glad you know how to ride a skateboard and you have passion for the sport," he said to Bieber. "I consider skateboarding a sport, and I like Justin Bieber because he rides," he revealed.

In thinking a bit more about how Bieber's nominated moment stands out from his fellow "jaw-dropping moment" nominees, Steve-O suggested that we think about re-naming Bieber's big scene. "It should be called a 'panty-dropping moment,' " he said with a laugh. "The jailbait panty-dropping moment of all time, [by] Justin Bieber."

And although Steve-O doesn't expect to win, he did give himself a little plug, since in his infamous Porta-Potty bungee scene, his jaw did drop. "I should win, because my jaw was completely dropped the whole time," he said. "I had my mouth wide open and poo flying in there, and if I didn't drop my jaw, then that wouldn't have happened, so I should win."

Will wizards, vampires or dream thieves steal the 2011 MTV Movie Awards? Find out June 5, when the 20th annual show airs live at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Tune in at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT that night for the "America's Best Dance Crew" finale and Movie Awards pre-show, loaded with live action from the red carpet, exclusive movie clips and a special edition of "After Hours."

What Will Happen at the Start of the Awards?

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1665046/steve-o-justin-bieber-jaw-dropping-moment-mtv-movie-awards.jhtml

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