A. R. Rahman: Slumdog's music man

The 81st Annual Academy Awards were held last Sunday.  The star of the show was Slumdog Millionaire, winning 8 Oscars.  Two of those Oscars went to A. R. Rahman, the man who wrote the score for the film.  Rahman ended the night with the awards for Best Score for Slumdog Millionaire and Best Song for "Jai Ho."  

Rahman was born in Madras, India and he is the first Indian man ever to win two Oscars.  He studied classical music on scholarship at the Trinity College of Music at Oxford University.  The start of his film music career began with in 1992, when Rahman worked with Mani Ratnam, one of India's most famous directors, on the film Roja.  You can check out his website here.  And you can listen to some of his songs at Last.fm.

I absolutely loved Slumdog Millionaire and I think anyone who has seen it can say that the soundtrack was amazing!  It is definitely something that stuck out to me, I actually bought the opening song called "O...Saya" on iTunes a few days after seeing the film.  Rahman worked with one of my favorite artists, M.I.A., on a few tracks.  She is from Sir Lanka. 

This is the video of "Jai Ho" from the end credits of Slumdog Millionaire.

I was just recently made aware of a Pussycat Doll's Remix of "Jai Ho," which is so great!  Yes, I am a fan of the Pussycat Dolls!  They did a really good job with the remix.  The song can be heard here.  It will most definitely make you want to dance! 

Top Albums of 2008

Yes, I know it's already two and a half months into 2009, but I happened to just stumble upon Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums of 2008.  I love things in a list and I think Rolling Stone does a great job sorting through mainstream (Top 40's) music along with less popular music to create a valid list.  Here is the top ten:

1. TV on the Radio: Dear Science
2. Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs- The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
3. Lil Wayne: Tha Carter III
4. My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges
5. John Mellencamp: Life, Death, Love and Freedom
6. Santogold: Santogold
7. Coldplay: Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
8. Beck: Modern Guilt
9. Metallica: Death Magnetic
10. Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend

To check out the full list from Rolling Stone, along with reviews of each of these albums click here.

Here is a music video that caught my eye and it's from Vampire Weekend, the number 10 album of 2008.  It's one of the band's singles called "Oxford Coma."

Vampire Weekend is from New York and they are touring in Mexico during the month of March.  To listen to more of their music go to their Myspace.  "A Punk" is a phenomenal song and I highly suggest rocking out to it sometime!

Epic Tours and New Albums to Watch For

Spring is in the air and summer tour dates are being released!  There are some great musicians that will be trekking around America to put on some unquestionably epic shows.  On the top of the list is Coldplay.  The band just won three Grammy's and I just found out will be doing a summer tour, even though they did just tour this last fall.  Check out the dates and get tickets from Live Nation. Oh what I would give to see Coldplay perform at an outdoor venue! 

Two of the greatest piano men are touring together this spring, Elton John and Billy Joel.  The tour starts in March and runs through August.  John has five Grammy's under his belt and Joel has six!  Collectively they have sold over 300 million albums over 30 decades.  This tour is probably going to go down in history.  Here is the link to look at the dates and tickets. 

For those of you local music-lovers, there are a lot of great local musicians touring currently as well.  I am biased to the Minneapolis area because that's where I live, so I use Mr Chan Presents to find out about both mainstream and smaller artists that are coming through the area.  

Coming up this Tuesday, February 24th, there are some great albums being released.  The classic Van Morrison is releasing a live album titled, "Astral Weeks Live at The Hollywood Bowl." Somalian hip-hop artist, K'Naan, is releasing "Troubadour" this week.  I have just recently been hearing more and more about K'Naan, he is definitely an artist on the rise. 

Arrests, Reunions, and Magic: A Brief Overview of the 2009 Grammy Awards

The 2009 Grammy Awards Show was packed full of gossip, glamour, and great musical performances.  As I watched the red carpet pre-show on E! TV, I was shocked to discover the breaking news that singer Chris Brown had been arrested the night before on charges of battery of a female victim and would not be attending the Grammy's.  Then a few minutes later, I was even more shocked to find out that singer Rihanna, Brown's girlfriend, would not be able to attend the awards show either.  Rumors spread like wildfire, and it is still not confirmed if Rihanna was, in fact, the victim.  Either way, Brown's image has been ruined.  However, just recently Brown released his first statement concerning the incident.  Here is a link to read more about Brown's recent statement from Rolling Stone.

The Grammy's were definitely off to an interesting start with both superstars Rihanna and Chris Brown not attending and in turn, not performing as they were scheduled to do.  Putting all drama aside, there were some great moments during this year's Grammy's.  Blink 182, a 90's rock band, announced their reunion, which made me ecstatic!  The trio was recently featured in Rolling Stone with a look at their past in photos.  Check out the slide show; there are some really awesome pictures from when the band first started. 

There were three big winners at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.  The duo of Robert Plant, former singer for the great Led Zeppelin and Allison Krause, a bluegrass singer, walked away with five Grammy's, including the highly honored Album of the Year for Raising Sand.  The duo also performed at the awards show.  Another big winner with four awards, including Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song, was Lil Wayne.  He also had the most nominations this year.  The final big winners were Coldplay with three awards, including Song of the Year for "Viva La Vida."  

There were some okay performances that night (i.e. Taylor Swift & Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers & Stevie Wonder) and then there were some amazing performances.  I picked my top three performances of the evening, which I deemed epic and unforgettable.  

1. Jennifer Hudson performing "You Pulled Me Through." Click here to see the performance.
2. T.I., Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Jay-Z and M.I.A.'s compilation of "Swagga Like Us." 
3. Radiohead's performance with the USC Marching Band of "15 Step." Click here to see the performance.