May 17, 2024

Review Category : TMZ Music News

When It Comes To Making <i>Tomorrow’s Hits</i>, The Men Just Add Horns

The Men heralded their upcoming record, Tomorrow's Hits, with a simple blog post: The words "Things Will Be Different" hyperlinked to a video of Maxine Nightingale singing "Right Back Where We Started From."

The message is a bit contradictory to be sure, but definitely one that jibes with the band's tendency to create wildly different records while still remaining The Men.

"While our records do tend to be really different from each other, I think that that personality or that character, that spirit, is the constant and that's how you always know you're listening to The Men," bassist Ben Greenberg told MTV News when he and bandmate Kevin Faulkner came in to chat about their record, due out March 5.

The first few tracks to drop from that record — "Another Night," "Different Days," and "Pearly Gates" — are markedly different from anything the band has done in the past.

Sure, they've still got some of the hard-edged sound The Men flaunted on 2012's Open Your Heart (on "Different Days" and "Pearly Gates" especially) and a ton of the bombast found on the folky New Moon, but this record is replete with horns. And those horns add more than a dash of Bruce Springsteen mixed with '80s Bowie swagger that's entirely new for the band.

"A lot of the songs on the record are based on a strong groove and based on the five of us playing together as kind of a rhythmic unit, so the horns gave us some opportunity for counter-melody, additional syncopation," Greenberg said. "A way to kind of ...

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Ahead Of Sochi, Leonardo DiCaprio And Jonah Hill Reteam On Olympic Bombing Movie

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill really must have hit it off during "The Wolf of Wall Street" because in addition to co-creating a TV series based on the life of rapper Q-Tip, the buddies are also going to reteam on a biopic of Richard Jewell, the man falsely accused of bombing the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

According to Deadline, Hill would play the Olympic Park security guard in a movie based on the Vanity Fair article, "American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell." The story is a pretty tragic one, and the announcement seems perfectly timed with the Sochi games about to kick off.

If your memory doesn't reach all the way back to 1996, the story of Richard Jewell is a confusing one that grabbed too many headlines. Jewell had been working in Centennial Olympic Park during the Atlanta games when he found a backpack filled with pipe bombs. He alerted police immediately and got much of the surrounding area evacuated. The bombs eventually did go off, killing one. Another person working as a cameraman died from a heart attack while running toward the scene.

At first, Jewell was considered a hero for saving potentially hundreds from the shrapnel packed inside the bombs, but that changed in the days after the explosion when it leaked to the media that the FBI was investigating him as a possible suspect. News programs and late-night talk show hosts —*cough*Jay Leno*cough* — essentially decided that Jewell was guilty, when in fact he was completely innocent.

Jewell was ...

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‘Divergent’ Trailer Is Dauntlessly Cool: Watch It Now!

May the odds be ever in your f— oh, no, wait. Sorry. Wrong Young Adult adaptation, wrong spunky heroine. Let's try that again.

It's time to choose your faction, Initiates. The new trailer for "Shailene Woodley stars as Tris (neé Beatrice), a young woman who is forced to choose between continuing on with her family in their austere lifestyle or breaking free and joining a thrill-seeking group in the community, the Dauntless. What she learns about herself in the process of making her choice proves to be life changing.

Oh yeah, she also meets a life changingly handsome dude along the way: the mysterious (and did we mention handsome?) Four (Theo James).

Woodley and James debuted the trailer Monday night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and now it's here on the internet for all us cord-cutters to enjoy.

Check out the trailer above, featuring Tris' fear landscape, the knife-throwing and train-jumping action we've come to expect from the film, and much more.

"Divergent," starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James, hits theaters March 21.

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Nick Jonas Is Reuniting With An Old Friend For New Gig

When Demi Lovato's Neon Lights Tour kicks off in Vancouver on Sunday she will have an old friend on board to keep her arrangements on point: Nick Jonas. Yes, that Nick Jonas. The former Jonas Brothers singer has booked his first new gig since the sibling band announced their split
 in October.

Nick, 21, told Rolling Stone that he will be the musical and creative director of Lovato's tour, a gig he accepted right around the time that he and his brothers decided to throw in the towel.

Nick Will Bring The Party Non-Stop
"I'm overseeing video content, wardrobe, lighting and staging," Jonas told the magazine. "And then I'm extending into the musical side of things, which includes creating the arrangements for the songs. I'm building what Demi wanted, which is a show without stops and starts."

You might recall that the JoBros broke up after Nick reportedly shared his concerns with Joe and Kevin about the band's future. The guys admitted there was a "deep rift" within their ranks and a "big disagreement over their music direction." There seems to be no such disagreement between Nick and his former Disney "Camp Rock" co-star. They share a manager, which is how the team-up formed.

Friends From Way Back
The gig is just the latest collabo between the two, who've been helping each other out for nearly a decade. Lovato was one of the stars of the JoBros' 2008 "Camp Rock" Disney movies and she served as the opening act on their Burnin' Up Tour that year.

The brotherly trio also helped co-write ...

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Justin Bieber’s Stripper Photo Has ‘Workaholics’ Guys Feeling ‘Hella Jealous’

In recent seasons, the guys on "Workaholics" have taken the art of gross-out TV to staggering new heights, downing boogers like bon-bons, splashing on amniotic fluid like it was Cool Water cologne and teaching us the finer points of trache-to-mouth resuscitation (to name just some of their acheivements).

So, really, at this point, there's nothing that shocks them ... not even the scandalous new photo of Justin Bieber obtained by TMZ, which appears to show the singer (and pal Khalil Sharieff) uh, helping themselves to a stripper's ample assets.

To them, it's just another pic — and no, they're not just saying that because the Biebs is a fan of the show.

"Oh this is fun, I have zero photos like this, and it's my dream to have a ton of photos like this," star Adam DeVine told MTV News while viewing the photo with his castmates. "There's no problem with this, he's 19 years old, and he's throwing eggs at houses? That's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to lick stripper titties with your friends when you're 19."

"Who cares?" Anders Holm added. "Don't hate the player."

We'd never dream of it. As it turns out, the "Workaholics" guys actually share a mutual admiration for Bieber's recent achievements. Well, that's one way of putting it.

"I'm hella jealous of him," director Kyle Newachek said.

"Did that happen to you? I don't think so," DeVine asked. "Because we were hanging out a lot and we went to a couple strip clubs midday on Wednesday to have lunch; the salmon? Good ...

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Timbaland Is Locked In For Jodeci Reunion Album

Timbaland has produced millions of hit records, but you can never him of forgetting where he came from.

Before crafting tracks for Justin Timberlake and Jay Z, Timbaland was cutting his production teeth in the studio with 1990s bad-boy R&B quartet Jodeci. Now, he's back working with the group on a new album — their first in nearly 20 years.

"People who follow Timbaland from day one, I met with [Jodeci member] DeVante [Swing] and I'mma help work on the new Jodeci album, just for y'all," Tim, a protégé of DeVante's, told fans during a Hang With video chat from his tour bus.

Jodeci was already well established by the time a young Timbaland came into their fold. The group's first two LPs, Forever My Lady and Diary of a Mad Band, were multiplatinum successes. But it was on the group's last album, The Show, the After-Party, the Hotel in 1995, that Timbaland (and a young Missy Elliott) received production credit.

Since that last album, Jodeci's two star vocalists, brothers K-Ci and JoJo, have gone on to release albums as a separate duo. But rumors of a full reunion continued to circulate for years. Now that the group is finally coming together to make new music, Timbaland is ready to contribute. "That'll be my career coming in full circle, connecting back with Devante," he said.

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