March 17, 2025

About the author  ⁄ MTV News

One Direction Tease Next Album Will Be ‘Quite Retro’

The boys of One Direction have accomplished a lot in 2013: their second headlining tour, a 3-D documentary and a Moonman for Song of the Summer at the VMAs. Now, they're ready to check another thing off their list.

The follow-up to their widely successful 2012 album, Take Me Home, will reportedly be released around the holidays. When we caught up with Liam Payne at the New York premiere of their doc, he warned Directioners to look out for a much edgier sound on their third album.

"[It's a] very rock direction," Payne said. "We actually spent a lot of time writing this album. We're very proud of it, so we can't wait for it to come out.

"It's very live sounding, very rock-y," he continued, before also describing it as "quite retro." "But it's very different so we are hoping people will kind of adjust to the music with us."

According to reports, the guys are working with the same songwriting team behind their 2011 debut, Up All Night and Take Me Home, including producer Julian Bunetta. And the U.K. boy band recently told "Nightline" that they have penned 10 of the tracks on the record.

"[We] had the chance to work with a lot of great writers and stuff, but we just made it a bit more edgier," Liam Payne explained at a press conference back in May. "Just subtle changes here and there so it kind of grows as we grow."

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Kaskade ‘Nervous’ To Sing Live On Tour

Ryan Raddon, better known as Kaskade, has been nominated for Grammys, has sold out the Staples Center and had 12 top 10 singles, but he still isn't satisfied. For his eighth studio album, he laid down his own vocals on the title track for the first time ever.

MTV News caught up with the EDM veteran to get to the bottom of all things "The song's about me and my story and being true to myself, getting to this point in my life and following my passion and not being affected by everything that is going on around me. It's a very personal song and it just made sense to name the album that and then, cool, we'll call the tour that too."

Certainly a rarity in electronic music, Kaskade said he was a bit nervous recording his voice on the track, but performing it live has been rewarding. "I was a little shy about that, a little nervous just cause I've never done it before but it's been awesome, now I play the song at shows and to see everyone singing along and seeing how it resonates with my audience is very rewarding, I love that, the aspect of sharing my art."

The tour is being dubbed the Big Rooms Small Tour, which was a very intentional stylistic decision by Kaskade, who felt the album played best to the biggest room possible. And as Kaskade teased, maybe he will sing live.

Luckily, the album comes out on September 10, just in time to hold fans over before his first show ...

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‘NYSNC’s JC Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick Spill 5 VMA Secrets

'NSYNC's long-awaited reunion a at the VMAs had fans, including A-listers like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, screaming with delight.

For almost a decade, the five members held different opinions about whether they would ever grace the stage together again. But with one phone call from Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award winner Justin Timberlake, they got the group together again.

Now, fans might be wondering how the reunion came together. So MTV News spoke to JC Chasez and Chris Kirkpatrick to get the inside scoop on it. Here are five secrets behind 'NSYNC's VMA reunion!

Two Cities, Five Guys And A Reunion
The fivesome didn't just rehearse their portion of Timberlake's epic performance in NYC, but also headed to Florida, the same state they formed in, to rehearse. "We were rehearsing at the Fillmore in Miami last week. Justin really wanted it to be a secret and he wanted it to try and be as quiet as possible 'cause he wanted it to be this moment," Chris recalled. "We tried to keep it as secretive as we could." Chasez added, "The main thing is just how quickly it came together; it came together just within a matter of days. It started with a phone call just a few days before the VMAs basically. [The rehearsals were] very relaxed, a lot of jokes being passed around at each other's expense, but again, it was fun."

Mic Check!
Despite the band not saying anything prior to last Sunday, when an official Twitter account was opened in the band's name on Saturday, that's ...

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Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech: A Pop Culture History

It was an unforgettable speech — a moment when those gathered could feel, and hear, the tide of history turning.

On Wednesday (August 28), thousands once again descended on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 50th anniversary of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s landmark "I Have a Dream" speech. Delivered on August 28, 1963 during the "March On Washington," the 17-minute speech encapsulated the civil rights icon's message of freedom, equality and liberty for all Americans, regardless of race.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal,' " King said on that day.

"And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

Most amazingly, King essentially freestyled toward the end of the speech after gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, "Tell them about the dream, Martin," tossing his notes and coming up with the iconic phrasing on the spot.

MLK's March On Washington Turns 50: Here Are 4 Ways You Can Take Action.

"I Have a Dream" also ...

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Miley And Justin Get Big VMA Bumps, Katy’s ‘Roar’ Remains At #1

There's not a whole lot of change atop the Billboard charts this week, with Katy Perry maintaining her grip on the Digital Songs chart and Luke Bryan staying at #1 on the albums chart. The real action was over on iTunes, as several stars experienced massive boosts in sales following the MTV Video Music Awards. Let's just say Kanye West and Justin Timberlake were probably happy they decided to show up.

JT, Kanye and Miley Get Big Bumps

Though the full impact of the VMAs won't be felt until next week's Billboard charts — this week's charts reflect the sales week that ended on Sunday, the day of the broadcast — based immediate iTunes data, well, being on the big show was definitely good for business: basically anyone who graced the stage experienced a serious bump in sales in the hours following the telecast.

Kanye West's "Blood on the Leaves" shot up an incredible 1187 percent in sales, while Justin Timberlake was close behind, posting a whopping 1,876-percent increase in sales. Lady Gaga saw sales of "Applause" increase by 115 percent, Katy Perry's "Roar" jumped 25 percent, and Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke both reaped the benefits of their scandalous collaboration, as Cyrus's upcoming Bangerz rose to #5 on the iTunes album chart, and Thicke's new single, "Give It 2 U" jumped 30 percent in sales.

Katy's "Roar" Rules Once Again

It's a second week atop Billboard's Digital Songs chart for Katy Perry, as "Roar" sold another 392,000 downloads to hold on to the #1 spot. Robin Thicke's ubiquitous "Blurred ...

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Drake’s <i>Nothing Was The Same</i> Producer Wants You To ‘Tear The Club Up’

As the September 24 release date for Drake's highly anticipated third album Nothing was the Same, looms closer, more and more details are beginning to leak out.

Young Money president Mack Maine already has his favorites. "I haven't heard the whole album, but my favorite track so far is the intro," he told MTV News at the Barclays Center after the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards.

"He also has a track him and Detail came up with, they're gonna tear the clubs up with that. It's a tie between those two."

Detail, who has logged hits with Lil Wayne, described NWTS as a hip-hop afterparty. He acknowledged that artists like Kanye West and Jay Z have already dropped some pretty high-profile rap albums earlier in the year, and now Drake will help to close out a year with some pretty remarkable releases. "Be on your worst behavior," the YMCMB producer warns.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone Drake's go-to producer Noah "40" Shebib revealed that the intro that Mack referred to is a song called "Tuscan Leather." It reportedly samples Whitney Houston in a very clever way. "It's a three-staged record — one sample flipped three different ways, with a verse over each beat," 40 said.

Drake describes "Paris Morton Music II" as an all-out rap-fest. "That track excites me from a rap standpoint, just getting off bars and different flows," he said. "I played it for J. Cole, on some rap buddy-buddy sh--, and he was like, 'Damn!'"

Earlier this Rolling Stone also revealed that Jay Z, Lil Wayne and producer ...

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What Came First: The Miley Or The Twerk? Oxford Dictionaries Rep Weighs In

Oxford Dictionaries Online added a whole new batch of words to its latest edition on Wednesday (August 28), including the now infamous "twerk." But if your first thought is that Miley Cyrus' teddy bear twerk-a-thon at the 2013 Video Music Awards had something to do it, you may be surprised.

According to a representative from the OD (not to be confused with the historical Oxford English Dictionary), the immortalization and legitimization of the word had nothing to do with the ex-Disney star. The Head of US Dictionaries, Katherine Connor Martin, told MTV News that the words added today to the online version of the dictionary were decided on months ahead of publication — back in the spring.

That means "twerk," "buzzworthy" and "selfie" were locked and loaded before Miley took the stage Sunday and twerked all over Robin Thicke as part of her "We Can't Stop" performance.

As for how the word was chosen for inclusion, Martin said that a few factors are taken into account. "Frequency [of use] is very important, but we look at a variety of different sources," she explained. "We have 'corpora' — so those are sets of electronic text that are supposed to be representative of the English language, so we can see changes happening and identify new words that are coming into use that way."

The team also has a watch list of words that the editors of the ODO have "identified as being new and noteworthy," Martin said. "We assess those for frequency and also for a breadth of usage."

Twerk was first put on ...

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Kristen Bell: ‘Frozen’ Is ‘The Kind Of Movie I Wanted To See As A Kid’

Winter is coming. The next Disney animated film to hit theaters is titled — chillingly — "Frozen" and features the voice work of Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, Idina Menzel and Josh Gad in this loose retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale "The Snow Queen." MTV News recently caught up with Bell, who explained what movie-goers can expect from "Frozen."

"The movie is about a pair of sisters — one who has the power to freeze things, and it happens when she is fearful or angry," Bell said. "And because of feeling terrified to show that to the world, she sort of runs away and freezes the town accidentally. I play the sister Anna, who makes it her mission to travel across these snowy lands and bring her sister back amidst the fact that they're fighting and kind of at that point hate each other. It's kind of how they make up and find love in the end."

Bell's voicework on the film isn't limited to dialogue — she sings too!

"We're singing the lovely songs of Kristen and Bobby Lopez, who wrote 'Book of Mormon,' " she enthused. "So it's really, really funny music. It's really good music. They're amazing to work for."

Yet, the thing Bell is most proud about when it comes to "Frozen" is embodying a relatable heroine — something you don't always find in your average Disney princess.

"I'm really excited to show it to people. I became a part of the kind of movie I wanted to see as a kid," she said. "I always loved Disney animation, ...

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