Monthly Archives: April 2002

Sophie Ellis-Bextor Accuses Bond People

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Pointing her finger at the producers of ‘Die Another Day’ of using her name to get publicity for the upcoming James Bond film is Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Sometime last year, reports indicated that the gorgeous vocalist-tress had auditioned to play a Bond girl in the 20th 007 picture.

The ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ striking singer has admitted that she did indeed meet up with the people behind the whole Bond franchise but she also was quick to add that she knew right then that there wasn’t a suitable role for her.

“I think the producers were a bit cheeky because I met with the casting director ages ago when it was just an idea of a film” she told a leading UK magazine. “And so we realised that there wasn’t a part for me. There was either this uptight blonde girl or this kind of South American scaling walls type. I really wasn’t either.”

After the initial conversation, Sophie had a couple of further interviews with the Bond people but nothing came of it. Then before she knew it, the tabloids are having a field day claiming that she was fighting for a role in ‘Die Another Day’.

“They started releasing it to the press. I think they were doing it as a way to get publicity for the film. It is a bit naughty really because there were headlines left, right and centre saying “Will it really be Sophie?” knowing jolly well I haven’t been in contact with any of them for months now.”

Madonna Not Helping Father

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Madonna’s stepmother, Joan Ciccone, has openly blasted the ‘Like A Virgin’ singer in the press for not supporting her father, Tony Ciccone, 70, claiming that the Material Girl wasn’t willing to give up any of her cash to help her aged father, even though Madonna’s dad was on the verge of losing his home and business.

Having left Detroit and his former position as a car designer, Tony is attempting to make a go of a small vineyard in Suttons Bay, Michigan.

According to reports, things got pretty ugly for the music diva’s father so much so that now he has to depend on state benefits despite the fact that his famous daughter has truckloads of cash.

Putting it on record that he has never once approached his daughter for any assistance, Tony told the press that “What she does and how she decides to treat people is up to her.”

Madonna was once quoted as saying “I hated my father for a long time”.

Sure Madonna and her father may not have had the perfect father-daughter relationship but the thing is many felt that the bonds between father and daughter were tightened when both Tony and Madonna appeared together on stage during 1990’s Blond Ambition tour. Doesn’t look that way now.

The Talented Mr Tommy Mottola

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What precisely went wrong in the case of the extraordinary singer Mariah Carey, what with falling CD sales and all?

Well, currently now it looks like there was a sort of a secret smear campaign that went on. It appears to link up to Mariah’s dramatic fall from grace with strong evidence that has emerged lately that suggest her former husband and record company boss, Tommy Mottola, purportedly tried to boost the profile of Mariah’s rival the sexy Jennifer My-Bum-Is-As-Big-As-A-House Lopez at the expense of his ex-wife.

Irv Gotti, Ja Rule’s executive producer, has told a leading hip-hop mag how he was hurriedly snatched up to work on some of Jennifer’s numbers to be rush-released ahead of the Mariah’s project which by the way they had also been working on.

Ja Rule, singer of hits like the recent ‘Always On Time’, was then brought on board by Mariah’s former hubby and manager of the Sony label to work alongside Jennifer in a bid to scoop the collaboration the rap sensation had already done with Mariah.It has been alleged that Tommy was so infuriated that his ex-wife had signed a deal with rival label Virgin. And we all know how that one turned out finally right? In case you don’t, well Mariah’s subsequent release of the Glitter album/soundtrack suffered astonishingly poor sales, eventually leading Virgin to pay the star GBP40 million to leave the label. This later led to 1800 job cuts at the company. Pretty understandable since they paid such a huge amount for the vocalist to leave their label and so they’ve to try and balance their accounts.

“I get a call from Tommy Mottola, who I have a great relationship with, and he’s like, I need you to do me a favour. I want you to do this remix for J Lo. I want you to put Ja on the record,” Irv said. “Immediately I knew what he was doing because we had just finished the Mariah record.”

Irv claims that he was given the track to remix on a Thursday, with strict instructions to have it finished within 48 hours as the J Lo video was being filmed on that Saturday.

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, with evidence and all, what has Mariah to say about the latest developments? So far, at the time this write-up was published, no word was uttered from Mariah’s camp.

Rik Waller Wants To Shed The Fats

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Rik Waller can soon be seen on the small screen yet again after agreeing to be filmed in a celebrity version of the television show ‘Fat Club’. The singer will be joining other ‘challenging waste line’ stars to try and lose the fats.

Rik said, speaking to an online webpage “I’ve been wanting to lose weight for quite some time now and this seems like the wonderful break. I believe it’ll be tough but I sure am determined to finish to get to the end of the show.”

The ‘Pop Idol’ hopeful’s chubby frame will be filmed for six months as the singer endures a gruelling fitness system and is encouraged to assume a more healthy diet.

Other dieting hopefuls besides Rik will include DJ Jono Coleman and ‘Emmerdale’ star Lisa Riley. All of them are set to meet up for the first time later this week ahead of filming schedule for a ‘get-to-know-you’ lunch session.

After his stand-out performance on BBC’s ‘Top Of The Pops’ recently singing his Top 10 sensation ‘I Will Always Love You’, Rik has managed to keep alive his Pop Idol dreams and like previously reported on Pop-Music.com, he will release a full-length album real soon.

Anyway, good luck Rik!

Work Has Begun On Eve’s Third LP

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Eve, right now, doesn’t have it all atlased out but she knows what she has to do with her third album. “I’ve got to step it up. It has to be some other type of hip-hop,” she said, talking to an online music-zine.

“This is my third album and I want to do things that I would do on my fifth album but I know I can’t take it there yet,” Eve said. “I’m more excited about this album than I was about my first. My second album was a hard project because I was going through so much. It was my second year in the game, and I was just trying to figure out, ‘Is this really what I want?’ I just was bogged down with so much stress. Now I’m focused and I’m happy.”

The beautiful ‘Who’s That Girl’ vocalist said that she plans on getting a couple of female instrumentalists. “I want an all-girl band. They can be all the same or diverse. I’ve never had a band. It’ll take me awhile to get it together. I would like to explore it, just experiment. I don’t know if they’ll be on my tour but I would like to incorporate that because I’m just not a rapper, I’m an artist. Artistically, I feel like I’ve grown so much. I just love music as a whole. Hip-hop, I love pop, I love alternative and I’m trying to feed myself artistically.”Eve, who has just finished shooting two movies, talked about one of her new numbers “It’s called ‘Irresistible Bitch’. That’s a Prince remake. We’re hoping to get Prince on the record. I don’t know if it will occur. But it’s sizzling. It’s different and it’s a dance track. It’s not regular hip-hop and I love it.”

Although Eve has a name for the new opus, she’s not divulging it until she runs it by her people but she did say she plans on releasing it either in July or August 2002.

Gareth Wants To Beat Will

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Gareth Gates, 17, has held on to the No.1 slot in the UK singles chart for a third uninterrupted week with his cover of ‘Unchained Melody’, after having held off a chart battle from the likes of Britney Spears who had to settle for a No.2 position with her number ‘I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman’.

Now, Gareth has immediately set his sights on defeating rival Will Young’s three-week stay at the top of the charts.

Speaking to Pop Idol judge Dr Fox, who is now known as DJ Foxy, Gareth said “I have to make it to four weeks at number one”.

He even added “I have to beat Will. I have to! I have to! I’ve got to get my own back”.

What exactly does he mean by that? Well, it has been reported that presumably Gareth is still unhappy with Will actually emerging the victor of the first-ever ITV1 talent show ‘Pop Idol’ and not himself.

There was only one other new entry in the top 10, with X-ecutioners unveiling at No.7 with ‘It’s Goin’ Down’.

Wads Of Wonga For Westlife

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How is this for a wedge load of wonga? According to the tabs, the already wonderful world of Westlife is about to get a whole lot better for Kian, Shane, Mark, Nicky and Bryan with the news that they will earn GBP2 million EACH from their latest tour.

The fellas are being paid GBP14,000 for each of their 68 ‘World Of Our Own’ 2002 concerts. They will also collect GBP800,000 from merchandising and GBP300,000 from their deal with sportswear manufacturers Adidas.

Kian told the News Of the World: “It’s great being in this position but it could all end tomorrow so we’ve invested a lot of our money. Obviously we’ve bought cars and clothes but the majority is stashed away.” Not under the bed we hope!

Alicia’s Not Calling

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Alicia Keys who broke through with that ‘Falling’ number of hers, will release soon her latest offering, entitled ‘How Come You Don’t Call Me’ from her acclaimed ‘Songs in A Minor’. By the way, it’s a reinterpretation of Prince’s 1982 B-side ‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?’

The clip was filmed last weekend in Los Angeles, opens with Alicia singing around the house, but the setting, and music, soon change. “The interesting part is that halfway through the song she actually switches to singing the song live,” explained Alicia’s J Records spokesperson. “So you have the studio version and the live version as the scene changes. Pretty hot, if I do say so myself.”

Along with the innovative use of music, the video also marks a historic moment for the ‘A Woman’s Worth’ singer. It’s going to be the first time she will reveal her hair without braids.

Before launching a two-month tour July 2 in Milwaukee Alicia Keys will work on material for her next album due by the end of the year or in early 2003.

Naomi Campbell Stood Westlife, The Sword-fighting Heroes Up

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Naomi Campbell recently stood the boys of Westlife up and obviously they’re not exactly thrilled about it.

Last week the boyband were all ready and waiting to film their new video for their next single, entitled ‘Bop Bop Baby’, in which Naomi was to star in but at the very last minute the high-profile supermodel blew the boys out saying she’d changed her mind. Naomi’s representatives quoted a conflict of schedules.

Costing Westlife GBP15,000 since they missed a whole day of shoots trying to find a replacement who in the very end, turned out to come in the form of the Rolling Stone’s guitarist Ronnie Wood’s daughter Leah, the boys are said to play swashbuckling heroes for their latest video.

The video sees Nicky Byrne, Bryan McFadden, Mark Feehily, Kian Egan and Shane Filan leaping into action. For instance, you’d get to see them riding horses and fighting with swords against bad guy Vinnie Jones (Snatch), and save a damsel in distress.Mark who spots a goatee in the video told the the press “It was a real swashbuckling adventure. We all wanted to be heroes but we didn’t want just one guy to get the girl in the end so we all go after her. We love dressing up but to be honest we just wanted to get swords to play with.”

Vinnie Jones said he had fun on the set but can’t seem to avoid being typecast. “I’m having a laugh but as usual I get to play the baddie – what a surprise.”

The Irish boyband are hoping their new number which will be out on the 20th of May, will be their 11th No. 1 smashhit.

Meanwhile, Westlife’s Shane Filan is looking for a lovenest in County Sligo, Eire, and has told pals his girlfriend, band mate Kian Egan’s cousin, Gillian Walsh, will be moving in with him.

A chum said “Now that she has nearly finished her A-levels Gillian is ready to move out of home and he’s really keen to get somewhere with the relationship he has going with the young lady. Shane’s mum and dad love Gillian and so it’s all go really.”

Ladies First Can’t Wait

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The U.K charts have been filled with two-step talents, like Mis-teeq, Craig David, So Solid Crew and more. Now be sure to add Ladies First to that list.

Ladies First also known as London duo, Sasha and Mel, are about to secure their virgin hit with ‘I Can’t Wait’, which is already out in stores. Their debut offering is a cover of a 1986 smash by Nu Shooz spiced up with an underground and pop vibes.

According to Sasha “I’m surprised that nobody’s covered it yet. It’s such a brilliant classic. We were lucky enough to come up with the idea to cover it. At the time Pete from Artful Dodger was looking for us who was actually trying to get hold of us to work with. We had this idea and we did it. It was a matter of a week before we had it recorded.”Continuing on the topic on how they put the track together, Mel said “That was a mad time for us. We were nagging our record company saying that we really want to work with Artful Dodger. We love his sound and we love all the tracks plus Craig David was so mind-blowingly wicked. It was our dream but they were like “yeah right, dream on. That’s hundreds of thousands of pounds away from that point”. So we were like “we can see that”. Soon, we got a phone call from Pete who then said let’s get to work girls.”

Mel had this to say about their debut full-length release “It’s nearly finished. You can expect a lot of different flavours all rounded into one. And that one is the Ladies First sound. It’s difficult for us to describe the sound when you’re so involved in it.”

So how did this striking girls form Ladies First? Well, apparently, they met about 7 years ago at a club and then later on they kept running into each other at other events, literally every week. As friends, they partied together till late. Mel and Sasha were doing their own thing by going down for auditions and demo-ing with producers. Soon it got to a point where they began to work together as a duo.