Music

The American Idol judge could rake in millions with a steady gig in Vegas

Jenny from the Block may soon be Jenny on the Strip. TMZ reports that the flygirl-cum-actress-cum-diva was spotted over the weekend with her manager at Britney Spears’ Piece of Me show and Shania Twain’s Still the One performance — possibly doing research for her own iteration of the Vegas residency.

Though there’s no word yet from J.Lo herself, a stint in Sin City wouldn’t be an altogether surprising move at this stage in her career. Where a Las Vegas residency once spelled doom for fading musicians’ careers, today it’s a normal — not to mention enormously lucrative — gig in the rotation for megastars like Madonna, Elton John, and the ever-in-love Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. And while performers certainly skew middle-aged and older, Vegas dealmakers appear to be consciously appealing to younger crowds, opening up residencies to DJs like Deadmau5 and Tiesto. (Though Lopez is middle-aged herself at 45, her fan base tends to skew younger than that of the Dions and the Meatloafs and the Chers.)

A sojourn in Las Vegas spells a few things for an artist like J.Lo: stability, breathing room, and major cash. Residencies are essentially like a tour, minus the grueling travel schedule. They often consist of a handful of shows each week for four or five months, which would leave time for the other projects in Lopez’s multi-hyphenate career: judging American Idol, managing her lifestyle brand, and overseeing the foundation she started with her sister Lydia to improve health care access in under-served communities.

It would also allow Lopez some time to regroup from her 2014 album A.K.A., which disappointed with the lowest sales of her eight studio albums, selling just 60,000 copies in the U.S. She could — and likely would — return to some of the more crowd-pleasing hits from her earlier career as she mulls over where to go next.

And if none of these reasons is enough, then the six-figure nightly intake stands a solid chance at sealing the deal. Even after a tumultuous decade for Britney Spears and a rough run with her most recent album, Britney Jean, the onetime chart-topper is now raking in more than $300,000 per show, on track to gross more than $30 million over two years. Her love may not cost a thing, but J. Lo’s turn on the Vegas stage most certainly would.

Frustrated Canadian fans just need to Shake It Off

Turns out that Taylor Swift fans really will listen to anything she releases. Due to a glitch in the Canadian version of iTunes, a Taylor Swift song titled “Track 3″ was released on Tuesday and immediately shot to the top of the charts. But fans who downloaded the song were bummed to realize that they had purchased eight seconds of static noise for $1.29.

The short white noise track even beat out Swift’s last three singles from her upcoming album, 1989, “Welcome to New York,” “Shake It Off” and “Out of the Woods,” which sat at two, three and eight, respectively, on the Canadian charts as of Tuesday morning.

Maybe confused country fans thought this is what pop music is supposed to sound like.

The famous saxophonist's visit prompted officials to reiterate their calls for foreigners to keep out of China's affairs

Kenny G is striking all the wrong notes in Hong Kong, the Chinese government says.

The Chinese foreign ministry has hinted that Kenny G, the American juggernaut of smooth jazz, might well be among the so-called “foreign influences” meddling in China’s affairs, after the top-selling saxophonist turned up at the main democracy protest site in Hong Kong’s Admiralty district, Reuters reports.

The city has been beset by protests for three weeks, with demonstrators furious over the tight restrictions China has put on local elections.

In photos making the rounds on social media, the curly-haired saxophonist is also seen making the peace sign at the barricades with patently delighted protesters.

But the tweet was apparently seen by Chinese officials not as a simple update on the musician’s whereabouts, but as an expression of support for Hong Kong’s protesters, who Beijing has resoundingly condemned.

“Kenny G’s musical works are widely popular in China, but China’s position on the illegal Occupy Central activities in Hong Kong is very clear,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

“We hope that foreign governments and individuals speak and act cautiously and not support Occupy Central and other illegal activities in any form,” she said.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Leung Chun-ying, has alleged that “foreign influence” is involved in the massive challenge to his government that the protests pose, but has declined to name such influence until the “appropriate time.” He has never mentioned saxophonists as possible meddlers.

Interestingly, one of the artist’s songs, “Going Home,” is universally used in China at malls and events to gently let people know that it’s closing time and that they have to leave. Conspiracy theorists might see a hidden message for the protesters here.

Hint: feminism. But she's not saying any more about it.

Apparently, the banana featured in the kitchen portion of Nicki Minaj’s video for the song “Anaconda” is no coincidence. The sexy nature of the video inspired a thousand opinion pieces when it debuted in August and has since racked up more than 200 million views. And now, in a new interview, the singer addresses some of the symbolism, or lack thereof in her performance.

The rapper told GQ writer that she intentionally included the banana as a symbol of female empowerment:

“At first I’m being sexual with the banana, and then it’s like, ‘Ha-ha, no.’ ” I ask if she’s referring to how the Drake scene immediately follows the kitchen scene. “Yeah, that was important for us to show in the kitchen scene, because it’s always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that’s fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything.”

But that’s about the only explicit gender comment Minaj says she makes in the video. Apparently, the singer fell asleep four times over the course of the interview, and didn’t give writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner very much to work with. Aside from the banana moment, she repeatedly denied any overt gender politics in any of her work. Brodesser-Akner writes:

You heard it here first. “Anaconda” is about a snake, and also about a woman’s ex-boyfriends, and the video is just one big slumber party. You can release a record cover into the atmosphere that makes all who see it so shocked and discomforted that their only way to metabolize it is to turn it into the world’s fastest-spreading meme, to the point where her squatting form ends up on a polo shirt, right where the little crocodile usually goes. You can do all this, and still you can look someone in the eye and say that it’s not cynical in the least, that it’s not a comment on gender or sex or the culture or anything. Double shrug.

Shrug.

Featuring collaborations with Ed Sheeran and Miguel, Tough Love shows off the British soul singer's talents in a new way

When Jessie Ware broke through with “Wildest Moments,” two things were immediately clear to anyone who followed the song’s muffled, echoing instructions to “Listen listen listen!” First, that volatile couples everywhere had a new anthem. Second, that Jessie Ware had a voice: elegant and intentionally unflashy, but still plainly capable of holding its own alongside her contemporaries. That’s part of why it’s a little shocking to hear the 30-year-old Brit admit she only recently stopped feeling self-conscious about it.

“I was scared about showing more of my voice,” Ware says of her sophomore effort, Tough Love, out now. “I couldn’t have written this album before. I didn’t feel confident enough.” What a difference a few years makes. Nearly everything about Tough Love is bolder than her 2012 debut, Devotion, from the edgier production (courtesy of one of pop’s biggest producers) to her vocals (whose power is no secret this time around) to her collaborators (hungover sessions with “Adore” crooner Miguel and a spontaneous Ed Sheeran collaboration dot the credits). Just listen to the soaring “Say You Love Me,” and it’s clear fans are dealing with a new and improved Jessie Ware. Finally, the singer jokes, she’s “letting it all hang out.”

The turning point, Ware says, occurred while working with “Stay With Me” songwriter James Napier, who co-wrote the album’s blistering torch song, “Pieces,” and begged her not to hold back. “I remember Jimmy being like, ‘I want to hear you Jessie, I want to hear you sing,’” she recalls. “‘You let it rip in shows! Why can’t I hear that?’” Ware worried she was screaming bloody murder until she played the song for the xx’s whisperer-in-chief Romy Madley Croft, who gave her an unlikely confidence boost. “I was like, ‘Oh God, how is this going to go down with the queen of subtlety and understated vocals?’” Ware says. “She was like, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to have a song like this.’ It really reassured me.”

Just like her debut, Tough Love drew some inspiration from a wedding. Ware wrote “Wildest Moments” after she and her best friend got into a fight at one and didn’t speak for weeks. (“I wrote a pretty good song out of it, so I’m glad we had that fight!” she says. “We’re still best friends.”) The slick electro thump of Tough Love‘s “You & I (Forever),” meanwhile, was inspired by how long it took Ware’s high school sweetheart, whom she married in August, to pop the question. (Ware herself walked down the aisle to Sade’s “Your Love Is King”; fans have gotten in touch to say they play her song “Valentine” at their weddings, which Ware notes is actually a terrible choice — the very first line is “So you will never be my lover or my valentine.”)

Part of the album’s electronic heft comes from Katy Perry and Kesha hitmaker Benny Blanco, who co-executive produced Tough Love with Sam Smith producer Two Inch Punch under the name BenZel. Word of their collaboration left fans wondering if Ware was pursuing a more club-friendly sound, which wasn’t totally out of the question, given her early work with electronic act SBTRKT and “Imagine It Was Us,” a dancefloor workout that was tacked on to the U.S. release of Devotion. Though Ware says she was inspired by Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” when recording the Dev Hynes disco jam “Want Your Feeling,” making dance songs was never the plan. Part of the reason Blanco and Two Inch Punch work under the name BenZel — and pretended for a long time that the project was actually a group of Japanese school girls — was to put some distance between the duo’s work and Blanco’s Top 40 success. “Everyone was like, ‘She’s trying to crack America! She’s going to have a big ol’ hit!’” Ware laughs. “Benny was never that for me. He knows what kind of artist I am.”

Still, Ware says she and Blanco fought often in the studio about the direction of the new songs. She balked whenever the material veered too far into pop territory; Blanco told her to “f-ck off” and pushed her to stop hiding in her own songs. Listening to the album, it’s clear Blanco’s influence rubbed off — and that Ware is still adjusting to the change.

“I think what Benny wanted was for more people to hear me, and if that meant having more of a direct chorus, then so bloody be it!” she says. “I don’t feel like a pop star.” With Tough Love, she may not have a choice for much longer.