Mostly Harmless

Ok, so I had a moderately large post written up on how magical the keyboard is and how I somehow keep dropping off of Wi-Fi and into EDGE hell, potentially because I have a hidden ssid on my network. But then I meandered off to check e-mail and load a different page in another window and this page reloaded (i.e. blank) when I came back to it.

So that sucked a little.

Time to save a draft.

Also time to go to bed perhaps.

Posted from my iPhone. Word!

Update: So I just realized that my Wi-Fi router isn’t configured to give out DHCP adresses so I had a completely bogus IP address, which explains why the iPhone kept failing over to EDGE. It’s all fine now.

Sometime later tonight Kelly’s latest album will be available on the iTunes Music Store.

Scratch that! It’s here!!

I got the e-mail from Apple saying that my pre-order was ready at 10:24 p.m., CDT. I had it downloaded by 10:29. (I’ve got a CD in the mail from Amazon as well but the iTMS version has 4 extra tracks.)

A mere 938 days since the last album release and against the protestations of her label, album #3 is now a historical fact.

Much has been written on the web about how her label bosses don’t like the album. The only thing different about this release is that the struggle between the artist and the label became public, i.e. she had to fight the same battle for the previous two albums, Thankful and Breakaway.

What I find amazing is that the label only really liked one song on Breakaway (which was Since U Been Gone). The songs from that album spent 111 weeks (yes, one hundred and eleven weeks) on the Top 40 charts and won two Grammys. Because of You won the ASCAP Pop Music award for Best Song of the Year but she had to fight to even get it on the album.

Oh yeah, they thought Breakaway would only sell 500,000 copies. It sold about 6 million copies, domestically.

Shows what they know.

After the songs became hits the people at the label came around, apparently. Oh, now you like the album?

So when The Old Man doesn’t like the new album and wants Kelly to swap out 5 songs for more “$radio friendly$” tunes, going so far as to offer her millions of dollars to do so, and she says “no thanks,” I say: “Thank You, Kelly.”

To The Old Man I say: “Go stick your head in a goat.”

I just know that they would have picked the 5 best songs on the album and tossed ‘em.

I know that the best songs won’t be played on Pop radio and it is unlikely that My December will sell as many copies as Breakaway, but Kelly has more musical talent in her crooked pinky finger than The Old Man has in his whole body. That’s why they should just get the hell out of the way and let her record what she wants.

BTW, the next album will be some sort of mix of Country/Blues/Pop/Rocks/and/Soda. If you thought Kelly would pick one genre and stick with it you’ve obviously never been to one of her concerts or seen her perform on TV.

Speaking of TV performances, the episode of CMT Crossroads that she taped with Reba McEntire is awesome… check it out. And the video for their duet of “Because of You” is freakin’ phenomenal.

Meanwhile… I’ve listened to the whole album already. I’ve been listening to the leaked version for a couple of weeks now so only three of the tracks were completely new. One is a different remix of Never Again, which is still good despite being an 8 minute long club remix (because the song is still recognizable), the other two are “Dirty Little Secret” (saucy!) and “Not Today,” which would have made an awesome first single — too bad it’s not on the album and not even on the iTMS version, now that the pre-sale is over.

It boggles the mind to think that the label thought these were throw-away tracks. Morons.

(Some of the other tracks will be showing up as B-sides on upcoming singles, so there’s still hope to get more of the 26-27 tracks that have been recorded for My December.)