Ask Michael Bublé how he felt going in to record his third studio album, Call Me Irresponsible, and this artist with 11 million albums sold and two Grammy nominations under his belt can sum it up in one word.

“Terrified,” he says simply. Terrified?

“Completely, because I knew that it had to be better than the first two — that it had to show growth without alienating anyone, and that’s a tough line. So I sat there from the very beginning and came up with the songs, put together the skeleton, and thought about what arrangers I would hire. I even ended up at the mastering session, which artists rarely attend. I wanted to be involved in every aspect because I wanted it to be conceptually beautiful.”

Bublé has certainly achieved success on that front. As with his previous two 143/Reprise bestsellers, 2003’s self-titled debut and 2005’s multi-platinum follow-up It’s Time, Call Me Irresponsible boasts more of Bublé’s buoyant, modern interpretations of standards from a variety of eras, including songs by such greats as Leonard Cohen, Eric Clapton, Cy Coleman, Gamble and Huff, and others, as well as two self-penned originals, including the first single, the uplifting love song called “Everything.”

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Michael Bublé – 2009 – Haven’t Met You Yet

Single

2009

Owl City is an electronica/pop project of Adam Young. Formed in early 2007, in Owatonna, Minnesota, Owl City has reached the Top Unsigned Artist position on Myspace, having over 10 million total plays. Owl City has released the EP “Of June” in 2007 and the album “Maybe I’m Dreaming” 2008. In July of 2009, the album “Ocean Eyes” was released. Young maintains two side projects, Swimming With Dolphins, and Port Blue.

From the Facebook page:

“If your household appliances wrote love songs while you were away on vacation, their cheerful blips and bleeps would pour out the windows, sweep through the neighborhood like candy-coated tidal waves, and you would return home to find crowds of people standing on your lawn, clapping and singing along to the happiest pop melodies imaginable. Welcome to Owl City.”

last.fm

2009

Mae is an American rock band that formed in Norfolk Virginia in 2001. The band’s name is an acronym for Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience, which is derived from a concept called Multi-sensory Aesthetic Theory that drummer Jacob Marshall studied while a student at Old Dominion University.

Jacob Marshall and Dave Elkins began what would become Mae by writing their first song, “Embers and Envelopes”, in Marshall’s living room. The band signed with Tooth and Nail Records and released their first album, Destination: Beautiful, in 2003. They released their second full-length album, The Everglow, in 2005. The band toured extensively to promote it, and also performed on the Vans Warped Tour. Mae re-released The Everglow in 2006, adding three new songs and a 2-hour DVD.

Later in 2006, the band announced that they had fulfilled their contract with Tooth & Nail and signed to Capitol Records for their third full-length album. Mae began recording the album in the fall of 2006, working with producer Howard Benson (who has produced albums for Saosin, My Chemical Romance, and Relient K). It is titled Singularity and was released on August 14, 2007. On June 19, 2007, the band released their first single from the upcoming album titled “Sometimes I Can’t Make It Alone”.

According to Elkins in a 2003 interview, while the band members are Christians, Mae is not a “Christian band”.

last.fm

2009

Arctic Monkeys are an alternative rock band who formed in High Green, Sheffield, England in 2002. The band consists of Alex Turner (vocals, guitar), Jamie ‘Cookie’ Cook (guitar), Nick O’Malley (bass) and Matt Helders (drums, vocals). Founding bassist Andy Nicholson left in 2006.

Each of the band’s first five singles I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, When the Sun Goes Down, Leave Before the Lights Come On, Brianstorm and Fluorescent Adolescent hit the UK Top Five, but their sixth single, Teddy Picker, only went Top 20 and their seventh single, Crying Lightning peaked at #12.

The band’s rise to success started in late 2004/early 2005 when demo songs which had been handed out in CD form at gigs found their way onto the internet. These demos rapidly spread among message boards and friends leading to a growing fan base for the band, and were collected on the unofficial Beneath the Boardwalk, which the band recognizes on their website. The band owe much of their success to viral buzz via the Internet, and have eschewed typical ‘commercial’ channels, including refusing to appear on the UK’s (now discontinued) Top Of The Pops music program, which was often seen as a gateway to success.

The band’s debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, holds the record for the largest first week sales of a debut album in the UK (in its first week, it sold more than the rest of the Top 20 albums combined). The album sold over 360,000 copies in its first week, but lost the title in November 2007 to Leona Lewis’s album Spirit.

last.fm

2006

Tracklist

		Track			Duration	Listeners
1		Cartoon Music for Superheroes			2:04	18,505
2		In Transit			3:32	41,439
3		Everyone Gets A Star			3:04	36,649
4		Bright Young Thing			3:11	33,517
5		Blue Skies			3:10	31,964
6		101			3:26	17,569
7		Call An Ambulance			3:11	31,927
8		Scared			4:39	32,105
9		Holiday			3:05	29,098
10		Hard To Live In The City			5:12	14,731
11		Postal Blowfish			2:18	8,761
12		Well…All Right			2:26	10,157

2006

Albert Hammond, Jr. (born April 9, 1980, in Los Angeles) is a musician best known as the guitarist for the rock band The Strokes. Outside of the band, he has released two solo albums.

The son of Gibraltarian-British songwriter Albert Hammond, Albert Jr. was sent to the elite boarding school Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland at the age of 13. While there, he met Julian Casablancas, who would go on to be a fellow band member.

In 1998, Albert met up with Julian in New York City and together they formed a band with Julian’s former schoolmates: Nick Valensi, Nikolai Fraiture and Fabrizio Moretti.

The Strokes today are a successful band, arguably because of their ability to produce albums of great sound and lyrics while overcoming the ‘wealthy heirs’ stigma.

Albert is currently engaged to English model Agyness Deyn. His trademark is wearing formal suits, usually a different one for each show. Albert is usually seen playing an olympian white Fender Stratocaster, or bandmate Nick Valensi’s Les Paul Jr. He is usually associated with the “rhythm” guitar portion of the majority of Strokes songs, and most solos are played by Valensi. The solos in which Albert does play are Last Nite, Trying Your Luck, Take It Or Leave It, Under Control, The End Has No End, Ize Of The World, and Vision Of Division. His solos tend to focus largely on more emotional, “bluesy”-type melodical work, and the guitar tends to have a cleaner, softer tone in comparison to Valensi’s (with a noteable exception found in Vision Of Division). He often holds the guitar in a high horizontal position, similar to Bob Dylan and Ian Curtis.

last.fm