VH1 DIVAS Celebrates Soul is set to premiere on Monday, December 19 at 9 p.m. ET. That day is a full month and some change away, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not already doing backflips of excitement about this year’s lineup, which will feature Mary J. Blige, Jill Scott, Florence + The Machine, Kelly Clarkson, Jessie J and Jennifer Hudson. Regarding the latter, we’re excited to reveal this new promo image of the Grammy- and Oscar-winning singer/actress J. Hud! We haven’t heard any advance word about what songs she’s planning on performing that night, but seeing as how one of the featured soul-music capitals we’ll be spotlighting is her hometown of Chicago, we’re sure she’s got some exciting tricks up her sleeve about how to best honor the rich musical legacy of the Windy City.
VH1 DIVAS Celebrates Soul will air exclusively on VH1 on Monday, December 19 at 9 p.m. ET/8 CT. Stay tuned to these pages for more updates as they come in!
RELATED: VH1 DIVAS Celebrates Soul On December 19 With Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson And More [VH1 Blog]
This year’s lineup for VH1 DIVAS Celebrates Soul is outstanding, and we’re fully confident that you’re going to love seeing the likes of Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Jill Scott, Florence + The Machine, Kelly Clarkson and Jessie J perform when the special airs on VH1 on Monday, December 19. However, wouldn’t it be even better if you were there seeing it live and in person?
Well, let us be the first to tell you that that person could be you! We’re excited to announce our 2011 VH1 DIVAS Tweetstakes, which is open today through November 23. Entering could not be any easier: Simply tweet a message about who you think has “real” soul to @VH1 and include the hashtag #VH1DIVAS and you’ll be entered in the contest, where we’ll eventually choose a winner at random. Yes, really, it’s as easy as that! Now, get those thumbs warmed up and start tweetin’.
(For those of you who delight in reading legalese, here’s the complete list of rules.)
Rihanna‘s “We Found Love” (featuring Calvin Harris) hit the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 charts today, marking her 11th (!) song to hit #1 on the charts. All of her hard work is clearly paying off, as she is now inducted into an illustrious group that includes The Beatles, Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Supremes and Whitney Houston as the only artists to reach this plateau. Singling out female performers, this achievement puts her in a tie with Whitney Houston for the female artists with the most #1 hits all-time, trailing only Mariah (18) and Madonna (12).
Also scoring a big milestone this week is Kelly Clarkson, whose new single “Mr. Know It All” has just become her ninth Top Ten hit. We were lucky enough to see Kelly perform this song (and a few as-yet-unnamed others) when she taped VH1 Unplugged last week, and we’re giddy with excitement over the rocketing success of her new single and album, Stronger. You’ll be able to catch Kelly’s full Unplugged performance when it premieres exclusively on VH1.com at 7 p.m. ET on November 17, which is just one day before the 11 p.m. premiere on VH1.
Rihanna’s ‘Found’ Her Way Back to Hot 100 Summit [Billboard]
[Photos: Getty Images]
“Did I just do that [song] Erin Brockovich style?”
It’s just seconds after Kelly Clarkson has wrapped the first track of her five song VH1 Unplugged set when she peers down at her chest, wondering if one of her breasts managed to sneak its way out of her red bandage dress during her performance, just like what happened to the titular heroine of the film that won Julia Roberts an Academy Award back in 2000. Well, spoiler alert, it didn’t, but this near wardrobe malfunction gave Kelly the inspiration for some of the most playful between-song banter that we’ve heard in quite some time during the show’s taping in New York City earlier this afternoon.
VH1 Unplugged: Kelly Clarkson will be debuting exclusively on VH1.com at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, November 17, which will be followed up the next night with the show’s on-air premiere. We don’t want to give too much about the show away at this juncture, as we’d rather you be able to experience it fresh through your own eyes and ears. That said, we will say this — Kelly looked positively radiant throughout her set, thanks in no small part to her smoky eyes, make-you-melt-in-your-boots eyelashes, sun-kissed hair and, of course, that stunning red bandage dress. As for her songs, well, let’s put it this way: Her setlist was comprised of some songs from her new record, Stronger, some old faves and a surprising cover. And her voice? Sure, it sounds positively fantastic on her studio recordings, but we will attest that it’s another thing entirely to be in the same room as her when she drops the hammer and belts out one of her patented power choruses. We’re talking CHILLS, palpable chills, when she kicks her voice into fifth gear.
Find out for yourself when VH1 Unplugged: Kelly Clarkson premieres on VH1.com exactly three weeks from today on Thursday, November 17 at 7 p.m. ET.
[Photo: Pegah Rashti for @VH1]
Hot off the presses, we’ve got some exciting news to share with you! We’ve been able to convince an outstanding array of wildly talented vocalists, including Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Jill Scott, Florence + The Machine, Kelly Clarkson and Jessie J, to participate in the latest entry in our long-running series, VH1 DIVAS. This year’s theme will be VH1 DIVAS Celebrates Soul, which will enable each of our performers to pay their respects to the cities where soul music originated and ultimately flourished, places like Chicago, Detroit, London, Memphis and Philadelphia. We’ll have more details on this amazing show in the coming days and weeks, but for now, here’s the full press release that just hit the wires.
VH1 DIVAS Celebrates Soul with Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Jill Scott, Florence + the Machine, Kelly Clarkson and Jessie J
VH1 Divas Celebrates Soul Pays Tribute to the Great Cities of Soul Music Including Chicago, Detroit, London, Memphis and Philadelphia
The Roots Confirmed to Perform as House Band
Special will air Monday, December 19 at 9 PM/8c on VH1
NEW YORK – October 27, 2011 – VH1’s beloved, popular franchise, VH1 Divas, returns and will pay tribute to the cities where soul gave birth to music’s most powerful classics and inspired today’s divas. Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Jill Scott, Florence + The Machine, Kelly Clarkson and Jessie J will pay homage to these cities and soul music’s timeless classics at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom. VH1 Divas Celebrates Soul premieres Monday, December 19 at 9 p.m. ET/8 CT on VH1.
The full press release continues below…
If you tuned in to our five-day 100 Greatest Songs of the 00′s countdown last week, you already know that pre-preggers Beyoncé took home the #1 spot with hubby-featured smash, “Crazy In Love.” Good for them, right? The collabo is over eight years old, and still carries with it a sense of sonic recognition that might one day be categorized as “timeless.”
If you ask our countdown’s pundits, however, there is a wide range of respectfully-dissenting opinions on what video should have been #1. Tim and Damian from OK Go suggested that Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” should have earned the coveted slot, our former colleague Rich Juzwiak was vying for Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together,” and a number of other commentators from the show made arguments for OutKast, Kelly Clarkson, and Eminem.
If you could have your way with our list’s top 10 songs, which one would you have crowned The Greatest of the 00′s? Take our poll and leave us your thoughts in the comments section. Don’t worry, we’re thick-skinned!
When we first heard Kelly Clarkson‘s latest single, “Mr. Know It All,” we figured that, thematically, it was a fairly straightforward kiss off to an ex that did her dirty. This was backed up by Clarkson’s introduction to the song at the iHeartRadio festival over the weekend in which she dedicated the song thusly: “If you’ve ever dated anyone that’s a know it all, this one’s for you.” However, after watching the video for the song that debuted in the wee hours this morning, it’s apparent that there’s another target for her ire: The media.
The video opens with Clarkson sitting on top of a suitcase, all alone in a large room. Closer inspection of the walls reveals that it isn’t a hideous wallpaper pattern that Kelly is sitting in front of, but rather, a collection of nasty headlines and stories about Clarkson’s label drama and relationship woes, all culled from newspapers and tabloid magazines. And they say print media is dead!
The MGM Grand played host to a plethora of pop stars this weekend for the Clear Channel-sponsored iHeartRadio Festival, two nights of genre-spanning, crowd-pleasing pop music. A mix of veterans and newcomers thrilled the (reportedly very drunk) crowd on both nights. The most successful performers were those who stuck to a setlist of hits, like Jay-Z, who may have performed “On To The Next One” but didn’t take its advice about his old songs, including favorites from The Blueprint and The Black Album alongside newer singles like “Empire State of Mind” (with a guest appearance by earlier performer Alicia Keys). Those whose songs were less well-known by the crowd, like Sublime with Rome, were less well-received.
Perhaps the big surprise of the weekend, according to reports, was Jennifer Lopez, who, in a set that spanned her musical career, proved supremely capable of standing among the pop titans of today (with a Pitbull feature on “On the Floor”). Saturday’s “special guest” Sting also more than pulled his weight, backing Steven Tyler on bass early in the evening, then joining Lady Gaga for performances of “Stand By Me” and his own “King of Pain.”
Yesterday’s late night music lineup may as well have been a VH1 showcase. The only musical performer we haven’t explicitly championed at some point appeared on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon—after an interview with this month’s Posted artist Demi Lovato. Such a jam-packed lineup does make it difficult to choose the best performance of the night, but we have to give the edge to Kelly Clarkson, who made her first appearance in support of Stronger yesterday on The Tonight Show, where she performed single “Mr. Know It All.”
Clarkson has always had a great voice and an even better sense of how to use it—a fact that makes her live performances thrilling (and certainly contributed to her Idol win). So we were excited to hear her breathing more life into “Mr. Know It All,” a song that we already like but that she opened up for us further with her performance last night. (If we don’t sound quite as enthusiastic as we could, that might be because we not-so-secretly think that, were the situation not so dire out there for rock bands, we think that Clarkson would be a killer frontwoman with serious riffs behind her. But we try not to let that affect our judgment too much.) We are definitely looking forward to Stronger (and to the “Mr. Know It All” video, which should arrive somewhat sooner).
After the jump, see Demi Lovato’s interview on Late Night (introduced by The Roots with a reworded Styx cover: “Domo Arigato, Demi Lovato”) and links to the other performances.
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