OK not gonna start hating on the empty frivolity atop the charts for a third straight week (mainly because I still like it well enough), but can someone explain how it’s different to North Shore Pony Club’s ‘Sex, Drugs and Drum Machines’? As far as I can tell the local track didn’t chart at all, while this is getting very comfortable at the top (probably going to hold another week at least). Both tracks have great clips and naggingly simple hooks/beats… You’d think with the number of rough local songs which go top 10 and 20 here we coulda made room for that one. Anyway…

New Gaga! That’s an event, right?

No. How quickly the mighty have become mortal. A friend described this song as a total mess, in advance of my hearing it, and I have to agree. Feels like a re-tread of Bad Romance without the drama or scale – even the ‘Ju-da, Ju-DA’ parts feel like guide vocals to that eventual monolith. It’s like she thinks just singing ‘I’m in love with Judas’ is enough to make it a win, when the controversy only mattered with Old Gaga because it was attached to monster hits. Plus that squelch section is plain awful. Like Uffie-ish. I’m bummed.

New Rihanna! Is that an event now?

She actually has had a much better last six months than Gaga, but this is a bit flat after the pounding she’s given us lately. I’m all in favour of R&B power ballads (see: ‘No Air’, ‘Halo’, ‘What Goes Around (Comes Back Around)’), but this is too weak and ploddy. Though I like that she included a proper squealing solo (this time not by Slash).

That’s it? No more new entries!?

Yep. We’ve gone from the most pleasantly volatile chart of recent memory to a prolonged autumnal lull in record time. More than a third of the top 40’s been in for 10 weeks or more. We need a hero to come along and slay the chart. Can someone in promo at Uni give The Wanted a proper push? Please?

Chart Attack will be featured in next week’s Groove Guide, out Wednesday. GG is a free, weekly streetzine and you can pick it up from a number of spots around the country or simply visit grooveguide.co.nz for daily updates.

Other surprising winners were Lady Antebellum who won five out of the six awards that they were nominated for. It includes the coveted Record of the Year and Song of the Year awards for their single ‘Need You Know. Check out the full list of winners below.

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List of Grammy award winners [via The Guardian]

Album of the year – Arcade Fire, The Suburbs

Record of the year – Lady Antebellum, Need You Now

Song of the year – Need You Now (Lady Antebellum, performers)

Best new artist – Esperanza Spalding

Best female pop vocal performance – Lady Gaga, Bad Romance

Best male pop vocal performance – Bruno Mars, Just the Way You Are

Best pop vocal album – Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster

Best traditional pop vocal album – Michael Buble, Crazy Love

Best electronic/dance album – La Roux, La Roux

Best solo rock vocal performance – Paul McCartney, Helter Skelter

Best hard rock performance – Them Crooked Vultures, New Fang

Best metal performance – Iron Maiden, El Dorado

Best rock song – Angry World (Neil Young)

Best rock album – Muse, The Resistance

Best alternative music album – The Black Keys, Brothers

Best female R&B vocal performance – Fantasia, Bittersweet

Best male R&B vocal performance – Usher, There Goes My Baby

Best urban/alternative performance – Cee Lo Green, F*** You

Best R&B song – Shine (John Legend and the Roots)

Best contemporary R&B album – Usher, Raymond v. Raymond

Best rap solo performance – Eminem, Not Afraid

Best rap song – Empire State of Mind (Jay–Z and Alicia Keys, performers)

Best rap album– Eminem, Recovery

Best female country vocal performance – Miranda Lambert, The House That Built Me

Best male country vocal performance – Keith Urban, Til Summer Comes Around

Best country song – Need You Now (Lady Antebellum, performers)

Best country album– Lady Antebellum, Need You Now

Best contemporary jazz album – The Stanley Clarke Band, The Stanley Clarke Band

Best Americana album – Mavis Staples, You Are Not Alone

Best contemporary blues album – Buddy Guy, Living Proof

Best contemporary folk album – Ray LaMontagne and the Prairie Dogs, God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise

Best classical album: Verdi: Requiem (Ildar Abdrazakov, Olga Borodina, Barbara Frittoli & Mario Zeffiri; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Chorus)

If only wars were actually like this – the visuals for Rihanna and Young Jeezy’s soon to be everywhere new single is finally out. It’s enough to give Lady Gaga a little competition in the costume department and comes complete with apocalyptic themed Mickey Mouse military garb, a pink tank (to match her lipstick, of course) and a feature with Jeezy reminding us that he’s not planning on going anywhere soon. Plus, there’s that little screencap above. God knows why this wasn’t the first single but it looks like we may finally have the number one we were looking for. Hit the jump for the goods.

Rihanna – Rated R

Considering the year that Rihanna has had (Chris Brown etc) this album was bound to be scrutinised so much more than anything else she’s done before. But that’s how it goes when you’re one of the biggest pop stars in the world. So where do we start? How about at “I’m such a fuckin’ lady?” The line, which comes courtesy of Wait Your Turn, immediately shows a new side of Rihanna that we haven’t seen before; the good girl gone bad, but this time it’s for real.

It’s no surprise here that two of the best songs on the album come courtesy of The-Dream and Tricky Stewart who bring us Hard and Rockstar 101. On a sidenote, Rockstar 101 looks horrible on paper (it features Slash) but the results are actually pretty good. Instead of taking a front seat, Slash just sits back, strums a few power chords and let’s Ri Ri take on the role of the sex kitten (“I disobey the law/make sure you frisk me good, check my panties and my bra”). On Hard, which is possibly the highlight of the album, we get Rihanna shit-talking with all the bravado she can muster and depending how you look at it, it’s entertaining as hell. “While you’re gettin’ your cry on, I’m gettin’ my fly on,” she quips in the pre-chorus before handing over the reigns to Young Jeezy who delivers a substandard verse (with a quality delivery, as expected) along with a nice little dig at Gucci Mane.

But then there’s songs that just lag and after a few listens feel like filler. Stupid In Love has some interesting lyrics (“Never have I ever been a size 10 in my whole life”)  but ultimately sounds like places – I’m thinking Unfaithful – that we’ve visited before. Photographs take the most humane subject matter but then kills it with a cameo from will.i.am rapping about how he used to wear Calvin Klein, but that was the old him. I may be biased but the album probably could have done with more input from The-Dream, who is pretty much the go-to guy in R&B at the moment; plus he wrote Umbrella, so y’know, what could go wrong? Who knows, maybe the flop that was Mariah Carey’s new album put the record exec’s off. 

Firebomb has the potential to be a future single with it’s epic Brian Kennedy production which ends up being more anthemic with every listen. The Justin Timberlake assisted cut, Cold Case Love, stretches out the end of the album but it’s slightly understated much like Rehab was and it’d probably transform pretty nicely in her live show. As for Russian Roulette, well, that’s not even worth mentioning.

Rated R ultimately comes off as an album scared to push the envelope too far. So between all the really interesting tracks like Hard and Wait Your Turn, we get formulaic songs like G4L and Te Amo. Plus now we have Rihanna as she’s gone through this whole apocalyptic ice-queen transformation thing, which involves her semi-naked in her album inlay and even smoking in a few of the pictures. She’s all grown up and ready to leave her past behind – all she needs now are the songs to back her up.

This doesn’t happen everyday.

‘Run This Town’, a new Jay-Z track featuring Rihanna and Kanye West played on various stations around the US at 9:11am today, promoting the release date (September 11, 9/11) of his upcoming album, Blueprint 3. How many other people can actually do this?

It’s a pity that the Rihanna-sung hook doesn’t really pay off but the Kanye verse makes up for it. As with most of his guest appearances (Walkin’ On The Moon, Gifted, Digital Girl, Kinda Like A Big Deal, Alright) since he released the mostly sombre 808’s & Heartbreak, he really steps up his rap game. Here it’s all about mood rings, wine, success and cars. “This the fast life, we are on a crash course/what you think I rap for? To push a fuckin’ Rav-4?

Indeed.