9/21/10

The Majak Mixtape - New Music Tuesdays

Oh Tuesdays, how we love you here at the Mixtape. Back when the music industry was actually viable, the release of new albums on Tuesday was a major event, trumpeted in no small part by MTV, particularly Carson Daly and TRL. Obviously long gone are the days of people selling one million albums in one day, let alone a week. Hell, love-song-protestor Sara Bareilles was able to top the top 100 with a scant 90,000 albums sold in the first week. There were legit concerns of suicides by artists in the late 90s/early 2000s if they opened with such small numbers.

Well, we still love Tuesdays around here so here are some of the new releases for today.

Up first is John Legend and The Roots and their album Wake Up:

Is John Legend boring? Yes. We're going to just be upfront about that. Vocally, he's smooth but personality-wise he's about exciting as watching beige paint dry. But that sort of Light FM basicness to him actually fits well within the construct of the light soul music on the lead single of "Wake Up." Neo-soul and its purveyors are annoyingly earnest and ridiculously self-satisfied with the love of "real" music, but we won't hold it against this album and particularly this tune. The Roots are too sharp of a band and have too much of a self-awareness for that. Plus, if they are dicks, being the backing band for Jimmy Fallon would be good karmic payback for that.

Up next, Maroon 5 and their new album Hands All Over.

It sounds exactly like what you'd think a Maroon 5 album would sound like that. So for fans, it's a

And to the rest of the world, it gets a

In "She still has a record contract?" news, Paula Cole is apparently releasing an album today. We'd post a single from the album, but we really would prefer to indulge in a 1990s flashback instead.

Best of luck on the album Paula.

Dawson's not too hopeful about first week sales, though.


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