Post by ClassicSoul on Mar 1, 2006 13:13:34 GMT -5
Lindsay Lohan: Mottola's Waterloo?
A big message came out of Universal Music Group yesterday that bore hidden messages for all those involved.
The company re-aligned its R&B artists into two labels, Motown and Republic. They named the artists on each label, including soul diva — no, just kidding — Lindsay Lohan, the gossip-plagued teen queen actress on Motown.
What the press releases didn't say spoke volumes. Lohan was the only artist of any note on Casablanca Records, the ill-fated project re-started by Tommy Mottola after Sony Music showed him the door a couple of years ago.
The UMG release made no mention of Casablanca's future, but with Lohan (a not very best-selling recording artist) officially being moved to Motown, that would seem like the end for Mottola and Casablanca.
We'll skip for the moment the completely idiotic idea of Lohan as a singer being grouped in a sentence with Stevie Wonder, India.Arie and Erykah Badu as a Motown artist. And we won’t even mention her now on a label that once bred the colossuses of the music business, from Diana Ross and Gladys Knight to Marvin Gaye and Levi Stubbs.
More to the point: moving Mottola's one act to Sylvia Rhone's purview is UMG's Doug Morris' way of not having to say the ex-husband of Mariah Carey has been "Tommy-gunned." It's just over, that's all.
Maybe worse than anything is the news that Casablanca's one-time queen, Donna Summer, is signed or has signed or may sign —- that’s what I hear — with Sony’s Burgundy label for heritage artists. She'll join Chaka Khan, possibly Patti LaBelle, and some other vintage talents.
How ironic, no? Burgundy is a simple idea, and one that Mottola could have used to stage a comeback simply by reviving Casablanca's best names of the past.
Now don't think Rhone has it so easy at Motown, either. Stevie Wonder is very angry and disappointed that she didn't come through with her promises for his album, "A Time 2 Love."
Smokey Robinson, one of Motown’s founders, has just made a new album and it won't come out on Motown at all, but on the Universal Records label —- or so he told me recently. Motown is a far cry from what it was; Rhone would do well to make some immediate decisions, such as giving Wonder's album a real second push.
And Lohan? As I've said before, she's Shelley Fabares, circa 1963, and will be lucky to ever get a hit as good as the immortal “Johnny Angel.”
It's all well and good, but Shelley will tell you, in the record business, she never did fight Grace Slick or Joni Mitchell for anything more than a restaurant reservation.
LINK
(article at bottom of page)
A big message came out of Universal Music Group yesterday that bore hidden messages for all those involved.
The company re-aligned its R&B artists into two labels, Motown and Republic. They named the artists on each label, including soul diva — no, just kidding — Lindsay Lohan, the gossip-plagued teen queen actress on Motown.
What the press releases didn't say spoke volumes. Lohan was the only artist of any note on Casablanca Records, the ill-fated project re-started by Tommy Mottola after Sony Music showed him the door a couple of years ago.
The UMG release made no mention of Casablanca's future, but with Lohan (a not very best-selling recording artist) officially being moved to Motown, that would seem like the end for Mottola and Casablanca.
We'll skip for the moment the completely idiotic idea of Lohan as a singer being grouped in a sentence with Stevie Wonder, India.Arie and Erykah Badu as a Motown artist. And we won’t even mention her now on a label that once bred the colossuses of the music business, from Diana Ross and Gladys Knight to Marvin Gaye and Levi Stubbs.
More to the point: moving Mottola's one act to Sylvia Rhone's purview is UMG's Doug Morris' way of not having to say the ex-husband of Mariah Carey has been "Tommy-gunned." It's just over, that's all.
Maybe worse than anything is the news that Casablanca's one-time queen, Donna Summer, is signed or has signed or may sign —- that’s what I hear — with Sony’s Burgundy label for heritage artists. She'll join Chaka Khan, possibly Patti LaBelle, and some other vintage talents.
How ironic, no? Burgundy is a simple idea, and one that Mottola could have used to stage a comeback simply by reviving Casablanca's best names of the past.
Now don't think Rhone has it so easy at Motown, either. Stevie Wonder is very angry and disappointed that she didn't come through with her promises for his album, "A Time 2 Love."
Smokey Robinson, one of Motown’s founders, has just made a new album and it won't come out on Motown at all, but on the Universal Records label —- or so he told me recently. Motown is a far cry from what it was; Rhone would do well to make some immediate decisions, such as giving Wonder's album a real second push.
And Lohan? As I've said before, she's Shelley Fabares, circa 1963, and will be lucky to ever get a hit as good as the immortal “Johnny Angel.”
It's all well and good, but Shelley will tell you, in the record business, she never did fight Grace Slick or Joni Mitchell for anything more than a restaurant reservation.
LINK
(article at bottom of page)