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Courtesy of NME.com – ‘Wavin’ Flag: The Celebration Mix’ will be used globally during the tournament

K’naan’s song “Wavin’ Flag” has been named as the official anthem for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

A remixed version of the track called “Wavin’ Flag: The Celebration Mix” will soundtrack the campaign, which kicks off in South Africa on June 11 next year, reports Cbc.ca.

The news comes as officials in Cape Town prepare to make the draw for the tournament’s qualifying groups on December 4.

Last month New Order bassist Peter Hook said John Barnes was willing to re-record his famous rap (as featured on the England team’s official song, ‘World In Motion’, in the 1990 campaign) for use in next year’s competition.

In other K’naan news, the rapper has been confirmed to appear on Keane’s new EP, “The Night Train”.

For more on K’Naan, check out his NME.com page.

Taylor Swift is self-designing her new Nashville apartment in a way you might never imagine — unless you’re a 20-year-old with more money than you know what to do with. The country-pop star is having a moat-like pond built around her living room fireplace, and she says she’s considering adding a few exotic koi fish to the opulent centerpiece. While that kind of decor might not be so hard to imagine, the Disney-gone-surreal accoutrements are a little beyond what one might find in someone’s home — even when that home is a 4,062-square-foot penthouse.

Swift gushed to Rolling Stone this week about her renovation plans for the luxurious 18-story Adelicia apartment building. They’re imaginative, to say the least:

”You step on a stepping stone in the pond in order to get on a spiral staircase, which takes you up to the human-sized bird cage observatory,” Taylor told the magazine. “They’re delivering a human-sized birdcage, which I’ll put a brass telescope in. The ceiling of my living room is painted like the night sky.”

Swift can certainly afford whatever she can dream up, home-decor-wise. The singer and actress, who stars in next month’s chick flick “Valentine’s Day,” was ranked No. 69 on Forbes Magazine’s Celebrity 100 last year, having taken in an estimated $18 million in earnings. And this is an especially good week for Swift, whose fittingly named ”Valentine’s Day” soundtrack single, “Today was a Fairytale,” is selling like crazy on iTunes. If history holds, Swift’s sales will skyrocket yet again after this Sunday night’s Grammys broadcast, where she’ll be performing the song — and hoping to turn her eight Grammy nominations into trophies.

Guests entertained in Swift’s new apartment “fantasy world” might include singer-and-Twitterer John Mayer, who was spotted with Swift and friends at a Nashville restaurant earlier this week.

While Swift’s living room sounds like something that needs to be seen to be believed (and hopefully she’ll give a tour when it’s finished), between the water, the fireplace, the fish, the stepping stones, the staircase, and the birdcage, let’s just hope nobody gets hurt.

Until that fateful day when Swift takes us on a MTV Cribs-like video tour of her new digs, we can keep our peepers busy with the trailer for ”Valentine’s Day.” The movie arrives in theaters on February 12.

Photo credit: Tom Gatlin of Tom Gatlin Photography, Nashville, TN.

Courtesy of NME — Frances Bean Cobain sings as part of a “gang” on Dresden Dolls side-project

Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s daughter Frances Bean is to make her singing debut on a track also featuring My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, Andrew WK, and Weird Al Yankovic.

Seventeen-year-old Cobain sings on “My Space,” which will appear on the eponymous debut album by Evelyn Evelyn, who are made up of Dresden Dolls frontwoman Amanda Palmer and Seattle musician Jason Webley.

Other acts on the track include Tegan & Sara, ex-Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay, Margaret Cho, Eugene Mirman, and various members of Mindless Self-Indulgence, reports Twentyfourbit.com.

The album Evelyn Evelyn is due to be released on March 30.

In December, Courtney Love lost custody of Frances Bean Cobain.

For more on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, check out their NME.com page.

The late Michael Jackson has a prominent role in the revamped version of “We Are the World.”

Lionel Richie, who wrote the original charity anthem with Jackson, says the King of Pop can be seen in the new video for the track, singing with his sister Janet.

“We left the original footage of that part, but now he is singing with his sister,” Richie said.

“It’s something we wanted to see, but his mother requested it too, for Janet to sing with Michael,” said Quincy Jones, who produced the original track and helped orchestrate the re-recording. “It was perfect. It was meant to be.”

The video is set to make its debut Friday during coverage of the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics. “We Are the World — 25 for Haiti” features 80 artists, including Pink, Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Kanye West and Jennifer Hudson.

Proceeds from sales of the song will benefit earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti.

It’s been a week since singer-actress-lush Mariah Carey accepted her Breakthrough Actress award at the Palm Springs International Festival. Carey’s rambling acceptance speech was viewed by over a million YouTube voyeurs and prompted the drunken diva to admit that she had a few to many “splashes of champagne.” However, aside from some late night jokes at her expense, the damage is nowhere close to the career wreckage she caused with “Glitter.”

It takes a brave soul to stand drunk in front the eyes of a dozen camera lenses and a million YouTube loners. And musicians are a brave bunch. They’re not afraid to show up hammered for their close-up. You gotta respect that on some depraved level.

Here are some of my favorite pubic displays of musician drunkenness. See you at the bar. I’ll be having the O’Doul’s. I don’t want any videos showing up online.

Kanye West
It’s all been said, hasn’t it? What more can anyone add to the Kanye legacy. Oh,wait a minute. Kanye can. Especially when he’s drunk. No one love Kanye more than Kanye when he’s had a few too many.

Billboard has compiled a list of what it considers the 2009 “Artists of the Year”. It did so by looking at album sales figures and analyzing the Hot 100/Billboard 200 charts for those “who traveled further and faster than all the others”. Because this is Billboard, there’s no denying that the list contains only the most successful and popular acts of the year. You’ll find country, pop, hip-hop, R&B, adult alternative and alternative rock represented, but only those with the most crossover appeal.

Billboard’s Top 20 Artists of 2009

1. Taylor Swift
You Belong With Me

2. Beyonce
Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

3.Lady Gaga
Poker Face

4. Black Eyed Peas
I Gotta Feeling

5. Miley Cyrus
It’s All Right Here

6. Kanye West
Heartless

7. Britney Spears
3

8. T.I.
Live Your Life [Featuring Rihanna]

9. Nickelback
If Today Was Your Last Day

10. Pink
Please Don’t Leave Me

11. Kings of Leon
Use Somebody

12. Katy Perry
One Of The Boys

13. Flo Rida
Right Round

14. Kelly Clarkson
Already Gone

15. Jason Mraz
I’m Yours

16. The Fray
You Found Me

17. Ne-Yo
Mad

18. Lil Wayne
A Milli

19. Rascal Flatts
Here Comes Goodbye

20. Zac Brown Band
Toes

R&B singer Mary J. Blige will headline this year’s Essence Music Festival in New Orleans.

Billed as one of the nation’s largest annual events celebrating black music and culture, the festival is slated for July 2 through 4.

The full lineup has not been released, but as in the past, musical acts will perform at the Louisiana Superdome and motivational seminars will be held during the day at the Morial Convention Center.

Besides headliners like Blige, the festival showcases New Orleans acts. In the past, those acts have included New Orleans’ queen of soul Irma Thomas, Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews and trumpeter Irvin Mayfield.

Blige has performed at Essence eight times. This year she is expected to perform songs from her latest studio album, “Stronger with Each Tear.”

Courtesy of NME.com — Headliners for for 2010 Isle Of Wight Festival announced

Jay-Z and The Strokes are set to top the bill at next year’s Isle Of Wight festival.

The rapper will headline on the opening night (June 11), followed by Julian Casablancas’ men (12). A final headliner has yet to be announced.

The acts will be joined on the bill by fellow New Yorkers Blondie, plus special guests Pink, Orbital and Squeeze. See Isleofwightfestival.com for more information.

Tickets for the festival, which takes place between June 11 and 13 next year, go on sale this Friday (December 4).

To check the availability of Isle Of Wight Festival tickets and get all the latest listings, go to NME.COM/TICKETS now, or call 0871 230 1094.

For more on Jay-Z, check out his NME.com page.

On the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth, the Smithsonian Institution is showcasing the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s ubiquitous image through exhibits opening Friday in Washington and Los Angeles.

“One Life: Echoes of Elvis” will be on view at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington through August. The one-room exhibit is devoted to the evolution and influence of Presley’s image after his death.

“Think of all the entertainers you know, and how many of them do you know the names of their homes?” said curator Warren Perry. “Everybody needs to have a moment with Elvis.”

The exhibit features portraits, images from Graceland the mansion where Elvis lived, Elvis merchandise and a reminder that Elvis’ manager put his face on just about anything that could be marketed. The commercial images include an Elvis-imprinted lunch box, nutcracker, action figure and snow globe.

Original artwork from a 1992 Elvis stamp design competition is on view, along with the 1993 stamp with Presley’s likeness that became the most popular U.S. postal stamp of all time, with a printing of 500 million.

A gold bust of Elvis as Julius Caesar by sculptor Robert Arneson anchors another wall. A museum docent recently discovered a surprise in the sculpture that had been in storage at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum: A small heart was carved in the back.

“The people who call themselves Elvis fans, I’m sure there are fanatics, but these people have a loving affection for Elvis,” said Perry, who is from Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis lived after his family moved from Mississippi. “It’s conversational. It’s intimate.”

One of Perry’s favorite pieces is a scrapbook found in an abandoned Chicago warehouse with newspaper headlines and pictures carefully cut out and pasted in a thick book shortly after Presley’s death at age 42 in 1977.

“You can tell it was put together by a fan,” Perry said.

Presley sat for only one portrait painter. A painting by Ralph Wolfe Cowan, usually on display in the gallery’s entertainment section, is the exhibit’s central image. It was completed from sketches Cowan made in 1969 while creating another portrait that hangs at Graceland.

In Los Angeles, the Grammy Museum on Friday is opening the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit, “Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer.” The photojournalist was hired to shoot promotional images of the young recording artist just before Elvis became famous. The show features 56 of Wertheimer’s images from 1956.

Jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson can easily explain why the Mississippi Blues Trail would embrace jazz artists.

“Blues is an essential component of jazz. It’s like one of the building blocks. It’s what we use in order to navigate changes. You always have to keep close ties to that original sound and feeling,” Wilson said Thursday after a blues marker was unveiled in her honor at a school she attended as a child.

The ceremony drew a crowd of some 200 students, friends and other musicians, including singer Dorothy Moore and bluesman Bobby Rush.

Wilson, a two-time Grammy Award-winner whose eclectic repertoire has included covers of blues tunes, absorbed music from her earliest years. Her father, Herman Fowlkes Jr., was a bassist who recorded with blues harmonica icon Sonny Boy Williamson II.

Wilson chose the site for the marker. The Brinkley Middle School is located in what is now an economically depressed area of Jackson, but Wilson said it’s where she got her start.

“It’s where I learned about music. It’s where I played and went to school and it’s such a wonderful neighborhood,” Wilson said.

The marker is the 100th on the trail, created as part of a project designed to bolster the state’s blues tourism industry.

The trail will stretch from Memphis Minnie’s grave in Walls, near the Tennessee border, to Farish Street in downtown Jackson, a historic black business district and home of the Alamo Theatre where many famous black entertainers have performed. That’s where Moore’s marker was placed in 2008.

Scott Barretta, a researcher for the trail, said Wilson’s marker will illustrate how jazz and blues have intersected.

“Jazz musicians have always played blues, but usually when they talk about blues, they’re referring to chord changes for a particular style of song and not to songs very closely associated with blues,” Barretta said. “What’s unique about her is that she covers songs by Delta blues artists, such as Robert Johnson and Son House, and that music generally wouldn’t be found in the repertoire of jazz artists.”