day 2.365

vh1's supports the troops

last night, vh1 brought some quality entertainment to the troops with the return of their divas series. this time around, the music channel formerly known as "old people mtv" brought along katy perry, nicki minaj, sugarland, paramore, keri hilson, heart and grace potter & the nocturnals (who i've never heard of...). funny lady kathy griffin hosted the special - here are some of my favorite highlights.

kathy griffin opened the show with - what else? - a comedy sketch, titled "operation ragin' cougar," where she basically gave some marines a bunch of crap, and made plenty of pop culture jokes.

then kathy made her grand entrance, showing off her self-proclaimed "hot bikini bod." and, of course, there are plenty more celeb-unfriendly jokes. oh, and plenty of dirty jokes involving military terminology, which seemed to go over really well with the audience. and, of course, kathy had to pull out her top-secret "don't even think about it" list of rules from the base to talk about.

my favorite performance of the night - katy perry and nicki minaj's take on "girls just wanna have fun" - wasn't posted on vh1's web site (all they had was a short :30 preview), but i was able to find this clip from someone who was live in the audience.

each act performed their own mini-concent, with katy perry performing three of her biggest hits.

check back later for more performances from vh1 divas. in the mean time, click here to see other highlights.

day 292

leona lewis gets "happy"

it's been over a year since leona lewis broke into the international music scene with her single "bleeding love" and now the most successful x-factor winner is back with a new single, "happy," off her sophomore disc, echo. i was starting to get worried that leona was going to be a one-hit wonder stateside after her second single off her first record, spirit, didn't get radio play. but, now that i've heard "happy," i'm pretty sure leona is here to stay. the song is very much-so in the vain of "bleeding love" - most likely because "happy" re-teamed lewis with the creative force behind "bleeding love," one republic's ryan tedder. it's really catchy and is already stuck in my head after just two listens - so, you've been warned. check out the song in the video above and hear for yourself. the one thing that troubles me is that leona is very much in the real of celine dion, whitney houston, and 90s mariah; that era of music is kind of dead and gone. to really become a pop force, leona is going to have to release something super-upbeat. i hope, for her sake, that she has a track that could compete with kelly clarkson or even miley cyrus on the radio today. because, i don't want her to end up like mariah carey, who really doesn't seem to understand what her career or musical focus is anymore, or like whitney, who has a top selling album right now, but isn't really getting radio play. leona will most likely debut "happy" as part of her vh1 divas performance on september 17th. jordin sparks recently joined the divas showcase, which will also feature adele, miley cyrus, and kelly clarkson. the fact that they booked miley over taylor swift is crazy to me, because taylor easily could have pulled in the young audience just as well as cyrus. paula abdul is set to mc the evening, so i'll be tuning in just to see how much she slurs.