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Katy Perry Tickets—Single Cover Art Reviews

Katy Perry has released five different singles (“Ur So Gay,” “I Kissed a Girl,” “Hot N Cold,” “Thinking Of You” and “Waking Up in Vegas”) and each single has its own cover art.  While most of the fans who get Katy Perry tickets at StubHub.com will go to the shows for the music, album cover art can be an interesting look inside the mind of the artist and the production studio who is trying to market her music. What do Katy Perry’s singles cover images say about Katy Perry? Let’s find out.

“Ur So Gay” - The single cover art is slightly different from the EP album cover art, but the theme and the text font are pretty much the same. The single has an unprofessional feel to it, as though it were taken with a Polaroid camera. A pale, skinny, swimsuit-clad woman (presumably Katy Perry) is doing the splits on a well lit, wood-floored living room. The girl is wearing a mask of a white rabbit. The bunny head looks feathery and cheap, like a pinata. Her arms are spread out to her sides and she’s flipping the bird with both middle fingers. The EP cover shows Katy Perry with huge, ‘80s-style sunglasses, sticking her tongue out at the camera. The common themes of the two covers: anonymity and irreverence. Just like the song’s lyrics, these covers are sassy and passive-aggressive.

“I Kissed a Girl” - Katy Perry’s second single featured an image of Perry in a very done-up pose on the cover. Katy’s wearing one of her classic 1950s style swimsuit dresses, pink with a blue belt and blue bracelet. She’s looking right at the camera with a surprised look on her face that says, “I kissed a girl and I liked it?”  The album cover is mostly innocent but there’s just enough playfulness to make the song title ring true. 

“Hot N Cold” - Katy Perry is wearing the same pink swimsuit dress with the blue belt in the cover art for her single “Hot N Cold” that she wore for “I Kissed a Girl.”  Were they paying for the photography studio by the hour back then? In this image Katy is pictured with a sliced watermelon. She’s holding the slice up to the side of her face as though it was a phone and she’s looking down with an expression of indignation, of astonishment and anger. The picture is supposed to portray the feel of a teenage lover’s quarrel. It also was one of the first times that Katy Perry incorporated fruit as a prop- something that she would continue to do with her live shows.

“Thinking of You” - The cover art for the single “Thinking of You” takes a somber turn. Instead of irreverence or playfulness Katy’s sad-looking face is the only thing on the cover.  It looks as though the image has been photo-shopped quite a bit, as there’s a hint of paintbrush and gloss that wouldn’t normally come out in a regular photograph. Her upturned eyes are wide and boiling over with a fresh tear and her lips show a modest frown. While the dress is still pink and she has some flowers in her hair, it does appear that some tragedy has just befallen the artist- corresponding with the narrative of the song.

“Waking Up in Vegas” - The cover art for the single “Waking Up In Vegas” takes a turn for the corny, a lot like the city of Las Vegas itself.  Katy is wearing a short, flashy dress like the one a casino cocktail waitress or showgirl might wear. Her arms and legs are positioned in a pose that suggest dancing. Huge red dice the size of a loveseat are tumbling directly behind her. The cover is simple, but it does get the whole Las Vegas theme down pat. 

Billy Joel Tickets—Location, Location, Location

Billy Joel includes plenty of references to geographical locations in his most famous songs.  Is the Piano Man’s fixation with location indicative of his life as a traveling musician or are they more meaningful as allegory? Here are some of Billy Joel’s most famous references to physical locations and what they might symbolize.  When you get Billy Joel tickets at StubHub.com, make sure you get seats in the right location.

“Say Goodbye to Hollywood” - Many of the songs from the 1976 album Turnstiles were about moving, relocation, leaving and arriving.  Such is the case with “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.” Billy Joel moved to Los Angeles originally to try to liven up his musical career, but once he caught on he wanted to move back to his native New York. His lyrics talk about losing friends he met while in L.A.  Joel croons, “So many faces in and out of my life/ Some will last/ Some will just be now and then/ Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes/ I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again.”

“Vienna” - When the name of the song is the name of a city, you know it’s going to make this list of geographical Billy Joel songs.  Vienna isn’t exactly the focal point of the song, though, as Billy’s lyrics talk about slowing down, staying put for a while, saying goodbye to restlessness. Vienna can wait. Here Vienna is a metaphor for an ambitious goal that will be realized eventually. But unlike some of his other songs, Billy is anti-traveling in this one: “But you know that when the truth is told/ That you can get what you want or you can just get old/ You’re gonna kick off before you even/ Get halfway through/ When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?”

“New York State of Mind” - Also from the Turnstiles album, “New York State of Mind” talks about Billy Joel’s enthusiasm for moving back to New York City after a long bout on the West Coast. It’s only natural to feel an affinity to the place where you grew up, and Billy wants to get back to the good old NYC as fast as he can. He sings, “I’ve seen all the movie stars/ In their fancy cars and their limousines/ Been high in the Rockies under the evergreens/ But I know what I’m needing/ And I don’t want to waste more time/ I’m in a New York state of mind.”

“We Didn’t Start the Fire” - Chock full of pop culture references, names, places, events sometimes about the Cold War, sometimes seemingly random, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” rattles off plenty of geographical locations. A few of the mentioned places include North Korea, South Korea, South Pacific, England, Communist Bloc, Brooklyn, Budapest, Alabama, Suez, Little Rock, River Kwai, Lebanon, California, Congo, Berlin, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran and China.

“Piano Man,”  “Uptown Girl” and “The River of Dreams” all reference traveling to different locations, but do not mention specific places. In “Piano Man” the bartender has “someplace that he’d rather be.” The bar-keep says to the narrator, “I could be a movie star if I could get out of this place.” In “Uptown Girl” the narrative of the song follows the socio-economic problems inherent in an “uptown girl” dating a “backstreet guy.” While it’s only implied that he’s referencing different boroughs in New York, the song addresses issues concerning geographic polarization as it relates to wealth in major American cities. In “River of Dreams” Billy Joel talks a lot about walking in his sleep “from the mountains of faith to the river so deep.” Clearly metaphor, mountains and rivers represent locations on a journey that might not be a destination so much as an obstacle or necessary detour.

Kenny Loggins—Top Five Most Cinematic Songs

Some artists seem to translate to the big screen better than others. While artists like the Beatles and Michael Jackson do well on the radio and in the record store, artists like Huey Lewis and the News, Celine Dion, Elton John and Kenny Loggins have built careers on making movie soundtrack hits. Here are the top five most cinematic songs by Kenny Loggins, one of the kings of movie-music. You can see these classic songs performed live by purchasing Kenny Loggins tickets at StubHub.com.

5. “Nobody’s Fool” - “Nobody’s Fool” came out with Kenny’s Back to Avalon album, which also included the song “Meet Me Halfway,” which was a near miss for making this top five list. “Halfway” was, of course, the theme song for the Sylvester Stallone film Over the Top. “Nobody’s Fool” won the spot at No. 5 because it was the theme song for Caddyshack II, which was arguably a better film than Over the Top, at least in terms of hilarity.  While Caddyshack II tries to be funny and does a mediocre job of it, Over the Top tries to be serious but ends up being ironically funny.

4. “Playing with the Boys” - While it wasn’t the theme song of the movie, you can’t help but associate “Playing with the Boys” with Top Gun. You remember the scene, right?  Maverick (played by Tom Cruise) gets asked out by the leggy flight instructor, but first he has to overcome Ice Man (Val Kilmer) and his gargantuan wing man on a sand volleyball court. Kenny’s song starts blaring over the montage of images of shirtless Tom, Val and company slapping an obscene amount of high fives and playing volleyball way too intensely.  Even though Maverick checks his watch several times during the musical montage, he ends up arriving late for his date. Kenny’s song was too good to pass up midway through.

3. “I’m Alright” - The theme song for Caddyshack makes No. 3 on the list. Widely considered one of the best sports-related movies of all time (up there with Bull Durham, Rocky, Raging Bull, Hoosiers and The Natural), Caddyshack opens up with “I’m Alright” blasting over the title and opening credits sequence while the famous gopher dances and wreaks havoc on the greens.

2.“Danger Zone” - The mind immediately went to the image of a fighter jet piloted by Tom Cruise, when you read the words “Danger Zone,” didn’t it?  “Danger Zone” was the theme song for Top Gun, and played during some of the movie’s most intense aeronautical scenes.

1.“Footloose” - While it was tempting to make “Danger Zone” Kenny Loggins’ most cinematic song, “Footloose” wins because the song title became the name of the actual movie. What makes the song even more cinematic is that the word footloose never actually entered the script of the film. While the phrase “top gun” was all over the script of Top Gun, nobody ever actually said “footloose” in Footloose.  Kevin Bacon’s solo dance scene (the angry dance he performs in the abandoned factory) is actually to another song, “Never” by Moving Pictures, though most people associate it with “Footloose.”

Trace Adkins Tickets – Adkins Gets Drawn, Shows Construction Skill

Being a country star is a full-time job, but that hasn’t stopped Trace Adkins from taking on more responsibilities in addition to his busy touring schedule. In July, he traveled to Lancaster, Texas to be part of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Adkins and crew had quite the family to help. Carlton Marshall was a Dallas police lieutenant and was shot in the neck while on a SWAT mission in October of 2007. He was left without his hearing and much mobility. Marshall has a wife and three children, but his home wasn’t conducive to wheelchair accessibility. In the project, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition took seven days to redo the entire home to make it wheelchair accessible. In addition, the home was transformed into a place that the family could carry out their volunteer work involving horseback riding therapy. This project was just one of many philanthropies Adkins works with in his free time.
Adkins also has another project in the works, this one with the country music star as a comic book action hero. He will be the subject for a four-issue comic book called Luke McBain. The title character is based on Adkins with his non-nonsense southern toughness. He is the first country star to be a comic book superhero. The comic series will be put out by 12 Gauge Comics and written by David Tischman with the help of publisher Keven Gardner. On Adkins’ website, Tischman said, “The McBain character became kind of a reflection of Trace Adkins’ entertainment persona. It breathes a real life personality into the fictional character which is something we wanted. Trace helped a lot with that, and it’s something that I think we’ve worked hard to write into the character.” Fans will want to see his stage persona live by getting Trace Adkins tickets from StubHub.com.
Trace Adkins has been a formidable presence in the country scene for quite some time. He was born in Springhill, Louisiana and got his start in high school with a gospel quartet. His love for gospel followed him in college at Louisiana Tech University. After college, he started working on an oil rig, but after only a couple of years he decided to try his hand at music instead. He started playing in tough honky tonks and eventually wound up in Nashville. There, his 6-foot 6-inch presence on stage was hard to miss, and Adkins was soon signed to Capitol Records.
In 1996, he released his debut album, Dreamin’ Out Loud, which made the country Top 10. That album yielded now-classic singles like “Every Light in the House,” “I Left Something Turned on at Home” and “(This Ain’t) No Thinkin’ Thing.” The album showed that Adkins could tackle the emotions of romance without losing his honky-tonk toughness. He had similar success with 1997’s Big Time and 1999’s More… He released Chrome in 20001, his first country Top five album. Since then, he has had many successful singles like “Hot Mama,” “Songs About Me,” “Ladies Love Country Boys,” “You’re Gonna Miss This” and “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.” His latest studio release is X, which dropped in late 2008 and has been providing top singles for Adkins ever since. 

U2 Tickets – Rockin’ the Rock Hall 25th Anniversary

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a collection of some of the world’s most acclaimed artists will gather on the stage in musical harmony.  U2 will be there, as will Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Metallica, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin and Eric Clapton.  The concerts will take place over the course of two days: Oct. 29 and Oct. 30 at New York’s Madison Square Garden.  U2 will take the stage on the latter date, as will Clapton, Franklin and Metallica.  One of the biggest arena rock bands in the world, U2 has made a huge impact in the music industry as a whole.  Check out http://www.stubhub.com for more details and to get your own pair of U2 tickets as soon as possible!
Throughout the 1980s, U2 gradually began building a following of fans, with their powerful collection of Christian-rock ballads featured on such initial albums as: Boy and October.  The latter record became U2’s British breakthrough as it reached number 11 on the charts and spawned off the hit singles “I Will Follow” and “Gloria,” both of which were played repetitively on MTV.  Of course this was only just the beginning.
In 1983, U2 released the Steve Lillywhite-produced War.  It stormed the charts, entering at the number one spot in the U.K. and the number 12 spot in the U.S.  It gave U2 the internationally acclaimed hits “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Years Day.”  It also generated their first Top 40 hit in the U.S., “Pride (In the Name of Love),” a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.  Fiery and ablaze with protest anthems bristling with anger, despair and passion, the album was their biggest hit to date.
At this point U2 was one of the greatest rock bands in the world and they sought to do even better.  In the spring of 1987 the album that made them into bona-fide superstars arrived.  Joshua Tree became the group’s first American number one hit and in England it went platinum within 28 hours.  The album was packed with hit tunes including: “With or Without You,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Where the Streets Have No Name.”  With undeniable vision and remarkable clarity U2 had delivered up one of the most powerful rock records of all time.  It’s release prompted a highly successful worldwide tour.
Instead of falling flat after striking success with Joshua Tree, U2 powered onwards. Albums that followed included Achtung Baby, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, How to Dismantle a Time Bomb and most recently No Line on the Horizon.  The tour following How to Dismantle a Time Bomb, called The Vertigo Tour became the highest grossing concert tour of 2005, in the end generating $389 million.
Through the years U2 has remained a band for the ages—rock ‘n’ rollers who weave us heart-wrenching stories through beautiful melodic ballads.  It is fitting then that they will be honoring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.