Blog Posts by Daniel Kreps

The worst kept secret in music right now is Madonna's performance at the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show. The NFL still hasn't confirmed the news -- the league customarily waits until the Thanksgiving games to announce the Super Bowl performers -- and the Material Girl herself hasn't commented on the report. Yet, that's not stopping details about Madonna's halftime extravaganza from reaching the public. According to Just Jared, the singer will perform "Give Me All Your Love," a single from her upcoming 12th album, at the February 5th game.

The song is described as "catchy," the most important of adjectives where singles are concerned. Martin Solveig, the French DJ responsible for that unavoidable "Hello" song, produced "Give Me All Your Love." But the best news: M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj will reportedly appear on the track, and they'll also be at the Super Bowl when Madonna performs the song. Minaj and M.I.A., the most prestigious female rappers in music right now, previously collaborated

Need a terrifying way to spend Halloween? Instead of going to a corn maze or trick-or-treating while dressed as Nicki Minaj, sit down in front of the computer and listen to a new Flaming Lips song called "7 Skies H3." Not exactly Stephen King stuff, but there's a catch: The track is 24 hours long. Starting at midnight on October 31st, Oklahoma City time, Wayne Coyne will stream the band's newest aural Frankenstein. The song was originally packaged in one of those gummy skulls that the Lips have used to distribute tunes lately, but listen to "7 Skies H3"on the new website FlamingLips24HourSong.com. The site's Bookmarks icon is also a marijuana leaf, so that's a little clue on how this frightening track should be experienced.

The Amp fearlessly live-blogged the Lips' six-hour song "I Found a Star on the Ground," and that assignment was like mountain climbing while someone jackhammered our skull. It almost permanently ruined The Soft Bulletin for us. To take that long, long experience

From this point on, anytime you ever think about Reckoning or Automatic for the People, images of Bring It On and Crazy/Beautiful will pop into your head. R.E.M. called it quits last month, but not before filming a pair of videos for "We All Go Back To Where We Belong," a new track off the band's upcoming greatest hits comp Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982 - 2011. And what better way to call it a career than with actress Kirsten Dunst.

The video is, no joke, the actress doing nothing for 3 minutes and 39 seconds. We shouldn't say "nothing," since at the 2:27 mark, Dunst takes her loose hair and assembles it into a ponytail. That's literally the Act II climax of the "Kirsten Version" of "We All Go Back To Where We Belong." It's like one of those experimental Warhol films they forced us to watch in film school. (On the bright side, the song's pretty excellent, and a nice way for R.E.M. to cease making music together.)

In the battle of bare bones, one-shot music

For a guy who lost two teeth and required stitches after falling on his face in the shower, Steven Tyler was in a chipper mood this morning discussing his bathroom accident with Today's Matt Lauer. He also shared some post-fall pictures, and it hurts just to look at them. The Aerosmith singer blamed his shower collapse on "Montezuma's Revenge," the dreaded tourist disease that temporarily wreaks havoc on a digestive system. "I took a walk with the Incans for 48 hours, I walked in looking like Baryshnikov and walked out looking like Leon Spinks." A retired ballerina and a retired boxer; Tyler apparently stopped caring about pop culture in the mid '80s.

(Not to get off-target, but a brief geography lesson: "Montezuma's Revenge" is an illness that strickens people visiting Mexico, not South America. Montezuma was also Aztec, not Incan. The Aerosmith tour opened up in Peru, the stronghold of the Incan empire and the one geographical detail Tyler got right, but he collapsed in Paraguay,

Coldplay owed Rihanna big time after the pop singer collaborated with the group on their track "Princess of China," the closest thing to a surefire hit on Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto. To perhaps repay their debt, or maybe because they just really like RiRi's music, Chris Martin and his crew decided to cover Rihanna's newest single "We Found Love" when they stopped by the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge. Considering the synthesizer-happy sound on their oddly named disc, it's surprising that Coldplay opted to go a softer, slower, soulful route with their Rihanna cover, but "We Found Love" in ballad form would have fit nicely on the back-half of the band's latest album. The band's version also scrubs all the Trainspotting off the track. Listen below:

Rihanna's chart-topping "We Found Love":

Halloween is just around the corner, that October evening when the female masses pretend to be Lady Gaga or Amy Winehouse for a night. Except this year, another artist has become this year's go-to costume: Nicki Minaj. According to the Daily News, the rapper is the near the top of the most searched Halloween outfits, behind popular picks like "Playboy bunny" and "Angry Birds." A Minaj costume does make sense, especially since the rapper treats every day like it's Halloween. Instead of Hammering how to dress like Nicki, The Amp has the step-by-step guide on what you need to do to attain that "Super Bass" look:

First, and this is most essential thing, is a brightly colored wig, like one of these:

[Photo: Jordan Strauss/WireImage.com]

[Photo: Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images]

[Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com]

Next, practice these stupid facial expressions in the mirror:

[Photo: Jordan Strauss/WireImage.com]

[Photo: Dan MacMedan/WireImage.com]

[Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images]

[Photo:

Another week, another new Beyoncé video. She's been so rapid fire about releasing these music videos that, by the time you've finally digested one, another new clip is already being loaded onto Vevo. This time, it's for one of the best 4 tracks, "Party." This, like every Knowles video, finds the singer smiling and showcasing her flexibility while wearing provocative clothing. All her videos are essentially extravagant fashion magazine spreads, and this one could be called "Magiela and the Mobile Home," or "Bugattis in the Trailer Park." Also, Kelly Rowland stops by the party, so this is the closest we'll come to a Destiny's Child reunion for the foreseeable future. However, the visuals just distract from a bigger problem with the video.

There won't be any dance move controversy following "Party," but that's not to say the video doesn't have a major flaw. Namely, the disappearance of Andre 3000's excellent verse from the album version of "Party." For the video, Three Stacks was

Three makes it a trend: First, it was Adele canceling her U.S. tour because of laryngitis, then John Mayer revealed earlier this week he underwent throat surgery to remove a granuloma. Today, the Rule of Three took effect as Kiss' Paul Stanley, "The Starchild," announced today that he had a medical procedure yesterday to fix the "recurring vocal cord issues" that comes with singing "Love Gun" and "Strutter" for nearly four decades, CNN reports. The surgery was successful, and the singer expects to make a "swift and complete" recovery. It's a good thing Stanley waited until the conclusion of last week's Kiss Kruise to undergo the procedure.

"I hold myself to a higher standard than others do," Stanley said in a statement. "With that in mind, I wanted to remedy a few minor issues that come with 40 years of preaching rock 'n' roll." Kiss plans on releasing their new album Monster next year, plus embarking on another world tour (and delivering their oral history), so it was imperative that