Frank Sinatra is one of the greatest singers of all time, and the first real pop music superstar. A larger-than-life figure, Sinatra came up during the Big Band Era with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands; by the mid-1940s, his appearances were causing riots. In the 1950s, after a decline, he recast his career with a string of legendary releases on Capitol Records, an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in From Here To Eternity, and by becoming a mainstay on the Vegas strip.

This week's video, "High Hopes," is not at all typical of the moody saloon singer. The novelty song is from a 1959 movie, A Hole In The Head, and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song that year. A delightfully corny and optimistic tune, Sinatra sang it with a children's chorus, and it's still a part of pop culture today.

So please enjoy this look back at a simpler time, and one of America's greatest vocal talents, and, as always, let us know what you think.

1 - "Oh, yeah? Well, I'm rubber and you're

After the excellent reception to last week's Alan Jackson blog, we were strongly considering making Framed a country music-only affair. But, upon reflection, we decided it would be unfair to deny fans of other music forms of this most beloved of formats. That's why we're widely known as The Blog That Likes You!

Getting as far away from country as we can, then, it was 17 years ago that Birdman--aka Bryan "Baby" Williams--founded Cash Money Records in New Orleans. After signing a distribution deal with Universal Records in 1998, the label took off, especially with the Hot Boys, who featured Lil Wayne. And when Juvenile and B.G. of the Boys split amid accusations of money mismanagement, the label barely blinked, financially, as the Big Tymers picked up the slack and CEO Williams established his in-studio credentials, too, as Birdman.

This week's video is Birdman's latest, "100 Million Dollars," which features not only Williams but much of his Cash Money posse as well. In the guise of an

Hello, again, readers, and welcome back to Framed... The Blog That Likes You. We don't want to get too far into 2008 without recognizing a man who was perhaps last year's pre-eminent artist: Kanye West.

Last September, Kanye released his third album, Graduation, the same day that 50 Cent released his latest, Curtis, and country star Kenny Chesney released Just Who I Am: Poets And Pirates.  And, although this blog featured both 50 and Kenny in short order, we somehow overlooked Kanye, whose album was easily the best-selling of the three.

It's gnawed at us ever since, so we've decided to make amends by kicking off the year with Kanye's exceptional '04 video, "Jesus Walks."  There were actually three different versions of this video, but we're sticking with the one that was widely seen on MTV.

Compellingly, the video shows how faith can redeem even the lowest among us.  All three of the videos for "Jesus Walks" were regarded as controversial when released, but we'll let you be the judge.

Do you know why yawning is contagious?  Here's why: a million years ago, or more, there was far less oxygen in the atmosphere than there is today. The primates who would eventually become Homo Sapiens were scattered thinly across Africa because the low levels of oxygen would support only a few of these large, complex mammals. When one of these proto-men "yawned," it was a signal to his fellows that their neighbor was trying to secure more than his fair share of the precious resource, so "contagious yawning" developed as a defense mechanism. Just then, a giant, oxygen-rich meteor named Oxxyjo crashed into the Bering Straits, releasing an estimated 86 duodecillion metric tons of oxygen into Earth's atmosphere, rendering contagious yawning forevermore unnecessary. But it had already become part of the human-to-be genome, and the mechanism remains part of our heritage even today.

This is our way of introducing this week's video, Korn's excellent "Evolution."  It'll all tie in, you'll see.