Joe Kavanagh's Music News

Representatives of Paul McCartney revealed that the legendary Beatle was admitted to a London clinic last week, to undergo heart surgery. Macca went under the knife for a "routine medical operation" as doctors performed an angioplasty in order to open arteries around his heart, after the singer complained of feeling unwell over the festive season. We wish him a speedy recovery...

In a related story, McCartney's increasingly unhinged ex-wife was said to be livid after she saw him hugging Kylie Minogue at a televized New Year's Eve party. Friends of Heather Mills told a UK tabloid that she was "furious" after seeing the embrace and believed that it was arranged simply to have a dig at her. Man, this lady is nuttier than squirrel poop and I would imagine that the only dig that he would enjoy having in relation to Mills would have to involve a shovel and a headstone... Coldplay's Chris Martin has evidently been feeling the pressure of following up the band's hit album, X & Y, after word leaked out of their camp that the singer was forced to call upon a hypnotist to assist him in overcoming something of a songwriter's block. Coldplay's latest opus, Prospekt, is due out later this year but there is no truth to the rumor that listening to it backwards will help you quit smoking...

A spokesperson for the Three Tenors claimed that the legendary act has decided to call time on their career, giving us one of the more redundant announcements from the music world in recent times. I mean, what were they going to do, dig up Pavarotti and put him in formaldehyde every time they had to go out on tour? Just because it works for Cher...

Speaking of immigration troubles, rapper, Snoop Dogg is convinced that new video evidence will vindicate him in his efforts to overturn a UK conviction for assault and affray, which contributed to him being banned from ever entering Britain again. The footage, which emerged on Youtube, shows the clash between the rapper's entourage and UK police, which occurred in London's Heathrow airport. Having looked at the "evidence", I can tell you that it is heavily edited in the rapper's favor (maybe even shot by one of his own crew) and even if authorities did believe it, I don't believe that it will have much affect, as UK authorities claim that the barring order was chiefly inspired by Snoop's past behavior, which includes charges of murder, rape and an assortment of drug convictions. The footage also shows the rapper cruelly berating one of his lackeys in a manner that is absolutely, positively diva-esque, dropping him further again in my humble opinion...

Singer/actress, Natalie Imbruglia announced that she and husband, Daniel Johns - of Australian band Silverchair - have decided to call it quits after only four years of marriage. All very believable until the point where Imbruglia claims that the split is due to the pressure of their "career demands". It's not as if their phones have been lighting up with offers of employment in the past five years, unless it's been with offers of work washing dishes or waiting tables. This is the same Natalie Imbruglia who moved from LA to her native Australia last year, after claiming that the pressures of the Hollywood scene were to much to bear. Can anyone name one movie she was in? Scratch that, can her publicist even name one movie she's been in during the past five years? What ever happened to calling a spade a spade? ...

Like him or loathe him, Damon Albarn hit the nail on the head during a recent interview with the BBC. The multi-talented front man was waxing lyrical about modern society's increasing obsession with celebrities when he told an interviewer: "I think it [celebrity culture] is creating a mindset that suggests you can get something for nothing and that it's easy to acquire status and fame. It should be one of the hardest things to do. At some point in the very near future we are gong to have to change our value system so dramatically, and what we deem as important and what we throw away. We need to dismantle very significant parts of our culture and really re-examine them. I suppose you start with the celebrity thing." In a time when the world stops because Britney breaks a nail, these are words to live by. A single mother working two jobs to raise kids in a Brooklyn project deserves our sympathy. Starving kids being brutalized in Darfur deserve our sympathy. Self-indulgent, selfish millionaire brats like Britney Spears and Lyndsay Lohan deserve a good kick up the arse.