music issue, alright

When I can’t connect to my iTunes from work, I sometimes use the Yahoo music player. It usually knows me pretty well, but this week it has insisted on playing Scarlett Johansson every five minutes. I don’t know how, based on some of my selected faves (Gossip, CSS, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Rapture, etc…) Yahoo decided ScarJo covering Tom Waits was for me. It’s probably just some kind of sneaky marketing deal. So, after hearing her try too hard to sound like Cat Power on “Falling Down,” I clicked the “never play this artist again” option. Problem solved. At least, until I got the music issue of Nylon with her on the cover.

Really? The music issue? Come on. She did a fun little project to show what a hip Tom Waits fan she is (and David Sitek and Co. saved the album by at least making it sound decent, production-wise), but Nylon has one chance a year to do something out of the ordinary and they go and ruin it with putting yet another actress on the cover. How original. There are about 30 actual musicians throughout the pages of the magazine that would be more deserving of the cover (and Santogold’s style is way more hip–without the help of stylists and handlers). And what is she doing with that guitar as a prop? It’s not fooling anyone. Musically, she should stick to where she belongs: in Justin Timberlake videos.