You Da One

Even though "We Found Love" is still ruling the charts, Rihanna is gearing up for the release of her second Talk That Talk single, "You Da One," by releasing a behind-the-scenes teaser for the Melina Matsoukas-directed clip.

In the two-minute montage, the RihannaNavy get several glimpses at a blond-bobbed Rih with a fitted gold grill and a slew of outfit changes. For one of her ensembles, the pop titan dons a gold chain necklace and midriff-baring two-piece as she grinds up against a checkered wall with life-size playing cards nearby. Another scene finds the singer in a white tank top and tattered jean shorts, swinging a cane in between two brick buildings.

"We're in London town!" the chart-topper tells the cameraman while the Dr. Luke-produced track plays in the background. "We tried to shoot our first setup outside, but it started to rain really, really hard. Then it stopped after we had to switch setups. ... I'm running on one hour of sleep. I'm not even going to remember this tomorrow. My eyes are burning a little bit."

Rihanna has been dropping teasers for the "You Da One" visual for some time now. Two weeks ago, she released a clip of herself getting fitted for her grill. And just a few days ago, the singer took to Twitter to share another still, which depicted the star topless, leaning back and blowing smoke into the air. "#YOUDAONEVIDEO you know im already in trouble 4 this but, i like to keep yall in the loop," she wrote.

Fans can also expect to be kept in the loop about the video for "Take Care," Rihanna's collabo with Drake. MTV News recently caught up with Drizzy, who shared his expectations for the video for the Jamie xx-produced song, saying, "I want to make it perfect — the best video I've done to date — so I'm just taking my time."

Ke$ha's Version Of Dylan's Song Is A Slow-burning

Ke$ha

It's hard to associate Ke$ha with songs about anything other than hot guys, body glitter and partying. But she's defying her usual topics of interest for human rights organization Amnesty International. The singer is one of the many musicians on the org's Chimes of Freedom compilation of Bob Dylan's music, out January 24.

When MTV News spoke with K-Dollar Sign last week about her all-star remix of "Sleazy,"she also opened up about switching gears vocally and emotionally for her version of Dylan's classic "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."

"I mean, I think it's pretty well known that he's one of, if not my most, favorite artists of all time and ... one of the most amazing lyricists as well — the original storyteller," she explained. "So I love Bob Dylan and this was just, like, a dream. When they asked me to do a cover, I was just, like, salivating and going through all my records. It was so fun. It was the best homework assignment you could possibly have."

K's version of Dylan's song is a slow-burning, heartbreaking ode to the already heartbreaking classic, where she channels Dylan through lyrics like "Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say/ To try and make me change my mind and stay/ We never did too much talkin' anyway/ So don't think twice, it's all right."

Ke$ha had originally intended to record another Dylan track, but when she heard that someone else had their sights set on it, she settled on "Don't Think Twice," prompting a catharsis she could never have imagined.

"This song was kind of an accident. I sat down and this is the first take that I ever sang," she recalled. "I just sat down on my bed for the first time after months of being on tour and I just started crying, and it was kind of like an emotional purging, and you can hear it on the record."

In addition to Ke$ha and her contribution, the album will feature 75 other Dylan classics recorded by nearly 80 artists including Adele, Miley Cyrus, "Glee" star Darren Criss, My Chemical Romance, Evan Rachel Wood and Sugarland. The album pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of Amnesty International.

Better Days

In the eight years between Catching up to the Future and Fonda's new EP, Better Days, the band's principal songwriting duo, Emily Cook and David Klotz, have devoted their energies to some truly questionable projects: Cook contributed to the screenplay of the execrable Gnomeo & Juliet, while Klotz is the music editor for the ongoing pop-culture nightmare that is Glee. Egregious and eyebrow-raising though those credits may be, Cook and Klotz's work here is characterized by relatively good taste. Thanks to their dead-on instincts for engaging melodies and their heavy My Bloody Valentine influences, Better Days is a focused set of lush, dreamy pop.

The massive power chords and thundering percussion line of the title track open the EP on something of a Coldplay note, but a heavily distorted lead guitar line quickly kicks in and the song's melody takes a minor-key turn, recasting the song as an effective and on-point homage to early-'90s shoegaze. Cook and Klotz sing lead in unison on "A Love That Won't Let You Go," and they use off-kilter, slightly discordant harmonies to bring a real sense of tension to the track. While that approach to arrangements might not be novel (Fonda is hardly the first act to draw heavily from the Jesus and Mary Chain), it's something they make effective use of over the course of Better Days, allowing their deliberate aesthetic choices to play as big a role as their lyrics and performances in creating the EP's tone.

To that end, Fonda absolutely makes the most of Better Days's scant running time. Even with the new track, "Some Things Aren't Worth Knowing," added to the set for this new rerelease, the EP doesn't even scratch a full 20 minutes. None of the songs ever threaten to overstay their welcome ("In the Coach Station Light" is an unabashedly lovely two minutes), and there's something to be said for the degree of precision Fonda brings to their songwriting, especially on the riotous, punk-inflected standout "My Heart Is Dancing." That said, even in a market that's increasingly singles-driven, the sheer brevity of Better Days casts the EP as more of a teaser for a bigger project than as a standalone release.

Top 10 Worst Christmas Songs of All Time

10. Jimmy Boyd, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." This Saks Fifth Avenue potboiler from 1952 about a child catching his mother being sexually assaulted by an elderly home invader only becomes even creepier when you realize the kid's mom isn't cheating on his dad, but that Mommy and Daddy have a Santa fetish. Also, what 13-year-old still believes in St. Nick anyway?

9. Lou Monte, "Dominick the Donkey." With Italy in the midst of an economic crisis, Lou Monte's 1960 holiday jingle about Saint Nicola outsourcing his Christmas present deliveries in the Italian mountainside to a retarded donkey suddenly feels more prescient than ever. But that doesn't make it any less irritating.

8.Fogelberg, "Same Old Lang Syne." The concept is touching enough: Fogelberg runs into an old flame at the grocery store on Christmas Eve and they grab a drink and reminisce. But melodramatic lyrics ("She went to hug me and she spilled her purse/And we laughed until we cried") and gratutious details ("We took her groceries to the checkout stand/The food was totalled up and bagged") make "Same Old Lang Syne" a cloying annual annoyance.

7. Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry Christmas." In this new addition to the schmaltzy, nonsensical holiday song canon, Neil Diamond wishes you "a very, merry, cherry, cherry, holly-holy, rockin'-rolly Christmas," before idiotically exclaiming, "Cherry Christmas, everyone!" at song's end.

6. Cyndi Lauper, "Christmas Conga." Holiday cheer has always been all-inclusive. Hell, even the Jewish Neil Diamond has released three Christmas albums. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say a Latin house anthem with lyrics like "Bonga, bonga, bonga, do the Christmas conga!" probably wasn't necessary. But we still love you, Cyn.

5. New Kids on the Block, "Funky, Funky Xmas." This timeless boy-band classic features inexplicable British accents, inexplicable rapping, inexplicable lyrics like "It's snowing outside, but we ho-ho-hoing," and—less inexplicably, obviously—Santa Claus burning his butt.

4. The Cheeky Girls, "Boys and Girls (Xmas Time Love)." Best known for their hit "Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)," this Transylvanian duo cracked the U.K. charts in 2004 with a yuletide song based on Sabrina's "Boys (Summertime Love)." The song doesn't have a whole lot to do with Christmas, but there are some synthesized sleigh bells and the video features the bikini-clad twins frollicking in front of a Christmas tree at a festive pool party, so I guess that counts in England.

3. Clay Aiken, "Merry Christmas with Love." This inspirational carol about a lonely widow featuring lyrics like "This year there's no one to open the gifts/No reason for trimming the tree" was originally sung by Sandi Patti in the early '80s, but Clay Aiken resurrected it for his 2004 album of the same name, instantly catapulting it onto nearly every Worst Christmas Song list.

2. John Denver, "Please, Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)." Almost everyone can relate to the sentiment behind "Please, Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)," but a grown man singing "Now I'm almost eight, as you can see" is profoundly unsettling (not to mention absurd), even if that man is the eternally youthful John Denver.

1. NewSong, "The Christmas Shoes." For over a decade now, NewSong's contribution to Christmas music has ruined the holiday season for millions of people around the world. In the song, the narrator (played by Rob Lowe in the video below) meets a little boy who's "dirty from head to toe" and who asks him to buy a pair of shoes for his dying mother so she looks beautiful in case she "meets Jesus tonight." Half-step key changes and a children's choir are added insurance in case you haven't felt cheaply manipulated enough. Putting "The Christmas Shoes" at #1 on this list doesn't do justice to how horrendous it is. The enormous gulf in quality between our #2 pick, "Please, Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)," and this song is the equivalent of a 3.0 and a 10.0 earthquake on the Richter scale. It's not just the worst Christmas song ever, it's one of the worst songs ever recorded.

What Do You Think Of Karmin's New Video?

The Internet has launched dozens of stars in 2011 for the wrong reasons (see: Courtney Stodden, Rebecca Black), and then there's Karmin, a scary-talented couple whose infectious and clever covers of hip-hop songs blew up your inbox back in April.

Their reinterpretation of Chris Brown's "Look at Me Now" got them on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and, more importantly, snatched up by L.A. Reid as he took over Epic Records this summer.

On the set of Karmin's brand-new music video for debut single "Crash Your Party,"longtime lovebirds Amy Heidemann and Nick Noonan were still trying to wrap their heads around their up-and-up career trajectory.

"We feel a lot different than we used to with [us] making the videos at home in the living room," Heidemann told MTV News. "We were joking about it earlier, how we used to run over to the camera and push record and run [back] and be like, 'OK, ready?' "

"And then we had to turn the air off so it was always, like, 106 degrees in there," Noonan recalled. "This is a little bit different."

"A little bit different" is putting it mildly. The set was packed with a massive crew, multiple sets, child actors and stage parents and wardrobe changes, and the air conditioning was keeping it all at a bearable temperature. No wonder Heidemann used the word "overwhelmed" to describe their feelings in the midst of a 21-hour shoot.

The just-premiered clip, directed by Syndrome, features Heidemann and Noonan rocking out on YouTube before the pair climb into a magical suitcase that transports them to strangers' kitchens, children's birthday parties, karaoke bars and, ultimately, a massive stage where they are performing for adoring fans.

JLS 'Do You Feel What I Feel'

No sooner than JLS have released the very succesful “Take A Chance On Me” they are now following up with another new number called “Do You Feel What I Feel” and the official video was released yesterday. Is it as good?

The Video:

This is a clubby number, very pop and mainstream and needs an energetic clubby style video to go with it and this video does the job. The usual latest trend to have a film style intro with a bit of chit chat before the music starts with “bruv” muttered on the mobile once the parents have gone quite rightly starting the proceedings. Apparently Volvo’s are in now are they?…………..seems to be that way? It’s an OK vid but nothing exceptional.

The Song:

R n B and dance is the style of this number and pop is it’s focus. Vocals are typical JLS, decent and polished and fresh and the harmonies are also classic JLS and very good indeed. We liked “Take A Chance on Me” and quite a few other people did as well judging by how well it did in the charts.

This number in our opinion is in the OK category, it’s just not pushing any originality buttons here, it’s very poppy sounding and catchy and the technicals are OK as well, but there’s nothing here to make it stand out from the music crowd out there at present. It’s safe rather than edgy, it washes over you in a pleasant manner rather than throwing you back in your chair, it has a message but it’s hardly a passionate or strong one.. In summary it’s “nice” but lacks “bite”.

‘You Don’t Know Her Like I Do’ Is Somewhat Generic Melodically

The follow-up to Brantley Gilbert‘s chart-topping single ‘Country Must Be Country Wide’ allows the singer to show a dark vulnerability that is sure to make him a more appealing artist to country music fans who may be turned off by his brand of country rock. ‘You Don’t Know Her Like I Do’ is sentimental without being sissy.

Gilbert wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on his ‘Halfway to Heaven’ album, often drawing from personal experience. This mid-tempo cut about heartbreak feels genuine, though a little rushed. More time was needed to turn his pain into artistry.

"Cause you don’t know her like I do / You’ll never understand / You don’t know what we’ve been through / That girl’s my best friend / And there’s no way you’re gonna help me / She’s the only one who can / No, you don’t know how much I’ve got to lose / You don’t know her like I do,” Gilbert sings during the chorus. He’s talking to a friend that’s trying to move him past the hurt.

"I can’t forget, I’m drowning in these memories / It fills my soul with all the little things / And I can’t cope, it’s like a death inside the family / It’s like she stole my way to breathe / So don’t try to tell me I’ll stop hurting / And don’t try to tell me she ain’t worth it,” he adds during the second verse.

While Gilbert continues to bring a unique sound and perspective to country music, ‘You Don’t Know Her Like I Do’ is somewhat generic melodically. His passion and raw emotion overcome this flaw but not as well as some of the other songs on ‘Halfway to Heaven.’