Glam Slam: Summertime... and The Livin's Easy

by: Access Hollywood
Lindsay Lohan, Lisa Rinna, Mena Suvari, Rachel Zoe and yours truly hit the beach for a chic Malibu clambake to celebrate Lia Sophia's latest "Red Carpet Celebrity Collection" of jewelry.

Held at a cliffside estate overlooking the Pacific, a crowd of beautiful people lazed in the sun, enjoying the view and grooving to tunes spun by a DJ. Lindsay danced to Michael Jackson songs. There was plenty of food... clams and lobster rolls screamed "East Coast," while coconut water (from Vita Coco) added a tropical vibe to the sunny and very hot day.

Leighton Meester: New Album Will Be "Edgy"

by: US Magazine
What will Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester's upcoming debut album sound like?

"The music is very fun," Meester, 22, tells February's Teen Vogue. "It's edgy, like electro-pop rather than bubblegum, and you can dance to it."

The album -- which she first talked about to Usmagazine.com in February -- is due next spring.

Hugh Hefner "Impressed" by Jennifer Aniston's Naked GQ Cover

by: US Magazine

Us Magazine
Carmen Electra graces the cover of Playboy's 55th anniversary issue, but Hugh Hefner tells Extra he wouldn't have minded seeing "either Angelina Jolie or Scarlett Johansson."

When shown Jennifer Aniston's nearly naked January GQ cover, Hefner, 82, remarks, "This looks like the cover of Playboy. I'm much impressed by Jennifer.

"Is it just me, or is Jennifer Aniston getting hotter?" he says of the 39-year-old actress. "Never seen her in this light before."

See more photos of topless stars.

Hefner also elaborates more on his split from Holly Madison.

"Holly was looking for something more than I could give her," he says of his ex, who is currently dating Criss Angel. "She was looking for marriage and children."

Abdul: Police ID Body as Former Idol Contestant

by: US Magazine

Police have identified the woman found dead outside American Idol judge Paula Abdul's house as season 5 contestant Paula Goodspeed, whose performance of "Proud Mary" was mocked by judges (see video below).

Goodspeed, 30 -- who was infatuated with Abdul and admitted she made "life-sized drawings of Paula" during her 2006 audition -- died of an apparent drug overdose in an apparent suicide, the Associated Press reports. No official cause of death has been determined.

Goodspeed's body was found in her car -- which featured a license plate "ABL LV" and had a photo of Abdul hanging from the rear view mirror -- outside the judge's Los Angeles home Tuesday night around 6 p.m.

Abdul -- who was working on Idol all day -- was not home at the time. She returned late in the evening after the scene had cleared.

I am deeply saddened and shocked about what transpired yesterday," she tells Usmagazine.com in a statement. "My heart and prayers go out to her family.

Her rep tells Entertainment Tonight that the woman had been an extreme fan and had "issues." They knew about her for "several years," her rep adds.

DWTS' Cheryl Burke: "You Don't Have to Be a Size 0 to Be Beautiful"

by: US MAgazine
Dancing With the Stars' Cheryl Burke is sounding off on critics who have claimed she's gained too much weight.

"I was like, maybe I should just starve myself for four weeks just so people would shut up," she said on Friday's Ellen DeGeneres Show. "But at the end of the day ... I'm an athlete. I like to eat, I like to work out, and I like to feel healthy, and I feel healthy."

When DeGeneres told her she looked great, the audience applauded.

"There is so much pressure -- especially starting younger and younger -- for girls to think they have to look a certain way," the talk show host told Burke. "They're making themselves sick."

See photos of stars who have gotten scary skinny.

Earlier this week, professional dancers Louis Van Amstel and Maksim Chmerkovskiy spoke out negatively about Burkes weight gain and that of newcomer Lacey Schwimmer (Chmerkovskiy insists his quotes were taken out of context).

Criticizing a woman's weight "is just a wrong statement to make ... for women, and it's dangerous," Burke said.

"You don't have to be a size zero to be beautiful," she added. "In the world that I may live in right now, you don't have to be skin and bones. You can be healthy and beautiful, and you need to accept that about yourself and feel secure about it."

Check out Us' Weight Winners of the Year!

When Burke admitted that she is a "size four in a dress," DeGeneres praised her.

"That is a normal body and that's what most people's bodies -- if they're lucky -- look like," she said. "I think people would trade you for that body."

Added DeGeneres, "You're a beautiful person and don't hear [criticism] anymore. Don't listen to it."

The Year's Hottest New Music Stars

by: Forbes
Some recording artists toil for years without ever scoring a big hit. Then there's the fortunate few who skip all the dues-paying hardships and skyrocket straight to stardom.

That pretty much sums up the experience of Sean Kingston, Colbie Caillat, Flo Rida, and other new music acts on our list of music's hottest new stars.

For this new generation, getting established is as much about nurturing an Internet audience as playing gigs and knocking on the doors of hot record producers and promoters. Posting music and videos online and interacting with fans who can help get the word out about upcoming concerts and TV appearances through their personal blogs and Web sites are crucial pieces of the puzzle.

In Pictures: Music's Hottest New Stars


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"Nowadays, a marketing plan always has a significant element that is based around the Web," says Lee Trink, president of EMI Group's Capitol Records, home of new R&B hitmaker J. Holiday. "Radio is shrinking; video channels don't play as many videos. But the good news is, there are so many different ways to get to people [online] and to get to people in very niche ways."

Still, while the radio dial doesn't command the same audience it once did, radio exposure remains crucial to generating blockbuster hits, Trink acknowledges.

"All of those have massive radio," he says. "The way things sell big numbers is still the old-fashioned way."

To compile a list of the hottest new stars of music, we examined several measures of popularity and success. To start off, we looked at the top searches and downloads on peer-to-peer networks during the past 12 months as measured by BigChampagne, as well as press mentions as measured by Factiva.

Then we looked at U.S. digital track downloads and album sales in 2007 and the first two months of 2008, as measured by Nielsen SoundScan. Finally, we took a look at "mastertone" ringtone sales during the same period, as measured by Nielsen RingScan (mastertones are ringtones that play a snippet of the actual recording of your favorite song).

So who made our list? R&B and hip-hop acts dominate, including hitmaking singers Kingston, Holiday, and former "American Idol" champ Jordin Sparks and rappers Flo Rida, Plies, Huey, and Hurricane Chris. Also making the list are the rock band OneRepublic and easygoing singer-songwriter Caillat.

On top: Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, whose "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" was one of the biggest hit songs of the year. Soulja Boy (DeAndre Way, to his mom) got his first exposure by posting songs and videos on his YouTube and MySpace pages, which helped attract the attention of hip-hop producer Michael "Mr. Collipark" Crooms and eventually landed him a contract with Universal Music Group's Interscope Records.

To refer to "Crank That" as a mere "song" would probably underplay its multi-platform ubiquity. The official video racked up tens of millions of hits on YouTube and spawned a dance craze that prompted Soulja Boy to shoot an instructional video that generated more than 30 million hits of its own.

Then there were the countless spoofs and imitations that featured mashups of SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora The Explorer, Alvin and the Chipmunks and others. "Crank That" has also sold more than 3 million song downloads and more than 2 million ringtones. With that kind of reach, it was hard to escape the song's catchy refrain of "Yoooooo!/Crank that Soulja Boy, now watch me/Yoooooo!"

In a shifting entertainment landscape where young consumers are spending more of their free time online, building a strong Internet presence is important to set the stage for a recording artist's first big hit. To push J. Holiday and his breakout hit single "Bed," Capitol Records used the singer's fan base to help fuel further interest in the singer by supplying them with embeddable videos and other tools so that they could share their enthusiasm with others online, Trink says.

"We found that to be incredibly effective," he says, noting that, for many listeners, "It's a badge of honor to turn people on to music that you really love."

But despite all the added attention focused on online marketing, the biggest hits -- the ones that dominate the upper rungs of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart -- still tend to be the songs that get the most radio play.

Many of those hitmakers fail to generate much in the way of album sales. With sales of albums dropping sharply across all genres, why does that matter? Because album sales can reflect how interested consumers are in a recording artist, as opposed to just their hit song. And that, in turn, can be a barometer of a music act's ability to sustain a career beyond their debut on the pop charts.

Strong album sales for hot new artists on our list such as Caillat (certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America with more than 1 million units shipped for sale in the U.S.) and Kingston and Holiday (both certified gold with U.S. shipments of more than 500,000) would seem to bode well for their next releases.