Lauren Alaina Meets Justin Bieber And A Few Fans Of Her Own

As the 'American Idol' runner-up prepares to tour, she recalls her own fangirl moment with Bieber.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Matt Elias


Lauren Alaina backstage with Justin Bieber at the 2011 CMT Music Awards
Photo: Kevin Mazur/ WireImage

As Lauren Alaina prepares to kick off the American Idols Live! tour on July 6 in Utah, it's time for her to start imagining life as an artist beyond the confines of a TV competition. As her second-place finish on season 10 proves, she has quite a fanbase, and the tour will give them the chance to see her in person. The thought of meeting supporters had the 16-year-old recalling her own ultimate fangirl experience, meeting Justin Bieber.

"Well, I was presenting Sugarland at the CMT Awards, and I found out that Justin Bieber was there," she explained to MTV News at the "American Idol" tour press day. "And I said I that I wanted to meet him, and I guess the people that I was there with made it happen."

During some down time on the show, she was about to meet Bieber, who took home Collaborative Video of the Year with Rascal Flatts that night, but first she had to battle a fashion mishap.

"I walked up to meet him and he was doing an interview, and then I was just looking at my outfit, and I realized I had a rip in the side of my dress, so I was trying to fix it real fast," she recalled. "And then someone had told him I had gone over there to meet him, so he came up to me and was like, 'Hey, I'm Justin.' ... It just kind of set me back. We took a picture and then it was over."

Though it was brief, Lauren wasn't too disappointed with their encounter. "It was cool just to meet him," she said. "Everyone wants to meet Justin Bieber and I got to do it, so it was really nice."

While in Nashville, Alaina was greeting her own fans too. "I haven't had anything weird happen to me, it's just people recognize me a lot more," she said. "And I went to Nashville, and I got out on Broadway with Scotty [McCreery] and we were like swarmed in 10 seconds. We didn't even know if people were going to realize who we were. [And] I mean immediately, as soon as we got out of the car, they recognized us, so that was really cool."

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New Led Zeppelin On The Way? Jason Bonham Hints At 'Jam' Sessions With Jimmy Page -- But Not Robert Plant

Drummer admits he doesn't know what will come of 'new material.'
By Chris Harris


Jason Bonham
Photo: Larry Marano/ Getty Images

On Friday morning, mere hours before he was due to take the stage with classic rockers Foreigner at Detroit's GM Renaissance Center, drummer Jason Bonham — the son of late Led Zeppelin kitman John Bonham — told Jim Johnson and Lynne Woodison of local rock station 94.7 WCSX that he'd be an ex-member of Foreigner as of September 1. But that's not the only thing he said.

Much to the delight of Led Zeppelin fans everywhere, Bonham revealed that he's been meeting up with Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones in recent months and that they've been "trying to do some new material and writing."

It was the first time since Led Zeppelin announced they would re-form for a single performance (which happened late last year at London's O2 Arena, in honor of the late Ahmet Ertegün, who signed the band to Atlantic Records in 1969) that anyone connected to the band has confirmed publicly that new music could be on the horizon for the iconic rockers. While the bandmembers have stopped short of definitively ruling out such a reunion, singer Robert Plant insisted in the wake of last year's show that he intended to focus on promoting and touring behind his critically lauded album with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, Raising Sand.

Not that Bonham knows what — if anything — will happen with the new material he's been working on with Page (who collaborated with pop singer Leona Lewis on an uneven version of Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" at the Olympic closing ceremonies in Beijing on Sunday night) and Jones. He said he just shows up and takes his seat behind the kit.

"I've been over [to England] a couple of times," Bonham said. "I've been working with Jimmy and John Paul and trying to do ... some new material and some writing. I don't know what it will be, but it will be something. At the moment, all I know is I have the great pleasure to go and jam with the two guys and start work on some material. When I get there, I never ask any questions. If I get a phone call to go and play, I enjoy every moment of it. Whatever it ends up as, to ever get a chance to jam with two people like that, it is a phenomenal thing for me. It's my life. It's what I've dreamed about doing."

He said it's still too early to tell what will become of these "jam" sessions, but admitted that the "possibility of doing something is in the cards. I really felt it was in the cards from the moment we walked offstage at the O2." Bonham also explained that, before there could be a Led Zep LP, "lots of politics [would need to] get ironed out," but added that recording with Zep is "something I've always wanted to do."

Bonham noticeably didn't mention frontman Plant's name during the discussion. A spokesperson for Page's management had no comment on the matter, and a spokesperson for Jones' management could not be reached by press time.

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Robert Plant And Alison Krauss Win Grammy Album Of The Year

Raising Sand, from Led Zeppelin vet and bluegrass superstar, wins five Grammys on Sunday night.
By James Montgomery with MTV News staff


Alison Krauss and Robert Plant accept the award for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards on Sunday
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

"I'm bewildered," Robert Plant said onstage as he accepted the Grammy Album of the Year award with Alison Krauss on Sunday night. "In the old days we would have called this selling out, but it's a good way to spend a Sunday."

He was probably one of the few who were surprised, because Raising Sand, which won five trophies at Sunday night's show, is in many ways the perfect Grammy album. It features two respected veterans, a critically lauded producer, some sandpaper-and-velvet vocals and a baker's dozen of time-tested standards.

You're probably familiar with Robert Plant from his Led Zeppelin days, and you might be aware of producer T-Bone Burnett's work on the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack (it won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002). And if you don't know who Alison Krauss is, she possesses a haunting set of pipes and is one of the meanest fiddle players in the world. Oh, and she's won 21 Grammys, more than any other female artist and the seventh-most in history.

Really, she's the key to Sand's success, and not just because of her voice (or her fiddle playing). She and Plant first met in 2004, at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute to legendary bluesman Leadbelly, and the former Zeppelin man was amazed by her knowledge of American Roots music — so much so that they began kicking around the idea of recording an album together. Three years later, Sand was released.

And while Plant possesses the more famous voice, the album's finest moments radiate from Krauss. Whether she's getting bluesy on Little Milton's "Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson" or entwining with Plant's husky voice on songs like "Please Read the Letter" and Roly Salley's winsome "Killing the Blues," she more than carries her end of the bargain.

And perhaps that's also due to producer Burnett, who handpicked the 13 songs the duo cover on Sand. His arrangements are sparse — giving the two voices ample room to breathe — yet dense, warm and crackling at the same time. It's a testament to his work that he's often given just as much billing as Plant and Krauss on the project ... and it's certainly justified.

To date, Sand has sold more than 1 million copies, heaped tons of acclaim and actually earned a Grammy last year — "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" took home the award for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals.

One expert was surprised not by the album's success, but by the fact that it's actually quite a good album.

"At first, the album seemed like a vanity project. ... Two names, clearly a one-off record, didn't have to be any good, you know?" New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica said. "Led Zeppelin fans would buy it because of Robert Plant, Alison Krauss would get a check. But it actually turned out to be a really thoughtful, really good record. So when you combine all that with the fact that the Grammys love to lionize one of their own, I could really see it taking home some awards."

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