Concerts
Page: 15
Stevie Nicks had to cancel her concert Saturday night (June 15) at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania, because of “illness in the band,” according to a brief statement shared on the singer’s official social media accounts.
“Regrettably, due to illness in the band, tonight’s performance is being postponed. Please hold on to your tickets. A new date will be announced soon,” said the update, originally posted by the stadium at 5:30 p.m. ET on Saturday. The update was later added to Nicks’ stories on Instagram and Facebook, and shared on her page on X (formerly Twitter).
Billboard reached out to Nicks’ representatives for comment on Sunday. At press time, no further details or updates have been provided.
Trending on Billboard
The rock icon and vocalist for Fleetwood Mac, 76, was expected to take the stage Saturday night at the latest stop on her ongoing Live in Concert Tour across the U.S.
Nicks’ performance was postponed just hours before showtime.
In posts on social media, fans reported the show was canceled around the time doors were set to open, when they were already in line to enter the concert grounds. A video posted by a concertgoer in the comments of the announcement indicated soundcheck happened Saturday afternoon.
As of Sunday (June 16), Nicks’ published schedule has her performing on June 18 in Grand Rapids and June 21 in Chicago. What follows is a short break in her itinerary until July 3, when she’s set to jet to Europe for a gig in Dublin, Ireland. U.K. dates come next (Glasgow, Manchester and London), then stops in Antwerp, Belgium, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Last weekend Billboard saw Nicks and her touring band put on a lively show at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, with a 15-song setlist spanning solo hits and classics from Fleetwood Mac’s discography, complemented with plenty of career anecdotes told between songs. “My stories are starting to become as long as the show,” the star joked during her June 9 performance.
After opening with Bella Donna‘s “Outside the Rain” and playing the Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Dreams,” from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Nicks was in good spirits, telling the cheering crowd, “We’re very glad to be here. We got to fly in on a helicopter. It was truly magnificent.”
Taylor Swift was in storytelling mode with two surprise song mashups in Liverpool, England, Saturday night (June 15).
At the third of three shows at the city’s Anfield Stadium, Swift got creative with her acoustic set, weaving together crime mysteries for one mashup, and telling the story of an affair from the Red era with the other.
“This is what it all really comes down to, for me, in the show,” said Swift, strumming her guitar. “It’s just the most amount of, like, ‘Don’t mess this up. Don’t mess this up,’ ’cause it’s also my favorite part of the show.”
“This one, I’m gonna,” she started telling the crowd, but her voice trailed off. After pausing for a few seconds, Swift announced, “I’m gonna call this ‘The Murder Mashup.’”
She gave Liverpool the live debut of “Carolina,” the haunting song she wrote for the soundtrack of the 2022 film adaptation of Delia Owens’ murder mystery Where the Crawdads Sing — playing it alongside parts of Evermore‘s “No Body, No Crime.”
Trending on Billboard
“Carolina creeks running through my veins/ Lost I was born, lonesome I came/ Lonesome I’ll always stay/ Carolina knows why for years I roam/ Free as these birds, light as whispers/ Carolina knows,” Swift sang, continuing with the film ballad up until “there are places I will never, ever go/ And things that only Carolina will ever know.”
And then, to shrieks from around the stadium, she switched over to “He did it,” bringing “No Body, No Crime” (originally recorded with Haim) into what is now officially known as “The Murder Mashup.”
Following that pairing, the songstress softly begin playing “The Manuscript,” the contemplative closer of her 31-song The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology album, at her piano.
“She thought about how he said since she was so wise beyond her years, everything had been above board,” sang Swift, recalling a “torrid affair” with an older man in her younger years, of which she quietly reflects on in the Tortured Poets track. “She wasn’t sure.”
Swift then connected 2024’s “The Manuscript” to the bridge from 2012’s “Red”: “Remembering him comes in flashbacks and echoes/ Tell myself it’s time now, gotta let go/ But moving on from him is impossible/ When I still see it all in my head/ In burning red … Loving him was red.”
“The story isn’t mine anymore,” the closing line of “The Manuscript,” ended the piano number.
Watch clips from both of Swift’s surprise song mashups below. Stay up-to-date with her entire list of Eras Tour surprise songs here. The tour resumes in Cardiff on Tuesday, June 18, and then arrives for in London for the weekend on Friday, June 21.
Luke Combs dropped his new album Fathers & Sons on Friday, and that same night — appropriately, on Father’s Day Weekend — he was in front of 70,000-some fans at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, to celebrate his love of family… and his love of beer too.
Ahead of performing a string of love songs written about his wife of four years Nicole, Combs said fans often ask him why he records so many romantic ballads.
“I still sing beer-drinking songs too. I still like beer-drinking songs,” Combs said to wild applause. “But I love my wife. I love my kids. And if it wasn’t for her, I’d be about five No. 1s short of where I am right now. So these next couple of songs are about her.” (For the record, Combs has scored 17 No. 1 hits on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, so apparently he’d be down to a dozen without those love songs.)
Combs dedicated the newest song he performed, “The Man He Sees in Me,” to his two young sons: Tex, who was born on Father’s Day 2022 and turns 2 next week, and 10-month-old Beau. It’s the lead single from his new album, and it captures Combs’ drive to be a great dad while understanding that his kids will grow up and realize he’s not Superman (“One day between him leaving home and driving on my knee/ Maybe I’ll finally be the man he sees in me”). While the song was only released on June 6, he’s been playing it since April on his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour.
Trending on Billboard
Ahead of the song, he talked about the release of his 12-track new album Fathers & Sons. “Thank you for listening to it,” he humbly told the crowd, wearing a Los Angeles Chargers hat on the home field of both the NFL’s Chargers and Rams. “If you listened to it, thank you. If you haven’t, I hope that you do.”
But just like he said onstage, there was plenty of time for beer-drinking songs too.
The final two tracks before his encore really drove that home, starting with Combs’ 2019 Brooks & Dunn collab “1, 2 Many.” More than halfway through the song, Combs was joined by actor Luke Wilson and Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler to shotgun a beer onstage. (Well, at least one of the Lukes shotgunned a beer; Wilson took a few generous swigs before chucking his Miller Lite can into the crowd.) And next up was arguably Combs’ biggest party-starter of a song: one of those 17 Country Airplay No. 1s, 2019’s “Beer Never Broke My Heart.”
Combs returns to SoFi Stadium for night 2 on Saturday (June 15). On Friday, he was joined by The Avett Brothers, Charles Wesley Godwin, Hailey Whitters and The Wilder Blue as opening acts, and he’ll have a full new slate of openers on Saturday night: Jordan Davis, Mitchell Tenpenny, Drew Parker and Colby Acuff.
Watch the Wilson and Butler moment below, along with a little taste of “1, 2 Many.”
At 76 years old, Stevie Nicks — who breezily brought up her age a few times on stage Sunday night (June 9) — maintains the distinct, strong vocal performance for which she’s become iconic. She carries it through a showtime of about two hours, with a 15-song set and several stories spanning her fascinating journey in rock ‘n’ roll.
Nicks brought her headlining tour to the Mohegan Sun Arena, a well-designed, 10,000-seat venue in southeastern Connecticut that’s within the Mohegan Sun casino/entertainment complex owned by the Mohegan Tribe.
She has plenty to play, and so much to say — and with the life experience she’s had as an entertainer for so many years, rightly so. On Sunday Nicks was a lively conversationalist, letting her sense of humor shine while telling the crowd about her early days with Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s, how her debut solo album hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1981, and what’s currently on her mind in 2024.
Who wouldn’t want to hear what Stevie Nicks has to say? This January it’ll be 50 years since the 1975 lineup of Fleetwood Mac (with Nicks) came to be, a musical ride that followed humble beginnings alongside eventual Mac co-star Lindsey Buckingham with the Buckingham Nicks project, and preceded the ascent of her solo career.
Nicks’ concert at Mohegan Sun Arena featured setlist staples like “Dreams,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” “Stand Back,” “Leather and Lace,” “Rhiannon,” “Gypsy” and an encore of “Landslide,” a beautiful tribute to late best friend and bandmate Christine McVie. Mixed in with the chart-toppers were the singer-songwriter’s stories, almost like mini lessons on the history of Nicks’ path.
During a quick restroom break my husband overheard someone making small-talk wisecracks at the urinal: “She talks a lot, huh?” I grew up with a parent who’d listen to Fleetwood Mac albums on repeat. I could listen to her voice telling stories 100 times over and still find it soothing. We didn’t find the bathroom joke funny, but it was amusing timing.
As though she could sense what someone, somewhere, was saying, a charming Nicks was actually on stage poking fun at herself: “I’m trying, I’m making a big effort to shorten down my stories. My stories are starting to become as long as the show,” she quipped at the start of a 13-minute introduction to her performance of 1982 single “Gypsy.”
“Every time I do it, I mess up,” she said. “I take a part off, it’s impossible to understand where I’ve stopped and where I should start up again. I’m only sharing this with you because it’s part of the fun of being my age.”
“I’m so old … What’s everybody gonna say to me? ‘Stop! You can’t do this anymore!’ I’ll say, ‘OK. Fine. I’ll just go home and be alone in a rocking chair with my dog Lily,” Nicks said with a grin.
Below, see five of the best moments from Stevie Nicks’ concert at Mohegan Sun Arena. Nicks is currently on tour through June 21 in North America, then heading to Europe in July. See the full tour date list on her official website.
Stevie Arrives in Style for Her Show
06/10/2024
The weekend was packed with performances of new songs, killer costumes and more.
06/10/2024
In their early days, LOCASH earned their stripes playing the bars on Nashville’s Lower Broadway, so it was a return to their past when they took the stage at the Tin Roof to get Saturday’s party started with a rowdy, infectious, non-stop set that had the packed venue hopping from their opening tune, the 2019 hit “One Big Country Song.”
“Let’s get this party rockin’,” exclaimed Chris Lucas, as the duo followed with “Buzzin’ in the Country,” a surefire crowd pleaser with its sing-along chorus, before segueing into their first No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, 2016’s easygoing “I Know Somebody.”
Like many acts playing the event, LOCASH had a cover song in their back pocket. In this case, it was a sultry, slow-jamming take on the Prince-penned “Waterfalls,” made famous by TLC 30 years ago. The duo quickly brought it back to the present with “Hometown Home,” their first song released through the new label they started, Galaxy Label Group. “We pushed all the chips in and bet on ourselves,” Preston Brust said. And it’s paying off. The gently swaying song, which features the duo’s layered harmonies, was the Hot Shot Debut on the Country Airplay chart, bowing at No. 56.
Of all the acts playing Billboard Presents Bud Light Backyard, LOCASH got the award for traveling the most distance. Three hours before their set, the group arrived from Wisconsin, where they had played the night before, and immediately left for a show Saturday evening in Indiana.
LOCASH then called an audible and veered from the set list, diving into a breathless medley of classic rock songs, starting with The Outfield’s “Your Love,” Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69” and Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom,” before launching into Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy” and calling up the group’s lead singer, A. Jay Popoff, who lives in Nashville, to sing with them. For those several moments of pure unadulterated joy, there is no doubt that there was not a better time to be had on Lower Broadway. “Are we in trouble?” Lucas playfully asked after completing the rock segment. “I don’t know. I don’t care,” answered Brust.
After leading the audience in a chant of “Ain’t no party like a Billboard party because a Billboard party don’t stop,” complete with a spinning disco ball, LOCASH wound their segment down with their 2015 hit “I Love This Life,” which reached No. 2, before throwing signed drum sticks and guitar picks into the dancing crowd.
“What a charming Saturday” it was for Taylor Swift fans, just like the singer-songwriter narrates on “The Bolter,” one of the tracks she played live for the first time ever last night (June 8).
The Eras Tour sets Swift up to pull deep from her discography when she wants to, during her ever-changing acoustic section of the concert. Nearing her 100th show on the sprawling trek (Saturday night in Edinburgh, Scotland, was No. 98), the star got particularly unpredictable in her choice of surprise songs when she sat at the piano at the Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium.
First, on guitar, Swift debuted one of her newer songs live. She played “The Bolter,” one of the last tracks on the Anthology edition of 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, her new album that’s so far spent six consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Trending on Billboard
A song in which she tells a story that comes to the realization “hearts are hers for the breakin’” and that there’s “escape in escaping,” “The Bolter” flawlessly pivoted to 2017’s “Getaway Car,” from Reputation.
Swift performing well thought-out mashups during the surprise song part of the Eras show has become customary on the international leg of The Eras Tour, ever since the singer announced her intention to “be as creative as possible with the acoustic set moving forward,” back in February.
Saturday night in Edinburgh, she followed the mashup of “The Bolter” and “Getaway Car” with another song combo, this one more surprising than the first. On piano, she paired “All of the Girls You Loved Before,” a one-off track she released from the vault of 2019’s Lover, with a song Swift wasn’t even sure her crowd would recognize: “Crazier,” found only on the soundtrack for the 2009 film Hannah Montana: The Movie.
But the stadium had no problem recalling the swooping chorus of “Crazier,” and sang with her: “You lift my feet off the ground/ You spin me around/ You make me crazier, crazier/ Feels like I’m fallin’ and I am lost in your eyes/ You make me crazier, crazier, crazier.”
“Oh my god,” Swift said, laughing at how many people knew the words.
Watch both of Swift’s Saturday night Scotland surprises in the fan-captured clips below, and enjoy Billboard‘s complete list of all the songs we’ve heard in the Eras acoustic set (it gets updated with every tour date).
Wistful Folklore single “Cardigan” was the soundtrack to a couple’s engagement in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Friday (June 7), and Taylor Swift watched it happen. Apparently moved by the emotional moment, Swift commented on the marriage proposal she’d just seen from the stage, in front of a packed stadium.
“You put me on and said I was your favorite,” Swift sang with a smile. She looked out to the Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium crowd as she finished the song performed atop the The Eras Tour’s Folklore cabin.
“I love performing this entire show in the sunlight ’cause I’m pretty sure I just saw somebody get engaged over here,” she said to cheers confirming she wasn’t imagining things. “Did it happen?” Swift eagerly asked, and then threw her arms up, giggled and yelled, “YES!”
Trending on Billboard
“You have no idea,” continued Swift. “I never get to see that, right? ‘Cause it’s dark, usually, at night. But it’s not right now, so congratulations! Wow.”
“I just saw that whole thing!” she marveled. “Man, that’s amazing.”
Picking up her guitar, she added to the couple, “Thanks for doing that at my concert. That’s a big moment. Huge!”
Later in the concert, the extra light in Edinburgh helped the singer make sure her fans stayed safe during her always-anticipated acoustic set, when she performs solo and enjoys some audience interaction at the endstage.
Mid-strum during “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” from the 3am edition of Midnights — which she combined with pieces of 1989‘s “I Know Places,” as one of her surprise performances at the show — the star stopped singing the bridge.
To the tune of the song, she said, “I need help right in front of me, please, right in front of me. Just gonna keep playing until we notice where it is.”
Pointing her guitar in the direction of a person in need of assistance in the general admission floor area of the venue, she said, “Right there,” and then, “I’m just gonna keep playing ’til somebody helps them … We’re not gonna keep singing. We’re just gonna keep talking about the people that we help in front of me … Just let me know when. I could do this all night,” eventually resuming her song when she was sure the person got the attention they needed.
Swift followed the guitar performance with a mashup of Evermore‘s “‘Tis the Damn Season” and Lover‘s “Daylight” on piano.
Below, watch the newly engaged couple’s romantic moment, seemingly documented by fellow Swifties with cell phones, and a closeup clip of Swift’s reaction from the stage.
Plus, see Swift’s interaction with the crowd during “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve.”
📹 | FULL video of Taylor performing the most chaotic surprise songs ever 😅‘Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve’ x ‘I Know Places’ 💙🩵 pic.twitter.com/YLbi4um8d4— The Eras Tour Singapore (@TSTheErasTourSG) June 8, 2024
The beer and music were flowing at the first day of Billboard Presents Bud Light Backyard at CMA Fest as fans took a break from the Nashville heat and took in some great performances by some of today’s hottest hitmakers at a jammed Tin Roof on Lower Broadway on Friday (June 7). Fans enjoyed line dancing lessons […]
It’s sort of a weird time to be Post Malone. On one hand, he’s coming off the two most-difficult, least-successful albums of his career — the last of which, 2023’s Austin, failed to even generate a single top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit, marking a clear commercial low point for the pop-rap gold-spinner who was surpassed only by Drake in terms of consistent chart success for the second half of the 2010s. On the other hand, he’s already had two No. 1 hits this year, albeit both with co-stars (Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen, respectively) whose radio and streaming clout currently easily eclipse his own. Further complicating things: The latter of those two No. 1s marks the beginning of his long-hyped full foray into country music, a genre he has some obvious spiritual kinship with, but only tangential musical relation.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
This was a lot to balance for Post Malone during his headlining set at day one of New York’s Governors Ball festival (now officially referred to as just “Gov Ball”) — or at least, it seems like it should have been. But instead of trying to thread the needle between his successful past, his muddier present and his uncertain future, Post decided to simplify things with Gov Ball setlist: He simply played the hits. And he’s got a lot of them: more than you may even remember, more than maybe seems possible for a guy who’s only been making ’em since 2015 and has been in a relatively fallow period for ’em since the decade turned. As far as streamlining strategies go, it was a pretty undeniable one.
Trending on Billboard
“My name is Austin Richard Post,” the singer-rapper introduced himself after his first two songs, “and I’m here to play some s–tty songs and get a little bit f–ked up while we do it.” Whether dismissing his signature hits as “s–tty” was a sign of residual bitterness over his heavier, more personal recent work not being received as warmly as his debauched early hits or just the artist not taking himself too seriously, it ended up not really mattering, since it became clear pretty quickly Post was not interested in relitigating anything about his career on the evening. Instead, he played one smash after another — from “Better Now” and “Wow” through “Circles” and “Congratulations” — while gleefully shimmying, screaming, two-stepping and stripping (his shirt, anyway) on stage, looking every bit the superstar he was at his commercial peak.
The question of a Post Malone gig has traditionally not been whether he’d seem like a star, but what kind of star would lead the way: rap star Post, rock star Post, pop star Post, or now even country star Post? In truth, he’s been all four for some time — well, the first three, anyway, with the fourth seemingly on its way. But if one was the most forward on Friday night, it was probably rock star Post, with the first two songs (and many subsequent cuts) both being introduced via the grungy riffs of guitarist Liv Slingerland, and more six-string-heavy (and just heavy period) borderline inclusions like Beerbongs and Bentleys‘ “Over Now” and Hollywood’s Bleeding’s “Take What You Want” making the cut. There was lots of growling and shredding; one time, Post threw up the devil horns while hunching his shoulders and he very briefly kinda even looked like Ronnie James Dio. At some point in the middle of the set, the mix of loud, chunking guitars with rapping — largely about being angry at girls — inspired me to write in my notes: Has Post Malone been nu-metal this whole time?
But if country star Post is indeed on the horizon, you would not have known it from his Gov Ball performance. Just a day after making a pair of surprise appearances at CMA Fest — including one alongside longtime Nashville fixture Blake Shelton, with the two even covering a George Jones song together — he did not bring out Shelton, or Wallen, or any guest to further shepherd his new country pivot. (Aside from a couple fans pulled out of the audience to assist on signature ballad “Stay,” there were no guests of any kind during Post’s performance, not even “Rockstar” buddy 21 Savage, who’ll perform at Gov Ball on Saturday.) No mention was made by Post of his recent sonic and geographical detour, nor did he try out any brand new or unreleased material from his rumored upcoming full length. If you didn’t know going into the set that Going Country was a thing Post was currently in the midst of doing, you probably didn’t come out of it knowing either.
There was still the one obvious clue, though you had to wait till the second song of the encore for it: “I Had Some Help,” the reigning No. 1 song in the country, did eventually make its appearance as the evening’s pentultimate track. (As for “Fortnight,” his other No. 1 of 2024, forget it — it’s one thing for Post to sing over a Morgan Wallen verse, but trying to approximate an entire Taylor Swift lead vocal on his own would’ve been potentially disastrous on multiple levels.) “Help” sounded fantastic, and the crowd went bananas for it, but aside from its placement in the setlist Post gave it no special treatment, no lead-in or extra emphasis or anything to make you think it was a particularly notable song than most in Friday’s setlist. The implication was clear: “Help” is a hit, but still just one of many for Posty, and no one player is bigger than the team in a Post Malone setlist.
More of a statement, however, was the choice of the encore’s final song: “Chemical,” the biggest song from Austin, whose No. 13 peak was still fairly underwhelming by his career standards. It was the only song performed from the 2023 album — he played four times as many from 2016 debut Stoney — but it landed just like any of his bigger, longer-established hits, sounding much fuller live than on record, and making for a perfectly resounding closing number for the evening. The suggestion seemed to be that Post had never really stopped making big singles in the first place — and that regardless of whether on a given day he might be presenting more as a pop star, rap star, rock star or country star, what he truly is and always will be first and foremost is a hitmaker.
SETLIST
Better NowWowZack and CodeinePsychoGoodbyesI Like You (A Happier Song)Jonestown (Interlude)Take What You WantOver NowRockstarStayI Fall ApartWrapped Around Your FingerCirclesToo YoungWhite IversonCongratulations
Encore:
SunflowerI Had Some HelpChemical