genre rock
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Laura Jane Grace set out to make a point with a recent performance of a new song. It turns out, the song went right over the heads of the people she was hoping would hear it most.
On Friday (March 7), Sen. Bernie Sanders hosted a town hall as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour across the country in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and invited Grace to perform on stage. One of the songs she performed — her February released “Your God (God’s D–k)” — caused immediate outrage online over its profane lyrics and religious themes.
In the song, Grace makes a point that while religious conservatives have a problem using the proper pronouns for trans people, they seem to have no problem imposing gender on an omnipresent, non-physical deity. “Does your god have a big fat d–k? ‘Cause it feels like he’s f—ing me,” Grace sings on the track. “Are his b–ls filled with lightning?/ Do they dangle like heaven’s keys?”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Grace said that the purpose of the song was to open people’s eyes to the double standard of gender constructs today. “I’m not being profane to be profane, I’m not just saying ‘d–k’ to say ‘d–k.’ I’m asking a genuine question,” she said. “If you refer to your God as he and him, but you will not refer to a transgender person with the pronouns that are theirs … that’s just insane.”
Grace continued, adding that the outrage itself was representative of the larger problem around the right’s attack on trans people. “It’s such blatant hypocrisy. You can’t prove God exists with biology or chromosomes,” she said. “So if you’re gonna throw science continually in my face, let’s stick to that: Your god doesn’t exist.”
Sanders’ event was aimed at protesting president Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ proposed plans to cut federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid that low-income families rely on. “4,000 people came out to say: NO tax breaks for billionaires,” he wrote on Instagram following his Kenosha event. “NO cuts to Medicaid. NO oligarchy. NO authoritarianism. NO MORE billionaires buying elections.”
The White House has since stated that Trump “will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” but has alleged that there is “waste and fraud in entitlement spending” without providing concrete evidence of where that waste and fraud exists in programs like Medicare or Medicaid.
For decades, rock music dominated the sales charts, with bands like the Beatles, AC/DC, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin among some of the top-selling acts in recorded music history. But while rock music remains the second-biggest genre in the U.S., it lags far behind market leader R&B/hip-hop and third-placed pop when it comes to streaming.
For the prior year ended Jan. 2, 2025, R&B/hip-hop led the U.S. industry with 27.2% of audio consumption units, besting rock by just 1.7%, the latter coming in at 25.5%, according to Luminate. (These figures subtract activity from titles unassigned to any genre.) But for current market share — defined by Luminate as releases from the last 18 months — rock’s share of the market slips to 11.9%, less than half of that 25.5% mark that includes catalog titles, too.
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That might help explain some of the weakness of rock’s biggest acts in the streaming era. For decades, the music industry measured success using numbers in the millions: an album or song that sold 1 million copies was a platinum record; a diamond record, at 10 million copies, was a smash success. But while those milestones still apply for albums, the streaming era means the industry measures success in the hundreds of millions — and, increasingly, in the billions for huge success stories.
That makes 1 billion annual on-demand U.S. streams a reliable barometer of success for the biggest acts in the country, with the 2 billion stream plateau seemingly the measure of superstar status. But it’s heavily skewed towards genres — like R&B/hip-hop and pop — that have thrived in the streaming format. In 2024, streaming accounted for 91.2% of U.S. album consumption unit totals, vs. 8.8% from sales; while rock leads in market share for the sales formats with 35.8%, it trails R&B/hip-hop in streaming by a whopping 10 percentage points, 19.69% to 29.78%, respectively.
Last year, 51 artist catalogs passed the 2 billion stream mark in the U.S., not including any collaborations, according to Luminate. Of those artists, only one core rock artist hit that milestone: Linkin Park, at 2.25 billion. Meanwhile, four country artists — Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Chris Stapleton — achieved that distinction, as did three Latin artists, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma and Fuerza Regida. Another 11 artists that passed the 2 billion stream mark could be considered pop, including Taylor Swift (16.5 billion on-demand streams); Billie Eilish (5.16 billion); and Noah Kahan (3.2 billion). That means the vast majority of artists with over 2 billion streams in 2024 — 32, to be exact — could be considered R&B/hip-hop, led by Drake, the artist with the second-biggest stream count in the U.S. at 10.1 billion streams in 2024, down slightly from the prior year’s 11.5 billion. (Equivalent album units and streaming figures cited in this story include user generated content (UGC) on-demand streams, which are not factored into any of Billboard‘s chart rankings.)
So while it might be easy to think that rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, the Beatles, the Eagles, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones are among the biggest artists in the U.S, the big names in R&B/hip-hop swamp the iconic rock bands when it comes to streaming counts.
For example, not only did none of the above recording acts pass the 2 billion stream mark in 2024, but none of them have hit that milestone in the last five years. By comparison, attaining the 2 billion stream milestone is fairly routine for R&B/hip-hop acts — in fact, a strong contingent of R&B/hip-hop and pop artists annually surpass even 3 billion on-demand streams each year.
Billboard analyzed more than 90 of the top acts in the U.S. and compiled an average of each act’s annual stream count over the five-year period of 2020-2024, with Taylor Swift (10.74 billion average annual streams) and Drake (9.2 billion annually) leading the way. And many of the R&B/hip-hop artists analyzed showed hugely impressive averages. For that 2020-2024 period, those artists include NBA YoungBoy, whose five-year annual average for the U.S. on-demand streams stands at 6.2 billion; Juice WRLD (4.8 billion); The Weeknd (4.6 billion); Kanye West (4.043 billion); Eminem (4.037 billion); Future (3.7 billion); Kendrick Lamar (3.3 billion); J. Cole (3.15 billion); and Travis Scott (2.79 billion), according to Billboard calculations based on Luminate data.
Among rock artists, it’s a completely different story; only in the last two to three years have some of the other big-name rock artists hit the latter milestone.
Nevertheless, of the 45 or so big-name rock acts that Billboard examined for this article, eight have achieved the 1 billion milestone in each of the past five years, and one band — Imagine Dragons — reached 2 billion twice (2.3 billion in 2022 and 2.47 billion in 2023), making it the only rock act to average north of 2 billion over the period (2.04 billion).
Of the remaining bands with five years all over the 1 billion stream mark, one of those rock acts is the most famous band in the world, the Beatles; and, at a 1.91 billion average, they are the only other rock act even close to 2 billion annual streams. The other rock acts to reach the mark every year are Queen (1.38 billion annual average streams); AC/DC (1.2 billion annual average); Linkin Park (1.5 billion average, having broken the 2 billion mark in 2024); Maroon 5 (1.73 billion); Coldplay (1.6 billion); and Twenty One Pilots (1.24 billion).
Four other rock acts averaged over 1 billion streams annually during the period, but only hit the mark four times: Metallica (1.26 billion); the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1.15 billion); Panic! At the Disco (1.1 billion); and the Eagles (nearly 1.1 billion). Elton John (1.02 billion average) hit the mark in three of the years from the five-year period, as did Elvis, whose annual average was just shy of 935 million.
The Rolling Stones (958 million annual average) and Creedence Clearwater Revival (955 million) each hit 1 billion streams twice during the past five years, while Green Day, Billy Joel and Radiohead accomplished it once.
That leaves some major names that have yet to reach the 1 billion mark. Of the bands Billboard chose to examine, that includes Led Zeppelin, who averaged nearly 931 million streams annually over the last five years; and Pink Floyd, at an annual average of 844 million streams. Guns ‘N Roses, Aerosmith, Van Halen, The Beach Boys and the Killers all averaged between 500 million and 800 million streams annually for the period, while David Bowie, the Police, Grateful Dead and Creed were between 300 million and 500 million annually.
Still, 300 million streams is nothing to sneeze at. These days, that would bring in nearly $1.6 million in master recording revenues alone, Billboard estimates.
We still don’t know who will join Liam and Noel Gallagher on stage for Oasis‘ eagerly anticipated 2025 reunion tour. But even if you weren’t able to score tickets to the siblings’ upcoming first live shows since their acrimonious break-up in 2009, you will definitely be able to re-live it thanks to a just-announced live film chronicling the get-back nobody thought would ever happen.
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The band announced on Thursday morning (March 13) that a film documenting the Oasis Live ’25 tour will be created and produced by BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated writer/producer/director Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Spencer, Dirty Pretty Things) and directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (Meet Me in the Bathroom, Shut Up and Play the Hits).
No release date has been announced yet — and no further details were revealed about the content of the film — for the project that will be distributed by Sony Music Vision.
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Fans are starved for any information about the tour, including who will be performing alongside singer Liam and guitarist/occasional vocalist and songwriter Noel, though a report from the NME that purported to have the inside scoop on the rest of the band earlier this week was quickly rubbished by Liam.
After the British music mag claimed to have the line-up thanks to “sources working closely with the band and tour,” Liam slapped back in a post in which he demanded, “NME tell me who your source pots are that keep giving you info about OASIS and I’ll give you an exclusive interview about up n coming OASIS tour. You can have it all but how much do you want it.”
A short time later, he added, “It’s not the lineup reveal I’m bothered about I’ll reveal that to you in a minute I’m more bothered about the line where it says a source close to the band and tour that really causes me a great deal of concern.” Forever cheeky, Liam then confirmed who would be on stage with him and his brother, claiming it would be ““Tony Mc drums Alan white bass guitar Zak lead guitar Chris Sharrock keys.”
Fans in the know quickly surmised he was just kidding, since all four men served as drummers in the band at some point. “That’s a BANGING line up,” Liam joked.
Oasis have announced 40 dates so far for the Live ’25 tour, which will kick off on July 4 with the first of two shows at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, criss-crossing the U.K. before landing in Toronto on August 24 for a run of North American stadium dates, then moving on to Mexico City, South Korean, Japan, Australia and South America.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were never shy about sharing their love story with the cameras. The late Beatle and his wife/Plastic Ono Band co-leader are center stage in the first trailer for One to One: John & Yoko, an upcoming documentary from Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald that tells the story of a life-changing, fast-moving 18-month period in the couple’s lives in the early 1970s.
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The two-minute clip opens with audio of Lennon calling someone named Howard, in which the woman on the other end begins to spell out the singer’s name only to realize who she’s talking to. “You’re a member of the Beatles?” she asks. “That’s right, yeah,” Lennon answers nonchalantly. From there, the footage explodes into a collage of images of bombs falling in the Vietnam war and the couple preparing for a charity show as Lennon says, “good morning, folks. Have you had your breakfast yet,” accompanied by, yes, footage of the pop icon having his bowl of morning cereal.
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We see a flip-book of footage of John and Yoko leaning into their new lives in the city, shopping for clothes and goofing around with friends as Yoko says, “the Flower Generation is over, but we can start all over again, right?,” which leads into a famous image of the couple from behind throwing up raised fists as the Statue of Liberty hovers on the horizon.
The movie is a chronicle of the couple’s new life in New York post-Beatles in 1972, following them as they move into an apartment in Greenwich Village and prepare for their One to One Concerts, a two-show all-star charity event for children with special needs that they threw at Madison Square Garden in August 1972. It was the only full-length performance by Lennon in the wake of the Fab Four’s split two years earlier and in addition to the Plastic Ono Band it featured sets by Stevie Wonder, Sha Na Na and Roberta Black, among others.
Asked by a reporter at the time why they were doing the free shows, Lennon said, “to change the apathy that the youth have.” The couple’s only child, musician Sean Ono Lennon — seen in clips as a toddler — produced and remixed the concert audio for the movie, with the trailer ending with footage of Lennon , wearing his signature tinted round eyeglasses, performing his signature hit “Imagine” at the concerts.
The film also features newly transferred and restored footage from that era along with previously unseen and unheard items from the couple’s personal archives, including phone calls and home movies recorded and filmed by Lennon and Ono during the 18 months the couple lived in a cramped Greenwich Village apartment in the early 1970s.
“How would you like to be remembered?” a reporter asks Lennon at one point. “Just as two lovers,” he responds. The movie will be released exclusively in IMAX on April 11 and in wider release on April 18 and then stream later this year on Max.
Watch the One to One trailer below.
Nick Cave has responded to the viral comments he once made about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, clarifying his current stance on the band in the process.
Cave’s comments about the Los Angeles funk-rockers have circulated as something of a punchline for roughly 25 years now. Though their exact origins appear to have been lost to time, the quote is often attributed to Cave as, “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always ‘The Red Hot Chili Peppers.’”
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Chili Peppers bassist Flea (who, like Cave, was born in the Australian state of Victoria) responded to Cave’s scathing remark in 2006, noting that it initially hurt his feelings since he’s a huge fan of the Bad Seeds frontman.
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“I don’t care if Nick Cave hates my band because his music means everything to me,” Flea said. “He is one of my favorite songwriters and singers and musicians of all time. I love all the incarnations of the Bad Seeds. But it only hurt my feelings for a second because my love for his music is bigger than all that shit and if he thinks my band is lame then that’s OK.”
Now, Cave has taken to his Red Hand Files website to respond to a fan asking about the truthfulness of the quote, referring to his comments as an “offhand and somewhat uncharitable remark” about the band.
“There was no malice intended, it was just the sort of obnoxious thing I would say back then to piss people off,” Cave explained. “I was a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, feeling most at ease in the role of a societal irritant. Perhaps it’s an Australian trait among people of my generation, I don’t know, but that comment has followed me around for the last quarter-century.”
Cave also recalled how Flea’s own response had made its way to him, moving him and bringing forth the realization that “Flea was a human being of an entirely different calibre, indeed, of a higher order.” He also added that the pair have since apparently patched things up, with “pleasant” interactions following both on and off the stage in different iterations over the years.
The response closed with the revelation that Flea is apparently in the process of crafting a new album, with Cave noting he recently added his vocals to the new record which sees Flea’s trumpet-playing skills on full display.
“Last week, Flea sent me a song and asked if I’d like to add some vocals. It was for a ‘trumpet record’ that he is making,” Cave explained. “It is not for me to divulge what the song was, only that it is a song I cherish more than most, with arguably the greatest lyric ever written, a song of such esteem that I would never have dared to sing it had Flea not asked me to. I went into the studio on Wednesday and recorded my vocals.
“The track emerged as a beautiful conversation between Flea’s trumpet and my voice, filled with yearning and love, the song transcending its individual parts and becoming a slowly evolving cosmic dance, in the form of a reconciliation and an apology.”
With a matter of months to go before Oasis launch their long-awaited reunion tour, reports of the band’s line-up have seemingly begun to leak, and Liam Gallagher is having fun with it as always.
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Since the announcement that Oasis would be performing their first live shows since 2009, speculation has swirled in regard to who would be joining Liam and Noel Gallagher on stage.
At the time of their split, the band officially featured Gem Archer on guitar, with Andy Bell taking on bass, guitar, and keyboards. A series of touring drummers had sat behind the kit since the 2004 departure of Alan “Whitey” White, with Chris Sharrock holding the beat at their final shows.
Just a week ago, Liam took to X to share a jovial confirmation as to who would actually be on stage this summer. “Here we have it Peppa pig on drums Bert n Ernie on lead guitar n bass finger bobs on keyboard,” Gallagher tweeted, including beloved 1970s U.K. children’s program Fingerbobs in the mix. He added, “obv me n Rkid [his nickname for Noel] hope that clears everything up can’t wait to see you all who’s says RnR is dead.”
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However, a new report from NME has since put forth a more believable version of Oasis’ line-up, with “sources working closely with the band and tour” apparently providing the info. This version of the band features the Gallaghers joined by Archer and Bell, along with Oasis co-founder Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, and Joey Waronker, who has previously performed with R.E.M., Beck, Roger Waters, and more.
“NME tell me who your source pots are that keep giving you info about OASIS and I’ll give you an exclusive interview about up n coming OASIS tour,” Gallagher wrote in response to the report. “You can have it all but how much do you want it.”
“It’s not the lineup reveal I’m bothered about I’ll reveal that to you in a minute I’m more bothered about the line where it says a source close to the band and tour that really causes me a great deal of concern,” he added an hour later.
Gallagher soon offered another message apparently confirming who would be appearing on stage, claiming the line-up would be “Tony Mc drums Alan white bass guitar Zak lead guitar Chris Sharrock keys.”
However, eagle-eyed fans would note that founding drummer Tony McCarroll, his successor White, and touring members Zak Starkey and Sharrock are all in fact previous percussionists in the band. “That’s a BANGING line up,” Gallagher added.
He further added humor into the mix by claiming that Bonehead and founding drummer Paul “Guigsy” McGuigan would be serving as “pole dancers either side of stage there idea not mine bfore you all start on the faministik nonsense.” When pressed about the identity of the vocalist, Gallagher swiftly replied by noting, “ME you lunatic.”
To date, Oasis have lined up more than 40 dates for their Live ’25 outing, which will hit stadiums in the U.K., North America, Asia, Australia and South America from July through November. So far, the only confirmed participants are the Gallaghers — who have not shared a stage since August 2009.
Sure, Carrie Underwood is the country star behind hits like “Before He Cheats” and “All-American Girl,” but turns out, she’s also a huge fan of nu-metal. In a clip from season 23 of American Idol, in which Underwood took over for Katy Perry on the judges panel alongside Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie, an 18-year-old […]
At this point, even Billy Corgan isn’t sure what is real life and what is fantasy. Since the Smashing Pumpkins singer appeared on Howie Mandel’s Does Stuff podcast in November and revealed that his stepmother once told him that comedian Bill Burr might be one of his half-brothers after Mandel accidentally put a photo of the stand-up instead of the rocker, things have gotten progressively weirder.
After the two men were then surprised by Mandel when he had them unexpectedly meet for the first time in person on his pod earlier this year, Corgan, 57, told People magazine that the meet-weird was not a bit, but actually the real thing.
“It was one of those rare moments where I think all three of us really didn’t know where it was going. And you see that, and that’s what makes it sort of interesting,” Corgan said of the episode Mandel dubbed “Family Reunion with Bill Burr & Billy Corgan.”
“There’s enough energy there that that’s why it’s not a bit, because it’s really about confronting something in a way that none of us really knew what that confrontation would lead to, and you see it play out,” he continued. “You see jokes, but you also see kind of like, oh, there’s something there.”
It was so real, in fact, that Corgan said some close friends still ask him about the interaction, and ask for receipts. “A really good friend of mine said to me, looking around, ‘Okay, now tell me the truth.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re related,’” Corgan said. “And then my friend said, ‘Well, I think you are.’ And I said, ‘Well, I guess it’s possible because he really does look like my father in a way that’s almost shocking to me.’ So then my friend goes, ‘Well then get a DNA test.’”
While Corgan has heard stories about his late musician father — William Corgan, who died in 2021 — allegedly having a number of children out of wedlock, the rocker said one of the intriguing things about the potential mid-life reveal of a half-brother in 56-year-old fellow chrome dome Burr is that there is no definitive answer for now.
“It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s sort of strange,” Corgan said. “It really started from honest things, which are, my father may have fathered 12 other children, and the facts of Bill’s life actually do match the story that I was told. There’s no invention there.”
Burr was audibly and visibly upset by the unannounced family reunion, lambasting his longtime friend Mandel, and almost walking out of the interview in protest. “He’s bringing it here, not because he’s trying to heal the bulls–t that we went through growing up. He’s getting here just for the f–king ratings,” Burr said of Mandel during the awkward appearance.
Mandel did eventually leave the room and the two men traded stories about the man they both described as their dad, though Burr initially was not able to let go of his anger about the surprise. Asking what Mandel thought was going to happen, Burr wondered, “Are we going to play catch? We’re both in our 50s!”
Mandel later apologized for the unexpected bit, saying on a subsequent pod, “I feel horrible and I’m sorry, Bill. I’m sorry, Billy. I only tried to do something good,” noting that at that point in early February he had not heard a “peep” from his longtime friend Burr.
Metallica will be seriously in your face come this Friday (March 14). The heavy metal legends announced on Tuesday (March 11) that their 2024 Mexico City show has been optimized as an immersive experience on the Apple Vision Pro headset. The concert featuring such beloved hits as “Enter Sandman,” “One” and “Whiplash” will be beamed […]
30 years since the Smashing Pumpkins released Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, frontman Billy Corgan is reimagining the record for a series of opera performances.
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The event, dubbed A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, will take place in the musician’s hometown, with the Lyric Opera of Chicago hosting the event for seven evenings beginning Nov. 21. Tickets to the event go on sale from Friday, April 11.
The arrangements and orchestrations for the production are being undertaken by Corgan and James Lowe to craft “a new commission inspired by one of the greatest alternative albums of all time.” According to a description of the event on the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s website, Corgan and some unnamed special guests will team up with the Lyric Opera’s Orchestra and Chorus to offer a “completely new, sonic and visual experience” that provides the chance for fans hear the Smashing Pumpkins’ music “in a sumptuous new dimension.”
“It is thrilling to collaborate with Lyric head John Mangum, my musical partner James Lowe, and all of the artists at Lyric in reimagining this very special and historic album, and to discover how Lyric’s full operatic treatment is helping me experience my own compositions in powerful new ways,” Corgan said in a statement.
“Opera and rock both tell stories of heightened emotions, and I am excited for both fans of my music and traditional opera fans to hear some truly inspired work; for the balance here is to honor both traditions in a magisterial way.”
“Next season is filled with a tremendous range of lavish and powerful opera productions that we are excited to share with our audiences,” added Lyric Opera of Chicago President and CEO John Mangum. “I’m just as excited about the special performances like ‘A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness’ that open the aperture and expand the definition of opera and what an American opera company can be.”
First released in the U.S. on Oct. 24, 1995, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the Smashing Pumpkins’ third record, and their first double-album. Though often described as a concept album (with Corgan himself referring to the album as “The Wall for Generation X”), the record was a departure in terms of what the band had crafted on the previous efforts, with Corgan telling Billboard in 1995 that the somewhat grandiose 28-track release was still a “song-based album.”
The efforts of the band were rewarded at the time, with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness managing to become the Smashing Pumpkins’ first release to debut atop the Billboard 200 (despite the increased price resulting from its two-CD format). The record also garnered seven nominations at the 1997 Grammys, including album of the year and best alternative music album, ultimately winning best hard rock performance for lead single, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.”
A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness Dates
November 2025: 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30