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For the record, Bono said he has never endorsed a politician for office. But when Jimmy Kimmel asked him on Tuesday night (May 27) where he stood in the ongoing, escalating battle between Donald Trump and Bruce Springsteen, the socially conscious U2 singer said there was only one endorsement he could possibly give.
“I think there’s only one ‘Boss’ in America,” the Irish rock legend responded cheekily in reference to Springsteen’s longtime nickname. The dig at the president came after a recent late night Truth Social rant in which Trump called for a “major investigation” into celebrities who supported former vice president Kamala Harris in her White House bid. “HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT?” Trump wrote. “WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? …AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO???”
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According to Newsweek, there is no official record of any of those artist being paid to perform in support of Harris. In addition, Irish citizen Bono did not endorse a candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and did not participate in any campaign events.
That said, Bono was more than happy to be included in the Trump dump. “To be in the company of Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé and Oprah, I’d play tambourine in that band,” he told Kimmel, clarifying that neither he nor U2 have ever “paid or played a show to support any candidate from any party. It has never happened. It’s called ‘Truth Social,’ but it seems to be very antisocial and it’s not very true,” he quipped about the president’s social media platform.
He did, however, suspect that his name may have made it into Trump’s rant because he co-founded the non-profit One Campaign, a global non-partisan organization that has raised millions to create economic opportunities in Africa. In the midst of the Trump administration’s unprecedented dismantling of U.S. government agencies — including efforts to completely defund and eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development — Bono noted that people across the political spectrum, including the many “very religious Catholics and evangelicals and conservatives” who support his organization are “very, very, very angry with the person that they voted into office having demolished instruments of mercy and compassion, like USAID or PEPFAR,” he said.
The latter is a reference to a global initiative launched by Republican President George W. Bush in 2003 that is credited to date with saving 26 million lives of people living with AIDS and and allowing nearly 8 million babies to be born with HIV infection. “They are not happy and there will be trouble,” Bono predicted of the blow-back from Trump’s actions.
While he was happy to weigh in on the American pop-litical back-and-forth, Bono was actually there to promote his new biographical film, Bono: Stories of Surrender, which premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday (May 30). In a rare TV chat appearance, the singer jokingly said the memoir-tuned-one-man-show-turned-film has him playing an “aging rock star on a massive ego trip… It’s quite a stretch.”
He briefly described how the film had him exploring his “rather complicated” relationship with his strong-willed late father, Brendan Robert Hewson, as well as his own struggles to be a good father and son. When Kimmel noted that the film got a nearly 9-minute ovation at its Cannes Film Festival debut, Bono, despite being one of the world’s biggest rock stars, admitted to feeling a sense of imposter syndrome while walking the red carpet at the glamorous French film fête.
In fact, he was somewhat unnerved to even sit with Kimmel, asking actress daughter Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters) for advice, which she dutifully provided. “‘Dad, just bring it,’” she counseled the 65-year-old music legend. “And I’m like, ‘bring what?,’” he replied. “She said, ‘it. It. Just answer Jimmy’s questions. None of the jazz conversation without full stops and commas. Just answer his question, no false modesty.’”
Sage advice indeed. So, when Kimmel asked what’s next for U2, Bono gave a somewhat jazz-less answer. “Oh, oh yes,” Bono said in response to a query about whether the band is recording new music. “We’ve been in a studio. I think you’ve sometimes got to deal with the past to get to the present… in order to make the sound of the future.”
Bono described the sound as that of “four men who feel like their lives depend on it,” noting that “nobody needs a new U2 album unless it’s an extraordinary one. And I’m feeling very strong about it.” The unnamed album would be the follow-up to 2023’s Songs of Surrender, which featured re-recorded versions of 40 of the group’s previously released tracks.
Pumping up the jazz, Bono said the new tracks are songs for the “kitchen… the speedway, the garage… just for every part of your life. Songs to make up to, songs to break up to.” The best news is that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is back in the fold following neck surgery that kept him out of U2’s residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere in late 2023 and early 2024. “He’s really innovative,” Bono said of the band’s time keeper.
Watch Bono on Jimmy Kimmel Live! below.
Wet Leg has shared the second taste of its upcoming album Moisturizer with the LP’s opening track, “CPR.” The song was released on Tuesday evening (May 27) and follows its live debut at a recent run of live shows. The group – led by singer Rhian Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers – headlined two nights […]
As anticipation builds for surprise appearances at Glastonbury 2025, Sir Rod Stewart has confirmed that Ronnie Wood will join him for a Faces reunion during his Legends set. In a new interview on That Peter Crouch Podcast, Stewart explained that he was still in regular contact with the Rolling Stones guitarist. The pair were previously bandmates in the late ’60s/early ’70s blues rock band, alongside drummer Kenney Jones.
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“Woody, I do [speak to] a lot,” the 79-year-old said. “Just recently, ’cause we’re gonna do Glastonbury together.” You can listen to the podcast in full here.
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Faces hinted at a comeback last month, with Jones revealing in an interview with The Telegraph that the band had recorded “about 11 tracks” at RAK Studios in London for a new album – which would be their first full-length effort in over 50 years.“I can’t see it coming out this year. But I can see it coming out next year,” he continued. “Everyone’s doing different things. We do little snippets [of recording] here and there. Then all of a sudden, The Stones are out [on tour] again, Rod’s out again…”
First formed in 1969 through a merger between members of Small Faces and the Jeff Beck Group, Faces existed for six years before guitarist Wood left to join the Rolling Stones, and Stewart continued his burgeoning solo career. The group have released four albums, with 1971’s A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse hitting No. 6 on the Billboard 200.
Glastonbury will take place at Worthy Farm, Somerset next month (June 25-29) with headliners The 1975, Neil Young, and Olivia Rodrigo. Stewart last performed at the festival in 2002, topping the bill alongside Coldplay and Stereophonics that year.
The “Maggie May” singer will take to the Pyramid Stage on Sunday afternoon for the Legends slot – one of the most coveted in the festival’s history. Previous bookings have included Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Lionel Richie, Kylie Minogue and Diana Ross, with Shania Twain performing in the Legends slot in 2024.
Shortly after he was announced for this year’s event, Stewart said he was “proud, ready and more than able to pleasure and titillate my friends at Glastonbury.” He was the first name to be confirmed for Glastonbury 2025, which sold out in under an hour last autumn following the introduction of a new online queuing system.
2025’s edition will mark the final event to take place at Worthy Farm before the traditional fallow year in 2026, which sees the landowner Michael Eavis and his family allow the grounds to recover every four years. The festival will return again in 2027.
Ten years on from the release of his acclaimed seventh album, Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens has offered a surprising re-evaluation of the record.
Originally released in March 2015, Carrie & Lowell was Stevens’ first studio album since 2010’s The Age of Adz, and would ultimately peak at No. 10 on the Billboard 200, while topping the Independent and Folk Albums charts, and hitting No. 2 on the Top Alternative and Rock Albums.
Despite the highs of its success, the record was steeped in sadness and misery, with much of its musical and lyrical content being inspired by the 2012 passing of his estranged mother Carrie, and the relationship with his stepfather, Lowell Brams.
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As part of the record’s anniversary reissue, Stevens has collected a batch of demos to accompany its release, pairing it all with an in-depth essay that sees him ruminating on the album’s recording process and his thoughts behind it all.
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Speaking to NPR ahead of the reissue’s arrival this week, Stevens used the opportunity to share a harsh reassessment of the original album, going so far as to label it “evidence of creative and artistic failure from my vantage point.”
“I was trying to make sense of something that is senseless,” he explained. “I felt that I was being manipulative and self-centered and solipsistic and self-loathing, and that the approach that I had taken to my work, which is to kind of create beauty from chaos, was failing me. It was very frustrating. And for the first time I realized that not everything can be sublimated into art, that some things just remain unsolvable, or insoluble. I think I was really just frustrated by even trying to make sense of the experience of grief through the songs.”
Describing the recording process as “painful, humiliating, and an utter miscarriage of bad intentions” in his essay, Stevens doubles down on his stance, focusing on his mother’s inability to add her own voice into the record’s somewhat voyeuristic narrative.
“I’m kind of embarrassed by this album, to be honest with you,” he explains. “Because I sort of feel like I don’t have any authority over my mother and her life or experience or her death. All I have is speculation and my imagination and my own misery, and in trying to make sense of it all, I kind of felt like it didn’t really resolve anything.”
Continuing his retrospective look back at the record, Stevens is also asked whether he regrets having made the record. “Yeah, I do. I feel bad,” he explains. “It’s just a bummer that my mother’s not alive and can’t speak for herself. What would she say about all this? Maybe she would be proud. I’ll never know.”
The forthcoming anniversary edition of Carrie & Lowell also includes a demo version of the track “Mystery of Love,” of which a studio version would later appear on the soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film Call Me by Your Name, ultimately scoring a nomination for best original song at the 2018 Academy Awards, and best song written for visual media at the 2019 Grammys.
Legendary rockers Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, master jazz artist Herbie Hancock and conductor/soprano and contemporary classical musician Barbara Hannigan received their Polar Music Prize awards from the hands of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in the Vinterträdgården room of Stockholm’s elegant Grand Hôtel on Tuesday (May 27).
The 500-plus-person audience, made up of Swedish royalty, music industry players (artists, songwriters, publishers, execs and more) and friends and family of the laureates, rose to its feet many times during the six-hour event, as each of the laureates delivered heartfelt speeches. Hannigan thanked her mentors with a special mention for her (five minutes older) twin brother Brian; Hancock spoke of his father’s support for his musical career even though he wanted his son to be an engineer; and May also talked about his late father Harold, who helped him build his original Red Special electric guitar (also known as the “Old Lady”), which May owns to this day.
The event began with a royal ceremony, in the presence of not just the King but several members of Sweden’s Royal Family, followed by a multi-course banquet. The laureates were serenaded during both halves of the Polar Music Prive evening by a number of Swedish and international musicians playing music written by or performed by the three musical icons during their careers.
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Jazz vocalist/bassist Esperanza Spalding and pianist/producer Robert Glasper got an ovation for their rendition of the Hancock composition “Trust Me,” and returned to the stage to perform Hancock’s seminal “Watermelon Man.” Spalding then teamed with Argentinian pianist Leo Genovese for a stunning performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” in honor of Hancock’s 2007 album River: The Joni Letters. That tribute album to Mitchell won the Grammy for album of the year in 2008. The audience did not wait for that performance to end to give it a standing ovation.
Similar ovations showed the attendees’ love for Adam Lambert’s versions of Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” at the ceremony and “Another One Bites the Dust” at the banquet, as May and Taylor looked on approvingly.
The biggest ovation of the night went to Sweden’s Ghost, who recently topped the Billboard 200 with their album Skeletá. Frontman Tobias Forge donned a golden mask and was accompanied by Swedish heavy metal guitarist Fredrik Åkesson and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, singing a cappella from a balcony high above the banquet tables, for a tour-de-force on “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
As the evening was coming to a close, Marie Ledin, managing director of the Polar Music Prize and daughter of the award’s founder, ABBA manager Stig “Stikkan” Anderson, received an overwhelming response from the banquet guests as she thanked her father as well as her mother Gudrun, the Royal Family, the laureates and the entire assembled audience.
Ledin spoke about each of the laureates in turn: “Let me begin with Queen – this much-loved band are truly rock royalty! As a big fan myself, I’ve been lucky enough to have seen them in concert several times here in Stockholm. They taught me that music can be bold, dramatic, fascinating and fun.
“Herbie Hancock is a true musical pioneer and one of the most influential musicians of our time. He has taught us that music can challenge us intellectually even as it enriches our soul. Herbie has deservedly earned the admiration of musicians across all genres.
“Barbara Hannigan is a visionary soprano and conductor, and a passionate advocate for contemporary music. With her avant-garde experimentation, she proves that classical music does not have to live in the past, but is a living, breathing art form in itself.”
The 2025 laureates were also honored by the presence of three previous laureates, Max Martin (2016), Anne-Sophie Mutter (2019) and Nile Rodgers (2024).
One more special guest was Anita Dobson, who was in attendance with her husband Brian May. Dobson is having an especially great week, as she has guest starred on every episode of the current season of the BBC’s Doctor Who and will play a large part in the season finale on Saturday (May 31), though she wouldn’t reveal any details about the conclusion of her story arc to Billboard (as she shouldn’t).
The Polar Music Prize was first awarded in 1992, to Paul McCartney and the Baltic States, newly independent from the former Soviet Union. Since then, the prestige of the prize has only grown, with awards going to artists from all over the world. A partial list includes Elton John, Ravi Shankar, Metallica, Ennio Morricone, Led Zeppelin, Renée Fleming, Grandmaster Flash, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Isaac Stern, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Sonny Rollins, Diane Warren, Gilberto Gil, B.B. King, Emmylou Harris, Yo-Yo Ma, Miriam Makeba, Björk, Wayne Shorter, Patti Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, Chris Blackwell, Iggy Pop, Angélique Kidjo, the Kronos Quartet, Youssou N’Dour and Chuck Berry.
Tiësto tells us all about his collab with Sexyy Red and Kaskade talks about what it’s like to perform at EDC festival 2025. we also run down the highlights from Suenos Festival and Bottle Rock, all presented by Amazon Prime. From the blasting beats of EDM in Vegas to hot Latin sounds in Chicago and […]
You might have noticed that Machine Gun Kelly walked the red carpet at Monday night’s (May 26) 2025 American Music Awards, but did not appear to make it into the actual ceremony in Las Vegas. According to E! News, the “Cliché” singer had to bail on his first major event since welcoming a child with […]
The see-saw story of The Who‘s drummer chair continued to tilt over the weekend when former, then current and then former again time keeper Zak Starkey clarified that he had not been fired from the band but rather “retired.” The 59-year-old son of Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and in-demand session player wrote in an Instagram […]
Tom Morello has never been one to mince words when it comes to his thoughts on Donald Trump. The firebrand Rage Against the Machine guitarist and solo star joined his friend and fellow rock agitator Bruce Springsteen over the weekend in giving a NSFW salute No. 27 from the stage.
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Performing at the Boston Calling 2025 music festival on Sunday (May 25), Morello took the stage in front of a towering backdrop that featured a series of images of the president amid a sea of oversized buttons that spelled out “F–K TRUMP.” If that message wasn’t clear enough, at one point during his set, Morello flipped his instrument up to play with his teeth and revealed another pointed message aimed at the current administration taped to the back of his guitar that read “F–k I.C.E.,” in seeming reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency charged with implementing Trump’s aggressive deportation policy.
Introducing a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” Morello dedicated the track to The Boss, noting that the rocker has been “in a tussle with the president lately” after the Jersey giant recently dubbed the current administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous,” a broadside that raised the ire of the commander in chief.
“Bruce is going after Trump because Bruce, his whole life, he’s been about truth, justice, democracy, equality,” Morello said. “And Trump is mad at him because Bruce draws a much bigger audience. F–k that guy.” According to Boston.com, at the top of his set, Morello invited fans to enjoy “the last big event before they throw us in jail.”
In the midst of the Trump administration’s attack on universities it claims are not doing enough to combat antisemitism, Morello also mentioned his alma mater, Harvard University, which has particularly drawn Trump’s ire. In its latest actions, the administration has threatened to strip the school of more than $3 billion in grants following Trump’s order to freeze more than $2.2 billion in federal funding grants for the university and threats to revoke its tax-exempt status. Morello praised Harvard’s recent decision to offer a free online course called “We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy.”
Morello, who graduated with honors from Harvard in 1986 with a B.A. in political science, described the class as a primer on “basic U.S. government, understanding the Constitution, and how to recognize a dictatorship takeover of your country.”
The lash out against Trump by Morello amid the president’s slash-and-burn reshaping of democratic norms came after Springsteen kicked off his Land of Hope and Dreams tour in Manchester, England on May 14 by lambasting the blitz of strong-arm actions that many political pundits have deemed authoritarian.
“In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration,” Springsteen told the crowd. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
As is his wont, Trump replied to Springsteen’s harsh words with one of his all-caps Truth Social disses, calling the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer “highly overrated” and “dumb as a rock.” The president continued, “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK, who fervently supported Crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country.”
On the precipice of what many financial experts say could be a ruinous global recession sparked by Trump’s unpredictable, see-saw tariffs, the president continued his attacks on Springsteen over the ensuing days, adding in another of his favorite targets: Taylor Swift. On May 16, the 78-year-old leader of the free world wrote, “Has anyone noticed that, since i said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?‘”
While Swift has not responded to the unprovoked attack to date, Springsteen was unbowed, doubling down on his disdain for Trump on May 17, telling a crowd in Manchester, “Things are happening right now that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy, and they’re too important to ignore… In my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now… In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers,” calling Trump an “unfit president” who is running a “rogue government.”
Sir Rod Stewart capped the 2025 American Music Awards by accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award and giving the audience one of his patented high-energy performances to end the show on Monday (May 26).
The 80-year-old icon was introduced by five of his eight children — Kim, Ruby, Renee, Liam and Sean — who honored their dad’s 60-year career, which has seen him sell millions upon millions of albums worldwide thanks to such Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits as “Maggie May, “Hot Legs,” “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Some Guys Have All the Luck.”
“I’m absolutely flabbergasted — I had no idea they were here,” a gobsmacked Rod the Mod said after hugging it out with his brood, cheekily joking that he’s got “eight all together … I didn’t have a television.”
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Stewart recalled that when he started singing in the early 1960s, “well before all of you lot were here,” he said, gesturing to the crowd, “the reason I got into it was because I had this burning ambition to sing. That’s all I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be rich or famous.” The vocalist who began his career singing blues and R&B standards in his native England before joining the Jeff Beck Group and then Faces and launching his mega-successful solo era, thanked all the musicians he’s played with over the years as well as his biggest influences, including Sam Cooke, Temptations singer and solo star David Ruffin and blues great Muddy Waters.
Honors aside, Stewart seemed genuinely touched that five of his children were sharing the stage with him, shouting out the sweet surprise once again before plugging his Caesars Palace residency gig and then jauntily skipping over to the stage to perform his 1988 Hot 100 No. 12 hit “Forever Young.”
Wearing daringly tight pinstriped black pants, a white tuxedo jacket and a ruffled white shirt opened to reveal his chest and a chunky necklace, the raspy voiced icon looked ageless as he played air guitar while singing “May good fortune be with you, may your guiding light be strong/ Build a stairway to heaven with a prince or a vagabond/ And may you never love in vain,” as a trio of backup singers in shimmering black minidresses echoed the song’s ageless chorus back to him.
Stewart’s spirited show-closer also roped in a three-man bagpipe team, adding a bit more pizzazz to a performance that also spun through a Vegas-worthy tap dance break and a double fiddle and marching band drum solo.
Watch Stewart accept the Lifetime Achievement Award below.
The American Music Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.
