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Timothée Chalamet‘s anticipated turn as a young Bob Dylan in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown is getting an A-list release date. Searchlight Pictures announced on Tuesday (August 6) that the anticipated film from director James Mangold (Logan) will hit theaters on December 25. That Christmas release date falls in the heart of what is […]
Tyler Hubbard is putting his own spin on a modern pop classic. The two-time Billboard Country Airplay chart-topper recently recorded a batch of songs as part of the Apple Music Nashville Sessions, and alongside some of his own hits, he reimagined The Weeknd‘s 2020 four-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Blinding Lights.” Hubbard’s performance […]
Sam Smith is officially not the only one on their song “I’m Not the Only One.” On Tuesday (Aug. 6), Smith dropped the official music video for their duet version of “I’m Not the Only One” featuring Alicia Keys. Showing clips from a live recording at Keys’ Jungle City Studios in New York City, the […]
They’ve both been gone for decades, and yet it’s still possible to hear two Country Music Hall of Fame members who started at Sun Records, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, in new ways.
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Presley is the subject of Memphis (due Aug. 9 from RCA/Legacy), a 111-track, five-disc box set that mines recordings from five different locations in his adopted hometown: the Sun Recording Studio, the American Studios, the Stax Studio, the Mid-South Coliseum and Graceland Mansion’s Jungle Room. On three of the studio discs, previously released tracks are remixed strictly using the instrumentation from the core tracking session, leaving out material that was overdubbed at a later date.
“By not having the additional strings and backing vocals, there [is] an intimacy to it that would reveal things that we hadn’t heard before,” says Memphis producer Ernst Jorgensen, a well-established Presley authority. “So songs come out with a different feel to them.”
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The Presley package arrives with the 70th anniversary of his seminal recording of “That’s All Right,” the single that launched his career.
Coincidentally, Cash’s 11-track Songwriter (released June 28 by Mercury Nashville/Universal Music Enterprises) includes the similarly titled “Well Alright” — a previously unreleased, 30-year-old song that echoes the spacious, simplistic sound that characterized his own Sun recordings. John Carter Cash produced the album with David Ferguson, isolating the Man in Black’s vocals from a series of 1993 recordings and reframing them with new arrangements.
“I always wanted to know what would happen if it went down to the bare essence of the correct, simple picture behind my father,” John Carter said during a media listening event earlier this year. It’s “the right instrumentation, the sound of Johnny Cash supported by people who had played with him, mostly.”
It’s no secret that record labels are able to bolster their bottom lines by repackaging and/or reimagining catalog material from their best-selling artists, though after creating multiple retro releases of classic artists, it becomes increasingly difficult to find fresh ways to celebrate them. The new Presley and Cash releases succeed in representing multiple facets of each performer’s career. Memphis captures Presley in his early rockabilly stage, explores his “Suspicious Minds” comeback era and wraps with the massive productions that marked his live shows and studio efforts in his final, mid-’70s years.
Songwriter, while drawing on Cash cuts from 1993, points to different eras in his own evolution. “Well Alright,” by adapting “boom-chick” production to a story about meeting a woman in a laundromat, has elements of his 1957 hit “Ballad of a Teenage Queen.” “I Love You Tonite” reflects on his relationship with June Carter Cash while employing an appropriate country-ballad posture. “Hello Out There” — written after the 1977 launch of the Voyager spacecraft — takes a spiritual view of the universe’s expanse, much like his “I fly a starship” verse in “Highwayman.” And the tremolo-enhanced “Spotlight,” with a bluesy guitar solo by Dan Auerbach,fits neatly into the Americana genre that coalesced during Cash’s latter years.
“Dad saw no limits, and he said, ‘Always follow your heart,’ ” John Carter recalled. “So that’s what we did.”
Working with catalogs of such cultural heft as Presley and Cash is not for the faint of heart. “It’s very nerve-wracking,” says Memphis-based engineer Matt Ross-Spang, who remixed Memphis.
With the Cash material, the job was to enhance unfamiliar songs with musical settings that felt appropriate to his artistic sensibilities. With Presley, the assignment involved treating familiar performances — including a number of classics — with reverence, even while revising them. “You want to make it better, but you also don’t want to take it out of the realm of how we’ve all heard it and loved it all these decades,” Ross-Spang says. “I tried to really be true to the original. I tried to be true to the musicians’ and the producers’ direction.”
In the new remix of “Kentucky Rain,” sans the background chorus and horn section, Hammond B-3 stabs become suddenly evident. And on Presley’s underappreciated “My Boy,” Ronnie Tutt’s drum fills take on extra importance. In some ways, it sets up the sound of the live disc, where Tutt is a driving force.
“In a wonderful way, he’s overplaying,” Ross-Spang observes. “Every hip shake from Elvis, every scarf throw, every look or hand throw Elvis does, Ronnie’s doing an amazing drum fill. All the songs are going 90 miles an hour, and Ronnie’s leading the charge. It’s incredible. A big reason why those live shows were so exciting was Ronnie Tutt’s drums.”
Considered in tandem, Presley’s Memphis and Cash’s Songwriter hint at interesting parallels between both artists. They each played a role in the development of rockabilly while they were Sun labelmates in the 1950s. And both employed large concert ensembles during the 1970s — Presley stacked two backing vocal groups atop a large-size live band; Cash similarly performed on his ABC-TV show in the early 1970s with his band expanded by two supporting vocal groups (The Carter Family and The Statler Brothers), plus a sizable orchestra.
Cash eventually returned to a simpler sound with his Rick Rubin-produced American Recordings, beginning just months after he recorded the vocals that appear on Songwriter. Since Presley died at age 42, how he would have approached his senior recording years remains a mystery. But the two packages provide a reminder of how two significant 20th-century voices drew on small-town roots music to help shape the arc of modern country.
“They had great determination to go along with the melting pot of music that they came from,” Jorgensen notes. “Any kind of music — if you came from Arkansas, or Mississippi or Louisiana — was available to you. You couldn’t say the same about a lot of city environments.”
Pitbull is always looking for way to make history, and Mr. 305 has done it again. The Miami resident has reached an agreement to purchase the naming rights to Florida International University’s football stadium, ESPN reports.
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According to the network, Pitbull and FIU entered a five-year deal in which the “Time of Our Lives” artist will pay $6 million to the university for FIU Stadium to be renamed to Pitbull Stadium.
“International recording artist Pitbull is purchasing the naming rights to FIU’s football stadium,” ESPN’s reporter Pete Thamel noted on X. “He’s expected to pay the school $1.2 million per year for the next five years to change the name of FIU Stadium to Pitbull Stadium, per FIU board documents.”
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Pitbull shared the news in a video on Instagram that shows him dancing on a giant screen above the football field, with a sign above that reads “Pitbull Stadium” as his song “Triumph” plays.
It’s a landmark agreement as Pitbull is the first musician to have a stadium bear their name in the history of college athletics. Once approved, Pitbull Stadium will take effect this upcoming football season with FIU set to host Central Michigan in their home opener on Sept. 7.
“What we’re doing here is groundbreaking. We’re making history. This is history in the making,” Pitbull told ESPN. “You’re going to see that every other university is going to want to do the same thing. But the difference is, we don’t do this for propaganda, we do it from the heart. We do it because it’s meaningful. We do it because I’m from the crib. I’m 305. I’m from the bottom. This is my backyard.”
ESPN also reports that there’s an option in the deal for the Grammy winner to renew the naming rights for another five years if he chooses to do so. Other parts of the agreement include Pitbull crafting an anthem for the school, posting about FIU 12 times per year on social media and make an annual appearance at a university fundraising event. ESPN also reported that the 43-year-old mogul will have access to the 20,000-person capacity stadium for 10 days a year, and his vodka company will be the “preferred” distributor for liquor served in the venue. He also will be given a pair of luxury box suites to every home game.
Pitbull will look to bring his mojo for success to the school as it’s been tough sledding for FIU on the gridiron. The team hasn’t had a winning season since 2018 and is coming off a pair of rough 4-8 campaigns under head coach Mike MacIntyre.
Watch Mr. Worldwide celebrate getting the stadium named after him in his post below.
Sabrina Carpenter got an up-close-and-personal look at just how hard Taylor Swift rocks the stage when she opened for the Tortured Poets Department star on the Latin American, Australian and Singaporean legs of Swift’s Eras Tour in late 2023 and early 2024. And in a new interview with Variety, Carpenter says what she came away with was an indisputable fact: “Taylor is a rock star!”
The comment came while the singer/actress was perusing the racks at a Los Angeles record store and noticed that Swift’s latest chart-topping album was filed in the rock section. “She’s just such a gangster with all of it. No matter what people are saying, everything that I’ve ever seen her tackle, she’s done so with grace,” Carpenter added about the opening slot she has called a “dream come true.”
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That dream has become a reality, with Carpenter, 25, telling the magazine that Swift is now, “one of my best, best friends, and we grab dinner or text and catch up like you would with your best friend.”
The story also touches on her relationship with Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan. While Carpenter was cagey about details, she did reveal that the actor was totally into the Basic Instinct-inspired video treatment for her Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Please Please Please,” which features lyrics about a troublesome thespian boyfriend. “He loved the song. He’s obsessed with the lyrics, and I’m so grateful for that,” she says of the track on which she famously warns: “Heartbreak is one thing/ My ego’s another/ I beg you don’t embarrass me mother f–ker.”
She adds, “I don’t want to sound biased, but I think he’s one of the best actors of this generation. So getting to see him on the screen with my song as the soundtrack made the video better and all the more special.”
The video is, of course, part of the wind-up to Carpenter’s anticipated upcoming sixth studio album, Short n’ Sweet (August 23), which she refers to as the “hot older sister” of 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send. “It’s my second ‘big girl’ album; it’s a companion but it’s not the same. When it comes to having full creative control and being a full-fledged adult, I would consider this a sophomore album,” she says of the earlier collection that featured the singles “Vicious,” “Nonsense” and “Fast Times.”
And, despite “Espresso” climbing all the way up to No. 3 on the Hot 100 and its weirdly alluring hook (“That’s that me, espresso”) becoming a ubiquitous meme this summer, Carpenter reveals that she was “completely alone” in wanted to release it as the first single. “Not so much from my immediate team. But when it came to ‘the powers above,’” she says in air quotes about unnamed naysayers who didn’t get it, “there was a lot of questioning behind whether it made sense. But they trusted me in the end, and I was happy that I believed in myself at that moment.”
On the occasion of their recently released fourth studio album, Ask That God, Empire of the Sun‘s Nick Littlemore and Luke Steele recently came through the Billboard News studio to talk about the new music and the past, present and future of their longstanding project.
“We had to turn all of the computers off, we had to shut everything down, and even though the pandemic was horrible, for the band I thought it was a bit of a blessing because we got to step away,” says the group’s frontman Steele of the eight years between the new LP and the band’s last album. “For 20 years we’ve built this castle, and it was time for us to kind of abandon the dream and let it all get covered in reeds, to then come back again and realize what we loved so much about it in the first place.”
“I think what brings us back is what Edgar Cayce said,” adds Littlemore, referencing the late American clairvoyant, “is that sound is the medicine of the future, and I think we’re seeing that now, and I think that’s what’s always binded us together, is to make things that would live in the hearts.”
This elevated thinking applied to all areas of the album, including its title, with Littlemore saying that “everyone has their own person Jesus, or Allah or Buddha or whoever it is for that person. And I think music can be that for you too, and it’s certainly been that for us. And that is often the intention when we’re creating music, to create something that can be a beacon of hope and can be a signal of light and levity.”
To bring the album to life visually, the duo trekked to Thailand to film a series of characteristically cinematic, fantastical high-concept videos, many of them shot during long days in 100-degree heat.
But the pair says the sweat was effort was worth it for how the vibrant, layered clips — a few of which feature cameos from Steele’s son — expand the Empire of the Sun mythology “into a new dimension,” says Littlemore. “We’ve always been about something a little larger than the other bands. That’s the reason we started in the first place … we looked at the landscape and saw shoegazing, and we wanted to see Bowie.”
During the conversation, the pair also discuss Ask That God track “AEIOU,” the first collaboration between the band and Littlemore’s longstanding Pnau project, along with their upcoming tour, which includes a headlining show at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in November.
Watch the complete interview above.
Even without a gold medal draped around his neck, Snoop Dogg has been one of the big winners of the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Snoop’s commentary on the Olympic Games in Paris has been priceless, and he completed another more familiar side quest on Monday night (Aug. 5), when he performed at the USA Basketball 50th anniversary party co-hosted by Comcast NBCUniversal.
A Celebration of Olympic Basketball party was held at the Palais Brongniart, which has been doubling as the Team USA House, ahead of the knockout round set to begin for the men’s team on Tuesday (Aug. 6) against Brazil, while the women’s team will take the court on Wednesday (Aug. 7) in the quarterfinal.
The hoop stars were in attendance, with LeBron James, Steph Curry, Anthony Edwards, A’ja Wilson, Diana Taurasi and more in the building. Even NFL legend Tom Brady made an appearance, as well as Team USA alums Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Sue Bird.
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Snoop took the stage rocking a shirt featuring A’ja Wilson in her No. 9 USA jersey to perform hits such as Billboard Hot 100-topping anthem “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and he even covered Next’s “Too Close.” Eventually, some members of Team USA even joined him on stage to take part in the festivities.
Led by James, Kevin Durant and Curry, the men’s team is seeking a fifth consecutive gold medal at the Olympics. After dismantling Puerto Rico 104-83 in the final game of group play, Team USA looks to take it up a few notches in the quarterfinal game against Brazil on Tuesday (Aug. 6), where the Americans stand as heavy favorites (-26.5) to advance to the semis.
As for the women’s team, the ladies are in hot pursuit of their eighth gold medal in a row at the 2024 Olympics. They’ll suit up against Nigeria — who made it out of group play for the first time in the country’s history — on Wednesday (Aug. 7) in the quarterfinal.
Snoop continues to live his best life at the Olympics. He perused the Louvre Museum, swam with Michael Phelps and got up close with horses alongside his buddy Martha Stewart, when he dropped an equestrian freestyle.
Check out some highlights from the evening and Snoop Dogg’s performance below.
All we saw were STARS. USA Basketball, the NBA, the WNBA, Comcast NBCUniversal and Team USA came together Monday for a spectacular Celebration of Olympic Basketball. pic.twitter.com/gtDR42MUFD— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) August 6, 2024
Celebrity Family Feud is taking family to a whole new level this week, as Clay Aiken’s family takes on David Foster and Katharine McPhee Foster’s crew — and there’s even a link between the two. In a clip shared exclusively with Billboard on Tuesday (Aug. 6), the American Idol season 2 star introduces his 15-year-old […]
After nearly 20 years on Atlantic, Skillet has left the label and is ramping up its Hear it Loud imprint to independently release its new single — “Unpopular,” arriving Friday (Aug. 9) — and new album, Revolution, coming Nov. 1.
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“After this long, we’ve learned enough about our audience to know what they want to hear,” Skillet frontman John Cooper tells Billboard of the Christian and mainstream hard rock band. “We have a pretty good handle on that now, so it’s time for us to be pushed out of the nest, or maybe jump out of the nest.”
Cooper admits making the leap wasn’t totally comfortable for him. “There’s a part of me that didn’t like it because I don’t like new things. I don’t try new food. I don’t like going to new destinations. My wife makes fun of me,” Cooper says with a smile as he sits in the living room of his spacious new hilltop home south of Nashville, where he and his wife/bandmate Korey relocated from their home base in Wisconsin.
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“I had some really good relationships, so that was the hard part is that I liked the people that I worked with a lot and learned a lot from them,” Cooper says of leaving Atlantic. “But it just felt like a new season. It just feels like it’s time for a change.”
That confidence is well-earned. Since launching in 1996, the Grammy-nominated and multiple Dove Award-winning band, which also includes Jen Ledger and Seth Morrison, has placed three albums in the Top 5 of the Billboard 200, two No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Albums chart and a pair of chart toppers on the Top Hard Rock Albums chart. They have one of the most streamed rock songs of the 21st century with the five times RIAA platinum-certified “Monster,” while their 2016 hit, “Feel Invincible,” made Skillet the first Christian act to top Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart since the chart’s launch in 1981. They also scored 11 No. 1s on the Christian Rock Songs chart before that chart ended in 2018. The veteran rockers tour relentlessly in the U.S. and abroad and their songs have been licensed by the NFL, Marvel, ESPN and WWE.
The Coopers and Skillet’s manager Zach Kelm formed the Hear It Loud imprint a decade ago. Artists LEDGER, Colton Dixon and Fight the Fury all released albums on the imprint through Atlantic Records (Dixon and LEDGER remain on Atlantic through Hear It Loud). Now, as the imprint morphs into a full-service label handling all aspects of Skillet’s marketing and promotion, Kelm has hired independent radio promotion, social media and marketing teams to work the new music. Vydia will distribute Hear It Loud.
Skillet
Jimmy Fontaine
Cooper says the band didn’t consider signing with another label. “If we were going to do that, I would have just stayed [at Atlantic] because we had 20 years of very successful history with good people,” he says. “They knew the band and liked us.”
Cooper says one of the factors that made Skillet, whose last album was 2022’s Dominion, opt for independence was the desire to move more quickly in terms of recording and releasing music. “One of the things about being independent is being able to make quick decisions,” he says. “There’s not this chain of people that need weigh in on it. The system takes a really long time. Instead, I wrote a song and we recorded it eight days later. That is a huge benefit. With the change in pace of technology and of the industry, that was important to me to be able to make quick decisions.”
Securing a larger piece of the pie was also a factor in going the indie route, especially when it comes to streaming. “We were looking at the amount of international streams that the band gets from touring, doing festivals and shows all over the world,” Kelm says, “and just by picking up the international piece, it was going to be worth it from a financial standpoint to go on our own.”
“The international stuff is really a big piece,” Cooper agrees. “I don’t know how Skillet became an international band, but it happened. It was like we woke up one day and went, ‘Oh my gosh we’re streaming like crazy overseas.’ We’re trying to catch up and that is a major upside of what we’re doing now.”
As to whether they plan to sign additional acts to Hear it Loud, Cooper says they haven’t decided yet. “Let’s see what happens,” he says, “but if it goes good, there’s sort of a natural progression that seems obvious and I like that.”
Cooper’s immediate priority is launching “Unpopular” to pave the way for Revolution. “I think that people hear a song like ‘Unpopular’ and they feel the same way,” Cooper says of the single, which encourages the listener to stand up for what they believe even if it isn’t popular. “That’s one of the things I hope people get from the record is courage. I think when people know that they aren’t alone then they go, ‘Oh okay, then I can stand up.’” Fans can pre-order the song here.
The 10-song album, produced by Brian Howes, Seth Moseley and Korey Cooper, is a mix of the incendiary rockers Skillet is known for alongside poignant moments such as “Happy Wedding Day (Alex’s Song),” which Cooper penned for his daughter. “As I started writing it, I was like there’s no way I could sing it at the wedding. But the day of the wedding I woke up and felt like, ‘I can do it,’” Cooper says. “Korey never even heard it. Alex had never heard the song. My manager was at the wedding, and the next day I said, ‘You aren’t going to hurt my feelings at all, but I think we should record the song. What do you think?’ He was like, ‘Oh definitely!’”
Cooper says the title track reflects the spirit of the album. “‘Revolution’ really is the overarching theme of what we want to say. We really need a revolution of love,” he says. “That song sounds a little different for us too. It’s a little alternative. The cool thing about doing an independent project is going, ‘All right, let’s try something new! Why not? And don’t be afraid.’”
The band, which is also launching a new app, addresses these fractured political times on “All That Matters,” which Cooper describes as a patriotic song. “Thirteen or 14 years ago it was a very different time, and part of the message of the song is saying if we could go back to that time, it really wouldn’t matter if you’re on the right or the left, because people got along,” he says. “There were things that we agreed on, like faith, family, freedom. There were things that mattered in life, and we were going to stand up for those things, wave the flag and be patriotic. We live in a country where you are free to chart your own course. Free to worship the God you want to or to not worship God and to raise your family. That was just kind of a live-and-let-live kind of thing. It was really wonderful, and that began to change.”
Cooper says being independent had a big impact on the way the new album was written and recorded. “It was a really incredibly liberating feeling,” he says. “We only wrote songs that we loved, and we only recorded songs that we loved, and we did it all super-fast. If this wasn’t independent, I feel it would be another year before we’d be releasing new music. If you look at Skillet’s timeline, you’ll see that it was every three or four years. It was a long time between albums.”
The band will perform music from the new album on their fall U.S. tour with Seether. Then in November, they’ll embark on their first tour of the Middle East, then will conclude with dates in the U.K. “It’s just really weird that 27 years into our career, we are opening up new markets around the world,” he says. “We’re spending half of the year overseas now, and I never would have dreamt that in a million years.”
Nearly three decades into their career, Cooper is happy with Skillet’s journey. “I always tell people, ‘We’re the biggest band you’ve never heard of.’ I laugh about it,” he says. “In no way do I live in frustration about it, because I’m just so blessed. The truth is I can’t believe I’m still playing music. I’m so lucky. How can I ask for more?
Cooper believes the band’s underdog status has helped their longevity, noting that, according to their Instagram data, Skillet’s No. 1 audience is the 25-34-year old demographic. “That just plays into the strangeness of the Skillet story,” he says. “That’s why, in some ways, this move to go independent is not the most shocking thing in the world, because we’ve always done things out[side] of the box. So why not try to crank it up and be the underdog again? That’s the Skillet story.”
