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Leanne Lucas, the instructor whose Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance and yoga class became the target of a deadly stabbing in Southport, England, last year, is speaking out about the attack for the first time.
In a sit-down interview with BBC posted Monday (Feb. 24), Lucas recalled from start to finish how then-17-year-old Axel Rudakubana — who in January pleaded guilty to the murders of three young girls and the attempted killings of 10 other people at the July 2024 class — burst into her studio with a knife. As he began attacking the children in the room, Lucas sprang into action calling the police and urging the rest of the class to run to safety.
That’s when she says Rudakubana turned on her, leaving her spine, head, ribs, lung and shoulder blade severely injured. “I just knew that if I didn’t get out, everyone was going to die,” Lucas told the broadcaster with tears in her eyes. “I thought that he wasn’t going to stop until he killed everyone. I thought that he wanted to kill us all.”
Rudakubana was sentenced to 52 years in prison, with Judge Julian Goose adding in his January ruling that the teenager would likely “never be released.” In addition to critically wounding multiple people, Rudakubana killed 9-year-old Alice Da Silva Aguiar, 7-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and 6-year-old Bebe King.
In the interview, Lucas recalled the agony of helping the rest of the children escape while enduring the pain of her injuries, for which she was later hospitalized. She noted that police have told her that the surviving children would not have made it out of the class alive if not for her and fellow organizer Heidi, who also assisted the fleeing children at the scene — but Lucas still feels guilt over the three girls she couldn’t save.
“That gives nothing for the children who did die … that doesn’t take that away,” Lucas told the BBC. “I just don’t know what else I could have done.”
The dance class was just one of countless Swift-themed events local organizers all over the globe put together during the “Anti-Hero” singer’s Eras Tour last year and in 2023. Before the attack started, Lucas remembers her students happily making friendship bracelets and chatting in a circle, with 9-year-old Aguiar apparently saying shortly before her death, ‘This is the best day of my life.’”
Swift personally spoke out about the killings one day afterward, writing in a statement, “The horror of yesterday’s attack in Southport is washing over me continuously, and I’m just completely in shock …”
“The loss of life and innocence, and the horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families and first responders,” she added at the time. “These were just little kids at a dance class. I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”
About a month later, Swift hosted some of the survivors and their families at her London Eras shows and personally greeted them backstage at Wembley Stadium.
Lucas told the BBC that she still has to take life “an hour at a time” amid her grief, but that Aguiar, Stancombe and King are the reasons she keeps going. “The only reason to survive is the fact that I did get out, and I am alive,” the instructor said. “The fact that the girls aren’t, I’ve got to stay alive for them. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Pantera announced the dates for an extensive 2025 U.S. summer amphitheater tour on Monday (Feb. 24), with plans to hit 29 cities from July through September. The self-proclaimed “Heaviest Tour of the Summer” from the band featuring the lineup of core members singer Phil Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown with guitarist Zakk Wylde and drummer Charlie Benante is slated to kick off at The Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown, PA on July 15, followed by shows in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Dallas and Raleigh, before winding down on Sept. 13 at iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, FL.
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The Live Nation-produced tour will feature support from Swedish metal icons Amon Amarth, with more opening acts to be announced later. Ticket and VIP pre-sales will kick-off on Tuesday (Feb. 25) at 10 a.m. local time, with a general on-sale launching on Friday (Feb. 28) at 10 a.m. local time here.
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After years apart, Brown and Anselmo reunited in 2023 for the band’s first major tour in more than two decades, with Wylde and Benante signing on to fill in for late band co-founders drummer Vinnie Paul and guitarist Dimebag Darrell. They went on to tour Europe and open for Metallica on their 2023-2024 M72 world tour and will appear at what is being described as Black Sabbath’s final reunion show with Ozzy Osbourne on July 5 at Villa Park in Birmingham, U.K. alongside Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Jason Momoa, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Alice in Chains, Halestorm, Gojira and others.
Check out the dates for Pantera’s 2025 U.S. summer tour below:
July 15 – Burgettstown, PA @ The Pavilion at Star LakeJuly 17 – Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music TheatreJuly 19 – Tinley Park, IL @ Credit Union 1 AmphitheatreJuly 20 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music CenterJuly 22 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music CenterJuly 25 – Hershey, PA @ Hersheypark StadiumJuly 26 – Wantagh, NY @ Northwell Health at Jones Beach TheaterJuly 28 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Broadview Stage at SPACJuly 29 – Gilford, NH @ Bank NH PavilionJuly 31 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts CenterAug. 2 – Mansfield, MA @ Xfinity CenterAug. 3 – Hartford, CT @ Xfinity TheatreAug. 6 – Milwaukee, WI -@ American Family Insurance AmphitheaterAug. 7 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target CenterAug. 20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Utah First Credit Union AmphitheatreAug. 22 – Auburn, WA @ White River AmphitheatreAug. 23 – Ridgefield, WA @ Cascades AmphitheaterAug. 26 – Phoenix, AZ @ Talking Stick Resort AmphitheatreAug. 27 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia ForumAug. 29 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile ArenaAug. 31 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta AmphitheaterSept. 2 – Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance AmphitheaterSept. 3 – Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis PavillionSept. 5 – Noblesville, IN @ Ruoff Music CenterSept. 6 – St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino AmphitheatreSept. 8 – Birmingham, AL @ Coca-Cola AmphitheaterSept. 10 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Veterans United Home Loans AmphitheaterSept. 11 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Park at Walnut CreekSept. 13 – West Palm Beach, FL @ iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
The 2025 American Music Awards (AMAs) is set to air live from Las Vegas on Memorial Day, Monday, May 26. The special will air live coast-to-coast at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS and stream on Paramount+.
It will be the first yearly AMAs show since the one that aired on ABC on Nov. 20, 2022, with Wayne Brady hosting.
The 2025 AMAs will broadcast globally across linear and digital platforms and will honor the most popular songs and artists of the year while paying tribute to our country’s troops. CBS’ intention is for the AMAs to air on Memorial Day going forward.
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The AMAs franchise moved to CBS on Oct. 6, 2024, with a star-studded retrospective special, American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special. As the most-streamed AMAs in the show’s history, the special surpassed 13 million in reach and averaged over 6.1 million viewers, an increase of +53% from the last show in 2022 on ABC, the largest year-over-year growth of a music special or award show.
The anniversary show featured an all-star lineup that included Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Hudson, Carrie Underwood, Green Day, Brad Paisley, Chaka Khan, Sheila E., Gladys Knight, Kane Brown, Nelly, Nile Rodgers & CHIC, RAYE, Stray Kids, AJ McLean, Jimmy Kimmel, Kate Hudson, Lance Bass, Reba McEntire, Samuel L. Jackson, and Smokey Robinson.
The American Music Awards bills itself as the world’s largest fan-voted award show. Nominees are based on key fan interactions as reflected on the Billboard charts – including streaming, album sales, song sales and radio airplay.
Legendary producer Dick Clark created the AMAs in 1973 as a fan-based alternative to the Grammys. The first two Grammy live telecasts in March 1971 and March 1972 aired on ABC. When the Grammys shifted to CBS for the March 1973 telecast, ABC looked for a show to fill that void and went with Clark’s fan-based show.
The show on Memorial Day will be the 51st yearly AMAs broadcast. (There were two shows in 2003 and none at all in 2023 or 2024.)
That first show in 1974 ran just 90 minutes. The show in the first five years had a tight focus on three broad genres – pop/rock, soul/R&B and country. It now recognizes far more genres, including hip-hop, Latin, inspirational, gospel, Afrobeats and K-pop.
Clark, a master showman, was a legend in both music and television. He received a trustees award from the Recording Academy in 1990 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1992. He died in 2012 at age 82.
The 2025 American Music Awards will air concurrently on both coasts. The AMAs previously aired on the West Coast on tape delay. This welcome change was introduced on the anniversary show last October.
Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Corporation. PMC is also the parent company of Billboard.
The members of U2 are making sure the people of Ukraine know that they still have their backs three years after Russia’s invasion.
On Monday (Feb. 24) — the same date Russia launched its full-fledged military operation on Ukraine in 2022, effectively sending the countries into a war that is still ongoing — Bono shared an emotional piano-accompanied reading of Taras Shevchenko’s “My Friendly Epistle” on the Irish rock band’s Instagram. “Break then your chains, in love unite,
nor seek in foreign lands the sight
of things not even found above,” the poem dictates. “Then, in your own house, you will see
true justice, strength and liberty!”
“All who believe in freedom and sense the jeopardy we Europeans now find ourselves in are not sleeping easily on this, the third anniversary of the invasion,” Bono wrote in his caption, revealing that he and The Edge had originally sent the musical reading to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy days after Russia first invaded three years ago.
“More to say about this and other bewilderments later,” added the “Mysterious Ways” musician.
Bono and his U2 bandmates have been vocal in their support of Ukraine throughout the country’s war against Russia, which began in February 2022 when the latter country’s president, Vladimir Putin, ordering multiple attacks on Ukraine’s major cities as part of a “special military operation.” In April that year, Irish rockers performed on a bill with Celine Dion, Katy Perry and more stars as part of a Stand Up for Ukraine relief show, a month after which Bono and Edge traveled to Kyiv to perform Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me” in a metro station.
Last year, Bono also paid tribute to late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — one of Putin’s most outspoken critics who died in Russian prison in February 2024 — during one of U2’s residency shows at Las Vegas’ The Sphere. “For these people, freedom is the most important word in the world,” the frontman told the crowd at the time. “So important that Ukrainians are fighting and dying for it, and so important that Alexey Navalny chose to give his up.”
As Ukraine enters a fourth year of fighting off Russia, its fate remains uncertain. Many Western leaders gathered in Kyiv Monday to observe the date and, in some cases, pledge more military aid to Zelenskyy’s efforts. However, President Donald Trump recently stirred up concern over the United States’ yearslong Biden-era alliance with Ukraine by calling Zelenskyy a “dictator,” while maintaining a cordial relationship with Putin amid Trump’s pushes for a peace settlement.
See U2’s tribute to Ukraine below.
Wu-Tang Clan has announced what’s being billed as the legendary Staten Island crew’s final tour. The Wu is plotting the Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber tour, which was announced on Monday (Feb. 24).
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The trek will invade arenas across North America starting on June 6 in Baltimore to kick off the 27-date tour. Run the Jewels is slated to provide support as an opening act.
There is no pre-sale for the AEG-produced tour, with general tickets going on sale at 10 a.m. local time on Feb. 28. VIP packages will also be available. A Wu-Tang queue is scheduled to open 30 minutes before tickets are on sale.
“Wu-Tang Clan has shown the world many chambers throughout our career; this tour is called The Final Chamber. This is a special moment for me and all my Wu brothers to run around the globe together one more time and spread the Wu swag, music, and culture,” RZA said in a statement.
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Wu-Tang Clan
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He continued: “Most importantly to touch our fans and those who have supported us throughout the years. On this tour we’re playing songs we’ve never played before to our audience and me and our production team have designed a Wu-Tang show unlike anything you’ve ever seen. And to top it off, we’ve got the amazing Run the Jewels on our side.”
Cities on deck include Tampa Bay, Houston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York City and Toronto, and will wrap up in Philadelphia on July 18.
All nine living members of the Wu-Tang Clan will be participating in the final tour while Young Dirty Bastard will take his late father’s place (Ol’ Dirty Bastard passed away in 2004).
The final tour is being billed to contain a unique setlist of tracks that the Wu never performed in the past while also mixing in the classic hits from the group’s catalog. This marks the culmination of a five-year plan, per RZA.
In celebration of the tour announcement, Wu-Tang Clan is joining forces with Amazon Music to release a live EP with an exclusive vinyl as only 1500 were pressed.
Find all of the Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chapter tour dates below.
The Backstreet Boys are extending their upcoming residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere. On Monday morning (Feb. 24) the boys-to-man band announced the addition of shows on August 15, 16 and 17, bringing the total amount of announced residency gigs so far to 18.
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The band — AJ McLean, Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough — are the first pop group booked to perform at the Sphere, with McLean telling Billboard last week that they are planning “one incredible experience” for the “Into The Millennium” run that Carter promised would giver fans “sensory overload.”
The Live Nation-produced run will find the group performing their entire career-peak 1999 Millennium album in full along with greatest hits and their new single, “Hey,” at the shows that will kick off on July 11. The gigs will continue throughout the rest of the month, with gigs on July 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 24, 26 and 27, followed by shows on August 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10.
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Tickets for the new dates will go on sale first through the BSB Fan Club pre-sale beginning Tuesday (Feb. 25) at 9 a.m. PT. Fans who previously signed up for the Artist Pre-Sale can access tickets for the three added dates beginning on Wednesday (Feb. 26) at 9 a.m. PT, followed by a general on-sale kicking off on Friday (Feb. 28) at 9 a.m. PT; click here for details.
BSB will make history as the first pop band to touch down in the futuristic arena that to date has hosted U2, Phish, Dead & Company, the Eagles, EDM act Anyma and, later this spring, Kenny Chesney. “Die hard fans are going to get a great experience, a great nostalgic moment,” McLean told Billboard. “Even just playing the whole Millennium album, there’s some deep cuts in there that we were just discussing the other day,” Dorough added. “[We were] reminiscing about some of the songs like ‘The Perfect Fan’ and ‘No One Else Comes Close to You’ [and ‘Spanish’] Eyes,’ which are songs that the fans probably haven’t heard since the Millennium tour.”
The 25th anniversary celebration of the album that topped the Billboard 200 for 10 weeks and has sold more than 24 million copies to date will coincide with the July 11 release of Millennium 2.0, a two-CD collection featuring a remastered version of the original, along with six demos from the sessions for the album, b-sides from international releases, six live tracks and the previously unheard track “Hey.”
Roberta Flack, the beloved, Grammy-winning 1970s R&B singer best known for such hits as “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly” died on Monday (Feb. 24) at 88. At press time a statement from Flack’s spokesperson revealed that she died peacefully, with no official cause of death available.
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“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” read the statement. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
A classically trained pianist from an early age, Flack received a music scholarship at 15 to attend Howard University and was soon discovered singing at Washington, D.C. nightclub Mr. Henry’s by jazz great Les McCann, which led to her signing with Atlantic Records. She scored her first break in 1971 when Clint Eastwood used her version of the moon-y ballad “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his directorial debut, Play Misty For Me.
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A master of the “quiet storm” style, Flack’s effortless, soothing vocals soon became a staple of R&B and pop radio, leading to a two-decade run of chart hits.
Flack was born Roberta Cleopatra Flack in Black Mountain, N.C. on Feb. 10, 1937 and raised in Arlington, Va. where her mother, Irene, played organ at the Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Church. She learned to play piano on a funky junkyard instrument her father — a jazz pianist himself — found and restored for her, on which she practiced Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, as well as Mozart’s Requiem.
After getting her public debut playing piano as an adolescent in the Lomax church, Flack studied piano at Howard, then moved on to a music educator program after being told that the racial barriers at that time for a Black classical concert pianist were too high for her to achieve her dream. Following her father’s death in 1959, Flack returned to North Carolina and took a job teaching music at a public school, later moving back to D.C., where she taught at several middle and high schools for a decade.
Flack released her debut LP, First Take, in 1969 which included her first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which also helped the album reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart; the song would win the Grammy for record of the year in 1972. She hit No. 1 again in 1973 with “Killing Me Softly,” from the album of the same name, with the song winning the 1974 Grammy for record of the year. It was later famously covered by the Fugees in 1996 on their second album, The Score.
Flack’s unprecedented back-to-back Grammy wins for record of the year feat wasn’t achieved again until U2 scored the same two-fer with “Beautiful Day” (2001) and “Walk On” (2002). Flack regularly recorded with fellow soul great Donny Hathaway, scoring duet hits on the Hot 100 with the singer on a covers of “You’ve Got a Friend” (1971, No. 29) and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” (1971, No. 71), as well as “Where Is the Love” (1972, No. 5), “The Closer I Get To You” (1978, No. 2) and “You Are My Heaven” (1980, No. 47), among others.
She scored a total of 18 Hot 100 hits, and landed four albums in the top three on the Billboard 200 album charts, as well as more than two dozen charting hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
Flack’s chart prominence began to fade by the mid-1980s, but she kept recording, releasing her most recent album in 2012 with the Beatles cover album Let It Be Roberta. Over the course of her career, Flack was nominated for 14 Grammys and won three.
Check out some of Flack’s most beloved hits below.
Tate McRae gets why she keeps getting compared to Britney Spears. The 21-year-old Canadian pop star who first came into our lives as a tween finalist on the 2016 season of So You Think You Can Dance has mastered the art of dance pop temptation in videos like the one for her slinky new single, […]
Mariah Carey has booked a massive summer 2025 gig in the U.K. at Royal Sandringham Estate in Norfolk on August 15. The show at the 20,000-capacity venue will feature support from Eternal and Nile Rodgers & Chic. The outdoor gig in Norfolk, England presented by Heritage Live Festivals is the third concert announced for the venue this summer, joining previously announced shows by the Stereophonics (Aug. 16) and Michael Bublé (Aug. 17).
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Tickets for the Carey concert will be available during a pre-sale on March 5 beginning at 9 a.m. GMT (4 a.m. ET). Fans can register for pre-sale access in advance here. A general on-sale will kick off on March 7 at 9 a.m., with information available here.
“We’re absolutely thrilled to bring one of the greatest pop artists of all time to the Royal Sandringham Estate for an exclusive UK headline show. Mariah Carey is an award-winner, a record-breaker, and an absolute global icon – this show will be historic,” Heritage Live Festivals’ Giles Cooper said in a statement. “Mariah’s live show is second to none and with such a catalogue of huge hit singles, it’s going to be an incredible occasion. It will most definitely be an ‘I was there’ event that will live in all of our memories forever.”
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Carey has also booked another U.K summer gig with a headlining slot at the Pride in the Park event at the Brighton Pride festival, which will take place on August 2-3; Carey was supposed to play the Pride fest in 2020, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The singer recently celebrated her second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, writing on Instagram earlier this month that she was “so grateful” to get her second nod in a row after first becoming eligible in 2016. “It’s always an incredible honor to be recognized alongside so many legendary artists I admire. Thank you to the @rockhall and, of course, to my amazing fans— you are the heart of everything I do. This means so much! ❤️🎶,” Carey wrote in a post that also featured the full list of 2025’s nominees, which includes Bad Company, The Black Crowes, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, Maná, Oasis, Outkast, Phish, Soundgarden and The White Stripes.
Noah Weiland, the son of late Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, has paid tribute to his father with a cover of 1993’s “Sex Type Thing.”
Released on Thursday (Feb. 20), the haunting rendition of the track sees Noah offering up a faithful take on the original, albeit without the angry vocals that Scott included over 30 years ago. Featuring production and additional guitar from Spencer Carr Reed, the cover also comes accompanied by a video which sees Noah making his way throughout Sherman Oaks, CA alongside a Chucky doll which represents the elder Weiland.
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The video features subtitles which see Noah reflecting on the loss of his father. “There was so much I wanted to tell him, like how much has changed on Earth without him,” one caption reads, while a final caption adds, “I wish I could dream about you forever. But it’s ok…because for now I will carry on your legacy.”
“Filmed this about a dream I had long ago about seeing my father again,” Noah wrote about the track on social media. “It’s hard for me to stay in the moment sometimes, but I try.”
Scott Weiland passed away in December 2015 at the age of 48, with an autopsy later declaring his cause of death as an accidental overdose of cocaine, ethanol and methylenedioxyamphetamine. Scott first rose to fame in the ’90s as the frontman of Stone Temple Pilots, who officially formed in 1989 as Mighty Joe Young.
The band’s debut album, Core, was released in September 1992, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. “Sex Type Thing” was issued as its lead single in early 1993, and would peak at No. 23 on the Album Rock Tracks (now called the Mainstream Rock) chart. Second single “Plush” would also win them a Grammy Award for best hard rock performance.
Stone Temple Pilots would split in 2003 after releasing five albums (including 1994’s chart-topping Purple), though would reunite in 2008 and release a self-titled record in 2010. Scott Weiland would be fired from the band in 2013, with Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington taking over as lead vocalist until 2015.
In 2016, the band launched a search for a new vocalist, ultimately announcing Jeff Gutt as their new singer in November 2017. The band have since released two studio albums with Gutt, with their most recent being 2020’s Perdida.
That same year, it was revealed that Noah Weiland, along with the sons of Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, had formed a band called Suspect208, though the group would only last for a year before splitting.
In April 2024, Noah revealed he was being “blackmailed” by an unnamed individual who demanded $2,000 to refrain from leaking a demo titled “Time Will Tell”, which featured previously-unreleased vocals from Scott. Noah instead decided to finish the song with Reed, telling Rolling Stone the idea was to present the track as a familial collaboration.
“Due to the fact that nobody who ‘represents’ my dad actually cares to give the fans new unheard music, let alone keep his name alive in the first place, my friend Spencer Carr Reed and I decided to turn it into a more modern sounding song as if he was still alive and just decided to hop on one of my songs,” Noah explained at the time. “That was the concept behind it.”