News

03 May 2023

John Sykes on the Rock Hall’s Expanded Definition of Rock and Roll: ‘I Really Didn’t Change the Rules. I Went Back and Followed Them.’

Some will cheer the diversity, in every sense of the word, of the new class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, one that includes Willie Nelson, Missy Elliott, Rage Against the Machine and The Spinners. Others will see that it as a sign that the Hall has lost its way and its focus.

John Sykes, who has been chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation since Jan. 1, 2020, has an answer to the naysayers: “I really didn’t change the rules. I went back and followed them.”

It all comes down to the meaning of the term rock and roll. Sykes contends that that term represents the amalgam of rhythm & blues, country and gospel that transformed popular music in the 1950s. He says that many confuse that term with the narrower “rock,” which he sees as just one element, albeit an important one, in “rock and roll.”

So, while some will say the Rock Hall should mostly be reserved for the likes of The White Stripes, Soundgarden, Warren Zevon and Iron Maiden, all of whom came up short in this year’s balloting, and will see this year’s class as a hodgepodge, Sykes sees it as an exciting return to the true meaning of rock and roll. The news announcement for this year’s Rock Hall inductees includes this definition of rock and roll which you can bet Sykes helped draft – “rock & roll is a spirit that is inclusive and ever-changing.”

Sykes addresses this topic with the deep knowledge of a musicologist and the fervor of a man on a mission. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

When you became the chairman did you look at it and say, ‘This has to evolve or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is going to become a relic’?

When I came in, I was seeing that some people were mistaking rock and roll for rock. Rock is a part of rock and roll, but rock and roll was never one sound. It was an amalgam of R&B, gospel and country. So, I saw an opportunity to really look back to the original genesis of rock and roll and trace it to the present, which is where hip-hop and R&B and the music that’s moving culture today all came from. I really didn’t change the rules. I went back and followed them.

Six of the first 10 [performer] inductees [in 1986] were Black, and the following year Hank Williams was inducted and then Johnny Cash [1992] and then Brenda Lee [2002]. Really, all roads lead back to 1955 and the creation and explosion of rock and roll. All I did was go back to the original definition and then trace it today – finding the artists that are moving culture and moving young America.

If you look at rock and roll, it’s not one sound, it’s a spirit that moved teenagers in ’55. It basically drove adults crazy, drove the government crazy, drove the church crazy and that’s exactly what hopefully the music that’s moving culture today is doing [chuckles].

Some will say that the Rock Hall is struggling to find its new identity and purpose.

It’s kind of a mixed bag. This class of inductees is a perfect case for really the diverse sounds that make up rock and roll. I wouldn’t say we’re struggling. I would say we’re diversifying. We’re seeing that all these sounds can live together. It’s not like rock is no longer getting in. Foo Fighters got in two years ago. This year, Rage Against the Machine is right next to the first female hip-hop artist who has ever been inducted, Missy Elliott. I’m excited and proud of this diverse collection of artists.

Summarize the voting process.

What happens is the nominating committee’s list of nominees goes out to the general voting body of 1,200 people, which is made up of past inductees. We are constantly updating every year to make sure we evolve with the music because we need voters in their 30s and 40s who were 15 years old when hip-hop began to really explode in the early ‘90s in America.

Do you know who the seven performer inductees will be before you settle on the honorees in the other three categories [musical influence award, musical excellence award and Ahmet Ertegun Award]?

We do it side-to-side. We monitor the performers vote and we do watch to see if there’s anything we need to balance.

Chaka Khan had been on the ballot in the performer category seven times – counting four times as the lead singer of Rufus and Chaka Khan – without being voted in. This year she gets in through the musical excellence award.

Sometimes, not often, an artist just doesn’t connect with the general voting body for whatever reason. That was the case with Chaka, and before that with LL Cool J and Judas Priest. So, the musical excellence award gives us a chance to [rectify that]. It’s the same sized plaque on the wall. To us as a Hall, each has contributed to the growth and relevance of rock and roll.   

How many people are on those committees in the other categories?

Seven. I’m the tie-breaker, but I’ve never had to break a tie. 80%-90% of the time it’s unanimous. This year, it was unanimous.

When I took over the job four years ago, I built the committee with the sole purpose of having a diverse group of voters who are aware not only of where music has been but where music is going. The key factor is to make sure we’ve got the right people who understand the music and artists that are up for induction.

[Since artists become eligible 25 years after their first recording], this year if your first record was in 1998, you’re eligible. That’s not 1967 or 1955. 1998 feels like yesterday. We have to have a committee that understands not only the artists of the past – because we’ll never turn our backs on the artist of the past – but also the artists who are eligible today.

Willie Nelson has been eligible since at least 1987, but this was his first time on the ballot and he got in.

He had one of the highest vote totals in the history of the Hall of Fame. He scored a huge number. It reflects too how the voting understands that rock and roll is not a single sound. It’s an attitude and if anyone has attitude, it’s Willie Nelson.

Even before you took over four years ago, just as a member of the nominating committee for 28 years, had you been thinking that the Rock Hall really has to evolve?

Yes, I definitely thought that way and I think others on the nominating committee did too, especially Jon Landau, who ran the committee for 30 years. Before I even started, he began looking at hip-hop and the importance of that genre as being one of the corner posts of rock and roll. I can’t take all the credit myself.

Rock and roll started out being very diverse and I think what happened in the ’70s and ’80s, it somehow became a little bit more focused on rock, which is an integral part of rock and roll, but not the only one. We’ve expanded in the last eight years on the nominating committee.

When I came in, I really focused on that and also focused on women, who have had such an impact. Prior to 2019, about 14%-15% of the inductees were women. In the last five years, it has been almost 25%. We’re not there yet, but we’re seeing the inductees class evolve not only in sound but genre.

That’s the spirit of rock and roll: Rock and roll is constantly changing and evolving. For me, one of the greatest moments of my time at the Hall of Fame is [two years ago] when Jay-Z, one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time, held up his award and said, ‘Now that’s rock and roll.’ He understands that rock and roll was dangerous and rebellious in 1955 and that’s exactly what hip-hop has been and is today. It’s breaking the rules. It upsets parents. It upsets the establishment. Those are all reasons why hip-hop is a welcome member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I take this job seriously and I’m doing my best to keep it evolving so we can keep it relevant.

What kind of reaction do you think this year’s inductees will get?

We always get a lot of different feedback because these decisions are very subjective. There will be people who say that was great or that was horrible. [That feedback] goes with the job. I think we’re doing the right thing. Every single one of those artists on that list deserves to be in the Hall and that’s all that matters to me.

03 May 2023

Forever No. 1: Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Sundown’

Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Gordon Lightfoot with a look back at his sole No. 1, the simultaneously violent and breezy “Sundown.”

As far as signature songs go, “Sundown” might not be the first that came to mind for singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot upon news of his death earlier this week (May 1) at age 84. “If You Could Read My Mind,” the weepy post-divorce lament that marked his U.S. breakout hit in 1971, probably endures as his most beloved (and almost certainly his frequently-covered) hit, and six-minute story song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” remains his most distinctive smash. But while “Mind” made it to No. 5 on the Hot 100 and “Wreck” got all the way to No. 2, his only song to top the listing was “Sundown,” a jaunty but foreboding love song that hit at the exact right moment in chart history.

Lightfoot was a Canadian born in Orillia, Ontario in 1938, who had moved to Los Angeles in the late ’50s and enjoyed something of a nomadic career for the next decade. Though he went to L.A. to study jazz, he made money doing commercial jingles and singing on demonstration records. He would move back to Canada in the early ’60s and get involved in the Toronto folk scene, scoring some local hits as a singer-songwriter and capturing the attention of many of his more-celebrated peers — with his compositions being recorded by the starry likes of Elvis Presley, Peter, Paul and Mary and even Lightfoot’s songwriting hero Bob Dylan. (Lightfoot would later return the favor with a version of Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” which became a No. 3 hit on Canada’s RPM singles chart for Lightfoot in 1965.)

In the early ’70s, Lightfoot moved from United Artists to Warner Bros./Reprise, which precipitated his long-awaited U.S. breakthrough with “Read My Mind,” also a No. 1 in his home country. He scored a trio of minor Hot 100 hits in the following years, and charted a number of modestly successful albums on the Billboard 200, but would not notch another major success until 1974 with his Sundown set — and of course, its title track, a vindictive toe-tapper widely believed to be inspired by a major figure in Lightfoot’s life at the time, the backup singer and rock scene fixture Cathy Smith.

Lightfoot was having an affair with Smith as his first marriage, to Brita Ingegerd Olaisson, was disintegrating. The relationship with Smith was, by all accounts, tumultuous — with Lightfoot admitting that it often made him “crazy with jealousy” — and even turned violent, with Lightfoot reportedly breaking Smith’s cheekbone in one particularly bad spat. In the 2019 documentary If You Could Read My Mind, Lightfoot recalls of his relationship with Smith, “I would have liked to marry her, but I was just newly divorced, and I told myself I would never get married again. And I knew that it was not a good idea to carry on [with Smith] — it was one of those relationships [where] you get a feeling of danger.”

In interviews, Lightfoot would not confirm Smith was his specific muse for “Sundown” — instead opting to more generally refer to the inspiration being “a girlfriend” he had at the time. But the song, a paranoid warning to a lover that they “better take care, if I find you’ve been creeping ’round my back stairs,” is largely assumed to draw from their toxic romance. The Read My Mind documentary plays “Sundown” underneath its discussion of Lightfoot’s relationship with Smith, with Brian Good (of Lightfoot’s one-time opening act The Good Brothers) saying, “He wrote [‘Sundown’] referring to more than one person that might have been involved with [Smith] — and some of them were Gordon’s friends.”

Such material might seem unusually dark for a mid-’70s pop smash. But the trick of “Sundown” is wrapping its narrator’s fevered thoughts of “a hard-lovin’ woman, got me feelin’ mean” in a brisk, almost carefree acoustic groove and a sweetly harmonized and immediately catchy chorus that makes the anger and violence at its core distinctly palatable — as well as an ambiguous title that makes the song feel more mysterious than aggressive. (In Read My Mind, country-rock cult hero Steve Earle points out that the song also leaves out the details that might make it truly unseemly, comparing it to a “spaghetti western… where you can kind of make up your own movie.”) That mix of despairing lyrics and undeniable upbeat hooks was hardly unfamiliar to 1974 top 40 audiences, either; earlier that year, Terry Jacks had gone to No. 1 on the Hot 100 with “Seasons in the Sun,” originally a maudlin French ballad about a dying man’s farewell to his loved ones, which Jacks worked into a bouncy pop singalong fit for AM radio.

“Sundown” also worked due to its embrace of another trend on the U.S. charts at the time: the commercial rise of country music, which, thanks to crossover artists like Charlie Rich and John Denver, was starting to become a regular presence around the top of the Hot 100. “Sundown” is not an explicitly country song — more of a country-influenced folk-rock ditty, along the lines of Stealers Wheel’s 1973 smash “Stuck in the Middle With You,” whose intro build-up it also subtly nicks — though its post-chorus guitars have distinctly southern accents, and Lightfoot would play up its vocal twanginess in live performances. Regardless, the single would reach No. 13 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart, also making it easily the biggest country hit of Lightfoot’s career.

And “Sundown” and “Seasons” had something else in common as 1974 Hot 100 No. 1s: Both were by Canadian artists. In fact, five separate Canadian acts would top the chart in ’74: Lightfoot, Jacks, singer-songwriter Andy Kim (“Rock Me Gently”), veteran pop idol Paul Anka (“(You’re) Having My Baby,” along with Odia Coates) and AOR rockers Bachman Turner-Overdrive (“You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”). It was a near-unprecedented degree of takeover from our friends to the north — barely even approached again on the Hot 100 until 41 years later — that also took advantage of a fairly wide-open time in American popular music in general; a total of 35 different songs reached No. 1 on the chart for the first time in ’74, a record-setting mark at the time.

“Sundown” first hit pole position on the chart dated June 29, replacing Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods’ story song “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” before giving its spot up a week later to the Hues Corporation’s disco-leaning “Rock the Boat.” Its parent album of the same name had also topped the Billboard 200 the week before, and was still reigning when the single rose to No. 1, making that June Lightfoot’s clear commercial apex in the U.S. He would never top either chart again, though follow-up single “Carefree Highway” snuck into the Hot 100’s top 10, and the aforementioned “Edmund Fitzgerald” would reach the runner-up spot in November 1976, held from the top by Rod Stewart’s eight-week No. 1 “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright).” Lightfoot’s final Hot 100 appearance came with 1982’s No. 50-peaking “Baby Step Back,” though he would continue to record through the early ’00s and toured through the ’10s and ’20s, and even released the unaccompanied and appropriately titled comeback album Solo in 2020, his first LP in 16 years.

Smith would remain a major figure in the rock world throughout the ’70s, and after splitting with Lightfoot for good in 1975, she also spent time with Levon Helm of The Band and as a backup singer for country singer-songwriter Hoyt Axton. She also got involved with drugs, reportedly dealing to Keith Richards and Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones — and in 1982, became infamous for giving legendary comedian John Belushi the drug cocktail injection that led to his fatal overdose, for which she was charged with involuntary manslaughter, ultimately serving 15 months in prison. When Smith died at age 73 in August 2020, Lightfoot’s comments to The Globe and Mail reflected a much gentler outlook on the oft-destructive relationship that likely brought out the venom in his biggest chart hit.

“Cathy was a great lady,” he said. “Men were drawn to her, and she used to make me jealous. But I don’t have a bad thing to say about her.”

03 May 2023

Sprite and Ryan Tedder Spotlight Fearless Artists From Around the World in Sprite Limelight Season 2

Sprite is back for the second year of its global music program, Sprite Limelight, and they’re bringing the star power. The program was created to bring together an exceptional collective of fearless international artists with focused, creative points of view, to create original songs via an innovative format: one hook and many beats.

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This year sees the brand partnering with 3x Grammy-awarding winning writer, producer, and lead singer of OneRepublic, Ryan Tedder, to kick off the second season, along with a stellar lineup of artists hailing from across the world: Feid, Cassper Nyovest, Lexa, and Lay Zhang.

“I’m so excited to be the lead artist for  Sprite Limelight Season 2,” Ryan Tedder said of the partnership.  “Creating the hook and the theme for Sprite Limelight Season 2 and seeing how other artists around the world take that, run with it, and create something entirely fresh with an empowering message and interpretation – it’s beautiful and I’m genuinely so happy to be a part of it.”

For this year’s program, Tedder provided a central hook and lyric, from which each of the four artists created an empowering original song around Tedder’s hook. 

Designed to support its global brand narrative, Heat Happens, Sprite aims to help Gen Z stay cool  in the face of everyday moments of heat, based on the insight that music is where they go to, to switch off and clear their heads.

Sprite Limelight Season 2 debuts on May 3, 2023 with a program trailer on YouTube, introducing the artists and teasing their song creation journey. 

Subsequently, each artist will bring their personal stories to life in multi-format episodes dropped on their YouTube and Spotify channels along with Sprite’s global channels. The episodic content features an original music track, immersive docu-styled music video and a personal “Heat Confessional” to give fans a deeper view into how the artists stayed cool in the face of heat. 

“Season 2 of Sprite Limelight demonstrates how UMG For Brands continues connecting our partners with some of the world’s most notable and emerging artists to create cultural relevance and resonate with consumers on a global level. We are looking forward to experiencing the music moments our artists are creating for fans, both existing and new, through this opportunity provided by an established brand like Sprite,” says Richard Yaffa, EVP, Global Brands, Universal Music Group.

Sprite Limelight, its fearless artists, and the music they create, will continue to be a catalyst for music fans to overcome their own heated challenges in 2023 and beyond. Stay tuned for more Sprite Limelight coverage on Billboard. 

03 May 2023

Q Prime, Aaron Frank Team for New Artist Management Arm Q Prime AF

Veteran artist managers Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch are joining forces with Aaron Frank for a new venture — Q Prime AF.

Announced today (May 3), the fresh division will sit under the umbrella of Burnstein and Mensch’s Q Prime, the artist management company through which they guide the careers of Metallica, Muse, Foals, Disturbed, Cage The Elephant, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Three Days Grace and more.

Through the alliance, Frank will bring his Nashville-based team, plus an artist roster that includes Greta Van Fleet, Marcus King, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Houndmouth and All Them Witches.

“Cliff and Peter are the reason I became a manager,” comments Frank. “They have always been the gold standard of managers in my eyes, and their independent spirit and savviness is unmatched. I’m so excited to join their amazing team to elevate our work, and excited for what we can build together at Q Prime AF.”

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The partnership is at least eight months in the making. Over lunch, “Cliff and I decided that we needed to move Q Prime past the normal standard of management company rating:  Gold, platinum standard just wasn’t enough,” explains Mensch in a statement. “We wanted to establish a new standard. Tantalum, a rare earth precious metal found in eight countries and an absolute necessity in the digital world, totally fit the bill.”

Frank, with his group of “amazing artists, had a similar vision and, under the theory that the modern age needed a new standard of excellence, agreed to create the Tantalum standard of management companies.”

Frank cut his teeth in 2009 working for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s management company, Night Castle Management, in New York. In 2014, he relocated to Nashville where he co-founded ABI Management, and subsequently forming AMFM — nabbing GVF as his first client.

Q Prime also houses Q Prime South, founded 2001 in Nashville by John Peets; and Q Prime U.K., established 2007 in London and run by Steve Matthews and Tara Richardson.

03 May 2023

Al Kooper Is ‘Quite Surprised and Amused’ by 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction

Al Kooper terms himself “quite surprised and amused” to learn he’s been selected for a “musical excellence award” at the 2023 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Nov. 3 in his birthplace of Brooklyn.

Kooper joins frequent Rock Hall nominee Chaka Khan and Elton John’s lyricist Bernie Taupin in the category, which was introduced during 2000 as the sideman award and renamed during 2010. Previous recipients have included Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, LL Cool J, Nile Rodgers and Judas Priest.

“I wasn’t aware of that at all, actually,” Koper told Billboard from his current home in Boston. “So it’s flattering. I don’t have a plethora of awards.” In 2008, however, the multi-instrumentalist was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, and seven years prior he received an Honorary Doctor of Music from the Berklee College of Music, where he taught songwriting and record production.

Kooper, 79, has long been considered one of the Rock Hall’s great slights given his voluminous contributions — starting as a member of the Royal Teens and then co-writing the hits “This Diamond Ring” for Gary Lewis and the Playboys and “I Must Be Seeing Things” for Gene Pitney. “I’ve lived a long live and I’ve done a lot of stuff — and I was also lucky in how things fell for me,” Kooper noted.

That luck played out during June 1965 sessions in New York where Kooper found himself creating the organ riff for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” “I would just call it ballsy,” Kooper recalled with a laugh. “I was invited to the session and I went out and sat down at the organ. I wasn’t invited to play. (Producer) Tom Wilson said, ‘OK, this is Take 2…Hey, what are you doing out there?!’ Once I sat down, I just started playing.” The session led to an association that included playing live with Dylan — including at that summer’s notorious Newport Folk Festival appearance — and recording on several of his albums.

Kooper went on to join the Blues Project in 1965 and then formed Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1967, which he left after just one album (Child Is Father to the Man) over creative differences. “It was a band I put together and then they kicked me out of it, that’s how I look at it,” Kooper said with a laugh. “I was sort of surprised by how big they got, sort of instantly — but not when I was in it.” As a record executive with Columbia, Kooper helmed projects such as Super Session with Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills and The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. He had a record label called Sounds of the South, through MCA, through which he signed Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced its first three albums.

Kooper also produced Don Ellis, the Tubes and Frankie & Johnny and released 11 solo albums. He’s played on sessions for the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Roy Orbison, the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Neil Diamond, Rita Coolidge and more, and he scored the 1980s TV series Crime Story and the 1970 film The Landlord. He also served as the musical director of the Rock Bottom Remainders, the all-authors band.

Kooper documented many of his experiences in his colorful 1977 memoir Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Survivor, as well as in the continuing podcast Koopercast.

Kooper, who considers himself “housebound” (“As I got older I just wasn’t as interested in going out”), maintains a recording studio in his basement and continues to work on new music. His latest project is a career-spanning four-CD set of “everything that didn’t come out”; he’s currently working on getting the rights to all the material and has not determined a release date.

Kooper claims to be unaware of the online and social media campaigns pushing for his inclusion in the Rock Hall. He isn’t thinking about the induction ceremony yet, either, and said his attendance in November “depends on my health.”

03 May 2023

The Spinners’ Sole Surviving Founder Reacts to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction

The fourth time is the charm for the Spinners in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The R&B vocal group — best known for its 1970s Atlantic Records hits such as “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love,” “The Rubberband Man,” “Then Came You” with Dionne Warwick — was nominated in the performer category in 2012, 2015 and 2016 without getting the nod. This year it did, however, and will be one of seven performer acts inducted at the 38th annual ceremony on Nov. 3 in Brooklyn.

“It feels great. I really does,” Henry Fambrough, the sole surviving founding member of the group, tells Billboard from his home in Virginia. “I just wish all the other guys were here to see it. It really is a great honor.”

Fambrough, 84, recently announced his retirement from the Spinners, which released its latest album, ‘Round the Block and Back Again, in 2021. The baritone will be inducted along with fellow founding members Pervis Jackson, who died in 2008, Billy Henderson (2007), Bobbie Smith (2013) and Philippé Wynne, the group’s lead tenor from 1972-77 (1984).

Fambrough acknowledged that he’s been “a little disappointed” that the Spinners failed to be inducted on its other nominations. “But you have to carry on, you have to keep going,” he says. “If you’re nominated, at least you know someone is thinking about you.”

The group formed in Detroit during 1954, known at varying times as the Detroit Spinners and the Motown Spinners. It recorded first for former manager and group member Harvey Fuqua’s Tri-Phi Records, then became part of Motown when Fuqua sold his label to Berry Gordy Jr., his brother-in-law. The group’s success at Motown was limited: two top 10s on the chart now known as Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The group members supplemented their income by working in Motown’s record packaging plant, tour managing other acts or, in Fambrough’s case, serving as chauffeur for Gordy’s mother, who he says was “a great lady.”

After the Stevie Wonder-produced “It’s a Shame” in 1970, the Spinners took Aretha Franklin’s suggestion to sign with Atlantic, where producer Thom Bell took the group to new heights – seven top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (including the chart-topping “Then Came You” collab with Dionne Warwick) in eight years, six of them No. 1 hits on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, along with six consecutive gold albums. “When we signed (Bell) told us, ‘A year from now, you’re gonna be the No. 1 group in the country,’” Fambrough recalls. “And we were like, ‘Yeah. Right. Thank you.’ But it was true.”

The Rock Hall induction is not the Spinners’ first career honor. The group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1976 and was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. And Fambrough is confident that the current lineup will maintain the group’s pedigree, bolstered by its new Rock Hall props.

“Those guys have the groove down. They’re special,” Fambrough says. “Y’know, we made a pact with each other, back in the beginning; ‘We’re gonna make it or we’re not gonna make it, but whatever we do we’re gonna do it together.’ And when one of the guys would pass away, we would get somebody else to come in who was thinking like we thought and had the idea of the future that we wanted and just keep it going.”

03 May 2023

John & Martina McBride’s Blackbird Studio Launches Music Education Platform

A decade ago, sound engineer John McBride and country music vocalist/five-time CMA Award winner Martina McBride launched Blackbird Academy — an educational extension of the couple’s Nashville recording studio, Blackbird Studio, that opened in 2002 and has since hosted artists including Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Queen, Kings of Leon and Keith Urban.

Now, the McBrides will further delve into offering accessible musical education via Inside Blackbird, a new subscription-based platform aimed at teaching viewers about the processes of recording, studio producing, songwriting and live sound/production. The series features more than 200 hours of content covering different aspects of the music industry, as well as exclusive interviews and educational videos featuring top-shelf producers, musicians and engineers.

In one video, producer Nathan Chapman (known for his early work with Swift) discusses comping vocals. In another, session player Tom Bukovac discusses building a song from start to finish, while in another, producer Dann Huff (known for his work with Urban, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton and more) discusses the delicate art of discussing ideas in a recording session. Another video features Young Thug producer Bainz as he discusses navigating a studio session.

New videos will added to the platform each week.

Other contributors to the platform include artists like Billy Corgan, Garth Brooks, Yelawolf, Aly+AJ, Vince Gill and Young the Giant, as well as producer Joe Chiccarelli (The White Stripes, My Morning Jacket), guitar legend Joe Bonamassa, producer/engineer Niko Bolas (Neil Young, KISS), vocal coach RAab Stevenson (Rihanna, SZA, Justin Timberlake), front of house engineer Dave Natale (The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Fleetwood Mac). The platform also offers tutorials on live sound, including motors, rigging, power distribution, consoles, monitor engineering and wireless audio.

“Anyone with an interest or curiosity about music will benefit from Inside Blackbird,” John McBride said in a statement. “Learn more about instruments, gear, plugins, the recording process and live touring from the best in the business. Find out how artists start their careers and what it takes to succeed. If we don’t have the answer, we know someone who does, and that is who you will find at Inside Blackbird.”

The Inside Blackbird platform is now available to users for $15.99 per month and to students for $9.99 per month. Further discounts are available through an annual subscription, while the Creator Plan offers users access to not only Inside Blackbird’s content but also KIT Plugins’ complete suite of audio tools released to date. This includes the historic Blackbird Studio emulations for $24.99 per month or an annual subscription of $249.90 (two months free). Any future Blackbird plugins will also be included in the plan as they are released.

Inside Blackbird has additionally partnered with Save the Music by donating an unspecified portion of each subscription to the organization.

See the trailer for Inside Blackbird below:

03 May 2023

The Weeknd Partners With Blue Bottle Coffee on ‘Samra Origins’ Product Line Named After Superstar’s Mother

The Weeknd is connecting with his Ethiopian roots and honoring his family with his new Samra Origins coffee brand and product line in partnership with Blue Bottle Coffee, which was announced Wednesday (May 3).

Named after his mother Samra, Samra Origins pays homage to the Canadian-Ethiopian singer’s heritage and motherland’s standing as the birthplace of coffee. The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) and Samra developed the first Samra Origins blend with Blue Bottle’s head of innovation & quality, Benjamin Brewer. Brewer selected some of Ethiopia’s best coffees to craft three blend variations, which The Weeknd and Samra tasted before selecting the offering most similar to the coffee Samra brews at home. Blue Bottle then worked with The Weeknd to carefully fine tune the blend and create a distinct flavor profile, which not only captures classic notes of fresh fruit and bright florals but upholds centuries of traditions originated and perfected by Ethiopian coffee farmers.

“Ethiopian culture is an important part of my identity and I’m proud to work alongside the Blue Bottle Coffee team to shine a light on Ethiopian traditions, values, and of course, coffee,” said The Weeknd in a press release. “Growing up, I watched my mother perform Buna Tetu, a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. This sensory experience helped shape my understanding of community and taught me to always honor my roots.”

In an exclusive statement to Billboard, he added: “Samra Origins is a true passion project of mine that Blue Bottle matched and understood as we developed the products together. I hope the result ignites curiosity about Ethiopia’s people and motivates others to give back to communities in need.”

The Weeknd

The Weeknd

Blue Bottle Coffee

The Weeknd

The Weeknd

Blue Bottle Coffee

And to honor The Weeknd’s philanthropic efforts, Blue Bottle Coffee will donate to his XO Humanitarian Fund, which he launched in March 2022 alongside the United Nations World Food Programme. Since its launch last spring, the XO Humanitarian Fund has raised and pledged $5 million to provide food and support to millions of people experiencing hunger across the globe.

“We are grateful to have The Weeknd and Blue Bottle Coffee’s steadfast support as we work to feed families in hunger hotspots worldwide,” said Barron Segar, president and CEO of World Food Program USA, in a statement. “Private sector partners like Blue Bottle Coffee are critical in generating both public awareness and funding to save the 43 million people on the brink of starvation across 51 countries.”

Samra Origins will launch this month with a limited release of Exceedingly Rare Ethiopia Wolde Faye Koricha COE #7, which anyone can purchase for $65 (per 100g tin) exclusively online at samraorigins.com. Starting Wednesday, Blue Bottle guests can sign up for the online waitlist to be the first to know when Samra Origins officially drops next Tuesday, May 9.

“Ethiopian coffee is truly in a class of its own and the country holds a special place within our Blue Bottle community,” said Karl Strovink, CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee, in the release. “Since Blue Bottle Coffee’s inception in 2002, we’ve sourced coffee from Ethiopia. In 2023, Ethiopia is still consistently among our top origins by volume. I’m excited that we’re extending our commitment there with Samra Origins so we can continue to share the best of Ethiopian coffee and support our network of producers in the country.”

03 May 2023

Nick Cave Responds to Fan Questions about Attending King Charles III’s Coronation: ‘I Am Not a Monarchist, Nor Am I a Royalist’

Nick Cave is attending King Charles III’s coronation on Saturday (May 6). The trip might seem out of character for the midnight-dim singer-songwriter best known for murder ballads, patented jaundiced view of the soul of man and his death’s creep baritone voice. But in a letter on his Red Right Hand Files site posted this week, Cave responded to a series of letters asking why the Australian-born singer was making the trip, including one who wondered what a young Nick would think of the 65-year-old Cave tipping his hat to the new monarch?

“I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age,” wrote Cave, who noted that he had to be quick because he’s still working out what to wear.

“Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest,” added “The Weeping Song” singer, who said he once met the late Queen Elizabeth at a Buckingham Palace event for an event he thought was titled “Aspirational Australians Living in the UK” (or something to that effect).

“It was a mostly awkward affair, but the Queen herself, dressed in a salmon coloured twin-set, seemed almost extraterrestrial and was the most charismatic woman I have ever met,” he recalled. “Maybe it was the lighting, but she actually glowed. As I told my mother – who was the same age as the Queen and, like the Queen, died in her nineties – about that day, her old eyes filled with tears.”

Cave said that when he watched the Queen’s funeral on TV last year to his surprise he found himself weeping as her coffin was “stripped of the crown, orb and sceptre and lowered through the floor of St. George’s Chapel. I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself. I’m just drawn to that kind of thing – the bizarre, the uncanny, the stupefyingly spectacular, the awe-inspiring.”

As for young Nick, well, like many youngsters, Cave said his teen self was “young and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do.” Regardless of what you might think, Cave said he’s looking forward to the event and, yes, he’ll probably wear a suit.

Cave joins a short list of artists attending the event, including Sunday’s Coronation Concert performers Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, Take That and Andrea Bocelli. In the months leading up to Charles’ coronation there were a raft of stories about the many artists who had reportedly declined invitations to attend or perform, including such British pop royalty as Harry Styles, Elton John, Ed Sheeran, Robbie Williams, Adele and the Spice Girls.

03 May 2023

Snubs & Surprises for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s 2023 Inductees

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced the inductees for its 2023 class this morning (May 3). Seven of the 14 performers nominated for this year were officially welcomed into the Rock Hall, along with six more artists and execs via the honorary awards — including two recipients of the Musical Influence Award, three of the Musical Excellence Award and one of the Ahmet Ertegun Award.

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This year’s honorees (and those left behind) largely fall in line with trends we’ve seen from the Rock Hall’s last handful of induction classes — but there are a handful of exceptions, as well as some examples of the museum’s standards perhaps changing faster than we even anticipated. Here are some of the more unexpected revelations from this year’s class.

SNUB: The White Stripes

Whoops: The artist we predicted as the most likely inductee among the 2023 nominees was nowhere to be found among the names announced this morning. Detroit garage rock duo The White Stripes, who became one of the biggest and most critically acclaimed rock acts of the ’00s, seemed like a bulls-eye pick for Rock Hall traditionalists — particularly given their own obvious reverence for the kind of rock history the museum tends to honor. But Jack and Meg White’s snub in their first year nominated perhaps indicates that the target has moved somewhat for Rock Hall voters in recent years.

It’s just the Stripes’ first year of eligibility, so it’s pretty likely they’ll be back on the ballot in years to come, and may still have a good chance of getting in. The last rock band who missed the cut after seeming like this clear a slam dunk for first-year induction was Radiohead, who lost out in 2018 and then were welcomed in the very next year. But it’s getting pretty clear that dead-center rock acts who simply feel like obvious Rock & Roll Hall of Famers can no longer be considered shoo-ins for induction — at least not in their first try.

SURPRISE: The Spinners

At the other pole of our February predictions was R&B quintet The Spinners, about whom we said, “The songs hold up, but the group itself likely remains a little too anonymous for inclusion — even on its fourth nomination.” Well, the voters disagreed this time around, as the ’70s soul hitmakers did indeed get through the Rock Hall’s doors on their fourth time out — making them the first vocal group to be inducted since The “5” Royales were brought in as an Early Influence in 2015, and the first to be voted in as a performer since Little Anthony & The Imperials in 2009.

It’s hard to know what specifically the Spinners owe their induction to — though certainly, no group with classic hits as timeless as “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love?” and “Games People Play” really needs to justify its inclusion in any such institution. The group may have additionally benefited from a combination of seniority and sentimentality; they were one of just three nominees from the ’60s and ’70s on the ballot this year (and the one with the biggest pop hits), and they were also one of just three acts who had already been nominated three times before (with the other two also getting in).

SURPRISE: Rage Against the Machine
SNUB: Soundgarden

To be fair, it was pretty close to a coin flip between these two great ’90s alternative-era bands — whose names will forever linked due to members from each coming together in the ’00s to form the similarly successful supergroup Audioslave. It seemed like it was time for one of the two to get in this year; both had been nominated before and both have very Rock Hall-friendly resumés. We ultimately leaned towards Soundgarden in our predictions, saying that the Seattle quartet “cast a bit longer a shadow [than Rage Against the Machine] — partly because of their earlier start (as the first real sensations of the grunge era) and partly because of the specter of late frontman Chris Cornell, one of the most inimitable rock frontmen of the last 40 years.”

However, the voters leaned the other way this year: Rage Against the Machine was finally inducted in its fifth try since 2018, becoming the closest thing to a traditional rock band let through the Rock Hall’s doors in 2023. (And with a rapping frontman in Zack de la Rocha and a sound that’s as indebted to funk and hip-hop as punk and metal, they’re not all that traditional.) Rage’s voting profile probably got a boost from its 2022 reunion tour — which was unfortunately cut short after 11 dates due to de la Rocha suffering a leg injury, but still may have rekindled enough memories of the band’s greatness to get it over the hump this time around.

SURPRISE: George Michael and Missy Elliott

Neither is a surprise individually, but together (along with fellow 2023 inductees Kate Bush and Willie Nelson) George Michael and Missy Elliott getting in demonstrates just how much Rock Hall voters have begun drifting towards iconic solo artists, almost regardless of what genre they’re most associated with. George Michael’s music occasionally flirted with traditional rock, but he was also proudly pop — in ways Rock Hall voters have not always rewarded or even approved of — while rap great Missy Elliott has very little connection to guitar-based rock music to speak of.

However, George Michael and Missy Elliott are undeniably crucial figures of the last 40 years of popular music — with Michael becoming one of the most trailblazing superstars on radio and MTV in the ’80s and early ’90s, and Elliott evolving the sound and image of hip-hop with her innovative albums, singles and music videos. In 2023, it appears that such an outsized impact on the music and culture of the rock era is more important to Rock Hall voters than any kind of strictly defined quintessential rockness. (Of the five solo performers inducted this year, Sheryl Crow is the only conventional rock star — and she also spent significant parts of her career dabbling in other genres like pop and country.)

SNUB: A Tribe Called Quest

Neither a legendary solo hitmaker nor a traditional rock band, ’90s rap trio A Tribe Called Quest seems likely to keep getting stuck in the middle for Rock Hall voters. The influential New York group is now 0-2, having been nominated each of the last two years but not yet inducted. Affection for the group among hip-hop heads and critics of all stripes remains perennially strong, so they’re likely to at least stay in the mix for years to come, but it may take something of a concentrated push to actually get them through the doors at this point.

SURPRISE: Chaka Khan (Musical Excellence Award)

Welcome, Ms. Khan! The funk and R&B icon of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s had been nominated a staggering seven times as a performer — three times solo, four times along with her funk band Rufus — but had yet to be voted in, making her one of the institution’s preeminent bridesmaids. No longer: The Rock Hall finally took it out of the voters’ hands this year, making her one of three Musical Excellence Award recipients (along with storied studio musician Al Kooper and hitmaking songwriter/Elton John collaborator Bernie Taupin). Khan’s honorary induction is unexpected — probably for no one more than the singer herself — but logical, following such multi-time snubs as Kraftwerk, Judas Priest and LL Cool J taking a similar path to Rock Hall entry via the honorary awards earlier this decade.