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J. Cole has announced a new podcast series edited from conversations he had with his right hand Ibrahim Hamad and flimmaker Scott Lazer that will tell his story while also including unreleased music.
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The North Carolina rapper and businessman took to Instagram to make the announcement with a trailer and a lengthy caption attached. “It’s hard to write a caption to describe what this is,” he began. “I really don’t even know what to call it. We settled on calling it an ‘audio series’ but to me it plays like a movie in the form of a conversation. First, me and Ib spent mad days talking to Scott, recapping the whole journey up to present day. Front to back. It was new, it was fun, it was emotional and more than anything, it was therapeutic.”
Adding, “After that Scott took the conversation and did his thing with it… then it was time to listen back. When I heard it with fresh ears, I was glued to the story as if it was somebody else’s. At times I could feel my adrenaline rush when hearing about the ups and the many downs and how it all played out in the end.”
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He then continued on about how the process gave him a renewed perspective, writing, “I got so much clarity from it, and I understood more than ever the power of having a dream, the power of fueling that dream with strong vision, the magic that happens when we stay in alignment with God, and the darkness that can come in the times that we don’t.”
Cole then talked about his reclusiveness over the years when it came to interviews and social media. “As the years of my career grew I found myself much more hesitant to share details of my life with the world,” he admitted. “Even as I type this, I feel the last little bit of resistance. ‘You sure you want to do this?’ But if I was a younger version of myself, I know that I would get so much fuel from hearing this from somebody that went for theirs and ‘made it.’ For that reason, I think it’s worth sharing.”
Finally, he said he hopes this new audio series will inspire people to continue chasing the things that they’re passionate about. “So, if you rocked with me at any point so far on my journey, I hope this will give you even more perspective and fill in a lot of blanks,” Cole wrote. “If you have your own dream in life that you hope to achieve, in any field, I hope that this will feed your spirit, giving you confidence to believe in that dream and the encouragement to push through the tough times. To go for it even when you may be afraid to.”
Season 1 of Inevitable will be available starting today (Nov. 18) at 6 p.m. ET. You can find the series here.
Worl Boss is finally free — and now the Jamaican musical and cultural icon is getting the podcast treatment.
Worl Boss: The Vybz Kartel Story, an eight-part podcast series from SALT, Big Wave More Fire and Gulfstream Studios, is set to debut on Dec. 16, 2024. Created by Tahir Garcia and Sam Griesemer and executive produced by Nick Panama and Max Musina, the audio series will explore the life, career and influence of the dancehall icon.
“There’s so many incredible stories that exist within dancehall and reggae music and the culture here in Jamaica, and so many of them don’t get shared with the public. The only time you hear these stories is if you’re lucky,” Garcia, who also narrates the series, tells Billboard. “We took a step back, two or three years ago, and decided that we wanted this space to be able to tell the story properly. Obviously, podcasting has become this huge thing. But one thing that’s missing, especially in Jamaican culture, is this concept of [podcasts] being scripted. There’s so much more that can be brought to it with sound design and actually sitting down and editing interviews to tell the narrative in a way that captures everything and really preserved the essence of [Vybz Kartel’s] story.”
The new podcast series is told entirely by Jamaican voices and will exclusively feature interviews with important figures within Kartel’s circle, including the first female member of Kartel’s Portmore Empire crew Lisa Hyper, Kartel’s former DJ Creep Chromatic and famed musician Wayne Marshall. These key players will also be joined by Winford Williams — host of On Stage TV, the longest-runnning dancehall interview series — as well as essayist Carolyn Cooper, author and professor Donna Hope, and Milk and Jay Will, two important collaborators on Teacha’s Pet, Kartel’s reality show.
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Earlier this summer (July 31), just over a week before Jamaica’s Independence Day (Aug. 6), Kartel regained his freedom after the Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that he and his co-accused — Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St. John — will not face a new trial for the 2011 murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams. Although he was originally sentenced to 35 years in prison after a historic 64-day trial back in 2014, Kartel (and his co-accused) have always denied their involvement in Williams’ death.
“We have a lot of assets and we spoke to people at the source, including his camp, people in and around his orbit, fans and musicians. We did a pretty extensive job covering all the bases,” says Panama. “We have a lot of voices that are going to be represented and using that as a way to help breakthrough and create the world around the story is part of how we’ll successfully bring this to market. We’ve got some really great partners in the audio space that we’ll be announcing soon, and I think they’ll help amplify this project even more.”
Known for hits such as “Fever” and his Spice-assisted “Romping Shop,” Vybz Kartel’s raunchy music and slick wordplay have soundtracked multiple generations of dancehall listeners, and Garcia promises the new series will be for everyone: from first-time listeners to lifelong fans. “If this is your first introduction [to Vybz Kartel], it’s supposed to be just as impactful as it would be to someone who’s listened to him forever.”
In addition to his music and efforts to support Jamaica, Kartel’s legal woes have also become a major part of his legacy — one that Worl Boss does not shy away from. “Everything gets addressed and talked about. We just don’t dwell on that. It’s a part of the journey, but it doesn’t define the character,” explains Garcia, who also tells Billboard that, “the hardest part was getting people who are close to [Kartel] to speak freely — especially while he was still incarcerated — because nobody wanted to do anything that could potentially incriminate [him or themselves]. Everyone was very, very cautious about agreeing to do it, and what put them at ease was us not focusing on the mess.”
Although there are currently no additional details about the podcast’s distribution, Panama stresses that the podcast series is just one part of the story they hope to tell. “The second [part] is a documentary series and feature film that are in development with arguably one of the biggest Jamaican directors, and UTA’s representing the project,” he reveals. “That will probably be more of a late 2024 thing, but the reason we did those together is because the story is so dynamic. Dancehall is such a small genre from a small country that has an enormously outsized impact globally. To have a revered yet controversial figure at the heart of that with Vybz [Kartel] is such a fascinating character and cultural study.”
Since his release, Kartel has remained outside partying and enjoying his freedom ahead of a massive “Freedom Street” concert at the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, on Dec. 31 — his first performance in 13 years. Production and filming for Worl Boss began before Kartel regain his freedom, but now “there’s a third act to his story,” Panama muses. “He wasted no time walking out of prison and getting his entrepreneurial and music endeavors back up and running and continuing to build his mythology.”
From February’s box office-topping Bob Marley: One Love biopic to Worl Boss, Jamaica has remained at the forefront of global popular culture throughout 2024. For his part, Garcia hopes this new podcast series is the beginning of several projects chronicling and preserving Caribbean culture and music history. “That’s one of the things we spoke about very early on in this process, what does the next step within this space look like?” he says. “Once [Worl Boss] starts rolling out, hopefully it reshapes what people think is possible, and that’s going to be even more exciting.”
In 2010, Damien Shields, then 22, was reloading the official Michael Jackson website repeatedly from his home in Australia, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the heavily hyped unreleased track “Breaking News.” When it arrived, he was disappointed — then angry. He believed that the King of Pop, who died June 25, 2009, wasn’t singing on the song. It was an imposter. “I was outraged, the same as thousands of other fans,” Shields says. “But unlike those other fans, I wanted to do something about it.”
That moment led to a 14-year, DIY investigative journalism project, involving expensive trips to interview Jackson’s nephew Taryll Jackson in Los Angeles and scour the archives of the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C. Originally intended to be a book, Shields’ new, 12-part podcast, Faking Michael, which is available on major podcast platforms, is the “untold story of the biggest fraud in music,” he says.
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The “true-crime podcast,” as Shields calls it, was inspired by NPR’s Serial and makes a methodical case that two producers and Jackson friends, Eddie Cascio and James Porte, faked the vocals on “Breaking News,” “Monster” and “Keep Your Head Up” and hoodwinked Jackson’s estate and longtime label Sony Music. In 2010, the estate made a deal potentially worth $250 million with Sony for 10 albums, including deluxe reissues of previous Jackson albums and new and unreleased material. Shields argues, however, that the estate was under pressure to provide new tracks and made a deal with Cascio and Porte, whom Shields accuses of employing an imposter singer named Jason Malachi.
According to Faking Michael, when superproducer Teddy Riley and Taryll began postproduction on the tracks in August 2010, Taryll concluded his late uncle’s vocals weren’t on the songs and complained on social media. The podcast also reports that the estate asked producers for their expert opinions but ignored their feedback and released the tracks anyway in December 2010.
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After fans filed a class-action suit against the estate and Sony, the parties settled in an undisclosed agreement in 2022. Earlier, the label had pulled the three disputed tracks from the 2010 album Michael. A Sony representative declined to comment, and a rep for Jackson’s estate did not respond to requests for comment; an attorney who represented Cascio and Porte in the suit did not respond to requests for comment. But Shields, now 36, discussed Faking Michael by Zoom from Australia.
What should listeners take away from your podcast?
This is art forgery.
How did you fund all this research?
It’s self-funded. When I started taking this seriously and traveling overseas, it was very difficult. I was working a minimum wage-type job at a marketing firm and didn’t have any money. I would save up, then go on a trip, do my research and come back totally broke, then save up and do it all again. In 2017, I left my job to work on this full time. To fund that, I started driving ride-share. One of the interviews I did was with Teddy Riley’s manager, Lawanda [Lane]. [According to the podcast, Riley, who had worked with Jackson, received $50,000 per track for Michael, including the Cascio-Porte material.] I’d been trying to get Lawanda for 11 years. She texted me at two in the morning Australian time: “Hey, Damien, I’m ready to talk.” I said, “Now?” She said, “I can be ready in 10 minutes.” So I switched off my ride-share app, drove home and interviewed her for four-and-a-half hours. That’s one of the cornerstone interviews.
The podcast suggests Sony and the estate made the deal with Cascio and Porte because they were desperate to release unheard Jackson music immediately after his death. How did they fall for this?
There were stipulations in the deal that you will release X amount of songs on Y amount of projects over Z amount of years. When the estate was coming into the problem with the vocals and people were telling them, “Well, this is not Michael,” they had to weigh that with “What implication would there be of releasing it anyway?” compared to the implication of breaking the contract.
Why do you think the estate was so desperate for unreleased Jackson material during this period?
The material Michael worked on in the final years of his life — he didn’t really do anything [with it]. He worked with [singer] Akon for two or three years, and he did a verse and some ad-libs on a duet. He worked with [producer] RedOne for two years. RedOne thinks he had one song that could possibly be released, but it would have to be “We Are the World” style, with multiple artists, because he didn’t have enough with Michael. [The estate] wanted final-year songs [from 2009]. They couldn’t do it, because there weren’t final-year songs. And the Cascio tracks were [allegedly] final-year songs.
You air snippets of recorded music, including songs that appeared on Michael and unreleased studio recordings. Did you have to clear them with the estate and Sony?
A lot of the material Cascio and Porte turned over to Sony leaked online in the spring of 2015. [It’s unclear who was responsible for the leak.] The source materials were out there on the internet. You’ve got to let listeners hear it, but you’ve got to respect fair-use copyright guidelines. [The recordings are] only used when I’m talking about something to prove my case. Ethics are at the top of my list.
And you don’t want Jackson estate co-executor John Branca coming after you.
I hope that John Branca will appreciate this. As much as it makes the estate look foolish, it does demonstrate that they were the victim of fraud. The estate should be listening to this and going, “We have to contact the authorities.”
Have you heard from Cascio or Porte or anyone from the estate or Sony?
No. We haven’t had any blowback or pushback from people who are depicted in it. Even though we are talking about something that I consider to be the greatest fraud in music history, I made a very conscious effort to not attack anyone’s character. The actions speak for themselves.
What’s next?
I want to get a good night’s sleep!
To say that Colin Hay‘s musical career has been a long and winding road would be an understatement. In just over a decade, the Scottish-born musician went from an unknown musician playing folk clubs in Melbourne, Australia, to fronting early ‘80s hitmakers Men at Work, to languishing in Los Angeles after his solo record deal fell through.
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The “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?” singer discovered that the fame from being part of a multi-platinum band didn’t easily transfer to a solo career. Men at Work broke up after — or during, depending on how you look at it — the recording of their 1985 album, Two Hearts. Hay regrouped and released solo albums for Columbia Records (1987’s Looking for Jack) and MCA Records (1990’s Wayfaring Sons). Disappointing sales caused MCA Records to drop Hay, leaving him without a record label, a manager or a booking agent. “No one was interested really in anything that I was doing,” he tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast.
People began to take notice of his solo work — slowly. In 1992, Hay was asked to play at a new Los Angeles venue, Largo, by its owner, Mark Flannigan. Hay took to the stage with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a body of work from three Men at Work albums and two solo albums. The shows were a hit with local audiences, and Hay became a frequent guest. “Largo was really instrumental” in building the next phase of his career, Hay says. “It’s like a home, really, where I could just be myself and play whatever I wanted to.”
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Nearly 40 years old at the time, Hay says he knew record labels weren’t interested in him despite having Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits in 1982 (“Who Can It be Now?”) and 1983 (“Down Under”) and an album, Business as Usual, that spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard 200 albums chart. So, Hay decided to set about finding his own audience and take the one-man show honed at Largo on the road. It was a big adjustment for a musician whose previous band dominated radio and MTV in the early ‘80s and won a best new artist Grammy in 1983. “Thirty years ago, there was hardly anyone there,” he says of those early solo shows. “There might be 30 people, 40 people. Not so very long before that I had been playing to, like, 150,000 people.”
Those early solo shows were a valuable step in creating a second career as a solo singer-songwriter. Initially facing small crowds of 30 or 40 people, Hay discovered that he had a knack for storytelling that captured the audience’s attention between songs. “I think people were a little embarrassed for me in the audience,” he says in a Scottish accent softened by his upbringing in Australia. “I could see this kind of quizzical look in their face, like, ‘Why is he doing this?’ And so I just started to talk to people because they were just there, you know? And so I just started to talk to them and tell them what had happened to me. And as I did that, I noticed that people leaned in a bit closer.”
A big break came in 2002 when Hay was featured in an episode of the television show Scrubs. Through a mutual friend, Hay met Zach Braff when the actor landed the starring role. “He said, ‘I’ll see if I can get some of your songs on the TV show,’” Hay recalls. “I didn’t think anything of it.” But Braff made good on his pledge by taking Hay’s music to show creator Bill Lawrence, who ended up writing an episode called “My Overkill” in which Hay performs the 1983 Men at Work hit “Overkill.” “That was very … that was a huge thing for me, especially playing live,” says Hay. “It had a big impact in terms of my live audiences, people who discovered me through watching that show.”
A year later, Hay was performing in Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, a gig he held intermittently over the years and consistently since 2018. Hay was introduced to The Beatles as a child by his father, the owner of a music store in his native Scotland. After a decade rebuilding his career as a solo artist, Hay was sharing a stage with the Beatles’ drummer. “When you turn around you think, ‘Wow, I’m playing with Ringo!” Hay exclaims. “’He was in the f–king Beatles!’”
More than three decades later, Hay continues to entertain audiences with his solo acoustic shows filled with anecdotes and wry humor. The venues have grown considerably from sparsely filled clubs to crowded small theaters and performing arts centers. He also tours under the name Men at Work, although he is the lone original member. His vast catalog of solo albums haven’t been commercial successes, Hay points out, constant touring has been the key building his shows from 30 or 40 people in the early ’90s to 1,000 or so a night today.
“The success that I’ve really managed to achieve has just been through going out and playing live. So it’s a valuable thing for me. And also, I kind of treasure the audiences in a way because — people say that a lot — but really they kind of saved me in many ways. Because even when I first started to go out and play live in the early ’90s, people could sense my kind of slight sense of desperation about what the f–k is going on. And they would just encourage me [to] just keep going.”
Hay has indeed kept going. Nearly 50 years after Hay began to play at folks clubs in Melbourne, he says he’s in his natural state as a traveling, guitar-toting troubadour. “All I’m doing is trying to make sense of the time that I’ve got left and enjoy myself as much as I can — and also to hopefully give people a good night out,” Hay says. “I think that’s kind of a useful thing to do.”
To listen to the entire interview with Colin Hay, hit play on the embedded Spotify player, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Everand, Podbean or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts.
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Kamala Harris’ appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast struck a major chord with those on social media as her presidential campaign heats up.
With the presidential election less than 30 days away, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has embarked on a strategy of sitting for interviews with non-traditional media outlets. Some analysts and observers have criticized the vice president for engaging in what they deem “softball” interviews and avoiding legacy media. Her latest interview was on the Call Her Daddy podcast, hosted by Alex Cooper, and it generated several key highlights as well as some inspired responses from those on social media who had a chance to tune in.
The episode featuring Vice President Harris was devoid of raunchy humor and bold talk on subjects such as sexuality which has been part of the show’s appeal. Cooper asked some pertinent questions during the interview, which aired on Sunday (October 6) related to critical comments about Harris. One of those focused on Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders knocking Harris during a town hall in Flint, Michigan, saying that while her three children keep her “humble”, she feels “Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.” Harris spoke with warmth about her life with Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, and being a stepmother. “This is not the 1950s anymore,” Harris said. “Families come in all kinds of forms.” She would add, “I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble. Two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life, and children in their life.”
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1843052264249835980
Some social media users did express their disappointment with Cooper, wondering why she didn’t press her about the devastation by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina and when she planned to interview Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In the prelude to the episode, Cooper explained her reasons for interviewing Harris and revealed that Trump did not respond to her invitation to come on the show.
https://x.com/yashar/status/1843026581889183789
Many more online lauded Cooper for landing such a prestigious interview and getting some insightful answers. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, a user named TVMoJoe wrote: “I learned far more about her in 45 minutes than in any of the interviews she’s done with mainstream outlets. The reason: the questions were designed to get answers vs. play gotcha.”
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Demi Lovato and Penn Badgley got deep on the latest episode of Podcrushed, with the 32-year-old singer/actress opening up about her ongoing eating disorder treatments, gender presentation and more in an interview posted Thursday (Oct. 3).
Sitting across from the You actor, Lovato gave an update on how they’re currently managing their body image and mental health — all things the Camp Rock star has previously been open about. “I have a treatment team that I work with that helps me stay in recovery, and I’ve been in recovery from bulimia for five, going on six, years now,” she said. “I’m trying to learn body acceptance rather than body positivity, because body positivity feels like, ‘I can’t even reach that yet.’ I have a nutritionist and a therapist that specializes in eating disorders.”
Adding that cooking meals at home feels like “the biggest ‘F— you’” to her eating disorder, Lovato continued that “the main thing that I’m working on is just body acceptance, and looking in the mirror and being like, ‘This body is strong … This body saved my life and fought for my life when I overdosed. This body is a miracle.’”
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The interview comes a few weeks after the Sept. 17 premiere of Lovato’s Child Star Hulu documentary, on which the vocalist further explored their past struggles and interviewed fellow celebrities — Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore and Jojo Siwa, to name a few — about their own experiences with child fame. Lovato also recently dropped a companion single for the self-directed film titled “You’ll Be OK, Kid.”
But while Badgley had Lovato in his presence, there was another song he wanted to sing with her: 2021’s emotional ballad “Anyone” from Dancing With the Devil. In a clip posted to Podcrushed‘s Instagram, the Gossip Girl alum starts out the song before listening in awe as the “Cool for the Summer” artist took the floor.
Elsewhere in Badgley’s interview with Lovato, the Princess Protection Program star opened up about feeling more comfortable balancing masculinity with femininity as it pertains to their gender presentation. “I came out as nonbinary [in 2021]. I really shed that image of that hyper-feminine pop star that I had been for so many years. I cut all my hair off and it was really freeing for me.”
“I feel masculine and feminine,” Lovato continued. “I have both energies in me. At that point in my life, I really shunned the feminine energy in me, and now I’m able to embrace both.”
Watch Badgley interview Lovato above, and check out their mini-duet below.
If you attend one of the upcoming Daryl Hall-Howard Jones concert in November, you’ll be treated to the same high-caliber musicianship that make’s Hall’s video series, Live From Daryl’s House, a must-see for music lovers.
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“My band is the best band on Earth,” Hall tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast about guitarist and musical director Shane Theriot, keyboardist Greg Mayo, drummer Brian Dunne, bass player Klyde Jones, percussionist Porter Carroll Jr. and saxophone player Charlie DeChant. In each episode, the Live From Daryl’s House house band performs a handful of songs with a diverse group of musical guests who have recently included Jones, singer-songwriters Andy Grammer and Lisa Loeb, Robert Fripp, and Charlie Starr of the Southern rock band Blackberry Smoke.
Most musicians would face a steep learning curve performing the songs, but Hall and his crew make it look effortless. The band is so good that, according to Hall, the members don’t rehearse together before taping. Instead, Hall spends a little time on the songs with Theriot, and each band member has the music at home. “We get together in that room, turn the cameras on, and that’s what you see,” he explains.
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Take the episode with Fripp, the former King Crimson band leader who struck up a friendship with Hall in the mid-‘70s and produced 1980 album Sacred Songs. Hall says Fripp was blown away by performing with Hall’s band. Fripp joined Live From Daryl’s House for renditions of such songs as “You Burn Me I’m a Cigarette” (co-written by Fripp and Hall), King Crimson’s “Red,” David Bowie’s “Heroes” and “Babs and Babs” from Hall’s Sacred Songs.
“[Fripp] said, ‘I have never worked with a band that didn’t take at least three or four days to even begin to learn these songs. You guys just played them,’” says Hall. “I mean, it flipped Robert out.”
The tour is like a traveling version of Live From Daryl’s House. After Jones opens the show with the Daryl’s house band, Hall, who’s supporting his latest album, D, will perform a set with the same band. Near the end of Hall’s set, Jones will join Hall on stage to trade vocals on each other songs and perhaps throw in a cover song or two.
Hall and Jones were hitmakers at roughly the same time in the ‘80s. By the time Jones crashed the U.S charts in the mid’-80s with songs such as “Things Can Only Get Better,” “Life in One Day” and “New Song,” Hall was basking in the success of Hall & Oates’ 1980 album Voices, which contained “Kiss on My List” and “You Make My Dreams (Come True),” and 1981’s Private Eyes, which spawned the hit title track and “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).”
Until recording Live From Daryl’s House last year, Hall and Jones had never met. Now they’re prepping for a short tour together. “Howard and I get along really well, and I think he’s great,” says Hall.
The eight-date tour starts in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 7, heads north to Evans, Ga., on Nov. 16, Nashville and Knoxville in Tennessee, and culminates in Atlantic City, N.J., on Nov. 23. Before the tour kicks off, Hall will perform a free, private concert on Oct. 31 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Daryl’s House Club venue and restaurant in Pawling, N.Y.
Listen to the entire interview with Daryl Hall, go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, Podbean or Everand.
The multi-billion-dollar self-help industry might go into a slump if more people went to a Lindsey Stirling concert.
“I want [the audience] to have a great time and, like, smile and feel all that joy,” the effervescent violinist tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast while on tour to support her latest album, Duality. “But I also want people to leave the concert always feeling empowered. I want them to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, if this random girl decided once upon a time to dance around and play her violin and make her own costumes, if she can do it, I can do it. I can believe in myself. I can be better. I can be happy.”
Other than the yoga sessions at Coachella or Bonnaroo, a Lindsey Stirling concert may be the only place to you get an inspirational message and communal relaxation interspersed with genre-bending music and a dazzling stage show. “I actually do a guided breath work for the audience” during the song “Between Twilight,” she says, “where as I play, they close their eyes, and there’s a voice that guides them to breathe in and out in different breathing patterns.” It’s an opportunity to slow down the pace after a “very heavy” opening part of her performance, she explains, and has become “something fun that’s cool for me to get to share from my own life.”
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Stirling first caught America’s attention as a contestant on the America’s Got Talent TV show in 2010, reaching the quarterfinals before being dismissed. Her mix of classical-influenced pop music and dancing — while playing violin — didn’t connect with judge Piers Morgan. But by 2013, Stirling had built a YouTube following and was managed by Troy Carter, Lady Gaga’s then-manager.
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A decade later, Stirling has a string of successful albums, tours the world and uses her popularity to fund her non-profit, The Upside Fund, that to date has paid off $15 million of people’s medical debt. Stirling says she donates $1 from each ticket sale and 10% from her tour merchandise sales to the charity, and will donate the entirety of the proceeds from her Master of Tides Cruise in May 2025. “It’s something I’m really passionate about after watching people I love go through the stress of the medical system,” she explains.
Listen to the entire interview with Lindsey Stirling at the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music or Everand.
NFL star brothers Travis and Jason Kelce are taking their services to the Wondery podcast studio. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Super Bowl-winning siblings have signed a significant new deal taking their two-year-old New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce podcast to the Amazon-owned podcast studio, which signed a distribution and exclusive ad-sales representation deal for the family talk show.
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“We couldn’t be more excited to team up with Wondery for the next phase of New Heights,” the Kelce brothers told THR. “We love this show, and the fanbase that has grown with us over the last two seasons. Wondery understands the shared vision and will offer a wealth of experience and resources to take us to New Heights! We are going to create some groundbreaking moments together through this partnership. We are thrilled to start Season 3.”
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While the specific terms of the deal were not announced, THR noted that a person close to the matter described it as being in the “nine figure” range and “very competitive.” The multi-year deal will give Wondery exclusive global distribution rights to all audio and video episode of the pod, as well as its back catalog and the rights to make international audio adaptations of the show.
“We’ve been watching the growth of the podcast, really since it was launched, and I have been building a relationship with Travis and Jason and getting to know them for a while now,” Wondery CEO Jen Sargent told THR. “Sports is a really exciting category for podcast listeners. It’s a strategic priority of Wondery’s and Amazon’s. So there were a lot of reasons to think about joining forces here on the New Heights podcast.”
Sargent added that Wondery is looking into live domestic and international events and potentially creating localized content.
The brothers — older sib Jason retired from the NFL last year after 13 seasons as a center with the Philadelphia Eagles and tight end Travis is a three-time Super Bowl champion with the Kansas City Chiefs — launched the podcast in 2022 with Wave Sports + Entertainment. The new deal will make the show available on all podcast services, as well as YouTube, with Wondery also offering ad-free listening to its Wondery+ subscribers.
Talking about their lives on the gridiron and off the field, the show drew a dedicated sports audience that exploded into a much wider fanbase when Travis started dating Taylor Swift last year. Since then, the Ambies-, Webbys- and Shorty-award-winning football talk on the show that usually ranks as one of the top sports podcasts on Apple and Spotify has been spiced up with some tidbits from Travis and Taylor’s romance.
Among the Traylor highlights over the past year were such scenes as Travis dancing to Swift’s “Shake It Off” during a live taping in April in Cincinnati — where both men attended the University of Cincinnati — and Travis gushing about Swift’s “insane” Eras Tour show at Gillette Stadium in December. Kelce also revealed the the moment the singer officially won over brother Jason during an episode earlier this year, in one of the many mentions of the pop superstar on the pod.
The Kelces have both been expanding their off-field activities lately, with Jason joining ESPN as an analyst and Travis signing on to host Amazon’s Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? and booking a slot on Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX horror show Grotesquerie, as well as circling the action comedy Loose Cannons.
Their mega-deal comes amid new of a few other huge signings recently, including Wondery’s similar distribution and ad sales deal with actor Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert pod, which signed an estimated $80 million pact in July, as well as the just-announced $125 million deal Alex Cooper signed wit SiriusXM for her Call Her Daddy show.
If there’s one thing that everyone knows about the Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ Flea it’s that the veteran funk-punk bass slapper is never shy about letting it all hang out. And while 61-year-old rocker doesn’t hit the stage in the all together as often as he used to back in the band’s sock-only days, while chilling with his pal actor Woody Harrelson on this week’s episode of the Woodman’s SiriusXM Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast with former Cheers co-star Ted Danson, Flea told a chillingly hilarious story about a naked adventure he had with the Triangle of Sadness star.
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Flea opened by asking Harrelson is he remembered the time the two of them went on a nude snowboarding run. “He and I snowboarded naked. I have footage of Woody Harrelson and I snowboarding stark naked down a big snowy mountain,” Flea told Danson about the trip to Utah by the two pals.
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Harrelson said the footage is “great,” with Flea noting that he was ready to post it on Instagram before Woody’s wife, Laura, “cautioned me against it.” Always a gentleman, Danson joked that it was cold, after all, so the footage might have come up short, if you know what he means. Woody added that he and Flea always have a great time and good laughs when they hang out, some of his greatest times, in fact, even though Flea balances his Zen nature with a competitive side.
That explained how a friendly buff bomb down the mountain almost ended in fisticuffs.
Flea confirmed that he is super-competitive, though he doesn’t really care if he wins or loses, before throwing friendly shade when Harrelson said he also doesn’t care whose on top when they play basketball or race on their snowboards.
“I’ve seen you sulking after losing. I remember one of the last times we went, we were racing, and we were both reckless ’cause let’s face it. We go very fast, but we’re very average snowboarders. We have to admit that we’re average,” Flea said. “Wo we’re racing and I’m like out of control rocketing down this mountain and I nearly take a lady out, but I don’t. I see her and I’m like, ‘Whoa.’ Swerve out of her way and I miss her. All’s good. We’re racing. I can’t remember who won. Probably me, probably me, and we get down there, but then the lady, we’re getting ready to get on the lift and we’re laughing and yelling at each other, and this lady comes up and she’s infuriated.”
Flea said the woman chewed him out for nearly running into her, saying he was out of control and prompting the bassist to apologize and admit she was right. “‘I’m so glad that I didn’t hit you, but I’ll be much more careful next time. Please forgive me. I’m very sorry,’” he said he told her. “As you know, I’m neighborly. I’m polite, I’m considerate.”
When Danson asked if Flea meant it, the Chili Pepper said absolutely, acknowledging that it was probably a bit scary to see a naked man ripping by her on the mountain. “I didn’t even touch her, and she was like, ‘Well, you’re an a–hole.’ Blah, blah, blah, and I was like, ‘Ma’am, I’m very sorry,’” he reiterated. But then things got weird when Flea said the woman stuck her ski pole in his face, which agitated him. That’s when Harrelson skied up and saw the tense pole dance and came to his pal’s defense.
“And then she goes, ‘Well, my husband’s gonna come down here and he is gonna show you what for,’ and then that’s when you’re like, ‘Bring the f–king husband. I want to see her bring the husband,” he said Harrelson told the woman. The pair decided to exit the tense scene and hop on the lift, but not before Harrelson, “itching for a brawl,” started yelling, “‘I’m waiting at the top of the lift. I’ll be waiting up top!’”
Harrelson, who says he’s much more chill now, told Flea at the time, “nothing could make me happier,” than if the woman’s husband joined them at the top of the mountain, acknowledging back then — they didn’t specify when this adventure happened — the time the actor used to derive great joy from “impending chaos.”
Watch Flea and Harrelson tell their naked ski skirmish story below.
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