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You and I are going to live forever — or at least long enough to see Oasis reunite. On Tuesday (Aug. 27), 15 years since they last performed together, estranged brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher brokered a truce and announced 14 concerts in the U.K. and Ireland for next summer. On the new Billboard Pop […]
Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga have been independently ruling pop radio for the past almost 15 years, and last week, they finally came together for their first collab: the bombastic pop/rock duet “Die With a Smile.” On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking about why they make such a potent […]
Who says you can’t go home? On Sunday night, Miley Cyrus revisited her teenage origin story, heading to D23 in Anaheim, California, for the Disney Legends Ceremony. Cyrus started her run in the title role on Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana when she was just 13 years old, and at age 31, she gave a tear-filled […]
Perry Farrell is reclining with a vitamin IV inserted into his left arm, talking about the reunion of Jane’s Addiction, a band that redefined rock music the ‘80s and ‘90s, and offering a stream-of-thought commentary about his music and the state of the world.
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“I don’t want to talk badly about anybody, but I shouldn’t want to let people get away with murder and destroy this planet,” Farrell tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast when asked about his mindset regarding the intersection of music and commerce. “This planet is too precious to me, and my way of of combating that is to sing [and] to wisen myself. And then I try to get through [using] art and music. And then I build the party and I invite the best people I could invite. And they invite their friends, and they want to show up. And then the next thing you know, you’re standing next to people you’d never be standing next to, you know, and they’re all getting off, and they’re doing their thing, and they feel safe and they feel welcome.”
Jane’s Addiction has been through breakups, arguments and a rotating cast of visiting and semi-permanent members since their 1990 LP Ritual de lo Habitual. This time around, though, Farrell has gathered his original bandmates — guitarist Dave Navarro, bass player Eric Avery and drummer Stephen Perkins — for the first time since 2010.
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The foursome toured Europe from May to July and released a blistering new track, “Imminent Redemption,” on July 24 that harkens back to the group’s first two studio albums, 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual. “It was wonderful to have us all together again,” Farrell admits.
Next comes a co-headlining tour with Love and Rockets that started on Aug. 9 and runs through Sept. 26. “The tour is centered around the the idea of redemption,” says Farrell. “And the era that we’re living in, the era of redemption, it’s going to be a bumpy road. But then there should be peace for 1,000 years. I’ve studied mysticism for a good 30 years. I’m looking forward to the future of the world.”
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With the original members reunited, Farrell says the concerts are featuring only songs they recorded together: the initial three albums — including the 1987, self-titled live album — and “Imminent Redemption.” That means nothing from 2003’s Strays, which features the band’s highest charting single, “Just Because,” nor 2011’s The Great Escape Artist. Strays featured bass player Chris Chaney in place of Avery. Chaney and Dave Sitek from the band TV on the Radio played bass on The Great Escape Artist.
“I wanted everybody to feel comfortable,” Farrell says about the decision not to play songs from other incarnations of Jane’s Addiction. “And I think that was the a good decision. In that regard, I like it. There are other songs that we could do with the original members. That I would like to see before everything is … I don’t want to say busted apart, but I don’t know the next time we’ll be touring again.”
The road to redemption hasn’t been without its bumps, though. Last year, Farrell told a journalist the band planned on entering the studio and recording a new album after a tour in Australia. One of those tracks was “True Love,” a song the band debuted on tour in 2023. But while “Imminent Redemption” reached the public, no album materialized.
“I’m sad to say we got those two songs out, and I thought we were going in a great direction, and all of a sudden, you know, arguing started happening again,” Farrell says with disappointment. “But we’ll still go forward,” he adds. “I’m not going to give up. Not giving up on this. I have to put my money where my mouth is. If I want to talk about freedom and redemption, I’ve gotta live it—and I’ve gotta be truthful too, about it. So, hang in there and pray, really pray for us. I’m praying for the world to to come together.”
Listen to the entire interview with Perry Farrell at the embedded Spotify player, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music or Everand.
iHeartMedia’s business has been in steady decline since the beginning of 2023 but showed signs of improvement in the second quarter.
Total revenue rose 1% to $929 million, slightly above the company’s guidance, but was up just 0.1% excluding the impact of political advertising. A spike in expenses — namely operating and selling, general and administrative — contributed to a 21% decline in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).
“We’re seeing sequential improvement in our revenue growth,” CEO Bob Pittman said during the earnings call on Thursday (Aug. 8). “While the marketplace continues to be dynamic — with a changing outlook on interest rates, inflation trends, global uncertainty and rapidly evolving domestic political landscape — we continue to see strong momentum in our podcast business, our digital ex-podcast business and the sequential improvement of our multi-platform groups’ year over year revenue performance.”
iHeartMedia’s digital audio segment contributed to the company’s revenue uptick. Podcast revenue improved 8.1% to $104.5 million, well below the previous quarter’s growth rates, while digital revenue excluding podcasts rose 10.3% to $181 million. Overall, digital audio revenue climbed 9.5% to $285.6 million.
The multi-platform segment fell 3.4% to $575.9 million. Broadcast radio, the company’s largest single source of revenue, declined 0.9% to $425.5 million. Networks fell 12.8% to $106.6 million. Sponsorship and events improved 2.4% to $39.1 million.
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Looking ahead, iHeartMedia expects third-quarter revenue to increase in the mid-single digits, which would be $991 million to $1.01 billion, and adjusted EBITDA to land between $200 million and $220 million, compared to $204 million in the prior-year period. For the full year, revenue is expected to increase in the mid-single digits, which equates to roughly $3.9 billion to $3.98 billion, and adjusted EBITDA will be between $760 million to $800 million, up 9% to 15% from 2023.
“As we look at the back half of the year, our results will reflect the continuing positive impact on an ad market recovery year material upside from political advertising, as well as the benefit of our ongoing focus on cost efficiencies,” said Pittman.
While iHeartMedia eked out a small improvement in the second quarter, two other radio companies that reported earnings in the last week continued their slides. Cumulus Media revenue fell 2.5% to $205 million as its net loss grew to $27.7 million from $1.1 million in the prior-year quarter. Townsquare Media revenue fell 2.5% and adjusted EBTDA dropped 8.3%.
Now that we know Taylor Swift is the leading nominee at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, the next question is: What might she surprise-announce at the Sept. 10 ceremony? It was two years ago when Swift surprised the 2022 VMAs audience by announcing that a brand-new studio album called Midnights would arrive in October. […]
“This is a setlist that I have never done anywhere,” Melissa Etheridge tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast of the performance captured in her new live album, I’m Not Broken: Live from Topeka Correction Facility.
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“Unexpected Rain” is “a deep track on a deep album, The Awakening,” she says. “I rarely do ‘Unexpected Rain.’ I rarely do ‘The Shadow of a Black Crow,’ which is about addiction. I rarely do ‘Into the Dark.’ I rarely do ‘Love Will Live.’ They were very, very specific to what I wanted to speak about.”
It was a unique concert in more ways than one.
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Etheridge’s performance before 2,500 inmates at the women’s prison in Topeka, Kan., was recorded for two-part docuseries I’m Not Broken for the streaming platform Paramount+. The two-time Grammy winner says she had wanted to perform at a prison for decades. Etheridge grew up in Leavenworth, Kans., within eyeshot of the prison where country great Johnny Cash performed in 1970. The 7-year-old Etheridge couldn’t hear the performance from outside the prison walls, but was struck by accounts of the show. “We just had the newspaper article, and at that point I read it, and was like, ‘Wow, prisons must be a place of great entertainment, and someday I’m gonna grow up and play a prison.’”
The idea came up again when she switched management a decade ago. About five years ago, her management team began reaching out to the penitentiary to see if a performance would be feasible. Once the idea was approved and Etheridge was given a green light by Paramount, she brought on board a production company, Shark Pig.
The Topeka concert included many deep cuts because the filmmakers asked Etheridge to choose songs based on themes — such as trauma, motherhood, hope, redemption and consequence — that the series would address. At the concert, Etheridge introduced each song by talking about the specific themes.
The often racuous show included many of Etheridge’s better known songs, too. The show opens with “American Girl,” a non-single track from her 1993 album Yes, I Am. The set closed with her biggest hits: “Come to My Window” and “I’m The Only One” from Yes, I Am, and “Bring Me Some Water” and “Like the Way I Do” from her 1988 debut.
I’m Not Broken also captures Etheridge’s process for writing a song specifically for the concert. “A Burning Woman” was informed by her correspondence and conversation with five of the inmates. The women opened up about their circumstances, how they ended up in prison and their lives during incarceration.
“We sat down in the prison library, and we all spoke,” Etheridge recalls, “and just hearing their stories, laughing, talking, crying, whatever you know we did, was so powerful to me that it couldn’t help but humanize them, because they are human.”
Listen to the entire interview with Melissa Etheridge in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart or Everand.
The 2024 Summer Olympics only kicked off on Friday, and already we’ve seen huge moments from Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, Beyoncé and more music A-listers. It all started with the Opening Ceremony, which included all-French performances from Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, set in scenic landmarks across Paris, as well as a Team USA introduction […]
Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have faced off in the album of the year category at the Grammys just one time, when Swift’s Fearless won out over Bey’s I Am… Sasha Fierce at the 2010 ceremony. The duo could meet again on Feb. 2, 2025, if The Tortured Poets Department and Cowboy Carter receive album of […]
If you see Train perform live, odds are the last song is going to be “Drops of Jupiter,” the hit single from the band’s 2001 album of the same name.
“When people hear it, it becomes sad because they know that that’s the end [of the show],” singer Pat Monahan tells Billboard‘s Behind the Setlist podcast. “But we’re not gonna play something after that song. That song means the world to me for a lot of personal reasons, and it was a big song around the world.”
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Indeed, “Drops of Jupiter,” which Monahan wrote about his late mother, reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2001 — the band’s second-best chart performance behind “Hey Soul Sister,” which went to No. 3 in 2010.
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On Train’s current tour with REO Speedwagon, fans are likely to hear familiar songs rather than deep cuts. Monahan explains the band occasionally opened with “We Were Made for This” from the 2012 album California 37 on its recent European tour. It wasn’t released as a single, nor does it have the upbeat energy bands typically want to launch a concert. Rather, “We Were Made for This” starts out slowly and kicks into high gear about two minutes into the song with a soaring guitar solo by Taylor Locke. The momentum subsides again before the band brings the song to an energetic climax.
“The Train fans loved it,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s right for a tour with REO Speedwagon, you know. Because when they step off stage, people will have heard 35 hit songs.”
In most of Train’s July shows throughout the Midwest, Monahan and his four bandmates — Locke, bass player Hector Maldonado, drummer Matt Musty and guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Becker — have been opening with “Calling All Angels,” the leadoff track from the 2003 album My Private Nation. It’s a well known song for sure — “Calling All Angeles” reached No. 19 on the Hot 100. “I’ve grown to think that a first song should be recognizable [and] high energy, but not your biggest song,” he says, “that you don’t want to burn the biggest ones at the top because I think people are still taking you in.”
The middle of the set slows the pace. “Marry Me” from 2009’s Save Me, San Francisco, lets the audience know “I have a band with amazing singers,” says Monahan. “Bruises” is a “country rock” song that fits well into the concert’s acoustic interlude. Train will frequently play Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” which Monahan says is “a great transition” song that bridges the middle and latter part of the set that includes “Hey Soul Sister,” “Drive By,” a top 10 Hot 100 hit from 2012, and “Drops of Jupiter.”
When picking from Train’s vast catalog, Monahan thinks like a fan. He recalls a tour with Ben Folds Five, which had a hit in 1997 with the song “Brick.” “They’re a great band,” says Monahan, “but they avoided playing ‘Brick,’ because when they played ‘Brick,’ which was their hit, their fans got disappointed. And when they didn’t play ‘Brick,’ I got disappointed. I grew up wanting to sing along to the bands I loved, and so I don’t want to take that from Train fans.”
Listen to the entire interview with Pat Monahan in the embedded Spotify player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart or Everand.