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As evidenced by Madonna’s 2023-2024 Celebration Tour, the Queen of Pop’s reign has given her subjects an embarrassment of riches when it comes to iconic imagery. From her thrift-store bride on the cover of 1984’s Like a Virgin to the image of a worldly multi-hyphenate on the cover of 2019’s Madame X, Madonna has endlessly […]
Coachella 2024 is officially upon us, and whether or not you’re heading out to the desert, there’s a bunch of new music to jam to all weekend long. Future and Metro Boomin teamed up once again for their second collab album, We Still Don’t Trust You. We Still Don’t Trust You arrives three weeks after We Don’t Trust […]
In 2019, Sheryl Crow said that her album Threads — a set of collaborations with artist friends such as Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt and Neil Young, among others — would be her last. Five years later, Crow has proved her own pronouncement wrong, releasing Evolution at the end of March, and she came to Billboard News to discuss how it, well, evolved, as well as her career journey up until now.
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“I keep saying this is not an album — it’s more a playlist of new Sheryl Crow songs,” Crow says of Evolution, which was produced by her longtime friend Mike Elizondo. “It feels like an emotional download as opposed to a curated album.”
That download was spurred in large part, Crow reveals, by a decision she made in recent years to “really investigate what it meant to redirect my impulses,” which she endeavored to do through a curated psilocybin journey. “For me, nature is the only place I’ve actually been able to hear myself. And it felt like I was digging through dirt. Like those old science videos, where you see ants digging,” she says.
That experience led her to keep thinking of a favorite Peter Gabriel song, “Digging in the Dirt,” which she told Elizondo about. They recorded a cover, sent it to Gabriel, and he loved it — so much that he sent it back to Crow with his own voice added. “It’s just crazy. I’m a huge believer in manifesting, but I don’t know that I could have manifested that in a thousand years,” Crow marvels.
Evolution is, astoundingly, Crow’s 12th studio album, but her catalog has not diminished in relevance, as evidenced by the still growing number of young women artists who cover hits such as “Strong Enough” and “If It Makes You Happy.” That group includes Olivia Rodrigo, who Crow reveals she first met at Billboard‘s 2022 Women in Music event, where Crow presented the Woman of the Year honor to Rodrigo.
“I listen to her stuff and go, ‘Oh my gosh, I can hear the Breeders, I hear Blondie’ — she’s got that punk rock thing I haven’t heard in so long, but then she has great lyrics and great hooks,” Crow says. “And then I met her, and she came up in the business … but I liked how grounded she was. The fame thing wasn’t her major attraction. She just keeps writing her truth, she’s got the experience that backs up everything in her songs. I just root for her.”
To hear what else Crow had to say, watch at the link above.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have been making beautifully morose music together for more than three decades. In addition to their longtime collaboration in Cave’s Bad Seeds band, the pair have also teamed up for a more than a dozen soundtrack score albums, including their new score for the Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black.
In keeping with their eternally bleak, theatrical vibe, the pair released their homage to late British R&B singer Winehouse on Thursday (April 11), “Song for Amy.” Like much of the score they wrote for the film — which opened in the U.K. on Friday (April 12) — the tribute track leans into a dramatic, emotional vibe, accented by a haunting flute and piano riff and Cave’s signature pleading vocals.
“You say it’s time/ For us to call it a day/ I will love you anyway/ You know that I don’t even care what they say/ I’ll still love you anyway, baby,” Cave sings emotionally as strings swell up and he adds the gut-punch lines, “Love gives everything/ Just to take it away/ And I’d give you anything for you to stay.” The somber 12-track score features 10 instrumental cues (with titles such as “Tattoo Parlour,” “At the Taxi,” “Snooker Hall” and “Soho To Glastonbury”) as well as the 3:19 “Song for Amy” and a 2:12 instrumental reprise of that track.
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“Nick and Warren were the only musicians in my mind to score Back to Black,” director said Sam Taylor-Johnson said in an earlier statement. “Over the years I’ve listened to everything they’ve composed and longed to realize the dream of working together. Their sensibility as well as understanding of this story has led to a profoundly deep and moving film score.”
Back to Black: Songs From the Original Motion Picture is due out on May 17 on UMR/Island Records, the same day the film opens in the U.S. The collection features classics from Thelonious Monk, The Specials, Little Anthony & the Imperials, The Shangri-Las, Billie Holiday, Donny Hathaway, Tony Bennett, Willie Nelson, Minnie Ripperton and others, as well as a handful of Winehouse’s most beloved songs, including “Rehab,” “Tears Dry on Their Own,” “Me & Mr. Jones,” “Back to Black,” “Fuck Me Pumps” and “Song For Amy.”
The movie‘s cast includes star Marisa Abela (Industry), as well as Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan) as father Mitch Winehouse and Jack O’Connell (Godless) as troubled husband Blake Fielder-Civil. Winehouse died in 2011 at 27 of an accidental alcohol overdose after years of substance use struggles.
Listen to “Song For Amy” below.
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aespa member Winter recently underwent preventive surgery to treat a collapsed lung. The K-pop group’s label, SM Entertainment, released a statement on Friday (April 12) describing the procedure to treat a pneumorthorax, a condition in which air accumulates in the chest, applying pressure on the lungs and possibly leading to collapse. Explore Explore See latest […]
Fans have been wondering for months whether Jewel and former Yellowstone star Kevin Costner are an item. The singer, 49, and actor, 69, set tongues a wagging when they appeared together at a tennis fundraiser on Necker Island in December, but to date neither has commented publicly on their reported situationship. Explore See latest videos, […]
Jason and Travis Kelce returned to their old college stomping grounds on Thursday (April 11) when the NFL legend brothers packed the University of Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena for a taping of their “New Heights” podcast in front of a rabid audience of college kids and football fans. And while they had some A-list guests […]
Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Dua Lipa sees through your deception, Sabrina Carpenter keeps you up all night, and of course, Future and Metro Boomin remain doubtful about your reliability. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Future & Metro Boomin, We Still Don’t Trust You
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If you thought Future & Metro might be mostly phoning in their sequel effort to their chart-topping We Don’t Trust You from three weeks ago, that 25-song tracklist — 18 for the proper album and a seven-track extra disc — should make it pretty clear that this isn’t just spare bonus material. Besides, the leadoff title cut finds rapper and producer right away in new pulsing dancefloor territory, led by an uncredited appearance by The Weeknd, which sets the tone for the strobelit sonics for much of the project. But of course, folks will mostly be talking about the appearances on this set from J. Cole (“Red Leather”), who does not really seem to be addressing any of the recent “Big 3” feuding, and A$AP Rocky (“Show of Hands”), who appears to be taking shots — possibly at Drake? — via his current romantic partner: “N—as swear they bitch the baddest, I just bagged the worst one… I smash before you birthed son, Flacko hit it first son.”
Dua Lipa, “Illusion”
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Following the top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hits “Houdini” and “Training Season,” pop superstar Dua Lipa is back with the third taste of her upcoming Radical Optimism set, “Illusion.” Co-written with regular collaborator Caroline Ailin, singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., PC Music soundsmith Danny L Harle and psych-pop fixture Kevin Parker — the latter two of whom also co-produced — Lipa sings of learning to “take my rose-colored glasses of” when dealing with a potential new love with no shortage of red flags. The track finds her back in her disco-pop sweet spot, and with its repeated “dance all night” refrain should find its way to plenty of radio and club airplay in no time.
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Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”
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Speaking of disco-pop, if you prefer your dancefloor jams a little on the laid-back side — more “Levitating” than “Physical,” perhaps — Sabrina Carpenter has you covered with her new piping hot “Espresso.” The alluring new single, co-written with Grammy nominee Amy Allen and Carpenter’s “Nonsense” collaborators Steph Jones and writer/producer Julian Bunetta, features Carpenter positing herself as the caffeinated beverage keeping boys’ thoughts’ racing and sleepless: “That’s that me espresso.” Who’s to say what coffee puns she’ll end up ad libbing in the outro to this one during future live performances?
Lil Nas X, “Right There”
“Been hoarding music for years smh i hate my relationship with fear of my songs not doing well and perception,” Lil Nas X wrote on Instagram in March. “i wish i could just release music and not give af.” The rapper seems to be walking the walk now by dropping his new “Right There” on SoundCloud earlier this week, thought to be a track from his upcoming Nasarati 2 mixtape. With a bombastic beat built around an angelic backing vocal loop, the song sounds absolutely enormous as LNX mixes themes of sex, drugs and religion in his verses: “Montero just popped that Perc/ This feel like God in church/ This scripture a Bible verse/ Buss it open and make it twerk.”
Maggie Rogers, Don’t Forget Me
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Acclaimed singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers might not be likely to end up with the most buzzed-about release of the week since Future & Metro entered the picture, but Don’t Forget Me should nonetheless delight fans of her sparkling, impassioned folky alt-pop. Highlights of the songs not already released from her 10-track third official LP include the Pat Benatar-worthy ’80s pop-rock blast “Drunk” and the gently-but-firmly shuffling acoustic kiss-off “On & On & On.”
PartyNextDoor, “Lose My Mind”
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PartyNextDoor fans who want to hear the late-night singer-songwriter at his most carnal and unfiltered were no doubt encouraged by the recently released cover image for his upcoming PartyNextDoor 4 album — a naked model, shot from behind — and will probably only be further intrigued by “Lose My Mind” his hedonistic latest release from the project. “F–kin’ two b—hes at the same time/ Couldn’t make me choose if it depended on my life” he sings in the first verse, and it only gets more libidinous from there — culminating in a sample from DMX’s “Party Up (Up in Here),” which recontextualizes that song’s classic raging hook as a statement of unbridled lust and sexual abandon.
While listening to her latest LP, Don’t Forget Me, Maggie Rogers wants you to slide on in, roll down the windows, feel the breeze on your face.
“I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers says of Don’t Forget Me, which arrived, fully-formed at midnight. Clean face (with a touch of lipstick), good vibes, a bottle of your favorite.
“I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car, a trusted friend who could ride shotgun and be there when you needed her.”
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Don’t Forget Me dropped at midnight via Capitol Records, and is the followup to 2022’s Surrender, her second major label effort, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200; and 2019’s Heard It in a Past Life, an LP that peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and earned the singer, songwriter and producer a Grammy nomination for best new artist.
Rogers co-produced Don’t Forget Me with Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris) at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, and wrote eight of its 10 songs with him (the other two she penned alone). Shawn Everett (Brittany Howard, The War on Drugs) mixed the set, with Emily Lazar (Beck, Coldplay) returning to master the longplay.
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The Maryland native will be taking a long drive around the country with trusted friends for her first-ever arena tour, entitled the Don’t Forget Me Tour Part II.
The Live Nation-produced outing will kick off on Oct. 9 at Moody Center in Austin, TX, includes stops at New York City’s Madison Square Garden (Oct. 19); and visits to Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Seattle and other cities; and wraps up on Nov. 2 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, CA. Ryan Beatty will join Rogers as the opening act on her fall tour dates.
In addition to the arena tour, Rogers also announced Box Office Week, which will include pop-up events and special shows taking place over the course of the week at intimate venues in four U.S. cities.
Stream Don’t Forget Me below.
Perrie Edwards is making sure no one forgets her.
The former Little Mix star (who now goes by the name Perrie) takes a stride forward as a solo recording artist with “Forget About Us,” the first single lifted from her debut album.
While the British pop artist has kept schtum on information about the LP, Official Charts last month reported that she recently hosted a series of private listening parties for fans and industry pros in London where the singer previewed six new songs while telling the stories behind each.
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“What I wanted to make sure of was that every song [from] a different genre had a sister or sibling on the album, so it’s not completely mismatched,” she tells the NME of her forthcoming album. “It makes sense when you listen to it as a body of work.” Expect it to include “Motowny” moments, “guitar-led ballads” and tracks with “Mariah Carey vibes”.
The album also features Little Mix collaborator Jin Jin, and RAYE, who took home the album of the year award at the March 2nd BRIT Awards for her debut album, My 21st Century Blues.
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And, as previously reported, Ed Sheeran co-wrote “Forget About Us,” a polished pop ballad with country sensibilities. A spokesperson for her label confirmed the details of the report from the listening event, though no release date has been announced for the album yet.
Perrie burst onto the music scene in 2011 when she, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Jesy Nelson were assembled on the British X Factor. The group released six albums before Nelson left the group in 2020 after the release of their final album, Confetti.
Little Mix made history at the 2021 Brit Awards when they became the first girl group in its four-decade-plus history to collect the best British group honor. Later that year, in December 2021, the remaining members went on hiatus; their final show, an April 2022 gig at the O2 Arena in London, was livestreamed.
Leigh-Anne has already made the solo leap, with 2023 debut single “Don’t Say Love” and followup “My Love,” a collaboration with Ayra Starr.
Stream Perrie’s “Forget About Us” below.
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