Rock
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Two rock heroes teamed up for the ultimate onstage collaboration over the weekend. At the Sunday (June 18) finale of this year’s Bonnaroo Festival, Paramore‘s Hayley Williams joined Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters onstage for an epic performance of “My Hero,” caught on camera by fans in the audience. In videos from the night, […]
Teresa Taylor, a former drummer for Texas psychedelic noise merchants Butthole Surfers died of complications from lung disease on Monday at age 60. The group announced the news in a post in which they wrote, “Teresa Taylor passed away peacefully this weekend after a long battle with lung disease. She will live in our hearts forever. RIP, dear friend.”
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The news was also confirmed by Taylor’s partner, Cheryl Curtice, who wrote, “Teresa passed away clean and sober, peacefully in her sleep, this weekend. She was so brave, even in the face of her horrible disease. We were all fortunate to have her beautiful, strong spirit in our lives. She will be forever missed. We will have a memorial service sometime in the future. I love you, beloved Teresa.”
Taylor was also well known for appearing on the poster for director Richard Linklater’s breakthrough 1990 film Slacker, in which she was famously depicted standing with her hands in her front pockets, staring into the distance while wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses. She also appeared in the film, playing a character named “Pap Smear Pusher” who enthusiastically tries to sell a jar she claims contains Madonna’s pap smear.
The percussionist — who also went by the stage name Teresa Nervosa — was born in Arlington, TX in 1962 and met future bandmate and fellow Surfers drummer King Coffey when they both played in a high school marching band. She later joined the San Antonio-bred punk band fronted by Gibby Haynes with the name not safe for mainstream TV and radio whose sonic attack blasted fans with waves of chaotic noise, disturbing surgery videos and strobe lights.
Taylor played drums alongside Coffey from 1983-1985 and then again from 1986-1989, taking a leave after suffering from seizures she said were caused by a brain aneurysm; she underwent brain surgery in 1993 and came back for a brief period to play live with the Surfers in 2009. For a band known for confounding audiences with their pummeling, sometimes disorienting visual and audio assault, the sight of the two percussionists playing their respective stand-up kits next to each other became a vital part of their stagecraft, as did their long-running fib that they were actually siblings and not just bandmates.
She joined the band in the studio for a run of their beloved early albums, including 1984 full-length debut, Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac, as well as 1986’s Rembrandt Pussyhorse, 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician and 1988’s Hairway to Steven, among others.
In Nov. 2021, Taylor revealed that she had been diagnosed with end-stage lung disease in a Facebook post.
See the Surfers’ and Curtice’s posts, and Taylor’s Slacker scene, below.
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and his dancer girlfriend Melanie Hamrick have put their Florida home up for sale. A listing on realtor.com says the lakefront home with four bedrooms and 5.5 baths is listed at $3.499 million — and it looks like the Jagger connection is a key selling point. “You can’t always get what […]
Jelly Roll achieves a first on Billboard’s charts as “Need a Favor” rises from No. 12 to No. 9 on the Country Airplay tally dated June 24, with 17.5 million audience impressions June 9-15 on the ranking’s panel of reporting stations, according to Luminate.
Now that it’s within Country Airplay’s top 10, the song becomes the first ever to have hit the top 10 of both Country Airplay and Mainstream Rock Airplay.
“Need a Favor” concurrently spends a fourth week in a row at its No. 3 high on Mainstream Rock Airplay.
The format-specific radio charts have existed simultaneously since the chart week of Jan. 20, 1990, when Country Airplay began. Mainstream Rock Airplay’s history stretches back to March 21, 1981.
Late last year, Jelly Roll became the eighth act to have scored a top 10 on both charts, albeit with separate songs. He first hit the top 10 of Mainstream Rock Airplay with “Dead Man Walking,” which led for a week in May 2022, while “Son of a Sinner” reached No. 1 on Country Airplay this January.
At the time, the list of other acts who have appeared in the top 10 of both charts included Bon Jovi, Zac Brown Band, Brantley Gilbert, Kid Rock, Dave Matthews (solo on Country Airplay and fronting Dave Matthews Band on Mainstream Rock Airplay), Sting and Travis Tritt.
Since then, a ninth has added his name to the list: HARDY, whose “Jack” reached No. 3 on Mainstream Rock Airplay in March; he has notched three top 10s on Country Airplay.
Of those nine acts, Bon Jovi, Brantley Gilbert, Jelly Roll and Zac Brown Band are the only ones with No. 1 placements on both surveys.
Unlike with the clear crossover appeal of “Need a Favor,” the artists above with top 10 ranks on both charts have largely not had individual songs make both lists. One hit previously reached the top 20 of both tallies: Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” rose to No. 4 on Country Airplay and No. 17 on Mainstream Rock Airplay in 2008.
In addition to its Mainstream Rock Airplay and Country Airplay success, “Need a Favor” concurrently bullets at its No. 6 best on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 3.3 million audience impressions. In addition to its mainstream rock radio airplay, the song is bubbling under Alternative Airplay.
On the most-recently published, June 17-dated multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and Hot Country Songs charts, “Need a Favor” placed at Nos. 2 and 4, respectively. Along with its airplay, the song earned 11.2 million official streams and sold 7,000 downloads in the United States June 2-8.
“Need a Favor” is the lead single from Whitsitt Chapel, Jelly Roll’s latest studio album, and his first country set. It debuted at Nos. 1 and 2 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums and Top Country Albums charts dated June 17, respectively, with 90,000 equivalent album units earned.
All charts dated June 24 will update on Billboard.com Wednesday, June 21 (a day later than usual due to the Juneteenth holiday in the U.S. Monday, June 19).
Dolly Parton‘s rock experiment rolled on Friday (June 16) with the release of two more songs from the country icon’s upcoming full-length rock debut, Rockstar. Digging into a song she’s always loved, Parton teams up with Heart’s Ann Wilson on a straightforward cover of the latter’s signature 1975 jam “Magic Man (Carl’s Version).”
“I’ve always wanted a reason to sing ‘Magic Man’ by Heart and it was one of my first choices for the album,” Parton said in a statement. “I was so happy that Ann Wilson agreed to sing it with me. Nobody can out sing Ann, but I gave it my darndest, and we added a few lines that were not in the original. We wanted to have a few things that made it seem like ours. Thank you, Nancy, for letting me fill in for you on this. Hope I’ve made you both proud. I think it’s magic!”
Indeed, three minutes in, Parton and Wilson trade lines in a new verse that conjures yet more mystery. “A magic man with luring eyes, changed the course of my young life/ He was a magic man/ I was oh so quick to learn, I was caught up in the burn/ Of the magic man,” they sing. “No one else could understand, unless you’ve loved a magic man.”
Parton’s first rock collection is due out on Nov. 17 and will feature 30 songs, including 21 covers and nine originals. One of those fresh tracks also dropped Friday, “Bygones,” featuring Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, as well as Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx and touring guitarist John 5.
Parton said in the statement that “Bygones” is one of her favorite tracks from the album. “The song fits with so many couples and coupling my voice with Rob, one of my all-time favorites, made it even more special,” she said of the quickstep midtempo rocker on which she and the leatherbound metal yowler meld their sugar and spikes vocals in growly harmony.
“I’m sorry, so sorry/ How long must you punish me/ Why can’t we just move on/ Let bygones be bygones/ But you never will,” they sing on the chorus. The two tracks were preceded by the Parton-penned first single, “World on Fire,” which charted at No 1 on the Billboard rock digital songs chart last month.
Listen to “Magic Man” and “Bygones” below.
Trent Reznor has spent 35 years making the most outrageously dissonant, elegant and dark rock possible. But, as it turns out, the Nine Inch Nails leader is not totally immune to the charms of a great pop song. On the latest edition of producer Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Reznor fessed up that not only has he learned to appreciate a well-crafted pop ditty, but, thanks to his kids, he’s actually been brought to tears by one of today’s biggest mainstream stars.
“For while, I kept them in a kind of hermetically sealed way from pop music. Because I think it sucks generally — I had thought that,” Reznor said of his kids with wife singer Mariqueen Maandig. Then, Reznor said, he heard his six-year-old daughter singing along to Dua Lipa recently and it gave him pause.
“She is so into it and it is so cool. Like this is her music, you know, this is her thing,” he said. “It really reminded me the art of writing a well-crafted song — I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track. Because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know? It was clever. It felt good.”
The Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe-winning songwriter then made a startling admission. “It’s a difficult thing to do. I don’t know how to do that,” Reznor said. “When I’m trying to think of what to say, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me. And that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now and all of that together becomes something that feels the stakes are higher.”
That’s why he said he prefers film scoring, which has become his second full-time job thanks to acclaimed work on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Mank, The Social Network, Soul and Empire of Light, among others. “Sitting there and arranging stuff — I know what’s right… I don’t have to assess my thoughts on how I feel about a thing,” he told Rubin. “What it comes down to is I really enjoy weirdly working in service to something. It’s like cracking a code. It feels good to crack the code, whatever it is.”
As for the future of NIN, Reznor said because he has young kids at home he’s not really interested in “endlessly” touring any more and, frankly, given where he thinks the culture is now and the importance of music in it, “[it’s] a little defeating,” he said during the pair’s two-hour chat that ranged from the very beginnings of Reznor’s life and career in Cleveland through his thoughts on working with director David Fincher and his songwriting process.
“It feels to me in general, and I’m saying this as a 57-year-old man, music used to be the thing that, that was what I was doing when I, when I had time, I was listening to music,” Reznor said. “I wasn’t doing it in the background while I was doing five other things, and I wasn’t treating it kind of as a disposable commodity.”
Reznor also fessed up that he missed the attention music used to get, even from critics, who’s opinions he still doesn’t really care about. “But somebody heard it, it got validated in its own way culturally. Culturally, that feels askew,” he added. “Like I can’t think of any review I care about today that I even trust. I could write it before it comes out because it’s already written. In fact, ChatGPT could probably do a better job, you know? Or is currently doing the job. That makes for what I feel is a less fertile environment to put music out into –in the world of Nine Inch Nails.”
Listen to the full chat with Reznor below (Dua Lipa segment begins at 1:49:00).
Grief, struggles, darkness. We all touch those emotions at some point. All of them are swirling in the background of In Times New Roman, the eighth and latest album from Queens of the Stone Age. Speaking with Zane Lowe, host of Apple Music 1’s flagship show, Josh Homme broke it all down for a deep, long contemplation on hardship and the loss of nearest and dearest, a bunch that includes the late Anthony Bourdain, Mark Lanegan and Taylor Hawkins. On the music side, he says of the new album, which dropped at midnight, “you’re chasing a good feeling. And then the question is, what are you gonna do over that. What are you going to sing, are you going to sing? But it does start with chasing a feeling. Just trying to catch up with a good feeling.”The singer and guitarist, who recently confirmed he was recovering from surgery to remove cancer, the latest obstacle in a particularly difficult stretch that has included a very public divorce and ongoing custody battle.“I’ve taken a step further,” he tells Lowe, “it’s like when you’re in moments when you think, I’m not going to make it.” He talks of facing a metaphorical brick wall “in a multitude of situations in a tight timeframe.” But, he continues, “I’m also thankful for that too because making it through told me that I can make it through. I also would say that to somebody else. Just try to make it through, and when you do, you’ll know it’s true. You’ve just gotta keep living.”
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In Times New Roman, out through Matador Records, spans 10 tracks and includes the previously-released cuts “Paper Machete,” “Carnavoyeur,” “’Emotion Sickness” and more. It’s the followup to 2017’s Villains, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.“I think this is the first time I didn’t want to make a record, but I was dealing with a lot of stuff in my personal life,” Homme recently told Revolver. “We recorded a lot of stuff. I think I was doing it because when I’m in trouble, this is what I do. This is where I go to get right.”Stream In Times New Roman below.
For the second time, Taylor Swift earns a top 10 song on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart.
The National’s “The Alcott,” on which Swift is a featured vocalist, bounds from No. 15 to No. 10 on the tally dated June 17.
Swift first reached the region in 2020 when “Exile,” featuring Bon Iver, peaked at No. 9. In between her two top 10s, she appeared on Adult Alternative Airplay with two tracks, first with the No. 18-peaking “Coney Island,” featuring The National (March 2021), and then via “Snow on the Beach,” featuring Lana Del Rey (No. 30 this January).
As for The National, “The Alcott” is the band’s sixth top 10 and third in a row, following the No. 6-peaking “Weird Goodbyes,” featuring Bon Iver (November 2022), and five-week ruler “Tropic Morning News” in March-April. The Matt Berninger-led act’s other top 10s are “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” (No. 1, two weeks, August 2017), “Day I Die” (No. 7, December 2017) and “You Had Your Soul With You” (No. 9, May 2019).
Concurrently, “The Alcott,” which Berninger and The National’s Aaron Dessner and Swift co-wrote, and which The National produced, jumps 45-40 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay list with 748,000 audience impressions, up 18%, June 2-8, according to Luminate.
Following its April 28 release, the song debuted at its No. 13 high on the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated May 13.
“The Alcott” is the second single, following “Tropic Morning News,” from First Two Pages of Frankenstein, The National’s ninth studio album. The set debuted at No. 1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums survey dated May 13 and has earned 62,000 equivalent album units since its release.
When Duran Duran set out to play their first major U.S. show in March 2022 they knew it had to be epic and it probably had to be in Los Angeles. “When we kind of casually sauntered into the project built around a one-off show that we did there as we deepened the concept it seemed we naturally found ourselves talking about our experiences,” bassist — and 30-year-Los Angeles resident — John Taylor tells Billboard about the sky-high location for last year’s A Hollywood High docu-film.
The movie that premiered in November is moving to Paramount+ on June 21 and in advance of its streaming debut, Billboard spoke to Taylor about capturing the moment, the importance of paying tribute to the embattled people of Ukraine, the set list curation and why he thinks the English New Romantic band has been able to stick it out well past many of their peers.
A Hollywood High was filmed atop the Aster Hotel in Los Angeles and it opens with the band describing their first visit to Hollywood and the city’s enduring importance to their musical journey. The 12-song set opens with their 1985 James Bond theme, “A View to a Kill,” and features such classics as “Notorious,” “Come Undone,” “Ordinary World” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” as well as a handful of songs from the band’s most recent album, Future Past.
Check out the chat with Taylor below (answers editor for clarity and length.)
Why was it important to open the movie with all that background on L.A.’s influence on the band and your enduring love affair with the city?
I don’t know that it was important… but as a guy who has lived there for last 30-plus years, my first experiences there were all in the 1980s and it never left much of an impression on me. I never could have imagined myself settling there. But I can’t see it any other way now… I had to spend real time there to appreciate its pleasures.
[Singer] Simon [Le Bon] says in the into that “Rio” was inspired by your first trip to America. I had no idea that’s what “from the mountains in the north down to the Rio Grande” meant.
For me the idea of “Rio” literally encapsulated a world, a culture we had yet to tap into, which is South America. That first year I was a kid who didn’t have a passport before the band began. My first experience of leaving my country was with the band in 1981 when we came to the States for the first time. But when we got back to Birmingham and toyed with ideas for the next record we talked about the next level of exotic. Simon had a working title, “Rio,” and we had to make a song out of it.
The iconic rounded Capitol Records building plays a big part in the movie and in the intro it’s noted that it looks like the Rotunda from your hometown.
I suppose it does. Birmingham is the one other city with a landmark circular building [laughs]. Being on Capitol Records was pretty cool at the time. It was fortunate and it definitely helped our cause. For me there’s a certain nostalgia for the first couple times we came into America, that innocence to what we were doing. We were still under the radar here, we could make friendships with guys you’d meet at a radio station and end up hanging out and listening to music.
What was it like setting up on that roof and then looking straight at the Capitol building? It being lit up in blue and yellow is a nice permanent reminder of the war in Ukraine.
My first thought was, “we gotta light that f–king building!” I wanted to light it with the Ukraine colors, so we moved very quickly to make it happen. Here we [more than a year later] and the war continues and every night we still dedicate “Ordinary World” to the people of Ukraine. At that moment it felt like a statement, a show of solidarity. Duran Duran has never been a political band, but to make that kind of statement halfway through the show… there’s something very cool about that. And with our old friend the Capitol building.
Why use this as a stunt to announce your U.S. tour?
We were looking to do something that was going to announce our [2022] U.S. tour and there were variable ways to do it. You got back to the Rolling Stones’ Fifth Ave. truckscapade [the Stones famously shut down New York’s 5th Ave. in May 1975 with a truck parade to promote their American tour], which was the greatest of launches. We talked about that, we talked about a truck at the Roxy and then everyone got nervous about setting up gear on a truck. So, we looked for a fixed position and this place came up that none of us knew about it. Our manager said if we perform here we’d have the Hollywood sign behind us and the Capitol building in front.
Was there significance to opening with “View to a Kill?”
I think because it’s a Hollywood thing, a movie thing. It’s a shake-and-bake opener, it’s easy to play, a here-we-are kind of thing. We hadn’t played a show in quite a few months and we wanted to start with something not too difficult.
You really leaned into the most recent album with five songs out of the 12 you played. Why did you push the new material so hard during this one-off?
I think at show like that.. You play in Nashville to 10,000 people who payed for a ticket, parking, a babysitter and they come to hear the hits. But the fans who were there are superfans and they’re more interested in hearing new songs than “Girls on Film.” It was fresh for us and easier because when we’re playing bigger venues you have to lean away from the new material, probably only two bathroom breaks there.
You are one of the few groups from your era to still be touring this much, recording music and films and staying super-active. Why do you think you’ve been able to endure for so long?
I think we have a very particular inner dynamic. We fire off each other in a way that drives our engine. It’s not a love fest when we’re on stage, but it’s a dynamic where we push against each other all the time and are very competitive with each other. That is what drives the engine which moves the machine. I think of Sting and Peter Gabriel, who have an extraordinary body of creative works. Where are they now? They’re both on tour but it’s one guy sustaining that kind of creative energy, which is f–king hard. There are some things that are easier for an individual, like social media. That’s definitely easier for one guy, but in the long haul I wouldn’t trade it for the band.
Duran Duran recently launched their 2023 U.S. tour. A Hollywood High will be released on DVD/Blu-Ray on August 4.
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Don’t dwell on the past, because a behind-the-scenes video of the making of Halsey and Suga‘s collab of “Lilith (Diablo IV Anthem)” is about to drop, and Billboard has an exclusive first look at the BTS rapper’s time filming the visual.
During an interview taped while making the music video, Suga shares what a big fan he is of the Diablo video games, and how Diablo IV — which arrived June 6 — will play into his downtime while he’s on his first solo world tour. “I played Diablo 1, 2 and 3,” he tells the camera. “Back then, I spent a lot of time in the Cow Level.” (According to PC Gamer, Cow Level in Diablo 3 is a secret level event that honored artist Kevin Kanai Griffith, who died in October 2014 from a rare form of cancer. In that level, players battle against a horde of — yup, you guessed it — armed cow warriors.)
“I am preparing to play [Diablo IV] once it releases and I am touring,” continues the K-pop star, who is currently on the road supporting his solo album, D-DAY. “I bought a new laptop and I am just waiting. Once it releases, I will be playing, even as I am touring.”
The music video featuring the BTS member originally dropped on June 5, and since then, has already raked in more than 8 million views on YouTube. The moody visual — which was done in collaboration with Blizzard Entertainment, the video game developer behind the popular Diablo series — features Halsey walking through the Chapelle des Jésuites in Cambrai, France, while draped in dark hooded cloak before dropping it to reveal her fierce warrior garb and eventually becoming the game’s Blessed Mother Lilith. The reworked, darker version of “Lilith” — originally from her critically acclaimed 2021 album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power — has Suga joining Halsey for the chorus and rhyming a new verse about mid-song.
“Step out of the moment that’s been trapping you in/ All this negativity of hatred and insanity/ Don’t dwell on the past/ It’s time to make a change/ Look around believe in what you see/ I have returned to hell,” he raps before duetting with Halsey.
“I’m thrilled that I got to collab with SUGA of BTS on a reimagined version of ‘Lilith; for the Diablo IV anthem!” Halsey previously said in a statement of working with the K-pop star. “Having spent countless hours in Sanctuary with my family, I’m here as both a fan and a collaborator. Plus, I’ve always wanted to do a concept with SUGA with this type of dark mythology. Hopefully, fans of Diablo, SUGA, and myself will love Lilith’s embrace.”
Watch Billboard‘s exclusive clip of Suga talking about his love for the game above, and check out the full behind-the-scenes video of the making of his and Halsey’s “Lilith (Diablo IV Anthem)” when it arrives later today.
In the meantime, revisit Halsey and Suga’s full music video for “Lilith (Diablo IV Anthem)” below: