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Robbie Robertson, who died Wednesday (Aug. 9) at the age of 80, was a road warrior, songwriter and guitar hero who helped shape rock’s late-sixties golden age in The Band, provided or curated music for many of Martin Scorsese’s films and made several important solo albums. Over the years, he also emerged as one of rock’s most influential storytellers — myth-maker might be a better word, although he told true stories with dramatic resonance — first in Scorsese’s concert film The Last Waltz, later in the book Testimony: A Memoir and the Band documentary Once Were Brothers, and throughout his career as one of the most compelling raconteurs in the history of popular music.
Robertson spent the first part of his career backing up Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan and then, with The Band, writing and playing songs rooted in American mythology. The stories were his, but the characters seemed so entrenched in the landscape that it sounded like they had been waiting for him to sing about them — Carmen and the Devil, Virgil Caine, the man with the stage fright. Many of these songs sketch out whole stories in small details — if you need to ask why Carmen and the Devil are walking side by side, you’re missing the point, but you can see it’s bad news from a mile away.
Over the course of his time in The Band, Robertson seemed to age into a kind of mythic character in his own right, and in The Last Waltz, made about The Band’s farewell to the touring life and the star-studded concert they played to commemorate it, he started to examine rock’s own myths. “The road has taken a lot of the great ones,” he says in the movie. “It’s a goddamn impossible way of life.” Along with his bandmates, Robertson turned barstool stories about highway hotels and dodgy dive bars into widescreen epics. “Sixteen years on the road is long enough,” he says elsewhere in the movie, all of 33 at the time. “Twenty years is unthinkable.”
More than any other work of the time, The Last Waltz gives the main characters of rock’s second chapter the chance to take a bow just as punk and disco took the stage. The concert, famously held at the Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day, 1976 — complete with a turkey dinner and an orchestra for formal dancing — featured not only Band collaborator Bob Dylan, but also a Beatle (Ringo Starr), a Rolling Stone (Ron Wood), a Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter (Joni Mitchell), a New Orleans pianist (Dr. John), a blues great (Muddy Waters) and a rock star who may have been celebrating the seventies in an eighties style (Neil Young, who according to unconfirmed legend had a visible particle of cocaine in his nose that had to be edited out). The film recounted the story of rock, right up to the point when it splintered into sub-genres.
Robertson understood this vision better than his bandmates, who seemed to have found his concept pretentious. (The fact that he had a magnetic onscreen charisma that they lacked probably didn’t help, either.) “We were in the moment — we were playing songs we had hardly played before with people from Joni Mitchell to Muddy Waters — and all we could think about was trying to rise to the occasion,” Robertson told me in a 2016 interview. Over the years, the movie became its own myth, to the point that there have been tribute concerts commemorating what was essentially meant to be its own kind of tribute concert. (The film resonated so much with me that in 1998 I bought the movie poster, which has followed me to every apartment or office I’ve had since — a reminder of the music I grew up listening to that by then had come to seem a bit old-fashioned.)
Robertson’s first solo album, released in 1987, also seemed shrouded in myth — both figuratively in songs like “Somewhere Down that Crazy River” and literally in co-producer Daniel Lanois’ haunted, reverb-heavy production. At a time when mainstream rock was growing slicker, Robertson found a way to maintain some mystery, partly thanks to a list of guest musicians that included U2, Peter Gabriel, Maria McKee and two former members of The Band. He followed that with the New Orleans-themed Storyville (in 1991), projects that explored Native American music and what was then called electronica (Music for The Native Americans in 1994 and Contact from the Underworld of Redboy in 1998), and much later two more solo albums (How to Become Clairivoyant in 2011 and Sinematic in 2019).
In between those last two solo albums, Robertson published one of the best-ever music memoirs, Testimony, partly because he was there more than anyone else who remembers and he remembered more than anyone else who was there. Even this decision he cast in terms that loomed larger than life. “I just couldn’t carry around all of these stories anymore,” he told me in the 2016 interview. “There were too many and they got too heavy.” This sounds true enough, but it’s an unusually dramatic way to talk — you can practically picture the man weighed down by his memories, like a character out of one of the Scorsese movies for which he provided music.
In the book, Robertson tells his story with the same eye for detail and epic sweep he used in his songwriting. “It’s a cinematic piece of work and I had to structure the scenes so they fold into one another; as opposed to, then in February this happened, and in March that happened,” he said in 2016. When we spoke, he talked about writing a second book, devoted to his later career — and it’s hard not to wish he had lived to complete it.
Robertson has an incredible memory, and it says a lot about who he was that he even has a mythic — and true — explanation for it. In Testimony, he writes about how his birth father’s mother was a bootlegger who kept addresses and phone numbers in her head for safety. “My birth father,” he told me, “went on to become a gambler and won because he was a card counter.” You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried — and Robertson never needed to.
Billie Eilish’s Barbie soundtrack contribution “What Was I Made For?” rises to No. 1 for the first time on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart dated Aug. 12. “What Was I Made For?” reigns in its fourth week on the survey. It concurrently leads Hot Alternative Songs for a third week in a row. […]
Robbie Robertson, who died Aug. 9 at age 80, made an impression on Billboard‘s charts as the lead guitarist and principal songwriter of The Band. The group landed multiple songs on the Billboard Hot 100, beginning with “The Weight,” one of the quintessential rock releases of the 1960s, in 1968.
Between 1968-76, The Band (during this time comprising Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel) reached the Hot 100 nine times — eight times on its own and once on the Bob Dylan collaboration “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine).” Though Robertson penned many of the band’s lasting hits, he rarely contributed lead vocals, usually deferring to Helm, Danko or Manuel.
Though the band never rose higher than the chart’s top 25, its influence on its contemporaries in the rock scene — and enduring legacy — spurred lasting careers for its members after The Band’s eventual breakup, including Robertson.
In fact, though Robertson never appeared on the Hot 100 solo, he was a prolific presence on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart during the first decade-plus of its existence, paced by a pair of top 10s in “Showdown at Big Sky” (No. 2, 1987) and “Sweet Fire of Love” (No. 7, 1988).
Robertson also became a frequent collaborator of filmmaker Martin Scorsese, contributing to the soundtracks of The Last Waltz, Raging Bull, The Departed and many more.
His success continued into the 2010s, when Robertson earned his highest-charting entry on the Billboard 200, thanks to the No. 13 debut and peak of 2011’s How to Become Clairvoyant. Most recently, Sinematic — Robertson’s final studio album released before his death — appeared at No. 7 on the Americana/Folk Albums chart in 2019.
Below are the biggest Hot 100 chart hits from The Band during that eight-year span of 1968-76. The Band’s biggest Billboard hits chart is based on actual performance on Billboard’s weekly Billboard Hot 100 chart, through Aug. 12, 2023. Songs are ranked based on an inverse point system, with weeks at No. 1 earning the greatest value and weeks at lower ranks earning less. Due to changes in chart methodology over the years, eras are weighted to account for different chart turnover rates over various periods.
“Ain’t Got No Home”
Robbie Robertson, beloved guitarist, songwriter and frontman of The Band, died after an unspecified long illness on Wednesday (Aug. 9). He was 80 years old.
Robertson’s longtime manager, Jared Levine, shared the devastating news in a statement: “Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife, Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny. He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donovan, Dominic, Gabriel, and Seraphina. Robertson recently completed his fourteenth film music project with frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made to the Six Nations of the Grand River to support a new Woodland Cultural Centre.”
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The Toronto, Ontario-born artist began playing guitar at age 10, and at just 16 years old he joined drummer Levon Helm in the Hawks, the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins. The Hawks went on to play with Bob Dylan on his legendary Going Electric tours in 1965 and 1966, and recorded the seminal “basement tapes” with the legend before changing their group’s name to The Band. They released their debut Music From Big Pink album in 1968, which featured the Robertson-penned classic, “The Weight,” and the group performed at Woodstock Festival a year later.
Robertson was the sole writer of The Band’s first four hits on the Billboard Hot 100 — “The Weight” (peaked at No. 63), “Up on Cripple Creek” (No. 25), “Rag Mama Rag” (No. 57), and “Time to Kill” (No. 77). He was also the sole writer of the biggest hit Joan Baez ever had, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” which reached No. 3 in 1971.
After eight years as a band, Robertson ended the group in 1976, culminating in The Band’s legendary farewell concert, The Last Waltz. Dylan, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell all joined the group for the performance at San Francisco’s Winterland and a corresponding concert film was directed by Martin Scorsese. The Last Waltz soundtrack was released in 1978 and peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Robertson also delved into the film world, co-writing, producing, appearing in and composing the source music for Carny (1979), starring Gary Busey and Jodie Foster. He went on to create and produce music for Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), King Of Comedy (1983), and The Color Of Money (1986), which included “It’s In The Way That You Use It,” co-written with Clapton. Robertson scored, consulted for, produced or supervised music for numerous iconic films throughout the years, including American Beauty (1999), Any Given Sunday (1999) Gangs Of New York (2002), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2009), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Silence (2016).
Robertson made his solo album debut in 1987 with his Grammy nominated self-titled album, featuring guests Peter Gabriel and U2 and the beloved track “Somewhere Down The Crazy River.” His sixth and final solo album, Sinematic, was released in 2019.
The Band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2008. Robertson never won a Grammy in competition, despite five nods over the years, but he won five Juno Awards in his native Canada, including three in 1989 — album of the year (for his eponymous solo debut album), male vocalist of the year and producer of the year (in tandem with Daniel Lanois).
Additional reporting by Paul Grein.
Enigmatic singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez — commonly referred to as just Rodriguez — has died at 81. The Detroit musician whose slow boil rise to international acclaim was chronicled in the Oscar-winning 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man, died on Tuesday night (Aug. 8) according to a statement on his official website.
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“It is with great sadness that we at Sugarman.org announce that Sixto Diaz Rodriguez has passed away earlier today,” read the note. “We extend our most heartfelt condolences to his daughters – Sandra, Eva and Regan – and to all his family.” According to the Detroit News, Rodriguez had been in declining health but at press time a cause of death had not been revealed.
The Dylan-esque folk singer recorded two albums in the early 1970s that were released to little notice, Cold Fact (1970) and Coming From Reality (1971), leading the aspiring troubadour to give up on his musical dream, start a family and pursue a philosophy degree as he unsuccessfully ran for a series of local poltical offices.
The News said after failed bids at mayor and state senate, Rodriguez could often be seen walking in Detroit’s Cass Corridor neighborhood with a guitar slung over his shoulder, with most onlookers unaware of his former musical aspirations. That changed in 1979 when he was invited to perform in Australia to celebrate the re-release of his albums; he toured there again in 1981. At the time, it was rumored that he had taken his life by shooting himself on stage (another false story claimed he’d died of a drug overdose) after releasing Coming From Reality on Detroit’s Sussex record label, a false report his absence only served to feed amid a bubbling popularity Down Under.
A decade later, he discovered that his music was even more influential in South Africa, where, unbeknownst to him, his psychedelic-tinged, wistful folk ruminations had become wildly popular among South African youth, who embraced them as anthems against the repressive, racist apartheid government. Though long retired from touring, Rodriguez booked some arena gigs in the nation in 1998 to rabid response and later saw his music re-discovered by artists such as DJ/producer David Holmes, who used Cold Shot‘s opening track, “Sugar Man” for his 2002 Come Get It, I Got It compilation alongside songs by Muddy Waters, The Staples Singers, Cyril Neville and Betty Adams. Nas sampled Rodriguez singing the chorus from “Sugar Man” on his 2001 Stillmatic song “You’re Da Man.”
The uptick in interest led to the re-issues of the albums and a world tour, a renaissance that was capped by the best documentary feature Oscar-winning 2012 film Searching for Sugar Man, which chronicled two fans’ journey to find out what happened to their favorite singer. In fact, it was those two Cape Town diehards, rock journalist Craig Bartholomew and Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, who would become the focus of the film thanks to their dogged search to find out what happened to their favorite musician.
“Like a lot of people here, I discovered Rodriguez while I was in the army, which every 18-year-old used to have to do,” Segerman told the Detroit paper in 2008. “He was on everyone’s cassette tapes. It’s great pop music. But you start to realize this is raw, brutally honest ― and that’s the chord it struck. I was in the army, but I didn’t want to be a soldier. I didn’t support apartheid. Raw, brutal honest had lots of appeal… I told him, ‘In South Africa, you’re bigger than Elvis.’”
Dave Matthews, who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, met Rodriguez before playing Pine Knob in Clarkston, MI in 2022 and later praised him from the stage, telling the crowd that the singer was “one of my heroes growing up” in South Africa.
Rodriguez was born on July 10, 1942 in Detroit as the sixth child of Mexican immigrants. He began his career in 1967 with his debut single, “I’ll Slip Away,” followed by his signing to Sussex — a division of Buddah Records (Isley Brothers, Melanie, The Five Stairsteps) — which released his two albums.
His music earned comparisons to Dylan and Cat Stevens, who gentle 1970s folk anthems of love and understanding were tame compared to Rodriguez’s often more politically leaning lyrics. “Talking about the rich folks/ Rich folks have the same jokes/ And they park in basic places/ The priest is preaching/ From a shallow grave/ He counts his money/ Then he paints you saved,” he sang on the acid-tongue acoustic anthem “Rich Folks Hoax” from Cold Fact.
Both of his studio albums were re-issued by Light int he Attic in 2009 and the upswell in interest thanks to the film led him to perform with a full orchestra on The Late Show With David Letterman in 2012, as well as at the Coachella, Montreaux Jazz and Glastonbury festivals in 2013.
Listen to “Rich Folks Hoax” and watch Rodriguez on Letterman below.
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Two months after Daisy Jones & the Six actress Riley Keough was named the sole trustee of her late mother Lisa Marie Presley‘s estate, the star has opened up about the chaos that engulfed her world in the wake of her mother’s passing.
In a new Vanity Fair cover story, Elvis’ only grandchild addresses the swirl of headlines and drama that followed after Lisa Marie’s death on Jan. 12 at age 54 after a hospitalization following cardiac arrest.
“When my mom passed, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives. Everything felt like the carpet had been ripped out and the floor had melted from under us,” Keough said of the passing of Elvis’ only child; an autopsy determined that a complication Presley experienced following weight loss surgery several years ago that caused a small bowel obstruction was her cause of death.
“Everyone was in a bit of a panic to understand how we move forward, and it just took a minute to understand the details of the situation, because it’s complicated,” Keogh continued. “We are a family, but there’s also a huge business side of our family. So I think that there was clarity that needed to be had.”
Asked to confirm that that clarity has been achieved, Keough said, “clarity has been had.”
The settlement earlier this summer reportedly involved a $1 million payment to Priscilla and the reimbursement of $400,000 in legal fees.
Asked if things between Keough and her grandmother are totally smoothed out, the actress was a bit more guarded, but positive about the possibilities. “Things with Grandma will be happy. They’ve never not been happy,” she said, hesitating before describing the scene after her mother’s passing.
“There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was. She’s a beautiful woman, and she was a huge part of creating my grandfather’s legacy and Graceland,” she said of Priscilla. “It’s very important to her. He was the love of her life. Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy. That’s her whole life. So it’s a big responsibility she has tried to take on. None of that stuff has really ever been a part of our relationship prior. She’s just been my grandma.”
As for the conflicting reports about whether Priscilla will be allowed to be buried at Graceland — where Elvis and his parents are interred — Keough said she doesn’t know why that’s even up for debate. “I don’t understand what the drama in the news was about. Yeah. If she wants to be, of course,” she said. “Sharing Graceland with the world was her idea from the start. I always had positive and beautiful memories and association with Graceland. Now, a lot of my family’s buried there, so it’s a place of great sadness at this point in my life.”
The interview also revealed the name of the child Keough welcoming privately via surrogate in August 2022, Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen, whose first name is a nod to Elvis’ Mississippi birthplace. “It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” Keough says of the Oscar-winning Baz Luhrmann biopic starring Austin Butler as The King.
“I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family — it’s not like Memphis or something… Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine.” The child’s middle name is a nod to her late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, who died by suicide in July 2020 when he was 27; her brother is also buried at Graceland.
Dirty Heads return to No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for the first time since 2010, as “Rescue Me” jumps from No. 4 to the top of the tally dated Aug. 12. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news It’s the California band’s first ruler since “Lay […]
Surely you didn’t think The 1975 singer Matty Healy wouldn’t address the band’s recent controversial set in Malaysia during their first gig back since that international incident? After all, it was Healy’s broadside against the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws — not to mention an onstage same-sex kiss with bassist Ross MacDonald — that got the band’s set cut short and led to the cancelation of the Good Vibes festival and Healy’s claim that his group is now banned from Kuala Lumpur.
Well, Healy took the matter head-on, kind of, during a typically raucous, unpredictable headlining slot at Lollapalooza in Chicago on Friday night (Aug. 4). Playing on the Bud Light Stage at the same time as Kendrick Lamar top-lined at the other end of the park, the band lit into the intro to “It’s Not Living If It’s Not With You,” during which Healy said, “You want my travel tip? Don’t go to…”
But he never got to finish his thought, because as the band often does during this wind-up, they cut Healy off before he could say something else that would get them into hot water.
At another point in the set that included runs through “Chocolate,” “Oh Caroline,” “Somebody Else” and “Love It If We Made It,” Healy again seemed to allude to his headline-making talents, joking, “What would we do without a little bit of drama, right?” before swigging from his ever-present flask.
The set had some other predictably unpredictable moments as well, as when during “Robbers,” Healy stole a moment to hop down off the stage to go hug one of his musical heroes after spotting him in the photo pit. Appearing gobsmacked by the sight, Healy scrambled down to give a surprised-looking Blink-182 singer-guitarist Tom DeLonge a giant hug. Even as he continued to sing the song — cradling both his mic and a cigarette in his right hand — Healy paused for a moment to tell Tom, “I love you so much, I love you so so much.”
DeLonge had also been in the same area a few hours earlier during 30 Seconds to Mars’ high-energy, death-defying set, during which singer and rock climber Jared Leto did a tethered free-fall from the top of the stage to gasps from the crowd.
After the song was over, Healy shared with the huge crowd how excited he was to meet one of his rock icons. “The person who inspired me to talk about my d–k as much as I do and I thank him for that forever,” he joked about DeLonge in a nod to Blink’s proud history of juvenile lyricism.
Lollapalooza soldiers on Saturday night (Aug. 5) with sets from Morgan Wade, Alex G, Pusha T, Odesza and Tomorrow X Together. The massive four-day fest winds down on Sunday night (Aug. 6) with music from Joey Bada$$, Alvvays, Lil Yachty, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Lana Del Rey.
AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top” felt an appropriate choice of lights-down intro music for Metallica‘s concert at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Friday night (August 4) — the first show of the U.S. leg of the band’s M72 World Tour, and the first of two shows they’d play at the venue that weekend.
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After all, it’s now been 40 years since their debut album Kill ‘Em All first made them metal sensations. Though they’ve spent most of those four decades as gigantic rock stars, not many years in between have been particularly easy for the band, as they’ve dealt at length with death, alcoholism, in-band turmoil, repeat fan backlash and extremely public humiliation. But here they were, unquestionably at the top — as drummer Lars Ulrich later pointed out, performing in the round at the 80,000-cap MetLife marked the biggest venue they’d ever played in the New York area, and they’d be back doing so again on Sunday night — and their gratitude at being there (and being anywhere at all, really) was infectious throughout the night.
The band was likely feeling extra thankful to have an audience so willing to go along with their fascinating gambit for this particular tour: a risky “No Repeat Weekend” strategy that sees them play two nights at the same venue with two completely different setlists — meaning that each individual show is invariably lacking a handful of the usual musts. Fans with the time, willingness and (most importantly) money to make it out to East Rutherford for both of this weekend’s shows could afford to be zen about such things, but those in town for one night only could understandably be anxious about some of the big misses from Friday’s show. After all, can you really call it a Metallica concert if there’s no “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” no “One,” and — in Yankees country, no less — no “Enter Sandman”?
The answer, of course is “yes,” as became fairly clear early in the set. Many bands throughout history, even great ones, are too defined by their hits to stray from them in an average concert; Metallica can start off with three deep cuts (“Creeping Death” from Ride the Lightning, “Harvester of Sorrow” from …And Justice for All and “Holier Than Thou” from Metallica) and not feel like they’re reaching. Besides, even with over two hours to work with, the band’s songs are epic enough that there was only room for 16 of them; Metallica couldn’t hit all the big ones with that setlist length even if they tried. So it was pretty easy to let go of the idea of a la carte song ordering, and let Metallica’s omakase setlist do its thing.
And both the song selection and the performance was pretty impeccable throughout. It felt a privilege to get near 10 minutes each of both the spellbinding Master of Puppets instrumental chugger “Orion” and the underrated 21st century “Simple Man”-turned-“Free Bird” power ballad “The Day That Never Comes,” with the band — minus the occasional Lars aberration — in total lockstep, guitarist Kirk Hammett’s leads in particular sounding as explosive and radiant as ever. Even most of the material from the new 72 Seasons, which can feel a little flat on record, came alive in this setting — sounding more credible than ever as forgotten b-sides or second-side cuts from the band’s classic period. (“If Darkness Was a Son,” though, will likely always be a tough hang.)
But just as important than the specific songs and performances was the band’s good vibes throughout. You wouldn’t necessarily expect to be able to describe a Metallica concert — particularly one that starts with “Creeping Death” — as “life-affirming,” but that’s how it felt watching these guys cheesing up a storm, raving about their own picks (“I like that song!”) dodging gigantic beach balls onstage (dropped on the crowd during “Seek and Destroy”), even throwing an entire red Solo cup’s worth of picks into the crowd after the show. “We are so grateful to be up there kicking ass and celebrating life with you,” frontman James Hetfield raved. Bassist Robert Trujillo, who’s now been with the band a full two decades (and is basically the same age as the other members), still bounds with a sort of new-guy energy to him; he’s a great argument for why all veteran rock bands should add a brand new member — preferably one who’s been a longtime fan — halfway through their lifespan, to keep things from ever getting too stale.
The show closed with “Master of Puppets” — a signature song which, after three and a half decades of fan worship, also become the band’s unlikely first Hot 100 top 40 hit in nearly 15 years last summer. The most indelible image of the evening — in our section at least — was a series of four pre-teens in matching Metallica shirts losing their minds (and eventually their shirts) to “Master”; all members-in-training of the Hellfire Club, no doubt. One of the adults supervising them was also wearing a shirt with a Napster logo — seemingly as neither an ironic nor confrontational gesture, but rather just as a winking acknowledgment of how much water under the bridge band and audience share after 40 years.
The most emotional moment of the night, however, came earlier, as Hetfield acknowledged thanked the crowd for “remembering my birthday” — the frontman having turned 60 just on Thursday. “My seventh decade on the planet… I can’t believe it,” he rhapsodized from on stage. “Younger me would be saying, ‘You made it. You effing made it.’” Then, before launching into “Fade to Black” — from the band’s second album, and still one of the most vivid, heartbreaking, and still strangely empowering songs ever written about suicidal ideation — he reflected, “I’m glad I didn’t listen to my head when I was young.” It’s a long way to the top, but Hetfield and Metallica made a very good case on Friday for why getting there is worth the trip.
Setlist:
“Creeping Death”“Harvester of Sorrow”“Holier Than Thou”“King Nothing”“72 Seasons”“If Darkness Had a Son”“Fade to Black”“Shadows Follow”“Orion”“Nothing Else Matters”“Sad But True”“The Day That Never Comes”“Battery”“Fuel”“Seek and Desteroy”“Master of Puppets”
Streams and sales of Sinead O’Connor’s catalog vaulted following the Irish singer’s death on July 26, with many of her songs returning to the Billboard charts dated Aug. 5.
O’Connor’s catalog earned 7.9 million official on-demand U.S. streams in the July 21-27 tracking week, up 774% from 901,000 July 14-20, according to Luminate.
As for July 26-27 vs. July 24-25, O’Connor’s official on-demand U.S. song streams grew from 243,000 to 7.3 million, up 2,885%.
Additionally, downloads of her songs totaled 17,000 July 21-27, a 5,348% surge from a negligible amount July 14-20.
In terms of albums, O’Connor’s music earned 11,000 equivalent album units July 21-27, up 1,346% from 1,000 the week before. Of those 11,000 units, 4,000 were via album sales.
With consumption gains come multiple appearances on the Billboard charts for O’Connor, paced by her cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which returns to the Rock Digital Song Sales and Alternative Digital Song Sales surveys at No. 1 with 10,000 downloads sold.
The song also accrued 3.2 million streams, which, combined with its sales, drive it onto the multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs tally at No. 10 (where older songs are eligible to appear if in the top half and with a meaningful reason for their resurgences).
It’s the song’s second time on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs (which began in 2009); it ranked at No. 16 on the May 14, 2016, chart with streaming and sales gains following Prince’s death.
“Nothing Compares 2 U” was O’Connor’s lone Billboard Hot 100 No. 1, reigning for four weeks in 1990.
O’Connor’s songs “Mandinka” and “The Emperor’s New Clothes” also reach Alternative Digital Song Sales, at Nos. 16 and 17, respectively, and Rock Digital Song Sales (Nos. 24 and 25), with approximately 1,000 downloads sold apiece. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” was O’Connor’s lone other entry on the Hot 100, as the follow-up to “Nothing Compares 2 U” reached No. 60 in 1990.
Further placements for O’Connor’s music are possible on the Aug. 12-dated Billboard charts following a full week of sales, streaming and airplay tracking (July 28-Aug. 3).
O’Connor died in London at age 56. A cause of death has not been announced.